Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  Minthe stared out at them in a daze, her vision blurred, listening to the menfolk barter for her company for the night. Phorbas and a wealthy mortal herdsman bid back and forth using their sheltered flocks of sheep as tender. The satyr surprised his opponent, pulling out a small leather bag and throwing it at Kokytos’s feet. The room gasped when a minae of silver coins spilled out. Kokytos picked up up the heavy purse. And with that Minthe was sold for six skinny ewes and a handful of silver.

  Phorbas took her by the wrist and led her away with a triumphant smile. He stopped next to the food-laden table and handed Minthe a large kantharos cup of unwatered wine. She sipped it and gagged, then took a draught to numb herself. The drink made her head spin. The mortals and immortals forgot the chill and desolation beyond, drowning in a sea of feast and flesh. They danced and swaggered all around her, their bellies filled with the same drink. Minthe saw a man sit a woman in her lap, nibble her earlobe and kiss down her neck before pulling the fibula from her one-shouldered exomie with his teeth. Her bared breasts were quickly covered with a pair of hands and her mouth claimed by the lips of another.

  A plate of seasoned deer meat was thrust in front of Minthe and she nearly vomited, her stomach rebelling, her mind screaming for her to run as far and as fast as she could.

  Women and men shed their clothes, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Kokytos beckon a nimble dryad to his throne. A nymph against the wall moaned, gripping a satyr’s curved horns as he burrowed his face between her thighs. Next to them she saw a youthful man’s hand, then lips wrap around a satyr’s member, his mouth forced further down as the same herdsman who lost the bid for Minthe sharply thrust into him from behind. She turned quickly back to the plate of meat, then bit down, juices flooding into her mouth.

  “Hungry, were you?” Phorbas fed her a few olives. His thumb lingered on her lips.

  Minthe nodded quietly and he gave her a bright smile. This satyr seemed pleasant enough. She was lucky, she supposed. He seemed kind. To stay here and eat and survive, the men had given away their fortunes, the women their bodies. But there were far fewer women here, she realized. Most would be pleasuring more than one man.

  Minthe froze, and what she had foolishly agreed to undertake dawned on her. She panicked. Perhaps she could get Phorbas intoxicated and escape. The whole court would collapse into a drunken stupor soon enough and she could flee with a full belly… perhaps take some fruit with her. Pomegranates and olives would keep in the cold. She would have a chance. She could board a ship in Ephyra and sail south, beyond the cold, beyond talk of Kore and Demeter and daughters traded like chattel.

  The plate before her was removed and Phorbas held up the strong wine, raising the glass to her lips and tipping it back. She let it fill her stomach. The cup pulled away, and the hard rim was replaced with the softness of his lips. She swallowed. Her limbs grew heavy. She floated. She felt him crush her against his body, his hard shaft rising against her pelvis. Her chiton was missing, she realized lethargically. He rubbed his cock between her closed thighs, hissing his restrained pleasure. Phorbas kissed Minthe again, his tongue pushing past her teeth to caress hers, suffocating her.

  “It’s better this way,” he muttered against her neck. “Now that you’re relaxed.”

  “Now that…” she slurred, then cried out as he took her where she stood, pulling her closer to him. Her legs stopped working, her head swam. She flailed her arms and tried to push at his chest but he held her tightly, inescapably. Phorbas pulled out half way, then pushed in with greater force. Lost, she thought, her body slackening. Lost. She surrendered and grew quiet.

  He dragged her under the table where they would be uninterrupted. Phorbas laid her back, supporting her head in one hand and pulled her thighs up to his waist with the other. He mounted her. Minthe turned away from him and stared at the wall. He grunted into her ear and her back rhythmically scraped against the cold floor. He kissed her tenderly and moaned soft praises that contrasted sharply with each painful thrust. A last tear fell into the tangle of her hair and she closed her eyes, nearly unconscious, the wine mercifully pulling her away from her aching body.

  Lost… lost… lost…

  ***

  Aidoneus and Persephone took the winding staircases down to the atrium entrance of the palace. Persephone lingered for a moment to look up at the dizzying heights of the great golden poplar tree that overhung the entryway before they made their way down the path to the river’s edge. Outside, shades flitted about, appearing from and dissipating back into the asphodel. Persephone walked at Aidon’s side. He looked to their left and held her back for a moment by the shoulder. A young girl in a tiny black chiton ran out and toddled across their path with a flower in her hand, giggling to herself without making a sound before vanishing into mist within the asphodel. Persephone smiled in the direction of the little shade, and realized that Aidoneus could hear her coming before she ran across their pathway.

  The River Styx looked far vaster once Persephone was standing next to it. Stalks of asphodel grew even higher here; a few were taller than she. The still water seemed to stretch on endlessly, the far shore lost in mist. The pathway from the palace atrium to the river itself was lined with carefully clipped cypress trees— no doubt the work of Askalaphos. They were a far cry from the unruly, gnarled trees in the grove at Nysa.

  “Charon was the first person I met when I arrived here. When I came to the shores of the Styx as the new king of this realm, he asked me to give him one of these,” Aidon said, fishing out two gold obolos. He picked up Persephone’s hand and folded her fingers around one of the obols. “And aeons later, I can’t for the life of me figure out what he does with all those coins.”

  She met his smiling gaze as he closed her palm and brushed his fingertips over her knuckles. Waves lapped against the shore, breaking the comfortable silence and drawing their attention. Persephone looked out to see a long gray boat bobbing on the water, its bowsprit peaked upward into three metal hounds’ heads, the center head holding a lamp in its teeth high above the water. On the stern, a dark figure sunk a long oar into the river and pushed toward them. The prow raked across the gravel of the shore as the hooded man walked the bracings to where they stood. He knelt low at the bow, his oar still in hand, and looked up at them from under the hood with a half smile. “Did you intentionally keep her from us for so long?”

  “Persephone, may I present Charon, son of Nyx, the ferryman of souls. And no, my friend, that was not my intention,” he said holding out his coin. Charon pocketed the obol and looked to Persephone’s extended hand holding out her own coin.

  “You…” he said with a voice like gravel as he waved her hand away, “You ride for free, my queen.”

  Aidoneus gaped at him before composing himself. “In all the years I’ve— Why?”

  Charon removed his hood, revealing a smoothly bald and very pale head with ashen gray lips and sunken cheeks under high cheekbones. He looked up at both of them with eyes that swirled with the deep grays and blues of the river, “Why ask questions to which you already know the answer?” He extended his hand to Persephone with a smile. “Come, my queen.”

  Persephone looked to Aidon first. When he nodded, she accepted Charon’s hand, picking her skirts up above the water’s surface as she stepped in. Aidon followed, settling beside her in the stern. Charon pushed the boat away from the shoreline and back into the calm waters of the Styx.

  As he steered the craft into the wide part of the river, Charon began humming a gentle song to himself. Persephone’s eyes opened wide and her lips parted. Her mother had sung that lullaby to her when she was a small child. He looked at her, and smiled when he saw that she recognized it.

  She squinted when a wisp of cloud passed under the water, echoing the sky in the world above. The wispy streak reflected in Charon’s changing irises. “If you don’t mind my asking, why do your eyes reflect the River?”

  Aidon snorted, then cleared his throat to cover his amusement, knowing
how the boatman might respond. Charon didn’t disappoint. “Is the Styx not my home? Do your eyes not reflect the blue sky of the world above and the gray fields of the world below?”

  Persephone paused for a moment, looking away as she pondered his words. Hecate had spoken earlier about her coming in to her powers now that she was Queen of the Underworld— her new home. She knitted her brows together at the boatman. “Do you always answer questions with questions?”

  He smiled. “Why should I give clear and solid answers to questions that flow as dark and mutable as the Mother River?”

  Aidon smiled as Persephone wrinkled her nose. “Forgive him, sweet one. He spends his days being interrogated by the shades.”

  Charon smiled apologetically. “Your husband speaks the truth. The sad thing is that it’s always the same question I’m asked, and I can only give them one answer: ‘Because you are dead’. So please forgive me, my lady, for my puzzles and riddles. My job demands them so I might comfort those who make the journey across the river— and also to keep myself entertained.” He dipped his oar into the Styx once more, then turned his head back toward Persephone. “Speaking of, my lady, I take it you recognized the song?”

  The lullaby. He knew. Persephone smiled in answer, saying nothing. Charon nodded his head to her and guided the boat onward. They floated slowly downstream toward marshes so wide that both shorelines were obscured by mist. Drowned cypress trees reflected deep into the mirror of the water, broken up by tall clumps of feathery gray rushes. A handful of shades of every age and station stood together on the far side of the river.

  “I’ll come back and get them later,” Charon said.

  “Who are we receiving now?” Aidon said absently, leaning his foot against the center bracing of the boat.

  “Well, the deluge of the very young and very old has ceased for the most part. But even now there’s more standing at the shore than I’d like. Can we safely assume the bad harvest is winding down?” Charon asked.

  Aidon held his breath and looked at Persephone, wondering whether or not he should have told her, and if she would be angry at him for not saying anything. She simply sighed and looked at the thin shades. “My mother…”

  Demeter throws a tantrum, Aidoneus thought, and the mortals suffer. He thinned his lips, remembering when Hermes first delivered the news. He looked down. “I should have told you.”

  Persephone hated to think that the mortals were suffering on her account. It was likely temporary. Her mother was none too happy about her coming here, but she had been part of arranging her betrothal to Aidon all those years ago. Persephone thought back to the tapestries hanging in the palace’s great hall, showing her mother, father and her husband during the war with the Titans. Their promise had sealed the Olympians’ pact.

  “I will see her again,” she said, as Aidon’s breath hitched. “Won’t I? She can visit me here, can’t she?”

  Aidoneus smiled in front of clenched teeth before he could speak without betraying his anger. “Of course she can.”

  He squeezed her hand protectively. What could Demeter possibly do to Persephone in a kingdom where he held absolute power?

  She saw four women, two standing and picking asphodel, two more weaving them into garlands. Another held a long stalk of the wispy grass, plucking a frond and tucking it into her hair. Their forms were as solid as her own. They were beautiful and dark haired, stood as Charon's boat passed. Wings, as delicate and transparent a butterfly's own, unfolded behind them. The bowed their heads when they saw Persephone.

  “Who are they?”

  “Stygian nymphs. They lived here long before I arrived,” Aidon said, leaning back.

  She remembered what she knew of Olympus and the station of nymphs there. “Are they your servants?”

  “No. I leave them to their own devices.” His mouth perked up. “I pride myself on having no need of slaves here. That is a… decadence of the world above.”

  Charon piped up. “Would you like to see the marshes and river lands of Acheron up close, my lady? The Styx flows into and out of it to the black sea beyond— Oceanus. From there we receive the souls lost at sea in the world above. Usually I land here.” Charon pointed to the smooth limestone docks leading from the marshes to the fields beyond the near shore, “and the shades go up that wide path to be judged at the Trivium,” he said, motioning up the cobblestone path. At the distant end of the path loomed an enormous frieze of black granite supported by four rows of columns.

  “Where do they all go?”

  “To Asphodel, mostly,” Aidoneus replied. “It’s very rare that we send someone to Tartarus.”

  “We?”

  “Aeacus, Rhadamanthys, and his brother Minos. They were kings of men and mortal sons of Zeus when they were alive. They sit in judgment over most of the shades and decide by vote,” he said. “There was a time when I presided over all the judgments, but the mortals’ numbers grew too great. Now, I only personally preside over the trials of kings and other rulers, so that my judges will not be prejudiced either for or against them. I don’t want rivalries from their temporary lives affecting the eternal fate of those sent here. I also need to remind the wealthy and powerful that their status in life means nothing once they get here.”

  Persephone’s mouth grew dry. “A-are we going to visit Tartarus?”

  Aidon ran his thumb along her clenched knuckles. “No, sweet one. Rest assured I will never take you there.”

  “But it is part of your— our kingdom.”

  “There are things down there that no one has seen since the war. And certainly not anything I should expose you to.”

  The reeds of the marsh parted and Charon rowed the boat toward the delta of the rivers. More caves emptied onto the shoreline and she knew that they led to the world above. Lone figures, pale and dressed in funerary garb, walked listlessly from the caverns to stand and wait.

  “The other shore… is this river the boundary of the Underworld?”

  “The physical boundary, yes.”

  “Physical boundary… what do you mean?”

  “Well, surely we require more… hindrances to keep the living from the dead. The Styx is one such boundary. But there are more. Many more.”

  “Fates,” Charon interrupted. “Can you imagine living souls standing at the shore trying find their dead kin?”

  “Precisely,” Aidon said, remembering the last time a mortal had trespassed. “That's why there must be more boundaries between worlds than just the physical.”

  A tributary, red as blood, flowed away from the Styx and into the distance. Its banks were lined with black hooded shades staring vacantly into the waters.

  “The Cocytus,” Aidoneus said. “The judges will send some there for a time, to reflect on their actions in life. They stare into the river to see the pain they have caused. Some must stare for… a long time.”

  The tributary disappeared behind a hill, the land and gray clouds flickering and glowing orange and red in the distance. Persephone swallowed and pointed at the smoldering horizon. “Is that light from Tartarus?”

  “How does something shine when it destroys the light?” Charon mused, turning to look back at her.

  Aidoneus shot the boatman a warning glance. “The glow comes from the fires of the molten river Phlegethon. It surrounds the Pit of Tartarus and keeps us safe,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist.

  “Safe from what?”

  Charon and Aidoneus exchanged a glance, then stared at her.

  Persephone shivered before answering her own question. “The Titans.”

  “Yes,” Aidon said solemnly. “You’ll never need to worry about them, sweet one. Tartarus is as far below us as Chthonia is below the living world.”

  “Chthonia? I don’t—” Persephone looked away, embarrassed. She should have learned all these things long ago. Lord Hades rules the land of the dead… She knew no more than that. Persephone looked down at her lap and plaited her hands together. Aidon brought his arm up her b
ack, massaging her shoulder.

  “In the old tongue, Chthonia means ‘beneath the earth’. The mortals call this place ‘Hades’, but it's been here far longer than I have ruled it,” he said quietly. Her face fell. “Persephone, it’s all right. I imagine this is a bit overwhelming. Honestly, I think I had far more questions than you when I first arrived…”

  “Oh, you were terrible, Aidon!” Charon interrupted, making Persephone smile. The ferryman stood upright, stiffened his shoulders so he looked taller, and lowered his voice doing an impression of her husband in his younger days. “‘What’s this? Who’s that? How does this work? I want to change the way we do that! Why can’t I change it?’ You were an utter terror your first century here!”

  Charon rowed on one side, turning the boat around. Aidon would have reprimanded the boatman, but he was too busy melting. It was the first time his wife had laughed in his presence— by far the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. Persephone covered her mouth and stopped, thinking she had offended Aidoneus. She looked up at him smiling broadly at her and relaxed as he held her by her arms again, leaning her back onto his chest. She giggled once more. He planted a slow kiss on the top of her head and breathed in the scent of her hair, sending a shiver down her spine.

  They docked on the far side of the river, the waiting shades kneeling as Aidoneus climbed out of the boat and landed shin deep in the water. He lifted Persephone into his arms and walked up the embankment, setting her down once they reached the shore. With a quick brush of his hand, his sandals and the soaked edges of his himation instantly dried.

  She waved goodbye to Charon as the assembled souls stood and climbed cautiously into his boat, a coin in each of their hands. Charon’s soul-laden boat pushed off from the shore, and Persephone felt Aidon wrap an arm around her. The boatman raised his long oar to salute them.