Charis: First Three Chapters

SUNDAY NIGHT

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

—HERODOTUS

CHAPTER 1
A BLACKER BLACK, A WARMER WARM

HAD MR. WARD BEEN PAYING closer attention when he walked into Storage Room 19, he might have noticed that the warm was just a little bit warmer and the black was just a little bit blacker than usual. That he didn’t notice those small yet horribly significant details was unusual. The exactly matched blue of his tie, belt, and his shoes and socks betrayed his love for details, details, details; a talent that served him well as museum curator.

It was his appreciation for the particulars that brought him to the storage room in the first place. He couldn’t understand how he had missed such an obvious mistake on the inventory sheet, and for such an important occasion. Friday night was the start of The Ancients Alive, a Greek antiquities exhibition. He was sure he had checked and double-checked each item. Yet here he stood, flustered, looking for an additional, missing crate.

Mr. Ward adjusted the smart-looking spectacles on his narrow nose for the millionth time. His jaws clenched as he stared down at the inventory sheet, waiting for the mysterious item to magically disappear in the same way it had appeared. When he was sure that wouldn’t happen, he climbed his pencil-thin body up, then down, the ladder, scanning every shelf. Mr. Ward stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips, tapping his wingtip shoes.

“If it was a snake, it would have bitten me by now,” he grumbled aloud.

The tired fellow removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and then replaced them on his nose where they promptly slid right back down. Mr. Ward took a deep breath as he resigned himself to search every blasted nook and cranny again. He felt foolish making the effort though. He didn’t expect the crate to contain anything very special at all. Its inventory information was horribly incomplete. It said nothing about where the crate came from, who had received it into the museum, or even the name of the object inside it. It simply read: “Jar and Cover, Ancient Greek.”

He shook his head and ran his fingers through his receding blond hair.

“Shoddy work. Shoddy work indeed,” he muttered, making a mental note to chew out whoever was responsible. Mr. Ward loosened his perfectly coordinated tie, noticing the warmer warm for the first time.

“That’s another thing I’ll report. Everyone knows the temperature in these rooms needs to be carefully regulated,” he said to no one.

Mr. Ward wiped beads of sweat from his brow and walked toward the air-conditioner controls. On the way, the inventory sheet slipped out of his sweaty fingers and drifted beneath one of the bottom shelves.

“Goodness gracious,” he huffed, easing himself down on one knee to search for the paper. “What in heaven’s name?”

The linoleum was warm against Mr. Ward’s stomach as he lay on the ground, adjusted his glasses, and squinted into the blacker black beneath the shelf. There, in the dark recess, sat the missing crate. It was cloaked, rather intentionally it seemed, by the darkness around it.

“Well, I’ll be …” he exclaimed, reaching out his spindly arm.

‘Well, I’ll be’ was the last thing Mr. Ward said before the deep growl, violent jerking, flash of light, and deafening sucking sound snatched him away. His scream, piercing. His struggle, brief. His disappearance, final.

Gone was Mr. Ward with his perfectly matched wardrobe and ill-fitting glasses.

Gone was the warm that was just a little bit warmer, and the black that was just a little bit blacker.

Gone.
Only the mysterious crate remained.

MONDAY

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

—SOCRATES

CHAPTER 2

STRANGE DREAMS AND WINGED THINGS

THE DREAMS INTERRUPTING Charis’s sleep were pretty much the same every night. For the past couple of weeks, as soon as she closed her eyes they’d begin. She found herself standing in a great, golden room, so big that every sound she made echoed and bounced off the walls. When the dreams first started, she’d yell “Hey” or “Anybody there?” just because she got a kick out of hearing it over and over again. Now, she couldn’t wait to get this part of the dream over with to see if maybe, just maybe, she could finally get to the dream’s end.

Eventually, her feet—pointed and with her nails painted a soft blue—would float above the smooth, marble surface beneath them as she drifted down the familiar hall. Floods of opaque, yellow light came from everywhere, including her own skin, and filled the halls of what Charis had come to believe was a palace or museum of some sort. She’d squint her eyes as she studied her illuminated hands, arms, and feet, intrigued.

Charis would continue floating down the wide corridor toward somewhere she suspected was important. On the way, she’d stop to admire the paintings that decorated the shining walls. They were unlike anything she’d ever seen in real life. These paintings were animated and absolutely alive with color and movement; each brushstroke contained a measure of magic. From within beautiful gilded frames, the crashing waves of the ocean sprayed the girl with salt water, roaring lions in caves startled her as she drifted by, and instruments played music from invisible hands that she danced to with an equally invisible partner.

Forget it. She kicked away her covers and stretched her lanky body across the bed, yawning.

When Charis was slow to listen to her parents’ instructions and

behaved irresponsibly like Icarus during his flight toward the sun, Evan and Mona would say things like, “You’re getting awfully sunny there, Charis.” Those warnings were issued so often that Sunny eventually became Charis’s nickname. To the surprise of her parents, Charis’s constant questioning lessened as she matured, but that was mostly due to peer pressure. Her friends found it annoying too and didn’t hesitate to say so.

“I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Nuu.” Mona said.

“No, Mom. Don’t worry about it. It’s okay, I promise,” Charis replied as the doorbell announcing Gabe rang.

“Gabe is here,” Evan sang as he jingled his keys, preparing to leave.

Keys!

Charis ran upstairs to get the unusual trinket she had found in her backpack. It was a beautiful crystal fairy-like thing that glowed in jewel tones in just the right light. She noticed it at the bottom of her backpack Sunday while doing her homework. I bet Gabe put you in there, didn’t he? she thought as she traced the grooves of its etched wings with her fingernails. The doll had long hair and a tiny sword that hung from its waist. Charis ended up attaching it to a key ring and claimed it as her own.

“There you are,” she said picking it up from the nightstand and clipping it to her jeans.

Ding-dong.

“Coming!”

Charis charged down the stairs and ran into the kitchen to kiss her mom and dad goodbye before sliding across the wood floors toward the front door. When she opened it, there was Gabe, all left feet and goofy, just like her dad said.

CHAPTER 3
THE PROBLEM WITH HADES

IT WAS MORE OF A ROAR than a question. His voice rang out like a clash of cymbals over the constant moaning in the background. The words sprang from his mouth like punches and echoed on the glistening gray, stone walls.

“Tell me again,” Hades bellowed. “What is your pitiful excuse?”

He leaned his body forward in the seat of his elaborate throne. It was decorated with the bones of men and blackened with soot. The gaze of his black eyes bore into the space where Megaera’s eyes would have been if she were not made almost entirely of smoke. Hades’s goal was to intimidate. He was good at that.

Megaera’s shadowy, winged figure stood defiantly erect before him, but she did bow her head as a courtesy. She wasn’t stupid. This was Hades, and it wasn’t wise to provoke him unnecessarily. She had already made such a grave, costly error.

“No excuse, friend. Just the truth,” she hissed along with the snakes upon her head. “The truth is all I have.”

Megaera waved a withered hand, and the word ‘truth’ appeared in the air, a sickly green. The word floated up and hovered before Hades as if awaiting his acknowledgement.

“You also greet me empty-handed!” he stormed. Hades slapped his hefty hand against his armrest and caused ‘truth’ to airily vanish away. The anger on his face betrayed its usual handsome calm. He threw his pewter-colored body back onto his throne and let out a frustrated sigh.

“Tell me … again … what happened. And slowly this time. I want to try and make some sense of your failure.”

Hades peered into her blackened face, what he could make of it. He would be careful with his anger, temper it with wisdom. He knew that the relationship he shared with Megaera was a tricky one. He needed her and her wretched sisters.

The Erinyes Sisters—Megaera, Tisiphone, and Alecto—had served his kingdom well throughout the ages. As the avengers of wrongs, they dragged guilty men and women before Hades with relish, many still screaming their last living cries of horror. Hades would then dispense the punishment their crimes deserved. It was what he did. Yes, he needed the Erinyes Sisters, and the morbid, underhanded work they performed for him. A devious smile crossed his face because he knew they needed him too.

Without him, the snake-haired, red-eyed, black-winged sisters were useless. He was the only thing standing between them and the threat of obscurity. Given their unpleasant work, they hadn’t many friends on Mt. Olympus. The other gods hardly acknowledged their existence. Still, the agreement Hades shared with them was an uneasy one, symbiotic though it was. Individually, the Erinyes Sisters were difficult to manage. Dealing with them all together gave Hades an unholy headache.

“As I’ve told you before, my Lord,” Megaera said, carefully. “I located the object of your desire, but before I could bring it back into your benevolent arms, the ‘problem’ arose.”

As she spoke, a loud moan also arose from somewhere in the blacker black behind her. Megaera rolled her eyes within her shadowy face. She needn’t be reminded of her failure at the museum.

“Quiet,” she yelled. “Quiet” flew from her mouth in red and dove into the darkness toward the moan. Silence resulted.

“This unexpected ‘problem’ interrupted our mission, and so I had to abort it, to protect it, me … to protect you.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence signaling a reluctant agreement.

“The object of your desire remains hidden, unknown to anyone else, save you and me. To all else, it is unknown.”

Megaera’s shadowy silhouette bowed, deeply this time. She was done with her explanation. It would have to be enough. It was the truth. Countless years of listening to groveling humans trying to explain away the evil they’d done had taught the Erinyes Sisters one thing—neither opinions, nor feelings, nor intentions mattered in the end. Only the truth did.