Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  “Perhaps.”

  “It was your willing sacrifice!”

  “Yes. You see? We are of like minds. A better world does requires sacrifice.” He turned around to her, a flash of metal, gleaming in the firelight, held tightly in his right hand.

  She went cold. Her lungs refused to work. Her limbs went slack.

  “You said so yourself.” He advanced on her. “We all return to the earth. And through you its essence will flow into me. After all, the channel into the earth that our act has opened—”

  She didn’t let him finish his sentence. She couldn’t cry out. It would alert the guards. Delphinia ran, bolting for the door. The air took her breath away, freezing her lungs. The frost on the ground tore at the skin on her bare feet. She tripped over the oak branch that marked the entryway to her home. She scrambled, flailing into a crouched run, like a hind bolting its hunter.

  Colder… even colder now… why so cold? Delphinia’s brain muddled, fighting to stay alert, to glean and understand… Gaia forgive her, she’d been a fool… Her thoughts were a haze and she was dizzy, the world spinning around her.

  Wind bit at her skin, digging deep into her blood. Her footsteps were marked by drops of blood. So cold… He’d cast aside her linen wrap. He’d captured it as she’d fled out the door. Hadn’t he? She swore it was tight around her shoulders a moment ago. The golden knife— no, it was a short, bejeweled sword— tensed in his hand. The guards stood motionless. “Help me! Please!”

  One of them looked away from her.

  “Please! I’m a priestess of your gods! Have mercy… mercy!”

  She wrapped her arms around her. A mile. Delphinia limped. I can run to the next house. Please… she willed her legs to move, but they wouldn’t. She wobbled as the man closed on her. The air grew colder still and she fell into warm arms. Despite all, she cried for help until the words lost meaning, and struggled until the cold sapped her strength.

  “Your gods…” He rasped against her ear. “Where are they now, priestess? Do they deserve the power you surrender to them?”

  “Holy Cerulean Queen hear my cry,” she prayed, her words slurred. “Daughter of Rhea deliver me from—”

  “Quiet now. She cannot hear you. And if she did, Demeter would not care. The gods hate us. But you, my lady… you will help me rebuild what they destroyed… set right what they ruin time and time again… and free mankind from the gods themselves. A better world…”

  “You will burn in Tartarus! Your body will be ash… your screams will fill the Land of the Dead!”

  He smiled. “I’m not going there except by my own free will. I assure you.” He stroked her cheek. “Now fear not, priestess. Your beloved earth calls for you.”

  A sting of cold bit at her neck and warmth trickled over her freezing skin. Delphinia’s fingers grew numb. Her legs went limp under her but he held her steadfast. The night grew brighter. Frost glimmered, each point of light blurring with the light of a thousand haloed stars. She felt the sensation of him letting go, of her falling. The earth cradled her and the light blindness and cold ceased.

  He stood over her body. Her warmth and the tendrils of her connection to the earth flowed through him. It filled his veins and bones and loins. He hardly felt the wind. His hand pressed against the oak tree that shaded her home. The full strength of the earth rushed through him, filling and renewing him. His men put the priestess’s home to the torch.

  The oak’s leaves shook and gave up their hold on the branches all at once, drifting across the barren meadow. Mingling with their dark edges were flurries of white flakes, frozen and beautiful, biting at his skin as they drifted on the wind. He felt all the woman’s essence, her connection rise into him, becoming part of him. Then the wind stopped, and white flakes and clumps fell from the sky and covered the ground.

  Sisyphus smiled.

  ***

  Teach me…

  Persephone’s whispered words scalded Aidoneus. All he could think about was her body pressed to his, the thin layers of cloth the only barrier between them. He brought her harder against him with one arm and locked his lips to hers. With his left hand, he reached out, enveloping them in black smoke, ready to transport them through the ether to the world above. Her eyes closed and her tongue danced with his as the Underworld vanished around them.

  Nysa, he thought.

  She felt them being pulled through, the silver and crimson light of the ether whipping about them as they traveled together. Persephone broke away from their kiss. The black smoke that had lifted them out of the Underworld condensed under their feet to hold them aloft, solid against the infinite expanse of the Void. All was quiet. Vertigo gripped her as it had the few times she transported with her mother. Persephone didn’t know if the silver light and clouds were twisting about them, or if they were falling headlong through them. The journey took much longer this time. She looked down to see the rings on Aidon’s hand glowing fiery red. She gripped his shoulders tighter, and he responded by pulling her closer to his chest. She felt safe and secure against him as she tried to blot out the very real fear of falling through the ether forever, lost in the spaces between worlds.

  “We’re almost through,” Aidoneus said, then braced himself, his legs apart, supporting her. She watched as the light gave way, threads of silver pulling back from them to be replaced with darkness. Stars appeared, the brighter ones with peculiar haloes around them. Silhouettes of wild cypress blocked out the midnight blue of the sky and the stars above. She knew this place…

  The ethereal threads disappeared entirely and he almost reluctantly released his grip on her, watching as she slid down and away to stand on her own two feet and look around. Aidoneus could see his breath before he felt the cold. It was curious; foreign. He looked down and saw Persephone shivering, her arms held around her sleeveless shoulders. He quickly unwrapped his himation and draped her within its folds, gritting his teeth against the bite of the cold air.

  She felt the warmth of his body radiating from the soft wool, his fresh, masculine scent caught in the heavy folds of cloth. Persephone startled, realizing where they were. It was the grove; this was Hades’s sacred grove at Nysa. She closed her eyes, remembering when she lay here in the dappled sunlight, his unseen fingers teasing and caressing her naked skin as she reached ecstasy for the first time, her back arching in the soft celery grasses of the clearing.

  It seemed like a lifetime ago. She reached down to the ground. The wild celery had dried brown, their dead husks turning to dust in her hands. The asphodel showed no flowers, and their black stems stuck up out of the ground. She saw her breath in front of her face and looked at Aidon. His teeth were chattering. “Aidon, you’re freezing…”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. She ignored him and pressed her warm body against his, wrapping the heavy fabric around both of them.

  “Why is it so cold?”

  “I don’t know.” They looked up, the frost-haloed stars disappeared behind dark clouds. An infinitely tiny speck floated out of the sky and drifted between them, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Another followed, then another, then the air around them was full of gently falling cold flakes. They clumped together as they spun through the air cascading into one another. One tiny clump landed on Persephone’s nose, melting instantly.

  Persephone wiped the droplet and examined it on her hand. “This isn’t possible. It only snows on the very highest mountaintops. Higher than Parnassus, even…”

  Snow fell about them in the field. It melted when it hit the ground, but the dead plants and tree branches held it aloft, their topsides slowly turning white. Demeter wouldn’t do this; she couldn’t, Aidoneus thought. “We should go back.”

  “No. Please Aidon. I want to try.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I’m warm enough. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  He thought back to when Zeus, Poseidon, and he carefully scaled the wind-whipped face of Mount Othrys all those aeons ago. “I’ve fe
lt cold worse than this. At least there’s no wind. Something here is off balance, though. If you don’t mind, I’m going to skip ahead a bit in our lessons and have you send us back to the Other Side.”

  “Aidon, I’m not powerful enough to—”

  “Yes you are.” He stepped away from her warmth and lifted her chin to look into her eyes. He closed his hand around hers, her fingers lacing through his alongside the rings. “I wouldn’t have asked you to do this unless I knew you could.”

  “H-how do I even start?”

  “Close your eyes,” he said as she did so without hesitation. “Breathe with me, now. In and out.”

  Persephone inhaled through her nose and exhaled slowly, following as he breathed with her. She could only feel his hand gripping hers and the ground beneath her feet.

  “Whatever you may be thinking about, Persephone— any limitations, any feelings, anything at all— let them go. There is only you, the immortal goddess, and there is only the place you want to be. Concentrate.”

  Grow, she thought. Persephone felt her other hand raise almost on its own, her fingers bending toward the earth, her wrist curling upward. Aidoneus watched as a dark stalk sprouted out of the freezing earth, turning green and almost glowing as it lifted. One six-petal asphodel blossom opened along its length, then another. She could see it in her mind as the petals peeled back, their anthers unfurling, their stamen standing on end. She frowned, “I only made a flower, Aidon. I’m not—”

  “Concentrate!” he said sharply. Aidoneus felt an echo of energy surge all the way through him from the earth itself and flow out to her through their joined hands. His rings smoldered like coals.

  Upward through her feet, outward through her hands, and pulsing like the touch of her husband through her core, she felt the raw earth and all that lay beneath it surge into her. With a turn of her wrist, she channeled it through her outstretched fingertips. The asphodel stalk grew faster, the top bursting with an impossible mass of buds.

  In her mind she saw fire— Aidon’s chariot in the bowels of the earth outside Erebus, just before he claimed her. She saw the wreath from her hair, in her betrothed husband’s uplifted hand, the ashes flying away as the heat set it aflame. She remembered picking the asphodel to make that wreath from this very ground, how the red-orange anthers had ignited as they traveled through the fires of the earth.

  As the buds opened in front of her outstretched hand, one ember emerged, then another, swirling, the flames increasing as more buds opened in orange flames. The fire itself became a blazing ring that stretched in front of them, flaring with heat, melting the snow that clung to the plants around them.

  Through the ring of fire, Aidoneus saw the silver threads of the ether and smiled triumphantly. They pulled and tugged at the flames and latched themselves to a speck in the distance that grew wider, coming into focus and pulling their destination toward them. He could make out the garden of the palace, the stone walls, and the fields beyond. His mouth dropped open as a shiver crept up his spine in a mixture of arousal and astonishment. This was impossible— no one could bridge the ethereal reach this way. Except for his wife. Aidoneus had been wrong— intriguingly wrong about her— Persephone was a goddess beyond his reckoning.

  She opened her eyes and shuddered out a long breath, staring into the fire, her arm outstretched toward its center. She felt her husband’s wonder and admiration; she felt the earth’s energy and the pull of the fire. “The Phlegethon,” she breathed.

  It was only when she whispered it that Aidoneus recognized the circle of flame. He opened his eyes wide and a very old emotion he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in aeons came rushing through him. Fear. She was drawing the fires from Tartarus itself. He swallowed hard. “Persephone…”

  Help me.

  The voice was small— too small for him to notice. “I hear someone—”

  “Persephone, don’t listen to him! Close the gateway now! Close it!” he shouted at her.

  “No,” she replied calmly. Persephone felt his fear pulse into her hand and looked back to comfort him. “It’s all right, husband.”

  Aidoneus flinched and leaned back as she turned to him. Her pupils were rimmed in fire, glowing an orange that matched the circle before them. She calmly turned back to the pathway. For a moment he considered letting go of her hand, breaking the Key’s connection to the ether and their home beyond, but feared that she would be pulled in and lost to either the Pit or the Void. He had to try to reason with her. “Persephone; wife, do not listen to him! No matter what he—”

  “She. It’s a woman,” she paused, listening, “Her name is Merope.”

  “Merope?” He had never sent anyone to Tartarus by that name. His brow knitted in confusion, and fear was slowly replaced by curiosity. He closed his eyes and connected with Tartarus all the way through her body toward her outstretched fingertips, focusing on the gateway she created. He listened for the voice.

  Please help me, it said. I don’t belong here.

  “They all say that,” he scoffed, withdrawing from it.

  “Sisyphus…”

  Aidoneus stopped. Now that was a name he recognized.

  “Sorcerer king of Ephyra,” Persephone continued. “Merope was his wife. He tricked them.”

  “Tricked who?”

  “The brothers. Your judges, Minos and Rhadamanthys, with a glamour. They thought she was Sisyphus. They presented her as Sisyphus to you and you sent her to Tartarus.”

  “Impossible. No mortal could ever summon sorcery strong enough to fool—”

  “Gods above…” Persephone cursed under her breath shaking her head in shock, “…the things he did to her. Listen, Aidon.”

  He closed his eyes and focused again on the crying voice.

  …us both on the funeral pyre… imprinted his essence on me as I burned… calls himself a deathless god king in Ephyra, now… a kinslayer… blasphemer… sent me in his place. Please Lord Hades, Polydegmon, you are a just god…

  “Aidon, please, we must help her,” she echoed, looking back at him, her eyes rimmed in fire, her face pleading with him.

  A pyre, he thought. Ephyra’s people were Thessalonian. The people of Thessaly don’t build pyres; they bury their dead. Unless… He nodded to Persephone. “All right. I’ll speak to the Hundred Handed Ones.”

  “They hear us,” she said. The fire told her everything. They were the guardians of the Titans and the wicked. The jailers of the Pit of Tartarus. The vision of their home faded from the center of the circle, replaced with the gaping maw of black flames from her nightmares last night. She shuddered.

  Praxidike…?

  This time, Persephone recoiled. A sound so deep and resonant it almost made her nauseous welled up in fifty voices speaking as one from the dark fires. Aidon could hear it too. He protectively tightened his grip on her hand. “I’ve got you,” he whispered.

  “Wh-who are you?” she said.

  More importantly, the many-voiced one asked, who are you?

  “Kottos,” Aidoneus said to the Hundred Handed One, “you are addressing my wife.”

  Ahh, Kottos said, my brothers and I have waited aeons for you, my queen. Persephone Praxidike Chthonios. She Who Destroys the Light. Carrier of Curses. The Iron Queen of the Underworld.

  “What am I?” she whispered to herself, trembling.

  Aidon could feel her faltering. “Sweet one, it’s all right.”

  We are yours to command, Praxidike.

  She straightened, then looked back at Aidon who nodded to her. She spoke to the fire, “A woman is being wrongfully held in Tartarus. A glamour was cast over her. Her name is Merope, and she was sent there in place of Sisyphus of Ephyra. I command that you release her at once from the Pit.”

  And what should we do with her?

  “See that she is brought to the Palace of Hades. We must learn all we can from her,” she turned back to Aidoneus, her eyes flaring in anger. “The sorcerer king must be brought to judgment for what he did to her.” />
  As you wish, Praxidike.

  The fire flared once and the maw of black flames vanished back into the ring. The fires calmed and grew friendly. Their home once again stood on the other side. Persephone looked at Aidon, her eyes returned to normal and her hand shook in his grip. The sun started to dawn in the east, nearly obscured by storm clouds whipping flurries of snow around them. “Can we go home now?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly with a nod. She gripped his hand. He took a step forward and held her at the small of her back. Aidon just watched her, his heart racing. This was not the screaming girl he’d dragged into his chariot from the field of Nysa. His wife was a darkly magnificent creature, stepping through the ring of fire she created with him at her side. Persephone— his Queen.

  ***

  The journey home was quick; mere steps. When the threads of the ether closed the ring of fire behind them, they found themselves standing in the palace gardens. The blanket of misty clouds above was awash in the brilliant colors of dusk, reflecting the light from the Styx. It was so much warmer here, and she realized that she still had her husband’s robes wound around her shoulders. The cold from mere moments before still clung to him. Persephone took off Aidon’s himation and draped the dark fabric around his shoulder once more. He closed his eyes and inhaled as she sweetly attended to him; it smelled like her now— lilies, ocean mist, and warm earth. She draped and wrapped it loosely about him, pushing the last heavy length over his left shoulder.

  “Persephone…”

  Aidoneus wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned into his chest. He pulled her closer, his hands gripping at her skin. They breathed shakily, both trying to understand what had happened, what it meant, what they saw, what she was able to do. The tension left his fingers and he flattened his hands against her back, soothing and holding her. She sighed and closed her eyes, listening to each slowing breath. Her ear pressed over his heart, she slowly opened her eyes.

  Persephone blinked at what she saw. “Aidon, this is the garden, isn’t it? I didn’t accidentally take us somewhere else, did I?”