Hermes's Arc

Chapter 4 of 13

Hermes swept the trail with his sandal, but the dust kept its secret poorly. By the next dawn, something new sat moored at the black shore below the gates — a dark skiff with a red sail, lanterns burning like watchful eyes. The gatekeeper had set up a small bronze booth beside the doors. Souls now filed past it one at a time. Hermes crouched behind the slab and watched. "Oh," he whispered. "He's counting us like coins." The three-headed dog paced at the booth's side, snouts twitching. The gatekeeper held a long tally board and made a mark for each soul. Thirty. Pause. Thirty. Pause. The middle head lifted and stared up the slope, right at the hollow. Hermes felt his stomach tighten. Even numbers. Even gaps. He had been singing the same note for days, and someone below had finally learned the tune. He pulled back behind the stone and looked at his chain. Thirty knots, neat as teeth. "Sloppy," he told himself. "You made it pretty. Pretty gets noticed." He untied the laurel rope and started over. This group: seventeen. The next: forty-one. The next: twenty-three. He scuffed the footprints with a wing of his sandal and sent each batch down a different angle of the slope. He led the first uneven group out himself, walking at a mortal's pace so his staff's wings wouldn't shed a giveaway feather. The gatekeeper marked seventeen on his board, frowned, waited. No second wave came at the usual beat. The dog's three heads tilted, listening for a rhythm that wasn't there. Below, the skiff's lanterns dimmed a notch, as if bored. Hermes ran the route until dusk, breaking his own pattern on purpose. Crooked numbers. Crooked timings. Crooked paths. By the last trip, the booth had gone quiet. The gatekeeper leaned on his tally board, scratching out his neat columns, muttering. The trail of suspicion had cooled. Hermes climbed back to the hollow and sat against the slab, breathing hard. The bottleneck was still there — the long descent past the gates still ate his hours like a slow mouth — but the gatekeeper had stopped hunting him. He looked at his map and drew a new note in the margin: never the same number twice. Then he saw the dog's middle head, far below, lift once more and stare at the empty slope, waiting.