Iwalk out of the forecourt, and soon I'm on my own again. Rough brown grass tickles my feet. I pluck a few blades and roll them between my fingers. A lizard lounging on a flat rock gives me an appraising stare. I stare back.

   The path to the river is hot in the morning sun, but before long, running water and birdsong reach my ears, and then the grass turns silky, softening my steps.

   The riverbanks are full of people, some lounging about, some singing, others playing games of dice. One woman rests on her back with her eyes closed, humming under her breath. So much for my vision of mournful shades wailing in despair!

   I stand still for a few minutes, watching, relieved that no one is paying me any attention. But the longer I stand there, the stranger it seems. Everyone is smiling; everyone looks not only happy but ecstatic. It's unreal, like I'm gazing at a scene painted on a vase and the figures are starting to move across the clay.

   The sound of splashing makes my feet itch for cool, lapping water. I stroll around a bend, looking for a private spot where I can wade in alone. In a few minutes I come to a curve in the bank where a pale-leafed tree stands guard, and I pause, listening.

   I still hear singing, but it's no longer drifting over from the shades. No, the song seems to rise from the river itself. It ripples through me until I'm swaying to its rhythm. My feet start dancing a graceful grapevine toward the water, and as I dance, the morning's worries lift off my shoulders. Hades' disappearance, getting lost in the castle, my total ignorance about how to play queen—the river's music is carrying it all away. I'm humming, then singing along to a gentle, alluring song whose words I somehow know.

   I lift my chiton above my knees, ready to wade in, when a faint shout interrupts the music. I shake my head like a horse trying to get rid of an annoying fly, but the harsh noise comes again and again. I look up, irritated. There's a rider galloping from the palace, waving a hand frantically overhead.

   My toes wiggle deeper into the grass. I raise my chiton

another inch as the black horse devours the ground with its hooves and the rider's cloak streams out behind him.

   It's Hades.

   Hades! A burst of pleasure fills me—look how fast he's rushing to reach me! His tenderness last night suffuses my body again, and I melt. I'll wait for him. We'll go for a swim together, and then he'll explain why he wasn't by my side when I woke.

   He gallops up, leaps from the horse's sweating back, and pulls me roughly aside.

   "Not that river!" he says, his voice raspy. "Anywhere but there." He's holding my arm too hard. It hurts. "By Cerberus, it's good I came when I did."

   That's not what I expected to hear. Where's the apology? The kiss? So I answer sharply, "It's good you came when you did? It's good you abandoned me to wake up all alone? I didn't even know there'd be sun! I thought there'd be moaning wraiths everywhere!"

   "I've been away so much, I had business to attend to." He lets go of my arm so he can put both hands on my shoulders. "How was I to know you rise before the birds? I came back to wake you and you were gone. And the way jewels and clothing were scattered around, it looked like thieves had snatched you away."

   His anxious voice, his creased brow . . . "You were worried!" I exclaim. "You!"

Because of me.

   I kiss him, not caring who sees. But the shades keep humming and playing on the banks, oblivious.

   Finally Hades says, "Come." He leads me to the tree and we sit under its leafy branches. He wraps an arm around my shoulders. I lean into his side, and when he speaks, I feel his voice vibrating in his chest.

   "When I came back to our room this morning, I was looking forward to waking you myself. And then, actually, I planned to bring you here. To show you your new home's beauties. And its dangers."

   He looks pointedly at the river. It flows just as gently and innocuously as before.

   I snort. "Dangers! It's not exactly a raging torrent. And it's already full of people. If the river's so dangerous, why aren't you trying to save them?"

   "Because they're the reason it's here," he says, shifting back against the trunk and holding me tighter. "You see, some shades like thinking about their life on Earth, but for many, memory is an enemy. They grouse about what they left behind—wrongs done them, and tasks left unfinished. They wail about children in danger. They pick fights. In short, they're miserable. And that makes trouble. For them, there's the Lethe. The River of Forgetting."

   Across the distance, laughter rises and floats away like steam.

Hades looks at me. "Don't you hear the river calling?"

   "But it's so joyous, so peaceful! It couldn't do any harm."

   He shakes his head. "Those who accept the river's embrace lose their pain, but they also lose their past, their memories, their very names. They're happy precisely because they forget who they were."

   "Can't they go in just a little bit, maybe dip in a toe, and ease their pain without losing themselves?"

   "In theory," he says. "But the Lethe is a powerful drug. Once touched, it's too delicious to resist in full."

   I try to listen more closely. Now the water's enticing song seems to be made of a thousand twining notes. It's as if each drop of water were a voice surrendered to the river.

   "But they're shades, Hades. It might not do the same to me."

   "Why risk losing everything for the sake of an experiment?" he says. "What if those beautiful eyes of yours were blank? Your body nothing but an empty shell? That's not what I want sharing my bed." I cuddle closer as he reaches his other arm around and runs a warm hand slowly along my arm.

   Then, in a more practical voice, he adds, "Or ruling beside me. What if the Lethe swallowed your power?"

   "Me? Power?" I have to laugh. "I don't know why you keep saying that."

   "I want you for you. All of you." He stands and gives me his hand. "Now let me show you around."

   He lifts me onto the horse and leaps up behind me. With an arm firmly circling my waist, he nuzzles my neck and nudges the horse on with his heels.

We ride past a gleaming temple, open to the skies and guarded by ghostly white poplars. A golden throne with lion legs gleams on a white marble dais. Hades' voice murmurs in my ear. "For outdoor festivals."

   We ride and ride and ride along a wall that's taller than two horses. "Our borders have never been broached," he says with pride. "These walls circle our realm, except where rivers do the job. You've seen the Lethe. Now I'll show you the Phlegethon, if you're not bored yet."

   Bored? My eyes are more open than they've ever been, drinking up a brand-new world. The warm, dusty air smells like perfume to me. The horse's hooves make music as Hades holds me close.

   At one point he gestures to a gate where the sun enters each morning, crossing our lands when it's night on Earth. So that's why the sun is here. There are other gates, too, all firmly closed, and yet the walls feel as comfortable as Hades' arm, like a golden ring on a willing finger.

   I smell sulfur and a smoky scent like burning torches. We round a bend and look down a cliff and I cry, "The river's on fire!"

   "It isn't on fire," says Hades. "It is fire. Pure flame flows through the Phlegethon's banks, charring them black. That bronze door on the other side is the entrance to Tartarus."

   Tartarus, prison for Titans and miscreant gods. In spite of the heat, I shiver, and Hades turns the horse around. "Don't worry," he says. "They can't escape, any more than mortal shades can cross back over the River Styx."

   "Show me," I say. Anything to stay like this, wrapped in Hades' arm.

   The horse's rhythmic step lulls me, and I lose track of time. Finally we stop, and Hades points to a curving road that disappears into thick trees.

   "The Styx is over there. That river won't burn you, or suck out your identity, but don't try to go wading across. It has its own dangers. The banks are ferociously guarded."

   "Guarded against what?"

   "Escape. Charon the ferryman brings shades across that border from Zeus's realm, but no one crosses in the other direction. No one. Cerberus makes sure of that."

   "Let's go see it."

   "We'll have to do it another day." He glances up at the sun. "We took longer than I expected. Now it's time to prepare for your grand entrance."

   "My what?"

"Today you enter the throne room as my queen."

   I don't say anything the whole ride back to the palace, and I barely see the land around me. I think there are more streams, and we go through a gate, but I'm not sure. I'm too busy worrying.