Dreamless

Helen scrambled up onto her knees, slipping across a bit of broken crockery as she stumbled to the door, and jumped into the sky.
    As she flew home, she tried to listen for the sound of her own body in the high, thin air. Bodies are noisy. Take them into soundless spaces like the Underworld or the atmosphere and you can hear all kind of huffs and thumps and gurgles. But Helen’s body was as silent as a grave. She couldn’t even hear her own heart beating. After what she had just been through, it should have been thundering away, but all she felt was an intolerable pressure, like a giant knee was grinding into her chest.
    Perhaps it wasn’t beating because it had broken clean through and stopped.
    “Is this what you wanted?” Lucas shouted at his father while he fought to break free. “Do you think she hates me now?”
    “Just let him go!” Castor yelled to Pallas and Jason.
    They paused, but didn’t let go right away. First they looked over at Castor, to make sure he was sure. Castor stood and nodded his head once before passing judgment.
    “Get out, Lucas. Get out of this house and don’t come back until you can control your strength around your mother.”
    Lucas went still. His head turned in time to see Ariadne brush a drop of blood from Noel’s face, her glowing hands healing the cut instantly.
    An old memory, formed of images before he had words, came back to Lucas in a rush. Even as a toddler he’d been stronger than his mother, and once during a tantrum he’d pushed against her face while she was tenderly trying to kiss him quiet. He’d made her lip bleed.
    Lucas remembered the hurt sound she’d made—a sound that still filled him with shame. He’d regretted that moment his entire life and since then he hadn’t once touched his mother any harder than he would touch a rose petal. But now she was bleeding again. Because of him.
    Lucas pulled his arms away from his uncle and cousin, threw the back door open, and hurled himself into the dark night sky. He didn’t care where the winds took him.

CHAPTER TWO
    H elen took tiny, gasping breaths. This was the fifth night in a row she’d descended into this same spot in the Underworld, and she knew that the less she moved, the slower she sank into the quicksand. Even breathing too deeply edged her farther into the pit.
    She was prolonging the torture, but she just couldn’t bear the thought of drowning in filth again. Quicksand isn’t clean. It’s stuffed with the dead and decaying bodies of all its former victims. Helen could feel the moldering remains of all kinds of creatures bumping up against her as she was slowly dragged down. Last night her hand had skimmed across a face—a human face—somewhere under the tainted sand.
    A pocket of gas bubbled to the surface, sending up a plume of stench. Helen vomited, unable to control herself. When she eventually drowned, the putrid dirt would rush into her nose, her eyes, and fill her mouth. Even though Helen was only up to her waist, she knew it was coming. She began to cry. She couldn’t take it anymore.
    “What else can I do?” she screamed, and sank lower.
    She knew thrashing didn’t work, but maybe this one time she would reach the dry reeds on the side of the pool and be able to grab them before the heavy muck swallowed her. She waded forward, but for every inch of progress she paid with an inch of depth. When she was up to her chest she had to stop moving. The weight of the quicksand was pressing the air out her, like a great weight settling on her chest—like a giant knee was pressing down on her.
    “I get it, okay?” she cried. “I put myself here by being upset when I fall asleep. But how am I supposed to change the way I feel?”
    The quicksand was up to her neck. Helen tilted her head back and thrust up her chin, trying to will herself higher.
    “I can’t do this alone anymore,” she said to the blank sky. “I need someone to help me.”
    “Helen!” a deep, unfamiliar voice called out.
    It was the first time Helen had heard another voice in the Underworld, and at first she assumed she was hallucinating. Her face was still tilted up, and she couldn’t move it to look or she’d be sucked under.
    “Reach toward me, if you can,” the young man said in a strained voice, like he was struggling at the edge of the pit to get to her. “Come on, try , damn it! Give me your hand!”
    At that moment her ears filled, and she could no longer hear what he shouted at her. All she could