Under Earth

Flash-Fiction - by Mary Soon Lee

I was born a monster.

I had three heads, but no thoughts beyond those of a brute beast. To run, to bark, to fight. The fire of the sun, the ice of the moon. The smells of green, growing things, the rank smell of my mother.

How long I spent that way fathomless. Long enough that I knew the turning seasons. The summer chorus of cicadas in the olive groves. How the rare snowfall would clump to my paws.

I had no word for the god when he took me below. I had no words at all.

But under earth, in the god's kingdom, thoughts came to me. Angry, halting, heavy thoughts. That I hated him, the god who'd brought me to guard the gates of this skyless place. That I hated the dead creatures he ruled over. That if I could not escape the god's dominion, neither would the dead. Those few who tried, I tore and ripped and bit, their blood dripping from my three maws at once. None got past me.

No moon, no sun separated one day from another. No winter frost, no spring melt. Only the slow accumulation of words marked time's passing. In the dank stretch of dirt between the river and the gates, I learned the names of things. Rock. Coin. Boat. Learned, too, the invisible chains the god had set about me. I could not touch the river with nose, or paw, or thirsting tongues. An unseen wall held me from its water. I learned the limits of the strip of ground allotted me. Thus far and no further.

The voices around me became more than jumble-mumble, became words: please, no, get out here. My name, Cerberus. The boatman's name, Charon. The name of he who held me here, Hades.

When Charon set off on his return trips across the river, his ferry emptied, he would sing. Ballads, shanties, hymns. I laid my three heads down on the damp dirt, listening till the river's running drowned his music.

Once, I tried to climb into the boat to be near Charon.

As I put my paw upon the wooden gunwale, heat scorched me. An agony more savage than any I'd perpetrated. My bones burned within me. My fur smoked black.

Hades laid his hand on my hide. The heat fled. My flesh healed.

His eyes were terrible, vengeful. "Try that again, hound, and I will let you burn until your liver is ash, and then I will heal you and burn you again and again."

I whimpered at his feet.

After that, I harried the dead more fiercely than ever, became near as brutish as the wordless beast I'd been in the world above.

Against that brutishness, Charon. Following my aborted attempt to board his boat, Charon took note of me. He'd nod to me when he poled his ferry over. He'd step out of the boat to rub each of my heads with his rough hand.

He became the measure of my measureless days.

For him, I drooled and slobbered my first poor words: master, thank you, more.

And Hades witnessed this, his eyes terrible, envying a loyalty he'd never wanted before I gave it elsewhere.

"The hound is mine, ferryman," he said, his voice like the coming of winter. "Do not touch him."

"Then find another to pole the boat," Charon answered. No more than that, and spoken lightly enough, but Hades was the one who turned away. So I perceived that there are chains that bind even the gods, rules they cannot break.

I was as happy as I'd ever been. I bounded from end to end of my territory, barking whenever I caught sight of Charon's boat. He told me stories in little pieces, stringing them from one crossing to the next. I know what he gave to me, can guess at what I gave him back, a change in his monotony, companionship.

Age upon age, neither of us tiring of each other. He spun me stories. I pestered the dead for riddles, hoarded the best to offer him.

Hades watched. Hades waited.

Then came the hero, the hulking Heracles. And Hades, full-knowing, gave me into Heracles's keeping. The bards tell that Heracles fought for the right to take me. The bards lie. Hades practically thrust me at him.

And why?

Because when first I returned overground, words and reason fell away. Beneath the blinding blaze of the sun, beneath the moon's chill scrutiny, I was once again a monstrous beast, or almost so. While Heracles strutted about, parading me around to prove his prowess, odd things disturbed me. The splashing of a fountain, a sound like something I could almost remember. A voice raised in song, the cadence of it.

Half-familiar fragments that added up to nothing, until, down a narrow street, I glimpsed a small girl petting her dog's head. Then I had it, not in words, but in picture. Charon's hands, his gait, the play of his muscles as he poled his boat.

I ran to him then, ran from the town, ran from Heracles's posturing, ran across fields, across forest, across rock, ran with some great god's mercy aiding me, ran down through depths of dirt and stone till my paws bled. Ran till I reached my place under earth, that skyless strip between the river Styx and the gates.

Hades looked at me, read the returning reason in my triple stare. "You are mine, hound, not Charon's. Say it."

"No," I half spoke, half growled.

Hades laughed. Heat fired me from the inside out. My bones charred. My flesh scorched. Hades laid his hand on my hide, and the heat fled, my body healed. "You are and always will be mine."

"No," I said.

Fire consumed me from within. My paws smoked. My eyes crisped.

"Mine," said Hades, putting his hand to me, quenching his harrowing fire.

"No." I met his terrible gaze. "My own self, but I will guard your gates."

"Mine," said Hades, and again I burnt. Over and over and over.

"No," said a voice, but it was not my voice. "Have done, Hades. Have done."

And Hades, terrible Hades, bowed like a rebuked slave. Then Charon was beside me, tears running down his face, his hands checking me for injury.

"Welcome home," said Charon, while I licked the salt wetness from his cheeks. "Welcome home."

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