"There are no 'if's," he whispered. "I would not allow any harm to come to you."
She turned, and found him staring at her in wonder, as if he couldn't believe she hadn't run away by now. Persephone smiled, wondering exactly when their hands on each other had become less for frantic reassurance and more for exploration.
"You are sure about this?" she asked, as he brushed a lock of sweat-damp hair out of her face.
The moment he nodded, her smile turned into a grin and she pressed against his chest, leaning her weight forward to push him onto his back.
*~*~*
Persephone stretched her arms over her head, smiling lazily as she watched Hades button his black shirt. “Have you ever thought about adding more color to your wardrobe?”
“No,” he said, giving her a suspicious look. “Why?”
“It’s a little drab down here, is all.”
“You’re calling me drab?”
“Not you. But your clothes… yes.”
“Cerberus’s puppies all have flower collars now. Isn’t that colorful enough?”
“No.” She waved her hand idly, and Hades found his black shirt was suddenly a deep shade of purple.
He changed it back, and Persephone laughed when she looked down at herself and found her dress was now pitch-black. “Not sure it’s my color.” His shirt turned robin’s-egg blue, and she arched her eyebrows. “Now what are you going to do? You’ve only got one color to play with.”
He shrugged. “More of it.” Her dress suddenly gained black lace sleeves, and black-and-gray frippery around the waist that would’ve rivaled anything her mother wanted her to sew.
“You really want me to be wearing more clothes?”
“Fair point.” His pants turned bright blue as well. “But this is war now, after all.”
“In that case, I’ll call a truce.” She grinned, and his pants and shirt disappeared entirely.
“Subtle,” he said, smiling as he rejoined her in bed.
“I thought so.” She traced a fingertip over his lips. “You remind me of Artemis sometimes, you know that?”
“How?” he asked.
“Neither of you smile enough. It’s wonderful when you do,” she said, pausing for a kiss before she went on. “The first girl I ever had a crush on looked so much like Artemis. Same brown skin, same black hair in tight braids. But she smiled all the time.”
“I think I could learn to do the same.”
“Not worried about your reputation?” she asked. Another kiss. “Somehow a cheerful, grinning Lord of the Dead doesn’t sound quite as intimidating.”
“Then I’ll leave you to do the intimidation part.”
Persephone laughed. “I am not intimidating!”
“I beg to differ. First time I saw you out in that meadow of yours I dropped back into the ground at the mere thought of speaking to you. Took me weeks to get my courage up.”
“And now look at you,” she said, taking a moment to do just that. “See where bravery gets you?”
*~*~*
The first inkling that Persephone had that something was wrong was when a spirit bumped into her, looking confused and scared. Three other spirits were chasing after it, all crying and pleading. Before she could ask what the matter was, the original spirit darted away, drawing the others with it.
She frowned and looked around, searching for other agitated souls. At first, she saw nothing.
Then she looked up.
Spirits unlike anything she’d seen before—awful skeletons with sharp black wings and empty smiles—carried other spirits in large eagle’s talons, soaring with them out of sight. She ran in the direction they were heading, screaming for help. She stopped screaming, her breath leaving her, when she saw that the attackers were diving down to the river Lethe, submerging the unfortunate spirits they were carrying.
There were thousands of attackers.
She saw a young woman, her hands outstretched to a child who recoiled in fear at the sight of her. Before she could even try to reassure the child, one of the skeletons caught her shoulders, flinging her into the river. She emerged from the water coughing, walking right past her son as if he were a total stranger.
The Erinyes attacked then, slicing through the skeletons as though they were made of the thinnest gossamer rather than bone.
She couldn’t just stand here.
Persephone knelt on the ground, pressing her hands to the black earth, and closed her eyes. She’d wound vines up and around a myriad of the cave walls days ago, bringing a multitude of colorful blooms to the once dank walls. Now she called them forth for another purpose, raising her eyes to the sky and watching as the vines shot out of the ground, entangling the skeletons and tearing them apart. Their bones fell harmlessly from the sky, twitching for a moment on the ground, and then they lay still.
She caught sight of Hades then, on the banks of the Lethe, battling with the skeletons that were trying to push grieving families into the water to join their lost kin.
Slashing a skeleton clean in half with a rose vine, she ran to Hades’ side. “What is this?” she exclaimed. “What are they?”
“Zeus,” he panted. “One of his armies. He’s the only one who could animate—” He stopped, cutting a skeleton’s head off its neck before it could tangle its hands in Persephone’s hair.
Persephone took a step back, and then she kicked the skeleton’s disembodied head into the River Lethe with an enraged scream.
“Mother!” she called. Then, remembering her mother’s hatred of this realm—she wouldn’t come here for any reason, not even to ‘rescue’ her—she called for Hermes instead. He appeared at once, wincing when he took in the carnage around him.
“Well. Can’t say I didn’t expect this, but it’s still not a pleasant sight.”
“Tell Zeus to stop!”
“Since when can I order the King of the Gods to do anything?”
“Hermes…” she growled, and before she could think about her actions, she grabbed hold of the messenger God’s collar and flung him down onto the riverbank, his hair nearly touching the milky white water. Before he could react, she straddled him, scooping up a palmful of the water. “Would you like to forget how to fly?”
Hermes swallowed hard. “I’ll see what convincing I can do, Persephone.”
“Good.” She let him up, and he instantly disappeared.
Moments later, the skeletons did as well.
Persephone sighed loudly and sank to the ground. The vines that had attacked the skeletons fell back to earth, draping this way and that, many giving her reassuring pats before they settled into the ground and rooted.
Hades crouched next to her, brushing her hair back from her face. “Are you all right?”
“No,” she whispered, and though he looked stricken and she knew he wanted to stay beside her, he couldn’t help but glance to the side to the weeping spirits, and Persephone nodded. “Go on.”
He cupped her cheek in a brief caress, and then began to move along the river, talking to spirit after spirit.
Then a mournful howl overtook all other noise, and Persephone clapped her hands over her ears. She looked downriver, and saw Cerberus standing on the bank of the Lethe. Her puppies were running away from her, water streaming from their fur.
Cerberus could be terrifying to her, and she knew her. What must she look like now to something as small as those puppies?
The three-headed dog howled again, the sound of her grief echoing around the Underworld. Not knowing what else to do, Persephone took off after the puppies. It might not do much good—they wouldn’t remember her either—but at least she could keep an eye on where they decided to hole up.
Finally, they went to ground in the Elysian Fields, underneath one of the pomegranate trees. They huddled in a miserable ball together, whimpering, the small noise turning to loud whines when she ventured too close.
“All right,” she said, holding up her hands as she backed away. “I’m not going to hurt you. Oka
y? I’m just going to sit down right here.”
She sat, talking to the puppies calmly even as anger roiled in her heart.
How dare they do this? She knew that her mother had been involved as well; after a close up look at the ‘bones’ of the skeletons she’d realized that many of them were bleached-white branches.
Zeus knew full well why she had run away, and if her mother would only be willing to look at what he truly was, then she would understand as well.
But that was something Demeter would never do. She was far too enamored of Zeus to ever hear an unkind word against him. She loathed Hera, for ‘not letting a man be a man’, not that she would ever say as much to the other Goddess’s face.
Maybe that was what she should do. Just let Hera know about all the griping Demeter had done about her over the centuries and wait for things to take their course.
Persephone looked away from the puppies, staring for several moments at the spirits milling around. Thinking about how many more spirits had come through since her mother had frozen the earth.
She heard the echo of Cerberus’s howl again, and closed her eyes. Tears leaked from beneath her lashes, and as they fell to the ground she pushed herself to her feet, unaware of the small red flowers that bloomed where her tears had landed.
*~*~*
Though Persephone knew what she had to do, she gave herself one more night.
There was no playfulness this time; they came together out of grief, out of a need for reassurance. He held on to her tightly afterward, and when she tried to apologize for everything that had happened, he pressed his forehead to hers and told her to stop.
“This isn’t your fault,” he said. “None of it. It’s Zeus and your mother.”
Out loud, she acquiesced, but she knew better. Hades lived down here, rarely venturing to Olympus, knowing about events on the surface only through the information that newly deceased spirits brought to him. She had lived with her mother, with Zeus and the others, for years. She knew their foibles, their powers…their tempers.
She was only lucky that they hadn’t done something like this sooner.
Persephone dipped a quill in ink—upon discovering that she liked to draw new ideas for flowers, Hades had brought in a beautiful marble desk, a set of quills, and inks in more colors than she could’ve imagined existed. Now she wrote instead of drew, memories she loathed streaming from the pen.
‘I’m sorry. You believe that none of this is my fault and I love you for that, but you’re wrong. I told you once that you reminded me of the first girl I loved. What I didn’t tell you was what happened to her.
Her name was Nemea. She was a dryad. I visited her forest whenever I could, and kept her a secret from everyone else on Olympus. I knew what had happened to Daphne.
But eventually, mother did find out. She asked me to explain. I said there was nothing to ‘explain’; the two of us loved each other. And she sighed and turned away and I foolishly thought that was the end of it. I went to Nemea’s forest the next day, and found her turned to stone. Mother told me to calm down, said that a simple dryad could never be good enough for a Goddess and that I would thank her someday.
They will not stop. What they’ve done so far is horrific enough; I’m not going to sit by again and believe everything will be all right if I just leave mother alone to calm down. I hope everyone who was exposed to Lethe’s waters will recover in time. I never should have involved you in this.'
Once she was finished writing, she looked back at him. He was sprawled across the bed...so used to sleeping alone. The first night she’d spent in his bed, he’d nearly kicked her out of it in his sleep.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. Then she conjured the pink dress she’d so happily done away with, her eyes stinging again as she looked down at the pale fabric draping over her body. She folded the beautiful one he’d had made for her and placed it on the desk, the letter on top of it. Then she turned and walked out of the room.
*~*~*
“Persephone!” Demeter ran to her, pulling her into her arms as she sobbed.
For a moment, Persephone felt a too-familiar combination of pity for her mother and self-loathing for herself— how could she have made her mother cry like this? What was wrong with her, that she’d upset someone who’d given up everything else in her life for her sake?—but then she remembered the snow and ice. Remembered Cerberus.
“Bring the sun back, mother,” she said. “There wasn’t any need to bring the humans into this.”
Demeter stepped back, hurt and confusion in her eyes. “Are you really going to start an argument now? Of course I’ll bring it back; I’ll do it right away. Don’t look at me like that, Persephone. How can you be angry at me for being upset that you were gone?”
Persephone closed her eyes. It felt like her heart, her entire body, was once again in a vise; compressing everything she was into misery and leaving no room for anything else. She tucked her left hand into her pocket, touching the small pomegranate she’d brought with her. “I’m not angry that you were upset, I’m angry that—”
“Shhh,” Demeter said, hugging her again. “I know. It must’ve been awful down there. But you’re home now. You’re safe.”
“I was safe—” Persephone began, but then Zeus’s voice interrupted her.
“There you are,” he said. “I knew Hades would let you go after my demonstration. Pity, but sometimes I have to put my foot down.” He grinned. “Bet he couldn’t wait to get you back up here once he saw my army.”
“I left of my own volition,” Persephone said. “Just as I went to him of my own volition.”
“Persephone…” Demeter whispered. “You mustn’t say such things.”
“Why?” Persephone asked. “He’s a God, isn’t he? Doesn’t that automatically make him good enough in your eyes?”
Demeter sighed. “Are you still upset over that little nymph? I swear, Persephone, I tried to raise you to not get overly emotional about things and yet—”
“Nemea.”
“What?”
“That was her name. Nemea.”
“All right, Nemea,” Demeter said with a wave of her hand. “The point is, what’s done is done and you’re home.”
“And from now on, if you want to go wandering around meadows, I insist on escorting you,” Zeus said. “Can’t risk something like this happening again, now can we?” He grinned, and Persephone felt the anger flood back into her.
“Dear,” Demeter whispered. “He just made a very generous offer; thank him!”
She didn’t know what she would’ve done if Artemis hadn’t come up just then, moving between her and Zeus, smiling as she took her hands. “Persephone! Oh, I’m so glad to see you again. We have plenty to catch up on. You don’t mind, do you?” she asked Demeter, not waiting for an answer before she led Persephone away. “I know it’s tempting,” she said once they were out of earshot, “but tearing out his eyes would end worse for you, in the long run.”
Persephone let out the breath she’d been holding, hating how shuddery and weak it sounded. “Might be worth it, still.”
“And never mind his offer to escort you,” Artemis said. “I spend enough time in the forests and meadows, you can accompany me.”
“Thank you,” Persephone said, but Artemis shook her head.
“No need. We have to stick together; otherwise Zeus and his brothers would run roughshod over all of us.” She shuddered. “Hades always unnerved me, but I never believed he would stoop so low as to—”
“He didn’t.”
Artemis stopped, turning to face her. “It’s true, then? Aphrodite said that Helios told her you ran into that meadow like your dress was on fire and straight to Hades, and only then did he descend. It contradicted so with what the other witnesses said that your mother ignored it…”
“And you did, as well?”
“Forgive me,” Artemis said, so sincerely that Persephone couldn’t help but nod. “Aphrodite can romanticize anything, and if you
were truly in danger I didn’t want to dismiss that out of hand.”
“I understand,” Persephone said. “Artemis, I…I was running because Zeus was chasing me.”
Anger flared in her eyes, but no surprise. “I see. I’ll have a word with Aphrodite and some of the others. We’ll make sure he won’t be alone with you.”
“Thank you. I—”
“Persephone!” her mother called. “Come on, now. You can gossip with your friends later.” When Persephone didn’t rush to her side, Demeter went to her. “We’ll make you a nice dress; you always loved doing that.”
“All right, mother,” Persephone said, and the vise tightened further.
*~*~*
Hades wandered the caves, ostensibly looking around but his true focus on the letter Persephone had sent him. He’d done his best to make the shades in his realm comfortable, but there’d only been so much he could do with an enormous series of gray, cold caves. Or so he’d thought. Now the flowers Persephone had grown, the beautiful ones vining up the walls, were dying.
He knew how they felt.
Retreating to his throne room, he found Cerberus lying next to the throne, staring at him with woeful brown eyes. Her puppies still hadn’t returned.
“I know, girl,” he murmured. He stared at the throne, remembering Persephone on her first day here, clambering up onto it in that ridiculous dress in an effort to avoid Cerberus.
For once, he found himself wishing for an invitation to one of the Muses’s parties. Any other attempt to see her, to bring her back, would be defying the will of Zeus. Hundreds upon hundreds of his shades had already been irreparably damaged by Zeus and Demeter’s attack. And for each of those hundreds who’d lost their memory, there were families and friends who were grieving them. He couldn’t risk another attack like that, or something even worse. The people under his care deserved better from him.
He was still tempted.
*~*~*
“Persephone?”
She looked up, glad to hear Aphrodite’s voice instead of her mother’s too-cheerful tones. Ever since she’d come back up to Olympus she’d been almost maniacally happy, acting like everything was perfect and she wasn’t essentially holding her child hostage.
Last Petal on the Rose and Other Stories Page 13
