SIX MONTHS AGO ZACHARY MILLER HAD BEEN AN ordinary boy living an ordinary life in an ordinary part of the ordinary city of London (for, despite Charlotte's feelings on the matter, London is very ordinary if you grew up there). Zee liked music, he liked football (that's British for soccer), and most of all he liked Samantha Golton, the dark-haired forward on the girls' school team. He had spent quite a long time trying to name the exact shade of brown of her hair-it was richer than "nut," yet not as red as "mahogany" or as black as "raven." He had finally settled on "chocolate," which had the added benefit of connoting something extremely delicious.
Samantha was the fastest girl in her year at Feldwop and Egfred's School for Girls, and Zee was the fastest boy in his at Feldwop and Egfred's School for Boys. Zee thought it was time for some coeducation.
At night he dreamed of a summer running back and forth across football pitches with Samantha, practicing his passes with her, but there were a couple of problems with this scenario.
Problem Number One: He was going to spend the summer in Exeter living with his grandmother and training with the summer club there. Zee was actually really looking forward to going; he always came back from his summer holidays fit, well fed, sun drenched, and happy. But he did not know how he could survive ten weeks without a glimpse of those dark tresses rippling behind her as she ran, like the waves of a cocoa-dark sea.
Problem Number Two: He had never actually spoken to Samantha.
Not that there hadn't been plenty of chances. F &E offered plenty of opportunities for (well-supervised) interaction between the girls' and boys' schools. In addition to various formal social functions there was the drama club, the yearly F &E Olympics, and the chess club -which, due to its coeducational nature, was far more popular than it reasonably ought to have been.
But Zee did not do drama, he was terrible at chess, and he was unwilling to fake it for the sake of either club. He grew so quickly that tuxedos never seemed to fit him right, and anyway, most of the social events seemed designed for people with Roman numerals after their name. He had watched the girls' team play a few times, and he'd become friendly with some of the members of the team. He even went running occasionally with their captain, Nicki, who lived down the street from him.
But he had never been able to talk to chocolate-haired, almond-eyed Samantha; in fact, he had never been able to talk near or around chocolate-haired, almond-eyed Samantha. In fact, if you took any preposition and put chocolate-haired, almond-eyed Samantha as its object, what you'd get was one mute Zee. He thought it would be better at least to babble incoherently, the way Chad Blightmere did near or around Nina Desai- at least then Samantha would know he was there. But alas. Her very presence in a room turned him perfectly still and mute, a lovesick banister.
So even if he were going to stay in London, he could not frolic, because a banister does not frolic. In Exeter he could frolic all he wanted, but that frolicking would be entirely Samantha-free.
Or so he thought.
One day, just as spring was easing into summer and he had already mentally begun to pack for his trip, Zee went to see a senior girls' match with Nicki. On their way home they talked buoyantly of the match, of their teams, of school, and of nothing in particular.
"You going to play this summer?" Nicki asked.
"I'm going to Exeter," Zee said. "I'll play with the club there."
"Pity," Nicki said.
"Nah. I like it. My gran's there, and I stay with her."
"Every summer?"
"Yeah. My dad travels for work in summer. Mum's a teacher, so she goes with him. Gran's fun."
"Is the club any good?"
"Ah, they've got some brilliant players. The club attracts people from all over, and we always win the district."
"Oh," Nicki gave a shrug, as if to say that winning a district isn't a big deal when that district isn't London. "No girls' team, I suppose."
Zee blushed. "No."
She nodded. "Well, there's some sort of camp at the university there this year, and they actually let girls play. One of ours is going to be there in July."
Zachary stopped. "One of yours? Who?"
"Samantha Golton. The forward. Know her? She's almost as fast as you."
Zee's eyes popped open. "Samantha?"
"I see you do know her," Nicki grinned. "Shall I put in a good word for you?"
"Yes. No… I don't know!" Zee grabbed her shoulder. "What should I do?"
"Sam's cool. Why don't I, you know, lay the ground work?"
"No! No! Don't!"
"Okay, okay. Why not?"
"Because… because…" Zee stopped. Why not, indeed? Because either Samantha wouldn't be interested and then he'd have to curl up in a corner and die, or else she might be interested and then she'd try to talk to him and he might not be ready and then he'd embarrass himself and would have to curl up in a corner and die. Either way the consequences would be dire. Dire!
For the last three years, ever since his parents had enrolled him in Feldwop and Egfred, Zachary Miller had worked on his football game. His parents had insisted on sending him to a school that still wanted to train lords and ladies, whereas Zee wanted to go to a school where all the real people were, the ones who lived in this century. But F &E was known as one of the "best" day schools in the country, and he suspected that neither of his parents realized that in some ways that just meant that F &E attracted the "best" people.
All of the students at F &E were something. Most of those things involved having the most land or the longest name or the highest aristocratic rank or the most drops of blue blood or, at the very least, the most money. Zee didn't belong to that world. His dad was an American businessman, his mother was a schoolteacher and the daughter of immigrants. Most of the boys there belonged to something very old, very insular, and very, very, very white-something that people with grandmothers from Malawi and grandfathers from South Africa were not a part of. There were not a lot of biracial earls of Northumberland, nor were there many brown faces at F &E, no matter how many times the administrators took pictures of Zachary, Matthew Hollywell, and/or Phil Higsby for their promotional brochures.
But the opposite of something is nothing, and Zee had no interest in being nothing. He was determined to find his place at F &E. And since he could never be something based on bloodline, he would have to settle for merit. But he could not be the smartest. Zee was smart, certainly-consistently around tenth in his year. But F &E attracted its share of young geniuses, the kind of boys who were in the chess club for the actual chess-like, for instance, Phil Higsby, who was nationally ranked.
Zee could not be the best singer because, while he had a nice voice, he was no match for the still-soaring soprano of wee little Boyd Brentwaithe. He could not be the best at cricket because he thought cricket was dull, or at polo because he wasn't a total twit, or at debate because he preferred it when everyone just got along. But if he worked, if he practiced and trained, he could be the very best football player, and that- at F &E, like at any other British school-was truly something. There he had the lineage; his parents may not have been peers of the realm, but his mother was the University of Exeter cross-country champion, and his dad had played basketball and baseball at the University of Minnesota. Zee had speed, he had talent, he had mental and physical agility, and he had drive-plus he'd been kicking around a football ever since Grandmother Winter gave him his first one when he was three.
And Zee was the best. There was no denying it. There were rumors they were going to let him play for the senior team next year, a year early. He was the best, his teammates revered him, and he was something.
But no matter what, he was never as happy as when he was in Exeter, playing football all day and spending his evenings with Grandmother Winter. The boys there came from all over the West Country, and they were just people; they went bowling and wore T-shirts and didn't care about which fork to use, and they were Irish and Asian and African and sometimes all three.
And they were good. Much better than the F &E team, even the much-lauded senior team. Zee was just average on the club team, and in Exeter being average was just fine with him.
All of that was perhaps why Zee was even more nervous to hear that Samantha Golton would be in Exeter for July. Samantha was a part of the world of F &E, where all the boys carried their somethings around with them like medals of honor. Exeter had cows, and he had to carry nothing with him at all. He could just wear blue jeans and play football and be with Grandmother Winter, who made excellent lemonade and lots of cake, who took him to museums and bought him ice cream and laughed at his jokes, and who seemed to think he was really something.
But nothing that summer was to be as expected.
One night, a week before he was to leave, his mother sat him down with a sort of ominous-sounding "I want to talk to you about this summer." Zee's first thought was that she had found out about Samantha and wanted to give him love advice.
"Um, okay."
"Your father's travel schedule is light this year," she continued, "and he's got some holiday. I thought we might come out to Exeter in July and visit with you and Gran, if you don't mind."
"Really?" Zee said.
"Yes. It's been a while since I've visited my mother. We'll just come for two weeks or so."
"Okay," Zee said. That was fine, especially if it would be just for a couple weeks. And it was much better than love advice.
"And your dad thought we might invite Aunt Tara and Uncle Mike and Charlotte up for August, too. They've been talking about coming over."
"To Exeter?"
"No. London. We'd come back."
"But…"
"Wouldn't you like to see your cousin Charlotte?"
Zee bit his lip. He barely knew his cousin Charlotte. They had gone to visit when he was six; he had dim memories of kicking around a football with her at a time when he'd never heard the word soccer, and he had thought she was playing a weird joke on him. It's not that he actively didn't want to see his cousin Charlotte; his feelings on the matter were entirely neutral. But August was not for London, no matter about Samantha Golton. August was for Exeter and lemonade and freshly baked cake and the sort of floury, sort of talcum powdery, sort of lotiony smell of Grandmother Winter's home.
Grandmother Winter almost did not invite her grandson to stay with her that summer, for she knew that during the summer she would die.
Once in a while Grandmother Winter knew things. Some of those things were small things. She always knew where Lolita Thornbridge had left her keys. She always knew the specials at the Flying Horse and when they were out of pies. And she always knew, every year, what her daughter was getting her for Christmas. (Though every year she pretended to be surprised. Because it's not nice to take the fun out of life for people.)
And some of the things were big. She knew when she left home when she was twenty that she would never go back. She knew when she met Zachariah Winter in Liverpool one rainy day that she would marry him. She knew when she was pregnant that she would have a girl and then no other children. She knew when her daughter was pregnant that she would have a boy, that that boy would be named Zachary, and that he would be the most precious thing on Earth to his grandmother.
And one day in April, while she was watering her rose bushes, she was struck with the knowledge that she was going to die that summer. Her death would be quiet and painless, a good death as far as deaths go. But it would most certainly be a death.
Well.
Once the initial shock had worn off, Grandmother Winter found that she was not upset about dying- she had lived quite a good number of years, thank you. In fact, she had been alive all of her life, but she had never been dead, and it seemed an interesting thing to be. And her husband had been dead for ten years. It would be nice to be in the same realm of existence as him again.
Of course, she regretted having to leave her daughter. She regretted the sorrow she would cause. And she regretted that she would not be with her grandson as he grew older-yet she also knew that somehow she would never really go away from him. Whatever death held, she would find a way to watch over him. Grandmother Winter had a way of getting what she wanted when she set her mind to something.
The one problem with the whole scenario was that she did not want her grandson to have to see her die. But every time she tried to come up with an excuse for why she would not be able to host him this summer, her brain came up empty. And every time she was ready to reach for the phone to call the Millers, something distracted her. Somehow she knew that no matter what she did, her grandson would be there with her when she died-that this, like her death itself, was unavoidable.
So he would come. They would have one last summer together. She would not tell him how it would end, because there was no point in his being sad for one more second than he had to be. He would come, and she would give him the best summer she could, she would give him a lifetime of grandmotherness, and when the end did come, she would make sure he knew that she would always be there.
For Grandmother Winter sensed something inside Zee. Something that was all closed up, hard and tight, when she saw him in London, something that unfurled when he was there in Exeter over the summer. She had tried to talk to his mother about it, but Suzy did not see it, in the way that sometimes parents cannot see what is in front of them. "Of course he's more relaxed over the summer," she had said. "It's summer!"
So now Zee would not have his summers anymore, and whatever it was that made him expand, she would simply have to help him find it on his own.
WHEN ZEE ARRIVED IN EXETER ON JUNE 8, HE found that his grandmother had gone mad.
Not clinically mad. Not mad like talking-to-people-who-aren't-there mad or forgetting-to-wear-trousers mad or hello-I'm-the-Queen-how-do-you-do mad; but rather, mad in the way that a person can be completely normal all of your life, and then one day you discover she's completely gone off her rocker.
For when Zee arrived at Grandmother Winter's house -he had taken an early train to surprise her-he found her baking. This was not unusual in itself; grandmothers bake, and Grandmother Winter was no exception. But usually she baked a cake a week, on Sundays, and Zee would have a slice a night and count the progression of the week by the diminishing eighths of the cake round. Zee never let her throw the cakes away when they were stale -Friday's wedge might be dry and old, but it was still Friday's wedge, the crumbly vestiges of the week, and it contained an implicit promise that on Sunday there would be fresh, whole cake again.
But on this day when Zee walked in the door of his grandmother's house, the whole place smelled as if it, too, had been baked, from the overstuffed furniture to the flowery wallpaper to the bright, thick carpet. His nose led him to the kitchen, where he found Grandmother Winter and not a cake, but cakes. Many, many cakes. He saw ten cooling cake rounds of various shapes, sizes, and colors waiting to be assembled into something extremely delicious, and judging from the heat in the kitchen, he knew there were more baking in the oven. He saw bowls everywhere, dripping with batter, and open canisters of flour and various and sundry sugars, empty boxes of cream, and several chickens' worth of eggshells in the sink. As for Gran, she stood at the stove working at a saucepan filled with a creamy substance that Zee knew was a few squares of chocolate, some egg whites, and a splash of rum away from becoming Grandmother Winter's inimitable chocolate icing.
When Gran looked up and saw him, a magnificent smile broke out on her face, the kind of smile that reminds you what a wonderful thing it is that there are grandmothers in the world, and she put down her saucepan and hurried to him.
"Zachary! You're early!" she said, giving him a flour-covered hug. "Everything's such a mess. You weren't supposed to see this!"
Zee hugged her back, then gestured toward the mess in the kitchen. "Gran! You've gone mad!"
She laughed, "Perhaps."
"Are you having the whole town over?"
She winked. "I couldn't help it. I was just so excited to see you. I couldn't decide which kind to make, so I made them all."
"I can see that!"
"Come help me with the icing. Make yourself useful."
And so within moments Zee found himself wearing one of Gran Winter's most grandmotherly aprons, whipping sugar and cracking eggs into the gooey mess while his grandmother looked on approvingly, for she had personally taught him to crack and divide an egg properly, and there were not many thirteen-year-old boys in all of England who could do so with such skill and grace.
In fact, Grandmother Winter had not gone out of her baking mind; the cakes were not all for Zachary alone. Somewhere around dusk the doorbell began to ring, and one by one his friends from the summer team appeared on her doorstep. Every one gave Zee an enthusiastic handshake or a man hug or a slap on the back, and every one was given a large piece of cake, and as they all talked and laughed through the evening into the night, Grandmother Winter never mentioned that her grandson had made the raspberry icing himself.
The first weeks of summer passed quickly for Zee. He woke up early in the mornings to find his grandmother making sausages or omelets, or sometimes working in her garden, or sometimes curled up on her big green easy chair with the paper or a mystery. She saw him off to training during the days and welcomed him home at night. Some nights he went out with the team, but mostly he came home to be with his gran. Some nights they cooked together. Zee learned to make Bolognese sauce, which made the whole neighborhood smell of spices; poached fish with the texture of cream; curry thick with potatoes. Some nights they sat down together to watch the sort of television shows eighty-two-year-old grandmothers were supposed to love and thirteen-year-old boys were never ever, ever supposed to admit to watching, much less enjoying, and certainly not gossiping with their grans about afterward.
Then, on the weekends, Grandmother Winter took him to some absurd tourist destination, the type of thing they had done together when he was six and hadn't done since. The first week, when she suggested they go to the cathedral and take the tour, he thought she was kidding. But they did it; they even had tea in Tinley Tearoom. Zee ate his fill of scones with Devonshire clotted cream, and they pretended to be Americans. They went to Rougemont Gardens, they went to the House That Moved, they went to the moors and to the quayside. They watched the swans, they ate ice cream, and they rented a pedal boat and went out on the river. Zee told his grandmother that they had tourist things in London as well, and she told him firmly to keep pedaling, smarty-pants.
Zee felt relaxed, happy, and for a few weeks he was able to keep his mind off Samantha. He could put her away, like the rest of London. He would know when she arrived, and he could deal with it then. For the twenty-minute walk from Gran Winter's house to training took him right past the university fields. Really, it was the most direct route.
The summer camps were well on their way by the time Zee arrived in Exeter. His first week of training, the university fields were filled with young kids – ten-and-unders scrimmaging on makeshift half-size pitches. The third week the kids got a little bigger, the eleven-and twelve-year-olds practicing headers or passing the ball back and forth endlessly up and down the pitch.
And then one day in early July, on his daily trek home, Zee found that the children had been replaced by girls. Beautiful, wonderful girls, with muddy cleats, fierce footwork, and indomitable insteps. And in the middle of them all, executing a dribbling drill with delicious precision, was Samantha Golton, the muddiest, fiercest, most indomitable of them all.
Zee froze at the sight of her. He had known all along that one day he would see her there, but knowing Samantha Golton is going to be in a place and actually seeing Samantha Golton in that place are entirely different phenomena. He wanted desperately to flee, but since he was frozen, there would be no fleeing. There would be no moving at all. Ever. He was going to stay planted next to the bleachers on the lower football pitch of the University of Exeter athletic fields while the sun slowly set in the hills. The girls would end training, they would head to the locker room, then home for the night, and Zee would be there, still and watchful, and by the next morning, when the sun came up again, he would be covered in fresh dew.
Or he would have been, had someone sitting in the bleachers not suddenly blown a whistle, and had every single one of the beautiful, wonderful, fierce girls not turned her head in his direction, and had Samantha's gaze not fallen directly on him.
Zee unfroze. His feet popped awake and carried him swiftly behind the bleachers, where he caught his breath, began to blush furiously, then proceeded to head home, shaking his head and muttering to himself the entire way.
After that Zee considered changing his route. This one was obviously fraught with peril.
But it was the most direct way home. Zee decided simply to keep his eyes straight ahead when he walked by the lower pitch. If he didn't see Samantha, he would be much less inclined to humiliate himself in some way or another. He could ignore her all summer and wait to humiliate himself in London. Zee stuck to his plan-he never let his eyes waver, and he was proud of his determination and focus. These were qualities a good football player should cultivate.
On the last Saturday before his parents were to come join them in Exeter, Zee and Gran Winter spent their day walking around High Street. Grandmother Winter kept trying to buy Zee things-new cleats, a new coat, even some CDs with decidedly ungrandmotherly content.
Zee was busily trying to explain to his grandmother why he didn't need anything and why she shouldn't be spending money on him and just what exactly that one album title meant, when Zee heard it.
Her voice.
Directed at him?
He looked around wildly. There, walking right past him, so close he could-oh, better not to think about it- there she was, arm in arm with two girls. She was smiling at him. His jaw dropped. And then she said the most beautiful word he'd ever heard:
"Hi."
Hi!
The other girls nodded at him in greeting, and the trio walked on, whispering to one another. Zee stood in the middle of High Street with his mouth open.
She said, "Hi!" He couldn't believe it. Hi means Hello, and Hello means, well, Hello! It means… Greetings!… Salutations! It means, I know who you are and I wish to acknowledge your presence. In fact, I salute you!
Zee watched the girls disappear into the crowd, contemplating hi and all its myriad wonders. Grandmother Winter watched him watching them and smiled softly "Who's that?" she asked casually.
"Girl from Feldwop," Zee said.
"Very lovely," she said.
"Yeah," Zee shrugged, then added with a strange laugh, "You know, half the Feldwop girls are hoping to marry one of the princes."
Grandmother Winter tilted her head. "I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "She doesn't look as horribly dull as all that."
She grinned at Zee, who grinned right back. His body unfroze, and he laughed. "Let's hope not."
"Come on," said Grandmother Winter. "Let's go look at shirts."
That night Zee sat awake in bed and thought about the entire hi incident. She knew him. That amazed Zee. Of course, she'd seen him play before and they'd been at events together, but that was no reason for her actually to know him. To have noticed him.
He maybe could have said something back. Something like "Hi." Or "Hi, Samantha." But that might have been too much. And who knew what she would have thought then.
Zee didn't know what to do. Clearly he couldn't keep walking by the fields pretending not to notice her. He would have to find another route.
So he didn't see Samantha for another week, and he began to relax a little. The week was busy anyway-his parents had arrived, and his father had a strange love for tourist sites. So they visited all the standards again, this time without the irony, and they didn't pretend to be Americans because his father actually was one.
On the next Saturday, Zee had a match. His parents came to the game to cheer him on, but Grandmother Winter stayed home. She'd been feeling a little off for the last few days, and Zee told her it would be all right if she missed one game.
So his parents sat in the bleachers and watched, and right in front of them sat three girls, one of them with chocolate-colored hair.
Zee didn't even notice her until late in the second half, which was good because otherwise he might have fallen on his face. As it was, he was having a good match-he'd scored a pretty nice goal to tie it up in the first half. By the time he saw the chocolate hair, he was too exhausted to freak out in any way, shape, or form. And when the three girls approached him when the match was done, he didn't even run in the other direction.
Samantha smiled at him. "Hi."
"Hi!" Zee said. That went very well, he thought.
"Um… I'm Sam Golton. I'm at Feldwop too."
Zee coughed. "I'm Zachary Miller," he said.
"I know!" She laughed. "Hey, we're going to the Grecians match next Saturday. Do you want to come?"
"Um… yeah," Zee said.
"Brilliant. We'll meet you at the gate."
Zee nodded. He no longer trusted himself to speak. He might start babbling, or he might refuse out of fear, or he might introduce Samantha to his parents, who were standing off to one side pretending not to be watching the entire thing.
When he got home, Zee ran up to Grandmother Winter's room and told her what had happened. Grandmother Winter, who had arranged herself so she looked awake and well when she heard the family come in, winked at him. "See? I told you she wasn't dull."
And then everything changed, and Samantha Golton did not matter anymore.
The next day when Zee got up, his grandmother was not in the kitchen making sausages or pancakes or omelets. She was not outside gardening, and she was not in her big green easy chair reading the paper or a book. And Zee knew. He did not know how he knew, but he knew.
"Where's Gran?" Zee demanded of his mother, who was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea and staring blankly at nothing.
"She's having a lie in," she said quietly.
"She is?"
"I went in twenty minutes ago. She's still not well." A flicker of something passed over his mother's face. "I'm going to check on her again in a few minutes… to see if she needs anything."
Zee bit his lip. "Do you think we should… call the doctor?"
"She said not to."
He gulped. "Do you think we should anyway?"
His mother put down her tea and sighed heavily. She closed her eyes for a moment and then looked at him and said, "Maybe you can talk to her?"
"I'll go," he said. "I'll go."
But twenty minutes later there was no doctor on the way and no ambulance, either. There was just Grandmother Winter in her bed, resolute and strong in her dying. It's time, she said. They cannot help me, she said. It is my last wish to be here, like this, with my family, she said. Are you going to deny an old woman her last wish? she said.
Grandmother Winter had a way of getting what she wanted. So the Millers sat in her bedroom, not calling the doctor, not calling an ambulance, not able to do a single thing to stop what they had known would someday have to happen, that they had hoped so fiercely would never happen. Zee's mother sat by the bed and held her hand, while Zee sat next to her with his hand on his grandmother's shoulder, and Zee's father stood behind them, touching his wife's back.
She spoke with them all, quietly, lovingly, caresses of breath against the dark. And Zee waited his turn and tried with all his might not to run from the room, from this moment, from the utter certainty of what was about to happen. He tried so hard to keep his hand on her shoulder, firm and true. He tried so hard to keep from dissolving completely, so his grandmother would see him solid and present and strong.
And then she beckoned him closer, and he leaned toward her, and she smiled a little and told him, firmly and truly, "I will always watch over you. Never doubt that."
He did not doubt her, not one bit. You never doubt Grandmother Winter. In that moment Zee-who had never considered an afterlife, and even if he had, certainly would not have believed in it- felt with his entire body, from his toes to his tearfilled eyes, that she was telling the truth.
Grandmother Winter took a big breath in, a loud, urgent breath-and then Zee saw something flash in her eyes, and what he did not know was that his grandmother was having her last premonition. Her face darkened, then she turned to her boy, her beloved Zachary, and pulled his ear right to her mouth.
It would be her last breath, and with it she said two distinct syllables to Zee. But he did not understand them and would not for several more months. How could he? For when he leaned in close to her, close enough to smell the floury, powdery, lotiony smell of her, Grandmother Winter had whispered:
Me-tos.
FOR A VERY, VERY LONG TIME KING HADES-KING OF the Dead, The Unseen One, The Illustrious, The All-Knowing, The Receiver of Many-ruled the Underworld in peace. In the beginning there were some mishaps- the Persephone business and the whole Heracles to-do-each and every one caused by some rupture of the world of the Living and that of the Dead. No more, though. Hades learned his lesson quickly enough. There would be no more journeys into his Underworld for disoriented vagabonds with pretensions to myth or muscle-bound, snake-wrestling goons with delusions of grandeur. There would be no more sorrowful supplications from pretty-boy amateur musicians, no more frat-boy bride-stealing pranks, and (yes, he took responsibility too) no more bursting the earth open to kidnap pretty, young maidens. "Let them have their world and let us have ours," he would say to the Queen. "Never the twain shall meet!"
So a millennia or three ago Hades locked the doors and threw away the key, metaphorically speaking. No Admittance. No Exit. There would be only one way for mortals to get in, and once that happened, there would be no getting out.
After all, he would say to the Queen, Death is not a place from which to come and go, to stop by for a holiday, for a quick jaunt- Oh, I know, let's stop by Death for a quick bite to eat and maybe some gelato. That'd be splendid.
Through his minions he let word slip about some of the more extreme fates one could meet in his backyard. That, combined with an unforeseen sociopolitical shift in the Upperworld, gave his domain a reputation as a wholly undesirable place to visit. No one willingly goes to a nine-level torture chamber; when your welcome mat says ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO ENTER HERE, it tends to keep out the riffraff.
The Underworld was no hell, of course; at least Hades didn't think so. Sure, if you had been really, really bad (like, in the upper one half of one percent of all time bad), his Department of Eternal Rewards would send you to Tartarus and devise something suitably punitive-monkeys swinging by your entrails for eternity, say-but your average Joe would be just fine.
Really, Hades tried to be a good king. As he said to himself, if his lot in life was to rule the Domain of Death, darn it, he would be the best Domain of Death ruler the world had ever seen. He tried to keep his subjects reasonably comfortable-or at least make sure they were not uncomfortable. After all, they would all be together for a very long time. A very, very long time.
And once Hades passed his Decree for Underworld Preservation and Sanctity, the realm ran very smoothly for a good number of years. The King himself was so much happier without having to deal with mortals, and Immortals (people with god or demon blood) were governed by a strict invitation-only policy that kept out anyone who might mean him ill.
But nothing (other than Death) lasts forever, and as the centuries passed by, the Underworld became a more and more difficult place to manage. The problem was simply the lack of turnover in the population; people kept moving in, but no one ever moved out.
"Times change, and the Underworld must change with them," he would say to the Queen. "We must adapt!"
Hades may have been a Greek god, but that didn't mean his leadership practices had to be ancient. There were any number of great business minds in the Underworld, and Hades could spend as much time as he wanted picking their brains, sometimes literally. You can't manage a burgeoning nether realm on your own, he learned. Not if you want to survive in today's competitive atmosphere. Organize. Delegate. You're only as good as your weakest link.
He began to appoint various Regents and Vice-Regents, Directors and Chairs, luring Administrators from the Universe's ever-growing pool of Immortals with the promise of flexible hours and a good pension plan.
By the turn of the twenty-first century the Underworld had become a vast network of Divisions and Departments and Directories, with plenty of Subdivisions thrown in for good measure. Hades himself could barely keep track of them all, but it did not matter. Every Division and Department had a firm organizational structure, a careful and clear hierarchy that was quite literally etched in stone. The Assistant Managers reported to the Managers, the Managers to the Heads, the Heads to the Directors, the Directors to the Ministers, the Ministers to the Regents, the Regents to the Chancellors, the Chancellors to the Demigods, and the Demigods to the Lord of the Underworld himself. Any Assistant, Manager, Head, Director, Minister, Regent, or Chancellor who violated the carefully conceived management structure or (Zeus forbid) bothered Hades with the petty problems of his Division, would find himself living among the whip-happy Erinyes in Tartarus, where he could spend some time contemplating the benefits of adhering to management protocols.
As a result ruling the Underworld had become a much less hands-on process than it used to be, and Hades, who once tried to visit every corner of his realm, now barely left the Palace. He got daily briefings from Thanatos, his Chief of Staff, and Hypnos, his Domestic Affairs Adviser. The twin brothers really ran the place, and they did such a good job, such a very nice job. So as the Underworld expanded, Hades's duties contracted, and as a result he was able to enjoy the finer things of life. Or rather, death. It's only right. He's a god, after all.
What with everything left to his advisers, and his advisers' advisers, and so on, if there had been any trouble, Hades would really have been the last to hear about it. (The last except perhaps for his lovely bride, Queen Persephone, who did not venture out into the Kingdom at all, nor did she have anything resembling a daily briefing.) But really, how much trouble could there be? The Dead are a listless sort, not prone to revolt-they're Dead, after all. And his management staff had all been carefully screened- though no longer by Hades himself, but surely they had been, hadn't they?
Hadn't they?
There was that one incident. But Hades was sure he had handled it effectively.
Really.
One night not so long ago, on the date of their anniversary, Hades was eating dinner with his wife. This was rare indeed; there were so many social duties involved with being King of the Underworld. Hades always seemed to find himself hosting dinner parties for various visiting Immortal dignitaries, luminaries, and/or personages, but on this particular night Hades wanted to spend some quality time with his wife, his queen, his bride, the love of his life, the answer to all his prayers, in the hopes that she might one day actually speak to him.
Usually on their anniversary or on Persephone's birthday or on Valentine's Day or sometimes Just Because, Hades would throw a large party in honor of the Queen. Unfortunately, the Queen didn't always bother to attend these functions, perhaps thinking that with so many guests he would not notice her absence. But he did. He always noticed. So this year he pronounced it would be just the two of them. Alone. Together. She'd have to come then.
He had their personal chef prepare all her favorites-beginning with a light pomegranate soup because Persephone could not resist pomegranate. He had the table set as if for their finest dinner party. He informed all of his household staff that he was Absolutely Not to Be Disturbed.
Together, the husband and wife sat in their places at either end of the long dining room table, silver spoons clinking against china bowls, crystal goblets filled with the finest of wines, the flames of tall candles twinkling above silver candleholders, silk napkins folded like swans, shadowy servants bringing out large, steaming, silver tureens. The table could seat sixty-six, but on this night it was just the two of them-he in his white tie and tails, and she in a diamond tiara and one of the gowns she'd had imported from Paris (the city, not the man).
"Such a beautiful night, my love," he said.
Persephone sipped her soup.
"You look ravishing this evening."
Persephone took a bite of bread.
"The green makes your eyes look like emeralds."
Persephone coughed and turned to one of the butlers. "Would you ask the King to pass me the salt?"
The butler bowed. "Certainly, madam." He turned to King Hades. "My Lord, would you pass Queen Persephone the salt?"
"Certainly, my dear," said Hades, smiling at Persephone. He reached for the salt shaker, and that's when the heavy dining-room door burst open.
At the sound of the interruption Hades stood up, knocking his tall ebony chair over. The chair hit the ground with a deadened thump, and all the servants in the room jumped. Persephone took a long, languid sip of wine and sat back in her chair. In front of the door had appeared a tall, dark, angular shape clutching a bowler hat.
It was Thanatos – Hades's Chief of Staff, the demonic personification of Death, dark twin brother of Sleep, wretched son of Darkness and Night, with a heart made of iron and a soul that knew no pity, on whom the Sun never dared cast its blessed beams. And he was in a twit.
"My Lord," he said, breathing heavily, "there's a problem."
"Excuse me?" Hades said as if he really did not want to be excused at all.
"I-I-I'm sorry, Sir. But… there's a… problem."
"Well, fix it!" Hades roared. "Can't you see it's my wedding anniversary?" Across the long table Persephone rolled her eyes.
Thanatos cleared his throat. "I know, Sir… I thought you'd want to be aware, Sir!"
"What is it?" Hades sighed.
"It's Philonecron, he… he-"
"Who's Philonecron?" snapped Hades.
"Assistant Manager of the Department of Sanitation, Sir. A grandson of Poseidon. He… he-"
"He what? Get out with it!"
Thanatos exhaled. "He has blood."
Perhaps we should pause here and explain a few things. You are, no doubt, not very familiar with life in the Underworld, nor with what it is to be one of the Shades who live there, unless you are already Dead. In which case you may skip this part.
A Shade is, simply, a dead person. Well, not a person, exactly. A Shade is the essence of a person, what the body leaves behind after Death. History has portrayed the Shades as dull remnants of Life, aimless and joyless shadows lacking in thought or will. This isn't entirely true – or at least they don't begin that way. The problem is, life for a Shade in Hades's Underworld is not exactly a red-hot, thrill-a-minute, madcap adventure sort of thing. One could call it rather dull, which one, if one is a Shade, often does. As much as Hades may say he likes to make his subjects comfortable, he really doesn't care a whit for them, and all of the Dead know it. As a result, over time, the Shades tend to lose their will, their emotions, their personality, everything that connects them with Life.
But there is one thing that can change all that: Blood.
Yes, this sounds completely disgusting. Any warm-blooded human being finds the idea of drinking blood completely icky, oogy, squitchy, and well, just plain gross. But the Dead are not warm-blooded human beings. They are, well, Dead. And the only thing that can make them feel Alive again, if only for a brief time, is blood.
Blood is Life, and to the Shades in the Underworld the taste of blood, the feel of blood, gives them the thrill of Life again. As the blood courses through their bodies, the Shades thicken, gain substance, form, emotion.
There was a time, back before the Decree for Underworld Preservation and Sanctity was passed, when people would waltz through the Underworld all the time, carrying fresh blood with them. The smell would lure the Shades, who would crowd, clamor, and claw as if they had already drunk the stuff, as if merely the promise of blood gave them enough Life to fight for a taste.
But if you were the ruler of subjects who were half comatose by nature, any substance that transforms them into crowders, clamorers, and clawers would make you distinctly nervous. And the prospect of any old Tom, Dick, or Herodotus waltzing through your realm and being able to lure and excite your people would not be an attractive one.
Blood did not belong in the Underworld. It changed the Shades. Made them unruly. They couldn't control their actions. They began to have delusions of Life-and nothing is more disruptive to a realm of the Dead than delusions of Life. In his Decree for the Promotion of Underworld Hygiene, Hades proclaimed that blood would be strictly forbidden in the Underworld (excepting, of course, inside the Palace. Hades liked his boar extremely rare).
What Hades did not know was that not all of his employees obeyed his decrees scrupulously. And the most unscrupulous disobeyer of all was an Immortal named Philonecron.
Philonecron was actually born in the Underworld, the son of a daughter of Poseidon and one of the demons who staffed the employee mud spa. He grew up playing along the banks of the Styx, skipping through the Vale of Mourning, frolicking in the Plain of Judgment.
It wasn't bad, growing up in the Underworld. There were quite a lot of Immortal kids, actually; what with such a large number of Immortals working there, most of them only tangentially related to one another, romances sprung up right and left, and sometimes those romances resulted in families. Or at least children. Whether birthed, hatched, or regurgitated, new babies were a common occurrence in the Underworld.
And of course with children came institutional needs. And the Underworld adapted. Day care. A good school system. Interspecies medicine. Children are a nether realm's most valuable resource, and Hades made sure they were treated accordingly. And he was rewarded; most of the kids grew up to work in the Administration, serving Hades loyally (and eternally).
As a student, Philonecron took a long time to pick a career path. His teachers pronounced him highly intelligent but lacking discipline, the sort that would rather spend his time writing sonnets about gastronomical distress than doing his geometry homework. His first internship in high school was with the Erinyes in Tartarus, but his guidance counselors thought he seemed to enjoy the job a bit too much. After graduation from high school he worked in a few low-level agencies before settling in at the Department of Sanitation.
But Philonecron had other goals. He wasn't going to be a garbage man forever. He had a plan.
For, despite what his teachers thought, he had been paying attention at school. He'd learned all of his history well. And he knew that there was only one thing that mattered in the world, and that was power.
Philonecron wanted power. Not pretend power, like the bloated Managers, lording over Recreation or Meal Services as if they were kingdoms unto themselves. He wanted real power. He wanted everything. He wanted to rule.
Oh, not the Universe. He had no desire for the earth, for the stars and the heavens, for Mount Olympus and all it surveyed. That was too much. All he wanted was his own world, his home, the Underworld. Anyway, he'd learned well that people who tried to overthrow Zeus did not come to good ends. But as far as he could see, no one had ever tried to overthrow Hades. And Hades was ripe to be overthrown.
Over the millennia King Hades had become complacent, lazy. Everyone knew it; they were just too scared to say anything. He sat in the Palace counting his gold, mooning over the Ice Queen, and letting the Administrators make up work for themselves.
The Underworld wasn't supposed to be like this. It's the Underworld, for the love of Zeus – the Dark Domain, the Realm of the Dead-it shouldn't be run like some two-bit provincial government. Bureaucracy isn't even a Greek word. The Underworld needed a strong ruler, a man with a vision, a man handy with a whip, a man who could live up to the promise of the domain, bring back the days when it meant something to be a Greek god. The Underworld needed Philonecron.
But getting the Underworld to realize this was another matter. Taking control would not be easy. Hades was firmly entrenched. And all his Administrators enjoyed their petty positions of power. Hades had them all in his shadowy hands. Philonecron knew the whole Administration was designed only to perpetuate itself-all the Departments and Sections and Agencies only assured the complacency of the people who worked there, and kept Hades wedged in his throne.
The Underworld was now designed to serve the Administrators – the Immortals who served in the burgeoning bureaucracy. None of it was for the Shades. The Shades were the true subjects of the Kingdom of the Dead, and yet no one paid them any attention at all. No one cared about the Shades.
Really, Philonecron did not care about the Shades either, but he wasn't about to tell them that. Because the Shades outnumbered the Administrators at least five thousand to one. If someone could only incite them… It took him quite a while to get past all the Underworld Preservation protections and start collecting the blood. You couldn't just go waltzing through the doors to the Upperworld anymore; the only Immortal who could go through without a pass-besides Hades himself, and he never went anywhere-was Hermes, the Messenger. And there was just no bribing that guy. Philonecron had tried.
But he was not to be thwarted, and soon he figured out that since the Messenger was the only one who could get through the doors, all he would need to do was follow him out. The wing-footed fruitcake would be too busy showing off his speed to notice.
And he was. In and out of the doors of Death Philonecron went, lurking in the shadow of the Messenger. Even more so than he had expected-he had thought that once he was in the Upperworld, he would wander freely, yet once there, he found himself strangely drawn to Death, in fact, to the site of the same Death that had called the Messenger through the doors in the first place. He found, too, he could travel only so far from the Death before he was drawn back to it.
No matter. With Death, so often, came blood, lots of it, especially in this day and age. War and murder were everywhere, and firearms produced so much blood;
Philonecron wished he had invented them. Disease ate away at life bloodlessly, but in the vast, sterile buildings that housed the sick and dying there were great storage facilities of blood, almost as if someone there, too, had been trying to stage a coup in the Underworld. In a quieter Death scene, a heart attack by a lone man, there were always neighbors somewhere, sleeping too soundly to notice a quick exsanguination spell. Nothing too harsh. Just a couple of pints. You'll be a little dizzy in the morning. Rest up, drink some apple juice, you'll be fine.
Philonecron was patient. He spent years building up his supply, storing bottles in thick containers under piles in the refuse dumps. He knew they would keep; the Underworld was a natural refrigerator. The only problem would be keeping the Shades from sensing the blood too early-hence the use of the rubbish yard filled with the fetid flotsam of Administration life.
He lured customers gradually, peddling his product on his garbage rounds. "They'll be more where this came from," he would say. "Just you wait."
The Shades began to follow him on his rounds, lurking in the shadows to see if he might have something for them. He always did. More came, and still more.
"Come to the Vale of Mourning on the King's Anniversary," he would whisper. "I'll have something for you. Tell everyone."
The King and Queen's wedding anniversary was a Kingdom-wide holiday in Death. All Administration offices were closed. So you would think someone would have found it odd to see an extra-large garbage wagon making its way from the central refuse dump to the Vale of Mourning, but no one did. Nor did any of the Administrators think anything of the swarms of Shades that seemed to be following it. The Dead were an odd sort, prone to strange gatherings, and the Administrators didn't think much of it. Really, they didn't think about the Dead at all.
Even the Underworld Security Agency would be closed. The ten-foot-tall Sons of Argus, with their burly bodies and giant clubs, would be so full of wine and roasted Calydonian boar they wouldn't be able to see out of any of their one hundred eyes.
It was evening and a holiday. Time for fun. Time to frequent the ambrosia clubs and Anniversary galas. Time to drop by Tartarus (for Tartarus was always open for business) and watch the action, maybe buy a few souvenirs. Time to bathe in barrels of wine and darn the consequences. It's a holiday!
So there were thousands of Shades on the Vale that night, like a giant spectral army, all buzzing in expectation. And there, on top of his great wagon, was Philonecron, eight feet tall, swathed in a giant black robe, with a magnanimous smile stretched oddly across his pale, shadowy face.
"Drink up!" he shouted. "There's plenty for everyone!" He threw small jars one by one into the masses, and ghostly arms reached up and plucked them from the sky. "Don't be shy!"
More Shades came and still more; in front of Philonecron legions of Dead clamored and thronged. "I am Philonecron!" he shouted, hurling bottles everywhere. "Friend of the Dead!"
"Philonecron!" a few voices shouted, and then more. In front of his eyes the Shades were thickening, gaining definition, character, even speech. One by one the Dead had life again-they were laughing, hollering, shouting his name. And with definition, character, laughter, came something else. He saw it in their eyes. They had will. He had them.
"Would you like some more?"
"Yes!" they screamed, and he picked up the tremendous hose he had made from Minotaur intestine and began to drench the crowd.
And then he waited. He waited until every last Shade he could see had been touched by the blood. Hundreds, thousands of useless shadows becoming whole before his very eyes. And they had him to thank for it.
"Does King Hades give you blood?" he shouted.
"No!" they cried.
"No! He denies you the one thing you want most. Is that fair?"
"No!"
"Ladies! Gentlemen! What kind of a king denies his subjects what they most desire? What kind of a king deliberately keeps his people in shadow? Death need not be a phantom existence. With me, you could Live again!" He had been practicing this speech for decades.
He had it all thought through. "The Underworld is not for the gods, but for the Dead! For you! It's time to take it back!" He raised his arms up in the air, so excited by the speech that he did not notice the cheers of the audience were slowly weakening.
"Rise up!" he shouted. "Rise up against tyranny! Rise up! Follow me! We will have a new rule in the Underworld!"
That's when he noticed the immense shapes approaching him. He turned to look. Six Underworld Security Agents were lumbering toward him, clubs poised, apparently not glutted on Caledonian boar. Six hundred eyes blinked menacingly at him. Ten Griffins swooped down from the sky, howling and cackling, their enormous claws poised to rip into his skin. Three Erinyes appeared behind him, the snakes in their hair hissing wildly. And with them was the black, willowy form of Thanatos, riding in on a black winged horse, staring at him with an eerie composure that was marred only by a slight twitch in his left eyebrow.
The Erinyes grabbed him, pulled snakes from their hair, and tied his hands with them. Before they could gag him, he shouted to the throng in front of him, "See what they do? See? Knock down the Palace! Free yourselves!"
But it was too late. The effects of the blood were wearing off. They were becoming Dead again, Shades, phantoms, useless. They milled around aimlessly. Their will was gone.
Philonecron was pulled away. Thanatos appeared and raised his hands to the crowd. The Vale was silent.
"Go your ways, everyone," Thanatos said, his voice carrying as if through eternity. "There is nothing for you here."
Philonecron had expected to be sent to Tartarus -where there was a special chamber for disloyal Immortals. He wasn't afraid. Pain only made him stronger. He would come out eventually, he would begin his collection again, he would have enough blood to sustain the Shades through revolution, and then he could sit on Hades' ebony throne and lock all the Shades up in Tartarus for good. It would take time, but he would begin again. He would collect blood for years, decades, centuries if he had to. He would not fail next time.
But he was not sent to Tartarus. The Erinyes dragged him into Hades' Palace. Hades stood before him, a mountain of cold rage.
"Philonecron," he said, his black eyes burning. "You are banished. You have betrayed me, and my world is forbidden to you now. You may never set foot in the Kingdom of the Dead again. You will spend all of eternity wandering through the empty plains of Exile." He turned to go. Philonecron squirmed. Hades stopped, turned, and added, "Oh, and have a nice life."
For one year Philonecron wandered around the outskirts of Death, forbidden by Hades' very words to cross the threshold into the Kingdom. He slept in a cave and spent his days wandering the outer banks of the Styx with the Unburied- the lost souls who, for one reason or another, Charon would not ferry into Death.
He practiced his spell casting (there was a great advantage to having a demon father) and performed experiments on the Unburied. He followed the Messenger into the Upperworld nearly every day to collect blood, but as the days went by, he could not help but despair. He would never have enough, he could never keep the Shades alive long enough to overthrow Hades. He was a general with no army.
Then one day something happened. He was out on a blood-gathering round; the scent of Death had taken him to the body of an old woman somewhere in England. She had died peacefully, bloodlessly, and Philonecron would have to look elsewhere. But something struck him about the tableau in front of him. It was a typical deathbed scene: a family-a man, a woman, and a boy- tears rolling down their cheeks, heads bowed, whispers hanging in the still air. But there was something unusual about it. Something off. Something that caught his eye. The light in the room – no, no; the position of the body-no, no. It was the boy. There was something strange about the boy.
Philonecron could not believe what he was seeing. But it was true. There was no denying it.
The boy's shadow was loose.
GATHER SOME CLAY FROM THE BANKS OF THE STYX. You may have to bribe Charon to look the other way, but that's easily done. It would be better to use clay from the other bank, the one in the Underworld, but you cannot go there. So you make do.
Take the clay. Soften it well with Stygian water. Form it into the shape of a man.
Pause for a moment and think about your place in history, think about how the Titan Prometheus did just this, so long ago, to make the race of Man.
Well, not quite this.
Take one Unburied. Don't use force. Be gentle. You need his loyalty. Tell him you will make it worth his while. Tell him you are going to change things.
Show him the corpse of clay.
Tell the Unburied to lie down. Right inside it. It won't hurt a bit.
Watch as the clay embraces his shadowy form.
Now take an urn of ram's blood. Pour it over the body. Don't be shy. Drench the clay.
Say the magic words.
Wait.
Wait…
Purse your lips.
Think.
Take an urn of human blood. Pour it over the body. Drench the clay. Don't be shy.
Say the magic words.
Wait.
Wait…
Purse your lips.
Think.
Raise up your arm.
Mutter a few words.
Let the skin on your arm open, then the vein, and let your own blood, your half-demon-half-god blood, drip over the clay form.
Say the magic words.
Wait…
There!
Behold.
A limb twitches. And again. Clay skin adheres to clay bone. Unburied spirit relaxes into molded form. Fingers wriggle. Eyes open. Mouth. He blinks up at you, you nod, and he slowly lifts his body out from the ground that birthed him. Clay falls from him. He stands, he looks his body up and down. Feet. Shins. Knees. Thighs. Hips. Stomach, chest, shoulders, arms… it's all there. He is a man, or something very like a man. His body seems to stretch before your eyes, the stocky frame becomes too tall now, too thin, soon he stands as tall as you do, you, his master, but he looks as though you could break him with a glance. His death-white skin stretches tautly over his frame. His face is like a white clay skull. His eyes are yellowed, like memory. His lips are gray and scaly.
Well, you say, looking him up and down.
And then you make more.
Soon you have twelve- a good number, an Olympian number-and you line them up, one by one, murmuring to them, murmuring to yourself. You have twelve, all identical, except for the letter of the alphabet you carve into each of their foreheads to signify the order they were made. You have twelve of them in front of you, their clay skin crackling, their every bone painted in shadow, and you hold your arms out magnanimously and say:
My children. My people. How beautiful you are.
We are one, you and I. We are the same.
We are citizens of Exile, and I am your leader.
Together we will make a Kingdom.
But we will not be content to stay here, for we must take back what has been denied to us.
Soon we will rule the Underworld.
But we need an army. And you are going to help me get it.
Their eyes drink in your meaning. You survey them up and down. Your eyebrow arches. You clear your throat. You clap your hands together and say:
Right … let's get you some clothes, shall we?
THE MORNING AFTER HIS GRANDMOTHER'S DEATH ZEE woke up feeling odd. This was to be expected-his grandmother had just died, and her death had been an unwelcome intruder in dream after restless dream the night before. So when he awoke, he found himself feeling achy and exhausted. He was torn between letting sleep carry him off again and trying to shake it off and face the day. But if he fell asleep, he'd eventually have to wake up and remember all over again that Grandmother Winter was dead.
Zee decided that once was enough. He rubbed his eyes and stretched in the bed. He sat up. As soon as he was upright, a wave of dizziness flooded over him. His eyes filled with black, then the whole world seemed to go black, and he lay back down again. He exhaled, squeezed his eyes closed, and slowly sat up.
Much better.
He yawned, stretched, and stood…
And had to sit down again.
After a few minutes of steady breathing Zee managed to get up without any more problems, though his muscles still felt like dried-out clay. And his chest was filled with a burning, hollow feeling that was not remotely physical.
Eventually Zee made it to breakfast, where, once again, his grandmother was not. His mother was there, sitting in the big green easy chair in the living room, wrapped in an afghan and staring off at nothing. She gave Zee a long hug and touched his cheek. Zee made his way into the kitchen, feeling his muscles protest a little. His father was scrubbing some pots in the kitchen sink.
"Hey," he said gently "Can I make you something?"
"Sure," Zee said.
Mr. Miller opened the fridge and took out a big pack of sausages and some eggs. He poured a tall glass of orange juice and brought it over to Zee, squeezing his shoulder softly. Zee drank the juice down.
"How're you holding up?" his dad asked quietly.
Zee shrugged. His dad sat down at the table and put his arm around him. They sat for a moment, and his father seemed about to say something but then stopped when he noticed Zee's face. "You know," he said, "you look awfully pale… are you feeling all right? I mean physically…"
"Yeah, um… I feel a little off today"
"Well," Mr. Miller said, standing up, "let's get you a nice big breakfast, shall we?"
After breakfast (eggs and many, many sausages, which did help Zee feel better) his father sat down and talked to him gently about what would happen next. There would be a small funeral on Friday in Exeter. Afterward Mr. and Mrs. Miller would stay for a week or two to tie everything up. It would be a lot of work, and Zee could go back to London after the funeral if he wanted.
Zee did not want. He wanted to stay.
Summer was over for Zee in July, replaced by the strange season of mourning. Zee quit the football club-he walked to training on Monday to tell them, cutting through the university fields by unconscious habit and not even noticing that he was looking away-and spent his days helping his parents pack up Grandmother Winter's house. There was no way he could play anymore, and he'd be leaving in a couple weeks anyway. But a few of his friends from the club came to the funeral, dressed in suits that had been hastily shipped from their homes all over the West Country. Zee thought that it was pretty great of them to come. More would have been there, his friend Ben told him, but some of the guys on the team were sick.
"I've been feeling weird myself," said Zee. "Dizzy"
"Naw", said Ben, "this is something more. They've got it bad. Flat on their backs. Totally useless to the club now. Gits. Plus we've lost our best forward!" Ben nudged Zee.
"The best if you don't count the other four," Zee said.
"Well, yeah," grinned Ben. "That's what I meant."
Zee thanked them all profusely for coming and promised to come by training before he left. He got invitations from three boys to stay with them next summer so he could play with the club again. He told them he'd think about it, but he didn't mean it. As much as he liked the club, summer in Exeter would not be summer in Exeter without Grandmother Winter.
"Hey," Ben said, "some of us are going to the Grecians game tomorrow. I don't know if you can, but…"
Zee inhaled sharply. He had entirely forgotten about Samantha Golton. He couldn't watch the match, not now. But he had no way of contacting Samantha to let her know; he had no idea where she was staying.
"Can't," he said. "But listen, will you…" He trailed off. He couldn't just send Ben to give her a message. That would be… ill mannered. His gran had taught him better than that. He would have to meet Sam himself, tell her himself. He'd meet her, send her off to watch the match, then go straight home. "You say hi to everyone for me."
"Sure, mate. Come by next week, or we'll come get you."
The next day Zee took a bus to St. James Park an hour before match time and stood right in front of the gate. And waited.
And waited.
People flooded in around him, but none of those people was Samantha Golton. Or Ben, for that matter, or anyone else he knew
Then, fifteen minutes before match time, he saw one of Samantha's friends a few yards away. He waved and she came toward him.
"Zachary! Hi, I'm Sarah. Sarah Rocklin."
"Pleased to meet you." Zee shook her hand formally, like a well-bred grandson would. "Sam's not here yet?"
Zee shook his head.
"Have you heard anything from her?"
Zee blinked. "Uh, no?"
"Hmmm. She wasn't at practice yesterday, and neither was Padma. Sick, I guess."
"Oh!"
"There's something going around the dorms. I live in Exeter, so I'm not staying there, but training was pretty thin yesterday."
"Yeah, I guess ours was too."
"You guess?"
So Zee told Samantha's friend about his grandmother and the end of his summer and how he really was just there to tell them he couldn't come to the game-he was there because he couldn't be there, if that made any sense-and he had to be home to help his parents, and he was so sorry. He gave Sarah the speech he was going to give Samantha, which of course meant he would have nothing to say to Samantha at all, despite all his careful, considered preparation. Which meant that when Samantha did arrive, he would be left either repeating himself precisely and looking like a nitwit, or just stuttering aimlessly and looking like a nitwit.
But Samantha did not arrive, and neither did Padma. Zee and Sarah waited, and waited, talking of nothing until there was nothing left to talk about. They both began to shift and look at their watches and look off into the distance and shift some more. A half an hour after game time Sarah and Zee looked at each other and shrugged.
"I guess they're not coming," Sarah said uncertainly.
"They couldn't be inside?" Zee asked.
Sarah shook her head. "I've got the tickets."
"Should we call?"
"Sam doesn't have a mobile, and the dorm phone's useless."
"I hope everything's all right," Zee said.
But Zee could not help but feel that things were distinctly not all right. There was something sitting in his stomach, something apart from the hollowness left by his grandmother's death.
Zee couldn't have explained it to you. It didn't make any sense – there was nothing unusual about people getting sick, after all. But suddenly Zee was overcome with a sense of unease- somewhere, somehow, he sensed that something was very, very wrong.
"Um…" Sarah bit her lip. "I think I'll just go over to the dorms and check on them? Maybe they just forgot."
Zee looked at his watch. He was supposed to be back by now, but he knew he couldn't just leave Sarah to go off by herself. And whatever was wrong, he simply had to know.
"I'll come with you," he said.
When Zee and Sarah went to the dorms, they found Samantha, Padma, and most of the other girls in their beds, looking as if some specter had visited them and taken their souls. Sarah immediately called her mother, and soon the girls had been taken off to the hospital. Zee spent the next week calling Sarah for updates, but she never called him back, and soon he learned she had gotten sick too.
The mysterious illness swept through the young people of Exeter. One by one they took to their beds and simply could not get out again. The whole town began to panic. People could talk about nothing else. What on Earth was taking their children?
For it was only the children who were sick; as of yet there wasn't a single case of an adult with the symptoms. Some doctor on the local news one night called it the Pied Piper flu as a result, and the name stuck.
Zee watched as everyone he knew fell ill. He talked to their parents and read the newspaper and listened to various proclamations from doctors, and nothing would quell his unease. His parents weren't helping- they kept threatening to send Zee home on a train, and he had to fight to stay. It wasn't the Piper Flu. Whatever needed to be done for Grandmother Winter, he would do it. Then he could leave.
So his parents quizzed him every day on his health. But Zee was fine. Whatever had ailed him was passing-day by day he felt less dizzy, less tired. Perhaps he had gotten the thing and it had affected him differently. Perhaps his immune system had fought it off. Perhaps he had never had it at all.
It seemed he was the only one.
His club called off the rest of their season for lack of a team, and the football camps were shut down. By the end of that week everyone Zee knew in Exeter, including Samantha, had been fetched by worried parents and taken home.
The only good news was that none of the kids seemed to be getting any worse-everyone stayed exactly the same. From the little Zee could gather, no one could find anything physically wrong with any of them. No one could explain their complete collapse. And no one could make them better. All anyone knew was that the Piper Flu was entirely confined to Exeter, and it didn't seem to be contagious – there weren't any new cases developing around the afflicted kids who had been taken elsewhere.
The Millers themselves left Exeter two weeks after Grandmother Winter died. They had sold her house and closed her accounts and sold off her furniture-except for the big green easy chair, which Mrs. Miller was having shipped home. The Millers may have hurried things a little at the end, but they didn't tell Zee that. They needed to get out of there. Whatever plague or poison or fungus or flu had felled Exeter's children would not get their boy.
It was with a tremendous sense of relief that the family found London was as hale and hearty as it had been when they left. Zee called all his friends and found them quite well, thank you. He met with his best friends, Phillip and Garth, for dinner the day after he got back, and they were quite well too, and all their friends were quite well, and for one night Zee put away the Piper Flu and that big ol' uneasy lump. Football practice would start in two weeks and school in four, so the boys resolved to spend the rest of their summer enjoying themselves as much as they possibly could before the exigencies of school put fun to a tragic end.
As for Samantha Golton, Zee stopped off at Nicki's house on the day he got back to find that Samantha had been taken to the south of France with her family. Nicki didn't know much more – she was no better, but no worse. And yes, Nicki was feeling quite well, thank you. And so were the rest of the girls. Everyone was just great. Absolutely everyone.
Well, everyone didn't stay great for long. Two days later Garth was sick. Then Nicki. Then Phillip. It went on through his neighborhood, and through their friends, and through friends of their friends. One by one the Piper Flu picked off Zee's friends, his casual acquaintances, even people he didn't like.
When Zee heard about Garth's illness – then Nicki's, then Phillip's -he wasn't even surprised. He was horrified, yes, panicked, yes, but not surprised. He had known it would come.
He wasn't uneasy anymore. The creature in his stomach had transformed itself into something much more powerful than unease. Now he was filled with fear and dread, and some kind of strange apprehension. There was something wrong, something really wrong, and it was something strange, something unnatural-and it was something to do with him.
But what?
There was no answer, just dread. He could barely eat or sleep. Every time the phone rang, he jumped out of his skin, sure that on the other end would be news of someone else who had fallen ill. His parents, who had at the first appearance of the Piper Flu in London begun to talk of sending Zee to America, spent their time whispering and watching.
One night Zee decided he could not stand it anymore. He could not bear this alone. He was doing nothing, accomplishing nothing, and people were suffering.
He sat his parents down at the kitchen table, leaned in, and whispered, "I have to talk to you."
The Millers exchanged glances. "What is it?"
"It's the Piper Flu."
Mrs. Miller sat straight up. "Are you feeling sick?"
"No, no, I feel fine. But… but…" Zee trailed off He didn't know how to say it. He knew his parents sensed something was wrong. Even he could see how pale and tired he looked, and Zee was not prone to notice his own appearance.
"What? Zachary, what's going on?"
He coughed. "I think, um, I think it's something to do with me."
His parents both looked perplexed. They exchanged another glance, then his father asked gently, "What do you mean?"
"The flu. I think it's something about me. I mean, look, everyone got sick in Exeter. And now we come back here, and suddenly everyone's sick here. And it's all my friends. It's right here. It's not all of London, or we'd be hearing about it in the paper or on the news or something. It's just us. It's just… around me…" Zee's face flushed. He could hear how he sounded.
"Sweetheart," Mrs. Miller asked, "are you saying you think you're carrying something? That you're infecting people?"
"No, not really… well, maybe…"
"Well," Mr. Miller said slowly, "you know, they've decided it's not contagious."
"I know. But I mean, think about it."
"Zach," his father continued, "just because these are the cases we know about doesn't mean these are the only ones. I mean, of course it seems like it's only all around us. But it's probably not. There could be some poor family in Birmingham who thinks they're carrying the plague too." He laughed slightly. Zee did not.
"Honey," his mother said, "if you're feeling ill, we'll take you to the doctor. I mean, you certainly were a little off for a while. We can find out for sure. That will set your mind at ease."
"And Zach," his father added, "I know you must be scared and upset. But it's not your fault. Believe me."
Zee thought if his parents exchanged any more meaningful glances, their faces would freeze that way.
He couldn't make them understand. They wouldn't understand. There was only one person who would understand, and she had just died. Grandmother Winter would have believed him. She would have been able to help him. They would have figured this out together. But Grandmother Winter was gone, and he was all alone.
Preterm sports started two weeks before school for Feldwop students. On the first day just over half the team showed up for Feldwop's football practice, and as the days went on, fewer and fewer students came. Then the tennis team was hit, then rowing, then rugby. Even the chess club suffered. Finally the preterm training sessions were called off completely, for utter lack of participants.
Without training, Zee had plenty of time to see the doctor and do whatever else his parents wanted him to do, though he did not think it would help any. He had made a mistake by telling his parents what he thought-now they were just more worried, they suspected he had gone quite mad, and he was only more alone.
Mrs. Miller took him in to the doctor at the first available cancellation. She kept saying that they would get to the bottom of this, that they would help him feel better, but Zee could not help but feel that it was her fears she wanted to alleviate. His parents were acting suspiciously gentle with him, as if he were going to pop at any moment.
Zee didn't know what his mother had said to the doctor-perhaps something along the lines of "My son's gone barmy." But Dr. Widmapool was kind and thorough. Zee did not mention the Piper flu; indeed, they did not discuss it at all. Zee could not help but wonder if the good doctor wasn't relieved to see a patient who could sit upright.
Dr. Widmapool poked and prodded, both literally and metaphorically, and then sat Zee and his mother down.
"Well, Zachary looks just fine. I don't see any sign of this… this syndrome."
"Good," said Mrs. Miller.
"There is one thing in his blood work: He's a little anemic. That means your iron count is a little lower than it should be, Zachary. That may be why you were feeling dizzy and fatigued. Anemia happens, and it's not dangerous. But it's not something you normally see in healthy young boys. It means either you're not getting enough iron in your diet or else you've had some kind of blood loss. Are you a vegetarian?"
"No," Zee said.
"Have you lost any blood for any reason? An injury?"
"No," Zee said.
"Well… as I say, sometimes this happens. I don't see signs of anything serious. I'll want to monitor those levels. But I think a good vitamin regimen should cure you right up, and you won't feel so worn out."
"There's nothing else?" Mrs. Miller asked.
"No. No signs of infection. Other than the anemia, Zachary is a healthy young man. Though he does seem to be exhibiting some of the symptoms of stress… I believe that may be causing his sleeplessness and appetite trouble. I think this is perfectly understandable, given the, um, situation. Zachary, I'd like you to talk to someone. I have a name."
So Zee found himself in a psychiatrist's office. He was fairly sure this was also to make his mother feel better. With a few nice pink pills maybe whatever delusions he was having would go away, and they could all stop whispering and worrying and go back to being a normal family
"I'm not a nutter, Mum," he told her.
"Oh, honey, I know. But you have been under a great deal of stress, and he can help you with that. Dr. Widmapool thinks it will help you sleep."
"Whatever, Mum," he said. It wasn't like he had anything else to do. It wasn't as if he could do anything to help all his sick friends. He might as well chatter away with a shrink while the Piper flu took all of England.
So he humored his parents. He sat in Dr. Vandimere's office for an hour. They talked of life in general- the upcoming school year, his activities, his plans for the future, even football, though Zee got the distinct impression Dr. Vandimere didn't know his flick header from his foot trap. Every once in a while the doctor would try to work in a more direct question, and Zee would parry as politely as he could.
"You haven't been sleeping well?"
"Bit rough."
"Tell me about your dreams."
"My dreams?"
"Yes. Is there anything you dream about that you remember in particular?"
"Doors." The word just popped out of Zee's mouth. He'd had no idea it was in there. But once it was out, he realized it was true. He dreamed of doors. At night his brain filled with them. Long, narrow corridors; hidden hallways; small, dark staircases-and at the end of them, doors. Simple, nondescript doors, the kind you could pass by a thousand times and never notice. But in Zee's dreams he wanted desperately to open them, to see what was on the other side. He could feel it, there in the psychiatrist's office, the urge to reach his hand out, wrap it around the knob, and turn…
"Doors?" Dr. Vandimere repeated eagerly. He leaned in.
“Moors,” Zee said. "I'm frightened of the moors. Hound of the Baskervilles and all that." He widened his eyes. "I have nightmares!"
"Ah," said Dr. Vandimere. He made a note.
"I was sorry to hear about your grandmother," the doctor said.
"Yeah," Zee said.
"You were very close."
"Yeah."
"And then the Piper flu hit."
"Yeah."
"A lot of your friends got it."
“Yeah.”
"How did that make you feel?"
Zee blinked. "Uh… well…" He cut off. He was trying to be polite, but the doctor was getting awfully personal. Really, he was a perfect stranger.
The doctor shifted in his seat. "There've been a lot of cases of this flu."
"Yeah."
"And a lot of your friends are sick."
"Yeah."
"Both in Exeter and here."
"Yeah."
"The flu might even seem to be… following you."
Zee raised his eyebrows.
"You know, Zachary" the doctor smiled gently, "sometimes things happen we can't understand. Sometimes bad things happen to people we care about. And when something bad happens to our friends or family, but not to us, we feel guilty. We don't know why we should be exempt, and sometimes we even begin to feel that what's happening is our fault. But it's not our fault…"
Dr. Vandimere went on while Zee's ears burned. He was never ever, ever going to speak to either of his parents again. He had enough to deal with without being patronized. There was something going on, something strange and terrible, and the whole world thought he was crazy. He was just going to have to figure this out on his own.
It did not take long.
The day after his appointment with Dr. Vandimere, Zee walked to the tuck shop to get a sandwich and drink; he was on his own for dinner, as his parents were going to a meeting at Feldwop about the Piper flu that evening. Zee had wanted none of that. But he did want a sandwich, preferably a turkey one, and perhaps some crisps. All his brooding had finally caused him to work up an appetite.
So he walked the few blocks to the shop, and as he walked, he found himself extremely aware of each door he passed. There were so many of them; there were doors everywhere, countless, and they all seemed to be beckoning to him.
It was a little strange.
And there was something else, something even stranger. Zee suddenly found himself very aware of the back of his neck, like the skin itself had sentience. The feeling traveled down his spine, electrifying his back. His head tingled. His legs seemed aware and alive. And then suddenly he knew with absolute certainty what he was feeling:
Zee was being followed.
In the movies whenever people realize they are being followed, they act extremely cool. They continue walking calmly, confidently, while carefully planning their next move.
Zee did not act cool. Zee stopped right where he was and looked around wildly.
There was no one there, no one at all, just Zee alone on this sunny, door-lined street. Zee turned around and around and tried to find someone, anyone, but there was nothing.
He got his sandwich. He got his crisps. He even got a pickle. He walked back home slowly, still paranoid and prickly, swiveling his head this way and that.
He turned the corner and saw a young man on the other side of the street. It made Zee feel strangely good-he hadn't seen another young person in days, and Zee had to fight off the urge to run and talk to him. But the boy seemed preoccupied with something. He was stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looking around curiously. Zee half nodded at him as he passed, then turned the next corner.
That's when he heard the scream.
Zee whirled around and ran back around the corner. And then he froze.
The boy was no longer alone. Two men, or something very like men, were with him. The man-like men were extremely tall, extremely thin, and extremely pale. They were wearing old-fashioned tuxedos, and their skin looked like dirty plaster. One of the man-like men was holding the boy, the other was reaching into the boy's chest, which was giving way like jelly. The boy was screaming. Zee stood, absolutely unable to move, while the second man-like man started pulling out something long and black and flimsy from the boy's chest. And then the boy stopped screaming and seemed to collapse on the spot. The second man-like man took the black thing and folded it up like fabric, while the first picked up a shiny black physician's bag and held it open with an accommodating nod. The second smiled graciously and carefully tucked the black thing away, while the first tapped the boy on the forehead three times. The second took the bag, latched it, and gave his partner a satisfied nod, and they both brushed off their hands. Then the first one noticed Zee. He nudged his friend and pointed, and the two ran off.
Zee still stood in his spot, staring at the crumpled heap of boy. The boy weakly lifted his head, stood up, and stumbled around, and still Zee stared. The sun seemed to illuminate the boy, and that's when Zee noticed.
The boy had no shadow
Zee exploded into a run. He ran and ran, he ran all the way home, and then he did not leave his house until his parents put him on a plane headed out of England.
PHILONECRON HAD PLACED A DISCREET ORDER WITH the Underworld's best tailor. It cost him an arm and a leg (though not his), and Charon required his usual "service fee" for smuggling messages and goods back and forth from Exile. But Philonecron was not afraid to pay for quality, and he would have only the best for his Footmen-for that's what he had decided to call his new servants. He believed excellence inspired further excellence, and his would not be some hastily stitched, poly-blend, puckery-seamed, one-size-fits-all coup; no, no-Philonecron's revolution would be pearl buttoned, satin trimmed, and completely pucker-free.
This particular tailor had a reputation for working quite swiftly, as you might if you had two dozen arms (and were ambidextrous to boot), and in just two days Philonecron found on his doorstep (or what would have been his doorstep if he hadn't been exiled and weren't living in a godsforsaken cave-but, you know, stiff upper lip and all that) twelve promising-looking packages wrapped up in the tailor's own freshly shedded skin.
At the sight of the packages Philonecron let out what can only be called a squeal-as if he were a young girl on Christmas morning rushing to the tree to find a golden-haired puppy while a hush of snow fell over the world. A squeal is not a sound one might associate with an evil genius, but evil geniuses are people too (or in this case, not really), and they experience involuntary vocalizations just like you or I.
Philonecron squealed, and his squeal reverberated through Exile. The ground shivered, the stalagmites rattled, the stalactites trembled, the Unburied quavered, and the twelve buck-naked Footmen stood up as one and moved to attend to their master-who was more than a little moved by the gesture. He watched, marveling, as they lined up in a careful arc in front of him, precise and proud.
Philonecron sighed with pleasure. The men regarded him blankly, faces etched out of shadow and clay. He smiled munificently back at them and gestured to the packages. "Hold out your arms!" he sang, and, like that, twelve long, spindly pairs of arms dutifully shot out, ready to receive whatever burden he might bestow on them.
"Close your eyes!" he trilled, and twelve pairs of yellow eyes disappeared behind twelve pairs of heavy gray-white lids.
"Are they closed?… Good! Don't open them until I tell you to!" With great ceremony Philonecron walked down the line, one by one putting a package in a pair of arms. The Footmen did not move. When he was done, he took his place in front of them. "Right, now open your eyes!"
The Footmen were not very experienced at this sort of thing, and anyway, they tended to take their orders quite literally. So it took some coaching for Philonecron to get them to look down at the bundles their gray-white arms were embracing.
"Yes! Yes!" He held his arms out magnanimously "They're for you, my children! Go on! Go on! Put them on!"
It wasn't for several more minutes that Philonecron was able to get the Footmen to unwrap their packages, examine the garments, and then put them on. He never would have believed it before, but inbred, mindless loyalty does have its drawbacks.
But Philonecron's spirits were not to be dampened, and he in turn closed his eyes while his men dressed, and did not open them again until they were all lined up in their new finery.
And what he beheld made it all worthwhile. When his eyes opened, he let out a gasp. He shook his head. He clasped his hands together. His eyes moistened.
"Why," he exclaimed, "you're all just so… beautiful!"
The Footmen were wearing exquisitely crafted tuxedos with jet-black jackets trimmed with silk, impeccably tailored to the angular contours of their wearers. They wore white ties, white gloves, with crisply starched snow-white shirts, white silk waistcoats, and impeccably folded white silk handkerchiefs poking out of the breast pockets. Philonecron could practically see his reflection in their shoes.
Something happened to the Footmen when they put on their finery. They altered, grew into their sartorial molds – almost as if they were made out of clay. Which, in fact, they were. The transformation was not physical, exactly; they had been blank, mindless automatons, and they had become, well, still mindless, but possessed of dignity, elegance, and grace.
"Exquisite," he breathed. "Just exquisite!"
The Footmen all smiled their very first smiles and bowed their heads graciously one by one.
"My goodness," Philonecron enthused. "You're all so… well bred!"
Well, really, it was only natural. They were made with his blood, after all.
"Now," he said. "Come close, my beautiful darlings, and I will tell you what we are going to do."
It had all begun with the boy. You know. The Death. The old English woman. The family tableau. The man, the woman, and the boy. Something about the boy. His shadow. His shadow was loose!
Right then Philonecron knew that all of his problems had been solved. But he did not know quite how yet.
He stared at the boy and he thought. He thought hard.
And then he came up with a plan.
A delicious, delightful, delovely plan.
A lesser evil genius would have taken the boy's shadow right away. But not Philonecron. One shadow does not an army make. He would leave the boy's shadow, but he would take his blood.
Just a little. Not enough to kill him or anything;
Philonecron had a feeling he would need the boy later on, and anyway, he seemed like such a nice boy. The boy would be fine-woozy for a while, but fine. Children are awfully resilient.
He couldn't take the blood right then, of course, with the boy conscious and his parents right there. Yes, denizens from the Underworld can walk around the Upperworld unseen, but it's fairly hard to take blood from someone without his noticing. Philonecron didn't want anyone to start getting suspicious and behaving rashly He would have to wait until the boy was sleeping.
It was all right. He had plenty to do before then.
Philonecron spent four hours wandering the city; studying people and their shadows and the connections thereof. In the past he had regarded trips to the Upperworld as a necessary evil (that's evil in a bad way, nothing at all like evil genius, which is a wonderful thing) -you couldn't be a blood smuggler without visiting the realm of the Living. But he had always found these sojourns unpleasant-and it had little to do with all one had to endure just to come and go thanks to Hades' precious Security Decree. The Upperworld had become so uncivilized. The way people dress…
But on this day Philonecron felt nothing but joy as he orbited as far from the scene of the Death as he could. He loved the people, with their exposed legs and artificial fibers and white socks and vulgar shoes, for they were going to save him.
Since his first trip to the Upperworld Philonecron had always been fascinated by shadows. There was no such thing in the Underworld; shadows were a peculiar product of Life – something about the reaction between light and the Life Essence that allowed people and animals and things to exist in the Upperworld. (One of these days Philonecron would figure out what that Essence was so he could wander around the Upperworld unchecked, but that would be another evil plan for another day)
But for some reason he'd never paid any attention to children before. Perhaps it was because they were loud and too full of Life, or perhaps it was simply because one did not tend to find children around scenes of Death. Or perhaps he simply had never before been looking for an army.
On this day, though, Philonecron sought out as many children as he could find, Life Essence and all. Much to his delight, he learned that the boy, whom he had begun to think of affectionately as Patient Zero, was no aberration. If shadows were caused by the interplay between light and Life, a child's was still forming. An adult's was inextricably bound to his body, but a child had a tenuous relationship to his own permanence, and thus, his own shadow.
And so the shadow could be taken.
It would take a little work, a good spell or two, and he might have to materialize to carry it off. He might need to do a quick time spell or freezing spell, since children tended to congregate in groups and there was no sense in scaring the little dears off before they did their service to his cause, was there? But none of that would be difficult. In fact, right over there, look! Two children of just the right age. Let's give it the old college try. Be careful now. Approach them softly. Mutter a few words. They're frozen now, they won't notice a thing. Reach into their bodies… And there you go. Handle the shadows carefully, you don't want them to rip. That's right. Now, fold them up and put them safely in your breast pocket. Tonight you will experiment.
Philonecron patted the samples in his pocket with glee. It was a good start. There would be much left for him to do, of course. He would have to figure out how to enchant the shadows, how to turn them into soldiers. He would probably need to find a way to replicate them, for shadow collecting would be time consuming. And being around children tired him easily-now he was already beginning to feel the familiar stretching of his skin that meant he had stayed in the Upperworld too long, that this world of light and breath and time was beginning to wear on him. He would need some help.
Some servants to help him gather the shadows. He would so like to have servants.
His skin was beginning to look raspy, his inner organs felt like someone was tugging on them, and his mind was filling with clouds. But he had one more errand to run.
He went back to the scene of the Death-already that made him feel a little better-and found the boy's room. There was a nice chair in the corner, so he sat and waited. Darkness spread over the room, and soon the door opened and Zero came in and got into the bed. Philonecron wanted to hug him, to cradle him, to sing him to sleep-you wonderful boy, you have changed the world. But instead he just sat and watched as the boy's breathing became long and steady. His chest heaved up and down so peacefully, and Philonecron took a moment to think of the great beauty of childhood and of the fragility of Life. Really, he thought, nothing is more precious than watching a child sleep. Then he got up, picked up the boy's arm, and drained some blood.
Mission accomplished, he headed to the nearest door to wait for the Messenger.
Philonecron had given the Footmen careful instructions on how to navigate the Upperworld. In a way, he hated to send them up there; they were such precious, pure creatures, and he was loath to corrupt them with the world of Life. But that's what they were for, there was no getting around it. And they proved quick and willing studies, eager to sip from his font of knowledge, to strive to improve themselves, to work to be the best they could be. They reminded Philonecron so much of himself.
He taught them a few spells, enough for shadow stealing, stealth, protection, and minor time manipulation. But he had no idea what it would be like for them up there. Would they be seen? How long could they stay? Would they be frightened? All he could do was give them as many tools as he could and then send them out into the world, heart in his throat.
His last gift to them, before their first journey, was a small vial of Zero's blood.
"Keep this close to you at all times," he said. "When you go into the Upperworld, you will find yourself drawn toward the site of a Death. Resist. Take out this vial of blood. Smell it. Then pick out the scent in the air and follow it. It will lead you to a boy. His name is Zero. When you find Zero, follow him. He will lead you to your shadows."
Sometimes Philonecron was stunned by his own genius. He could have sent his men out willy-nilly, but that would just waste time. Death so often led to blood, but rarely to children. Children, on the other hand, inevitably led to more of the little rascals. Of this he was certain.
He sent out two of the Footmen on the first day with an impassioned "Go out, my darlings, go out and conquer." He spent the next several hours pacing back and forth in his cave, unable to do anything either evil or genius.
But then there they were, at the mouth of the cave, with their cracking, flaky mouths set in satisfied grins. Philonecron stopped his pacing and stared at them. One by one they unfolded shadows – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven! Seven shadows for a few hours' work. The shadows were in perfect condition, not a tear in the bunch. And the two Footmen, the two glorious Footmen, bowed from the waist and left Philonecron to his shadows.
The game was on.
Philonecron set up a little evil laboratory in a spacious cave nearby where he could experiment on the shadows. He found he could replicate them, but only about a hundred per shadow before the original became worn.
It took some doing to enchant the shadows, and even when he did, they tended to float around like specters, not behave like good little soldiers. That would take some doing. Zero's blood proved essential for everything. He should have known-well, he did know. That's the sort of evil genius he was. Every single shadow got a drop of the boy's blood. Certainly any human blood would have sufficed to give them Life, but by giving them the blood from the same person-well, did he mention he was a genius? You'll see why later.
The Footmen all had their different methods of shadow stealing. Beta, Zeta, Lambda, and Mu liked to stop time before the children saw them, freezing the creatures in the most delightful positions, reaching in and grabbing the shadows, then leaving the children frozen until the spell wore off. Kappa, Alpha, and Theta chose to let themselves be seen, then freeze the children in their postures of horror, whereas Delta, Epsilon, Iota, Gamma, and Eta preferred not to stop time at all, letting the children scream through the whole process until they passed out. Variety being the spice of life.
During the day the Footmen went out, and Philonecron experimented on the shadows. At night they gathered in Philonecron's cave and he read to them, or played music, or lectured on philosophy or history or fine wine. Then the Footmen slept- they slept standing up, like little wax statues. They were so adorable.
And every day the pile of shadows grew.
Zero was proving extremely cooperative, too. Just when the Footmen had collected almost all the shadows from the town that they possibly could, the boy left. It didn't take long to find him, and when they did – oh, what a day! He had gone to London. London! They would never have to worry about running out of shadows now, as long as the boy wasn't some sort of housebound misfit. Which he wasn't. He was intelligent, social, athletic, involved, handsome! He was wonderful, he was perfect, he was something, he was Philonecron's little Zero. Philonecron had chosen perfectly, perfectly-how his shadows would be inspired by the boy's commands!
(Oops. Well, he let that slip, didn't he? Philonecron never could keep a secret. But he had learned from his weeks of shadow work that the final step in bringing the shadows to Life would be the commands of the human whose blood they had been enchanted with. That being Zero. He'd have to find a way to convince the boy to speak the words, but that shouldn't be a problem. He'd spent enough time with the boy's blood that he wouldn't have too much trouble with the mind control, and he'd already begun working on luring Zero down to the Underworld.)
Philonecron didn't even notice when things went terribly wrong; he was too busy working in his laboratory training the shadows to become ethereal when attacked. But for four days the Footmen came back empty-handed. At night on the fifth day the captain of the Footmen appeared in the doorway of Philonecron's cave. Philonecron could tell just by looking at him that something was amiss-not that the Footman betrayed any emotion, but a good father always knows.
"My Lord. I am sorry to disturb you. But.."
Alpha was the only one of the Footmen who had speech. Philonecron did not think it necessary for them all to talk. He did so detest noise, and after all, what would they say? One would be just fine; Alpha could speak for all of them. Alpha's voice was barely even a voice; it was as if he moved air around to form syllables, as if the wind itself whispered in Philonecron's ear. Really, it was quite pleasant.
"My dear. Come in. What's bothering you?"
Alpha bowed in response. "My Lord. There is a problem."
Philonecron put his arm around his servant. "Well then, we'll fix it. Tell me everything."
Alpha's face grew long, even longer than usual. "It's Zero. He's stopped leaving the house."
"What do you mean?"
"He has not left his house in days. I believe"-he cleared his throat-"I believe he encountered some of us in medias res, and he has not left the house since. I do not think he is coming out. I am so sorry, my Lord, I do not know how it happened. We were careless, and…"
The Footman cringed a little, as if Philonecron were going to beat him. Beat him! His little darling! No, no. Accidents happen.
And it didn't matter. If Philonecron were some kind of evil simpleton, they would have had to start over, find a new Zero, steal shadows all over again. But he was a genius-a genius- and geniuses always have a Plan B. The day after Alpha and Delta came back with the first shadows, he had taken a vial of Zero's blood, gone out into the Upperworld, and done an errand of his own. It had proved quite satisfactory.
"Fret not, my sweet," he said, squeezing Alpha's shoulders. "I have a backup plan."