IT TOOK ME a second or two to come to terms with what had happened. Here was this sudden column of fire. Here was I, scorched and stunned. Here was Diomedes, running in circles with both hands on fire.
With both hands on fire! It had to register twice before it shook me out of my delirium. I jumped up and knocked him to the ground, smothering him with handfuls of mud to stop the blaze. When I had finally extinguished it, the two of us just sat in silence, gazing at the great flame, our rage forgotten.
“I can’t feel my hands,” groaned Diomedes.
“Do not be silly!” said Helen. “Your hands are covered in mud. You would feel it all right if you were hurt.”
“Imagine that!” said Diomedes as he scraped off the mud. “A fire that doesn’t burn!”
“It burns,” I answered, feeling my forehead where my eyebrows had been. “It just didn’t burn your hands for some reason.”
The cavern was now so brightly lit by the enormous fire we had unwittingly set, one might have thought the sun had arisen on Hell. “Well, this does not solve our water problem,” said Helen, watching the flames leap into banks of black cloud, “but it does save us having to walk in the dark.”
Together we surveyed our surroundings. The cavern was so bright, one might have mistaken it for daylight if the shadows hadn’t pointed in the wrong direction. Even from where we stood, the heat was oppressive.
“This isn’t over,” said Diomedes as he slid his sword back into its sheath.
“No, it isn’t,” I answered. I stood up to look him in the eye. “But now that we have light, I suggest we use it.”
“You suggest,” he said. All the muscles in his face seemed to be stretched taught.
Helen took him by the arm. “Let us walk while we have the light.”
Gradually, the creek widened and the ground began to slope more sharply, turning the gurgling brook into a swift stream. Ahead, we could hear the sound of a waterfall and in time came upon it as we rounded the last turn in our path. There the earth gave way to a cliff, and the river went screaming over the edge in a stinking, black cataract of filth.
“I have an idea—” said Diomedes, unstrapping his shield.
I stopped him midsentence. “How about we just use the path?”
Diomedes, however, had not heard me. Instead he was staring, slack jawed and wide-eyed, over my shoulder. Helen followed his gaze and gasped.
“Oh no,” I said, registering the mounting horror in their eyes. “Please tell me I’m not about to be swallowed in a tornado or beaten to death by a demon. I just don’t have the strength.”
“No, Odysseus,” Helen answered slowly, still staring over my shoulder, “but just the same, you’d better have a look.”
With enormous reluctance, I did. At first, however, I could not see what was bothering them. I was expecting some fleshless ghost to leer at me out of the darkness, or a winged dragon to descend from the clouds, but just as I was about to admonish Helen and Diomedes for their overactive imaginations, I saw it. In the distance, meandering across rocks and boulders, down gullies, and through narrow ravines, the fire we had started back at the spring was following the course of the river. Like a great, shimmering serpent, it wound toward us through the gloom, casting a flickering glow up the walls of our infernal prison.
I turned back to Diomedes. “I suppose we had better see where this waterfall ends. Let’s just hope it’s not somewhere important.”
“Or flammable,” added Helen.
This is Hades, I thought. Of course it ends somewhere flammable. But I kept it to myself as I peered over the cliff. To our left, a winding path led down to the next ring of Hell. To our right, the waterfall cascaded into a brown mountain of froth. All, however, was obscured by an inky mist.
“Do you think we can reach the bottom before the fire does?” asked Diomedes. He cast a nervous glance over his shoulder.
“Let’s hope so,” I answered, and we began our descent to the river Styx.
As we made our way down the cliff face and away from the waterfall, the thunderous spit and plash began to give way to another sound even less pleasing to the ear: a dull cacophony of muffled curses. From time to time, when the trail widened enough to allow it, we would stop to rest. It was during one of these infrequent breaks that I was able to have my first glimpse of the river.
Of course, I had learned something of it from our myths, but had never heard it described as I saw it now, stretching away into the distant vapors of Hell. From high above, it looked as though a wind were stirring its surface, but on closer inspection, I was able to see that the movement came from within. The inky swamp was stirred from below by thrashing arms and legs. The river was full of souls, and so violent were their anguished gestures that at first I thought they might be drowning. What I was witnessing, however, was something more along the lines of a vast undersea battle. In every direction, souls thrashed with their hands, feet, teeth, heads; thumping and screeching, each sought to bring more pain to his neighbor. Here and there an arm or head broke the surface, only to dive back under in pursuit of some unseen enemy. The water itself boiled with screams.
“How can we expect to cross that?” sighed Helen, leaning over the edge at my side.
“There ought to be a ferry,” I answered.
“I hope it’s a fast one,” said Diomedes, inserting himself between us. “When that flaming river makes it to the fall, I don’t want to be anywhere close.”
I glanced back up the side of the cliff. Beyond, I could make out a waxing red glow like a sunrise. There was no telling what might happen if the whole river Styx caught fire. We shouldered our gear and made for the final leg of our descent.
“This doesn’t feel right,” said Helen.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “we’ll make it.”
We didn’t.
We were just reaching the shore of the Styx when the sky lit red and a wave of liquid fire tumbled over the edge of the fall. In its own terrible way, it was a beautiful thing to have seen, this shower of light churning and sparking down the face of the cliff. With each splash and bump, a spray of embers shot into the mist, and as though called to a life of their own, each expanded in a cloud of flame before vanishing into ash. I was breathless with awe. Lucky for me, Diomedes was not.
“Run!” he shouted, and the moment the command registered in my consciousness, I understood its wisdom. Helen was already halfway up the bank, and Diomedes followed, lurching over the wreckage of rock and sand.
By the Olympian gods and the river Styx itself, I swear that no mortal Achaean ever ran with such absolute focus as I did that hour. Achilles—no, Hermes himself—would have marveled at such reckless speed. I leapt from rock to rock like a wild mountain goat, every nerve in my body focused on reaching the cliff face, where a number of small caves offered the only protection at hand.
There was a thunderous crack, and glancing over my shoulder, I saw the spray at the base of the fall burst into a cloud of fire. Then a sheet of flame sprang up around it and rushed outward like the surge before a storm. Diomedes and Helen had arrived at one of the caves, and Diomedes was setting his shoulder to a boulder twice his size when I reached him.
“Help me!” he screamed. I dropped my weapons in the cave and threw my back to the rock, heaving with all my strength as I watched the approaching storm of fire.
In Ithaca, they tell stories of mothers who, seeing their children in danger, are filled with a Dionysian frenzy that gives them the strength of six men. I believe I was myself infused with such strength at that moment as my friend and I heaved the enormous boulder in front of our shelter. It settled with a gravelly thud, and the two of us squeezed inside, then cast ourselves against the far wall, waiting for the worst.
Diomedes’ quick thinking saved us twice over, for the rock not only shielded us from the initial cloud of fire but also provided some protection from the heat it cast. Even so, the air around us grew thin, and I whispered my death prayer to the gods as I lost consciousness.