Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (21 page)

“Do you need help?” Silas could see no handle on the door. He began to reach out to touch its surface, but then drew back his hand. He picked up a rock and tapped the door with it. It made almost no noise, for the door was thick and solid, and the dank air swallowed every sound.

“Is there anyone in there?”

Silence. Not the silence of nothing, but the silence of waiting. Something waiting and holding itself still on the other side.

Locked doors were dangerous, in his experience. They were usually locked for good reasons. This door reminded him of the Camera Obscura at Uncle’s, and of the sealed tins of souls at his father’s house, each with its tortured occupant. Now Jonas’s words about not leaving the path began to pull at him. Silas turned away, crawled out of the passage, and continued on, pulling cobwebs off his hair and clothes as he walked.

The farther he went, the more the walls drew in, closer about him until the once vast passage funneled down to a small chamber with a single door on its far side. In the middle of the room, there was an enormous desk where, Silas was surprised to see, a man sat, wearing a green visor like some old-time accountant. His skin was thin, translucent, and creased, his face like a wrinkled piece of vellum. The man’s long robes looked like they had been woven from skeins of dust. The desk was covered in nearly tipping towers of papers and just in front of the man were various stamps, seals, and signet rings. Slowly, like an automaton, the man pulled a document from one pile, stamped it, then put it on another pile. About the table were many tall, pillared candles, and on the very corner of his desk perched the skull of a small child.

Without raising his head, the man at the desk rasped, “Dropping off, or picking up?”

“Um . . . neither, I believe. I am here on my own business,” said Silas.

“Well, then, who have we here?” the man asked, looking up. When he saw Silas with the corona of corpse fire about his head, he rose and bowed slightly but reverently, and said, “Begging your pardon, sir. I was trying to get through some of the backlog. How may I help?”

“I’m looking for the springs.”

“Oh, ’course you are! How long has it been since the last time?”

“I don’t believe I’ve been here before,” answered Silas.

“Of course you have,” said the man at the desk. “All the Undertakers come here.”

“But this is my first time,” Silas tried to explain.

“First time, last time . . . all the same from where I sit.”

Silas wondered how long it had been since this man had gotten out. Did he live down here in the catacombs? “I don’t mean to be rude, but may I assume, sir, you are not among the living?” Silas knew a ghost when he saw one, but experience had taught him it was always more polite to let others describe themselves first, before making any assumptions.

“If you are alive, sir, then in truth, I
am
among the living.”

Silas smiled. “I mean, are you dead? Departed? Like the other folk of this house?”

“As you like,” said the keeper of the crypt. “It’s just a job. Who’s to say what’s dead and departed down here in the dark? I am here. So I can’t be ‘departed,’ can I? Besides, nothing so small as life or death need keep us from a friendly chat surrounded by the bones and cerements. Living or dead, it’s all family down here, in’t? Just one big family reunion, that’s what the catacombs are.”

“I suppose that’s true. May I ask what it is you’re doing down here?”

“Keeping the records up-to-date. Someone has to make a note of who and what comes and goes, and that someone, for the time being, is me.”

“It’s a family trait, I think,” said Silas, thinking of the enormous funereal ledger back in his father’s house in Lichport.

“Indeed it is. Whenever something ends, there should always be a reckoning. And now, may I ask who you are?” The man looked at Silas skeptically. “You are kin, are you not?”

“Yes. I am Silas Umber.”

“That is very well. Now, if you don’t mind, would you please show me the psychopompic token?”

“The
what
token?”

“The
psychopompic token
. Any will suffice. Scepter of Mors? Sandals of Virgil? Wand of Hermes? Ring of Anubis? Cushion of Hypnos? Hadean Clock—”

“Yes! I have that one!” Silas exclaimed, relieved as he fumbled for the death watch in his jacket pocket. When his hand closed upon it, the watch felt hot, almost angry. Silas held it before him on its chain.

“Good, good. All is in order, then.”

As Silas returned the death watch to his pocket, he asked, “Will you tell me your name, cousin, so that I may remember you?”

The keeper of the crypt paused, and seemed touched that someone would ask him his name. “Indeed, sir. My name is Jacobus Umber. Very kind of you, indeed.” Composing himself again, he added, “But I suspect you’re not here for a chat with a distant cousin, so, how may I serve the Lord of the Upper Halls?”

“As I said, I’ve come to take the waters of the spring.”

“Yes. So you have. And you don’t know where the springs are? Of course. I may be of some small help, then, for the sake of your kindness. You are almost there in any event. Here is what you must do: Pass below that arch and follow the path down, and you shall come to a low hall. Within it, two springs flow up from the deep earth. Now, the spring on the left side of the hall, bubbling up from among the roots of a white cypress—do not drink even a sip of that spring. You may fill a flask of forgetfulness from it as your fathers and mothers have done before you, for the sake of your Undertaking, but nothing more. If any should fall upon your finger, let it dry in the air! Do not put even a drop into your mouth or all is lost.”

“What of the other spring?”

“Yes. The spring you seek is on the right side of the hall, and you will see two guards before it. That spring flows forth from the Lake of Memory, and its water is cold and fresh and splendid. From this spring you must drink your fill, drink until your stomach is heavy and your very lungs feel as though they will burst their bands.”

“Thank you, cousin Jacobus!” Silas said, already walking toward the arch.

“Wait!” cried the keeper of the crypt. “I have not said all. These guardians, you must get past them and neither strength of arms nor wit will avail you.”

“Then how?”

“You must speak these words and none other: ‘I am the Earth Child and the child of the Realm of Stars, this you can see already. I am withering with thirst and shall soon perish. Grant me cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.’ ”

“That is all?” asked Silas, repeating the words in his mind to memorize them. But as the words rang in his ears, he could feel their power, their antiquity, and how familiar they felt, as though he had said them before.

“Traditional, those words are. Old. Just say ’em. Then they shall give you to drink from that holy spring and then, you know, you’ll take your place among the heroes and all that sort of thing.”

Silas stared at him.

“Look, are you certain you are ready, little cousin? Drinking from the spring is only a portion of the trials that await you. Those who come down, I am sorry to tell you, often lead lives of trouble. Your path shall never be easy.”

“Maybe, but if I don’t do what I am supposed to do, who will do it?”

Jacobus Umber smiled at that.

“But perhaps,” Silas continued, “you could tell me what is to follow?”

“I am no soothsayer. But if I were a gambling man, I’d bet on miracles. Terrors. Blood-deep never-ending Obligations. Doom. That’s all.”

“What do you mean ‘doom’?”

“I mean, isn’t that why you’ve come? Oh, young master, have they told you nothing upstairs? I pray you’ve the stomach for what follows.”

“Do you mean the Door Doom?”

“I do,” Jacobus Umber said, but now he looked nervous, as though speaking those words put something poisonous into the air, “but let’s say no more about that. None of my business anyway.”

“I know something of it,” Silas said. “I know I am doing no more than my ancestors before me have been asked to do.”

“Well, that’s fine, then. You had better be on your way. They’ll be waiting for you back upstairs. I wish you
bonne chance
, cousin.” Jacobus Umber blew out the candles at his desk and quickly vanished through a tiny doorway sunk almost invisibly into the wall.

Silas went forward as he was instructed. When he passed through an arch richly carved with ivy vines on one side and a yew tree on the other, he saw the two springs. It was an unusual sensation for Silas, standing there. The springs represented two choices that were very important in the Undertaking: memory and forgetfulness. For wasn’t that the very offer he often made to the dead? To fade, or remain? And now, here he was, standing by the waters that made those choices possible.

By the spring of memory, two stone figures stood guard, tall and imposing, each bearing a bronze spear and a shield adorned with twined serpents. Their long tunics and cuirasses were almost the same color as the rock of the walls behind them. Their helmets—high and crested in the fashion of ancient Macedon—obscured their faces. They did not stir.

Without taking his eyes off the guardians, Silas went first to the spring of forgetfulness. It was surrounded by bottles and flasks and human bones, perhaps left behind by those who drank its waters, and then, forgetting why they’d come, merely sat by the spring and let their lives wind down. Taking one of his own flasks from his satchel, Silas bent over and began to fill it, careful to dip only the flask and not his hand in the waters. When he looked down, he felt dizzy. The surface of the spring was in constant motion as the waters flowed up from the darkness below. As he watched, the ripples all began to swirl in one direction, around and around, appearing to draw down at the spring’s center like a small whirlpool. Silas felt his throat go parched. He was thirsty, and the spring was right there in front of him. Its waters would soothe his throat. Before he knew what he was doing, he slowly reached down toward the surface of the spring. Just as his hand was about to dip into the water, someone shouted his name from the archway. His own name struck him like a blow and he sat up. Had it been Jacobus trying to help once more?

Looking about him, regaining his senses, Silas carefully sealed his flask, put it back in his satchel, and backed away from the spring. Even standing a few feet away, the spring exerted a force on him.
To forget everything . . . all of life’s problems and pains . . . to instantly forget them . . . the bliss of it if . . .
No. Enough. He quickly turned to the other side of the room and walked toward the spring of memory, drawing another flask from his satchel. At his first step, the guardians stepped forward with frightening speed and raised their spears to point at Silas. Startled, he yelled, “Wait!” But the guardians advanced toward him.

Immediately Silas blurted out the words as he’d been told.

“I am the Earth Child and the child of the Realm of Stars, this you can see already. I am withering with thirst and shall soon perish. Grant me cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.”

As he said the words, the wisps of blue fire, the corpse candles, rose and arrayed themselves about his head like a crown of bright, flickering stars.

The guardians raised their spears as though about to attack, but instead laid them upon the cold stone of the earth. From the small altar next to the spring, they lifted a black and red kylix, an ancient two-handed vessel, decorated with large painted almond-shaped eyes. Each guardian delicately held a single handle and in unison, bent toward the spring. They plunged the cup below the surface of the water, stood up, and offered it to Silas.

Slowly, Silas took the vessel. He raised it to his mouth, and began to drink. The cup was nearly full to brimming, and the weight of it against his lips made it hard for him to drink slowly. The water was cold, and it hurt his teeth. As it slid down his throat he felt his limbs go numb. And he was so thirsty, more thirsty than he’d ever been before in his life.

From the first sip, he could suddenly feel and remember every moment in his life when he’d been thirsty, and this made his desire to drink even more desperate. He gulped at the water, hoping he would never reach the end. As more and more of the water of the spring of memory filled him, it loosed the bindings of his mind. He could see, as if from a rooftop, all the parts of his life’s pageant now become visible at once.

He saw himself sitting on the porch, a child waiting for his father. Behind that vision, another him, but now a young man, still waiting on the same porch, and again, less than a year ago, walking through Lichport, still looking, still waiting for his dad. All three visions occupied the same space, the same moment, no longer isolated in time. He saw himself with different eyes. He was his father, seeing himself as an infant, as a toddler, as a teenager. He saw his father, kneeling by this same spring. And again, Amos kneeling; this time in the tall grass, crying, clutching an infant that lay motionless in his arms. Then he looked out from the corpse-eyes of his great-grandfather who was standing in front of his house, perhaps even now, watching the street, waiting for his great-grandson to return. He was Jonas Umber, eager for the honors due the family, impatient for the next generation to share in a familial sense of obligation. He was Maud Umber, not the maternal ancestress of noble carriage he’d met, but a soul trapped within a circle of fire kindled from her own terrible longing. He wanted to pause, to better understand her sorrows, but his mind was whirled away to see out through a hundred times a hundred other eyes. All his. All someone else’s. All the same. Their lives were within him, once only shadows in the blood, now fed and made substantial by the waters of the spring of memory. All the portions of his life, the moment he called them up, became clear and sharp in his mind’s eye, every detail of every memory standing out in stark contrast against the others. And in those visions, one thing remained a constant: Each person was waiting for something to happen. There was even a memory of his recent vision: A figure stood before a valley covered with bones. Was it him? Or his father? Was it actually a memory, or an event not yet come to pass? Silas wondered: Was no one in his family ever content?