The Gatekeeper's Daughter (26 page)

“What?” Mrs. Holt asked Therese where they stood in the barn by Stormy’s stall. It was late March, two short months before the wedding.

“I want to take Stormy to Texas,” she said. “I promise to take excellent care of him.”

Mrs. Holt looked from Pete to Jen to Bobby and back again to Therese. “Well, I must say I never expected this. When we gave him to you, I thought he’d stay here with us.”

“But we did give him to her,” Pete said. “Didn’t we? Or did you do it in name only.”

Mrs. Holt shook her head. “No. Stormy belongs to Therese, and if she wants to take him to Texas, she can.”

“He’s almost two, after all,” Jen said. “O
ld enough to leave Sassy.”

Therese couldn’t explain that she planned to visit Sassy often, via god travel. She also had to lie and say
Than would drive up to Texas with a trailer to transport Stormy, when in reality, she’d shoot him with an arrow before taking him directly to the Underworld. Although most mortal horses weren’t strong enough to ride until they were four, as an immortal being, Stormy could handle Therese, especially since most of the time they’d be in the air.

Before the night that she took Stormy, Therese switched duties with Hip once more so he could go as a mortal to the upper world and take Jen on a date. Jen was pleased to meet
Than’s twin brother. Therese could tell Jen recognized him from her dreams.

“I saw him coming,” Jen told Therese one spring afternoon as they kayaked together on the Lemon reservoir. “I’ve been dreaming about Hip for months.”

“Long distance relationships can be difficult,” Therese warned, afraid for her friend. If Hip broke Therese’s heart, she’d punch him, and now that she was a god, she knew it would hurt.

“Well, it was just one date,” Jen said. “But you never know, do you?”

One day while she was moving more things into the Underworld, her rats jumped from her shoulders and ran along the Phlegethon through winding chambers toward the Lethe. They didn’t beckon Therese, like they sometimes did, to show her something new down there she hadn’t seen before, but, she followed them anyway, curious. Long before the rats joined their friends in some dark crevice, Therese noticed the Fields of Elysium and the multitudes of souls sharing their common illusions. With her keen goddess eyesight, she spotted the souls of her parents picnicking beneath a tree. Her father scribbled notes inside a book, and her mother pinched a flower between her fingers, breaking off petals. Therese knew they would not recognize her, but she decided it was time to say goodbye. Without touching the Lethe streams, lest she lose her memory as well, Therese flew to their tree and said hello.

“Hello,” her mother said.

“Would you like to hear a poem?” her father asked.

Therese smiled. “Yes.”

Her father read from where he had written in his book:

A constellation of three

Hung in the sky

Sparkling happily

Ever nigh.

Their light shone

For years and years

Long after time

Had taken the spheres.

Look in the sky
             

And see all three

Sparkling happily.

Her father looked up from his book. “What do you think?”

Tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “It’s beautiful.”

“I think you made her cry,” her mother said to her father.

Therese batted the tears with the back of her hands. “That’s okay. It was lovely. And these are happy tears.”

Her father returned to his scribbling and her mother to breaking apart her flower. Therese whispered goodbye and floated away.

Two weeks before the wedding, Therese had completely moved everything she was taking with her to her chambers in the Underworld. She flew through the air on Stormy’s back with her rats on her shoulders, Clifford in the saddle in front of her, and her quiver and bow over her shoulder. She looked down at her aunt and uncle preparing for dinner with Lynn scooting around in her walker cooing “Terry!” her name for Therese. Then she turned and looked through the earth and into the Underworld, where
Than lit candles at their golden table, opened a bottle of wine, and turned on the CD player Therese had given him as a present. Jewels listened from her tank. Therese couldn’t be happier about the family she was leaving (though she would often visit) and the one she would soon be making with the love of her life. She sailed through the air as the sun set in the west and rose in the east, both of which she could see at once.

THE END

Please be on the lookout for the last three books of The Gatekeeper’s Saga:
The Gatekeeper’s House
(November 1, 2013),
The Gatekeeper’s Secret
(April 1, 2014) and
The Gatekeeper’s Promise
(November 1, 2014).

Please enjoy this first chapter of
The Gatekeeper’s House (#4)
:

Chapter One: Under Attack

Therese stood in the doorway, twirling a strand of her red hair round and round her index finger. There was only one bed in the center of Hecate’s room. That could be a problem, even though Therese only slept about once a week.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” Therese took a step back, knocking her quiver and bow against the cold stone wall.

“It will be fine.” Hecate skipped forward and snatched up Therese’s bag. “You can unpack your things in my closet.” When she spun around toward the back of the room, her black and white hair fanned out around her slim shoulders.

Hecate didn’t look like a witch or a hag or the dozens of other descriptions Therese had found on Google while visiting her family and friends in Colorado a month ago. She was an inch taller than Therese, and, in spite of the white streaks in her hair, she looked young, closer to Hermes’s age, mid-twenties, with a delicate nose and thin lips. Therese knew Hecate was ancient—older than Than—but one thing she’d learned since becoming the goddess of animal companions was that immortal beings aged at different rates from humans and from one another.

“You aren’t what I was expecting,” Therese said with a smile.

“Mortals get me confused with
Than’s sister, Melinoe. That’s probably it. Were you expecting someone more terrifying?”

Therese pulled her eyebrows together in confusion. “Do you mean Megaera?”

Hecate’s face broke into a grin. “Those two are nothing alike.” Then, in a somber voice, Hecate added, “I’m not surprised Than never mentioned Melinoe.”

“Well that makes one of us,” Therese said. How could he omit such an important detail? She’d told
Than everything about herself and her family. Why wouldn’t he have ever mentioned Melinoe? “Does she live down here, too?”

“She used to, until Hades banished her a few centuries ago. Now she lives on the outskirts of the Underworld in a cave on Cape Matapan.”

“And that is…”

“On the southernmost tip of Greece.”
Then Hecate stepped forward. “Where are my manners? Meg will scold me later. Please come on inside. It’s so nice to have company. I get lonely here when Persie moves in with Hades.” Hecate slipped Therese’s bag behind a wooden door, as though she wished to give Therese no opportunity to change her mind. “In the springs and summers on Mount Olympus, Persie and I share rooms with Demeter. Down here, I have a lot of time to myself.”

Therese looked around the chamber for the first time, its dome ceiling high and covered with dancing shadows, cast by the light of the Phlegethon, the river of fire. A stream ran from an upper crevice down a series of rocks and pooled in a six-foot-wide basin before thinning and disappearing behind another smooth boulder.

“That’s where I wash,” Hecate explained. “The spring is fresh and good enough to drink.”

Beside the basin and curled on a pillow was a small animal, a cute brown fur ball Therese had never seen. “Who’s this?”

“Galin, my polecat. This is the time when she likes to sleep.”

“I won’t disturb her, then.”

“My dog is awake and around here somewhere.” Hecate glanced about the room. “Cubie? Where are you?”

A black Doberman pinscher with tall ears and a long tail crawled out from beneath the one big bed.

“There she is.” Hecate reached over and patted the dog on the head. “Were you spying on us?”

“Absolutely,” the dog answered.

Hecate laughed. “Cubie, this is Therese.”

“Pleasure,” the dog said.

“Likewise.” Therese stroked Cubie’s back, wishing Clifford had taken her seriously when she’d announced that she was moving out of Than’s rooms. Instead, he’d given her an unconcerned stare as she had said
goodbye
and
I mean it this time
. “I have a dog, too. Maybe you would like to meet him.”

“Is he intelligent?” Cubie asked.

“He’s pretty smart.” As the goddess of animal companions, Therese had met quite a lot of dogs, and she felt positive that Clifford was as smart as any of them.

“But probably not as smart as Cubie,” Hecate said. “She was once the Queen of Troy.”

Before Therese could ask why a former Queen of Troy was now a dog, the floor trembled beneath their feet, followed by a loud
boom
.

Therese clutched the wall as Hecate fell back on the bed and shouted, “Ahhh!”

“What was that?” Therese asked when the floor stabilized.

“I don’t know.” Hecate’s voice was frantic. “I can’t get a prayer through to Hades or to Persie.”

Therese tried, too, but sensed no response. Blood pounded in her head as the ground began to quake again. She clutched the locket at her throat and prayed to Athena, but got no answer.

“Will these walls hold?” She glanced up at the ceiling, a host of scenarios playing through her mind. If the walls of the Underworld were to crumble, what would happen to its billions of inhabitants, including the souls of her mom and dad?

“Where are they—Hades and Persephone?” Therese asked.

Hecate winced as another
boom
sounded throughout the chamber. “Mount Olympus.”

Just then, a crack ran across the ground, up the wall, and through the dome ceiling.

“It’s going to collapse!” Therese shouted.

Small chunks of the ceiling fell on the bed, on the golden table by the hearth, and in the water basin, causing Galin to leap from her pillow and into Hecate’s arms.

“Clifford and Jewels!” Therese cried. “They’re in Than’s rooms.” Her stomach balled into a knot when she imagined them harmed.

“I’ll go with you.” Hecate set Galin down on the bed and spoke to the shivering weasel. “You and Cubie go to Demeter’s winter cabin, and wait for me there. Okay?”

More rocks crumbled down the walls as a series of
booms
sounded throughout the chamber. The stream, which once ran gently down the wall, shot out, spraying in all directions.

“I’m not leaving you!” Galin returned to her mistress’s arms.

“Nor I!” Cubie declared.

Soaked and trembling, the four of them rushed down the winding path along the Phlegethon, dodging the falling rocks. Cracks chased them all across the walls, and loud
booms
shuddered through the air. Therese was afraid to pray to Than, worried he’d god travel straight into danger. Even in her limited experience, she knew that if you arrived at a point occupied by solid mass, such as a large boulder, your body composition would momentarily meld with it. She’d discovered this problem when she once arrived in a brick wall. It had taken over an hour to recover, and the pain had been excruciating.

She found Clifford barking nervously by the hearth. “Come on, boy! We’ve got to get Stormy!”

Therese carried Jewels like a football in the crook of one arm as the group scurried down the narrow passageways toward the stables. She wondered if Than would be angry with her for not calling to him right away. He was already angry with her, and she didn’t want to put another rift between them.

As they passed by the intersection of the Lethe and the Styx, deities cried out, and, although Therese and Hecate slowed down and searched the waters, they could not find the source of the cries. Cubie said she’d stay behind and keep searching.

When Therese rounded a corner, a colony of bats whirred up from a crevice below and fluttered past them, and then out climbed Tizzie, up from Tartarus with blood dripping down one arm.

“What is happening?” Tizzie demanded
, her black serpentine curls covered in dust.

“We don’t know,” Therese replied.

“Well that’s just great,” Tizzie said, waving her hands. “The souls are in chaos. And if the pit ruptures, the Titans will be unleashed. Where the devil is my father?”

“Mount Olympus,” Hecate said, dodging a falling rock that landed with a clack beside her.