Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

The mage glanced back at Ceridwen and Danny. The sorceress kept a firm hand on the demon boy’s shoulder and an unseen wind blew through that ancient ruined world, that endless catacomb, and her linen cloak fluttered against him.

Danny shrugged, glaring back at Conan Doyle. What? he thought defiantly.

When the mage spoke again, he kept his eyes on Danny. "We have to adjust our expectations now that we have met you. We cannot confuse a hospitable invitation with a heinous threat."

Conan Doyle let his gaze linger on Danny a moment longer and the boy saw the mage sigh, chest rising and falling. Then Conan Doyle turned to the Cyclopes again.

"My name is Arthur. My friends are Ceridwen and Daniel. Please forgive us, and accept our thanks for your gracious offer."

Throughout this apology the Cyclopes had touched its throat and shoulder several times. The wounds had stopped bleeding. It did not even seem to be bothered by the cut he had made to its fingers, but Danny was not going to remind the monster either. Its single eye blinked and it had a sour expression twisting up its ugly face.

For a long moment the Cyclopes stared down at Conan Doyle. Its cooking fire crackled a hundred feet behind it, burning brightly, though the dead, black wood seemed to cry out as it surrendered to char and ember.

The monster looked at Danny, who flinched. He might have tried to defend himself but Ceridwen held him fast.

"That was an interesting attack, with your tongue," she whispered.

With Eve he might have made a joke of it. Even with Ceridwen, had he been feeling bold. But as the Cyclopes pushed Conan Doyle gently aside and took two long strides toward him, he could not have thought of a humorous retort if his life depended on it. His throat was dry. He ran his rough, sharp tongue across the backs of his teeth.

The Cyclopes crouched in front of him like a man bending to scold a puppy. The monster extended one long finger with its cracked yellow nail and poked him.

"That hurt," it said. "Don’t do it again."

"I… I won’t." It felt absurd, having this conversation. But it felt dangerous as well.

Then the Cyclopes grinned and nodded. "Good. Are you hungry, little satyr?"

And Danny realized that he was. The smell of meat cooking over the flames had his stomach growling. He glanced over at Conan Doyle, who nodded his encouragement, looking almost sinister in the shadows of this place.

"Um, well, yeah. I could eat."

"Excellent!" the Cyclopes rumbled. "Come!"

He moved back to his fire and picked up a long shaft of wood — a long tree branch to the rest of them but little more than a stick to the monster — and began to cook once more. At the end of the branch was some kind of creature but it was only smoking meat and bone now and Danny could not tell what it had once been. Nor did he want to know.

Ceridwen ushered him forward and the two of them strode up beside Conan Doyle.

"That was a near thing, Daniel," the mage said, brushing fingers across his mustache, unconsciously straightening it. He glanced warily at the Cyclopes.

Danny glanced at Ceridwen, then back to Mr. Doyle. "How did you know he wasn’t going to eat us?"

Conan Doyle stared at him for a moment, then gestured up at the tall rock Danny had leaped from. "He seemed surprised when you attacked him. Mystified by it. Perhaps even a bit hurt. Before that, I confess his invitation to dinner did sound menacing to my ears. Even now, I’m not completely certain of his motives."

"I am," Ceridwen said. They both glanced at her and she shook her head. "There’s no cruelty in him. His kindness is genuine."

Danny wasn’t convinced. Were farmers cruel to the turkeys before Thanksgiving? He didn’t think so. But there was such certainty in the way Ceridwen spoke that he thought her reasoning was from more than just observation, that she had a sense about the Cyclopes.

The one-eyed creature inhaled the aroma of his cooking and grunted appreciatively. "Are you coming, friends?"

"Yes, absolutely. Sorry for the delay." Conan Doyle nodded at them and started toward the Cyclopes’ cooking fire.

Danny stopped him. "Wait, one last thing. How does he know English?"

Conan Doyle frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Ceridwen smiled, her grave features lighting up with fond amusement. "Oh, I see. You were speaking with him and you thought.. no, Danny. He wasn’t speaking English. You were speaking Greek. Very old Greek."

"What? But I — "

"It isn’t only you," Ceridwen told him. "It is happening to us all. When we first entered this place, it was draining me. Cut off from the nature of the world I know, with only the cruel, lifeless elements of the Underworld, I was weak. I’ve begun to regain my strength now, at least a little of it. And just as I adjust, as this place comes to think of us as — "

Danny scoffed. "A place can’t think."

Ceridwen raised an eyebrow. "No? All right. If it’s simpler, consider this. This is a place of magick. A place where the souls of the dead from the entire history of a grand empire came upon their death. Not all of them spoke the same language. Yet they had to understand this place and one another."

He felt sick. "So the Underworld is treating us like we’re dead? Like we’re, what, damned to this place?"

Conan Doyle put a hand on his shoulder. "Something like that."

Danny sighed and gave a small shrug. "I’m not gonna say I like the sound of that, but at least it makes sense. I was afraid it was just me."

"There are things about your nature and your parentage that are only beginning to reveal themselves," Conan Doyle said. "In this case, you’re not the only one affected. But at a guess, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that you could have understood the language here even without the magick present. Demons are ancient. Ancestral memory for you will be different from that of ordinary humans. I’ve no doubt you may discover you speak dozens of languages. Or, perhaps — " and he looked thoughtful as he said this "- all of them."

"Holy shit," Danny whispered.

Conan Doyle smiled. "Yes."

He linked one arm beneath Ceridwen’s as if they were strolling through the park and together they walked toward the Cyclopes’s fire. Danny hesitated only a moment before following.

"That smells wonderful, my enormous friend," Conan Doyle said. "Your hospitality is greatly appreciated."

As they sat on an outcropping of stone near the fire, the Cyclopes grinned at them, obviously pleased with the unexpected pleasure of socialization in this place.

"The pleasure is mine, Arthur."

Ceridwen gazed up at the giant. "It saddens us that we will not be able to stay very long. One of our number has been stolen from us by vile enemies. We know only that our enemies seek the Erinyes, the Furies, and so we must seek them as well."

The Cyclopes’s single eye narrowed and his expression was grim. He nodded heavily and regarded each of them in turn. "I am sorry you cannot stay. This is a bleak place and it is not easy to find friends. I hope that we will meet again. You will eat your fill and be on your way. And while you eat, I will make a map for you, to show you the safest way. The Erinyes are very cruel, though. Not like me.

"They don’t like visitors at all."

Squire missed driving.

The train had left Athens headed due west toward Corinth and there seemed no choice but to pursue it, pausing at each of its scheduled stops in dreadful hope that some catastrophe would have occurred to give them a clue as to Medusa’s actions. How long could she go unnoticed, after all? Whatever part of Dr. Graves’s spirit had tainted her when he had shot her with those bullets, Medusa had managed to extricate it. Perhaps she had pried out the spectral bullets. However she had done it, Graves could no longer track her.