The White Oak (9 page)

“You are still among the living,” he says, flinging me to the ground. “I cannot take you across.”

“But you must!” I yell back, filled with panic at the thought of being left on the chilly plains of Asphodel to die and spend eternity as a cold flame. The ferryman turns on me, his eyes burning red.

“I could kill you right now.” He lifts his massive foot and presses it against my chest.

“Please,” I cry. “Please, Charon.”

At the mention of his name, he ceases his assault, and with visible disgust he picks me up by the neck. Holding me close to his face, he growls, “Who told you my name?” I don’t answer, but I have the sinking feeling that I’ve gotten myself into even more trouble. It’s probably not a good idea to mention Minotaur, and I’m very sure I should keep my connection with Sybil a secret. If he finds out I’m being helped by those two, he’ll quickly figure out that my coin is stolen.

The ferryman squeezes my neck and repeats his question. “Who told you my name?” he demands. His fingers crush my windpipe—I couldn’t speak if I wanted to. My vision begins to blur. I’m about to lose consciousness when I hear a sudden
ziing
. A stone whizzes past my head and hits the ferryman. He grunts but doesn’t let go of me. Three more rocks hit him, one squarely in the eye. He roars with pain and drops me to the ground. I gasp for air, clutching at my bruised neck with one hand.

Charon turns to look for the rock thrower, and I struggle to my feet to run away. Quick as lightning, the whip coils around my waist and pulls me back to him. He’s going to kill me; I can see murder in his squinty red eyes. I open my mouth to plead for my life, and as I do, the golden twig unfurls, flickering in my mouth like a snake’s tongue. When Charon catches sight of the twig, a look of shock and fear passes over his face and he recoils, dropping me and stepping backward. I shut my mouth and the twig flattens itself against my tooth once again. If Minotaur is still around, I hope he assumes that the flash of gold is the coin under my tongue.

“I have to let you board,” Charon says, “but don’t think I’m going to treat you any better than the rest of them.” He waves his meaty hand to indicate that I should proceed. “Let her pass,” he yells to the boatswain, who has already scanned my coin. As I walk down the long pier toward the boat, he yells after me, “And keep out of my way or I’ll knock you into the brine.”

As I hurry toward the boat, the pain in my mouth is so sharp that I have to stop and rub my jaw. I wonder if the pen is actually communicating with me by drilling into my tooth. If so, I wish it could find a better way to get my attention.

That’s when I catch sight of him, sitting at the edge of the dock behind an enormous coil of rope, a pile of rocks beside him and a slingshot in his hand. He’s wearing the same shirt and pants he wore at the funeral, except they are torn, and his blond hair is dirty and bloody.

“Lucas!” I whisper, looking quickly toward the boatswain and the ferryman to see if they are watching me. Their attention is on the other passengers, so I duck down behind the ropes, pain rising in my chest. “Lucas,” I say, sitting down next to him. I try to hug him, but my arms go right through him. Lucas sees the look on my face and puffs himself up, trying to become more substantial, but it doesn’t do any good.

“Are you . . . ”

“A ghost.” Lucas says. “Me and Grandma died in the sinkhole.” He snaps his slingshot and launches a stone into the water. It doesn’t make a splash, because the water is too thick. Instead it slides in and slowly sinks.

I sit next to him, dangling my bare feet over the edge of the dock. I can feel the heat rising off the stagnant water.

“Where is Grandmother?” I ask.

“She crossed over already,” Lucas answers. “I stayed behind to wait for you.”

I sigh with relief, happy that Lucas is here and my mean-spirited grandmother is not.

He sends another stone into the water. I feel my heart swell with love for him. I want to smooth his messy hair and comfort him, but he is in no mood for that, and my hands can’t touch him anyway. I pick up one of his rocks and feel surprised that it’s solid and heavy. I hear the ferryman cracking his fearful whip and remember his iron grip on my neck.

“Why is it that some things in this world are solid and some aren’t?” I ask, reaching out and placing my hand on top of his. It passes right through. “How can the ferryman crush me, but you can’t even hug me?” Lucas cringes, and I wish I’d used a different example.

“I’ve been watching the people down here,” he says. “Some are more solid than others. I think it has something to do with their power in the underworld.” He takes a stone off the pile and tosses it into the river. “At least I have enough power to throw rocks at monsters,” he says, shrugging.

I smile at him. “Thank goodness for that, or I’d be . . . ”

“You’d be what?” he says, studying me closely. “Cora, you seem solid all the way through.”

“Lucas, I’m—” I start to tell him but stop, not sure how he will react. Then I decide I have to tell him. If Lucas can’t accept me, nobody can. “I’m still alive,” I explain. “That’s why the ferryman doesn’t want me on board.”

“How is that possible?” he says. “You were buried in that sinkhole just like me!”

“The ground opened up underneath me and I fell all the way through to the caves. I can’t explain it. I don’t know how I survived. I mean, I have so far, but Minotaur says I could die here and be stuck. He’s helping me find a way out.”

“Who is Minotaur?” Lucas asks. I notice for the first time how concerned he is—like a father who finds out his child has been talking to a stranger. Before I can answer, Minotaur appears. Or more precisely,
part
of Minotaur appears. To stay hidden with us behind the ropes and barrels, he can’t show more than a head, shoulders, and part of an upper body.

“I am Minotaur, Cora’s friend and guide,” he says. I wince when he calls me a friend, but Lucas doesn’t notice because Minotaur has appeared in a persona he recognizes. The persona hovers above the dock dressed in military fatigues, a giant gun slung across his back and a smaller gun holstered under his arm. He’d be as big as the ferryman if his full body were showing. The soldier snaps to attention and salutes, saying, “Lieutenant Garrison, Sir!”

Lucas’s mouth hangs open for a moment. Second Lieutenant Garrison is the hero Lucas invented for the computer game he was building before he died. “Why did you tell him about my game?” Lucas says angrily.

“I didn’t,” I say. “He just knows. If you do something on a computer or any kind of machine, he knows.” Lucas seems concerned about this, but I don’t know why. What does it matter if Minotaur knows what Lucas did when he was alive?

“What do you want and why are you talking to us?” Lucas addresses Minotaur combatively.

“My mission is to aid and protect you,” Lieutenant Garrison says in his matter-of-fact soldier’s voice. Lucas stares at him, and neither of them says anything for a long time.

Lucas finally breaks the silence. “Bullshit,” he says. “What do you know about my projects?”

“Everything,” Minotaur replies. “I know what you have written, and I know what you are capable of writing.”

“I don’t believe you,” Lucas counters. “Show me.”

Minotaur’s persona fades and is replaced by lines of code that hover in midair. Slowly they rearrange themselves, forming a series of three-dimensional images. They are Lucas’s cave photographs, rendered in 3-D for his game. The images begin to change incrementally, until the landscape looks like the underworld, like the river and the plains of Asphodel, and the pier we are sitting on.

Lucas is fascinated. “How are you doing this?” he asks.

“It’s your program,” Minotaur says. “The one you started before you died.”

“That was just an idea I was playing with,” Lucas replies. “I hadn’t worked it out completely.”

“We filled in a few blanks for you, to help it along, but you will finish it here in the underworld,” Minotaur says.

“Who is
we
?” Lucas asks in annoyance. “And how can you know what I am going to do next?”

Minotaur pauses for a moment and looks at me, not Lucas. “Ask your sister,” he says. I feel a twinge of pain in my tooth as the golden pen digs in. I take it as a sign that I should say nothing.

“What’s he talking about?” Lucas asks.

I shake my head, not sure how to tell him about Sybil and the books, and worried that I will betray the secret of the golden pen if I do.

Charon cracks his whip and breaks the silence. “All aboard!” he bellows. The boarding is almost completed.

“Go quickly,” Minotaur says, disappearing from view. Lucas and I make a run for the boat.

She had no idea how much danger she was in, and at the time, I didn’t fully understand it either, although I thought I did.

I searched for her on the Ship of the Dead and then waited for her by the ferry. Hiding on the dock, I watched thousands of ghosts pass by and witnessed at least a hundred ferry crossings. There were times when I was sure I’d missed her, and other times when I wondered if she had survived the sinkhole, leaving me to wait years for her arrival.

There were only a few places to hide—behind coils of thick rope or piles of wooden crates. When the boatswain came for new rope or when he dumped his box of plunder into one of the crates, I had to climb quickly under the dock and cling to the posts to stay out of sight. When the ferry was making a crossing, I would explore the dock, reading the ship’s manifest or rummaging through the boatswain’s crates looking for weapons—that’s how I found the slingshot and the rocks.

Once, the boat returned when I wasn’t paying attention. I was snooping around the ferryman’s platform when I felt the pier shake as the boat bumped up against it. I quickly crawled under the platform and stayed hidden beneath the ferryman’s feet throughout the boarding. Up close, I could feel how powerful he was. The platform shook when he moved, and I could feel the wind made by the crack of his whip. I worried about being discovered until I realized that it wasn’t hard to escape his notice. He only cared about getting the passengers on board and across the river. It was the boatswain who continued to worry me. I watched him cautiously through a gap in the wood slats.

By the time I found Cora, I’d watched a thousand souls make the journey, and I had a good idea how to get her across safely. I tied up her hair to keep it out of the fans, and told her where to stand on the ferry. I protected her from the boatswain, and helped her get through the gate into the City, but the whole time, I was wondering about the things she wasn’t telling me. She was my twin, I knew her almost as well as she knew herself, and I could see she was keeping secrets.

She was traveling with an artificial intelligence that called itself Minotaur. Cora seemed uncomfortable around it, and I should have paid more attention to that, but I was too curious about how it worked and what it knew about the underworld. And, to be honest, I was flattered that it was familiar with my programs and seemed to think they were important. I had a vain notion that if I could finish my work, I could somehow become as solid as the ferryman.

When I look back on it now, I see that Minotaur perceived this. It recognized how badly I wanted power in the underworld. To my credit, I wanted to use it to protect Cora and get her out alive, to find my family, especially my mother, if she was down here. But mostly I wanted a chance to complete what I’d started. And Minotaur was able to give me that chance. It had access to the underworld database. If I could get into it, even for a few minutes, I could change this place. How many shades have that opportunity? It would almost be like living again.

And that’s what I craved. I hated being dead. I was sure I hated it more than any other shade. When the ground gave way and the avalanche of dirt and rocks crushed me, I fought back. Even after I was dead, I resisted. My ghost held on to my body and refused to separate. But the struggle drained me, and that might have been why I ended up fainter and weaker than the other shades. I spent myself battling death, or perhaps I left part of myself in the body after all—tore myself apart because of my stubborn will.

Grandmother didn’t resist. “When it’s your time, it’s your time,” she said when I saw her on the ship’s deck. She was almost as thick and strong in death as she was in life. She pinched me and scolded me. “Look what you’ve done to yourself,” she said. “I thought you were the smart one. You think you can trick death? Nobody ever has—nobody ever will.”

I was glad she wasn’t there when I found Cora on the dock, alive. Grandmother would have killed her just to make a point. But I wasn’t going to let her die no matter what it cost me.

I would defy this place, get her out, and if I could, I would do some damage to the underworld. I wanted more than just to trick death—I wanted to defeat it and get all of us out. I see now how foolish that was, how dangerous, but if I hadn’t acted on that ambition, things would have turned out much differently. As my grandfather once told me, “The heart was made to desire what destiny intends for it.”