Destroyer of Light

by Rachel Alexander

  “Let them,” he muttered quietly in her ear. “The allure of the forbidden is all they have. Speak against it, and you will only fan the flames.”

  “What would you have me do?” She ground out through clenched teeth. “My daughter has bound herself to a monster.”

  “Nothing lasts forever, Deme,” he said. “She will tire of him, or he will betray her. It is only a matter of which one will happen first. Their yearly absence from each other will be too long to sustain this… infatuation. Love doesn’t last among our kind. They will learn that cruel lesson eventually.”

  “Or you are witnessing here what shall be for all time,” Hecate said, appearing behind them and startling both.

  “What would you know of it?” Demeter hissed.

  “Only what I can see. We are, none of us, as infinite nor omnipotent as we would like to believe.” She smiled and looked on as the lovers ended their kiss. “And they shall outlast us all.”

  Persephone ran her fingers down his cheek, knowing that his palm had likely streaked her hair and neck with fertile earth. She didn't care. She would have him again. It wasn't goodbye. She had succeeded. And Zeus’s promise held more hope for them yet.

  “You should have told me,” he whispered to her, “and trusted me.”

  “I needed to do it this way, Aidon. It was the only way to save us. To save you.”

  He smiled at her, though his forehead crinkled with anxiety, thinking about the long months to come. He stood and pulled her up with him. His cloak and tunic were caked with mud, as was her dress. “I love you, Persephone.”

  “I love you, Aidon. My dear Hades… I will see you soon.”

  “Not soon enough,” he whispered.

  “Make it sooner,” she whispered into his ear, grasping at the collar of his tunic, “and perhaps we can try to fulfill our part in that new oath he swore.”

  He swallowed and his arms tensed at her words. “I will try to come to you. But we have much to do to fix all this.”

  With a last, soft kiss Aidoneus separated from her and walked toward his chariot. His demeanor darkened as he paused to confront Demeter. “Mark my words. After the last stalk of wheat is cut, she is mine. The Underworld will have her back, whether you will it or not. So I suggest you make that transition go smoothly. For her sake and yours.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Demeter’s voice cut like blades.

  “Your chief concern should be that your new cult of worshippers doesn’t forsake you when she leaves again,” he said, delighting in the brief flash of worry that crossed Demeter’s face. “They will need an explanation, no? As for my wife’s journey, Hermes will fetch her.”

  “What?” the Messenger whined.

  “He will be the one to take her home.”

  “You’ve got to be—”

  “My daughter’s home is—”

  “The world below,” Hecate finished.

  Demeter held her tongue. As Zeus had said, it would only fan the flames.

  Hecate matched Aidon’s pace, then climbed into the chariot with him, helped up by his proffered hand. He shook the reins and the horses trotted, circling around the gathering of gods. The wheels left deep grooves in the fresh earth. When Aidon passed by Persephone, he leaned toward her. Their fingertips brushed past each other, a last touch before he made his way toward the mouth of the cave. Aidoneus looked behind him at Persephone’s vanishing form, and then disappeared into the earth, leaving his love and the sunlit world behind him.

  14.

  The long chariot ride from Chthonia to the realms of mortals had left Persephone drained. Between gripping the edge of the swiftly drawn basket and bracing herself against the rigors of Hermes’s driving, her muscles were sore from calves to shoulders. The confrontation with her mother, husband, and the King of the Gods had only exacerbated the strain she endured during the very creation of Spring itself. She was worn out, body, mind, heart, and soul. A soft bed and a dark room seemed the most welcome things in the warm, living world.

  But rather than restful solitude, she’d found cheering throngs of starving mortals when she walked through the doors of the Telesterion. They’d thrown sheaves of barley at her feet and greeted the Goddess of Spring with happy tears, thanksgiving, and shouts of Kore! The Maiden. Karpophoros! The bringer of fruit. She has returned! She suspected she ought to bask in the glory. This was what she had risked so much for— the mortals would be saved, and she had earned a heroine’s welcome.

  Persephone just wanted to go home.

  She remained tight lipped and distant throughout the evening festivities, needing sleep, something she had sorely lacked in the previous days. Her heart twisted, thinking back on her admission of love to Aidoneus, then to a joyful day in the grove followed by a sorrowful night in their room. Had it only been two days since she admitted that she loved him? Had it only been hours ago that she was convinced that she carried his child? Tears blurred her eyes when she walked up the steps of her mother’s dais in the great temple, and a wreath of wheat and barley sheaves was placed on her head, covering her crown of asphodel.

  They sang and rejoiced, and Persephone took her place on a newly fashioned throne, of smaller stature than her mother’s. A tall, blond man Persephone didn’t recognize spoke to the congregation about how fertility had returned, reassuring them that new crops would be planted, that the fields would yield twice as much as before Kore had been carried away to the Realm of the Dead.

  When the moon rose high in the sky, Metaneira led her to her new bedchamber. No longer would she sleep under the stars on rushes and fertile earth, but in a room of stone and wood with a thin window. The former Queen of Eleusis, still buried in grief by the loss of all three of her daughters, had told her that the room once belonged to Kallithoe, her eldest girl, who was to be married before the winter had killed both her and her betrothed. When the woman’s face contorted with sadness, Persephone threw her arms around her to comfort her. Metaneira stiffened at first, but relaxed and finally broke down sobbing, letting her sadness overflow its banks.

  Persephone, despite her weariness, invited Metaneira into her room. She sat beside her, telling her about the peaceful fields where Kallithoe and her sisters resided. She described to the former queen, now Demeter’s priestess, how beautiful the Fields of Asphodel were, how glorious the light of dawn was when it shone through the Styx. She described the palace and the garden wistfully. At Metaneira’s insistence, she spoke a little about Hades, his strength and tenderness, and how he’d spent aeons shepherding the souls and looking after them. Then Persephone shared something that Metaneira hadn't even considered— that Kallithoe’s soul, that all the souls in Asphodel, would one day drink from the Lethe and be reborn to the world above.

  Metaneira held Persephone’s hands tightly and thanked he. This was, she said, the first true peace she had felt since the loss of her daughters. She confided in Persephone in hushed, anxious tones that throughout her service to Demeter, she had tried to be a good follower, but that some part of her felt absent until now. When Persephone yawned, Metaneira apologized for keeping her up so late, and sweetly drew back the blankets for her, tucking her in and snuffing out the oil lamp hanging next to the door before softly closing it. Persephone smiled for the first time since she and her husband had parted, satisfied far more by their exchange than any cheering throng of mortals. Still, sleep eluded her.

  Before long, Persephone heard breathy gasps and the rhythmic creaking of a bed frame down the hall from her. Once she realized the source of the noises, she wrapped a pillow around her ears to drown out the lovers: the tall man from the ceremony, Triptolemus— and her mother. Her insides twisted. While she had been wrenched away from her beloved husband, Demeter writhed with delight. She wanted most of all to use the Key of Hades and escape this unfamiliar place, and crawl into bed beside Aidoneus. But she didn’t dare undo the fruits of her sacrificed, all she had won.

  Her restless mind drifted to her conversation with Metaneira. She w
as astounded that the mortals knew none of the truth about life after death and the inevitable journey back to the living world. They seemed to believe that life was a path from the womb to the grave, and death a dismal eternity spent shuffling about in darkness and loneliness. They feared that fiery torment and being torn to pieces by Keres and Erinyes awaited them if they so much as sneezed the wrong way during their mortal lives.

  Hades had no priests to instruct them otherwise. The only stories about the Other Side came from self-proclaimed necromancers who could fool a crowd with ergot-induced delirium, thrown voices, and linen ‘ghosts’ flying on sinuous threads, more concerned with pocketing drachma than the truth of the afterlife. How would they ever learn the truth?

  Persephone would tell the mortals the truth about what lay before them on the Other Side. She owed it to her husband, and to herself, to reveal the mysterious world below. She would be an emissary during her exile to the world above

  She would give the mortals hope.

  Her courses came again two week later, the natural way, her body aligning itself with the rhythms of the moon and smashing any hopes she had of carrying Aidon‘s child. After they subsided, Persephone stopped dressing in the dark colors and heavy jewels of a queen. She donned a sage green peplos, embracing her role in the world above: the Goddess of Spring. She found that it eased the minds of the villagers. She wove crocuses and lilies into her hair alongside asphodel, and later pear and apple blossoms, and at last her beloved larkspur when it finally appeared on the green hillsides.

  Hermes visited almost weekly to gather lost souls. Ghosts were being drawn to Eleusis by the presence of their grieving relatives, and by the lingering hunger for food. She would ask him each time if there were any messages from her husband, but Hermes always replied the same way: he hadn’t spoken with him, but he was sure Hades thought of her often. Hermes insisted that the Lord of the Dead was buried in work trying to restore order to his kingdom. Another full moon came and went. No change, no messages. Then another full moon. Nothing. Persephone began to worry that excluding Aidoneus from her decision to eat the pomegranate seeds had been unwise. Her husband knew her well. He must have guessed by now that the Pomegranate Agreement, as it had become known, was her idea. How poorly had he truly taken it? Her lingering fear was that Aidon felt in his heart that she had betrayed him.

  When Hermes would ask if she had a message for Aidon, she would decline. She was bursting with things to tell her husband, but nothing she said to Hermes would be secret for long. Their marriage, and what Persephone had done to ensure that it would continue, was already the juiciest gossip among the immortals.

  ***

  Persephone sat under the great olive tree where the road curved, a piece of shade in the noonday sun. The days were warmer. Shoots of wheat rose green and proud in every field, their second set of leaves fluttering in the breeze.

  “Persephone?”

  She nearly dropped her cup of kykeon. “Athena? Athena! I wasn’t expecting you!”

  They embraced, and the Goddess of Wisdom leaned against the tree, running her thumb under a strap on her cuirass. Her eyes darted to Persephone’s hands clutched around the clay cup. “You don’t mind me calling you that? Instead of Kore?”

  “What, my given name? No. I prefer it.”

  “Ah. I had heard… I thought that after your time there, you might not want to…”

  “No.” Persephone hesitated to say more. Athena looked at her cup again. “Would you like some?”

  “What is it?”

  “Kykeon. My mother’s priests make it every day. I drink it sometimes, for their sake.”

  “Is it some sort of mead or wine?”

  “No. Try it.”

  Athena took the cup from her, sipping from the other side. “Sweet, simple. It’s… comforting. Are you sure there are no spirits in this?”

  Persephone laughed. “It’s just barley and honey, and a little bit of thyme. Mother doesn’t allow spirits in her house. And the souls in Aidon’s realm didn’t drink wine.”

  Athena looked around nervously. “There were no pomegranates there either, until you arrived. At least, according to Hermes.”

  “Well, no. Athena, is everything alright?”

  “Yes. But more importantly,” she said slinking down to sit beside Persephone on the grass, “are you?”

  “Of course.”

  “So Hades didn’t force you to eat the seeds?”

  “No.”

  Athena let out a sigh. “I had worried— Artemis had worried too— the last day we saw you, that he may have… made certain demands on you. You being his wife, and such.”

  “I chose to eat the seeds.” She smiled. “And I’d hardly call what we had ‘demands’. We…”

  Athena leaned forward, waiting for the Goddess of Spring to elaborate.

  Persephone pursed her lips. “Athena, whatever you might have heard…”

  “No one speaks of it. At least not with me.”

  “So you came to me directly.”

  She looked down and stayed silent for a moment. Persephone emptied the cup, and Athena brightened. “I’m sorry. I was only trying to make small talk. That wasn’t what I came for.”

  “Then what?”

  “I came to ask a favor.”

  Persephone sat back. “I’m listening.”

  Athena stood and plucked an olive branch. “This.”

  “The olives.”

  “They take a full year to fruit.”

  “Yes.”

  “And they were ripening for this year when… you were taken away.”

  “Winter was hard on everything.”

  “Yes. But that’s what I’ve come to ask you. Can you make the olives fruit before you leave?”

  “Four months? Why come to me? Aren’t they your domain?”

  “Yes. But…” She sighed. “Persephone, only you can make them grow. I’m just concerned with how the oil is pressed and used. The mortals need the oil for so many—”

  “Say no more.”

  “Then you will?”

  “I won’t be able to do it alone. Mother will have to help, but I can’t imagine her objecting. It’s important. Especially to your city.”

  Athena nodded. “Thank you. I knew you would understand. You know what it’s like, since you’re the patroness of Eleusis.”

  She guffawed. “I wouldn’t go so far as to call me a ‘patroness’ of anything.”

  “You mean more to them than you know.”

  “I only make them uncomfortable.”

  “My city was wary of me, at first.” She rolled her eyes. “They were as reliant on Poseidon as these people were on your mother. But give them time. You’ll see.”

  ***

  Some mortals, too weak to eat, could not be saved, and their passing prompted several quick visits from Death. When Persephone and Thanatos finally crossed paths, he bowed to one knee before her, shifting from desiccated skeleton to vital youth, and when he stood she surprised him with a quick hug. She asked him for any word from her husband. Thanatos replied that he had been so occupied with hunting down Sisyphus and reaping the last victims of winter that he’d had no chance to see Aidon. Thanatos placed a hand on Persephone’s slumped shoulder and assured her that her husband missed her greatly. It didn’t comfort her.

  She was becoming increasingly frustrated by his absence. He’d intimated that he’d come to her. The days were a drudgery, the sun taking forever to set. Each night without him was an eternity of shifting this way and that. She would touch herself between her legs, trying to mimic his caress. It satisfied her, momentarily. But then she would lay alone in the dark, breathing unevenly and staring through the window at the thin crescent moon, and the craving for him, for Hades himself, grew that much stronger. No matter how fast her fingers had worked, his strong arms weren't there to hold her afterward. Her bed was not theirs. The Telesterion wasn’t her home.

  Each day the sun rose higher and more winter pilgrims left Eleu
sis to return home and rebuild. Hellas mourned its dead and the people regained their strength by boiling the asphodel roots that Persephone had sprouted in the boggy snow run-off. After the last quarter moon, Eleusis was again home to its usual pastoral residents, their numbers thinned by those who hadn’t survived the harsh winter. A few Eleusinians approached her, cautiously at first, and then in greater numbers with each passing day, asking after their deceased loved ones.

  Persephone told them what awaited all mortals on the Other Side, and explained the rebirth that followed. Most looked at her with glazed expressions, disbelieving her, but more and more people took comfort in her tales. A few families planted pomegranate orchards, and started leaving small amphorae of olive oil and obolos near the cave where Persephone had emerged. The amphorae were later joined by images of her and her husband: at first, grass and stick figures bound together with twine, then images carved from wood.

  The offerings and devotions heartened Persephone. She was glad to bring hope to the weary mortals that floated through her days like windborne seeds. Still, she felt like an interloper in this world where she had once been adored. Celeus and Triptolemus were devoted to Demeter alone and would politely dismiss themselves from her company if she spoke of the Underworld. Triptolemus’s student Diocles was afraid of Persephone, and always addressed her formally as Daughter of Demeter, with a quick nod and an equally quick excuse to leave. Not all of her mother’s followers gave her the same stiff reception, and she’d found strong allies in Eumolpus and his students. Metaneira was typically reserved, but would share an evening with her every so often, and even laughed when Persephone had described fearsome Cerberus loping through the garden, chasing after a thrown stick like a playful puppy.

  While she felt her progress with the Eleusinians was slow and stilted, the land told another story. Chickpeas and white beans grew amidst stocks of asphodel, and the first olives were starting to reappear, helped out of their dormancy at Athena’s request. The bitter first harvest of figs was fed to the goats in a desperate attempt to keep the hungry beasts away from the growing cabbage. Sage and savory grew in small patches, plucked by the women to season and dry the fish that the men caught while the crops grew.