Barefoot, I walk toward the shack, the dank swampy water around us and fireflies dancing between tree branches. The air isn’t musty; instead, a familiar scent of sandalwood and thyme lingers around the place.

I swallow, remembering this scent from another time, another place. It was one of my mother’s smells: her kitchen, her potions. Her magic.

My heart aches for what I don’t have, what I’ll never have again.

Lennox fades in and out, and I look around, startled, wondering if anyone else noticed, but they didn’t. Everyone is focused on putting one foot in front of the other right now.

Scared, I reach for Lennox, squeezing his bicep tightly, then pressing my face to his chest, breathing him in -- needing the reassurance that he is still here, with me.

“You okay?” he asks concern in his voice, brushing my pale purple hair from my face, looking down at me. I breathe him in, loving the way he looks at me and hating that I can’t have what I want.

A real life, a real future with these men.

“I’m okay, just not feeling myself.”

“Is that why you made us drag this stranger to the middle of nowhere?”

“I asked you to do that because there is something about him.”

“Right. Something special.”

I see the hurt in his eyes. “Hey, don’t be like that.”

“Like what?”

“Jealous.”

He scoffs as we make it to the front steps. Behind us Hawthorne and South drag Eric, and I knock on the door, noticing the way Eric’s eyes are rolling back ominously.

“He’s practically dead,” South grunts. “Tell me again why we aren’t just letting his soul do what it wants?”

“I don’t know. Just trust me. He is important.” I knock again, my body on edge as I wait for an answer.

Finally, the door creaks open and a small, frail woman opens peers out from behind a thick wooden door.

“Yes?” she asks, her voice distant and her body growing hazy before our very eyes.

“We need help, with our friend,” I tell her. “Something is wrong with him. He just arrived and is... Well, I don’t know what. But it’s not good.”

“Come, come, my child,” she whispers, motioning us closer with her finger. I can already see the translucent covering over her body. “Let me see if I can help in the time I have left.”

She pushes open the door and we walk inside, her shack looking more cottage-like now that candlelight fills the room. The place has probably been here for centuries. When one soul departs, a new one takes up residence in the homes left behind. This one has probably seen thousands of witch doctors over the years. Apothecary jars line the shelves and a big witch’s cauldron-like pot hangs in a fireplace.

It is hard to know what is real in Styx, and what is fabricated in the in-between. But this cottage, and the witch living in it feels substantial as if there was anyone here that was going to help us, it would be the woman before us.

“I’m Marden Crow, and my time is almost out. But let’s see what we can do for your friend.”

“Are you sure?”

She smiles softly at me. “I’ve learned the best thing to do when someone -- or something -- comes knocking on your door is to answer.”

She moves bowls and books from the table in the center of the room, and lays a blanket down, telling South and Hawthorne to place him there. They do as directed and Eric’s chest heaves as if he is using all of his energy, even though he is doing none of the work.

“Where did you find him?” Marden asks, unbuttoning Eric’s shirt and revealing a broad chest, muscular and defined. She reaches for a jar containing a white colored paste and she removes the lid. It’s filled with a salve of comfrey and ginger.

How do I know this? The names of things I’ve never touched, never tasted?

“He was at the river, stumbling around, looking confused,” I explain. “I told him where he was, but he just said that Gaia told him he was coming here to help Harlow’s sister. I have no idea what that means.”

“Gaia?” Marden stops, her hands trembling.

“Do you know her?” I ask, my best friends standing beside me.

Marden nods ever so slowly, taking me in as if seeing me for the first time. I wrap South’s leather jacket tighter around my body, feeling exposed in front of this stranger.

“I know of her.”

“Is it relevant?” Hawthorne asks.

“Gaia?” Marden twists her lips and begins smearing the salve against Eric’s chest. “I’d say she is most relevant to Styx. To Earth. To life and death. To all of us. She is the beginning and the end for many.”

“You’re speaking in riddles I don’t understand,” South says, and his words are exactly the ones I’m thinking.

“It’s not intentional. Gaia is Mother Earth. A Greek goddess. Her web connects us all, whether we want it or not.”

Maybe for someone still living on Earth, the idea of Greek gods would sound ridiculous or foreign -- I can’t say for certain, as I never considered their existence before I was sent to Styx. But I do know what Lennox and Hawthorne have shared of Earth. And that is, no one on Earth believes in Greek mythology anymore. They’re just stories, legends.

But then they arrived in Styx and became believers.

How could you not, when you see the spirit world in the flesh? When Hades is a real, powerful being ruling the Underworld, forcing passage on those he chooses?

Maybe before death, people had the privilege of choosing what they believed; but once you pass through that life to this one, it’s no longer about believing. It is about truth.

And the Greek gods rule this world. So, it stands to reason they would rule other realms too.

“Mother Earth?” I repeat. “What would she have to do with this man?”

“More importantly, what do you have to do with this man?” Marden asks pointedly.

We all look down at Eric, his skin so pale, practically translucent.

He needs to wake up because he is the one with answers.

The answers that I have been looking for my entire life.