Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  “Why do you think he stays away?”

  Persephone bit at her cheek and felt her throat close. “Because he hates me now.”

  “No, not ‘hate,’ I think.”

  “Then what? Anger? Indifference?”

  “Something far deeper. Fear.”

  She shook her head. “Why would Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, ever fear me?”

  “Because you are the Queen.”

  “That means nothing.”

  “Then you should tell Alekto, and relieve her of her duties.”

  Persephone tilted her head to the side. “Alekto?”

  “One of the Erinyes. She awaits you on your balcony. Hypnos already left, but—”

  Ice ran down her back. “Oh Fates! Merope… I’d nearly forgotten.” Persephone paced, wringing her hands. “What should I do? About Alekto, about…”

  “You should do what Alekto expects of the Queen.”

  “Do what? What must I do?”

  “Rule.”

  Persephone looked up, but the Goddess of the Crossroads was gone. She swallowed the lump in her throat and paused. She’d never met a daimon before. She’d heard frightful things about them in passing from nymphs and mortals.

  But she was their Queen. Persephone pulled at the great bronze ring on the door. Her heart hammered as she took one careful step, then another into the amethyst antechamber.

  A nymph lay on the divan, naked and shivering. Persephone gasped, then ran back to her room and fetched a blanket from her bed, returning quickly to spread it over the sleeping Merope. The light dimmed, blocked by a great pair of golden wings. Persephone turned to look. The woman who stretched them was terrifyingly beautiful, her long figure clothed in a white chiton, her hair arranged in coils that moved like snakes. She brandished a bronze-tipped scourge and for a moment, Persephone’s heart stopped, fearing that Hades had sent this woman to punish her— that Hecate had coaxed her from her room to meet her fate.

  The beautiful daimon bowed low, her scourge at her side. “Praxidike. Mother Queen.”

  Persephone nodded to her. “Alekto?”

  “One and the same.” When she grinned up at Persephone, her dark lips revealed rows of pointed teeth. Alekto righted herself and folded back her wings. “She’s been shaking like that since we pulled her from the Pit.”

  “Do they all do that?”

  Alekto shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve never removed someone from the Pit before.”

  “How did you find her?”

  She smirked. “We have our ways.”

  “Thank you,” Persephone said solemnly. Her hand shook at her side. She would not be afraid…

  “No need to thank me.” Her irises flashed gold— a sharp contrast to her dark eyelids, heavily rimmed with kohl. “My sisters and I shall enjoy it very much when you find the man who should be there in her place. Consider the real Sisyphus payment. With interest.”

  Persephone tried to jostle the nymph awake. She pushed at her shoulder, but the woman lay there stiffly, shaking still. The Queen gingerly lifted the nymph’s eyelid. Her pupil was dilated and scanning this way and that, but Merope saw nothing. Persephone flinched back. “Why won’t she awaken?”

  The winged daimon rolled her eyes. “The girl wouldn’t stop screaming. Not once the entire way up here. I had to call for Hypnos. She would have driven us all mad, including herself. And it wasn’t just a soft slumber he had to use to quell her. She’s in a stupor.”

  “And still she shakes like that?”

  Alekto nodded.

  Persephone’s jaw tightened and fire coursed through her. “Sisyphus will pay for what he did. I promise you that.”

  Alekto smiled, showing all her teeth again, and folded her arms in front of her. “I like you. You, me, my sisters… We’ll get along just fine.”

  “I… I should hope so,” Persephone said, raising a questioning eyebrow.

  Alekto laughed. “Ah, I see it now!”

  “What is that?”

  “Why he’s so madly in love with you.” She clapped her knee. “Gods, you two are so alike, it slays me!” Alekto’s throaty laugh continued, echoing into the antechamber. The nymph stirred but stayed asleep.

  Persephone remained quiet. Alike? She pursed her lips. How were they alike? She was from the world of the living and he… She scowled, her teeth clenched, and Alekto stopped.

  The frightful daimon cast her eyes to the ground. “My apologies, Praxidike.”

  “No, it’s… Think nothing of it.” Persephone managed a brief smile. “We’ll have to see each other again.”

  “Yes. And soon, I hope. Don’t let that dusty bag of bones you call your husband keep you up here forever.”

  The Queen guffawed before composing herself and giggling behind clasped hands. Alekto fought off laughter again and brandished her bronze scourge in the manner she had when Persephone had first sighted her.

  Alekto gave an exaggerated curtsy, to Persephone’s amusement. Her wings spread and with a few beats she rose into the cool air. Her voice faded into the mists as she flew toward the Phlegethon. “Until next time, Praxidike. Perhaps in Tartarus?”

  ***

  It was finished by sunset. Demeter was impressed by how the Prince had remained serene and obedient throughout the ritual. She glanced behind her at Triptolemus, who was sleeping peacefully on the couch near the hearth. His parents were unable to see the change, and the Prince had wisely said nothing. But she could see what they could not. A faint luminescence under his skin shimmered back and forth, his body adjusting to being one of the deathless ones. Now that Triptolemus was immortal, the house of Celeus wouldn’t die of starvation. He could work his magic with the plants, teach the secrets to his house, and teach all of Eleusis, all of Attica, and then all of Hellas one day.

  It had been quicker for him than for Demophon. She had spent three days coaxing the baby to drink the kykeon and ambrosia, the infant fussing and twisting every time she tried to feed him. Demeter remembered how her infant daughter would suck the sweet liquid off her fingers. Kore had been such an easy baby.

  Demeter thought about the uncertain days of Kore’s infancy. Eleusis was just a handful of wood and straw houses back then, and though her mortal neighbors left offerings at her nearby temple, none spoke to her, or even recognized who she really was. The effigies of her were crude back then— big breasted clay women with fertile wombs and comically large hips that the villagers would heap with sheaves of barley, millet and wheat— the crops her lady mother Rhea had created for the humans.

  Aidoneus’s promise to steal Kore away to his sunless kingdom once she came of age had haunted her since the night he came to her home. From the moment he left, she lived in fear that he would return any day to rip Kore away from her, keep her as his ward until she came of age, or let Hecate or even frightful Nyx raise her daughter to distrust or despise her. On one of Demeter’s rare visits to Olympus, Hestia had told her that his awful promise to her was the last he had spoken to any of them. He would shun the company of the Olympians in order to abide by Demeter’s hasty oath and one day take her daughter. Demeter was left to guess when that would be.

  Half a year after that fateful night at the end of the war, a farmer named Iasion heard Demeter weeping for her loneliness and her daughter’s immutable destiny. She had startled when he appeared in her doorway, and asked what could make such a lovely young mother cry, and wondered if she had lost her husband during the war. He sang Kore to sleep. Demeter had only leaned on his shoulder and continued her tears. The next day Iasion brought fresh milk and sweet figs. He mashed up the figs and laughed as Kore happily gummed the fruit from his fingers. The day after, he popped a pomegranate seed into Demeter’s mouth and surprised her with a quick kiss and tender words. Iasion still visited Demeter even after she told him the truth— that she was one of the immortals whose long war had ravaged the earth and its people, and had turned Iasion into a childless widower. He took Demeter to see the plowshare he’d made from
melted down shields and spears, and the even rows he used to organize each plant in his field, so different from the clumps of wind blown seed in the villager’s fields.

  Demeter had loved him for the short time they had. She remembered listening to the crickets chirp all night as the mortal farmer’s calloused hand wrapped around her arm and cupped her breast. She remembered the lullabies he taught her to soothe Kore back to sleep. She remembered the thick blond stubble on his chin and the laugh lines around his turquoise eyes. She remembered refusing to make him immortal. She remembered when he died. They had been lying hand in hand under the open sky in one of his freshly tilled wheat fields, blissful and exhausted from lovemaking. The king of the gods still harbored jealousy for Demeter, and with a single sudden bolt of lightning, he destroyed her brief happiness. In grief, she took Kore from Eleusis and fled to Nysa before the first green shoots of wheat broke the soil.

  She grew sad thinking about how she had almost forgotten him, even though she knew Iasion had long ago drunk from the Lethe in the Underworld and forgotten her. No doubt his soul had been reborn and then died again many times by now, crossing back and forth between this side and the Other. How proud he would be of Triptolemus, who took the fruits of the land that Iasion had once organized into neat rows and transformed them into something even greater. She looked back at the sleeping Prince again and felt her heart beat faster. From the questions he had asked, she suspected that Triptolemus knew who she was, and perhaps could even see through her aged disguise. The Prince had tried so hard today to please her and offer her comfort. He had the passionate idealism of young Zeus and the mature strength of her lost Iasion. And now that he was one of the deathless ones, neither the King of the Gods nor the Lord of the Dead would be able to harm him.

  Triptolemus had stripped for her in his greenhouse. She had rubbed the ambrosia-infused olive oil into every inch of his skin and hair, admiring his form in the soft light and tamping down wayward thoughts about his crystal blue eyes and the sinews and muscles under his golden skin as she concentrated on her task. He hadn’t flinched at her hands once, not even when she had massaged the oil onto his most intimate parts. Triptolemus simply stood there, calmly breathing through his nose, smiling softly and following her lead as he accepted each of the five sacraments that would grant him immortality. The last part was the most difficult.

  Demeter now faced this same difficult task as she fed the kykeon to baby Demophon. He was quiet, murmuring only once when she lifted him out of the crib. She had just enough ambrosia left to complete the ritual for the babe. This time the infant was relaxed, accepting the liquid from the ceramic feeding cup that dry-breasted Metaneira had used to feed the child goat’s milk since his birth. Demeter stood up and gathered Demophon in her arms. As she slowly unwrapped the swaddling clothes and brought the loose end of her himation around his body to warm him, she bounced him on her knee and softly patted his back to keep him quiet and break up any gas. If he was too cold or uncomfortable, he might cry out and wake his family. Demeter had rubbed ambrosia oil into Demophon’s infant skin yesterday. He glowed in the light of the hearth fire, his nascent immortality begging to be loosed from its mortal bonds. She knelt down with the babe in her arms, and blew on the coals.

  And now to separate the chaff from the corn, she thought. She pulled the end of her himation over her head to improve her concentration.

  Demeter waved her hand over the coals and watched them flame to life in a ring, an empty space created in their midst. She brought her right hand over the flame, the fire swirling now into a circle around her extended palm. She felt its heat radiating through her. Three days ago it would have burned her skin, but after the House of Celeus started placing sacrifices on her altar, all she could feel from the fire was the gentle lick of heat under her palm. She splayed out her fingers and swept her hand in a circle at the wrist. The fire responded in kind; its flames swirled like water in a basin. A circle of protection for the infant formed in their midst. It wouldn’t take but an hour— there was plenty of coal in the hearth for the time she required.

  She lifted the infant’s ear to her lips and whispered the words she had said to Triptolemus before he stood atop the coals spilled from the brazier in his greenhouse. “Initiate to the holiest of mysteries, behold the final sacrament. Now we cast aside your mortal life to be sacrificed in the fire. As the corn must shed the chaff, so too immortality must free itself of the dust of the earth. Accept this final purgation and join the sacred deathless ones.”

  The baby murmured and looked up at Demeter, his limbs moving languidly as she placed him on the coals. He hiccupped once but otherwise remained quiet. Demeter kept winding her right hand over the fire as she drew his mortality out of him with her left. Embers flared around Demophon, who lay unburnt within the circle of fire, the essence of his mortal life consumed… just a little while longer…

  Metaneira awoke when the flame started to flicker. She looked over at Doso hunched in front of the hearth. That kind old priestess… stoking the fire so late at night. May the Great Lady bless her.

  She glanced at Demophon’s crib. Empty. Her breath caught in her throat as a gurgle came from near the hearth. Metaneira stood slowly, her bare feet padding across the freezing stone floor. A loud hiss from the flames stopped her for a moment and lit the shadows as a drip of sap from a fresh log flared and fizzled. It calmed. Her heart beat faster. She neared the hearth and the shrouded Doso, who fanned the fire with her breath and drew tendrils of gray smoke from it by the tips of her raised fingers. A golden glow shone just in front of her. Metaneira heard a cooing murmur and peered over the oblivious priestess’s shoulder.

  “My baby!”

  The queen screamed and heaved Doso away from the hearth fire, where she landed hard on her elbows. Demeter spun back as Metaneira dove forward into the fire and gathered the startled infant from the flames. She batted away the embers that clung to the sleeves of her mantle while Demophon wailed.

  “Celeus! Celeus! Wake up, Celeus!”

  “Quiet! Put him back, you foolish woman!” Demeter rasped, pleading with the hysterical queen. “It’s not finished yet!”

  “Witch!” Metaneira screamed over her. Demeter watched helplessly as the fire closed back in on itself and dissipated. “She’s a witch!”

  “Metaneira! What is the meaning of this?!” Celeus threw off his wool blanket and sat up from the divan to see Metaneira drop Demophon into his cradle and furiously grab the old crone’s hair. Doso cried out in pain.

  “Celeus! She was trying to kill our baby! She’s a witch! A servant of Hecate! We must stone her!” she said, still gripping a clump of Doso’s hair. Triptolemus startled awake and stood up from his bed.

  “Let her go!”

  Metaneira spun around as Triptolemus slowly advanced on her.

  “Mother, let her go. Doso wasn’t harming him.”

  “I know what I saw! And I saw a witch burning my son!”

  “How dare you say that about her! She’s not who you think she is—”

  “She’s poisoned you, Triptolemus!” Metaneira pointed back at her son, tears stinging her eyes. She roughly wrenched Doso away, the old woman’s body splaying across the stone floor.

  “Mother, if you could calm yourself long enough to let me explain—”

  “No! Stay back! You are under her spell!”

  Demeter got up on one elbow and looked Triptolemus in the eye. She was certain now— he knew.

  Metaneira spat in Doso’s direction and leveled a quivering finger at her. “I curse you, witch! Murderous she-hound of Hades! I curse you with all the fires of Tartarus! I call upon the Queen of Curses, Persephone Praxidike Chthonios, to—”

  A blast of heat rolled through the room, nearly knocking everyone off their feet. Doso rose above them to the rafters, her clothes became flame and ash, her naked form shone with blinding golden light and flaming sheaves of barley. A warm wind blew from the altar and wrapped around her. From the empty air, a golden p
eplos took shape and draped itself around her. Wrinkled skin smoothed and tightened from the worry lines in her forehead to her crooked and callused toes, and color flushed her furious cheeks. Fragile white hair thickened into coppery blonde curls lifted and coiffed around a golden diadem. Her green irises burned with rims of gold.

  “Ignorant humans!” Demeter’s voice resounded throughout the room. Triptolemus and King Celeus immediately dropped to their knees and bowed their heads low. Metaneira staggered and fell to hers. A red mantle with a gold barley border draped around Demeter’s body. “Heedless and stupid! Unable to recognize good fortune from bad! You have made a mistake without remedy.”

  Metaneira bowed her head and cried, clasping her hands, preparing to be immolated by the goddess and her golden fire. “Forgive me, Demeter Anesidora, Goddess of the Harvest, bringer of many gifts! Holy daughter of Great Mother Rhea, I—”

  “Silence!” She alighted on the ground, the air around her still flaming with gold. “Foolish woman, you would cast me out as a witch when I saved your children? Then think to curse me with the very name Hades raped onto my stolen daughter’s body?!”

  “Please, Great Lady of the Harvest, forgive your humble servant’s ignorant words! I could not have known it was you!” Metaneira’s pleading grew unintelligible, her tongue thickened by her sobbing.

  “I swear by the Styx, Metaneira, I would have made your precious son immortal and young all the days of his life. I was not trying to burn him! Not after you had shown me such kindness.” She calmed, the fires around her abating as she watched this woman cry and cower before her, much as she had cried and cowered before Zeus in Nysa the night her Kore was taken. She remembered supplicating uselessly to the god she thought had once loved her; the god who betrayed her and her daughter. “Demophon was too far gone with the fever, otherwise I would never have attempted such. Now there is no way to save him from death.”

  “Please, no!”

  “And yet you force me to find a way,” Demeter rasped, pacing the floor, “because I swore an oath to you on the Styx that I would not let Hades have him.”