Zorro and the Little Devil Page 17

  I handed the reins to him and instructed him to guide the animal to the place where he had last seen his friend.

  He snapped the reins and the horse moved forward. I held onto the back of the reins to prevent myself from tumbling off, since Diego was urging the horse forward with some degree of speed and I had no desire to be thrown off its back.

  It took only minutes to arrive at the cave. Quickly I dismounted and reached up to help Diego off the horse as well. As it turned out, he did not require my aid, but instead deftly swung his leg around and dismounted on the other side of the horse.

  I did not even have to ask the lad why he had sought aid from a stranger rather than going back to his father and tell him what happened. Obviously he was worried that recriminations would be quick to come when he told his father of how he had ignored the instruction to stay out of the caves and, as a result, had threatened the health of both himself and his friend. It was clear he was hoping that the two of us together would be able to retrieve Bernardo and thus his pere would never be the wiser. I admit that I could sympathize with him in that regard. Any number of times in my youth I ignored my father’s precautions and got myself into a serviceable amount of trouble, and my father was most firm in his remonstrations. If the boy’s father was anything like mine, his ambivalence was understandable.

  “It was through there,” the boy said and pointed at what was obviously an entrance to a cave. Doubtless he and Bernardo had hoped to find some manner of buried treasure, or perhaps discover an animal lolling about within. He led me up there with sure, steady strides and I followed directly behind him, leaving my horse to attend to its own needs. I knew it was far too well trained to simply vanish and leave me to my own devices.

  He scrambled up the short distance to the cave with the speed that any small boy could muster. I, who was old enough to be his grandfather, needed to go a bit more slowly, and it caused the impatient lad to plead with me to make haste. I clambered up into the cave and had to bend over and remove my hat to make sure the top of the cramped area did not knock it off. Diego was just ahead of me and pointing to a deep, black pit. I leaned over it and felt warm air billowing upward from it in a steady gust. “Hello!” I bellowed down and, as I expected it to, my echo reverberated back up to me.

  “What do we do?” asked Diego.

  “Do?” The question seemed utterly pointless to me. “My lad, there is only one thing to be done. We must leap after him.”

  Diego paled at the suggestion. “But won’t we die?”

  “I have died many times. It is an experience I never hesitate to recommend.”

  “I don’t want to die,” said Diego. His chin was quivering and it seemed as if he was about to start crying.

  For some reason, I found that very irritating. I strode around the edge of the pit and slapped the boy across the face. His mouth dropped in clear astonishment that I had dared to employ corporal punishment.

  “Be a man, Diego,” I told him sternly. “Little girls cry. Are you a little girl?”

  “No,” he said, and his chin ceased to tremble. He drew himself up and a new attitude of confirmed masculinity seeped from his pores. “Let’s rescue Bernardo.”

  And before I could make another move, the boy stepped off the edge of the pit and plummeted into the darkness. Without hesitation I leaped in after him.

  ***

  I fell for some seconds and then, exactly as I expected, the rush of hot air began to increase in intensity. As it did so, my fall slowly began to decelerate until I was floating as gently as a zephyr. The only thing that kept me falling was the momentum from when I had at first leapt into the pit. One of the shadows below me took form and I realized it was Diego, standing there and looking up at me with what was clearly great relief. Whether he was relieved that I had descended with him or he was delighted just to be alive, I could not say.

  “As I thought,” I said when my feet touched the ground.

  “How did you know?” asked Diego.

  “You said you did not hear your friend hit the bottom. That caused you to conclude that the pit was bottomless. I have traveled a great many years and seen many fascinating objects, young Diego, but I have never in my life encountered a genuine bottomless pit. And if he had struck, the same echo that we heard earlier when I shouted would have reverberated upward so that you would have heard it. The fact that you heard nothing suggested to me that he had not struck the bottom but instead been wafted to safety by the steamed heat rising upward.”

  Diego nodded, clearly understanding my explanation. Indeed, he was already ahead of me, studying our surroundings. “There!” he suddenly said, pointing excitedly. “He must have crawled out through there!”

  I saw where he was indicating. There was a hole in the wall, barely wide enough for a grown man to navigate, and easily handled by a child. He did not even wait for me to give him instruction to proceed; instead he clambered to his hands and knees and quickly scrambled through. I likewise dropped into a crawling position, and felt my knees creaking as I did so. Oh, for the days when I was young and invincible and nothing could ever serve to slow me. Nevertheless, I had a mission in front of me and nothing would be accomplished in my sitting around and wailing internally about the ravages of old age.

  I clambered after the lad as best I could. My knees were thoroughly scuffed as I crawled along on the rocky surface. Fortunately enough it did not take very long to reach the other end of the small tunnel, and when I clambered to my feet I saw Diego some feet away, staring at a river. He looked very confused, which I could see when he glanced back at me. “Is this usual?” he asked.

  I walked over and joined him, and stared down into the river that was streaming past us. It was most definitely not usual. The water was almost solid black, as if it were made from melted tar. But it was not the thickness of tar, simply the color.

  I was about to discern its blackness because there were torches in evidence nearby. They were attached to the wall, which puzzled me greatly, for that meant that this area was maintained by someone for some reason, and I had not the faintest idea who would do that, or why they would.

  Then I heard a gentle, rhythmic splashing that seemed to indicate a boat was approaching. I leaned out slightly to see it and then immediately understood where we were.

  “Diego,” I said softly, for the environment in which we stood seemed to call for demure voices. “This is the river Styx.”

  “The river of the dead?” he said in surprise.

  I nodded in approval. “You are well read,” I congratulated him. Then I pointed at the near distance. “And that individual, if I am not mistaken, is Charon.”

  Indeed it was. The slow current was guiding a small ship forward, and a man was standing in the middle of it, steering it with a large pole. He was a sordid god. Down from his hairy chin, a length of beard descended, uncombed, unclear. His eyes were hollow furnaces on fire. A girdle, foul with grease, bound his obscene attire.

  I fully expected Diego to be appalled and even frightened by the approach of the ferryman of Hades. But instead the boy stood at the side of the river, his arms folded, as patiently as if he was waiting for a normal coach to pick him up and bring him to a friend’s house. Charon guided his vessel over to us and stood there, staring in what seemed to me to be polite confusion.

  “You should not be here,” said Charon in a voice that sounded as if it was being whispered from beyond the grave. “You are still among the living.”

  “We are very aware of that,” I informed him. “By any chance, have you encountered any other living people in recent times?”

  “Yes,” said the ferryman. “A young boy. I asked him why he was here and he did not answer.”

  “He couldn’t answer. He doesn’t speak. Probably didn’t hear you either,” said Diego, “because you speak so softly.”

  “That would explain why I told him to go back and he declined to do so.”

  “Where is the boy?” I asked.

  “I
did my job. I took him to Hades.”

  “Then take us, too,” said Diego.

  “Payment,” intoned the ghastly figure.

  Immediately I began to reach into my coin purse, but Diego was ahead of me. He pulled two coins from his pocket and tossed it to Charon, who caught it effortlessly. “Three,” he intoned. “The other boy did not pay.”

  “Fine,” said Diego, allowing his impatience to flash. He pulled a third coin from his pocket, but this time stepped onto the boat before he gave it to the ferryman. I stepped on board and the river Styx carried us forward.

  I could not help but be curious. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Yesss,” Charon said, hissing the word like a snake.

  “When people come here, what is their general disposition?”

  Charon made a gesture that looked somewhat like a shrug. “Generally they believe they are dreaming. Most are surprised to have arrived here. They are confused. They generally go along with it because they do not think it is genuinely happening. I do not bother to correct them, because why would they believe me?”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Nothing bothers me,” said Charon.

  “That must be a nice way to live.” Then another thought struck me. “Are you actually alive?”

  Charon paused, seeming to give the question some genuine thought. “I do not know. No one has ever asked me that. How does one know if one is alive?”

  “What an odd question,” I said.

  “I do not see why it is so odd. As I said, most dead people have no idea that they are dead. So how do living people know if they are alive?”

  To my surprise, it was Diego who responded. “Because our hearts beat. Because we breathe. Because we love each other. Because things matter. When those things cease, that is when you know that you are dead. And nothing else matters.”

  “A reasonable response, Diego,” I congratulated him. “There is more wisdom in your soul than I would have thought.”

  We did not speak anymore as the ship glided us to our destination.

  A vast archway stood before us. The following words were carved across the top:

  “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.”

  Diego stared at it, puzzled. “What does that say?” he asked.

  “It is Latin,” I told him. “Roughly translated, it says, ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”

  At that suggestion, Diego snorted contemptuously, or with at least as much contempt as a ten year old boy could muster. “I never abandon hope.”

  I patted him on the head. “Good lad,” I said. It was one of those moments that I regretted never having taken the time to produce a son and heir of my own. I found myself, much to my surprise, feeling envy for Diego’s father. I hoped that he appreciated the wisdom and spirited nature of the boy.

  Soon we arrived at the great gates that opened into Hades. They were, at that moment, closed, and a huge beast sat in front of it. It was a monster of a dog, and had three heads rather than the normal singular one. Diego stared at the creature, clearly shocked at seeing something so vast and so different from the normal canines he must have encountered in his life. “What is that?” he asked Charon.

  “That is Cerberus, the guardian of the gate,” he said. “If you are entering and dead, he does not disturb you. But if you are dead and attempt to leave, he becomes the most ferocious monster imaginable.”

  “And if you are alive and try to enter?” asked Diego.

  Once more Charon shrugged in that thoroughly noncommittal manner he had. “I have no idea, because it does not generally happen.”

  “I suppose we will all find out,” I said.

  We stepped off the boat and onto the shore. There was no reaction from Cerberus and very slowly, very quietly, Diego and I approached the vast gates.

  We walked thirteen paces, drawing within range of the beast, and suddenly its heads snapped up and three pairs of eyes were fixed upon us. A growl that sounded much more like an earthquake than any noise that could be conjured by a living thing rumbled from its throat.

  My sword was slapping against my leg as if encouraging me to withdraw it and leap directly into a fray. That, however, did not strike me as the best idea I had ever conjured, because had the beast turned on me, it could have snapped me up into any of its jaws and swallowed me whole. Actually for a moment I almost considered provoking it to do so, because if I was whole and within the beast, I could do a good deal of fatal damage to it. Once again, though, we were left with the question of whether the creature was genuinely alive or not. If it had been conjured by Hades, it might well be impossible to kill. Furthermore its teeth seemed to be as sharp as my blade, and if it decided to chew me somewhat before swallowing me, that would have been the end of the Baron.

  Then I suddenly remembered the bulging object that had remained within my right pocket, which I had acquired during my sojourn into Argentina some days earlier. My host had cooked some meat on a vast grill and given me some to take with me upon my adventures, should I ever find myself suffering from hunger. I removed that chunk of meat from my pocket and held it up for Cerberus to see. He blinked all six eyes simultaneously, and then the center head struck forward and snatched the meat from my hand, using a tongue that brushed against my skin and felt for all the world like rough horsetail plant that was typically used in Japan as a material for polishing.

  The great beast swallowed the meat, and then its right head lowered itself to me and licked me with what I chose to consider affection rather than simply tasting me. I reached out and scratched the bridge of its nose, and it rumbled affectionate dog-like sounds. Obviously feeding the monstrous dog had served to bring it solidly onto my side.

  That was when a deep, stentorian voice echoed through the vast chamber. “So what have we here?” it asked.

  Diego and I turned together and looked directly at the speaker.

  He was a remarkably young man, with a thick black beard, dressed in purple robes and possessing a skin so alabaster that it almost seemed the color of a vase. “Why have two living beings come to my domain?”

  “Hades, I assume,” I said.

  He frowned slightly, tilting his head in curiosity. “You do not seem surprised to encounter an ancient god.”

  “You aren’t exactly the first god I have encountered. Previous to this, I descended into Mount Etna in Sicily and met both Vulcan and his lovely wife, Venus.”

  “Venus,” echoed Hades, smiling at the memory of her. “Did she flirt with you? She loves to flirt because it so enrages her husband.”

  “I’m sure you’ll understand when I inform you that I have a policy against speaking ill of the fairer sex. What passed between us must remain the secrets a gentleman must keep.”

  “She flirted,” Hades said with certainty, which of course was correct but I was hardly in the mood to spell it out for him. “So why have you come here?”

  “A young boy who also hadn’t died descended here by mishap,” I said. “I suspect that since he is not here, he has passed through those gates into the beyond. We wish to retrieve him so that we can return him to the world of mortals.”

  “That cannot be,” said Hades, sounding almost apologetic about it. “If he has passed into my realm, that is the end of that. He cannot be restored.”

  “That isn’t fair!” Diego cried out.

  “Fair?” Hades seemed incredulous. “Where was it promised that life was fair? Although now that I think about it, death is indeed fair because it applies equally to all individuals. No matter his rank, station or age, every human dies sooner or later. That seems fair to me: everyone being treated exactly the same. Furthermore when the boy came here, he didn’t offer any protest.”

  “He’s mute,” I informed Hades.

  “Oh. Well … that would explain it, I suppose,” said Hades. “But it changes nothing. He is mine, and I am not wont to give him back.”

  “Surely as gentlemen we can come to some arrangement,” I s
aid. “Diego is right. It is not fair that a lad who could not speak is being punished for that by being condemned to spend the rest of his life in the land of the dead.”

  For a long moment Hades considered what I had said. Then with a smile he reached down into the folds of his robe and withdrew a fearsome looking sword. It was long and the blade wasn’t metal but instead a shimmering column of purple flame. “Fight me for him,” said Hades.

  “I beg your pardon?” I said.

  “Fight me for the lad. If you win, the boy will be released and I will return you to the world above. If you lose, then you two join him in the realm of the underworld.”

  “I cannot agree to that! I cannot lay Diego’s life on the line in order to — “

  To my utter shock, Diego turned to me and extended a hand. “Give me your sword.”

  “What?” I could not believe what the lad was asking me to do.

  “Give me your sword,” he repeated with great calm. “Bernardo is my friend. I got us into this. It is my responsibility to get you out.”

  “Now see here!” I fulminated. “I cannot allow you to — ”

  “Give. Me. Your. Sword.”

  ***

  It was remarkable. The fearful lad of ten had seemed in his manner to have somehow magically transformed into a stern young man of thirty. There was no doubt, no uncertainty in his voice. It was hard for me to believe that it had been only a short time ago that he had been standing on the edge of the pit, whimpering about his friend and having no idea how to proceed. Now, faced with a direct challenge, it seemed he was almost eager to undertake it.

  I would love to tell you that in that moment I took charge of the situation. That I pushed the boy aside, withdrew my sword from its scabbard, engaged Hades in combat, defeated him and saved the day. But as I have often said, even though there are many who continue to insist that I am an inveterate liar, I must again insist on telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  I pulled out my sword and handed it to Diego. He whipped it back and forth as if seeing a sword for the first time, yet I could tell by his deportment and calm expression that he knew precisely what he was doing.