The Voyage

doing my best to keep the plot moving in a forward direction.

I froze in fear as the sound of shuffling footsteps over linoleum floor sounded. I didn’t know what to do. What if they saw me? I was supposed to be dead if they saw their dead son standing in their living room; I could only imagine what they would do.

“Meagan, stop eating and say grace,” Said a woman’s voice. “And stop shoving all your food in your mouth, chew, please.”

A roundish man walked from the kitchen to the entrance of the living room and looked me dead in the eye. He didn’t seem shocked to see me. In fact, he hardly even seemed to be looking at me at all. His head was nearly bald and his mustache was gone, but otherwise, he looked the same.

Dad frowned and shook his head; moving through the living room towards the stairs. I held my breath and allowed him to pass, skirting to the edge of the room. I expected him to say something. To break down in tears, embrace me and cry, “You’re alive!” But he didn’t make the slightest glance in my direction. It was then that I remembered Grayson telling me the dead were nothing more than ghosts in the world of the living. I didn’t know if that meant people could walk right through me, but I decided I wasn’t going to risk testing it.

Mom and Meagan were in the kitchen. I stood over Meagan and watched her eat. She’d gotten taller, and mom had let her hair grow longer. Mom asked her about school, and she replied with a mouthful of food. Mom scolded her.

I should’ve been there, sitting at that table with them. I should’ve been laughing at Meagan as a noodle fell from her mouth onto the floor. But I was dead.

Dad came back into the kitchen and moved right past me to the refrigerator. It was strange being invisible and being right in front of someone, but knowing they couldn’t see you. I sat down on a chair that was pulled out just far enough that I wouldn’t have to move it. I sat in silence, watching my family continue with their lives without me.

 “Mail’s here,” Meagan announced.

Mom looked out the window to the street beyond and said, “Hmm, it’s rather early for mail, isn’t it?”

Dad glanced out the window as well. “Meagan, can you go out and get it, please?”

Meagan made a face, but pushed away from the table with a groan and left to retrieve the mail.

When she returned, she brought with her, a large stack of letters. “Here,” she said, handing the stack to mom who shuffled through the parcels, absentmindedly.

 “We got a lot of get well cards for Nicolas. Oh, look " this one’s from your mother, Stephen.” She said to my father.

My ears perked up. It was the first time I had heard my name spoken, though I wasn’t sure of the usefulness of a get well card considering I was dead.

            “Did the hospital receipt come yet?” He asked, taking a bite out of a sandwich he had pulled from the refrigerator.

“Umm,” mom said, searching through the stack. “Yes, here it is.” She pulled out a white envelope with a hospital insignia on it. Dad reached over and took it, ripping the top and pulling out a white letter. He looked at it, but then set it back down.

“I need my glasses,” he grumbled to himself. He got up and disappeared into the living room.

I couldn’t help myself. I needed to look. Mom’s back was turned and Meagan was focused on wolfing down her food. I picked up the letter and read it carefully. The address for the hospital, the number for the doctor, yes! Here it was; patient info. A strange pulse made itself known in the side of my head.

“Mom!”

I looked up. Meagan was staring at the letter, wide eyed. I dropped the letter and watched it float to the floor.

“Mom!” She repeated.

“What? What is it?” Mom asked, turning around swiftly.

“T-the letter " It was just floating there,” she said, pointing to where I stood.

“Don’t be silly, honey. It was probably just the wind,” mom explained, turning around and getting to work on putting dishes in the dish washer.

“But I saw it,” Meagan pleaded. Mom ignored her. Phew, I thought. I moved away from the kitchen and back towards the living room. Dad moved past me, the opposite way with wire-rimmed reading glasses in hand.

My time was up here. Avra and Grayson would be wondering where I was by now. I took one last look at the happy family that would never see me alive.

I turned with a sigh, which turned to a sudden sense of shock. I walked over to the living room window. Scanning the yard, I spotted nothing. The grass was perfectly green and undisturbed, and a man mowing the lawn further down the street hadn’t looked up. But I was almost positive that I had seen it " Chiron standing there with his arms folded behind his back and a wide smile. I quickly made a doorway out of there.

Back inside the shack, the group had returned, along with an impressive arsenal of deadly weapons. A swift punch in the arm forced me to turn to Avra.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Where did you run off to?” She asked, frowning. Her hands were on her hips again. She had exchanged her tunic for leather armor like mine. It fits her well, I thought.

“It’s not important now,” I said, trying to get off the subject. “Are we ready to go yet, or what?”

Avra gave me a stern look. “Yes, but were going to do it later. We need some rest now. I mean look at us; we’re tired and it’ll be a long journey to where we’re going. We should use this time to take a break. You need it, especially"”

“But Chiron’ll probably have an army of immortals assembled by then,” I argued.

“Knowing that creep, he probably has his army ready to go. There’s no use in trying to take him by surprise, he knows we’re coming,” Grayson said warily, approaching from across the room.  

I wanted to argue, but I knew he was right. In the end, I decided that, maybe a little rest was a good idea. We settled how long we would take to sleep and regain our strength, and as soon as we had, I immediately felt exhausted, as if hours of strenuous effort had finally caught up with me. I was sleepy as well, which was strange. I hadn’t felt sleepy without the aid of Chiron’s drugged food or Hypnos’ powers in a very long time.

We settled down on the cold floor. Soon, it was nighttime outside the shack and darkness had swept over the room like a black veil. I was exhausted and tired in every sense of the words, but some force was keeping me from falling asleep. Even as I set my head against the straw, I could not bring my eyelids to a close for more than a few seconds. The pulsing in my head started and stopped randomly, not to mention my heart was in a nervous frenzy. I tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position, but it seemed nothing could settle the anxiety I felt. I sat up, getting my bearings. I wished now that Hypnos were here so that he could knock me out for a few hours.

I rubbed my eyes, thoroughly. When this is all over, I thought; I’m going to sleep in my own bed, no matter who saw me. I thought briefly about how a mysterious mass underneath the bed covers of their deceased son would roll over with my parents.

I sighed. What was I doing here? Why couldn’t I have just died and had a normal afterlife " whatever that entailed. No games, no wars, no Chiron. This whole mess was becoming a bit too much from me.

I got up; finally tired of sitting in silence of snoring children and rumbling griffins (who I was amazed had managed to sleep for so long a time) and made my way over to the far wall and thought of a place to go.

Home? No, if I went back there one more time I probably wouldn’t ever come back. I cycled through the list of possible destinations until finally I settled on one that seemed like a good choice.

The door appeared, and I made my way through into the cottage by Erebus’ city. It was quiet. Though the sea outside churned and washed upon the rocks just below the tiny cliff, there were no shrieks of evil things, or vicious cries from the dead that wandered the coast. I made sure that there were no enemies hovering in the vicinity. Satisfied that I was indeed safe, I ventured beyond the door and onto the desolate yet soft earth.

Of course, the sight was beautiful, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I picked out a relatively flat and horizontal obsidian rock that jutted out, a few feet over and above the dark water and climbed down to it. There, I sat for a while, just listening to the sounding of crashing waves and the refreshing spray of sea water on my skin.

“Running off again, huh?” asked a voice behind me. I turned to see Avra standing above me on the cliff. She scaled the few stones down to where I sat and made herself comfortable. “I couldn’t sleep either. I don’t understand how Grayson does it.”

“Wasn’t it you who said we needed the rest?” I asked her.

“Yeah, but I figured you could use a break,” she answered.

“You have no idea what I’ve been doing for the past few hours. For all you know, I’ve been lying on a beach in Malibu, soaking up some rays and getting in a tan,” I joked. Avra gawked and shoved me in the arm.

“Don’t tell me that,” she said, turning serious. “I don’t need that kind of mindset right now.”

“What do mean?”

Avra turned to me. “I don’t need our great leader telling me that he has no idea what he’s doing. It puts a bit of a damper on the whole war. Nobody needs that now.”

“You know, I never asked for this " for any of this. I never said I was some great leader, and I never wanted to be in a war. Death is turning out to be a lot harder than life makes it out to be.”

Avra smiled and looked off to the sea for a moment. “Grayson told me you lost your memory,” she said after a while.

“Not all of it,” I replied. “It’s kind of a long story. Not to mention it’s hard enough to explain as it is. I remember some things, but it’s like they’re not really my memories . . . like their somebody else’s. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.”

“You’re right, that does sound crazy,” she admitted.

“Well, at least I came back in the end, right?”

Avra gave me a puzzled look, but then I saw understanding in her eyes. “You remember then " I mean " about when you left?” There was something about her voice that sounded embarrassed.

“Yeah,” I said. “It was about time too. I had a feeling that things were starting to get awkward between us,” I said, remembering back to the first moments of being dropped into the challenges, and the bold girl who had saved my life. “Remember the first"well, the second time we met? I had no idea who you were. You probably thought I was an idiot.”

“I did,” Avra said. “I remember saving your butt too . . . on multiple occasions.”

“It was only. . . .” I counted on my fingers, “well considering I saved you that one time at the lake, I’d say the score comes down to about one to five,” I said, unable to hold back a stupid smile.

“One to twelve if you count the first time around,” Avra grinned. We sat there for a while, smiling like idiots. I needed this, I really did: a chance to feel normal again . . . at least, for a little while. The waves crashed and began to reach higher on the rocks. Soon, Avra and I were retreating up the cliff to avoid the freezing sprays of water. We were standing at the entrance to the cottage when Avra looked to me and smiled, but then her smile turned to confusion and finally to awe. “Hey, look!” She exclaimed suddenly.

I turned to follow her gaze and found myself surprised. Far off in the distance, a few streaks of red and orange had made themselves known on the horizon. The light blossomed over Erebus’ city and over the dark water, which shimmered and reflected the warm colors brightly.

Funny, I thought. I didn’t know the sun rose in the underworld. I repeated the thought out loud to Avra who nodded slowly.

“It really doesn’t come up that often, but then again, it’s not really the sun at all. My guess is it’s another illusion, just on a grander scale.”

I watched the sunrise for a moment longer. “Yeah,” I said with a short sigh. “But it is beautiful.”

“I’d say it’s sort of like the war horn, wouldn’t you?”

I nodded.

“Well then, let’s go.” Avra turned back and into the cabin. I heard the door slam shut, but I made no movement to follow. I wanted to stand there for a little bit longer. I didn’t care that this sunrise was fake, or that in a few hours, I would be smack dab in the middle of a civil war in the underworld. I had never asked for this: to be here, now. I should be back home with my mom, my dad, and my little sister, I thought. Not in this terrible place. But I was here, so even though I would never feel the warmth of the sun on my face, for a moment, I was alright with simply watching it rise.

“Hey, are you coming?” Avra called from the doorway. “You know I can’t leave by myself.”

“Yeah. . . .”

Together, we returned to the shack and moved past roused griffins and the dead who had simply pretended to snooze because they couldn’t actually sleep. Grayson stumbled to alertness as well. I stood at the far end of the room; the area where most of the boxes were and the fewest dead were gathered against the walls. I stood atop one of the boxes and waited until everyone was awake and ready to listen then took a few more moments to figure out what the heck I was going to say.

“Look,” I started. “I know this probably seems like a horrible plan to a few of you, I’m glad you decided to trust me. Well, now it’s time to go. Now it’s time to do something. We’re leaving now so get ready. You all know your part, so I don’t need to remind you. Jack!”

Jack looked up from his curled position, then, quick as lightning, he was on my back and intertwining his talons around my torso and legs. Our entire group left the shack and made for the cottage, griffins and all.

When we stepped outside, there was the immediate sound of gasps. Many of them had, like me, never seen the sun rise in the underworld. I wondered if their thoughts were like mine had been. Were they scared as well?

Jack squawked and unfurled his great wings. Many of those on the cliff had to back up because of the enormous wingspan. He flapped once, then twice, and then raised them high overhead. I took this as a sign that he was ready for flight. I squatted down low and jumped as I as I could, noticing that my feet never touched back down on the earth. Soon, the wind was rushing past my face as Jack carried my over through the air, skimming along the water. A comical shriek sounded over the wind as Idiot picked Avra up against her will and shot up into the sky. Avra continued to scream, even after Idiot had leveled out and was flying smoothly high above the little cottage. After that, a shrill whistle came from below as Grayson called Hermes. The boatman came up from underwater once again; the murky water spilling from the portholes in the sides.

I watched as the dead began to gather on the boat, which magically became larger with each person who stepped on it. Grayson was talking to Hermes who was listening intently.

The other griffins had followed Jack and were now streaking, playfully, through the air; snapping at each other and having miniature races where each tried to outmaneuver the other. When Grayson had finished negotiating with Hermes, he joined us with his own griffin. I noticed that he was wearing that eerie Minotaur mask of his again.

After Hermes had cast off with his new crew of dead souls and all animals that could fly were doing so, Jack found an updraft and together we soared higher, up to where Avra gripped tightly onto the griffins talons like a lifeline. The griffin was showing slight signs of strangled pain.

“You might want to ease up there,” I teased. “If you kill him, you’ll drop right out of the sky.”

Avra looked daggers at me, then wide eyed down to the sea. I think she was gripping even tighter now. Her face had become rather pale and sickly.

I soared around her for a few minutes, getting reacquainted with how Jack banked and dove. It was so smooth, I sometimes forgot he was even there, and I was flying by myself over the vast sea. But then, Jack would flap his wings, and frequently the natural silence would by Avra shouting, “whoa!” or gasping harshly.

When all was said and done, we all leveled out and began to fly over the dark spires of Erebus’ city as they twinkled in the dim light. We were headed far beyond there, according to Hypnos and Thánatos. The Fields of Asphodel was at the very edge of the underworld. It would take nothing short of a god to open the doors, which was why they had headed there before everyone else.

This would be the farthest we had ever journeyed. According to Hypnos, it was the equivalent of crossing Europe, horizontally, in an airplane. Man, I thought. This could turn out to be a long trip. But at least I was still headed somewhere. At least I still had a purpose, even though my headache continued to return.

Author's Note

same deal with the dashes and stuff. Please, tell me what you think.

Reviews

[Daniel Gardner]

Nice work so far. I like the way your characters speak and you do a good job with your narration as well. Keep it up.

[Coyote Poetry]

I like the story. I'm reading backwards. The conversation was interesting and the people in the story had purpose. Life is knowledge and answers needed to be brought forward by living the question. A very good chapter. Thank you.
Coyote

[WriterSki7]

A few missing letters and comments, soem grammatical errors but other than that it's going quite well. Looking forward to the next chapter, really. For some reason my Word does not have this problem. I posted another chapter on Wolfpack the other day and it was just fine: dashes and all.

[ChristianM]

Considering I don't think I'm this far in the story yet I think I'll just review dialogue.
I thought it was good, but you could put some work into it.
I felt that some of it was too close together.
For example
“You might want to ease up there,” I teased. “If you kill him, you’ll drop right out of the sky.”
Now, I could be totally wrong here but I think it would be less confusing for the reader if you grouped these two sentences into one. The instances where you do this aren't in the middle of a paragraph but separate which is good, but still throws the reader off for a second.
Other than that, I thought it was good.

[HorrorMaster]

Very awesome chapter, when their is going to be a final chapter of this book? I want to see how it ends. Are you going to publish it?

[Star Wolf]

Very nice and still very fascinating and interesting. I'm really enjoying this!

[Dutch Jr.]

Your plot does move forward, dialogue is natural, narrating is very well-written. Nice job.

[The Analog Kid]

I love the floating letter part:)

[James Watts]

I liked the scene with his family. That fact that you mentioned get well letters had me thinking. Is this a dream? Is he in a coma? You have me wondering just what is really happening and have gotten my curiosity up. Very nice read.