“Someone didn’t listen. You saw Hector’s missing a foot. Fox trap, left deliberate. I caught the fellow that put it there. You’ll know him if you meet him. Two fingers missing on his left hand, and he can count himself lucky I left him the hand . . .”
“Rania dropped a skillet on Ridiki’s left leg—she didn’t mean to, she’s just clumsy, but it could’ve killed her.”
“Right. Anyway, that’s Hector. Best dog I ever owned, three legs or four. Took a bit of time for us to get him—Deniakis keeps count of his dogs. Your dad was dead by the time he came but a fellow called Nikos fixed it . . .”
“He helped me train Ridiki.”
“Another thing we’ve got between us, then. Now, the fellows with the mules will be up here . . . let’s see . . . bit over half an hour. Just time to get you clear.”
“But . . . but I’ve got to see Dis about Ridiki.”
“Listen, kid . . . what’s your name?”
“Steff.”
“All right, Steff. Looking at it your way, if Hector’s Cerberus and I’m Charon, then Dis is the boss down here. You absolutely do not want to see Dis. River in the underworld—isn’t that right?—fall into it and you forget everything. Same here. Fall into our river and next time anyone sees you you’ve forgotten everything all right, because you’ve been washed up in Siren’s Bay with a hole in your head might have been got by you banging it on a rock. Or maybe being banged with a rock. No, I wouldn’t put it past him. Why d’you think I beat you up the way I did? Sorry about that, but I couldn’t let you go, not after what you’d seen, and I was scared rigid what he’d do when he got his hands on you. You won’t get any sympathy out of him—you’d just as well ask old Hector . . . Wait! That’s it, Steff lad. What call d’you think Dis has to be interested in dogs? Cerberus is the one you’ve got to ask. You can do that as you’re going.”
“But . . .”
“You’ve got two choices, Steff. Either you do what I tell you, ask Hector for what you want, and then make yourself scarce, or I carry you kicking and screaming out onto the hillside and tie you up and come back for you later. Either way I’m taking a hell of a risk, trusting you not letting on to anyone. OK, your uncle would flay you if he found out, same as my wife would flay me if she found out I’d handed you over to the boss. But your uncle’s not the only one. You’re telling nobody. Got it? Nobody. Now, make up your mind.”
Steff shook his head. He couldn’t think. The man was too much for him, not just too big and too strong, but too full of adult energy and command.
“All right,” he muttered.
The man grunted and picked up his lantern.
They walked up the tunnel, side by side. Hector came in sight, lying as Steff had first seen him, but with his ears fully pricked at the sound of his master’s returning footfall. The man checked his watch again.
“Still got time for it. Just like to see Hector doing his tricks after all these years. I’ll have to tell Maria about you, any case, and I’ll lay she’ll be wanting to meet you. Ready? Pipe away, then.”
They halted. Half heartedly Steff put the pipes to his lips. They were Ridiki’s. He’d never expected to use them again. The sharp notes of the alert sounded along the tunnel. Hector rose, puzzled for a moment, but then eagerly, as if glad to perform for his master.
“Well, I’ll be busted!” said the man, laughing aloud as Hector responded to the next two calls. “Ten years and more it’s got to be since he last did that. I’ve never had call to learn the signals. Well done, old boy. Now sit. Steff’s got something to ask you.”
Obediently Hector rose again to his haunches. Steff knelt to bring their two heads level. He took Ridiki’s collar from his pocket and held it forward. Hector gave it an investigating sniff and then smelt it carefully over. To a dog, another dog’s smell is its name. He would know Ridiki if he met her. Only he wouldn’t—she was dead.
When he’d sniffed enough, Steff leaned back to ease his posture. The movement caused the shadows on the wall to shift, as the two shadows of Steff’s head, one thrown by the lantern in the man’s hand and the other by the lantern on the opposite wall, detached themselves from Hector’s shadow, so that it now seemed as if the shadows of three heads rose from the shapeless mass of overlapping shadows cast by the two bodies.
The shadow world had returned in all its strange certainty, and Steff knew that he now spoke through Hector to his shadow self, the monstrous guardian of the underworld.
“Oh, Cerberus, please . . .” he whispered. “Please can you let Ridiki come back home with me? . . . I don’t expect you can, but . . . anyway, please look after her. Thank you.”
He rose, and his two shadows now hid the dog’s and the shape on the wall meant nothing. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and when he looked again he saw, towering over his own double shadow, the single shadow of the man, cast by the lamp on the opposite wall. The lamp the man was carrying shone directly on the wall, making his shadow almost too faint to see, but it was there, reaching up to the tunnel roof and arching over them because the man was standing closer to the light source.
“You know you mustn’t look round until you are out?” said the man, amused but sympathetic.
An echo floated back, toneless, a shadow voice, whispering out of the rock of Tartaros.
“. . . until you are out.”
“Yes, I know,” said Steff. “Thank you. I’ll go now. I’ll turn left at the river and try and climb up that way. Then I won’t run into your friends with the mules.”
“Easier that way, any case,” said the man. “There’s a bit of a track. And look. Wednesdays Mentathos runs a truck down to the town, so the women can do their shop. I’ll be waiting for you after school. Don’t let on you know me—neither of us wants anyone asking questions—just follow where I go and I’ll take you to meet Sophie. Better tell someone you’ll be late home. OK?”
“OK. See you,” said Steff, and turned away into the unceasing stream of the invisible dead moving in the other direction. The lantern glow dwindled behind him. Reluctantly he switched on his hand torch. Its sharp, white, modern beam banished the shadow world. The tide of dead ceased to exist, a remembered delusion. None of that had been true. He’d taken a crazy risk for a silly, childish hope, and been extraordinarily lucky. Ridiki was dead, buried under the fig tree.
And yet she was there, trotting silently behind him. He’d always been able to tell, just as he could tell exactly where his hand was if he closed his eyes and moved it around.
Oh, nonsense! Kidding himself again, the way he’d been kidding himself all through the adventure because he so longed for it to be true. All he was doing was making it worse for himself every step he took until he reached the open air and turned round and she wasn’t there. Torturing himself with hope. Grow up, Steff. Get it over.
No, he told himself. This was another test, the hardest of all.
Somehow it was now far further up the dark and empty tunnel than it had been when he’d been stealing so cautiously in, and all that way he fought the compulsion, grimly forcing himself into the gale of the rational world as it blew every shred of its shadow counterpart away. All he had left of it was this one last tatter, that when he at last looked back and saw nothing but the rock-rubble floor of the cleft he would still at least know that he had kept faith with Ridiki.
He reached the wooden barrier, opened the door, closed his eyes and held it for long enough for her to slip through before he shut it. Still with closed eyes he set his shoulders against the barrier to check his direction and purposefully walked the few paces more to bring himself clear of the cave before he opened them.