But what?
Everything had depended on his being with Philonecron. It would have been all right to enchant the shadows as long as he'd been able to follow them; now everyone was doomed.
Zee sighed and sat down on the rock. The two Footmen stood right in front of his doorway, their garish faces peeking in every once in a while. They seemed to be quite delighted with his predicament. Zee wanted to hurl rocks at them, but he had a feeling they'd be more than happy to come in and break his neck or choke him with clay or something.
He could try to disable the Footmen-hit one over the head, maybe, and just try to outrun the other one. Then he could still make it to the Palace. Then he'd still have a chance. Of course, when he and Charlotte had tried that when the Footmen attacked them in the Upperworld, they had stopped time and frozen him in place. (He hadn't thought of that when he was considering killing himself. That was dumb.)
Zee sat and he thought. He thought about everything that had happened so far, about how terribly wrong it had gone, and about the chances he had had to make it right, and about all the ways he had made things worse. He thought about all the Dead, and all the Dead that were to come, and how unless he thought of something fast, they were going to spend eternity in torment.
And he found himself thinking of his grandmother. What would she think of him now, sitting here? Would she be ashamed of him? Ashamed of him for letting Philonecron control him like that, ashamed of him for running to the States and leading the shadow thieves there, ashamed of him for falling for Philonecron's trick, ashamed of him for enchanting the shadows, ashamed of him for not doing something now-now when there was nothing left to do?
Zee sighed. The sad part, the really sad part, was that she would probably not be. She would probably love him and be proud of him anyway. That was just the way of Grandmother Winter.
She was down here… somewhere. He would never be able to find her, he knew that now, but she was here. She was near him. She had promised him she would watch over him, and now when it mattered most, she was close by. Grandmother Winter had a way of getting what she wanted. He wanted to see her, to give her a hug, to tell her how much he missed her, how much he needed the strength she gave him. But he couldn't. He would simply have to get the strength from the idea of Grandmother Winter- the sweet, soft, strong idea of her.
And with that strength he would have to do something. He would have to try. He would have to try to get past the Footmen, even if it was impossible, even if it meant his death. Which it probably did. Because at least he could say he had tried. At least he would not have let the world go without a fight.
Zee closed his eyes and he pictured his grandmother. He remembered the floury, talcum powdery, lotiony scent of her, he held it in his mind, he breathed it in.
Then suddenly he sensed something in the cave with him. Something small and not quite human. He'd seen enough creatures that day to know they tended to pop up everywhere in the Underworld-and it wouldn't do him any good to be killed by a vampiric lizard right now so he opened his eyes, expecting to see such a beast, or maybe a four-headed rat or a mucus-spewing mole.
But what he saw was a cat.
Not a demon cat. Or a skeleton cat. A regular cat. Almost, well, a kitten.
The cat had darted into the cave and was making its way slowly toward him, eyes set on him. Zee stared. Upon looking closer at the cat, he thought it looked a great deal like Charlotte's cat, Mew.
In fact, Zee couldn't be sure, but if he had to bet, well, he'd bet the cat was Mew.
"Mew?" he whispered.
The cat leaped toward him and frantically rubbed against his legs. Zee felt tears springing to his eyes; he couldn't help it. "What are you doing here? How did you get here?" He picked up Mew and squeezed her. "You really are an extraordinary cat."
He shot a glance at the doorway, but the Footmen didn't seem to have noticed a thing. They were standing a few feet away from the door, stock-still now- they looked like wax statues.
Mew bonked her head against his a few times, then leaped out of his arms and dashed to the left wall of the cave.
"What is it?" Zee asked.
Mew began to scratch violently against the wall. Zee got up. "What are you doing?" he whispered, walking over to her. He stood between Mew and the doorway and stared at her. She looked at him and kept scratching.
Zee examined the wall. It didn't look different from any of the others-ragged, with bits of rock jutting out…
Oh!
Zee put his hands on two of the rocks and pulled down. Nothing. He tried two more. And then he saw a small, round rock just to the right of his head. He put his hand on it, pressed down-and the wall evaporated.
In front of him was a slightly larger room, maybe four times the size of the little cave. It was quite clearly a laboratory- Philonecron's laboratory. It was filled with test tubes, beakers, strange contraptions, and jars of unidentifiable substances. Cabinets and shelves lined the walls. Hanging against one wall was a very long white lab coat, and there was a bookshelf filled with quite ancient-looking texts, and on top, a box of scrolls. And there was a whole wall containing small jars of what looked very, very much like blood. The markings on them were in Greek, and so Zee couldn't tell which jar was which, but he knew his blood was somewhere in there. He grimaced.
Mew had run over to a corner and was squawking madly at Zee. He got the point. She was standing right in front of what looked like a trash bin, and Zee hurried over, raised the lid, and gasped.
The bin was filled with shadows.
They were piled on top of one another carelessly, like old towels. They looked thin, used, torn. Zee tried to pick one up, but he couldn't get hold of it-his hands just passed right through.
Zee looked at Mew, who stared pointedly back at him.
"I have to enchant these, don't I?" he said.
Mew simply looked at him.
"Then they can take care of the Footmen, and I can get to Philonecron."
Mew stared.
"I should hurry, shouldn't I?"
More staring.
"All right, then."
Zee knew what he had to do. He went over to Philonecron's cupboards and searched until he found what he needed. With a deep breath he went back over to the shadow bin and stood over it.
"Here goes…" He took the knife and sliced open his arm. Pain shot through him, and he winced. He felt tears leap to his eyes, and he exhaled deeply, then held his arm over the pile of shadows and squeezed, watching the blood as it dripped down.
He nodded at Mew, then toward the doorway. "Go check on them, will you? I'm going to make some noise."
Mew turned her head toward the door and crept off.
He closed his eyes. He had no idea if this would work. His words were supposed to be the final step, so whatever needed to be done to these shadows, he hoped Philonecron had already done it.
And the words-Zee had repeated them over and over again earlier today. Did he still know them? He exhaled and tried to clear his head.
Ek..
Ek skotou…
Yes, that was it. Ek skotou es to phaos! That was the first sentence. Ek skotou es to phaos! The next was much the same.
Ek thanatou…
Ek thanatou es to…
Es to what? Si something. Si something?
Argh!
Ek skotou es to phaos. Ek thanatou es to…
Es to…