Page 13 of Taking Orders in the Underworld

With that, Nyx swept out of there, leaving Nika to deal with two puzzled faces.

“I suppose I have some explaining to do.”

***

When all was said and done, it only took Nika twenty minutes to explain everything that had happened in the past year. From her pub losing the Hades cook-off, Rae joining the team with the prize tokens, Garth deciding he no longer wanted to pay the libation tax he’d always done or rely on the cook-off again as he always had, and why they were now in desperate need of help.

“And this pub, this is your pub?” Orpheus asked her.

“No, well, yes. I don’t own it … but it’s just as much mine. At least it feels like mine. I’ve put my blood, sweat and tears into that place. I don’t want to see it go into ruin.”

“It’s a beautifully sad story, Nika,” Orpheus said, having learnt her name when they first sat, “but I fail to see how I can be of assistance.”

“Well, I thought, perhaps if you were willing to come and play at the Watering Hole? It would be the event of the millenia, greater even than the festival last year …”

Already, Orpheus was shaking his head.

“I will not leave here.”

Nika barely stopped her heart from free-falling into her stomach, her one plan, her one hope, disappearing right in front of her.

“Why not?” she demanded.

A gentle hand rested on hers, and Nika turned to face Eurydice. “Because we are not supposed to be together. I am supposed to be in the fields of Elysium and Orpheus was sent here.”

“Ithoughtyou were supposed to be in Elysium. Why are you here?” Nika gestured to the space around them, her scowl clearly indicating that the cavern was little better than squalor.

Eurydice smiled at her, as if Nika was still a newborn who had much to learn about the world. “Because I love my Orpheus, and I have already lost one lifetime with him. I would not choose to lose another one. Besides … I’m not that fond of fields anymore. Grass snakes,” Eurydice shrugged.

“You crossed the Phlegethon to get here?” Nika was stunned.

Eurydice smiled that soft smile of hers again. “There is not much I would not do for my Orpheus.”

“And, so you see, we cannot risk leaving,” Orpheus said. “For I would not have my Eurydice taken from me a third time if Hades remained mad at me. That is a fate worse than torture or squalor.”

He sent Nika a rue smile.

Nika bit her lip thinking. “What if you playing at the Watering Hole would allow you to roam freely again, wherever you wished, in the Underworld? Would you consider it then?”

The two lovers looked at one another – a shared look that held an entire conversation without saying a word out loud.

Eventually, Orpheus answered her.

“We would,” said Orpheus carefully, “but again young one, it is no use. The golden lyre Apollo gifted me with, and taught me to play, has long since been cast in the stars by the Muses.”

“If I were to get you another lyre?”

Orpheus shook his head again. “There is no lyre like that one.”

When Nika scoffed, he continued.

“How do you think I – a mortal man – gained such a reputation for my sound and song?”

“Talent?”

“Talent will get you so far, yes. But being gifted by the gods … well, the gifts they give you become part of the story that makes it legendary. I’m afraid you’ve rather wasted your time in coming all this way. You could get any musician to play as well as I without it.”

Still, Nika would not be thwarted.

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