Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  Thanatos didn’t need to think about these things when he was with Eris. His conscious self could disappear. Whether she saw his angelic or skeletal aspect mattered little; if she ever did see his shadowy self, Eris never let on that she cared. Perhaps, he thought, she enjoyed it— the chaotic transition between vitality and death, youth and desiccation.

  But whichever side of him Eris preferred, Thanatos knew exactly what state he was in at that moment. The hard smack of his hips against her inner thighs, skin on skin, was buried in the chaos of the smoking Chalcidian battlement where she’d found him. With thin black wings outstretched, Eris had swooped on him like a falcon, demanding her fulfillment. It was a habit of hers when she discovered him walking the killing fields, searching for those who had died honorably.

  They’d had more trysts in these situations than he cared to admit— surrounded by the smell of freshly spilt blood, the screams of city folk and horses mingled with the cold puncture of bronze spears, the black smoke of olive oil burning in store rooms. For ages the mortal blood had soaked into the ground while they coupled, the dust of men returning to the earth, seeping through the rich soil and falling toward his home in the Underworld, rejoining his family and his king.

  But now the blood stood fresh and red on the snow, frozen in time, bodies and souls trapped in the cold unnatural waste of the living world. It troubled him. But her high-pitched cries drowned out thoughts of the disastrous imbalance plaguing the world above and of his wearying role. Her velvety heat made him forget where he was, who he was, what he was each time he slipped into her.

  Thanatos let their surroundings vanish from his thoughts and tried to find warmth within her, fighting against the cold that chilled his bones. Heat she had in abundance, but no warmth existed in Eris. It had always been that way with her, even when the world was fresh and green. Eris gripped his right arm, fingernails digging half moons into his wrist, and pulled his sickle dangerously closer to her throat with each flex of his hips. She stared at him with dark irises, light freckles framing a twisted smile. Just as he was about to question whether or not the Goddess of Discord could feel anything at all, he got his answer.

  She gasped and opened her eyes wide, digging her slender fingers into the mortar cracks behind her, arching away from where he was joined to her. Thanatos dropped the sickle into the snow and grabbed her hips, quickening his thrusts. Eris screamed and laughed as she undid him. A groan forced its way out of his lungs and through his gritted teeth, and he felt a heat flash through his body that could have melted all the snow in the world above.

  Stepping away from her, Thanatos picked up his sickle and himation, shaking the fallen snow from his cast off cloak. She leaned against the stone with her legs still spread open, a sated grin on her lips and her skirts were hitched up around her waist. Eris whooped in gratification and triumph, then leapt off the masonry ledge and twirled in a circle. Death wrapped the heavy black wool around his slender frame while she sang to herself and danced about. She ran her tongue along her teeth when she came to a stop in front of him. Thanatos smirked.

  “I needed that,” she said, exhaling and sighing contentedly, her wings fanning behind her. Eris smoothed her tattered peplos over her hips, paying no heed to the remains of their tryst meandering down her inner thigh. She snatched his sickle out of his hand and cut off a lock of her black hair, casting it over the edge of the stone battlement. It floated on the breeze, drifting in front of the last line of the Chalcidian phalanx defending the city. She bit her bottom lip and smiled, standing on tiptoe to see what would happen.

  A panicked cry went up when the lock settled to the ground and the soldiers broke their lines, the Thracian army plowing through them, slaughtering as they went, and battering down the wooden gates. They swarmed hungrily toward the precious grain stores the Chalcidians had struggled the whole of the afternoon to defend. The air was filled with the death cries of livestock, the pleading screams of women, and the acrid smell of thatch rooftops burning.

  Eris stretched her arm toward him, sickle in hand, her lip caught in her teeth. She looked perfectly coquettish— a mockery of the innocence she’d abandoned long before he’d first come to her.

  Thanatos grabbed his instrument from her roughly. He shook his head, still recovering, his voice harsh. “Foolish woman…”

  “Foolish how? To live up to my name? To engage in my divine role?” She sauntered closer to Thanatos and scored his flesh from the hollow of his neck to the underside of his chin with a sharp fingernail. “To enjoy fucking Death?”

  “You know what this sickle really is, don’t you? That blade I press to your fragile neck at your insistence? You’re aware of what it could do to you?”

  “So why don’t you do it?” she said, tracing the tip of her tongue over the rosy line left by her fingernail. Her lips brushed across his abraded alabaster skin. “Slip one of these days. Cut my throat as you fuck me.”

  He didn’t know if it was a dare, a request, or a taunt. Thanatos remained silent and stepped back, looking at her askance, before he gave up trying to guess her intent. Wrapping his himation around his shoulders, he saw her grin in triumph.

  “Oh, Thanatos, you care so much about my well-being,” she said, then clasped her hands to her chest in mock realization. “You do love me! I always knew you did! After all, I’m the only woman whose bed you’ve ever returned to.”

  “I’ve only seen your bed once.”

  She laughed again and danced in a circle around him. “Coy as ever, my delectable little murderer of souls, but you know what I mean. I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve put your magnificent prick in me.”

  “The thing I like the most about you, Eris,” Thanatos said, hissing her name through his teeth, “is that it’s like fucking a different woman every time.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, the leering smile still decorating her face as she came to a stop in front of him. They heard heavy buskin boots crunching through the snow, growing louder. “So why are you here, anyway?”

  “I need to speak with your… associate.”

  “Oh, you mean my brother.”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times, Eris,” a deep voice said, “don’t call me that.”

  Thanatos drew his hood back over his head against the bite of the wind and turned to face Ares. The red cloaked God of War and Bloodshed stood with spear in hand, his Chalcidian helmet squarely framing his jaw and pasting the fiery red ringlets of his hair to his forehead and neck.

  “Would you rather I called you daddy?” Eris said with a wicked grin, sidling up to him and leaning against his shoulder. Ares pursed his lips and looked sick. Thanatos understood from the expression on the Olympian’s face that Ares had recently made the same mistake he continued to make with the Goddess of Discord.

  Death grinned. Eris had no parents. No discernable ones at any rate. Most didn’t know where she came from, and she always gave a different answer whenever anyone was foolish enough to ask her.

  “Leave us be, woman,” Ares sneered at her. “The men need to talk.”

  “Men,” she snickered, clutching roughly at her breasts. “Oh! So if I grew a prick, I could join you? Because it really wouldn’t take much to grow one like yours, brother.”

  “Get out of my sight!” Ares bellowed, his face turning as red as his bloodstained cloak.

  Thanatos bit his lips together and thanked the Fates that his hood currently hid his face from the angry god’s view. Eris laughed and walked between Thanatos and Ares, her hands outstretched and pointedly brushing past both of their groins. She spread her wings and spun around, her path through the ether opening behind her, its edges wavering and bending as though all of existence were collapsing within it.

  “I’ll see you soon, lover,” she said, blowing an indiscriminate kiss into the air. Eris snickered again and vanished.

  “Intolerable, insulting wench…” Ares muttered, his anger abating. “I don’t know how you can stand her.”

 
Thanatos shrugged. Black ink outlines of an eight-pointed sun and horses dancing along a meandros of waves decorated Ares’s forearms. He cocked his head to the side to examine them. “Those are new.”

  “I’m siding with Thrace today,” Ares said with a smile.

  “And yet your helm would suggest otherwise.”

  “That was from yesterday,” he replied, “We’ll see how it goes. If Thrace continues to please me, I’ll change it, too.”

  “Well, that’s part of the matter I came to speak with you about. You do realize what’s happening all over Hellas and beyond, don’t you?”

  Ares snorted. “You mean Demeter refusing to tend the earth? Or can we call a spear a spear and attribute this to your dread lord and lady?”

  “This has nothing to do with our king,” Thanatos said quietly. “And even less to do with our queen. Wanton destruction is the domain of the Olympians; not us.”

  “Ha! One would think Hades would be pleased with all this. Isn’t he? More souls for his kingdom, after all.”

  Thanatos looked at him with a cold smile. “You’re a fool, young one.”

  “Oh? How so, Death? If I were unlucky enough to draw the lot for the Underworld, I would redouble my efforts to make sure that my third of the cosmos was the best share.”

  Thanatos raised his eyebrows at that. “Well then, I’ll be sure to thank the Fates every day that you will never set foot in the greatest of the three realms.”

  “Greatest?!” Ares laughed long and loud, the slice of swords through flesh crescendoing around them in answer. “Gods above, I’d rather be a slave to the poorest mortal alive than lord over all those who have perished. I meant that it would be great under my guidance! You’re funny, Death— I always knew I liked you for a reason. Greatest, indeed…”

  Thanatos absently twirled his sickle and wrapped his himation tightly around him, the bite of the wind chilling him to his core. He gave the red-cloaked god a toothy smile. Death took a menacing step closer to Ares. His cheeks sunk in until the taut flesh split and pulled away into the gaps between his pale bones. Hollow sockets stared into the war god’s eyes. “Keep telling yourself that, Ares.”

  The grin left the Olympian’s face and he paled, almost losing his balance on the icy slush underfoot.

  Coward, Thanatos thought. You wouldn’t last a day on the Other Side. His bony fingers clutched at the hood hanging over his skull so it wouldn’t be pulled back by the bitter wind. “I’ve been busy enough, God of War. Stop exploiting the famine. Your thirst for bloodshed can wait until Demeter has finished her… grieving. And if you do not grant me that simple request, then someday I just might fail to show up and give your worshippers a noble death.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Ares bristled.

  “Try me. Would you rather deal with my sisters?”

  Ares swallowed and slid his right foot backward.

  “I thought not.” Thanatos spread his black wings and took flight above the killing fields. “End this ridiculous war today, Ares, or next time your honored dead will be visited by the Keres. Consider yourself lucky that I’m leaving you with the choice.”

  16.

  The room, immense upon her arrival, now felt small and cloistered. But she didn’t dare leave it. Three days had passed, and still no Aidoneus. The first night she was glad to be alone. Each subsequent night, loneliness and fear grew steadily in her heart and the walls shrank around her. She had steeled herself, waiting for him to come to her, for what purpose or to what end she knew not.

  Do not forget who you toy with. I am the eldest of the gods…

  When she was a child in Nysa, Persephone had heard how the queen of Olympus grew angry with her husband, continuously shamed and humiliated by Zeus’ endless infidelities and the fruit they produced. One night, Hera chained him to their bed and convinced several of the other immortals to rebel against him. Demeter wisely chose to stay out of it. Artemis ran to Persephone the next day to tell her their father had been freed— that a monstrous, many-armed creature had climbed Olympus in the middle of the night to subdue the rebels and break the chains that bound the King of the Gods.

  Her mother had crowed when she’d learned that Zeus had chained Hera in the sky for a year for her impudence. Demeter had taken Persephone on her only memorable visit to Olympus, and could barely restrain her triumphant glee when she swore her and her daughter’s undiminished fealty to Persephone’s father. Then joy reverted to spite, and her mother cursed Zeus’ name when he took Hera back. She cursed him further still when he went years without taking a woman to bed other than his wife.

  Persephone hadn’t chained Aidoneus— by striking him in anger, she’d done worse. The shock on his face before she’d screamed at him to leave was the last she’d seen of him. She feared his response, and the waiting only made it more terrifying. She was no fool— by every law she knew, Hades could still demand his rights to her body as her husband. But he hadn’t come to her to demand anything, and Persephone now worried that his ardent declarations of love had faded into despondency, or worse— hatred.

  I should never have brought you here.

  She knew enough about what happened among the mortals— Demeter had at least educated her on that. Insolent wives were punished all the time in the world above. The gods did the same, as Zeus had when Hera defied him. Though Aidoneus had let down his guard, had told her he loved her and thereby left himself raw and exposed to her the night before their fight, she knew that his affection toward her might quickly turn to hostility. Who knew what retribution he had in store for her? He was the master of Tartarus, after all. He’d been separated from the other deathless ones for aeons— from the end of the Titanomachy to the day he came to Olympus claim her as his wife. And at his core, he was a hardened warrior.

  She’d had an intimate, deliciously forbidden taste of that part of Hades after their fight, or during their fight— she wasn’t sure which was which. The line dividing anger from lust had melted in the heat of coupling. Persephone loved it and hated it equally — she desired the way he had taken her, and loathed herself for desiring it at all. Aidoneus had seemed so pleased and effortlessly in control once they were both sated— so very different from the emotions he’d awakened in her.

  “Do you think this room is your only sanctuary?”

  Persephone looked up from her cupped hands, her eyes red. “What are you doing here?”

  “Seeing to my queen.” Hecate sat beside her. “As I was when you first arrived, I am now: at your service.”

  “Did he send you?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re his agent nonetheless,” she scoffed.

  “Look more closely at our roles. The waves roar, but do they command the sea?”

  “So you have told him to stay away?”

  “There was no need.” Hecate fought back a smile. “You had already done so, my queen.”

  Persephone stood and paced across the room, her arms folded over her chest. “It’s not your concern.”

  “But it is.” She stood. “The wellbeing of this realm is my absolute concern.”

  “You have your own to attend. The ether.”

  “Rivers run through each other. Much as they do here.”

  “Stop… stop with your riddles! I am tired,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I am so very tired of not having any answers. Who am I, Hecate? What am I?”

  “It will take two sets of oars to reach those unknown shores. You know who holds the other pair.”

  Persephone clenched her teeth. “Why am I even here? Why not someone else? I am nothing here.”

  “If you so believe.” Hecate stood. “Do you wish to return?”

  “I…” Of course she had considered it. She could leave this place behind her and go home, to a place she knew well… back by Demeter’s side. Charon would row her to the other side. He could not refuse her because she was… Queen. Her hands dropped to her sides. All of them, from the least of the shades to her great husband, saw her a
s Queen. Hecate smiled.

  “Do you wish to return?” she asked again. “To a world where you know you are nothing as the crow knows it can fly? Where you were a caterpillar and could be a happy little caterpillar and would only be told that butterflies existed somewhere?”

  Persephone thought about her poor mother, grieving in the world above, and the recent victims of the famine. She missed Demeter, in truth, but a great chasm stretched between her life as Kore and her place here as Persephone. There was no going back. She swallowed, her answer barely audible. “No.”

  “Then you must cast off childish raiment for the garb of a queen.”

  She scowled at Hecate. “Have I not already done just that? Or rather, was it not done to me? My lord husband made certain that I’d ‘cast off my raiment’ when he brought me here!”

  “You are maiden no more.” Hecate grinned. “But a broken maidenhead does not a woman make.”

  “I have…” Persephone glanced at herself in the mirror. “I have changed, though.”

  “Your journey has begun. No more than that.” She tittered and swept her red hair back from her shoulder. “Would that it were so simple: a man lays with you and you rise from the bed a woman, full and formed!”

  “Of course I don’t believe that,” Persephone mumbled, her cheeks flushing at Hecate’s snickering.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Only a fool would believe that!”

  “Should I count you among them?”

  “No!”

  “Then leave this room.”

  She teared up again. “I… I can’t. You don’t understand.”

  “Are you afraid, child?” Hecate spoke the word pointedly, but her voice was tender.

  Persephone leaned against the column, then flinched, realizing it was the one where she’d started her last fateful encounter with Aidoneus. She walked away, pacing near the door.

  “Why do you flee him?”

  “I don’t…” She balled her fists. “This is my room. I’m not running away from anything. If he cares to, he will come.”