Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  “Infrequently. For only—”

  “—an hour at a time or so?”

  She paled. “How did you know?”

  “Because I’ve barely been able to stay asleep for that long since—” he looked away from her, not wanting to bring up their fight just yet. He hoped this distraction from that inevitable conversation could continue just a bit longer. “When I did sleep, I always dreamed of them.”

  “This is impossible. I can’t grow anything down here, and believe me, I’ve tried.”

  He cupped her hand from underneath, holding it and the blossom aloft. “This is proof that you did; that we did. For me to do such a thing on my own is impossible— here or in the world above.”

  “But…” she started, “that’s not true. After you came to me in Eleusis, my shrine was covered in asphodel. You left the flowers for me when I awoke.”

  He smiled. “As much as I would have loved to have done that for you, I wasn’t the one who grew them. It was you.”

  She looked up at him in disbelief.

  “Persephone, my intention that night was to introduce myself to you as your betrothed husband. I didn’t anticipate, much less plan on, arriving in the dream already embracing you. And from your reaction, I don’t think you expected to see me that way either.”

  That’s not necessarily true, she thought, chewing on her lip. Persephone drew her hand away from his and felt heat wash over her from her stomach to her face. “Aidon, I visited a mortal wedding that day in Eleusis. It was the first time I’d ever witnessed… what happens between men and women. That night I had gone to sleep thinking about it, wishing to dream about what it would be like with— with my husband.”

  He fought to suppress a smile. She had brought them together intimately. But in truth, he had too, though the desire had been buried in his heart, disconnected from his conscious mind. “When we came together that night, something happened. Something… unexpected and beautiful, honestly— and it carried itself with you when I brought you here as my wife. The pomegranate grove should not be possible. Those trees are alive— well and truly alive, and every other thing growing in the Underworld is not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Early this morning I went to the grove, and underneath a fallen petal I discovered living soil, new shoots of grasses— things that haven’t existed in the Underworld since Chaos formed it. I don’t know what to make of it, but—” He turned away from her again and stared out into the darkness. “I honestly hope to reconcile with you, and maybe we can find those answers together.”

  His clumsy earnestness finally revealed to her what she had been seeking behind the mask he’d worn all evening. Her fingers tapped on the ledge once more before she leaned away from it and stepped back from him. “Th-that is my hope as well. Maybe it would be wise for us to speak in private?”

  Aidon turned and offered his arm once more. “Our destination is… acceptable to you?”

  “Well, what could be more private than your own antechamber?” she said quietly as she held the flower in her hand. “I haven’t even seen your quarters.”

  “No,” he said with a brief smile. “You haven’t.”

  She placed her arm within his and walked, thinking about the first dream they shared. When we have each other, it should be in the proper place— in my own bed, after I’ve claimed you. His last words to her the night they met suddenly felt like ice in her stomach. Perhaps he was going to assert his rights to her after all. Maybe that was what Aidoneus meant by wanting to reconcile with her. And here she was encouraging him.

  He pushed open one side of a heavy ebony double door. The wood surfaces were intricately inlaid with gold in the shape of the great poplar tree that stood at the palace entrance. A stylized meandros of sapphire and lapis lazuli flowed like a river at the base of the door underneath the poplar tree. They walked into the dimly lit room and Aidon closed it behind him. Persephone shuddered, trying to let her eyes adjust as the latch clicked into place. The same elaborate design was inlaid on the other side of the door.

  He licked his suddenly dry lips, looking up at the design as he took the Key of Hades off his left hand. Aidon wanted to be alone with her— without the constant throng of voices from Asphodel and Tartarus. He spoke quietly. “I’ve had a lot of materials to work with over the aeons and created most of the palace myself, but I’m not half the craftsman that Hephaestus is when it comes to shaping metal. He gifted these doors to me a few centuries ago when I—”

  “I don’t want to have sex with you tonight.”

  He flinched and stood there for a long moment before he turned to her. “Excuse me?”

  “I—” she looked down at her clasped hands, fearing that she was treading on very dangerous ground. “If that’s why you originally thought to bring me here. I know you are m-my lord husband, but…”

  Idiot! he thought to himself. Of course she would think that all you wanted to do was bed her. You hauled her straight to your private rooms, for Fate’s sake…

  He turned away so she couldn’t mistake his annoyance with himself for anger at her. Aidon clinked the heavy rings together, rolling them in his hand before setting them on the ledge next to the door.

  “I think I gave you the wrong impression, Persephone. The only thing I wanted tonight was to finally speak with you again. Sex is the furthest thing from my mind, right now.” Liar, he thought. When is making love to her ever far from your mind?

  With a flick of his wrist, the torches on the wall flared to life one by one and illuminated the room. She smelled ignited pitch and the faint hint of date plums and olive oil. On the floor of the antechamber, black, blue and white marble formed a mosaic that mapped out the rivers and marshes, the palace, the fields and groves of Chthonia, their names marked in ancient glyphic letters that she didn’t recognize.

  The borders of the ceiling were low and hewn in white marble, but a central dome swept high overhead in a deep black obsidian. Bits of gold and small polished diamonds studded it here and there, flickering in the torchlight like stars. When she saw the constellations of the Hunter and the Bear, Persephone realized that Aidon had set each one of them in the exact arrangement of the sky in the world above. She peered at it with a mix of wonder and unease. She tried to imagine how long it must have taken to place each diamond star in the obsidian heavens above them, and to perfectly recreate them from memory. Behind a set of sheer indigo curtains, the room opened to an outside terrace where she could hear the falls and feel their cool mist even where she stood. Two ebony divans sat facing each other, covered with soft black sheepskins, their backs draped in fine indigo-dyed linen. Her version of this room was smaller and meant for one, furnished with a single couch, and she gathered that these quarters were not meant for Aidoneus alone.

  He stayed quiet as Persephone timidly took in her surroundings. “How can I trust that you didn’t bring me to your room for that? For… sex?”

  “You can’t,” he said without even a hint of emotion in his voice. “As you have said, I am full of riddles, and partial truths, and evaded questions, no? I’ve given you no cause to trust me.”

  She wasn’t expecting that, and looked at him wide eyed. His face remained calm; hers burned at his bold words. Persephone walked into the center of the room and stood near one of the divans, her face the same color as the red flower in her hand. She stared down at it, not wanting to lift her gaze, to answer his indirect accusation, or address her embarrassing one. “Y-you created our rooms rather far apart when you made them. The hallway we walked through was almost as long as the palace.”

  “That wasn’t meant to be your room forever.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I built it, my intention was to make sure there was a place in the palace for you to call your own when you came here to be my queen. Somewhere for you to stay as long as you needed until you were ready. That is, until you were comfortable enough to come to me of your own accord. At least that was my plan.” He looke
d at her warily then shook his head. “Obviously, the Fates have never had much use for my plans.”

  “So, right now, we are in our… yours and my…”

  “Yes.” She sat down and folded her hands in her lap, carefully holding the blossom so she wouldn’t fidget. He remained standing— restraining the urge to pace about. “I didn’t take you here to cajole you into staying in this room, either. If we cannot reconcile what happened and fix this tonight, then I’ll gladly walk you back. Or you can go alone; whichever pleases you. Even if we do find a way to mend this, and you’re still uncomfortable in my presence…”

  “How can we even begin to mend this, Aidon?”

  “You can start by trusting me,” he said. She opened her mouth to speak again, but he held his hand up and silenced her with his next sentence. “Wait. I know that you don’t trust me; I know why you don’t trust me. So if my evasiveness has harmed you, harmed us, then please allow me to put an end to it for you. Forever.”

  “How?”

  “Ask me anything.”

  19.

  “Anything?”

  “Persephone I promise that— No…” He straightened his shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Persephone, I swear to you on the great River Styx that I, Hades Aidoneus Chthonios, firstborn son of Kronos, will answer plainly and truthfully anything you ask of me from this moment forth.”

  Persephone raised her eyebrows. “Anything…”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you abduct me?” she started without preamble.

  He knew she must be full of questions, but was taken aback by the suddenness of her asking. When he considered how many questions she must have built up within her all this time, fears started to well up. Aidoneus silenced them. He loved her. He’d sworn an oath to her. He was ready to answer anything for her. “I spoke precipitously when we fought but the reasons I gave for taking you here were the absolute truth. I didn’t want to lose you; not when I was… when I was falling for you. If I had arrived too late, or if we hadn’t consummated our marriage as soon as I had you with me, then I would have only been able to sit under the shade of your branches and mourn you forever.”

  She looked down, “So what you told me— what my mother was going to do to keep me with her…?”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She clenched her jaw and turned away from him. Aidoneus took one step toward her, then drew back. He let Persephone feel her anger and sadness, own it, strengthen from passing through it, and didn’t move to comfort her just yet. There would be time enough for that.

  “Your mother was coming for you, and I needed to reach you first, before she did something all of us would regret for eternity. Hecate warned me of the danger. She knows everything that transpires within the ether, and when she heard Demeter’s wail of grief at losing you, she knew your mother’s reason had been overtaken, and Hecate cried out in pain from the shock of it. I’d never seen her respond so acutely to a vision as she did that day. She wrenched me away from you at my grove in Nysa when I wanted so badly to stay— because I had to save you.”

  She sat silently for a moment and forced the tears back. Could his words be true? Aidoneus had sworn an unbreakable oath on the Styx that he would tell her the truth. It must be true. “Then, are we actually married, Aidon? Or did you just… have me… and later call me your wife?”

  “Your father, the King of the Gods, said that I should find you and bring you to my home, that you were already my wife in all but deed. He told me this before I came to you in Eleusis. We were husband and wife by the word of Olympus before I even laid eyes on you.”

  “Why was there no ceremony?”

  He shrugged at her, incredulously. “We’re gods. We need no ceremony. To whom would we swear ourselves?”

  “But what about Aphrodite and Hephaestus?”

  He snorted. “Empty pageantry. And everyone knows how well that arrangement has turned out. The Blacksmith is one of the few Olympians I actually respect. But that poor man’s been shamed and cuckolded so many times by that wife of his, I fear I’m the only one left who does.”

  “Is there any ceremony that we could have had?”

  “I know of none. Zeus came to Hera in the guise of an injured bird and simply claimed her. And as for the traditions of the mortals— you did come to my sacred grove with a bridal wreath of laurels in your hair. But I wasn’t about to grab you by the wrist and drag you like a sack of grain from your father’s oikos to my bedroom the way the city folk do.” He smiled wryly and paced across the room as he thought. “Those who work the land still respect the old ways, but you and I are not peasants. As for the immortals, there is one… ritual. It’s not necessarily a marriage ceremony, though. And— it’s not for us. At least not right now.”

  “What is it and why can’t we have it, then?”

  “It’s called the hieros gamos,” Aidoneus said. Persephone carefully cradled the pomegranate flower in front of her as he continued. “The great rite of sexual and spiritual union between our kind. It’s a creation act that very few have participated in, and even fewer have practiced it for its intended purpose. That first night we all met on Olympus, it was your mother and father’s participation in that ritual that created you. I know the foundations of the rite, but I’ve not been made entirely aware of its particulars— something about twin souls, opposites working as one, conjunction and transcendence. Those are Hecate’s words, not mine. You’d have to ask her if you wanted to know more. But I do know that for the ritual to work as originally intended, for it to be as transformative is it claims, it requires that we love each other, wholly and completely.”

  She swallowed and looked away from him again. “Do you love me, Aidoneus?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation.

  “Why?”

  “I could give you a hundred answers about your beauty, your wit and curiosity, your strength, and any number of other things, Persephone, but the simplest one I have is that you make me feel alive. And as I’m sure you can guess from seeing the realm I’ve called my home all these aeons… that’s not an easy thing to do.”

  “Do you love me because of the golden arrow?”

  “No. I loved you far before that.”

  “Then why did Eros shoot you with it?”

  He bristled. “Zeus told that little kakodaimonos to do it. I think your father thought, in his own way, that it would help me court you.”

  “Had you ever courted another woman?”

  “No. I had never sought out nor coupled with a woman before you.” He paused, knowing full well that if he withheld anything from her, it could destroy their fragile peace. “There was one who pursued me. But nothing came of it.”

  Her mouth went dry and she was filled with a strange brew of curiosity and white hot jealousy. Persephone was so confused by her reaction that she barely managed to voice her question. “Who?”

  “A nymph of the Acheron from long ago. I spurned her affections. Bluntly. After that no one else dared. I was already bound to you, as far as I was concerned. Taking another would have dishonored and betrayed you.”

  “That’s… I…” Persephone stared at Aidoneus incredulously. “All my life, all I knew was that the gods can’t remain faithful to the women they married, let alone are betrothed to. I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”

  “Which is probably why Zeus thought it would be a good idea to shoot me,” he chortled. “Truthfully, I’ve wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t. I fear I would have been a rather cold husband to you. I often worry that I still am.”

  “I don’t think you are,” she said softly, shaking her head. They smiled thinly at each other. She remembered how confidently he had spoken to Merope, and how vulnerable he seemed with her now. She was perhaps the only being in the cosmos to truly know Hades for who he was. “What did the arrow do to you then, if it didn’t make you love me?”

  “It unlocked something within me— lust, certainly— and also the capacity to love, pe
rhaps?” He paused for a moment and thought on this, remembering the revelations that had struck him so profoundly during their fight. “I had already made up my mind to finally take you as my wife. I wanted you with me after I knew you’d reached majority, and spent millennia wondering how I should go about courting you. I didn’t know what it was that I felt. I had no way to recognize it until after I caught the arrow. When I did, I felt this… fire… rush through my veins. It smoldered and became an obsession. I thought that seeing you in the safety of the dream world would resolve it. It didn’t, and what I felt after I held you bordered on madness. I couldn’t think of anything else but having you in my arms again. And that fire burned unabated until I finally joined with you.”

  She shivered and felt her skin start to prickle. Persephone dropped the pomegranate flower in her lap and brought her hands around her arms reflexively, as though she were trying to warm the rest of her body until it matched the heat burning low in her belly. “I… I almost wish that I had been shot with it. Maybe it would be easier for me to—”

  “I wouldn’t have wished that sudden insanity on anyone. Least of all you. The golden arrow is a weapon. And one that I thought too potent to risk anyone finding or using, especially down here. It’s why I kept it on my person. I consider myself lucky that I saw it coming before it pierced my heart. The potency of the arrow striking true would have driven me to… couple with you immediately.”

  She blushed at her own thoughts, hoping he didn’t notice the heat seeping into every part of her body. Persephone pictured Hades rampant and priapic, out of his mind with need, searching all over Hellas for her and pulling her away from the Eleusinian wedding without a single word. She imagined him carrying her off over his shoulder and laying her down in a field of soft grass and poppies, his lips trailing across every inch of her. Her fingers tensed, as though they were digging into the sinews of his sun-warmed shoulder blades, the cool grass on her back, the breeze fanning their burning skin. Aidoneus cradled her neck with one strong hand, locked her legs around his waist with the other, and made her his— slipping in and out of her in a rhythm as old as time, until narcissus, crocuses and larkspur blossomed all around them. While that would have frightened her unimaginably that day, the fantasy set her aflame and drenched her in liquid heat. Persephone shifted uncomfortably on the divan. It had been three days since he last touched her.