by Lianyu Tan
Xenia winced, stepping aside in a hurry as Persephone flounced past her. “Mistress... where are you going?”
“For a walk,” Persephone said.
As she strode toward the gates, groups of servants stopped whatever work they were doing to greet her. She had grown so sick of hearing her own name by the time she reached the outer courtyard, she would’ve been glad not to hear it for another century.
She passed the gleaming walls of obsidian, seeing her face reflected in the stone, then noticed something else besides her reflection.
Xenia trailed behind her with another two serving girls she had managed to pick up along the way. Part of Persephone admired her tenacity.
“I said I’m going for a walk. I don’t need an escort,” she snapped.
“Yes, mistress,” Xenia said, eyes demurely downcast, but still she did not leave.
“Oh, by Zeus!” Persephone threw her hands up in the air. “I do not need an escort. Surely no ills could befall me, for are these not all Hades’ lands?”
Xenia and the other servants glanced at each other. “We’ve been ordered—”
“I don’t care what you’ve been ordered! I am ordering you to leave me alone!”
“Begging your pardon, but you do not have that authority,” Xenia said.
The woman had courage, she would grant her that. “Fine.” Persephone stalked away, heading to the stables. Inside, she took down her own tack and picked out one of the mares, a dappled gray. There was one place in the underworld where Hades’ mortal servants were unlikely to tread.
“Keep up, if you can,” she said to Xenia and her unrelenting helpers, then mounted, sitting astride. She nudged her mare forward without looking back and soon urged her into a canter, then a gallop. She bent down low over her mane, reveling in the wind rushing past her face. They crossed the lowlands of the Plain of Judgment together, not pausing even when the dead called out her name. They’d find no mercy from her this day.
When the lowlands became desolate and barren, her mare slowed, as though reluctant to venture further. Persephone had to nudge her into continuing, each step more hesitant than the last.
Persephone felt it, too—the sense of impending dread. She passed through a valley, rocky cliffs looming tall around her. She glanced from side to side, noticing how even the hardiest of weeds refused to grow here.
Xenia drew up beside her, mounted on a soot-colored gelding. “We should not be here,” she said, her kind face creased with worry. “Please, let’s turn back.”
“I want to see.”
The air seemed even cooler here, making her shiver. Her mare whinnied piteously and would not be calmed. Persephone was forced to dismount and proceed on foot, followed by Xenia. The other servants appeared not to have made it this far.
Waiting for them at the end of the valley was a monstrous giant with dozens of arms jutting out from all over his torso. From his shoulders sprang a multitude of heads. Each one of his eyes watched Persephone and Xenia as they drew closer.
“Good day to you,” Persephone said, craning her neck to look up at the giant’s many faces. “What are you called?”
“Cottus,” the giant said, a few of his mouths moving at the same time, so that it sounded like a chorus. “You are not dead. You should not be here.” He looked at Xenia. “Your judgment does not lie here. You should not be here.”
“I hold Hades’ favor,” Persephone said, hooking a finger under her necklace and holding it away from her skin so that Cottus could see it more clearly. “I wish to pass.”
Cottus leaned down and squinted at her. He made a grumbling noise like rocks being crushed. “You may pass,” he said, clearly unhappy. “Not you,” he added when Xenia tried to follow.
“Please, don’t be long,” Xenia said with tears in her eyes. “It isn’t safe.”
Persephone’s gaze softened. “Don’t worry. Nothing can hurt me here.”
Xenia looked stricken, but she bit her lip and said nothing.
Persephone turned from her and walked past Cottus. Behind him was a large wooden platform, attached to a trolley system with a winch. Below the platform was darkness as far as the eye could see, a color so deep it seemed to suck the light into it.
Truth be told, Persephone had no desire to see the heart of Tartarus for herself, but now that she was here, pride demanded that she not falter.
“Do you have a torch?” Persephone asked.
“There are lights beneath,” Cottus said. He pulled on a cord, and far below, she heard the faint ring of a bell.
Persephone stepped onto the platform and tried to smile reassuringly at Xenia. The poor woman was as pale as new milk.
“Hold on,” Cottus said.
There was nothing to hold on to. Persephone opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but then Cottus unhooked a rope, and the platform went plunging into the darkness.
Persephone screamed for the first few feet and then had to conserve the rest of her breath as the platform hurtled downwards at a breakneck pace. She had made a terrible mistake, but there was no way to turn back and no one to hear her cry for help. The air was cold and brutal, blowing the hem of her chiton back into her face. At least there was also no one to see her disheveled state.
When she thought she could bear it no longer, lights appeared from below, and the platform ground to a shuddering halt. Persephone was amazed to find herself still in one piece, although the coiffure that Xenia had created was completely ruined.
Muffled noises filled the air—screams and pained groans, crying, the same pleas and prayers repeated over and over again.
Xenia was right. She should not have come.
Persephone stepped off the platform. She was in a huge cavern, carved laboriously from the bedrock of the earth. Lit torches glowed orange in the dark, illuminating paths that extended out from the cavern. Below her hung a multitude of wooden walkways, providing transit over a deep abyss.
On her level, she saw another monstrous giant speaking to a number of men wearing Hades’ colors. She took one glance at them, then turned and walked the opposite way, moving quickly, as if she knew what she was doing. Awful as this place was, she had no intention of being brought back before Hades quite so soon.
She found herself naturally taking walkways that led her further downwards, until it felt like forever since she’d last walked on level ground. As she walked, she passed cells carved into the rock and sealed by bars of iron; cells sealed by spider silk, by glyphs and incantations carved into the walls and floors.
Hands reached out to her from the dark.
“Mistress... save us...”
“Mistress, I’ve been here some hundred years. I’ve never harmed a living soul. Please—”
Persephone hurried past them all, not daring to look too closely at any wretched soul. Her stomach was turning from the noise and the smell of cold iron and dried ichor. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she was in too deep to admit her mistake and turn back.
“Daughter.”
The word was whispered, so faint she scarcely heard it. She froze, rigid with terror, then forced herself to relax. Zeus was not here, would never deign to bring himself here, and Demeter’s voice had never been that deep.
Nevertheless, she took a torch from a wall sconce and walked toward the voice. She found herself in front of a cell set apart from the others in its own row. Inside, there was a body chained to a rack, so still and gaunt that at first she doubted whether it had the strength for speech at all. Each limb was overly long and ill-proportioned, as though he was a Titan made small by sorcery.
The creature opened his eyes—eye. One of them was in the process of growing back, covered in ichor and slowly reforming itself from the inside out as she watched, unable to look away.
“Daughter,” he said, his voice a dry croak, so disused she could scarcely make out the word. “No. Granddaughter? Come closer, that I might see you.”
Slowly, as if drawn by invisible thread, Persephone approached the
cell.
Its inhabitant ran his tongue over cracked and ichor-stained lips, staring at her like a starving man might stare at a feast. He lunged forward, straining so hard on his chains that there was a cracking noise, perhaps one of his bones snapping.
Persephone screamed and dropped the torch. She quickly snatched it up again before it could roll through the bars into the cell, afraid of what any disruption to the cell boundary might do to the fragile powers that kept this place functioning.
The creature—Titan—laughed, his bony chest shuddering with each exhalation. He was clad only in a loincloth, dirt, and ichor, though his dark beard reached almost to his waist.
“Which one are you then, girl? And speak up. My ears aren’t what they used to be.”
“I’m called Persephone,” she said, grateful that her voice did not quaver. “Born of Demeter and Zeus.”
“Zeus... I should’ve torn his head off before swallowing. Crunched his bones to dust.”
Persephone shuddered. This thing, this creature, was her grandfather, Kronos?
“Ah... don’t look at me like that, girl. I was once a handsome brute, revered among men. Tell me, what do they say of me, up in the overworld?”
She could not help but pity him, tortured and reduced as he was. “They say you ruled over a golden age of mankind.”
He grinned with a mouth full of broken teeth. “Golden... yes. When the air was sweet and the world new and honey dripped from the trees.” He moved his jaw, as though recalling the taste of it. “Do you have any?”
“Honey?” Persephone’s brow creased. “No. I’m sorry.”
“Wine? Water?” When she shook her head, Kronos scowled. “What good are you, then? You reek of Hades. All the attar in Aigyptos could not mask her stench on you. Mayhap you could tell her to make my stay here a little more comfortable. It’s been long enough.”
Persephone fought the urge to sniff at her garments, though her cheeks flushed. “I’ll ask.”
“Ask!” Kronos screeched, loud enough that Persephone winced. “Ask, she says, like a lapdog and not the proud scion of Kronos that she ought to be.” He stared down at her, his eyes half-lidded. “Did Zeus tire of you and throw you like a bone to poor venereous Hades?”
Persephone stiffened. “He would never! Zeus had nothing to do with this,” she said, though she wondered if that were the case. Hades had been adamant she’d secured his approval, at least.
Kronos shifted a little on the rack, his chains clanking. “But you are a prisoner here. The same as me,” he said, his mouth opening in a wide grin.
Persephone grasped the bars of his cell and pressed her face against them. “We are nothing alike,” she said. “When Hades grows weary of me, I’ll be free.”
Kronos stared at her, the whites of his eyes large and luminous in the dim light. Then he broke into a raucous, braying laugh, so loud Persephone took a step back and looked nervously to check for anyone approaching.
“Stop that,” she said. “You’ll summon a guardsperson.”
Kronos’s laughter died down, though a tear of mirth remained in the corner of his eye. “Oh, girl. How young you must be. How fortunate, to be so naive. You wear Hades’ favor and yet you know her so little?”
Persephone’s hand went briefly to her neck. “I’d had no chance to know her. I wasn’t exactly courted.”
“In my days, the chase was the courtship. You saw a girl you wanted, you kept her in your bed until she was round with child and no longer had the strength to flee.”
That practice was alive and well. It was a hard tradition to break, seeing as the gods were unwilling to change their ways. But she’d thought—hoped—that Hades could be different.
It was stupid. She ought to have run whilst she still could.
“Nothing has changed,” Persephone said.
“Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.”
“That’s not true!”
“Oh?” Kronos leered at her. “And who would you be without Hades’ favor, Demeter’s daughter? Nobody. All you have to offer is what lies between your legs.”
Persephone bit her tongue, grateful for the bars and for the distance between them. She would not ever have dreamed of striking an unarmed old man before today.
“Hades will never let you go, not after what she did to have you. But don’t despair, girl. If it’s freedom you want, then you shall have it,” Kronos said.
“What did she do?” Persephone asked.
“Help me and I’ll tell you.”
“How?”
Kronos dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Free me and free yourself. We shall crush this prison and its jailers along with it.”
Persephone paused as though considering his offer. He really thought she was so selfish, so naive as to betray all of Olympus just to fulfill her wish? Nothing justified treason, not even her freedom. “I must go,” she said. “Goodbye, Grandfather.”
He strained to raise himself partially off the rack. “Foolish girl! Without me, you are nothing! Hades will never let you leave. Never!”
Persephone turned her back on him and kept moving, her heart racing as she ascended via the long walkways. It wasn’t true. Hades would tire of her, in time. Poseidon spent his seed as though it were endless as sea foam; Zeus had bastards in all the lands surrounding the Aegean. A century from now, maybe two, Hades would find some nymph or other to divert her attention.
Persephone wasn’t sure she could wait that long.
12
Interrogation
The ascension from Kronos’s cell level was hard on Persephone’s muscles, and her thighs ached by the time she’d reached the platform. The giant guarding this area was not amused to see her.
“You are not authorized to access the depths of Tartarus,” he said whilst tapping the fingers of half his hands in irritation. “Hades will be displeased.”
“I won’t tell her if you won’t.”
He sniffed but nodded to the guards to prepare the platform.
Persephone stepped upon it, holding her hands by her sides to flatten down her chiton.
The ascent was much slower and gave her time to think. It was not long before she lost sight of the guards and the giant below, and even the glow of their lights faded from view, leaving her in darkness.
She made a promise to herself never to commit any crimes so heinous as to merit punishment in this place. She would never be condemned to live forever in the darkness, tortured eternally, slowly going mad, with only her own thoughts for company.
Xenia almost cried to see her emerge safely at the top of the pit, which made Persephone glance aside, unable to look her in the eye. They found their horses, which had obediently stayed nearby, and set off together toward the palace.
“Did you find what you were seeking?” Xenia asked.
Tartarus held only questions, not answers. “I’m glad I went,” Persephone said. It was not a lie—seeing Kronos and the other prisoners had only strengthened her resolve to escape this place.
When they arrived at the palace, a flock of serving girls descended upon Persephone and prevented her from making her way back to her room. The girls washed her feet and brushed her hair, tying it in a loose braid, and served her food, which she ate alone. When she was done, Xenia guided her not to her own room but to Hades’ chambers, which adjoined hers.
Hades’ rooms were at least twice as large as her own. They had an austere air about them, with the walls carved from black marble, softened with tapestries in abstract geometric patterns. There was a partition for dressing, with clothing stacked in neat shelves, and the most enormous collection of shoes, boots, and sandals that Persephone had ever seen. She supposed something had to break the monotony of Hades’ clothing—most pieces being various shades of black, save for the white chiton she’d worn on their wedding day and a few others in deep, jewel-toned hues.
A bathing chamber adjoined the room, but there was no vessel for a servant to fill with water. Instead,
Persephone turned a lever, and water flowed freely from a faucet, disappearing down a grate placed below. There was even a separate tap for heated water, which she used to wash the chill from her hands.
“We gained much when Daedalus joined the ranks of the dead. I had thought to expand the plumbing more extensively, but alas, he finds such projects rather menial.”
Persephone jumped, clutching a hand to her chest as she turned around. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Hades wore black today, the color almost as dark as the center of Tartarus. Perhaps Daedalus had also crafted the dye, for Persephone had seen nothing of its ilk on the surface.
“Turn that off, please.”
Persephone’s cheeks flushed as she turned the lever once more so that the water stopped flowing. “Mother could use something like this for her crops.”
“Mm hmm.” Hades sat down at her writing desk and moved a stack of scrolls to one side. She had turned the chair so that she could sit and face Persephone at the same time. “Come here and tell me about your day.”
Persephone walked back into the main sleeping area. Her palms were sweating, and she wiped them over her hips. She had done nothing wrong. Why did Hades have such an effect on her?
It was awkward standing when Hades was not, so she sat on the end of the bed, for there were no other chairs to be had. “I visited Tartarus today.”
“I see. Did Xenia not instruct you about your duties as my bride, to receive your wedding gifts?”
She tried to read Hades’ face. She seemed calm, but her gaze had such an intensity that Persephone felt the need to look away. “She may have mentioned something.”
“And yet it was not done. What did you do within Tartarus?”
Persephone stood. She walked to the window and opened the shutters, closing her eyes as the cool night air wafted over her. “You already know, don’t you? Why are you asking me this?”
“I wish to hear you tell me. Please do not walk away when I am talking to you.”
“Is this an interrogation? I’ve committed no crime.”
“Come back here and sit down, Persephone.”
