Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Hydra

Dr. Chenault kept Clifford overnight on Thursday and Friday, but Saturday, after a disappointing swim meet, Therese rode with Carol and Richard to pick him up. He wore a hard cast on his head, covering all but his eyes and snout and would have to be fed a liquid diet with a turkey baster for a while. Therese suspected his skull would heal faster than most patients. After waiting a few more days for Clifford to get settled at home, she decided it was time to bake a cake for the Hydra.

She perused the pantry for a cake mix. Let’s see, she thought. Chocolate, white, and yellow. Which would a monster like best? Chocolate was poisonous to dogs, but could it hurt a dragon-headed sea snake? She decided on her favorite—white cake with white icing—so if things went wrong, she could die eating it.

“What’s the special occasion?” Carol asked when Therese slid the two round cake pans full of batter into the oven.

Therese had already prepared her answer: “I never properly thanked the Holts for Stormy.” She realized then that she should bake a cake for the Holts, and she promised herself she would, if she succeeded in her fourth challenge.

Later that evening after dinner, she carried the cake up to her room, under the pretense of wanting to decorate it privately (which sounded weird and got her a funny look from her aunt), donned her sneakers, jeans, and traveling robe, along with her sword, shield, and visor with headlight, and god traveled to the foot of Larissa Hill near Argos, Greece. It was three in the morning there and dark, for the city was far below, like strands of white Christmas tree lights spread across an enormous field, and though the stars and waning moon shone brightly, the hill was in shadows.

“I can do this,” she said to the wind. She shivered in the cold. It was warmer when she came with Than at dawn several days ago. The night air chilled her to the bone. She should have worn a coat over the traveling robe. She could pop back and get one, but she decided to move on. “Let’s get this over with,” she said to no one in particular, or to any gods who might be watching.

She drew the sword, balancing the two-layers of cake in her left hand. Then, keeping her eyes open as she had practiced, she imagined the decoy zone located on the opposite side of the hill from the heart-shaped pool.

The invisible plastic wrapped around her, and the bright light shined from all directions. She recognized the fork in the tunnel with its peculiar anvil-shaped dividing wall. Since the Hydra was nowhere in sight, Therese landed at the fork, flipped on her headlight, set the cake on a rock near the ground, and then took several steps away from it to wait.

Her heart thudded in her ears as she ferociously bit the inside of her lips. The Hydra could come from any one of three directions—from either of the two tunnels that forked from the anvil-shaped wall, or from the main tunnel feeding into them, currently at her back. She sloshed around in the three-inches of ice-cold water, constantly turning to shine her light down each of the three ducts, both wanting and not wanting the monster to come.

She wondered if any of the gods were watching her crouched and shivering in the dark tunnel, her teeth now chattering uncontrollably as she held her breath, her limbs stiff, frozen with both cold and fear. She felt small beneath the massive hill and the ancient ruins, a tiny dot in the larger scheme of things. Realizing the gods would see her as nothing but a little frightened girl, she pulled her shoulders back, jutted out her chin, gritted her teeth, and narrowed her eyes. She was a warrior, and she would fight.

That is, if the Hydra would ever come.

As the minutes wore on, and the cold crept deeper into her bones, and the shivering made her feel like a victim of Parkinson’s disease, she pondered the idea of calling out to the monster. She had tried and failed to study the petroglyphs carved into the rock throughout the tunnels. She had tried and failed to observe the tiny fish swimming near her feet. She had tried and failed to appreciate the stalactites, hanging like icicles from the ceiling. When she thought she could no longer take the cold, that she’d have to either pop back home for a coat or give up for another day, in a moment of insanity or delirium or both, she muttered, “Here Hydra, Hydra. Here Hydra, Hydra.”

In less than a second, the water moved like the tide coming in across her calves, and a scream, like a train screeching to a halt, echoed throughout the tunnels. Therese couldn’t tell from which direction the monster was coming. She spun around and around, dizzy and panting, telling herself to go, to leave, to get the hell out of there. But she couldn’t focus. She couldn’t imagine her destination, and this made god travel impossible.

Think, Therese! Focus!

In her spot of light, Therese saw the scaly beast, its huge dragon head bobbing up and down on the end of its long, serpentine neck. She also saw claws and legs and realized it wasn’t a sea snake after all as it half slithered and half tromped through the water toward her. Eight other necks, four on each side of the base of the center one, hung seared and lifeless, flopping like wings. Therese stood with leaden feet, watching in terror wherever her light fell, her mouth agape and her mind blank and stunned. The great mouth opened, exposing rows and rows of sharply pointed teeth, and lunged toward her, its head now within inches of her. Therese closed her eyes and thought of her room and Clifford nestled on her bed, but she didn’t leave as the monster’s snapping jaw grazed her nose before rearing back to strike again. Stupefied, Therese looked around in all directions, in full panic, swinging her sword madly, blindly, and hitting nothing. She leapt away from the path of the Hydra and fell on her hands and knees, her traveling robe ripped from her in shreds, hooked on the claws of the beast.

Therese sprang to her feet and retrieved her fallen sword as the monster discovered the cake and devoured it, making a noise sounding something like glee. Without stopping to look, Therese ran in the direction from which the Hydra had come, with only the circle of light to guide her. She stumbled once and fell, but scrambled to her feet, her eyes locked on the path before her. All she could do was run for her life. Even if she prayed, the gods couldn’t help her.

At a fork in the tunnel, she went to the right, because the water seemed to get deeper the other way, and she knew the tunnel leading to the heart-shaped pool was shallow. The Hydra must have finished licking the icing from her mouth, for Therese heard the ground shaking again. She ran on, at full speed, but could hear the monster closing in on her, getting closer and closer to the shield on her back.

Another fork made her pause, and that was her undoing. If she’d flung herself one way or the other, she might have avoided being plucked up by the shield and lifted into the air. Therese threw her sword at the Hydra’s head, slipped her arms from the shield, and jumped toward the rock wall. Scraping her hands and knees and elbows, she scuttled into a small cavity in the upper side of the wall, barely able to maneuver herself because it was a tight squeeze. She wriggled as far in as she could, flat on her stomach and elbows, until she hit up against solid rock. The Hydra screamed in frustration, chipping at the rock with her sharp teeth. Therese had nowhere to go and nothing to do but lie there.

“I will not freak out,” she said aloud. “I will not freak out.” She lay there, panting, trying to catch her breath, stuck like an insect in a spider’s web, the walls closing in on her, like a cocoon, weaving tighter and tighter around her. The Hydra continued to scream and chip as Therese shouted, “Think!”

Using her hands and elbows, she rolled over onto her back to inspect her nook more fully, wincing with the realization that her back had been scratched by the claw of the Hydra. It stung and throbbed with pain now that she was aware of it. Up above her was another hole. She propped herself up, sticking her head into it, shaking so badly that her head repeatedly bumped into the rock. The light on her visor revealed another tunnel, so, like a termite, Therese pulled herself up till she was standing on her feet, cringing at the loud wails of the Hydra and the pounding against the rock near her. She unbelted her scabbard, useless now that her sword was lost, and let it drop to her feet. Then she grasped on to the rocks above her and found lodgments for her feet as she inched her way further up.

Therese rejoiced when she noticed the tunnel widening, allowing her to breathe and hold her arms out to each side. Eventually, she had to choose one side to scale, no longer able to stand astride the opening. She chose the side which was furthest from the wailing beast.

The wall became easier to scale, no longer upright, but slanting now into the steep slope of a hill, and the air became fresher, crisper. A few more strides, and Therese found herself safely out of the hill, staring up at the star-filled sky over Greece!

She emerged from the caverns and lifted her arms toward the moon, happy to be alive. She had been face to face with the monster and had lived!

Her elation quickly turned to dread as the pain throbbed in her back and she had this realization: if she left the hill now, she’d never have another chance to complete the fifth challenge. She had no traveling robe, and she had no way of getting another. She wasn’t allowed to ask the gods for help, and they weren’t allowed to help her, except to give advice. If she was going to make it through the entrance to the Underworld, she’d have to do it tonight. Besides, how would she get home without the robe? She might make it down to the city of Argos and ask for help, inventing some story about being abducted and taken to Greece. Then she wouldn’t have to climb back into the cold and narrow lair and risk her life again. But that would mean no life with Than. He might insist on changing her anyway, but how could she live with herself knowing that her cowardice was the cause of his eternal torment?

She must succeed or die trying.

She took in another breath of the crisp, chilly air and then turned back to the hill, descending down the steep slope of the tunnel toward the Hydra.

As she bent her knees and hiked into the musty cavern, the quiet, still air made her shudder. The thrashing and wailing had stopped, and the beast could be anywhere. Therese turned her head in all directions, shining her light around the tunnel, not wanting to return the same direction she came. To her right, above a boulder wedged in the rocky slope, she spotted another opening. She inched over to it and discovered it was more gradual in its descent. Crouched low, she crept along as quietly as she could, following its curves as it spiraled down. When she reached a fork, she sat on her bottom and looked down both ways. If only one of the gods could give her a sign. This was worse than the labyrinth. She would never find the heart-shaped pool; she might as well find a needle in a haystack. Tears pricked her eyes, and she gave into the tears as they slid down her face.

Then she spotted water in the tunnel to her left, so she took it. Not long into the tunnel, Therese could stand, and a few yards further, the walls opened up into a massive cavern, at least a hundred feet wide and twenty or more feet high. Shining her light all over the walls and ceiling, she lost her footing and fell into a body of water. She scrambled back to the bank, crawling on her hands and knees, and pointed her light on the water. It wasn’t the heart-shaped pool. As she sat there catching her breath, she noticed something moving beneath the water, and the craziest idea struck her: the only way she’d ever find the heart-shaped pool was by having the beast lead her to it. If the Hydra nested there, she might return to it. So, without allowing herself to think twice, Therese climbed to her feet, and when the Hydra emerged from the water and slithered across the bank, Therese ran toward, rather than away, from her.

“Ahhhh!” Therese screamed as she ran, summoning the courage by burning her throat with the loudest sound she could muster. “Ahhhh!” she shouted again, and, surprisingly, the monster paused.

Therese leapt from the ground onto the scaly neck, and wrapped her arms and legs tightly around her. “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me!” She closed her eyes, pressing her face against the slimy scales. The Hydra swung her neck back and forth, trying to buck her off, and, for a second, Therese compared the feeling to riding the octopus at the Pagosa Springs Fair.

Time for a new tactic, she thought in a lucid moment. “It’s okay girl,” Therese said softly. “There, there. I’m not here to hurt you.”

The Hydra screamed back in reply and dipped down into the water. Therese held her breath and closed her eyes. When they resurfaced, Therese’s light was gone and she found herself in complete darkness.

Down into the ice cold water they plunged, only to come up again. Down and up. Down and up. Therese shivered but clung to the neck, her ankles crossed, her right hand holding tightly to her left wrist. Apparently, the Hydra hoped to wash Therese from her neck by continuously dunking her underwater, but Therese fiercely held on. Then like the fastest rollercoaster ride ever, they streamed through the air, turning one way and then another, Therese gritting her teeth and clamping shut her eyes. Before she had a chance to take a breath, they plunged down into the water again.

The Hydra rolled round and round beneath the water, like an alligator, but Therese clung to the beast’s neck with her arms and legs. Her neck and shoulders ached, and she trembled with cold, and now, she felt like she couldn’t hold her breath much longer. She opened her eyes with panic and noticed a light glowing across from her. The memory of the night her parents died flashed through her. There had been a light then, too. But this light was different. It was a boy. A glowing boy. Was it Than? No, it was Hip, and he was swimming toward her!

She dived away from the Hydra and power kicked the dolphin kick to Hip. He wrapped his arms around her, and in the next instant, she was enveloped by sleep.