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The door falls shut behind her and the realisation sinks in, too late, that this is it. The way out is sealed behind her. She’s made her choice, she’s committed to it now.
Sally Jackson takes a deep breath.
The air smells damp and stale, and she pushes away all thoughts about the sort of mould and bacteria that must be down here. In the light of her torch, she can see the dust float freely and she picks a direction on a whim. Left, because why not.
Her sight isn’t as clear as it used to be, but she takes turns following her gut more than anything else. What’s left of this place is decaying, crumbling into a mess of dead ends and places she shudders to think about. A hunch is all she has to go on, a hunch she’s been nurturing for close to five years now. The walls may change, the tunnels may shift, but between Roman columns and modern brickwork, there’s a feeling, a feeling that calls her forward.
How late it is, how much time passes, she can’t tell. When her legs give out, she sits down to eat, puts down her backpack to dig for the cans and the dried meat. Spare batteries, bottled water, sanitiser tablets; knife, camping stove, noteblock – she’s prepared for this for a long time.
Too long.
The tunnels keep changing, but she presses on. Things scurry around in the shadows, but Sally doesn’t dare look. As long as the maze’s denizens aren’t aware of her heightened perception, she too can avoid their attention, or so she hopes. There’s not an ounce of divine blood in her, she doesn’t smell, she holds no draw for them.
Hopefully.
Briefly, she wonders if Paul has come home yet. If he’s found her note. Whether or not, it’s out of her – and his – hands now. He can’t follow her, want though he may. If she fails… She’s written everything she’s always wanted to tell him. As far as last notes go, it’s all she can give him.
It’s worth it.
For Percy.
She presses onward.
The longer she walks, the more the maze reveals itself to her, in the sickly smell of the air, the discolouration of the bricks. It speaks of decay, of a life force nearly drained that’s desperately clung to. She’s heard about it, knows about its destruction. This fragment is just a last remnant, digging its claws deep into the fabric of the world.
It’s funny, isn’t it, what spending too much time with your daughter-in-law does to you. Sally knows nothing about this sort of thing, shouldn’t know anything about it, beyond what she’s soaked up over the years. But to her eyes, her curse and her blessing alike, the walls tell tales none of her children could ever hope to hear.
A hiss from one of the side tunnels brings her back to the present. Dying though it may be, the maze isn’t entirely dead just yet. But it’s too late already; too late, she realises, when the figure jumps into her path. Its teeth – fangs, really, bared and glistening in the dim light of her torch – are primed to sink into her flesh, its muscles coiled, ready to strike.
In an instant, if two missed attempts to grab it count as one, her dagger is in her hand. A gift, once upon a time, by Percy’s girlfriend, before she abandoned him like all the others did.
And she fights.
Not well. Not elegant. Not particularly effective, either, but neither is her opponent. Sally’s heard about empousae, heard all about them from Percy and his friends, but this one is nothing like the tales. None of the grace, none of the deceit, not even a single word. Feral, if she had to describe her. Perhaps the maze has driven her mad, too, imprisoned for god knows how long down here.
She stabs. Misses. The beast’s claws tear her arm open, but she sees an opening and dives for it. With one more strike, the empousa disintegrates into dust – golden, but with a sickly tinge.
No time to rest. She bandages herself as well she can. Further, further down the tunnels. Eyes seem to follow her, but when she turns around, there’s no one there.
Her eyes tell her she’s penetrating deeper into the maze, even though she couldn’t say how she sees it. The first time she comes across a corpse, she loses it, screaming and crying and kicking the walls, until she realises that despite the orange shirt, it’s not Percy. Not him. Anyone, but not him. The next two are just as eerily well preserved, as if the decay had been halted midway – rotten enough to be dead, clearly, but an almost sterile lack of stench…
They’re a warning, she realises. Whatever lies down this path is not to be disturbed, and when it kills trespassers, it leaves them in the tunnels. Stay away, they seem to say.
And yet she’s gotten this far, unnoticed, perhaps even invited.
She pauses.
‘Your wisdom honours you, mother of my cousin.’
Sally spins around, dagger in hand, before the person behind her has finished speaking.
‘Your vigilance is appreciated, but you do not need your weapon, Sally Jackson. It would suit you well to not point it at me again.’
She’s beautiful, that’s the first thing Sally notices. Her face is chiselled like a statue’s, framed by grey hair, punctuated by piercing grey eyes. The lines of her face speak of a lifetime of hardships, but her posture is one of authority, of someone who is used to leading and being followed. This is no ordinary monster, that much is clear, and if she’s not a goddess, she’s still more than can just be stabbed, she’s sure.
The dagger comes down and goes back in its sheath and Sally hints at a slight bow.
‘Apologies, my Lady…?’
‘Athena.’ The goddess steps forward. ‘Fear not. I take no slight from your precautions. The Labyrinth is no place to let one’s guard down.’
Sally takes a deep breath. ‘So it really is the Labyrinth, then.’
‘Indeed. My most prodigious son’s crowning achievement, and the source of his infamy.’ Grey eyes wander along the walls. ‘Or what remains of it, in any case.’ Her gaze returns to meet Sally’s own and she has to stop herself from taking an instinctive step back. ‘But you won’t find what you seek here.’
‘Percy…’
Her words come out as a whisper and she steels herself, straightens her posture.
‘I have to find him.’
Athena raises an eyebrow, a gesture that is no doubt well calculated. ‘And you believe you will find him here.’
‘I hope’, Sally breathes. ‘I’ve tried everything else… he’s not dead, that boy Nico searched heaven and hell for him. No Iris Message can reach him, his friend Grover can’t find him, his father doesn’t know either…’
She steadies herself against the wall and takes a deep breath.
‘He’s somewhere not of this world. And this…’ She gestures at the bricks around them. ‘This place, it doesn’t belong. You’ve got to feel it too, right?’
‘Your reasoning is sound’, Athena nods. ‘Indeed, the maze doesn’t obey the rules of the mortal world, nor the will of the gods. Even I cannot grasp its full extent. But your search is in vain. It is my advice that you turn back now while you still can, and you would do well to heed it.’
‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’
Sally pushes herself off the wall and readjusts her backpack. But before she can take another step, a hand touches her arm, and when she turns back around, Athena’s face is right in front of her, as if studying her. Eventually, she seems to come to a decision.
‘I would accompany you, then.’
Δ
Athena, it turns out, means just that: accompany. Sally finds this out when the next monster jumps into her path and Athena doesn’t vaporise it or smite it or whatever the hell it is the gods actually do – she just watches as Sally, barely, stabs the shit out of it until it crumbles into dust.
But the tunnels lead somewhere, Sally can see it; some curved away and leading back to the periphery, trying to lead her astray, but some turn inwards, to whatever the beating heart of this maze is. The path is clear as day in front of her eyes, straight to the centre. Straight to an answer. Athena may raise her eyebrows, comment on the curious nature of her choices as she does whenever Sally chooses a different tunnel, goes left or right at a fork, but she knows, knows, that she’s heading to a destination.
‘You are determined’, Athena observes. ‘I can see where Perseus gets it from.’
‘From what he told me, I got the impression you don’t like him very much.’ Sally glances left into a dark tunnel and pushes forward. ‘No offence intended.’
The goddess inclines her head ever so slightly and follows. ‘None taken. You are correct. I considered him an unaccountable risk, even when it was not a popular position to take. Wisdom…’ She trails off. ‘To be wise nets very little favour at times.’
Her eyes seem to bore into Sally’s back.
‘You, however… it is not hard to see how you drew Poseidon’s attention. Even though the Lord of the Sea is easily impressed, it would take a lot for him to break an oath.’
‘Thanks. I think.’
‘You unite within yourself Perseus’s more admirable traits… as well as temper some of his father’s worst.’ A brief smile tugs at the goddess’s lips. ‘You understand the meaning of respect, for instance.’
Sally snorts. ‘I grew up in Brooklyn, s— ma’am. You don’t make it far if you piss off the man. Or disrespect your elders, for that matter.’
‘“Street smart”, would you say?’
Sally shrugs. ‘If you want to call it that.’
Ahead, a crossroads waits, dimly lit by two torches Sally knows better than to ask where they’ve come from. The path is clearer than ever before and it takes her no two seconds to choose one exit. Whatever the Labyrinth is leading her to, whatever clues it can provide about Percy’s fate, it must be close.
‘I don’t believe I’ve travelled this part of the maze before’, Athena muses behind her. ‘Your eyes are keen indeed.’
There’s a note of satisfaction in her voice that rubs against Sally’s thoughts, like a grain of sand in a shoe, until the wrongness of it finally catches up with her and she stops dead in her tracks to spin around and stare the goddess down.
Grey eyes unapologetically meet hers.
‘You’re looking for something, aren’t you.’
When she doesn’t reply right away, Sally adds, ‘you don’t have to tell me. I can’t make you anyway. But I’d appreciate not being lied to.’
There’s a hint of surprise, and a hint of irritation, but both disappear just as quickly. Athena raises an eyebrow instead and nods.
‘You surmise correctly. I apologise for underestimating you.’
‘Apologise when you don’t want something from me’, Sally grumbles. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what it is?’
‘Is it far yet?’, Athena counters. And to her embarrassment, Sally’s reluctant ‘no’ is hardly needed. She’s sure the answer is written on her face, plain as day. At least the other woman does her the courtesy of not mentioning it, simply gestures down the tunnel as if to say, ‘lead on’.
So she does.
Δ
How long they keep walking, or indeed how long she’s been in here, she couldn’t tell. Might be hours, might be weeks. For all she knows, it’s been a year on the outside and she’s been buried and mourned, given up on just like Percy.
But she couldn’t. Never give up on her boy.
This close to their destination, it’s almost like she can hear the Labyrinth’s beating heart – faint, but clearly there. These are paths that haven’t been tread by human feet in ages, but there’s something that calls to her – wants her, even.
When the answer reveals itself, Sally’s breath hitches in her throat.
Behind the last turn, brickwork and slate gives way to marble and granite, and then the tunnel opens up into a huge cavern, taller than the eye can see. Bridges and platforms cross a chasm that seems to swallow the light the deeper it goes, until she feels dizzy just looking into it. At the last moment, a firm hand pulls her back and Athena’s stern words ring in her ears.
‘Don’t look down. It leads to a place nobody can return from.’
Looking up isn’t much better. The columns that support a ceiling she can’t see go up further than her eyes can follow, and their polished surface reflects a blinding light that threatens to burn her retinas clean off.
But that’s not what’s taking her breath away.
Bookshelves. Spanning wall to wall, covering every level, every platform, even running up and around the ladders and staircases that connect the floors. She tries to count and gives up after the first hundred rows, each labelled with neat little signs she can’t possibly decipher from a distance.
To ask would be superfluous. The answer is without question.
‘The Library of Alexandria’, Sally whispers. ‘That’s it, right? This is what you’ve been looking for.’
Athena graces her assumption with an approving nod.
‘The place where all knowledge is kept, past, present, and future. It’s what you’ve been searching for as well, though you may not have known so.’
‘But… it was destroyed!’
‘As was the Labyrinth. As Mount Othrys, as Mount Olympus itself.’ Grey eyes give the area a calculating look. ‘Much that should have gone has remained, kept alive by belief and ancient magic.’
‘This is incredible’, Sally breathes, Percy, Paul, and anything else momentarily forgotten. ‘This place… it’s a miracle.’
Athena snorts. ‘If you want to call it that.’
The goddess strides ahead, a torch and a spear in her hands suddenly, armour forming on her shoulders and shining in the light. It’s a regal look, a damn impressive one if Sally is honest, and she hurries to follow, as fast as her backpack will permit her, and catches up just as the torch sets fire to the first shelf.
‘What are you doing?’ She tries to tear the torch away and fails miserably, but when Athena whips around, her eyes blaze with a silver fury and Sally falls over her own feet as she stumbles backwards.
‘Do not interfere, Sally Jackson.’
‘But why?’
The torch sets another shelf ablaze.
‘This Labyrinth has nearly been our downfall before. It never will again.’ Another flame. ‘Much that is written here must never be read. Knowledge too dangerous to remain.’
‘Knowledge…’ Too late, the realisation hits her. ‘Past, present, and future!’ She jumps in front of the spear and it stops a hair’s width from her chest. ‘Percy. This place can tell me where Percy is, can’t it?’
‘Indeed.’ The silver eyes darken back to their usual grey. ‘And I regret withholding this knowledge from you. But there are needs greater than your own at stake here, and you too cannot remain in the Library.’ She nods at the tunnels. ‘The Labyrinth, it has spoken to you. Its thrall has brought us here, and useful though you were, I cannot permit you to succumb to it.’
‘That’s cold.’
‘The right answer is rarely the popular one. I warned you.’
‘No, I’m warning you now.’ Sally grips the spear and pushes it out of the way. ‘Where. Is. Percy.’
‘I do not know.’ Grey eyes flash with impatience. ‘I can see where Perseus gets his impertinence as well.’
‘All in good measure’, Sally shoots back. ‘And if I don’t believe you?’
‘What you believe does not change the fact that I cannot tell you what you wish to know.’ There’s a glint in the goddess’s eyes, one Sally hasn’t seen since a sleepless night spent dancing at a club the night of her 19th birthday, with a woman whose never-learned name has been a regret ever since. ‘You have a warrior’s heart, Sally Jackson, and a sharp mind. I would regret having to fight you. But be forewarned that I will if I must.’
The glare lessens when Sally lets go of the spear.
‘A hero as formidable as Perseus doesn’t disappear unless he wants to, I am certain of this. Your son will be found if and when he wants to be found. Until then, it would be futile to search for him.’
Sally snorts. ‘You have a strange way of comforting, h— my Lady.’
‘It isn’t often required of me’, the goddess admits. ‘But your plight is hard not to feel for.’ The smallest of pauses. ‘As are you, Sally Jackson. If the situation were different…’
There’s a note of regret tinging her words, one Sally feels all the same.
‘I know what you mean’, she admits. ‘But…’
Athena inclines her head.
‘You have a husband who’s been grieving you for days’, she surmises (and the reminder how much time has passed outside hits Sally like a bullet to the chest). ‘And though I wish it weren’t so, you cannot remain with me.’ She straightens herself and grips the torch tighter. ‘I have much to do before I can leave this place myself. Farewell, Sally Jackson.’
She flicks the tip of the spear, a blinding bright light flashes, and when Sally dares to open her eyes again, it’s to the streets of Manhattan.
