Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  “There is nothing to negotiate. I kept my end of Deme’s bargain. I have been patient long enough. Persephone is due to me.”

  “Demeter will never agree.”

  His mouth went dry. “You and her mother swore her to me on the banks of the River Styx. A binding oath on the Styx, Zeus. Did either of you think I would forget?”

  “I never said I wouldn’t honor it.”

  “What about Demeter?”

  “You know she’s too stubborn to let her girl go.”

  “Persephone has been a woman, a full-fledged goddess, for nearly a millennium. Longer, perhaps.”

  “That doesn’t matter to Deme. Persephone will always be her Kore.”

  Aidoneus clenched his teeth. “Then what do you suggest?”

  “Take her.”

  “That’s it?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “I sired her; my consent is all you need to marry her. You want her? It’s done. She’s yours. Find Persephone and take her.”

  “I can’t just… have her. What do you expect me to do? Turn into a swan? Rain down around her in a shower of light?” he said. “Those are not my ways.”

  “I know, Aidon,” Zeus said, shaking his head. “You are too reserved, too somber. There’s no way you can seduce her outright.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring,” he said, stung.

  “I’m not giving you an impossible task. You command more than just the dead; you can find ways to her that are closed even to me.” Zeus shifted on the throne and rested his chin on his hand, knitting his brow. Then he smiled. “I may have something to help you along… Eros!”

  The winged youth raised his bow, his arrow already nocked, took aim, and loosed. Aidon caught the golden arrow and winced, his hand clamped around its head, inches from his heart. He opened his fist. Parallel wounds from the razor sharp edges closed themselves. His blood quickened as he held the golden arrow in his shaking hands.

  Heart racing, his head grew light, and he shifted his stance to steady his feet underneath him. Flashes of russet hair, a soft female voice, the twirling skirt of a green linen chiton, grass-stained knees, and delicate, flower-trimmed ankles invaded his thoughts. He looked at Zeus with a mixture of bewilderment and fury. “Was that necessary?!”

  Zeus laughed. “We shall see.”

  2.

  Moist soil gave way to tender blades of grass and a host of flowers. Kore waved her hand over the barren earth at the banks of a stream and bright green shoots appeared in its wake. A twirl of her fingers drew gentle buds up from the ground.

  “Larkspur, milady?” said Minthe, brushing her blonde hair behind one ear. “I doubt your mother would want even more in this field. Why not something else?”

  “I’m feeling... uninspired right now,” she said, annoyed by Minthe’s high-pitched voice. Though Kore was older than Minthe, she looked younger, and her more youthful appearance made the naiad’s cosseting chafe all the more.

  It would be worse if Athena and Artemis were here. Though older than them by aeons, she still retained the countenance of a youth and they looked so… womanly. She was not alone among the immortals in her youthful appearance. Eros, Demeter would remind her, looked as young as she did and was nearly as ancient as Kore. She sighed. Perhaps that was what her domain would always mean for her. Flowers and budding shoots were young and she was their goddess. Kore frowned. And because of this, she thought— remembering that her cousins had been elevated to the Dodekatheon while she had not— she would always be a goddess of little consequence or responsibility.

  Kore made short strands of larkspur and wove them about her wrist, then a strand around each of her ankles, contrasting the white blooms against her short, sage green chiton. Kore looked down at her bare legs. Though youthful, she was ages past her flowering and the same as every other woman who had her monthly courses, she wanted to wear the longer belted dresses of an adult, and to wear her russet brown hair braided up in a beautiful chignon.

  Kore dropped her gaze, frustrated.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Minthe asked. “You’ve been like this all afternoon.”

  “Nothing…” she lied, looking to the storm raging around Olympus. While she had begged her mother to let her come today, she was now glad that Demeter had refused. The dark clouds and lightning did not lie: there must have been a terrible disagreement today.

  The sweet sound of pipes in the distance caught her ear. A plucked string from a lute answered the pipes and grew louder, closer. She heard laughter. Kore started walking toward the music.

  “Lady Kore, we mustn’t. It’s the mortals! Your lady mother forbids us to go near them.”

  Kore giggled. “The way you talk, they sound like monsters! Honestly, Minthe, we have nothing to fear.”

  “I really shouldn’t stray too far from the river, milady, please…” Minthe implored her. Her immortal spirit was rooted to the riverside, vulnerable anywhere else. Kore rolled her eyes.

  “Then stay. I’m going to see what they’re doing,” she said, quickening her pace.

  “But your mother—”

  “I won’t tell her if you won’t!” Kore called out behind her. Minthe nervously wrung her hands before disappearing into the grasses in a flash of green.

  Kore ran toward a grove of venerable oaks and peered around the thick trunk of a tree. The villagers from Eleusis were casting white flowers into the wind around a tent they had erected in the clearing. From under a saffron cloth emerged a man and woman smiling at each other, followed by one of her mother’s white-cloaked priestesses. They paraded around the tent with other guests, then sat at a small table while the rest gathered around. On the table were two small barley cakes alongside straw effigies of Kore and her mother that were draped with vibrant flowers.

  She smiled. It was a wedding party!

  The woman wore a long saffron peplos and a crown of laurel and olive. The man, bare shouldered and tanned, fed a cake to the woman. The bride picked up her cake and fed him a bite. They kissed, and the crowd cheered again.

  Kore clapped her hands together with the host of friends and family. From her hidden vantage at the edge of the clearing, she felt a tinge of loneliness.

  The couple entered the tent at the behest of the Eleusinian priestess, kissing each other, their friends cheering them on lasciviously. A short, red-cheeked man poured barley beer, and the guests passed ceramic cups to the renewed melodies of lute, pipes and tambourine. Kore crept into the clearing, casting a glamour of invisibility over herself as she approached the wedding party.

  Through the swirling music and dance she heard a cry from the woman. Was she hurt? She found herself in the middle of the revelers, close enough to see through the fabric of the woven tent. Their saffron nuptial robes lay in a heap on the floor. The man and woman lay beside each other amidst blankets and cushions and strewn flowers, his hand trailing down her neck to her breast. When his fingers reached its apex, he gave her nipple a little pinch. As she cried out, Kore looked at her face. She was smiling, and curled her body against the man. He took the stiffening peak in his mouth and kissed her breast, his hand now sliding downward, fingers gently moving through the thatch of hair between her thighs.

  The woman bucked and gasped, her hand caressing the man’s chest and shoulders. Kore felt something deep within her start to tighten and coil, making her suddenly, and strangely, very aware of the place between her thighs. The woman turned and grasped at a part of the man, unseen to Kore, the woman’s hand moving in long strokes. His face contorted in a strained sigh and he moved over his new wife, kissing her lips and pushing her hand away from his loins.

  The woman parted her legs, lifting her knees above the man’s waist and staring up into his eyes. Kore looked on, wide-eyed, as he pushed slowly forward. The woman’s mouth opened and her eyes squeezed shut, her fingers curling as she grasped her husband’s back. The man paused to stroke her forehead.

  He leaned down, kissed her, and pushed forward again. The look of agony on
the woman’s face intensified, then melted away as he brought his hips to rest inside hers. The husband embraced his wife again, moving in a slow rhythm between her thighs, drawing her closer, kissing her, and caressing her breasts. The wife raised her legs higher, slender calves alongside his back, her hands raking his shoulders as she moaned her pleasure.

  Her knees lifted to his shoulders, ankles crossed behind his waist, and Kore now saw between their bodies. A hard shaft of flesh protruded from the man and thrust rhythmically into the woman. Kore felt her insides coil tighter and her thighs squeeze together. Her nipples hardened and chafed against her dress.

  The woman cried out and moaned, arching toward her husband. The man rose above his wife and his hips thrust faster through her. Kore’s heart beat out of her chest, her breathing paced in time with the woman’s strained cries, and then the man groaned and collapsed onto his wife.

  They unwound together, breathing heavily, skin glowing with sweat. The man pulled out of the woman, his engorged flesh softening as he held her close, kissing her and whispering sweet praises into her ear, thanking the gods that he had her as his.

  So this is how these mortals worship each other, she thought. The ache of loneliness grew stronger as she turned away from the tent.

  The sky had become golden, small clouds tinted with pink on their undersides as they traversed the sky. She left the wedding party and walked back toward the meadow. Kore felt an unexpected slickness between her legs and blanched. It wasn’t her moon cycle; that had ended a week ago. She reached under her dress, and shivered when she touched her nether lips, inexplicably swollen and… wet. Kore looked at her glistening fingers.

  She raised an eyebrow. This was new— a fluid that wasn’t water or moon blood, but flowed slick and clear between her fingers. Kore bent to wipe it through the grass as she walked. A thick shrub bearing clumps of white, pungent flowers grew from where she trailed her dripping fingers.

  Kore sighed, knowing she would have to explain this new hedge to her mother. She made herself a crown of the pretty little flowers. It would be a decent excuse. She walked on, her mind filled with questions and a strange yearning for something unknown and unexpected. She’d felt loneliness before, had felt it painfully since her mother had moved them back to Eleusis from the fields of Nysa a millennium ago, but never this acutely. Oftentimes, it was a loneliness and boredom she could deal with on her own, busying herself with the simple acts of creation her mother taught her— her divine role as the Maiden of the Flowers. But this feeling… this wasn’t anything she could possibly solve or satisfy alone. It tormented her— flooding her with a strange ache and curiosity.

  The images of the husband and wife in the tent played back and forth in her mind, one to the other. Nature had been a part of her as long as she had existed. She knew what mating was, that most creatures needed to do so to create more of their kind. But what she saw today, the motions made, the things done, the dizzying heights to which the husband had taken his wife and what she had in turn brought to him had little to do with making more humans. If that was what they wanted, the man would have just mated quickly with her to plant his seed at the proper time in her cycle, like deer or rabbits, and that would be the end of it. But he’d taken his time. He’d ensured that she enjoyed it. And the look on the woman’s face, the convulsions of her body, confirmed it. To see pleasure and desire and love… she’d only heard whispered stories…

  Questions were all she had now, and there was only one person who could answer these riddles for her— one who had loved and had been loved, one who knew what it all meant. Her mother. The sky lit up in a soft flare of reds and purples. Demeter appeared, her emerald-pinned blue peplos echoing the colors of the sky, under a flowing gold mantle that matched the barley fields beyond Eleusis. The wind came in from the sea and whipped her long robes about her. Kore’s feet padded through the grass, faster as she grew closer, eager to have her answers before it was time to rest for the night. She wrapped her arms around Demeter. “Mother!”

  “Kore!” she caught her daughter and held her close, relieved. Her face was creased with worry. “Where have you been?”

  “There was a wedding near Eleusis. I went to watch.”

  Demeter frowned. “Is that where you got those flowers in your hair?”

  “Not exactly…”

  “Tell me the truth, Kore. You didn’t speak to anyone there, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t even let anyone see me. And the flowers are new. My creation,” she said, turning once on her toes before walking toward the sunset. “I think I’ll call them lilacs.”

  Kore raised her left hand over the fields and gently closed her fingers to her palm. All the flowers followed suit, resting for the night. “Mother?”

  “Yes, dear one?”

  “Will I ever get married?”

  Demeter halted in her tracks and pursed her lips, struggling to hide her distress from Kore. Had he come unseen to visit her? Hades has been unknown and unseen by most of the Olympians since the war. Who knew what tricks he’d learned during all his aeons in the darkness? He could be capable of anything. Demeter quickly schooled her expressions. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I…” she flushed and looked away from her mother. “The man and woman at the wedding looked so… so happy when they were alone together in their wedding tent. I just wonder if…”

  Demeter watched her daughter twist. She smiled, relaxing. He hadn’t come to her, and Kore was still innocent. It shone through in every turn of her ankle and her hands clutching at the edges of her chiton. She tried to explain the best she could. “Darling, what you saw wasn’t true love, it was just lust. They were pricked by Eros, and their love will die someday. The husband will take a hetaera or a lover, and the wife will be shut away in his home to bear his children. The love of men is fleeting. It is the way of things.”

  “He told her how much he loved her, that he would never leave her,” Kore said, walking beside Demeter. She watched her mother shake her head, a disappointed grimace on her face. Kore knew that look well. “And… and he said that he was so very happy the gods had let him find her, Mother. That didn’t sound fleeting to me.”

  Demeter stopped and turned to Kore, trying to keep irritation from creeping into her voice. “Child, you might be aeons old, but you are still young in the ways of the world. The only lasting love is that between a mother and her children. I am sparing you the agony of a husband who lords himself over you, then breaks his oaths and your heart. Please learn from my folly, my bitter experience. This is what’s best.”

  Kore wilted as they resumed their walk through the field. Twilight descended, washing the fields in a pale pink. A tall oak rose over the hill as they crested it. Maybe her mother was right. After all, her father had left Demeter to wed another, and even then had not found his wife’s attentions to be enough. The ongoing tales of his philandering had been impossible to avoid. But not all men were Zeus, were they? “Maybe it would be different for me,” she muttered under her breath.

  Demeter spun about to face her. “No, it most certainly would not. And don’t ever believe any man who would tell you otherwise, Kore. Men will say and do anything to have… that.”

  “Have what?”

  “What they all want: a girl’s maidenhead. They think to possess and own a woman once they take it, and they will say anything, do anything, to claim it. What you saw the man doing to that woman in the tent was all he wanted or cared to have from her.”

  “Doing to her? But she,” her cheeks burned and her voice grew small, “she looked like she enjoyed it.”

  “Did she now?” Demeter knit her brow. “At first, even?”

  Kore recalled the pain on the Eleusinian woman’s face, the anguished cry. “No. But—”

  “You saw how he hurt her when he took her. Kore, she clung to him out of desperation, not love, through the rest of the act once she realized what he had done— that she was a maiden no more. It is what is expected of wives. The
y must submit to the demands of their husbands. If she did not, he would have taken it from her anyway and with greater harm to her. When women fall foolishly into the bonds marriage— or worse and more often these days, when they are sold by their fathers— then they are obligated to submit their bodies to their husband. The woman you saw today only chose to go along with him to avoid more pain than he had already caused her.”

  Kore looked at the ground and felt tears sting the corners of her eyes before she willed them away. Ownership. Submission. The loss of her very self, if she were no longer a maiden— no longer Kore. Her wise mother was right. It was foolish to wish for a husband, despite the softness and love and unbounded joy she had witnessed. What if Demeter’s prediction was correct and they despised each other later and her husband strayed from her so he could claim another? Perhaps she should be glad that she was to remain a maiden, just like her cousins Athena and Artemis, and would never endure the shame of that.

  “And those poor mortals,” Demeter went on. “Half the women don’t even survive childbirth. Including the woman you saw today.”

  Kore looked up at her mother in horror. “That can’t be true! Please tell me that’s not true.”

  “Kore, you know as well as I do that Eleusis calls on me to bear witness to their marriages. I can foresee their fates and that’s the most likely cause of her inevitable death. I cannot stop her from passing to the Other Side.”

  “Mother, no! Please, these are your people! Surely there is something you can do?”

  “It is not my role to decide who lives and who dies. And it is the natural order. All men and women must die, or mankind would overrun the earth.”

  “But can’t you at least save just this one woman, Mother?”

  “No, child. Those decisions are for the Realm of the Dead.”

  The look on her daughter’s face made Demeter wish she hadn’t let her current worries cloud her words. Even talking about that godsforsaken realm might pique Kore’s boundless curiosity. The immortal Olympians shouldn’t bother themselves with death anyway, and her little flower didn’t need to trouble herself with these things. Kore was panic stricken, and looked helpless. Demeter immediately regretted filling her daughter’s mind with such dreadful thoughts right before bed.