WHEN I ARRIVED at the base of the next bridge, I had another look at Chiron’s map. I didn’t need to. I knew perfectly well where I was: the valley of liars. I had managed to avoid thinking about it until now, but if there was one stage of this journey I had dreaded above the others, it was returning to the ring where I had already spent an eternity of suffering. This ring ought to have been the easiest; I knew this part of Hell as well as I knew my own home—better, I suppose, for having spent so much more time here; but even from where I stood, I could hear the screams; and the air, sweet with the stench of burnt flesh, filled me with a dread so deep, I couldn’t move.
I stood for the longest time, blinking and swallowing and willing my legs to take me forward, but my body would not obey. Eventually, I turned away from the bridge and found a rock to sit on. I took my sword and bow and placed them on the ground in front of me. I leaned my quiver against the rock, then sat with my head in my hands and prayed for strength.
But the strength didn’t come. As soon as I’d stand up, the paralysis would return. Then back I’d sink to my place on the rock. Why should this be so difficult? Surely it wasn’t just the memory of the suffering. It wasn’t the fire itself, I think, or the agony of the souls that burned in it. The landscape was no more threatening or lonely than anywhere else in Hell. Yet somehow the thought of returning—even just to pass through—was more than I could bear.
And then, when I felt my spirits could sink no lower, I reached for Penelope’s cup—and found that it was missing from my belt. I leapt to my feet with a gasp, scoured the earth around the rock, and retraced my steps to the bridge and back, groaning and slapping my thighs. All to no avail. How could I ever go on, I thought, now that I’d lost my last source of consolation? I laid all my gear out on the ground before me and sorted through it piece by piece, hoping with the sort of irrationality that arises only from despair that I might discover the cup beneath some belt or pad or fold of cloth. I emptied my pouch and quiver.
I heard a voice behind me. “Oh, for the sake of the gods. Are you that dense?”
I spun around to see Proteus sitting, cross-legged as usual, atop the same rock I’d been sitting on. “He took it.”
“Who? Who took what?” I asked. Proteus’ sudden reappearance had driven my thoughts, already muddled, into further confusion.
“Diomedes took your cup. I watched him do it while you were climbing the slope back at the broken bridge.”
“Diomedes stole from me?”
Proteus seemed to frown and grin at the same time. “I know you by reputation, Odysseus, and I know you are not so daft as all that.”
“But why would he steal from me?”
Proteus rolled his yellow eyes and climbed laboriously down from the rock. He shuffled all the way up to me till our noses were almost touching. He was so much shorter than I, he had to bend backward to look me in the face. “To hurt you,” he said.
I retreated and pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. Would Diomedes have done such a thing? Proteus advanced, pressing his finger into my chest. “I do not entirely understand what you did to that young man, but you . . . hurt . . . him.” With each word, he poked me again.
“I? Him!”
“Listen to me, Odysseus. I understand putting the lives of your wife and son before that of your friend. I’m not sure Diomedes would understand it, but most men would. Your dog, though? And that vicious, thieving grandfather of yours? I have abjured the society of men, have lived in more or less constant isolation for three thousand years, so I may not be the most sensitive observer”—here he stopped for a moment to consider the truth of his self-accusation, then nodded and went on—“but that man really loves you. He loves you more than he loves his own father. More than he ever loved anyone, I suspect. And that is a sacred thing, a love like that. But you have treated it lightly. You have thrown it back at him so many times, I think he just finally had enough.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I said. “Why do you care?”
“I do not care. He is your friend. Or not. It is no business of mine either way. Granted, I do have a certain vested interest in your ultimate failure, but for the short term, I should rather see the two of you together. So . . . objectively and subjectively speaking, I feel confident telling you that you have made a terrible mistake and need to set things right with your friend.”
I blinked at him for a time, torn between the ugliness of the speaker and the truth of his speech. I had never really stopped to consider why Diomedes was so devoted to me. I suppose it is a measure of my self-love that I just assumed he ought to be. Now that he was gone, though, I think I understood.
“I have to find him,” I said.
Proteus smiled. “Yes, you do.”
Then I picked up my gear, grit my teeth, and crossed the bridge.
I walked in the measured footprints of my former friend. His tracks were not difficult to follow. Every print started with a deep, determined dig of the heel and ended with a push of the toes that scattered the dust behind it like a sneeze. Diomedes marched the way he did everything in life—single-mindedly, without slowing down or straying to the left or the right. To judge by the evenness of his tracks, he didn’t even look around as he walked.
“Why did you return for me?” I asked Proteus as we began the next descent. He had been following at a distance, and we hadn’t spoken since leaving the valley of thieves.
He shrugged. “Your friend Diomedes is not a clever fellow. I put little stock in him finishing the journey on his own. Mind you, he is far easier to get along with, but I figure my chances are better with the Man of Many Faces; besides which, you are the bigger prize.”
“Seems like you’re going to an awful lot of trouble,” I said. “Why don’t you just change into an eagle and fly out of here?”
Proteus sneered and shook his head. “Not that easy.”
“The changing part ought to be. All you need is water, right?”
“Water and a hundred years of practice.”
“What is there to practice? It’s magic. Just wave your hands in the air and say some funny words. That’s the way it works, right?”
Proteus shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. “Have you ever broken a bone, Odysseus?”
“Have I what?” Proteus’ thoughts seemed to swing erratically from one topic to another. (I was given to such mental wandering myself but found it disconcerting in others.)
“A bone. Have you ever broken a bone?”
“I . . . uh . . . my leg. When I was young.”
“Which one?”
“Who cares? I thought you were going to explain your shape-shifting.”
“I am. Now tell me, which one?”
“The shin. When I was a boy. I slipped on some rocks when I was fishing. Cracked my leg right open. A bit of the bone pushed through the skin.”
“Ah. That is a good one,” he said. His voice had a disconcerting ring of satisfaction in it. “How much did it hurt?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I am not kidding.”
“It hurt a lot.”
“Well, then. If you can think back to the day you broke that bone, see if you can reimagine the pain—that stab of fire that radiated from the leg into every part of your body, the sharp surge of nausea, the desperate sense of frailty . . .” His voice trailed off.
“All right.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, if you can do that, then you have just the slightest understanding of what shape-shifting is about.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Of course not. You see, when you broke that shin of yours, someone had to reset it. Am I right?”
I nodded.
“Then, over time, it healed. But it has never quite been the same, has it?”
“It aches when a storm is coming.”
Proteus nodded. “I do hate storms.” He lapsed into a contemplative sort of silence. “More important, though, the shape of your leg was slightly altered after it healed.”
I nodded.
“Imagine, then, breaking all your bones at once and resetting them all at once.”
I grimaced.
“Ah. Now you begin to understand.” He spit on his left hand—the one with four fingers—and held it up. Then as I looked on, his thumb cracked and bent and snapped and shrank into itself while the missing finger grew back. Each small shift followed a grinding patter of crunches and pops. When the transformation had finished, he lowered his hand again and gave it a little shake.
“But how did you learn to do it?” I said.
“Practice,” he answered. “Lots and lots and lots of practice.” I examined him closely as he hobbled along beside me. He did look rather beat-up.
“Why?”
Proteus stopped and looked up at me. “You and your questions. You are worse than a wood nymph.” He shook his head and continued. “A woman, naturally. A witch. She promised me immortality. She promised to give me fame and power—and herself.”
“And did she?”
Proteus looked surprised. “Why, of course. She gave me everything. But first”—he shuddered—“I had to learn to break my bones.”
“She must have been beautiful.”
“No, actually. But she could be when she wanted to.”
“What’s the difference?”
Proteus ruffled his blue hair. “You are the most astonishing mix of wit and idiocy.” He rolled his eyes. “Beauty may be enough for a mortal, but when you have to live with someone forever . . .” He walked for a time saying nothing but shaking his head. Then he spoke again. “She began with my fingers. Broke all the digits of my left hand. Every bone of every finger. Then we waited for them to heal. A few weeks later, once the pain had started to ebb in that left hand, she did the right. Then the arm. Then the other arm. My feet, legs, ribs, skull. Oh, I broke my skull so many times . . . There is a rock somewhere in Pharos that will never be its natural color.”
“You did all that for love of a witch.”
Proteus laughed. “Certainly not. I did it for immortality. And immortality is what I got. It took years to break all my bones. Hundreds of years. I did not even realize how long it was taking. And by the time I was done, all I really wanted was to die. Of course, by then I could not.”
“But you’re here.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Ah. I see. You’re hoping that Hades will give you a peaceful death in exchange for my life.”
“No. No. He does not have that sort of power. What I would really like is simply to rest somewhere for a while. It does not have to be a comfortable place, just stable.” He smiled to himself. “I should like to settle down as a seal, perhaps. That is a nice shape, when you stop to think about it.” He pushed his blue hair out of his eyes. “Just a big bag of flesh. In a shape like that, you can let your bones float about wherever they want. Besides that, I like seals. They are friendly creatures. And loyal. The smell is off-putting, but one grows accustomed to it.”
Here our conversation ended, for Proteus had grown tired and I had begun to wonder why he was telling me so much.
At the top of the next bridge, Diomedes’ tracks altered. It seemed he had hesitated briefly, looking out across the expanse of lowest Hell. And truly, the vision from the top of this last bridge was enough to give anyone pause. Gazing out across the infernal gloom—not quite darkness, but neither was it light—the lowest level of Hell appeared to me as the mouth of a great caldron, bubbling over with steam. A fog spread across the chasm that was so dense, I was able to make out only what appeared to be a ring of towers pushing their domed crowns through the mist like islands in a roiling sea.
“Those must be the only mountains in Hades,” I mused aloud.
“And that one is moving,” Proteus added.
I looked again. The undulating fog made it difficult to discern at first, but sure enough, the peaks of the mountains were swaying, dipping, and reemerging with a rhythm of their own.
“Well now, that is curious,” I said as I followed Proteus down into the mist.