Captive in the Underworld

by Lianyu Tan

  “Hades doesn’t mean for me to succeed.”

  “She must,” Xenia said.

  Persephone glanced at her and scoffed. How would she know?

  Xenia chewed on her lip, looking as if she wished to say more. “I’m sorry, mistress. I wish you good fortune.”

  She stepped into the chariot, then she, too, was gone.

  Persephone was left alone with her thoughts, and she did not much like them. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” she said to herself. She desperately needed to scratch her nose again, and now there was no one to ask.

  She wished Xenia had left her a light. With the night came the dark, awakening her ancestral fears. The winds raised the hem of her chiton, and she shivered.

  She could not sleep like this. Her body ached too much, her arms screaming at her for release, the balls of her feet throbbing as if she were standing on a bed of needles. There was no comfort here, no softness. Too late, she wished for her warm bed in Hades’ palace, the caress of her furs, the clean rasp of the sheets.

  Something scuttled near her feet, unseen in the dark. She rose up on the tips of her toes and screamed, kicking out blindly.

  Nothing was there. Her heart thudded in her chest. She rested her forehead against the tree and moaned, wishing herself to be anywhere but here.

  If she could free herself, this would end. She could not rely on Hades’ mercy. But what could she do?

  She ran her fingers along the branches of the tree, as far as she could manage without moving her wrists. The willow had been planted here long ago and no longer remembered the touch of the sun. Its signature was alien, its being impenetrable.

  Persephone banged her forehead against its trunk in frustration. The rough bark cut her skin, and a trickle of golden ichor slid down her face. She grimaced at the pain lancing through her head.

  She wriggled her feet, kicking off the sandals that Xenia had so thoughtfully picked out for her earlier that day. With her soles bare, she buried her toes in the ground.

  It was loamy here, with a low level of phosphorus. Perhaps the tree was too much to start with. She closed her eyes and searched for any sign of activity in the ground. Grass grew nearby. She struggled for long minutes to find its signature as the night sky seemed to grow even darker. Her pain interrupted her concentration; she had to bring herself back to the dirt more than once, corralling her thoughts until she could focus.

  Grass. Grass should’ve been easy and plentiful; her frustration made her thoughts blur and snap like thread breaking.

  Persephone leaned her head against the willow and sobbed, her breath coming sharp and dry in her throat. Her failure in some ways was more painful than the whipping had been.

  Still, with no other end in sight, she persevered. Her extremities had gone numb by the time she caught it—something—a whisper that might have been everything, or nothing at all.

  She strained to hear it. Gradually, the whispers of the grasses filled her awareness—she listened to their manifold complaints, their sleepy chatter. The horses had been unexpected; none had grazed here for quite some time.

  She smiled as she listened. She was not alone, then; could never be alone, not when she could touch the living ground. Was it living? Or were these the ghosts of grass?

  The plants did not know the difference, in any case. She withdrew from them and reached out for the next largest thing.

  Ox-eye daisies spread through the grass, their flower heads dried-out husks. It would soon be harvest time, on the surface, and perhaps here as well, if the underworld followed the same seasons.

  She could not move her hands, but she imagined herself with palms outstretched, summoning the spirit of spring into the ground. She was not sure that anything had happened until a plant brushed the side of her foot with a white halo of petals.

  Oh! She would’ve leaned down to pick the flower if she’d been able. Giddy with elation, she longed to touch more: all the living things that grow here, cypresses and ferns, poppies and figs.

  All this time, she’d been trying to make the land bend to her will, and all she’d had to do was listen?

  She leaned her forehead against the willow’s trunk. It had been a seedling before she’d been born, a young sapling when she’d been learning to walk. Its thoughts were slow to change, and it did not know her.

  “Please,” Persephone said, her fingers spread against its branches. “Please help me.”

  Its leaves rustled in the breeze. It did not understand her plight, only knowing she was in its shade, beneath its canopy.

  For long years, it had stood above the black palace on the horizon. Through the earth, it had felt the footsteps of the dead marching by, two by two, the restless making the pilgrimage to Lethe, to drink of its waters.

  She felt the network of its roots stretching into the void beneath her, its bone-white capillaries seeking moisture. Its hold upon the ground was absolute. It could not be moved.

  There was something else growing there, near the base of the tree. Persephone went very still, opening her eyes in shock. “No. I cannot,” she said to herself.

  She could feel the wind shivering its leaves, the moisture feeding its roots. It was beautiful and old, and she had no right.

  Then again, she’d received no instruction, only been told she could leave on her own merits. That was permission enough. And yet...

  Persephone closed her eyes again and concentrated. Not on the tree this time but on the spores living in its bark and around the base of its trunk.

  Could she really do this? No. Yes. Hades had forced her hand. It was time for her punishment to be over.

  For a long time, nothing seemed to be happening. The tree’s branches creaked in the wind. And then rust spots appeared on the leaves, rapidly spreading and turning fresh green growth dry and brittle. The leaves started falling like rain around her, creating a thick layer of black and diseased litter.

  Under the dim night sky, she could see dark bumps emerging from the tree’s trunk, like tiny stepping stones for insects. The tree shuddered, and Persephone wept for it.

  She did not break her connection with the willow. It seemed the least she could do for it, to witness its final hour. Its heartwood filled with decay, spreading rapidly from the trunk to its extremities. New fungus burst from its bark like scabs on a leper, consuming the tree from within.

  It took a long time for the fungus to hollow out the tree entirely. She felt its last breath like a keening wail, long and drawn out, and she came to herself with a start, her face wet with tears.

  She tugged at her bonds. The branches were now brittle, hollow from within, but they did not easily break. It took several attempts, straining until it felt like her wrists would break first, before she tore her first branch down from the tree.

  The weight of it dragged at her hand. She wrapped her fingers around it, as best she could, her wrist still bound, and swung the branch against the trunk of the tree until it splintered and cracked. Once demolished, it was a simple thing to drag her cloth manacle over the broken ends of the branch until her hand was free.

  She repeated this on her left side, now with her right hand to assist, and soon she was completely free. She slipped the last cloth band over her fingers and threw the hateful thing aside, dropping to her knees in complete exhaustion.

  She landed in a thick pile of leaf litter that coated the ground. Persephone had never thought herself vicious, and she knew this death—destruction, whatever it was—would haunt her for a long time.

  She did not know how long she stayed there, head bowed in mourning. When she looked up, it was to find dawn breaking, bathing the world in its pale gray light.

  The leaf litter was gone, consumed by the earth. All around her sprouted a riotous slew of flowers: crocuses and violets, roses, larkspur, irises, narcissus, all blooming out of season in a frenzy of color.

  Persephone climbed to her feet, unsteady as a new colt. She took a step forward. Where her bare feet touched the ground, m
ore flowers blossomed, erupting from the soil.

  “Stop,” she said. “Enough.”

  She took another step, but still they followed her: orchids and hellebore, aconite and asphodel. She broke into a run, delicate flower heads unfolding in her shadow.

  There was an open-sided pavilion at the bottom of the hill, overlooking a stream. She felt Hades’ presence before she saw her, the shape of her distorting the landscape like a bubble floating in glass.

  She had not forgotten the list of ills she’d suffered at Hades’ behest, but she could not stand on her pride. Power leaked from her every pore; she needed aid, even if it came from Hades. As a conduit, she was not fit to contain the glut of energy that threatened to burst from her. Persephone’s skin felt incandescent, hot and tight and ready to fracture.

  She barely slowed as she entered the pavilion, a ground cover of violets trailing in after her. Persephone grabbed the nearest column for balance, clinging to it as vines curled around her ankles and twined up along the column, seeking to be closer to her.

  “Persephone,” Hades began, reaching toward her.

  A surge of energy sparked through Persephone, and she stumbled, holding out both hands to brace herself. She fell upon her knees, fingers digging into the dirt and then recoiling as a line of hyacinths sprang up beneath her palms.

  Hades crouched before her and took Persephone’s hands in her own. “You must breathe.”

  “Make them stop, please, make it stop. I can hear them, in my mind,” Persephone said, her fingernails digging into Hades’ palms.

  “What can you hear?”

  “All of them,” Persephone whispered. Every tree, every bush, every riverside grass. It was as though the entirety of the underworld’s vegetation had awakened to her presence and were making themselves known to her. She felt as though their voices had set her ablaze, their song too enormous for her to hold.

  Hades gently took back her hands, placing them on Persephone’s shoulders. “Breathe with me,” she said. “In,” she chanted, and paused. “Out.”

  Persephone closed her eyes and did as she was told, focusing on the sound of Hades’ voice to drown out the others. She wept with the strain, her nails digging into her thighs deep enough to leave crescent-shaped marks.

  “I can’t,” she gasped. “I—”

  “Steady.” Hades counted out loud the moments between her breaths, her pauses growing longer so that Persephone grew quite dizzy from lack of air.

  Something brushed her cheek, and Persephone opened her eyes, letting out a strangled cry. It was only a vine, moving toward the far columns of the pavilion.

  “There,” Hades said. “Have they stopped?”

  Persephone turned her mind inward, then nodded, too worn for speech.

  “I am proud of you,” Hades said.

  Persephone stood up too fast and swayed on her feet. Hades caught her, setting her down on a bench and then sitting beside her. Persephone was too tired to mind the proximity, their hips almost touching.

  Hades was her lodestone, both attracting and repelling. When Persephone had left the hilltop, her head filled with ghosts, her first impulse had been to run to her. But now that she was here, Persephone could not stand the thought of breathing the same air.

  They sat in silence for some time, broken by the gentle babble of the stream as it passed them by. Something else tugged at her thoughts. She turned to look at Hades. “You’ve not said that before.”

  Hades met her gaze. “Praise where praise is due.”

  Persephone glanced away. Words so lightly given meant nothing. But still, her cheeks flushed. “You have a strange way of showing it.”

  “Our ways are not kind. But life and death are not kind.”

  Hades was not kind. “Did you know what would happen when you tied me up there?” Persephone asked.

  “Not exactly. I had my suspicions.”

  Persephone had gathered that much. “What if I hadn’t managed to break free? What then?”

  “Xenia would have come to help you, eventually.”

  “Eventually?” Persephone’s voice shook. “How long did you plan to leave me there?”

  Hades pressed her lips together. “I trusted you to find your own way.”

  “I could’ve been there for days!”

  “No,” Hades said firmly. “No matter what you think, no matter what Demeter might have said, you are destined for great things. Your gifts are unique and can be wielded like a sword—for good or ill. You need only learn to control them.”

  Persephone wanted to believe her but couldn’t. The way Hades spoke about her, like she was some kind of—like she was a goddess, not a fool getting in everyone’s way. That description suited Athena, Artemis... not her.

  She pressed a hand to her chest. Her wrists still bore marks, but they were already fading. “I touched—I killed—” Her throat closed over with tears. She had thought she’d cried them all out, and yet here they were, still more to fall.

  Hades looked toward the rise of the hill. “Not exactly. A shade cannot die twice.”

  “But then I—what—destroyed its soul?” Persephone asked, horrified.

  “Do trees have souls?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Hades narrowed her eyes. “What would you have me say? You broke something, yes. But what you found was worth the price.”

  Persephone glanced up at the wooden roof of the pavilion. Vines continued to crawl over the structure, filling every corner with greenery. She reached out her hand. “Stop,” she said.

  The plant stopped climbing, but continued to mature, revealing greenish-yellow umbels.

  “Beautiful,” Hades breathed.

  Persephone glanced over to find Hades staring at her, not at the foliage. Another time, she might have looked away, but now she held her gaze.

  Hades’ lips were as red as a pomegranate seed. It seemed like it had been so long since she’d felt those lips upon hers.

  “Please take me back to the palace,” Persephone said. “I must rest after my ordeal.”

  Hades was the first to look away. “Of course,” she said and stood, holding out her hand as a courtesy.

  Persephone took it, her fingers briefly entwining with Hades’ before she let go.

  In the chariot, she leaned against the side railing, placing as much distance between herself and Hades as possible. Hades said nothing, but her shoulders seemed stiff, her grip on the reins excessively tight.

  Persephone flexed her fingers, squeezing them into fists then releasing them. She would give Hades no cause to punish her a second time; she was done with being humiliated, frightened, tormented.

  Hades would never touch her again.

  18

  The Bathhouse

  The days passed swiftly after that. Her lessons with Stephanus progressed to the point where she no longer needed him and was reading on her own—texts on logic and history she left scattered around her room for Xenia to clean up, scrolls piling in untidy mounds until they spilled over onto the floor. Erato she took to her bed and read by candlelight, her lips moving to sound out the unfamiliar words, her cheeks flushing even though there was no one to observe her. She would bury those scrolls under old comedies and dry philosophical treatises, only bringing them out when she was certain of being undisturbed.

  Persephone slogged through a history of the underworld and read summaries of the major judgments from the last ten years. Most had been performed by the judges of the dead: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, but for special cases, like Pirithous and Theseus, Hades intervened.

  Hades bade her to sit and pass judgment from time to time, even allowing Persephone’s voice to sway her mind on a number of occasions. Persephone worked hard to persuade Hades to lessen the punishment of several long-serving residents of Tartarus, even going so far as to move a few repentant individuals to the Asphodel Fields. This change did not endear her to the judges of the dead, but Persephone could not be touched, so long as she held Hades’ f
avor.

  The wounds on her back healed. Her memory of the whip’s caress seemed to diminish in her mind, though she could not bring herself to forgive Hades for the insult. True to her word, Hades did not seek her bed. Persephone sometimes dreamed of what might have transpired if Hades had succumbed to her monstrous impulses that morning by the willow tree. Those dreams would leave her waking in a sweat, her mouth dry, her body racked with longing.

  Hades granted her dominion over a patch of land that encompassed the site of her punishment and the pavilion below it. Persephone had the remains of the willow tree cut down to the stump, and she planted around it—fruit trees, poplars, and a pair of new willows to either side of the pavilion.

  She spent as much time in her grove as she could but never tasted the sweet fruits of her work. Any food or drink that passed her lips continued to be imported from the overworld.

  Persephone never lost hope that she would one day leave this place, though her stay was not entirely unpleasant. She renewed her acquaintance with her grandfather, Kronos, and though he remained in Tartarus, Hades permitted his living standards to be much improved. Whether that was from compassion or belief in his professed change of heart, Persephone could not tell.

  Persephone threw down her knucklebones in disgust. “Again! Come now, surely you cannot be playing fair.”

  Kronos chuckled and wrapped his arm around her pile of drachmae, sweeping it to his side. “The bones never lie, my dear.”

  He looked much healthier these days, with his frame filled out and his musculature back to fighting order. His beard and hair had been trimmed, and he could almost be considered handsome once more. He sat with her at an actual table, no longer tormented, though a thick manacle encircled one of his ankles, binding him to his cell.

  “Another round?” he asked.

  Persephone shook her head. “Perdix said the new baths ought to be fit for use today. I intend to pay them a visit.”

  Kronos scowled. “Too much heat causes deficiencies of phlegm,” he said. “Why go to all the trouble when it ruins the constitution?”