Underworlds #1: The Battle Begins

  Then Miss Hilda smiled and said, “Shoo — lunch period’s nearly over!”

  WE STUMBLED TO A HALF-EMPTY TABLE WITH OUR trays and pulled our chairs close.

  “So, are we ready to call the cops yet?” asked Jon.

  “Or the loony bin?” asked Sydney. “Maybe we can get a deal. Three for one.”

  I made a face at her. “Who are you talking about — us or the lunch ladies?”

  Sydney had the book now and was flipping its pages with one hand while she forked up macaroni with the other. “To borrow a line from you, Owen, I don’t know.” She was quiet for a minute, thinking. “I mean, we did see a fire-breathing wolf.”

  “We did,” Jon said.

  “And Dana did vanish,” she added.

  “She did,” I said.

  “And if those ladies …” Sydney paused to look toward the kitchen. “If those ladies really are the Valkyries from Norse mythology, what they told us might be true.”

  “If. Might,” I echoed, stabbing my macaroni a little harder than I planned. “Are you saying Dana was actually taken to the Underworld? And that the Underworld is below our school?”

  The other kids at the table looked over at me. Oops.

  “Ha-ha! Still kidding!” said Jon.

  “Listen,” said Sydney, whispering now. “Where do they have double red doors? And ancient things? Guys, I think we need to learn more about Orpheus’s lyre. Let’s finish eating and go to the library.”

  I nodded. “The farther we get away from the kitchen, the better I’ll feel.”

  We cleared our trays and ran upstairs. Plunking down at the first open computer, we logged in and started searching.

  “Orpheus. Lyre. Red doors. Ancient things,” said Sydney, clacking away on the keys.

  I paced back and forth, but it was less than a minute before she and Jon were cupping their hands over their mouths.

  “Whoa!” Sydney said. “The art museum in town has an exhibit that’s closing … today. It’s called ‘Ancient Treasures.’ And the picture of the museum here shows that it has — ta-da! — double red doors!”

  As Sydney scrolled down and I paced, Jon read over her shoulder. “It’s got swords. Shields. Scrolls. Jeweled stuff. And stop … stop …”

  “Owen!” said Sydney, staring from the screen to me. “You’ll never believe —”

  I stopped pacing. “The lyre of Orpheus?”

  “Yes!” Sydney said. “The lyre is part of the exhibit leaving the museum today. Its next stop is another museum in …”

  I held my breath as she scrolled to the bottom of the page. She raised her face to me, her eyes wide.

  “Iceland!” she said.

  I felt as cold as if I were in Iceland.

  “The lunch ladies want us to steal the lyre of Orpheus? Seriously?” asked Jon.

  “Orpheus’s lyre is one of the most powerful objects of the ancient world,” Sydney said. “Maybe it’ll help us get Dana back.”

  That was it, wasn’t it? We had to help Dana.

  “The museum is five blocks from here,” I said. “We can walk, but we’ll need to get out of school for the afternoon.”

  Jon groaned. “Never gonna happen.”

  But Sydney jumped up from the computer and grinned. “My dad’s the shop teacher, don’t forget. He can give us a pass.”

  We looked at one another. I didn’t like lying, but this was different. If there was something mythological and magical and weird going on, no one was going to believe us. Dana would still be gone. Maybe gone for good. We had to do something.

  “Next stop, shop class!” I said, marching out of the library.

  IT TURNED OUT THAT MR. LAMBERTI WAS A NICE guy. A nice guy who didn’t ask a lot of questions.

  Ten minutes later, we were staring up at a small, white granite building with a set of large red doors. Marble columns at least twenty feet tall stood across the front of the museum like warriors at attention. It was an imitation of a Greek temple, which seemed completely right.

  And scary.

  We raced up the steps and through the doors, paid admission, and walked as fast as we could to the exhibit. It was curtained off, but we peeked in. Several guards and a couple of curators in suits were moving around from display to display with clipboards, checking things off, pointing.

  “They’re getting ready to ship it out,” Sydney whispered.

  We slipped behind one heavy curtain and peeked out to scan the long room.

  After talking to the Valkyries, some things were beginning to make sense in my mind: Get the lyre. Go to the Underworld. (Well, one of the Underworlds.) Save Dana.

  Yeah, right. The whole thing was nuts. Completely. But despite all that, things were starting to click in my head.

  No, not click.

  Hum.

  “There are a dozen display cases with instruments in them,” Sydney whispered. “How do we know which one has the —”

  “Second one from the end,” I said, pointing.

  My friends stared at me. Maybe it was all those years at my grandma’s house, learning how to play guitar, feeling music in my fingers. Maybe it wasn’t me at all, but the lyre. Miss Marge told us it was magical. And powerful. Whatever the reason, I heard the lyre. And apparently no one else could.

  Thrummm …

  “Owen, are you receiving signals from the beyond?” whispered Sydney.

  “No, from that case at the end of the room,” I said. “The lyre’s in there. We need to get closer.”

  “And get ourselves arrested!” Jon said.

  I knew it was crazy. But so was what I had seen happen to Dana that morning.

  Thrummm …

  “Follow me,” I whispered.

  As if I suddenly knew what I was doing, I ducked back behind the curtain and ran out to the far end of the hall, peering in the door closest to the case. Jon and Sydney followed and crouched next to me.

  Two workers came over to the case. One inserted a key, and the other tilted the glass back. As he did, the sound grew louder in my ears. Thrummm, thrummm. It was like someone urging me, “Owen, come on!” Slipping on a pair of white gloves, the curator lifted the lyre. I drew in a breath. That was it!

  It was a wooden horseshoe a foot square and painted gold, though most of its paint had flecked off. A crossbar connected the two arms of the U, with seven strings stretched between it and the bottom of the U.

  Jon gave me a nudge. “Owen, stop drooling over that thing and look over there.”

  A lone figure in a dark coat was lurking behind the curtain we had just abandoned. He wore thick black headphones over his ears. He crept closer and stopped. I began to sweat. Maybe it wasn’t just gods and monsters. Maybe there were people involved in this mystery, too.

  “Who’s he?” whispered Sydney.

  “Someone else who doesn’t want to be seen?” said Jon. “Someone who wants to steal the lyre, too? We should probably get out of here —”

  But the man with the headphones was blocking our one escape route. Everywhere else, there were more guards than we could deal with. We were trapped.

  The moment the curator set the lyre in a wooden box, the thing hummed in my ears again, and Soul Snatcher’s words came back: The music of Orpheus’s lyre could charm people and beasts to do his bidding.

  Impossible, right? But I heard the lyre. Did that mean it could actually work? And could it work for me?

  Quickly forming a plan, I jumped out of hiding and grabbed the lyre from the box. “I need this!” I shouted.

  “Owen!” cried Sydney, reaching for me.

  All the lights went up and the man with the headphones ducked back behind the curtain. I heard him running off down the hall.

  Guards swarmed over us in seconds. “Who are you?” they yelled. “Up against the wall!”

  “Put down that lyre!” said a curator. “Gently, please —”

  “I think you’d better plug your ears,” I whispered to Jon and Sydney as I placed my fingers on three of the seve
n strings. “Don’t ask why. Now!”

  As they jammed their fingers in their ears, I turned to the curator. “You mean this lyre?”

  I plucked the strings.

  Brum-thru-lummmm!

  The three strings vibrated, and the world around me quieted. Everything slowed down — things moved so little that I thought time had stopped. The moment passed, and just after it did, I watched the guards drop their arms to their sides.

  “That’s my favorite tune!” one said, smiling.

  “Mine, too,” said another, closing his eyes.

  I brushed the strings again, and the chief guard said, “You kids better get back to school. The side entrance is the quickest way out.”

  “What about the lyre?” I asked.

  “You play it so nicely,” said the curator. “Try it for a few days. If you like it, keep it.”

  So. The lyre was magical. It could make people do things on command, ridiculous things. And for some reason, I knew how to use it.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Bye!”

  Fingers still in their ears, Jon and Sydney stumbled after me down the hall to the museum doors, and soon we were out on the front steps — with the lyre. No one chased us. No alarm blared. Nothing.

  “How did you do that?” Jon blurted, finally unplugging his ears.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “The lyre did. It has amazing powers. The thief knows it, too. I bet he was wearing those big headphones to block the lyre’s sound.” I looked down at the magical instrument in my hands. “Look, if Dana was taken to the Underworld — no matter how or why — school is where it happened. The Valkyries said that the entrance is under the school. So that’s where we need to be. With this.”

  “We’d better hurry,” said Sydney, checking her cell. “Dismissal’s in eight minutes. Our parents …”

  We ran as fast as we could and arrived at school just as the buses were pulling out. I saw my mom waiting in her car, and headed over to her.

  “Owen,” she said, getting out and looking annoyed. “I just saw Mr. Lamberti, and he told me you were all gone from school. What’s going on? Why isn’t Dana with you?”

  I drew in a slow breath to calm myself and glanced at Jon and Syd. “Mom, I can explain everything. Listen …”

  Jon and Sydney slapped their hands over their ears just in time, as the lyre’s strings moved under my fingers. “We’re all staying after school. Dana is … inside. We’re doing some extra credit. I mean, if that’s okay with you …”

  I knew it was wrong, but when Mom’s expression went from annoyed to interested to happy, it seemed like the right thing to do.

  “Pretty little harp,” Mom said, smiling. “Reminds me of your grandmother.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Mom, we’re going back into school now. Dana and I will be home for dinner. Promise.”

  Mom nodded and grinned from ear to ear. “See you then!”

  I hoped I wouldn’t have to break my promise.

  I FIGURED THAT THE EFFECTS OF THE LYRE WOULD eventually fade, and people would go back to normal again, so I kept plucking the strings until my mom drove down the street and I couldn’t see her anymore.

  “That lyre is some kind of magic weapon,” Jon said.

  “I’m totally going to invent us some super earplugs,” Sydney added.

  I turned to them. I had a vague idea of what we were about to do, and it seemed completely crazy and probably dangerous. “You realize this is all nuts, right? The Underworlds. The lunch ladies. The weirdo big wolf. The magic lyre. This whole mythological thing.”

  “Like we’ve been eating crazy pudding,” said Jon.

  “Except we don’t really have a choice,” said Sydney.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Just so we’re all on the same page about it.”

  The school was unlocked, which wasn’t strange. What was strange was that the instant we stepped inside, the public address system crackled.

  “Owen Brown, report to the office!”

  “Why is the office still open?” asked Jon. “And how does anyone know we’re here?”

  When we got to the main office, we found the secretary standing at the door with her coat on, ready to leave.

  “Here,” she said, dropping something into my palm.

  “The penny!” I said, peering down at it. “You found Mags’s penny with blue Lincoln hair!”

  The secretary smiled. “Under the principal’s desk. The collection can is in the safe for the night and won’t be out again until the morning. If you want, you can bring this back then.” She switched off the office lights, shooed us into the hall, and left the building with a wave.

  “Nice little moment,” said Sydney. “But we have an Underworld to get to.”

  “And a Dana to save,” said Jon.

  I tucked the penny into my pocket. “Let’s go.”

  We entered the maze of hallways toward the back of the school. The lyre glowed eerily under the ceiling lights. Our footsteps echoed off the walls. There was a smell, too. Not coffee from the teachers’ lounge. Not mashed potatoes from the cafeteria. Not cleaning fluid from the janitor’s closet. It was the same thing I had smelled when Dana disappeared.

  “Smoke,” I said under my breath.

  We took the stairs carefully and quietly, but I couldn’t stop the panic in my chest. Was there really an entrance to the Underworlds below our school? Would the lyre help us get into it? And out of it? Was any of this real?

  “It’s locked,” said Sydney when we got to the boiler room door. “No way can I open this with my tool kit.”

  “Maybe the lyre can do it,” said Jon. “Orpheus charmed rocks and dead stuff, too.”

  “I’m not Orpheus,” I said, feeling unworthy of the ancient magical instrument in my hands.

  But I tried it, anyway. For a reason I can’t explain, my fingers went right to the two highest pitched of the seven strings. I plucked them one after another, making a simple two-note melody. Even before the notes faded, the door began to quiver like the surface of a pond. It turned gray, then silver, then white.

  Then it wasn’t there.

  “Whoa!” Jon whispered. “You’re the Jimi Hendrix of the ancient lyre!”

  Probably not.

  But instead of furnaces and pipes and cables and machines behind the boiler room door, we saw charred trees and giant boulders surrounded by hills of rough black earth. The sky, if that’s what the ceiling of the boiler room had become, stormed with fiery clouds.

  I went cold all over. This couldn’t be true. This was beyond impossible. It was terrifying.

  We stood on the edge of the creepy landscape, staring and unable to move, until we heard the soft lapping of water.

  “Dana’s book tells about a river dividing the living and dead,” Syd said softly. “You have to cross it to get to the land of the dead. It’s called the river Styx.”

  Jon whistled. “If Mr. Kenkins only knew what was in his boiler room.”

  “Dana’s in there somewhere,” I said, trying to sound strong. “Come on.” We followed the sound of the water down a steep, black slope to an area of overgrown reeds. The rank smell of a polluted river filled the air. Then the reeds moved, and an ancient man in a droopy hat limped slowly toward us, leaning on a long wooden pole.

  Before I could do anything, I felt Jon and Sydney move to stand quietly behind me.

  The old man stopped and tipped his hat.

  “I am Charon. At your service,” he said. His voice sounded like gravel rolling in a tin can.

  “You’re the ferryman, aren’t you?” I asked, my words trembling. “We read about you.”

  Charon licked his lips when he saw the lyre. “I’ve seen that before. Long ago.”

  “We need to get across the river,” said Sydney, peeking out from behind my shoulder. “I mean, sort of, you know … please?” It was the first time I’d seen Sydney choke a little. My own fears doubled.

  Charon kept his eyes on the lyre. “This way,” he said. He turned and
hobbled a short distance to the river, then paused. “Will you be wanting a round-trip, like Orpheus? Or one-way?”

  “Round-trip!” said Jon quickly.

  Charon snorted. “Optimistic, aren’t you? Well, come on. Climb aboard the yacht.”

  Tucked among the reeds was not a yacht. It was a raft of soggy planks tied together with frayed rope. When we stepped on, the thing nearly tipped over. But when Charon climbed on, the raft didn’t make the slightest dip in the water. The old man had no weight.

  “Hold tight,” he said, showing two rows of black gums with not a single tooth. “Lest you fall among them. They’re grabby, you know.”

  Jon tugged my sleeve. “Who’s grabby?”

  I didn’t know, but when Charon pushed his pole against the shore and the raft floated into the river, we saw them — human shapes swimming under the waves, their mouths open in silent screams.

  “The recent dead,” Charon explained. “They haunt the shore, hoping to rejoin the living, fearing to cross to the far side.”

  “What will happen to them?” Sydney asked.

  “They’ll cross,” Charon said darkly. “They all do.”

  I thought about my grandmother. It had been so hard when she’d died two years ago. She wasn’t even that old. Then she was gone. Would I see her here? Would we see all the dead here? The idea made me shiver, and I clutched the lyre more tightly.

  Soon we left the shallow waters and the silent souls. For minutes, the only sound was the waves lapping over the planks. Before long, we docked among the reeds on the dead side and got off the raft one by one. Then Charon thrust his hand out at me, palm up.

  “A little something?” he asked.

  I gulped. I had given everything to the charities that morning.

  Sydney and Jon shook their heads at me.

  Charon’s old eyes flashed with anger. He turned away. “One-way voyage, then.”

  “But we have to get home!” said Jon.

  “No exceptions,” said Charon.

  “The penny!” Sydney whispered. “With the blue hair!”

  I dug into my pocket, pulled out Mags’s penny, and dropped it into Charon’s palm.