The hallways rear up like a hydra waving serpentine heads. I've already forgotten my path from yesterday morning.

   What's more, all the servants I heard bustling about earlier have disappeared, leaving me alone with a jumble of rooms and hallways. Against all the spirals and frescoes, the only figures I can see are statues, stiff with perfection. Every corner seems to shelter someone brandishing a sword or stepping from a chariot.

   Then it occurs to me—the doorways all look the same, but each statue has some distinguishing characteristic. I'll use them to keep track of where I've been, and eventually, when I have a map in my head, I'll find my way downstairs.

   A fellow with a traveler's hat and winged sandals must be Hermes. He raises his staff, preparing to guide mortal spirits away from their earthly bodies. What a handsome face he has: boyish and a little playful.

   I walk down the hall toward a towering statue of Hades, confident, bold, and totally regal. In fact, there are statues of Hades just about everywhere. Hades, reins in hand, leading eight horses across a frieze. Hades in a gesture of welcome, standing near a staircase.

   These may not be the stairs I took yesterday, but they go down, don't they?

   With every step I hear a rhythmic tapping. The lower I go, the louder the sound gets until it saturates the air around me. Where there's banging, there's bound to be a person to ask for directions.

   I follow the noise through a door into a courtyard, except it's like I've walked into a cloud, because white dust is swirling everywhere. Craggy shapes loom up like stones scattered on a hillside in the mist. I cover my mouth with my hand and try to wend my way toward the banging noise.

   I round one of the rocks and suddenly a gigantic shoulder is writhing toward me out of the stone. I lurch back, preparing to flee; then I realize the muscled, surging shoulder is nothing but marble. A statue in the making, that's what it is.

   As I come among more finished work, I start to recognize some of the statues. Right in front of me there's a white marble man with wings raised above broad shoulders. Even though the stone isn't painted yet, his face looks familiar, and so do the greaves etched on muscular calves. Then I remember a smile on that face, and those wings folded back, and that hand helping me up from the throne room floor.

   Now the hammering is almost deafening. I can see an arm going up and down just past a curving backside, the only statue of a woman in this whole place. I walk carefully through the cloud enveloping her, and there's the craftsman, chiseling away in a controlled frenzy. He must be close to done, because his creation is already laden with bracelets and necklaces. Her hair is perfectly coifed, without a single loose tendril. Slender and graceful, she stands regally with an ease I envy.

   The sculptor steps back and gives the face an appraising look. I follow his gaze to the statue's strong chin, her generous mouth, her eyes—the eyes I see in my mirror every morning.

   I freeze as still as the stone. Even my breath stops.

   It's me.

   Except the statue of me looks like she actually knows what she's doing. I try to mimic her perfect posture, her noble expression, the set of her mouth—but then the dust tickles my nose and I explode with a gigantic, most un-regal sneeze. The sculptor looks my way, smiles, and wipes his hands on his dust-coated tunic.

"Excuse me," I say. "I'm trying to find the weaving room."

   His look goes as blank as an untouched slab of rock. Without my throne and jewels I must be invisible, even though he's just been carving my face.

   "You know, where the loom is set up? I can't seem to find my way around."

   He shakes his head. "Not my business, weaving."

   Then I remember the statue of Hades with his hand on Cerberus's head. I describe it, and the sculptor lights up.

   "That's one of mine!" he says, leading me back to the door. He points toward yet another corridor. "Through there, miss," he says, "and then a sharp left will take you where you're going."

The warp strings stand at attention, held taut by their silver weights. I roll the gleaming basket closer on its little wheels and rummage through the balls of yarn. A soft greeny brown settles in my hand. Soon the boxwood shuttle starts its dance. My hand follows in its wake, and before long I drift into a place close to dreaming.

   I feel like myself again. Something more than the infamous tripping queen.

   That statue in the courtyard knows more about ruling than I do. They should tote her up to the throne room whenever they need a figurehead. She'd accept their homage without fluttering an eyelash, content to be nothing but a symbol, a receptacle for their prayers. She'd probably even look more at home in the fancy clothes.

   She's got it easy. She doesn't have a heart to hammer so loud she can't think.

   I pick up a richer brown now and wind it on the shuttle.

   Look at me! I don't belong on that throne. I'm only here because I happened to fall in love. I don't have a clue what shades want—or what they need. What, exactly, does a queen do?

   The dark brown makes wavy lines, like branches.

   Let's take an inventory of my skills, shall we? I'm good with friends, and plants, and weaving. That's hardly enough to justify a crown.

   The shuttle meanders, pulling the brown lines wider.

   And I don't even have any friends here, let alone a blossoming vale. There's only this loom. So I'll have to make weaving be enough. This and Hades' strong arms should be enough to make my life here work. Right?

   But even as I try to convince myself, my hand tightens on the shuttle and my foot itches to kick the silver basket across the room.

   A tight hand makes tight weaving, my mother always said, and the bit of cloth I've just woven is as puckered as pinched lips. I pull out the offending strands, then gaze at the picture on my loom. The brown needs something brighter for balance.

   I grab a bursting green and start plucking bits of color like bright notes across the fabric. Then I wrap them with a deeper green, rounding the edges into curves until they're unfurling like new leaves.

   All right, that's what they'll be: bright life sprouting from soft, woolen earth. More color now. I'll jumble some blossoms in among the leaves, so it looks like spring branches when everything is illuminated from the inside. I pick up a dark purple, but it's a late-summer color, like ripe plums pulling a branch low or juicy grapes crowding on the vine.

   I toss the purple back in the basket and start pacing.

   The only garden I have now is on my loom. No fresh water cascading over rocks to cool my fingers, no rich-smelling soil, no leaves as soft as lambs' ears. Just wool.

   What I'd give for a garden of my own, here, in the underworld!

   Then the loom seems to whisper, "Why don't you?"

   Oh, right, trash my image even more. Who ever heard of a queen digging in the dirt, coming home with a mudstreaked chiton? I've probably done enough damage already, waltzing around barefoot.

   "Why don't you?"

   Because queens are dignified, that's why. I'm not a country girl anymore. I have a household to learn to run, a position to uphold, responsibility to exercise . . . if I can ever figure out what I'm supposed to do.

   The shuttle, having wormed its way back into my hand, is making the fat purple grapes.

   I think of my mother walking barefoot out of the courtyard, her hand already reaching to caress a glistening lemon leaf.

   "Why don't you?"

   Just a little garden. I'll put it near that big oak where the hill flattens out, halfway between the palace and the Lethe's plain. It's not like I'm going to wave my hands and shout, "Hey, look, everyone! Here's a queen digging around in the dirt!" No, I'll work there quietly, and the moist soil will root me and the warmth of sun-soaked leaves will revive me, and I'll be me again.