Anne Ursu - The Shadow Thieves

Zee shook his head and grinned again. "I'm sure you'll think of something."

THE PASSAGE INTO DEATH WAS SO SIMPLE, LIKE THE end of a breath. All Grandmother Winter knew was that at one moment her body and her soul were intertwined, and the next they were not. The body became a shell, no longer a part of Dalitso Winter.

Interesting, she thought.

She could no longer see, really, or hear-not in the way we always think of seeing and hearing. Her eyes and her ears were dead, gone, but she found she still knew everything about the room-Zachary's head was bowed by her side, with tears running down his cheeks; her daughter was leaning in to wrap her arms around her body; her son-in-law reached in to embrace the whole family. Grandmother Winter was aware of everything-the strange, sharp smell of the air, the cotton sheets about her body, the taste of lemons in the room, and her beloved family, so close and impossibly far away.

She did not like seeing her loved ones like this, bent over with sorrow; everything in her wanted to cry out, to thrash and scream at the sight of it. But she knew that great grief came from great love, and that their grief was an honor to her. And she did love them so very much.

And Zachary. The taste of her last premonition would not leave her. Something was going to happen to her boy, something terrible. There was evil in the world, and it was going to come for him. She could not protect him, she could not warn him-she had not had the breath left. She could not say, "Find this man, he will help you"; all she could say, with her dying breath, was, "Metos," and hope that someday he would understand.

And now she was leaving them. For there was a presence beside her, something decidedly not human, something tall and thin and Immortal, and she could feel herself being drawn to him. He reached into her body-the shell that contained her-grabbed her soul and began to pull.

Like that, Grandmother Winter was out of her body, floating in the air, led by a messenger with winged feet. She scarcely had time to look about the room for one more glimpse of her family, her grandson, before he pulled her off. But she would be back. She had promised her grandson that she would be back, and Grandmother Winter always kept her promises.

Through the house the Messenger led her, out the door, and down the street. The world sped past. It was all wrong somehow, the light, the noise, the air. She did not belong here anymore.

She was a little surprised when they went into the bowling alley, but she didn't ask questions because the Messenger clearly wasn't answering them. They traveled through the bar, past the bowling lanes, through a wall, into a storage room filled with cracked bowling pins, and then through a nondescript door that read, NO ADMITTANCE.

Down they went, through wetness, through blackness, through coldness. It made Grandmother Winter slightly nervous, of course, that they were heading downward, but it did not seem prudent to panic.

And then suddenly there was light again. Well, not light exactly. But not darkness, either. They emerged from the tunnel and before her was grayness, a great, flickering grayness, like a fog lit by fire. The world was made of rock- a deep red rock that looked like nothing on Earth, craggy and cliffy and endless. They flew over a great expanse of rocky plain, and then the Messenger began to slow.

Below her was a great strip of light spreading out before the snakelike form of a river, which appeared to be steaming. No, not a strip of light, but rather lights, hundreds of lights. Bodies of light. Ah, she realized, they were the Dead. She was the Dead. They were all the same.

The Messenger dropped her off at the end of the line, slipped her a small coin, and flew off.

And there she stayed.

She was standing next to a form like hers, a creature of death and light, and behind her was the rocky terrain they had just come over. She could not see what lay ahead.

The being next to her spoke. "Hello. Long line, huh?"

Well, no, he hadn't spoken, not really, but his words appeared in her head. And she found, too, that she could not talk, per se, but she could project words to him.

"Quite," she agreed. "What is this place?"

"Greek Underworld," he shrugged. "Who knew?"

"Hmm," said Grandmother Winter. That was a surprise. "What are we waiting for?"

"To cross the Styx," he said.

"And what happens after that?"

"I don't know…"

This did not seem the time for further questions. She would wait, she would cross, and then she would set about getting back to her grandson.

She spent her first weeks in the Underworld learning about the way of things. The best way to do that was to be quiet and listen, and that's what she did. She learned about the Immortals and the Dead; she learned about the City and the Plains, about Hades and his Administration, about the absent Queen. She learned there were the official rules and then the way things were really done. And that, of course, was what she was most interested in.

And she began to ask around. "I need something," she would say. "Where do you go when you need something?"

And she learned. She learned there was a guy who could get her some blood to drink. (Strangely, that sounded pretty good to Grandmother Winter, though not what she was looking for.) There was a guy who could sneak her into the City, a guy who could give her a brief power of taste and some wine to boot, a guy who could get her gold, a guy who could smuggle things from the Upperworld (lots of guys like that, actually)- but there was no one who could help her keep an eye on her grandson.

I made a promise to my grandson, she said. I promised I would watch over him. And I always keep my promises.

The City guy, the taste guy, the smuggling guy-none of them knew. This is beyond us, they said. But I can get you a great deal on some Harpy repellent.

Then she met the blood guy. And she told him, "I need something. I need something beyond the City, beyond gold, beyond blood."

"Beyond blood?" he asked carefully.

"Yes, beyond blood."

"You need the Witch," he said quietly.

"The Witch?"

Yes, the Witch. Grandmother Winter needed the Witch. The Witch was a great secret, almost a myth in the Underworld. Some thought she did not exist. The blood guy, though, he had seen her- or so he claimed. The Witch hid in the caves behind the City, wearing a great black cloak made out of night and shadow. She was almost as old as Earth itself, and she looked it-shriveled, wrinkled, haggard. The Witch had great power and was greatly feared. The Witch could grant wishes, impossible wishes, but she was angry and unpredictable. People went in there and they never came back. That was the price you paid for having an impossible wish.

"I will go," said Grandmother Winter.

"You might not come back," the blood man warned.

"I know," she said.

It took quite a while for Grandmother Winter to find the Witch. The blood man had told her to go to the caves beyond the City, but the caves were vast and confusing.

And then, after days of searching, she found a small cave with a small stone door marked with a Greek letter that she could not read. She knocked, and a raspy voice said, "Who has come?"

"My name is Dalitso Winter," Grandmother Winter responded in the soundless way of the Dead. "I have come to see the Witch."

"Enter."

The woman before her was small and bent over and completely wrapped in a black cloak with a black hood. Stark, white, bony hands reached out from black sleeves, strings of white hair escaped from the hood, and Grandmother Winter could just make out a face made entirely of wrinkles, with a long, crooked, Witch-like nose.