Nyx in the House of Night

and his crew set sail and travel to the cave at Taenarum, in Greece, a portal to the Underworld. There, Odysseus sacrifices a young ram and a black ewe to the god of the Underworld, Hades. As the beasts’ blood flows into a trench, Odysseus calls on the spirits to rise and meet him at the entrance to the cave. The wise mortal gives him the advice he was seeking, and he speaks to several other helpful spirits, too, before the Queen of the Underworld, Persephone, sends some not-so-savory spirits to the cave and Odysseus books a hasty retreat.
    Our first glimpse of Nyx’s Otherworld is early in the first book, Marked , when Zoey freaks out after she’s been Marked as a fledgling vampyre and goes to her Grandma Redbird for help. Running from the spirits of her Cherokee ancestors because she’s certain death is closing in, she trips and hits her head, knocking herself unconscious. Her blood trickles into a crevice in the ground and a woman’s voice calls to her. Thinking it’s Grandma Redbird, she throws her spirit into the crevasse and finds herself in a cave with a small brook, where her blood mingles with the clear water. Unlike Odysseus, Zoey doesn’t purposely visit the cave; she has no idea this is part of the Otherworld, and while, yes, she was in search of counsel from her wise grandmother, it was never her intent to ask advice of someone in the spirit world. But there is a parallel between the cave at Taenarum and the cave where Zoey first meets Nyx. They are both portals to the other side, the land of gods, goddesses, and the shades of the dead. And they are both accessed by blood. Caves play a large part in Underworld myths, no doubt because ancient Greeks saw them as openings to what lies below.
    To the Greeks, the concept of the Underworld was very literal—a world under the ground. When people died, their spirits were escorted down a long, winding path into the Earth until they came to the river Acheron and paid the ferryman, Charon, to take them across to the Underworld. Homer describes the descent in the Odyssey :
down the dank moldering paths and past the Ocean’s streams they went
and past the White Rock and the Sun’s Western Gates and past
the Land of Dreams, and soon they reached the fields of asphodel
where the dead, the burnt-out wraiths of mortals make their home . . .
    Nyx’s Otherworld is more esoteric, not a physical place, but within another realm. To visit the Otherworld, a mortal can’t simply find a portal and begin the descent into the Earth, as they could in Greek mythology. Entrance to Nyx’s Otherworld requires separation of the spirit from the body. Also, Grandma Redbird, in Untamed , uses the word “fall” to describe Kalona being cast out of the Otherworld, which implies that if the Otherworld is located anywhere, it’s up, not down.
    What else do we know of the Greek Underworld? It was a vast place, sectioned into three different areas that segregated its inhabitants. The Asphodel Meadows were for ordinary souls who were neither super good, nor über bad, Tartarus was reserved for those who deserved punishment, and Elysium welcomed the heroes and the virtuous. Elysium is depicted as a bright, blissful, verdant place of never-ending day. As described in Homer’s Odyssey, “There indeed men live unlaborious days. Snow and tempest and thunderstorms never enter there, but for men’s refreshment Okeanos sends out continually the high-singing breezes of the west.” Within Elysium, the Elysian Fields were home to the virtuous, while the Islands of the Blessed were the afterlife realm of heroes. According to Hesiod’s Works and Days , “They live untouched by sorrow in the Islands of the Blessed along the shore of deep swirling Okeanos, happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a year.” Elysium, then, is Paradise, perhaps on par with what modern Christians and Muslims think of as Heaven.
    Contrast this with what we learn of Nyx’s Otherworld. Following Zoey’s encounter with Nyx in the cave in Marked , we don’t see anything more of the Otherworld until the end of Tempted. After Zoey witnesses Heath’s murder at the hands of Kalona and attempts to strike back, her soul shatters, she falls into a coma, and her spirit awakens in the Otherworld. Like Elysium, Nyx’s Otherworld—at least, what we’ve seen of it by the end of the seventh book—is a place of breathtaking beauty, a tranquil, pastoral Eden. Zoey is alive