Hugo laughed. It was a low and rumbly thing that started in his chest and poured out from his mouth. “Ah. I see. And anywhere else, you might have a point. But not here. Not with these. Try it. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
No one could promise that with any certainty. The only thing he’d been able to touch was Mei and the ground beneath his feet. And Apollo, but the less said about that the better. This felt like a test, and he didn’t trust this man as far as he could throw him. Wallace had never thrown a man before, and he didn’t want to start now.
He sighed and reached for the cup, expecting his hand to pass through it, ready to glare at Hugo as if to say See?
But then he felt the warmth of the tea, and he gasped when his fingers touched the surface of the cup. It was solid.
It was solid.
He hissed when he jerked his hand up, sloshing tea over the side of the cup and onto his fingers. There was a brief flare of heat, but then it was gone. He looked at his fingers. They were pale as always, the skin unblemished.
“These teacups are special,” Hugo said. “For people like you.”
“People like me,” Wallace echoed dully, still staring at his fingers.
“Yes,” Hugo said. He finished pouring the tea into the remaining cups and set the teapot back onto the tray. “Those who have left one life in preparation for another. They were a gift when I became what I am now.”
“A ferryman,” Wallace said.
Hugo nodded. “Yes.” He tapped the stitched lettering on his chest. He didn’t seem to notice the cable, his fingers disappearing through it. “Do you know Charon?”
“No.”
“He was the Greek ferryman who carried souls to Hades over the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world between the living and the dead.” Hugo chuckled. “It lacks subtlety, I know, but I was younger when I named this place.”
“Younger,” Wallace repeated. “You’re already young.” Then, unsure if he was insulting a sort of deity who was apparently in charge of … something, he quickly added, “At least you look like you are. I mean, I don’t know how this works, and—”
“Thank you,” Hugo said, lips quirking as if he found Wallace’s discomfort amusing.
“Oh boy,” Nelson grumbled, picking up his teacup and slurping along the edges. “He’s an old man now. Maybe not as old as me, but he’s getting there.”
“I’m thirty,” Hugo said dryly. He gestured toward the cup on the table in front of Wallace. “Drink up. It’s best when it’s hot.”
Wallace eyed the tea. There were bits of something floating at the top. He wasn’t sure he wanted to drink it, but Hugo was watching him closely. It didn’t seem to be hurting Mei or Nelson, so Wallace gingerly picked up the cup, bringing it close to his face. The scent of peppermint was strong, and Wallace’s eyes fluttered shut of their own accord. He could hear Apollo yawning in the way dogs do, and the bones of the house as it settled, but the floor and walls fell away, the roof rocketing up toward the sky, and he was, he was, he was—
He opened his eyes.
He was home.
Not his current home, the high-rise apartment with the imported furniture and the red accent wall he thought about painting over and the picture windows that opened up to a city of metal and glass.
No, it was his childhood home, the one with the stairs that creaked and the water heater that never had enough hot water. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, Bing Crosby singing on the old radio, telling everyone who could hear to have yourself a merry little Christmas.
“Until then,” his mother sang as she spun through the kitchen, “we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”
It was snowing outside, and garlands stretched along the top of the cabinets and on the windowsills. His mother laughed to herself as the oven dinged. She grabbed an oven mitt with a snowman printed on it from the counter. She opened the oven door, the hinges squealing, and pulled out a sheet of homemade candy canes. Her holiday specialty, a recipe she’d learned from her mother, a heavyset Polish woman who called Wallace pociecha. The scent of peppermint filled the room.
His mother looked up at him standing in the doorway, and he was ten and forty all at the same time, in his sweats and flip-flops, but also in flannel pajamas, his hair a mess, his toes bare on the cold floor. “Look,” she said, showing him the candy canes. “I think it’s the best batch yet. Mamusia would be proud, I think.”
Wallace doubted that. His grandmother had been a frightening woman with a sharp tongue and blunt insults. She died in a home for the elderly. Wallace had been sad and relieved all at once, though he’d kept that thought to himself.
He took a step toward his mother, and at the same time felt the warm bloom of the tea as it slid down his throat and settled in his belly. It tasted like the candy canes smelled, and it was too much, too jarring, because it couldn’t be real. Yet he could taste her candy canes as if she were really there, and he said, “Mom?” but she didn’t respond, instead humming along as Bing Crosby gave way to Ol’ Blue Eyes.
He blinked slowly.
He was in a tea shop.
He blinked again.
He was in the kitchen of his childhood home.
He said, “Mom, I—” and there was a sting in his heart, a sharp jab that caused him to grunt. His mother had died. One minute she was there, and the next she was gone, his father speaking gruffly into the phone, telling him it’d been quick, that by the time they’d caught it, it’d already been too late. Metastasized, one of his cousins had told him later, in her lungs. She hadn’t wanted Wallace to know, especially since they hadn’t spoken in close to a year. He’d been so angry at her for this. For everything.
This is what the tea tasted like. Memory. Home. Youth. Betrayal. Bittersweet and warm.
Wallace blinked and found himself still in the tea shop, the cup shaking in his hands. He set it back down on the counter before it spilled more.
Hugo said, “You have questions.”
In a shaky voice, Wallace replied, “That is quite possibly the biggest understatement ever spoken by the human tongue.”
“He tends to be hyperbolic,” Mei said to Hugo, as if that explained everything.
Hugo lifted his own teacup, taking a sip. His brow furrowed for a moment before smoothing out. “I’ll answer them as best I can, but I don’t know everything.”
“You don’t?”
Hugo shook his head. “Of course not. How could I?”
Frustrated, Wallace snapped, “Then I’ll make this as simple as possible. Why am I here? What’s the point of all of this?”
Mei laughed. “That’s what you call simple? Rock on, man. I’m impressed.”
“You’re here because you died,” Hugo said. “As for your other question, I don’t know if I can answer it for you, at least not on the scale you mean. I don’t think anyone can, not fully.”
“Then what’s the point of you?” he demanded.
Hugo nodded. “That I can answer. I’m a ferryman.”
“I told him that,” Mei whispered to Nelson.
“It’s hard to retain information right after,” Nelson whispered back. “We’ll give him a little longer.”