Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  She wanted to send him crashing into his peak before he could prove his mastery over her body. Aidoneus read the determination in her face, and his eyes danced at the challenge. He brought his left forearm across her body, grabbing her breast and pinning her back against the column.

  Her eyes opened wide as he drew his thumb downward to the newly accessible thatch of curls above where they were joined, drawing her sensitive nub out from under its fleshy hood. Persephone arched hard against his restraining arm and cried out as she struggled against the pleasure he gave her. Hades curled his lip triumphantly, watching her writhe. He grasped her mound and ran his thumb in circles across the small ridge of flesh, the intensity shooting straight to her core. Between sharp breaths, she wondered how often that look of wild victory had crossed his face during the war.

  Unwilling to relent, Persephone fought against the cruel ecstasy and squeezed around him, bearing down as hard as she could. She watched with satisfaction as he threw his head back with a gasp and broke the contact of his thumb against her clitoris. His efforts had at least loosened the grip of her legs around his hips. When his senses returned, he withdrew and thrust forward with all his might, finally breaking her hold when she cried out.

  Persephone felt his arms wrap around her body, lifting her from the column. She crossed her ankles behind his waist for balance and held onto his shoulders. His fingers dug into her hips. Hades plunged into her, taking her, fucking her in the same position as he had when he initiated her in the dark. As his hips rolled against her thighs, he kissed Persephone hard and savored the hum of their mingled moans, muffled by their intertwining tongues.

  With long steps, he took them across the room to the bed and laid Persephone down at the edge, pushing her knees up to her shoulders in one fluid motion. He stood over her and mounted her again, her calves held above her head in his outstretched arms. Pleasure swelled into anger, anger melted into pleasure, forward and back again as they lost themselves in each other.

  It took half her energy to resist the ache and tension of her impending climax, and the other half to keep up with his relentless thrusts. She refused to allow Aidoneus to win— to prove that he possessed her body and spirit. She was so close to driving him to ecstasy first as he entered her harder and faster, his rhythm fevered and accelerating, his cock thickening, the telltale vein prominent on his forehead. His face and neck were tinged by the blood pumping under his skin as he hovered at the precipice.

  Aidoneus wildly mating with her finally pushed Persephone past the point of no return and she screamed, her back arching toward him. She let the crashing waves carry her, shaking her body as she cried out. Her sheath spasming around him raced him toward his peak, shattering him.

  “Persephone!”

  Her name tore from his throat, drowning her cries. Lightheaded, he planted a hand beside her to steady himself, not willing to leave her body just yet. They gasped for air as they came back to the room and to each other, their eyes glazed over, their breathing falling into unison. Aidoneus exhaled a long shuddering sigh. Exhausted, his mouth twisted into a satiated smile.

  “Well, sweet one,” he crooned softly, “I can’t think of a better way to forgiv—”

  He barely registered the blur of her open palm in the corner of his eye. It cracked against his cheek. Aidon brought his hand over the stinging, reddening mark on his face in shock.

  “Get out!” she cried.

  Aidon pulled away from her and gaped at Persephone, still holding his cheek as he stepped back.

  “Get out!” she screamed, sitting up.

  He grabbed his himation and wound it loosely around his waist and shoulder. Aidon quickly gathered his effects, the rings and pins clinking in his hand as he swiped his tunic off the floor. She lay on her side crying, her face turned pointedly away from him, sobs muffled. Persephone hugged her knees to her chest, unwilling to even look at him. He felt sick.

  The final piece lay at his feet— the golden arrow. He picked it up and threaded it back through the folds of his himation before walking to the door. Aidon turned to her one last time.

  “Persephone…”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Persephone, I’m—”

  “Please leave,” she said quietly around a sob.

  It had all been undone. Everything he had shown her, everything they had shared yesterday, was now obliterated. Maybe he had been fooling himself, thinking that she could love him; maybe he really was a monster after all.

  He stood by the door longer than he should have, listening to her cry and waiting in vain for Persephone to change her mind. He should have followed the first suggestion Thanatos had given him and not pursue her any further. It had only brought them heartache and pain. He fought back memories of her kissing him as she pressed her body against his back and caressed the wide scar he had shown to no one else. His eyes and throat stung.

  Aidoneus finally shut the door, wondering if he would ever see the inside of this room again.

  14.

  “Off with you, witch! We have no food here.”

  “I don’t need food,” the old woman said, “only a hearth to sleep beside.”

  “As you can see, we don’t have that either; and certainly not for one of Demeter’s hags.”

  Demeter glanced down at the telltale sheaves of barley embroidered on her himation, the same pattern worn by her priestesses. Behind the dark bearded man, she could see his household packing their belongings and placing coals in the bronze and hide carrier that would protect their hearth fire, praying to Hestia to spare the small flame from the cold on their journey. If it went out, it would portend death in the family. Death was everywhere these days.

  “Where are you going?” Demeter asked.

  “Ephyra. And if you have any sense in you, you’ll go there too.”

  “When the Great Lady of the Harvest gets her Kore back from Hades she will—”

  The door slammed in her face. Demeter tucked a white lock of hair behind her ear again and rubbed her boney fingers together for warmth. All the gods of Olympus had abandoned her. She had first gone to the depths of the sea to Poseidon’s court. The price he had named for helping her was unthinkably lewd, the very idea of it an abomination. Demeter had practically run from his underwater palace, chased by the sound of his derisive laughter, wishing she could retch. She had wandered the frozen wastes of Hellas begging local gods and nymphs to help her get her daughter back, and receiving no assistance. Most were too afraid of Hades to even speak with her.

  Eleusis was her last retreat, and her only remaining hope. Surely her most devoted priestesses would come to her aid. But when she had returned to her temple, she had found no offerings but barren straw, and no sacrifices but a fetal lamb that was obviously dead long before it found its way to her altar. She stood by as the people of Eleusis escaped to Athens for warmth, or to Thebes for food— wherever the rumors of better circumstances took them. But Demeter had been everywhere. There was nothing left for them, and there wouldn’t be until Zeus returned her daughter and ended her grief.

  Everywhere she had gone she’d seen priests bleeding black sheep over open pits, averting their eyes as they did so. They made offerings to the Underworld, all of them begging the hard-hearted King of the Dead to return Kore to the earth, to end the famine and cold. They didn’t bother to appeal to Demeter anymore.

  Empty temples were something she could live with. She had suffered through empty temples when the people of Attica went to war, burning each other’s fields a few centuries past and nearly razing Eleusis to the ground. But soon mortals started dismantling her temples altogether, taking the wood to burn in their homes for warmth. Then they burned her effigies in grief and anger as their children and elders died. How quickly they had turned against her when the food ran out, and without their devotion, Demeter weakened. Hades’s abduction of her daughter had turned her hair white with grief. And while she ignored the prayers of Hellas, the sacking of her temples had aged her
further, beyond even her own recognition. Her joints were stiff and ached in the cold. Her shoulders were hunched and she leaned heavily on an oak staff.

  Demeter at last came to the final refuge that she dared approach. It was also the place she most feared to set foot. Rumors from villages to the east had it that King Celeus would burn Demeter’s priestesses alive for what she had done to his people. Immortal though she was, Demeter didn’t relish the idea of burning. She was weaker now than ever— weaker than when Kronos spat her out all those aeons ago. It was so very cold. The great palace of Celeus, the Telesterion, loomed large before her; its wooden gates freshly cleared of snowdrifts. It was the only sign that someone still dwelled within. Demeter wrapped her hand around the cold bronze knocker and hammered it against the door three times.

  Nothing.

  The wind bit at her skin as she waited. She was about to reach for the knocker again when she heard the door begin to creak open, a dusting of snow falling from the cracks in its jamb high above her.

  A tired-looking woman dressed in the dark blue of mourning peered out, her gray-faded blonde hair falling loose and matted around her shoulders. She turned to speak to someone behind the door. “One of Demeter’s wise women.”

  Demeter nodded a bow. It had been so long since she had been called anything but a witch. “I am at your service, my lady. I humbly seek shelter and the comfort of your hearth for the night.”

  “Are you a healer?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “What is your name?”

  Demeter thinned her lips. “Doso.”

  The door swung wide. She looked up to see a white bearded man dressed in dark blue standing next to the woman, a circlet of gold framing his balding head. King Celeus.

  Demeter fell to her knees. “My lord, please spare me. I am but a humble servant of the Lady of the Harvest.”

  “Supplication doesn’t suit you, Doso,” he said grimly. “You have too noble a bearing about you.”

  “I do come from… a high born family, my lord.”

  “And where were you born?”

  “Crete.”

  “Rise,” he said. “If you are a healer, Doso, my wife and I welcome you.”

  “Then the tales about you—”

  “Burning priestesses?” he scoffed. “You must have traveled here from Athens.”

  “Yes, my lord. But the rumors…”

  “People are saying all sorts of things these days,” he said somberly. Celeus motioned her forward. “Come in from the cold, Doso, before we lose what little heat we’ve managed to keep in the hall.”

  Demeter leaned on her staff, pulling herself across the threshold. The heavy smell of pennyroyal and parsley wafted from a censer, and she knew at once that illness had plagued their household. Wisps of fragrant smoke hung in the air, illuminated by the great fire in the hearth, and warmed her skin. Its heat so inviting that she would have blissfully fallen asleep had she sat down. Ancient tapestries, pulled from around the palace in a desperate attempt to seal the heat into this one room, bridged the great hall’s marble columns. The household shrine stood at the back of the hall, and Demeter could make out the mitered soot silhouette where her effigy once stood. Though it was barren, she could still feel the offerings that had been made to her. They flowed from the altar and into her bones with a heat that rivaled the hearth fire.

  “The countryside is in a panic. It’s not safe now, even for the king and queen, to openly keep faith with the Great Lady. So many say she abandoned all mortals to die,” the woman said sadly. Demeter recognized her now, though she appeared to have aged ten years in the past month. Queen Metaneira spoke again. “Our servants have long since fled, the people of Eleusis are leaving us, and we’re too weak to defend our own home from being sacked. Best to be more subtle, and not incite anyone.”

  “I understand,” Demeter said. “I’m sure the Great Lady would understand as well. Bless you for keeping the faith.”

  Celeus shook his head. “We’re among the last. So many of our friends have left for Argos, Knossos, Ephyra…”

  “What is in Ephyra?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “As you said, my lord,” Demeter replied, “you hear all sorts of things these days.”

  “King Sisyphus has food there. His infamous greed during the harvests meant that his silos were full when the cold and famine struck. His ships come back laden with gold and slaves from the trade of even small amounts of it.”

  “Why has your house not joined in the exodus west?”

  “Mighty Zeus will strike him down and curse all who dwell in his wicked city,” Metaneira said angrily. “Sisyphus demands the worship and devotion of anyone who approaches the walls of Ephyra. And he takes the maiden daughters of noble families. Calls himself a god king. The Receiver of Many will send him and his acolytes straight to Tartarus for his hubris.”

  “Metaneira!” Celeus shot at her. “I thought we agreed!” He turned to Demeter. “I apologize, priestess, for mentioning the Unseen One in your presence. We meant no offense.”

  Demeter smirked at their epithets for Aidoneus. “Why do you admonish your wife to keep He Who Has Many Names nameless, my lord?”

  Celeus and Metaneira looked at the ground in silence. Metaneira’s voice wavered when she finally spoke. “We were weak; we feared for our lives. We thought to appeal to him in our desperation, and if he wouldn’t hear our prayers to return our people’s beloved Kore, he would at least save us. Our prayers and sacrifices fell on deaf ears.”

  Demeter narrowed her eyes. “Trust me now when I tell you that no matter how hard you plead with him, Aid— the Unseen One will never hear you.”

  “We should never have called on him, Doso. He took so much from us.”

  “Yes, he did,” Demeter said, her eyes stinging. “He will not take any more from you as long as I’m here. You said you needed a healer?”

  Metaneira motioned her toward the fire, where a crib was set up and a couch was turned toward the flames. Demeter hobbled over and peered into the crib. An infant boy slept fitfully, murmuring and twisting in the throes of a fever, clearly having been given drops of barley beer to soothe and quiet him. She looked over to the couch and held her breath. A young man lay there, his brow beaded in sweat, dark circles under his eyes, his lips parched and cracked. He slept just as restlessly as the infant. Dusty blonde hair fell across his forehead. Even in his sickness he was strikingly handsome. Demeter felt heaviness creep into her chest. The youth looked so much like Zeus did when she had first met him. When he still loved her.

  “My lord husband and I had the fever as children and lived, so it didn’t sicken us. But—”

  The queen broke down, her words lost as she cried. Celeus wrapped an arm around her. “We’ll see them again, my love. Someday.”

  “My daughters!” Metaneira cried. “Kallithoe… Kleisidike… little Deme… He took them last week! Maidens, all of them… Kallithoe was to marry in two weeks and I had to bury my eldest daughter in her bridal dress! Gods, why?!”

  Demeter’s mind turned to her Kore, drawing a thistle up from the fertile soil and dancing through the field with the little fiery copper butterfly. And then their world had collapsed around them. No levy could hold back her tears.

  “Shhh, wife…” Celeus stroked her hair. He looked to Demeter, his own eyes watering. “Please help us, Doso. We’ve kept the faith alive in this house. Surely the Great Lady will show us some measure of mercy and save my sons?”

  “She will,” Demeter said, rivulets pouring down her aged face. “Hades stole my daughter as well.”

  The king and queen shuddered at his name. Celeus spoke low. “Woman, you cannot call on him—”

  “I do not fear him—” she said, raising her voice before she remembered that she was Doso, not Demeter, “—m-my lord. And I am through ceding ground to him. He will have no power over your sons; not as long as I’m here. I swear on the Styx they will not pass into his clutches as your daughter
s did!” She walked over to the youth and swiped his hair from his forehead. “Tend to your altar once more, my lords. My work is done through your offerings to the Great Lady. What are your children’s names?”

  “The infant is Demophon,” Metaneira said, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her mantle. “And this is Triptolemus. The Prince of Eleusis.”

  His eyelids fluttered, and Demeter lightly touched his forehead. “Triptolemus…”

  He heard his name called and saw light once again. Triptolemus had turned away from it before, but it was so very close this time. Was he finally slipping away toward the realm of the Unseen One? Had Thanatos come to reap his soul and send him to the Other Side? He let out a sigh, wondering if this exhale was his last breath. At least he would see his sisters again. But when Triptolemus looked up, he didn’t see a desiccated skeleton looming over him. Instead, a beautiful woman filled his vision, her long hair cascading from her golden diadem in rich waves of spun flax and copper. Her eyes were emerald green, and her chiton a brilliant red, emblazoned with golden barley. The light came from her. He smiled and passed back into unconsciousness as her soft hand stroked his forehead.

  ***

  This was her last day as the Maiden. She stood taller, nearly flowered. Hecate could feel the impending shift to the Woman as surely as she had for a hundred aeons. She walked through the garden in her white peplos, her adolescent feet padding over the earth. She sensed the bursts of colorful blossoms at the garden’s edge before she could even see them, felt the warmth of breathing life radiating from the six trees. They had taken a little less than a moon’s cycle to bloom, their flowers vibrant red against the rich green leaves. Their brilliance stood like a beacon against the pallid grays and midnight-darkened evergreen of the Underworld.