Destroyer of Light

by Rachel Alexander

  She winced as a sharp piece of gravel embedded itself in her foot, but kept walking. The path felt like it stretched on forever in the dark and she feared that at any moment Aidon would appear before her to stop her. She passed under the low branches of a pomegranate tree and stood in the center of the grove, exhaling in relief when her toes sunk into the soft blanket of grasses and moss. The narcissus that had poked its way through the soil this morning was still there. She considered plucking it so she would always have this immortal flower to remember her husband by if her plan failed, but stopped. She must have faith that this would work.

  A sacrifice was required for both the land of the living and the land of the dead. With all the world above had suffered and all the world below had endured, there was nothing else to be done. If she dwelled here forever, Demeter would neglect the earth, destroying it. If she were only above for the portion of each year it took to make the plants flower, not grow, there would be too much damage to undo each time. There had to be a balance, as Kottos had said.

  Six seeds.

  Would they even accept this? Not just Zeus and Demeter, but her husband? There were too many questions in her mind, but the dream had been clear. She let the himation fall to her feet. The cold air hit her immediately, tightening every inch of her skin. She stood up on the balls of her feet and gripped a fruit, pulling it down until the stem snapped and the branch rebounded. The others jostled, pomegranates bouncing in the moonlight, and the leaves shook loudly against each other. She looked around to make certain she was still alone.

  Persephone rolled the ripe fruit in her hand, trying to find a weak spot on the rough rind. She scratched her thumbnail along a fissure until it gave way. Her heart beat faster. The skin tore back unevenly as she cut an edge through it, then dug her fingers in, splitting it open. She struggled, feeling a few arils break against her fingernails, drenching her cuticles and staining them deep red. The juices dripped down her hands. With a last wrench the whole fruit gave way, spilling seeds around her, a few broken ones bouncing against her thighs.

  It had been so much easier to open the damned thing this morning when she could clearly see it and wasn’t exhausted by grief. Her shaky desperation had turned this into a mess. Persephone brushed as much of the evidence off her skin as she could, then sat and wrapped Aidon’s cloak around her, careful not to stain it with pulp. His scent of warm earth and cypress enveloped her.

  Peeling back the bitter flesh, her fingers feathered over the dark seeds, each one flush against the other, crammed together, ready to burst. Her heart hammered in her chest.

  There’s only one way around this, and that is to overthrow the order of things.

  She picked one seed from the pomegranate and held it up in the moonlight. The barest hint of red shone through it. Persephone lowered it to her lips and shut her eyes.

  The skin cracked, a small burst of tartness on her tongue followed by sweet pulp. She rolled it along the roof of her mouth, and swallowed.

  She opened her eyes and looked around her, then shifted her weight from one hip to the other. Persephone had forever bound herself to the Land of the Dead. Even if they took away her marriage, her name would forever be Chthonios because of that single seed. She expected some sort of change to overcome her, something physical that would signify the importance of what she’d done.

  Nothing.

  How long could she stay in the world above now that she was truly a creature of the Underworld? What would happen, she wondered, if they tried to keep her from coming back? Would she fall through the earth, the realm of the dead drawing her down like iron shards to a lodestone? Would it feel like dying?

  She knew she would not be barred from the world above. Aidoneus had eaten asphodel roots and he was free to come and go at will. But she was a goddess of the earth. Just as it was an adamantine rule of nature that whoever ate the fruits of the Underworld was bound to it forever, there were similar truths for the world above. The time that passed from tilling and planting to the harvest of every grain, leaf and fruit was a changeless constant. To maintain the balance, she would have to stay for the duration of the season and protect the mortals’ food from seed to reaping. Half the year.

  Six seeds.

  Persephone dug out a row of five more arils and held them in the palm of her hand like little polished garnets. She picked them up, one by one, sucking on each and breaking it with tongue and teeth. She savored the tartness and sweetness of the arils and the dry scratch of the seeds, then swallowed the pulpy mass whole.

  She was tempted to eat more, to find every seed that spilled and eat the whole fruit— to consume every last fruit in the orchard if that was what staying with Aidoneus required. She restrained herself.

  Her husband would hate her plan, but the just and reasoning part of him would understand. Her mother would feel betrayed. Persephone herself hadn’t wanted to make her marriage into a half life when she declared her love to Hades, and her heart rebelled against her own scheme.

  The Fates seldom listen to our plans.

  A dark possibility settled over her thoughts. If nothing could stop her from returning to Chthonia now that she’d eaten the fruit, they might retaliate against her husband. If they thought Aidoneus was responsible for this, it could mean war between the realms. Despite Persephone’s impulse to rush back to their room and rejoice with him that she’d found a means by which to keep him, even if only part of the time, she could say nothing. Reveal nothing. Persephone rose to her feet and pointedly set the opened pomegranate down next to the blooming narcissus, the missing seeds upturned and visible to anyone who ventured into the grove.

  She knew her husband. He would come here soon after she’d left and he would find it: clear, undeniable proof of what she had done. Not now, but soon— hopefully after she had spoken with her mother. Her husband’s shock would be her proof to Demeter and Zeus that she’d done this of her own free will. It would absolve Aidon of guilt, and save him from being punished.

  It wasn’t enough to have him discover it with surprise. Persephone herself would have to tell all what she had done, and she would need Aidoneus there if she was to prove his innocence in this. He would have to follow her above and face Demeter and Zeus with her. But how could she get him to follow without telling him what she had done?

  Persephone turned back toward the palace and opened a path through the ether. Bright fire circled in front of her until she could clearly see the golden tree etched onto the door outside their chambers.

  She didn’t see the stout gardener peering at her wide-eyed from behind a white poplar tree in the garden. Persephone stepped through the gateway, letting it close behind her and returning the hallway to moonlit darkness. The door creaked open and she walked across the antechamber, casting off her husband’s himation along the way as she crept back into their bedroom.

  Careful not to disturb him, she shut the curtain and padded across the bed, the mattress sinking under her weight. Persephone nestled against his chest, rising and falling, deep in sleep.

  “I love you, Aidoneus,” she whispered. Her eyes drooped shut. “Forgive me.”

  11.

  “Fates…”

  Askalaphos took a cautious step forward, his sandal padding softly into the grass. Cerberus howled in the distance, the unsettling harmony causing the gardener to jerk to a stop. He reconsidered his advance; Hecate had told him not to come here, that it was sacred ground and not meant for his care. The grasses and moss under his feet had grown in uncharacteristically wildly, stopping at the outermost roots of the intertwined trees. They were an untamed island in the sea of perfect asphodel and poplars that he’d spent millennia cultivating.

  He heard a twig snap and held his breath, then realized that it had cracked under his own foot. The garden was still pitch black. Askalaphos had been finishing a final perusal of the grounds to make sure that Menoetes’s ever growing flock of black sheep hadn’t wandered in again, leaving their droppings, munching on asphodel flowers,
becoming a toy or a meal— or both— for Cerberus. He was tired of cleaning up after them.

  Just as he was about to retire to his bed, Askalaphos had seen all the lights in the garden dim. Then she had walked out, clad only in Lord Hades’s cloak. He’d hid, not sure of what to do. She had dropped the himation at her feet and he had stumbled away and huddled behind a poplar tree, praying she hadn’t seen him. He didn’t dare imagine what the Queen— or, gods help him, the King— might do to him with the knowledge that he’d glimpsed her naked in the moonlight. Askalaphos had guessed that it was a ritual of some sort. He had never involved himself with any of the esoteric goings-on in Chthonia, and never questioned them. He’d heard rustling from Persephone’s direction, then silence. It wasn’t until Askalaphos saw the walls of the garden glow with the light of her fire, so very much like the Phlegethon itself, that he dared to turn around and slink from his hiding place.

  He’d barely stepped into the grove when he saw it: a pomegranate, open, missing seeds, right where she had been standing.

  “No, no, no…” Askalaphos wrung his hands and tried in vain to draw in a full breath.

  Why did he always have to stumble into these messes? No one could find out about this… not Menoetes, not Hecate or Nyx… no one. Especially not Lord Hades! Askalaphos knew— everyone knew— about the rage that had beset Aidoneus in the throne room that day. Word traveled fast in the Underworld. Hermes was here. The Olympians had recalled Persephone to the world above, somehow, and she was to leave before dawn. If anyone knew that Persephone was now bound here forever, that she must return to Chthonia, and that Askalaphos had been present and could have stopped her in time, but didn’t… He would be blamed for pushing the entire cosmos to war.

  The pomegranate had been wrenched apart— a twisted, irreparable mess. He had to hide it.

  Askalaphos took off his chlamys and shivered. Cerberus bayed and wailed in the distance, and his skin prickled again. He bundled up the fruit and as many fallen seeds as he could find, and pinned it closed. He darted his eyes around, praying that no one had seen him.

  He took a few steps, careful not to leave any tracks behind him, and wiped his feet in the grass. Askalaphos ducked under a branch, then broke into a full run. A frightened bleat was all he heard before he tripped and sprawled in the dirt. A black lamb shook itself off and bounded away into the asphodel. His parcel rolled away from him, coming to rest against a rough ebony staff. The gardener paled and looked up at the crooked knees of the bondsman.

  “Askalaphos?” Menoetes said, holding up an oil lamp. The light was blinding, and he couldn’t see the man’s expression beneath his hood, only the flickering flame.

  “I… I…” he said, scrambling to rise and dust himself off. Menoetes leaned forward and grasped the gardener’s hand. He still favored his right leg, injured a few months ago, but hoisted the portly man easily to his feet.

  “Easy there, friend. What are you doing out so early?”

  “I-I could ask you the same.”

  “One of the littler ones squeezed under the gate,” he said, motioning vaguely into the distance where the lamb had zigzagged through the garden and away from Askalaphos’s clumsy feet. “I almost had her when you came charging out of nowhere. What’s your hurry anyway?”

  “Nothing. N-nothing important, Menoetes,” the gardener stammered. “I’ll-ll just be on… my…”

  Askalaphos trailed off, dropping his gaze to the bundle that now had Menoetes’s rapt attention. A few seeds had spilled out, shining bright red in the flickering light of the bondsman’s lamp. Cold raced down his spine when Menoetes poked at the bundle with his staff.

  “What have we here?”

  ***

  “Sweet one…”

  He didn’t want to do this.

  “My love…”

  Let her sleep, his heart screamed at him. Let her rest, and let her stay here forever right beside him. But he had to awaken her. They were waiting.

  “Persephone,” Aidoneus whispered close to her ear.

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s… time to wake up, my love. You have a long journey ahead of you.”

  Persephone felt his hand petting her shoulder, and drowsily opened her eyes. The crackling hearth fire lit her husband’s careworn face. She blinked, wakefulness arriving along with recollection of everything that had transpired over the last day and night. She sat up and wrapped her arms around Aidoneus. He held her close, breathing against her neck.

  She tangled her hands in his hair, and noticed a faint red glow. Her breath caught in her throat— it was coming from the rings on her hand, the Key. She breathed out slowly, hoping that Aidon wouldn’t make the connection yet. Persephone pulled away from him and clasped his left hand, his three rings smoldering the same as hers. She opened her mouth in bewilderment.

  Six seeds.

  “I saw them too. Before I woke you,” he said quietly. “I’m going to take it… as a good omen— that you and I will be together again, someday.”

  “Yes.” Persephone nodded, then swallowed. “Aidon, when did you wake up?”

  “An hour ago. I couldn’t sleep.”

  She frowned. “You need rest. Today will be no easier for you.”

  “I’m not the one who has to face the Olympians.”

  Perfect timing, she thought to herself. “What if I asked you to?”

  He grimaced. “Persephone, we discussed this last night—”

  “This is different,” she interrupted. “I want to speak to them and convince Zeus—”

  Aidon snorted derisively and shook his head.

  She continued. “I need to tell them that I must come back. That the Underworld needs me. And I need you there to support me, Aidoneus.”

  “Persephone…”

  “The truth is as true today as it was yesterday, and as it will always be.”

  “Should we just forget everything that’s happened and wallow in denial? Please, my love, don’t make this harder on yourself. There are only two paths diverging from this moment, and one leads to the end of the world.”

  “Please be there with me.”

  He furrowed his brow. “You overestimate me, sweet one. Do you think it will be easy for me to face those who are separating us? To just leave you there and come back without you?”

  “Please trust me.”

  “This has nothing to do with my trust in you, my love. I don’t have that kind of faith in myself.”

  “But I do, Aidon,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You asked me to trust you before. Many times. Please…”

  He lowered his head. What would stop him from tearing Zeus and Demeter to pieces when he saw them? For betraying him and ripping away the one thing he’d ever wanted or asked for or cared for?

  “Please,” she repeated. “This might be the last thing I ever ask of you.”

  A knock at the bedroom door interrupted his answer.

  “Your majesties?” came a muffled voice. Hecate had come to escort her and Hermes to the world above, Persephone knew. What she didn’t know was how the three of them would travel. Would they all journey through the ether together? About the other matter, the white witch had said yesterday morning. I can and should speak with you about it later. Tomorrow, perhaps?

  At least she would have an answer about that. Hecate must have known all that would transpire and had wisely said nothing. Persephone wrapped a bed sheet around herself and cracked open the door. “Hecate.”

  The kindly Goddess of the Crossroads stood on the other side, her hair wound up with strands of selenite, an oil lamp in her hand. “All the world above waits, Queen Persephone. You and I can speak candidly on the way there.”

  She nodded. “If you could wait outside and give us a moment to prepare ourselves?”

  “Certainly,” Hecate said, and nodded her head before leaving the antechamber through the double doors.

  Persephone lit the torches on the wall with a wave of her hand.

  “You can do that al
most effortlessly,” Aidoneus mused.

  “Thanks to you.” She was about to ask him again, and worried her lip with her teeth.

  “I’ll think on it,” he answered, reading Persephone.

  She gave him a pained smile. “We should get dressed.”

  The routine, mundane preparations for the journey ahead helped keep her heart from bursting out of her chest. It took all of Persephone’s will to suppress and conceal every thought about what she was to do today, and what it would mean for her, her husband, her mother, the mortals— all the cosmos, in truth. She stretched out the two pieces of fine wool that made up her black peplos, looking for any signs of their lovemaking. Satisfied that they were spotless, she folded the garment perfectly so it revealed only her ankles and pinned up one shoulder. Persephone felt Aidon take the other side from her, fibula already in hand.

  He slid the pin in place and picked up her jeweled girdle. “She’s not going to like seeing you in this.”

  “Unfortunate for her,” she muttered. “I’m not returning to my mother as Kore.”

  He let out a long sigh. “That much is certain, according to the scroll Hermes read yesterday.”

  “I mean I’m not going to my mother as a powerless, ravished victim, Aidoneus,” she said firmly. “I will appear before her and Zeus as Queen of the Underworld. And as you said before Sisyphus’s trial, one must look the part.”

  He nodded silently, fastening the catches of her girdle. Persephone wound her tresses up with a ribbon and started arranging the asphodel flowers that had spilled from her hair yesterday into a crown. Not one of them was creased or wilted. Immortal flowers did not decay. Persephone bade him sit in the chair in front of the hematite mirror. She ran a comb through his curls and pulled his long hair back with a gold clasp. His face was set in stone as he looked at her in the reflection. Persephone refrained from coaxing him to speak his mind as she normally would. There was a time and place for everything.