Storming Paradise (3 page)

The street party was not hard to find. The village was small, just a few streets crossing one another in a central square. From there, the strains of music and laughter rang out loudly, the whole event just a street away. Tympanum drums drummed, pipes piped and lyres strummed in time with the harmonizing voices of men and women, at least three tunes being sung at once. The party itself had taken over the whole street, from the back of a grocer's store all the way along to the flower beds of old woman Galene's back porch, with colorful bunting running its whole length. The grocer and old woman Galene were there, feasting on spit roast boar, sampling wine so sweet that they could not remember having ever tasted its like.

Into this scene of Dionysian excess strode Hercules and Iolaus, in search of a good meal and a place to rest. As they stepped onto the street, young women danced around them, trailing fluttering ribbons behind them as they briefly incorporated these newcomers into their dance.

“Come join us,” cried one, and another repeated the refrain, brushing Iolaus and Hercules with her fluttering ribbon. The women wore short, white dresses that reflected the moonlight and barely covered their hips, their hems fluttering against the swish of perfectly tanned legs.

“I'm looking for the owner of—?” Hercules began, holding up the boots he had retrieved from the robber's cave.

The girls laughed and moved on, taking light, prancing steps on bare feet as the music played on all around them.

Iolaus watched them go, all light steps and long legs.

“Let's see if we can find the owner of these items,” Hercules said as Iolaus watched the women. “Surely someone around here must . . .” He stopped, realizing that his companion was transfixed by the pretty women. “Iolaus?” Hercules asked, and then snapped his fingers before Iolaus' face.

“Huh? Wha—?” Iolaus said, like a man waking up. “I was just . . .”

“I know what you were ‘just,'” Hercules assured him. “Come, let's find ourselves a drink and see if anyone knows who owned these boots.”

It did not take long to find either food or drink. A spread of food had been laid out on a series of tables placed together that ran at least half the length of the street. There were hot dishes, stews and soups flavored with the most aromatic spices. There was warm bread too, fresh from the oven and so light that it tore apart with barely any effort. There were sweets, two whole tables arranged with dishes of spiced apples, mangos and oranges, bowls of grapes and cherries and fine, plump strawberries. There were more exotic dishes too, dates marinated in wine, carved meats smothered with sauces made from fruits and vegetables and berries. Plates and wooden bowls were piled in regularly spaced stacks along the table, and the party's participants were encouraged to pick and choose as much as they wanted, and to return often for seconds, thirds and fourths. As Hercules balanced rashers of spiced pork on his plate, a rotund man reached past him to add another morsel to the already gravity-defying masterpiece that he had created on his own plate. “It's my ninth helping,” he said as he caught Hercules' eye, “and there's still more to try.”

Hercules offered a wan smile in reply. “I hope it tastes as good as it smells,” he said.

The rotund man laughed. “Better! So much better!” Then he was off, rifling through another dish with a set of tongs.

There was also the drink, ales and wines and honey-flavored mead, casks and barrels and skins of the stuff, with more appearing as each vessel was emptied.

Besides the food, the drink and the music, there were also games. Attendees could enjoy variants of skittles and dominos, hoops and darts and games of chance that involved balls and numbers and spinning wheels. All told, it seemed that everyone was having a good time, even the people who had landed themselves the task of providing the entertainment or of refilling people's goblets, bowls and platters.

“You know, Hercules,” Iolaus said as he raised a goblet of wine to his lips, “I think we've landed on our feet here.”

Hercules took a seat on the steps of one of the houses that backed onto the street, chewing on a duck drumstick that sent steam into the night air in flurries. “I think you could be right,” he agreed, “but we're still no nearer to finding out who owns these boots and the other trinkets.”

Iolaus took a seat beside Hercules, placing his plate on the ground beside him. “Ah, what's the rush? We'll find them. Just look for the person without any shoes.”

Hercules laughed. “Those dancing girls were barefoot, weren't they?”

“I believe they were,” Iolaus agreed. “Maybe I should go speak to them.”

Iolaus did just that, although his inquiries soon involved dancing, and before long both he and Hercules were fully committed participants to the all-night street party as it trundled its way into the small hours on a noisy journey towards dawn.

The party's attendees encompassed almost everyone from the village, Hercules concluded. There were close to one hundred people here, spanning all ages and both genders. Everyone was in high spirits too, thanks to the atmosphere of upbeat music and flowing alcohol. There were kids running around, giddy with the excitement of being out so late, and there were old folks congregated around games of chance or skill that only they seemed to understand the rules for, all played for the tiniest of rewards and the loudest of cheers. Between those two extremes were the adults, some keeping an eye on their children, as they drank from goblets of wine or ale, others dancing with the music, or making secret liaisons in shadowy doorways that were nowhere near as secret as they presumed to believe.

When Hercules inquired about the boots and other trinkets he had recovered from the cave, it seemed that people were only too willing to talk to him. They would share anecdotes and tell him jokes, some as old as his father, who was an immortal. They would invite him to join in games of luck, to bet on insect races with money he didn't have, and when he told them this they would say it did not matter and that he could bet with their money, just so long as he was having fun.

Hercules also asked whose party this was, what it was being held in celebration of, and the answer was always the same. Nobody knew who was hosting the party nor why. It seemed that the party had simply appeared, taking over a whole street that was just long enough to hold every participant with enough room for music and dancing and an occasional romance.

As for the boots and the trinkets—well, those never seemed to quite register on the minds of the people of whom Hercules inquired. Oh, they were happy to talk to him, happy to hear of his exploits and to share their own over a drink and a bite to eat, but the conversations always seemed to spiral off into other directions and Hercules never did quite get around to learning if anyone recognized the items that he had recovered.

Before long, Hercules was involved in a game that involved running across the width of the street to try to snag a maiden, and the whole quest with the boots and the trinkets was forgotten.

At some point during the night of celebration, Hercules recognized the man they had encountered on the road. His cloak looked wrinkled where he had dried it in the sun, and he seemed oddly deflated as he picked at the food and tried to keep a low profile. Before Hercules could approach him, several of the locals surrounded him and he looked up guiltily as if expecting a beating.

“Look, fellas—” he began.

But the locals didn't want to hear his excuses. Instead they simply welcomed him to the party, the
joie de vivre
of the occasion a panacea for all grudges.

The moon was still in the sky when Iolaus began meandering to the end of the street in search of somewhere to sleep. He had been playing a game of tiles with three other men, none of whom he could say he had learned the name of, when he had realized that he had fallen fast asleep with his head rested against his hand.

“Time I called it a . . . whatever,” he said, pushing himself up from the games table and staggering away on leaden feet. He had drunk a lot, and eaten his fill of chicken and pork and some muddled dish made from eggs and flour that tasted of cheese and felt effortless to chew. But he had spent most of the preceding day trekking through the mountains with Hercules, and he was exhausted.

Iolaus made his way unsteadily past strumming lyre players and tables that seemed to still have enough food on them to feed an army, stepping over the fallen drunks who had already gone to sleep in the street, and past the huddled gamblers who were locked in games of chance involving painted stones whose sides made them fall in different ways, creating new combinations with every throw.

There is a kind of homing instinct that kicks in at these moments, Iolaus realized. Too tired to party further, he followed that instinct as it drew him down the length of the street—a street that seemed almost unfeasibly long at that moment—and out into the village square from which he suspected he could find an inn or perhaps a storage shed in which to bed down for a few hours' sleep.

As he exited the street, Iolaus heard a cry.

“Iolaus! Wait!” It was Hercules, waving to Iolaus from a few dozen feet along the street, where the party remained in full swing.

Iolaus stopped, his head suddenly heavy, his footsteps graceless, as Hercules hurried along the street towards him.

“Where are you going?” Hercules asked. “There's a group at the far end, by the boar, that are just starting on songs about my father. You must hear them, they are hilarious.”

Iolaus gave Hercules an up from under look where his head felt too heavy to lift. “Need sleep,” he slurred.

“‘Sleep'?!” Hercules repeated the word as if it were a curse. “Come on, my friend—while the wine still flows—”

Iolaus rested a hand on one of Hercules' impressive biceps, as much to steady himself as to halt his friend's speech. “Hercules,” he said, slowly. “I am tired and . . . and I am also . . . tired. I need sleep, not songs.”

Hercules shook his head and tsked. “Listen to you. Where's your sense of fun?” he challenged.

“Asleep already, prob'ly,” Iolaus slurred in reply.

Hercules glared at him, shaking his head in incredulity while the street party continued behind him. “I never thought I would say this, Iolaus, but you are a party pooper.”

“I am no such thing,” Iolaus retorted, weaving in place as he tried to look at Hercules through heavily lidded eyes. “I poop on no parties. Except political parties, because they always want to build a labyrinth or a temple to some god who insists on awkward tributes.”

Hercules shook his head in disappointment, and to Iolaus it seemed that he was shaking his head so hard that the ground itself shook.

“You cut that out,” Iolaus said. “I'm having enough trouble standing here as it is.”

Hercules stopped shaking his head. But the ground did not stop shaking with him. “Wait,” he said. “Do you feel that?”

Iolaus did the kind of slow blink that seemed almost as if he had gone to sleep in the middle of it. But when he opened his eyes, the ground was still shaking, and he could see loose dirt and pebbles dancing on its surface where the first rays of dawn sunlight struck the street. “Izzat . . . ?” he asked, and tried again, making more effort to form the words. “Is that . . . an earthquake?”

Hercules was alert, looking all around them for the source of the sudden disruption. “It's something, but I don't know what it is. Monster maybe?”

“That griffin coulda—?” Iolaus began.

But his words were cut short when the street hosting the party began to shake harder, plates and goblets and painted game pieces tiles dropping from tables, the bunting shaking and falling, dropping away from where it had been hitched against the sides of the buildings.

Then, with a rumbling shake, the street began to descend. It was being swallowed by the earth.

Iolaus looked down at the ground. Dust was being churned up as the street sank into the ground, as if a great, shifting tectonic plate was located right here, whose edge was the very end of the street that was hosting the party. In fact, he realized, feeling suddenly a lot more sober than he had just thirty seconds before, it was precisely the end of the street where the juncture lay—and Hercules was standing on one side of it while he was on the other.

Hercules, too, was all too aware that something strange was happening. He had spun to look around him, searching for the source of the tremor even as the street started to sink—an inch, then two—into the ground.

“Hercules, get out of there,” Iolaus urged, grabbing his partner's arm. “Something's happening to the street.”

Still facing away from Iolaus, Hercules looked at the street and saw the bunting swaying in place and the way the tables were starting to fall over, spilling their contents. The people, it seemed, did not notice or care—the dancers continued their dancing, the musicians their tunes, and the few drinkers who were still awake enough to pour more simply poured, laughing too loudly at what was occurring all around them.

“What's going on?” Hercules asked.

Iolaus' eyes were fixed on the ground, watching as the street sunk another inch, dropping Hercules and its other attendees down into the ground. “The whole street is sinking!” he shouted. “Come on, buddy—let's get out of here before we get swallowed up!”

Hercules spun, turning back to face Iolaus, and his friend recognized his expression of fixed determination. “We need to do something, come on!”

An instant later, Hercules was running down the street, shouting a warning at the top of his lungs. “Earthquake! Get off the street! Get off the street!”

Iolaus stepped down onto the street and followed his partner's lead, repeating the warning and struggling to wake up the sleeping drunks. This was not how he had imagined this party would end.

Despite Hercules' warnings, no one seemed much bothered by the turn of events. Most of the party's attendees seemed quite satisfied to continue their games of chance, recite their anecdotes or dance with the pretty girls with the fluttering ribbons.

“It'll pass,” one assured Hercules.

“If this is how I go, at least I did it before the hangover kicked in,” another assured him, a man with a patchy beard and a ruddy face.

“Maybe they're right,” Hercules muttered, looking around the street. Over ninety people were here, and not one of them seemed to be in a rush to leave. They had a point—it wasn't as if being on another street would guarantee their safety. Except . . .

“Hercules!” Iolaus called from the far end of the street, the end where Hercules had caught him just a few minutes before. “Look!”

Hercules looked at where his friend pointed, saw how the street had dropped so far that now there was what looked like a wall of dirt standing at the street's end, four feet in height like a stable gate. Hercules glanced down to the other end of the street, saw that it too had sunk to a similar depth, and that the buildings lining the street were now up above them, and beginning to lean in.

“Sorcery,” Hercules hissed, instinctively recognizing what he was looking at.

As he spoke the word, the street sunk another foot as the bright rays of dawn touched the skies above for the first time.

Hercules reached towards the nearest building that now rose high above him, grabbing a handful of soil from the ground there. Dried in the sun, the soil came loose in his hands and the street continued to sink. He reached farther, grasping for the stone block that served as a step into the residential building whose ground level was now five feet above him.

“Hercules?” Iolaus called. “You got any bright ideas?”

Hercules clung onto the stone step, using all of his strength to hold the street in place and to stop it sinking further. His strength was legendary, but even he could only hope to slow the street's descent for a few moments. “Evacuate the street,” he shouted to Iolaus.

“How?” Iolaus shot back. “No one wants to leave!”

He was right, Hercules knew. He had tried to get people to leave but no one wanted to listen, they were too caught up in this party to end all parties.

At that moment, as Hercules tried to figure out an answer, the stone step to which he clung broke away and a great chunk of masonry came crumbling down in his hands, dropping to the street with a crash. The street continued to sink, five feet becoming six, the buildings above shifting to enclose the space, marching forward like centurions. As the buildings shifted, closing together above their heads, the street became darker, cast in shadow where it had been momentarily touched by the dawn's light. People started screaming as they finally realized that something was very wrong.

“Hercules!!!” Iolaus called again, fear unmistakable in his tone.

Hercules looked around frantically, wondering what he could possibly do now to stop this disaster. His strength was not enough to hold back the street's descent, and if that was not enough then he did not know what else he could do. Hercules made a tough decision then, the kind that would haunt a man of even the firmest resolve:
he ran.

Iolaus was bewildered when he saw Hercules come charging towards him. “What's the plan, big guy?”

“Save our skins!” Hercules replied without slowing his pace. His outstretched hand slapped against Iolaus' back as he spoke, pushing the man in a stuttering run towards the end of the street.

“Woo! Gonna . . . let me . . . catch my . . . breath?” Iolaus complained as Hercules shoved him towards the disappearing end of the street.

“No time!” Hercules replied, grabbing Iolaus by the top of his pants with one hand and his collar with the other. Then, Hercules lifted Iolaus from the ground and threw him high into the air.

Iolaus sailed through the air, screaming as he hurtled ten feet upwards and out of the disappearing street. Around him, the buildings that had lined the street were closing in, barely a two foot gap between them now.

Iolaus landed hard on the ground, tucking and rolling automatically as he struck the dirt. He came to a halt a moment later, rolling to a stop beside the well that dominated the center of the village square. Around him were buildings on four sides with streets between them.

Getting up on hands and knees, Iolaus turned and looked back at the party street, now ten feet behind him. Except there was no street—the buildings had all but closed in on the space where it had been, the only indication of its existence a dark trench that still ran between them.

“Hercules!” Iolaus called, scrambling back towards where the street had been.

For a moment the only movement was the twin rows of buildings as they shifted impossibly back to cover the hole in the ground where the street had been, sealing the ditch. Iolaus stared, mouth open, unable to process what had just happened.

And then the ground between those buildings seemed to explode, and the familiar form of Hercules came bursting from the soil, a woman tucked under each arm. He leapt forward and seemed to take a few steps through the air before finally landing six feet behind where Iolaus stood at the edge of the disappeared street. He and his charges were covered in dirt, but they were otherwise unharmed.

“What in the name of Zeus' lightning just happened?” Iolaus asked as Hercules set down the two women whom he had rescued. One was clad in the short white dress of the dancing girls that he and Iolaus had first encountered, while the other was a woman in her thirties, wearing a loose cotton blouse and lightweight skirt, her dark hair tied in a plait.

“No time,” Hercules spat, scrambling across the square and back to where the street had been. He skidded down on his knees and plunged his hands into the soil, tossing clumps of dirt aside. “Come on, help me! Dig!”

Iolaus knelt down beside Hercules and started to dig, shifting handfuls of dry soil aside as he burrowed beneath the surface. The two of them dug for a couple of minutes, but it soon became clear that there was nothing there other than the dirt, no trace of the street that had been hosting the party.

Iolaus had stopped digging long before Hercules, and he knelt there and watched as his friend, whose noble heart knew no limits, continued to scoop handfuls of soil aside.

“Give up,” Iolaus said gently. “It's gone.”

Hercules lay flat, his arms buried in the dirt almost down to his shoulders.

“It's gone,” Iolaus repeated.

Hercules turned his head and looked at Iolaus, and for just a moment Iolaus thought his friend was going to scream in frustration. But he did not. Instead, wearily, as if the fight had gone out of him, Hercules pulled his arms out of the soil and stood up, brushing himself down.

“Hey, buddy,” Iolaus said, standing before Hercules as he wiped dirt from his hands. “You can't win them all. You tried. But sometimes the odds are too heavily stacked against you.”

Hercules nodded solemnly in agreement. “I detected magic at work there,” he averred, glancing down what was now just a narrow alleyway between the buildings that had previously lined the street.

“I think you're right,” Iolaus agreed. “Question is, did someone steal the street, or did the street actually exist to begin with?”

Hercules nodded once more, gazing out at the rising sun as it peeked over the mountains before finally turning his gaze upon the two women he had rescued. “Why don't we ask them?” he said.

The woman with the plaited hair was frazzled. She had come out of the party with all the energy of a floppy rag doll, presumably having spent all night there. There were food stains on her blouse and strands of her hair were coming loose from the braid. She told Hercules that her name was Phoibe, but when he tried to question her, sitting on a stone bench in the shade a few feet from the well, she brushed him away as if swatting a fly.

“I don't know anything,” she mumbled, gazing at Hercules with eyes that clearly did not want to focus.

“What were you doing at the party?” Hercules asked, not really certain whether that was the right question.

“Heard that sweet music,” the woman said, and her mouth was left open where she had said this last word. Her eyelids began to close.

“Where from?” Hercules urged, and he repeated the question twice more until the woman replied.

“Was just folding clothes in back,” the woman called Phoibe mumbled quietly, “when I heard . . . I heard . . .” She slumped sideways until her head rested on Hercules' shoulder. She was already snoring lightly, each expelled breath smelling like a winery during fermentation season.

Iolaus, meanwhile, spoke with the younger woman who was one of the ribbon dancers as they sat in the shade of a building's porch. She wore a short dress that clung to her svelte body and exposed her long, tanned legs. Her long, dark hair was loose and she wore a garland of flowers there, propped just above her forehead. Judging by her flawless skin, Iolaus guessed she was in her late teens or early twenties. She was full of energy despite partying all night and the sudden and dramatic escape that Hercules had performed, and seemed to be abuzz with excitement.

“I'm sorry about your friends,” Iolaus began, “but we're going to try to get them back.”

The woman laughed, a musical trilling, and gazed out at the streets around them and the slowly rising sun. “It's so fresh out here, so open,” she said.

Iolaus looked around, taking in the village with its white buildings and wide streets. Other than himself, Hercules and the two people that Hercules had saved, the streets were deserted apart from a few birds hopping around here and there, poking at the soil for worms. “Yeah, I guess it is. You come from around here?”

“Who me?” the girl replied. “Oh, goodness no. I just came for the party.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“Word travels, you know?” she replied with a flash of flawless white teeth.

“Where are you from? Did you travel far?” Iolaus wondered.

The pretty woman stood up and twirled. “I'm from . . . way to the south, a place far different from this.”

“A village?” Iolaus asked.

The woman was twirling now with her arms upraised, spinning around and around with an expression of glee on her face. “No, oh no,” she exclaimed as she spun and spun.

All the spinning was starting to make Iolaus feel a little nauseous, and he began to regret drinking that last goblet of wine, and perhaps the two or three he had drunk before it. “You want to maybe sit down?” he asked. “I'm feeling a little delicate.”

The woman turned once more and laughed, wrapping her arms around her body before spinning in the opposite direction. “How can you just sit there when there's so much to enjoy?” she challenged. “The sun, it's so beautiful.”

“Yeah.” Iolaus could not deny it. No matter how many times he saw it, the sun at dawn seemed something akin to a miracle, its golden rays charging forth in sheer brilliance from Helios' chariot as he drew the mighty orb behind him in its race across the sky.

“Come and join me,” the woman called. “The dance can still go on, can it not?”

Iolaus watched her for a moment, feeling the wine roiling in his stomach. Twirling delightedly before Iolaus, the woman stepped barefoot out of the shadows cast by a nearby building, out to where those first rays of the sun struck the soil, warming it with their touch. In that instant, something odd happened. Iolaus saw her leg change as the sunlight struck it directly for the first time. Veins appeared along the back and sides of her svelte leg, the tan leaking away in a heartbeat, fading to a discolored white like the meat of a fish.

“Um . . .” Iolaus began.

Before him, the young woman continued to dance, beckoning him closer with outstretched arms. “Come join me! We can dance all day!” Only, she was no longer a young woman. As Iolaus watched, her face became gaunt and her hair receded and became frizzy, losing its color strand by strand. Her chest began to cave, and where once her dress barely held the promise of pert, rounded breasts, now it seemed to sag, her breastbone pressing visibly against the skin. Her arms too had changed; they were becoming skinny, the flesh melting away as the sun touched her.