With No Heart in his Chest

“Orpheus,” she breathed. “It’s me.”

And he was alone.

Orpheus was a boy in love, who had never had to learn to be a man without someone else holding his heart. So when he lost his wife, he asked the gods to take him, too. They refused. He yanked on the door to the River Styx, and Charon flung him back out. He plunged a knife into his chest. He could not die. And, as he was to learn, it is very hard to learn to live with no heart in your chest. So here is what he did instead:

The morning after he lost his wife, Orpheus took his lyre to King Hades’ back door, and he played to coax it open. The song was beautiful; anything Orpheus played was beautiful, but his lyre wept. While he played the sun rose, and while the sun rose people flocked to his music, and while they flocked to him he played, and played, and played, until his fingers bled. Still he played, and while he played his fingers wept blood and the boy cried until the ground beneath him was mud.

When the sun set a woman came and knelt on the ground beside him. “Here,” she murmured. “Here is a salve for your fingers. Tomorrow will you play for me?”

She rubbed salve into his hands, and in her crooked, wrinkled fingers he saw the age she carried so gracefully. Eurydice would have worn age like a crown, if she’d gotten the chance.

“I play for her.”

The morning after his fingers bled, Orpheus sat at the door to the Underworld with strong hands and a clear voice that was beautiful, but desperate. He sang when the sun rose, and he sang while people gathered around the strange boy, here again, and he sang while his voice croaked and rasped, as dry as the dirt around his feet and in his cracked lips.

When the sun set a man came and rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Here,” he offered. “Here is tea for your throat. Tomorrow will you play for me?”

Orpheus drank the tea, and in the man’s voice he heard the laughter that always rang around Eurydice.

“I play for her.”

The morning after his throat rasped, Orpheus knelt in a patch of dirt that was forming grooves in the shape of his knees with calloused fingers and a smooth voice. The sun rose, so he sang and played, but still the doors would not open. The people around him heard the song and whispered about the foolish boy whose heart was lost. While they whispered he played and sang and sang and played until his stomach growled.

When the sun set a girl came and prodded the boy with chubby fingers. “Here,” she said. “Here is some bread for your stomach. Tomorrow will you play for me?”

Orpheus ate the bread, and in the girl’s face he saw the family he and his wife might have had.

“I play for her.”

“For who?”

The fourth day after his wife died, Orpheus played a song for a little girl, all about a woman whose eyes had shone like stars, and whose laugh had warmed the darkest heart, and whose beauty had rivaled that of Aphrodite.

The girl scratched her nose. “She sounds boring.”

Orpheus laughed, and the sun set.

The fifth day after his wife died, Orpheus played a song for a man, all about a wife who never wore shoes in the summer but complained when the ground burned her feet, and who ate the last peach in the bowl every time, and who angered faster than a hot knife slipped through butter.

The man chuckled. “She sounds like my Alexandra.”

So when the sun set, Orpheus went and ate with the man and his wife, and they laughed at his stubborn Eurydice and sobered at his tale, and held his hands when he couldn’t go on. They talked through the night, and when the sun rose they sat with him at the door and sang with him.

The sixth day after his wife died, Orpheus play a song for an old woman, all about a lover who combed her fingers through his hair when she wasn’t thinking, and who tucked notes into the strings of his lyre, and who had followed him out of death unquestioningly.

The woman said, “She sounds like a good woman.”

Orpheus nodded. “She was.”

When the sun set, the woman’s bones protested, and she couldn’t stand from where she knelt next to Orpheus. So he scooped her up in his arms and carried her home. He spent the night making her tea and soup, and rubbing the ache out of her old joints, and singing her little songs to make her smile. The next morning when the sun rose, she said, “You must be exhausted. Stay and rest a while.”

He smiled, but continued on his way.

Before he had gotten both feet out the door, a cushion hit him in the head. He turned to gawk at the old woman, who was pushing herself to her feet with a cantankerous hand holding another cushion. “If you’re in such a hurry to go, at least let’s save our knees.”

Orpheus died. It shouldn’t be a surprise, because every man dies. Maybe it was on the seventh day. Does it really matter? On the day that Orpheus died, he rose with the sun, and went to his spot by the door, where there was a cushion waiting for him, and bread and water ready, and a picture scratched into the dirt of a stick man with an unnaturally large head covered in … snakes? and holding what seemed to be a bear’s head. (Underneath someone had scratched the words, “This is you.” A lyre, then, not a bear.)

Orpheus hadn’t even begun playing when the door slid open and a figure stepped out, beckoning him through with a wave of its arm.

“It’s time, Orpheus.”

The man looked around him, at the woman, and the man and his wife, and the child, and at the cushions and the food and the man-snake-lyre-bear drawing.

“Already?”