All I Ever Wanted

And a destiny I don't think I can live with.

Recap: Epiphany, the betrothed of Icarus, stands condemned in the court of the gods. This is the tale of how she got there, which started with Icarus’s death at sea. She ran away from serving in the house of her master Celeas, a nobleman of Athens. With the ambition to bring Icarus out of the Underworld, she commissioned a fisherman named Sulaiman to help her sail to the end of the Earth. After searching hopelessly in the Underworld in the midst of danger and warnings from the gods, she has just been reunited with Icarus in the depths of Tartarus… but now she needs to find a way to get him out. Click here to read this story from the beginning.

This is very well the end, Epiphany.

Cassandra’s prophetic words hang in my mind and sour my stomach. Odysseus, too, is disturbed. His firm frown and marked silence sing sharply of his regret that we went to see her at all.

Icarus’s smile has begun to fade.

I wonder where Odysseus is taking us now. I want to leave. I want to ask him to take us back to the surface, even if I have to face the jaws of Cerberus to see the sun again.

And then there is that trouble with Bacchus. He may be the only one who can revive Icarus from his ghostly state; otherwise, as Silenius said to me, What good is a wraith in the waking world?

But Bacchus won’t answer my prayers.

“Where are we going?” I say finally.

“Back to Charon,” Odysseus mumbles without looking at me.

“You think he’s going to give us more clues?” I ask. “I barely got him to talk to me the first time. Besides, Cassandra said we wouldn’t be able to —”

“I know what she said.”

“Then why are we —”

Odysseus turns on me suddenly. “I have to,” he says, nearly shouting. “I need to!”

Icarus and I both stop, speechless.

He looks at me with the most intensity I have seen in his ghostly eyes. “When you found me, I had no purpose,” he says. “But you said, all of this has to mean something. And that took root. I am overcome, now, with the idea of purpose. How could finding the bridge to Elysium not be my purpose? There’s a divine plan taking shape; it’s been happening all along. You are part of it, Epiphany — whatever you are, herald of the apocalypse, sign of Zeus’s promise, who knows; but what’s meant to be is all going on now, and I won’t rest until I see it accomplished, until I know the end.”

His courage inspires me, though the creeping sense of dread I feel makes me unsure that I have the same wish.

“Then we will go see Charon again,” I say. “You know I want to see us restored to Elysium, too. Why should we believe everything Cassandra says?” For a moment I hear her whisper in my ear again. You will be separated from him. Before the end.

I glance at Icarus.

He looks back at me, managing a faint grin.

But Odysseus isn’t done. He directs a fiery gaze at both of us. “I don’t think we have a chance going on like this,” he says.

I stiffen. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” he says. “You ignored Hermes, and Bacchus won’t answer you. You’re trying to steal a soul. What do you think that’s going to cost us?”

“What’s this about Hermes?” Icarus asks, his expression clouding.

“The gods sent Epiphany a message of woe,” Odysseus says, “and told her to turn back.” The murderous look in my eyes puts him on the defensive. “He was going to find out eventually! You’re courting divine consequences, and I told you to beware. Even the plight of Sisyphus was not enough to sway you.”

“Aphrodite and Persephone are on my side,” I fire back. “You know it isn’t fair, and it hasn’t been from the beginning. I came here with one goal, and you knew that when you decided to be my guide. Now we’re this far, and you’re drawing a line in the sand?”

Odysseus seethes. “I didn’t know at the start that your goal meant complete rebellion against the gods. You’re willing to invite their wrath at the expense of a much worthier aim — saving everyone here! You want to save one person temporarily — and you’re willing to put that at odds with the fate of all humanity. Can you not even see it?”

“How can you ask me to give up all I ever wanted?” I cry in despair. “You’re the one putting our aims at odds! Who says we can’t still accomplish our shared purpose? I’m still on board — but you can’t make me choose!”

“You must choose, Epiphany,” Odysseus says finally, his voice firm. “I can deal with it no longer. You are asking for disaster.”

“‘The worst event in all of history,’” Icarus says, an uneasy look on his face as he quotes Cassandra. “‘It’s already been decided.’”

I can barely contain my fury at this utter betrayal. The person who has been my only companion these long days underground is about to ruin everything. Now Icarus avoids my eyes and shifts away from me, his attention gravitating toward the darkness from which we came.

But I’m hearing a distant voice, someone repeating the phrase I said only a moment ago, in a melody.

All I ever wanted,

A perfect shining dream,

All I ever wanted,

Now shackles for my feet.

All I ever wanted,

An elusive sparkling stream,

All I ever wanted,

A bloody platter at my feast.

Who could have ever told me

It would always be this way?

That all my wants and wishes

Would be my ultimate dismay?

Born of something beautiful,

Cursed in darkness from of old,

All my deepest longings

Turned to a burden made of gold.

A figure drifts toward us throughout the song, till I see that he is wearing a royal robe, and a crown, slightly askew, laces his gray head.

He spares me a faint glance and then his gaze holds, and a look of recognition passes over his face.

“You must be her, the other singer,” he says. “I have found you at last.”

“And who might you be?” I ask.

“They called me Midas in my living days,” he replies. “I learned to sing from the satyrs, the best singers in the wood. But I heard you were better.”

“How do you know about me?”

“Can you sing to the Queen of the Dead and keep it from the ears of the Underworld?” he says. “Word is that Hades is waiting for you.”

“Hades knows you’re here?” Icarus says, alarmed. “He knows what we’re doing?”

“I can’t… I can’t be sure,” I say, my face flushing, but it’s not the truth. I have no reason to believe that Hades will let us go free, only that he hasn’t yet interfered.

“Epiphany, you should’ve told me.” Icarus looks more afraid than I’ve ever seen him. “We’ll never escape this place. Who knows if something worse will happen to us?”

“Our dreams are diseased,” says Midas with an uneasy smile. “Do you know what I thought I wanted? For everything I touched to turn to gold.” He chuckles, shaking his head. “But do you know what I really wanted? The satin feeling of a rose petal. The taste of a ripe peach. A cool drink of water on a sweltering day. The embrace of a friend. A house of feasting. All that was good and glorious… became cold and hard under my fingertips.”

It’s too much for me.

“I don’t know how to turn back,” I say to them all. I look at Icarus. “I don’t know how to leave you. We’re supposed to be together forever.”

“I wanted that, too, with all my heart,” Icarus says. “But how can we possibly go against our fate?”

I shrink under his words. Fate opposes us. It opposes me.

To be abandoned at birth. To work as a servant all my years. To win my betrothed and the chance at a life — and lose him in such a ghastly fashion. To be disowned by my would-be father-in-law in the throes of my grief. To travel here in the face of angry men and monsters, in the wake of the gods’ derision, only to be toyed with, to find my love again and have him step back from me the moment that my only friend and guide decries my decisions.

This is my destiny.

But I don’t think I can live with it.

“Go, Odysseus,” I say finally. “Depart from me, if I am such a plague on your aims.” Odysseus blinks at me, still angry but startled, and I see for a moment the friend who saved me from being turned to stone. I feel a sting of regret. But his expression hardens, and I lose him.

I turn to Icarus. “We don’t have to leave yet,” I tell him quietly, wishing I could hold his hands in mine. “We don’t have to fight fate. I just want to be here with you. Perhaps Bacchus will still hear us.”

“But you shouldn’t stay,” he says, moving closer to me at last, the look in his eyes as kind as I remember from our days by the sea. “How could we ever succeed? You should take your chance. … You should let me go.”

I can’t understand what he’s saying. It’s not real. “But you said you loved me.”

“I do love you. I will always love you,” says Icarus. “But we have already met our end. We can’t extend it. I don’t want you to leave me…”

“Then I won’t!” I say. “I’ll stay — I’ll…”

“You can’t,” he says.

I look at Odysseus, who turns his face from me. He begins to walk away. Midas is looking on with sad curiosity. I’m embarrassed to have this audience until I remember what audiences are good for.

“You wanted to hear me sing?” I say to Midas. He nods rapturously.

Icarus tries to speak but hesitates. I take a deep breath, compose myself, and begin.

All I ever wanted,

Held just out of my reach.

All I ever wanted,

Like the waves upon the beach.

Crashing now and vanishing,

A vast parade of dreams.

Why did no one tell me

Life is never what it seems?

If all I ever wanted

Is what you can never give,

How am I supposed to sing,

How am I yet to live?

Who will give me mercy

For my just and unjust cause,

For my self-imposed destruction,

For my unforgiving loss?

Who will make it right

When am I all alone,

Who will yet remember me

When my fate is set in stone?

Even Odysseus has stopped and turned. Icarus is looking at me, almost hurt, like I have melted him from the inside. And Midas is smiling widely, elation on his ghostly face.

But a roar from the darkness shatters the moment.

I turn to see a shape I’ve only glimpsed in nightmares. Horns and a huffing bull’s head leering from a set of massive human shoulders, chest, and gnarled arms, balanced by a fur-covered torso and legs with cloven hooves.

And it comes for me.

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