Now if only I could remember my name. It occurred to me that I had two of them. Was one of them Lester? Oh, dear. How awful! The other was something that began with an A.
Alfred? Hmm. No. That would make this young girl Batman, and that didn’t feel right.
“My name is Meg,” she offered.
“Yes! Yes, of course. Thanks. And I’m—”
“An idiot.”
“Hmm. No….Oh! That’s a joke.”
“Not really. But your name is Apollo.”
“Right! And we’re here for the Oracle of Trophonius.”
She tilted her head, sending her left eyeglass frame constellation into a higher astrological house. “You can’t remember our names, but you remember that?”
“Strange, isn’t it?” I struggled to sit up. My fingers had turned blue, which probably wasn’t a good sign. “I remember the steps for petitioning the Oracle! First, we drink from the Springs of Lethe and Mnemosyne. I did that already, didn’t I? That’s why I feel so odd.”
“Yeah.” Meg wrung the water out of her skirt. “We need to keep moving or we’ll freeze to death.”
“Okay!” I accepted her help getting me to my feet. “After drinking from the springs, we descend into a cave. Oh! We’re here! Then we go farther into the depths. Hmm. That way!”
In fact, there was only one way.
Fifty feet above us, a tiny slash of daylight glowed from the crevice we’d fallen through. The rope dangled well out of reach. We would not be exiting the same way we entered. To our left rose a sheer face of rock. About halfway up the wall, a waterfall gushed from a fissure, spilling into the pool at our feet. To our right, the water formed a dark river and flowed out through a narrow tunnel. The ledge we were standing on wound alongside the river, just wide enough to walk on, assuming we didn’t slip, fall in, and drown.
“Well, then!” I led the way, following the stream.
As the tunnel turned, the rock sill narrowed. The ceiling lowered until I was almost crawling. Behind me, Meg breathed in shivering puffs, her exhales so loud they echoed over the babble of the river.
I found it difficult to walk and form rational thoughts at the same time. It was like playing syncopated rhythms on a drum set. My sticks needed to move in a completely different pattern than my feet on the bass and top hat pedals. One small mistake and my edgy jazz beat would turn into a leaden polka.
I stopped and turned to Meg. “Honey cakes?”
In the glowing rhinestone light of her glasses, her expression was difficult to read. “I hope you’re not calling me that.”
“No, we need honey cakes. Did you bring them or did I?” I patted my soaking wet pockets. I felt nothing but a set of car keys and a wallet. I had a quiver, a bow, and a ukulele on my back—Oh, a ukulele! Wonderful!—but I didn’t think I would have stored pastries in a stringed instrument.
Meg frowned. “You never said anything about honey cakes.”
“But I just remembered! We need them for the snakes!”
“Snakes.” Meg developed a facial tic that I did not think was related to hypothermia. “Why would there be snakes?”
“Good question! I just know we’re supposed to have honey cakes to appease them. So…we forgot the cakes?”
“You never said anything about cakes!”
“Well, that’s a shame. Anything we can substitute? Oreos, perhaps?”
Meg shook her head. “No Oreos.”
“Hmm. Okay. I guess we’ll improvise.”
She glanced apprehensively down the tunnel. “You show me how to improvise with snakes. I’ll follow.”
This sounded like a splendid idea. I strolled merrily onward, except where the tunnel’s ceiling was too low. In those places, I squatted merrily onward.
Despite slipping into the river a few times, whacking my head on a few stalactites, and choking on the acrid smell of bat guano, I felt no distress. My legs seemed to float. My brain wobbled around in my skull, constantly rebalancing like a gyroscope.
Things I could remember: I’d had a vision of Leto. She’d been trying to convince Zeus to forgive me. That was so sweet! I’d also had a vision of the goddess Styx. She’d been angry—hilarious! And for some reason, I could remember every note Stevie Ray Vaughan played on “Texas Flood.” What a great song!
Things I could not remember: Didn’t I have a twin sister? Was her name…Lesterina? Alfreda? Neither of those sounded right. Also, why was Zeus mad at me? Also, why was Styx mad at me? Also, who was this girl behind me with the glowing rhinestone glasses, and why didn’t she have any honey cakes?
My thoughts may have been muddled, but my senses were as sharp as ever. From the tunnel ahead of us, wafts of warmer air brushed against my face. The sounds of the river dissipated, the echoes growing deeper and softer, as if the water were spreading out into a larger cavern. A new smell assaulted my nostrils—a scent drier and sourer than bat guano. Ah, yes…reptilian skin and excrement.
I halted. “I know why!”
I grinned at Peggy—Megan—no, Meg.
She scowled. “You know why what?”
“Why snakes!” I said. “You asked me why we would find snakes, didn’t you? Or was that someone else? Snakes are symbolic! They represent prophetic wisdom from deep in the earth, just as birds symbolize prophetic wisdom from the heavens.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So snakes are attracted to Oracles! Especially ones in caves!”
“Like that big snake monster we heard in the Labyrinth, Python?”
I found this reference vaguely unsettling. I was pretty sure I’d known who Python was a few minutes ago. Now I was blanking. I flashed on the name Monty Python. Was that correct? I didn’t think the monster and I had ever been on a first-name basis.
“Well, yes, I suppose it’s like that,” I said. “Anyway, the snakes should be right up ahead! That’s why we need honey cakes. You have some, you said?”
“No, I—”
“Excellent!” I forged on.
As I’d suspected, the tunnel widened into a large chamber. A lake covered the entire area, perhaps sixty feet in diameter, except for a small island of rock in the center. Above us, the domed ceiling bristled with stalactites like black chandeliers. Covering the island and the surface of the water was a writhing sheet of serpents, like spaghetti left too long in boiling water. Water moccasins. Lovely creatures. Thousands of them.
“Ta-da!” I exclaimed.
Meg did not seem to share my enthusiasm. She edged back into the tunnel. “Apollo…you’d need a zillion honey cakes for that many snakes.”
“Oh, but you see, we need to get to that little island in the center. That’s where we’ll receive our prophecy.”
“But if we go into that water, won’t the snakes kill us?”
“Probably!” I grinned. “Let’s find out!”
I jumped into the lake.
Meg takes a solo
Scares away her audience
Good job, McCaffrey
“APOLLO, SING!” MEG YELLED.
No words could have stopped me more effectively. I loved being asked to sing!
I was halfway across the lake, up to my waist in reptilian noodle soup, but I turned and looked back at the girl standing at the mouth of the tunnel. I must have agitated the snakes in my wake. They swished back and forth, their cute little heads gliding just above the surface, their white mouths open. (Oh, I get it! That’s why they were called cottonmouths!)