The Queen of Flowers and Roots

by Io

  The Queen of Flowers and Roots

  Io

  Translated by Rosemary Dawn Allison

  “The Queen of Flowers and Roots”

  Written By Io

  Copyright © 2017 Laura

  All rights reserved

  Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

  www.babelcube.com

  Translated by Rosemary Dawn Allison

  “Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Contents

  What Feeds the Flowers

  Bitterness

  The White Narcissus

  Where the Roots Are

  The Cruel Equilibrium

  The Realm of Alabaster and Obsidian

  Unknown

  Buds that blossom, buds that shine

  Six Pomegranate Seeds

  Music for the Dead

  Theseus and Pirithous

  The Divine Thread

  Hestia’s Hearth

  The Goddess Cut in Half

  The cap of invisibility

  Hymn to Persephone

  The Twelfth Labor

  The Triple Goddess

  Nothing to do with Olympus

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  P. S. (Kore)

  Contents

  Contents

  What Feeds the Flowers

  Bitterness

  The white narcissus

  Where the Roots Are

  The Cruel Equilibrium

  The Realm of Alabaster and Obsidian

  Unknown

  Buds that blossom, buds that shine

  Six Pomegranate Seeds

  Music for the Dead

  Theseus and Pirithous

  The Divine Thread

  Hestia’s Hearth

  The Goddess Cut in Half

  The cap of invisibility

  Hymn to Persephone

  The Twelfth Labor

  The Triple Goddess

  Nothing to do with Olympus

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  P. S. (Kore)

  What Feeds the Flowers

  In one of my earliest memories - and I know it is one of the first because, in those that follow, grass and the fragrant soil are seen from the height of a maiden and not of a little girl - a flower fell from the bunch.

  I had gathered too many daffodils and lilies, large yellow daisies, baby’s breath, large melancholy violets, and some that I still don’t know; even orchids, with their complicated forms and sophisticated colors, and the roses of Pieria, which mortals cannot see. There were even leaves and shrubs, which had struck my fancy, so I had to carry the bounty with both arms, chin up to see the other side.

  It was inevitable that at least one flower would fall from the exaggerated bunch I wanted to give my mother.

  I watched with dismay as the stem slipped away and the corolla of the daffodil, yellow and white rimmed, tilted down; flew from my helpless little hands, because if I had stretched out an arm to grab it, I would have caused my entire bounty to fall.

  “Oh, mother!” I said, annoyed. “That flower doesn’t care for me, she wants to run away from me, and now she will return to her field!”

  My mother smiled and stroked my face, her fingers as delicate as the spring breeze. She smelled of cut grass and ripe corn, and her hair was the gold of the fields, with the same waves that the wind drew when he delighted in playing overhead.

  “Don’t worry, dear, you have so many that one less won’t make your bunch any less. Is it for me? You are really kind.”

  When she took the bundle from me I found myself with arms free; but in doing so, other flowers fell to the grass, and another exclamation escaped me.

  “Oh, mother, even those are running away! Why don’t they want to stay with us?”

  The smile, in my mother’s voice, was the sun that touches you. “I was clumsy and it fell, that’s all. It’s nothing: I’ll pick them up and put them back in the bunch.”

  I looked at the petals in the grass.

  “No,” I said, “If they don’t want to come with us, we should not force them. They will be happier going back to their plant.”

  My mother said nothing, and even then, I knew that her silence was deeper than any words from a mortal.

  “Won’t they be happier, mother?”

  “My dear,” was the reply, “they can’t go back to the plant: after they’ve been picked, they are like the wires cut by Atropos, one of the goddesses of fate.”

  I was so upset, that I took a step backwards. “What! I have cut off their lives and killed them!” The bunch was lush in my mother’s arms, the tall leaves, the petals fully open. She wore ripe ears in her hair, which were less gold than her golden tresses.

  “Flowers don’t live very long. If you want to gather them, go ahead and don’t worry; in the end, though they fade, and you can cause them no more harm than will time.”

  But my eyes were focused on one of the fallen flowers: a red poppy that had quivered with life, when I’d gathered it, and now, lying on the grass, it seemed like a motionless little body.

  “It will die,” I repeated, with a trembling voice, “it will die because of me.”

  “Not because of you, daughter. In the end, the reign of the eldest son of Cronus opens his doors to all mortals.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “The flowers are mortal?”

  “Anything that is not descended from your father is mortal, Persephone.”

  I put the fallen flowers in a small bouquet. It was tiny: a narcissus, a poppy, and the daisies, a few large and velvety burdock leaves. I hadn’t known that by picking them they would be killed, when I plucked them off the plant.

  “I didn’t want to hurt them,” I whispered, “I didn’t know I’d be sending them to the Unseen. I promise you, mother.”

  “Have no fear,” was the reply, “ no suffering, pain or cruelty exists in the Underworld, and no one will ever trample them. I’m sure they have already forgiven you, dear.”

  But I thought of the Avernus where, in the end, everything goes, and I was wondering how many flowers bloomed in the Elysian fields beyond death; all those of each spring and every summer, since time began, since the lord of death had existed. Now, the bouquet was already fading in my hand it would be added to that endless multitude. I thought that the god of the afterlife was really lucky.

  I set the flowers carefully down among the roots of a sapling that had grown that year.

  “Do you think the King of the Underworld will like these few flowers, even if they are not as beautiful as those I gathered for you?”

  For a moment, my mother’s dark eyes, as deep as the earth, narrowed, turning them into two deep fissures.

  “Don’t mention the sovereign of the Avernus,” she warned, “his power is equal to that of your father, and his kingdom one hundred times greater. Everything you see, sooner or later will end up belonging to him, and he has no need of our gifts. Look, Persephone.”

  Without leaving my flowers, she pointed to the moss growing on the north side of the rough trunk of a very old cherry tree. On the side, where there is almost no sun, the wood was black; I touched the moss, in the shadows of the underbrush, and it felt wet and cold, although it was a hot day, with the rays of the sun shining on my mother’s hair.

  “You cannot give him something that already belongs to him; he may think you are one of those arrogant people who believe they can snatch away his rights. His power is great, his pride boundless. He denies al
l that you are, and all that I am.”

  Even my mother was proud. I was silent, out of respect for the teaching given me, but in my heart I thought if the god of the dead were such a powerful ruler, he would not be so petty as to believe that I wanted to steal from him. He reigned over the heroes of ancient times and the immortal singers: the Invisible, the Inexorable, son of Cronus. The Rich one, or Pluto. He boasted more titles than all the other gods. What did he care about a few wild flowers of the field? Probably he hadn’t even noticed.

  My mother took my hand, and I felt the rings on her fingers. Gold and silver were always lukewarm on her as if they had been out in the sun. It was only later that I discovered, surprisingly, that metal is cold, and that its sparkling is not from the heat of the day, but the frosty starlight. In surrounding ourselves again in the heat of summer, the fields and the nymphs’ laughter, I turned one last time to look at the shadows under the trees.

  The flowers under the cherry tree were dry.

  Not withered, they would still be able to recover if they were set in fresh water sweetened with honey, they were stiff and blackened, devoid of any life, as if a flame had suddenly dried them.

  The king of the Underworld had accepted my gift.

  I felt sad for the ephemeral flowers, but I thought that now they were in paradise, where they could bloom for eternity. I was glad that the Invisible had not felt I was arrogant, as my mother had feared. I thought I had done well to believe in him.

  Then, for a long time, I gave it no more thought.

  I began to ask myself what nourished the flowers I loved so much when I was very young, and yet it was already too late. My fate had already been inevitably decided and, with it, the fate of all those who were attached to me.

  My mother smiled, combing my hair where she inserted my favorite flowers, the humble daisies and bright dandelions, to hold the braids. Growing up, my tastes would change, but I never stopped decorating my wrists and ankles with the wildflowers of my childhood.

  She said: “They are the roots.”

  “The roots?”

  She bent down and closed her hand around a clump of mugwort, which grew up without permission on freshly tilled soil. The earth was soft, and the plant came out easily, still attached to its soil. The roots were thin hairs sticking up here and there. She shook the plant to remove the earth to expose the pale strands.

  “Are these,” she said, “they are nourished by the soil, and the force rises from it as far as the buds and flowers over which you preside, daughter. Without its roots, the plant will most probably quickly die.”

  I thanked my mother for the explanation and asked her to put the Mugwort back in its element, before it died. With a smile, she pleased me, as she always did, because my mother has always loved me and I’ve always loved her.

  Strange, to think of the fact that all I loved would cause me so much suffering.

  She finished combing my hair and told me to go and play with my sisters, which I did with great pleasure, but continued to think about the roots that feed the plant. It was a little as though I had discovered my own origins.

  “I want to be beautiful and half as wise as my mother.” I said when we were playing, and my sister Artemis smiled. Even then she didn’t smile much, and I was always happy when she did. I cared so much for her.

  Artemis replied, “I would also like to have my mother’s wisdom, she has never avenged our father’s consort, for the misfortunes that have been brought upon her. If it happened to me, I would strike without hesitation.”

  Artemis was taller than me and was already beginning to blossom into a woman, but wore a chiton and held a short spear, which she would not allow me to sweeten with garlands of flowers. I had no doubt that she had the strength to abide by her intentions, now and in the future.

  “I don’t care if something bad happens to me,” I said, “but I think I’d do anything to protect those I love. But apart from my mother, I don’t really see who else I could love if not my sisters, and I’m sure that neither her nor you will ever suffer injury.”

  Artemis laughed. “You can be sure of that! I won’t be getting married, and I won’t allow anyone to insult me, as no one dares harm the forest thickets, if you value your life, and your mother blesses the earth with fertility. Nobody would ever raise his hand against her, at the risk of unleashing her wrath.”

  “True,” I said, pleased with the compliments received, “my mother presides over everything on earth, no matter how big it is, and we can feel safe to walk on it. My mother has full control as deep as the roots reach.”

  Artemis stopped laughing.

  “Sister, it’s not true, don’t forget the subsoil doesn’t belong to your divine mother, or even to our divine father. The roots are not part of your kingdom.”

  I frowned, not because she had disagreed with me but because I didn’t understand very well.

  Athena, who was also taller than me, but still flat and lean, just like I was, intervened to explain:

  “Our sister wants to say that the surface of the earth, turned by the plow and the patient ox, belongs to your mother; but further down, where the sun does not reach and only precious stones bloom, is someone else’s... realm.”

  This made me curious about everything. It was strange that my mother had left such an important detail out of her teachings.

  “Our father governs the sky,” Athena said, softly, “Poseidon, our uncle, the seas. But there is another realm and another uncle.”

  “Oh!”

  I was so glad to have understood that I clapped my hands, and in response to my joyful movement, all the birds in the surrounding trees began to sing.

  “You mean Hades!”

  My sisters, and the surrounding nymphs, silenced me with commanding gestures.

  “Don’t pronounce his name!” Artemis scolded me.

  “Don’t talk about him,” stipulated Athena, “he rules the Avernus and beneath the earth and reigns over a vast realm, where all mortals must go at the end of their earthly cycle. They fear him in a way that they don’t fear even Zeus.”

  For a fleeting moment I remembered the dried flowers. But I was the one to gather them. If anyone was guilty of killing them, it was I, certainly not the god who had only had the credit of having accepted them into his own realm.

  “I don’t understand why,” then I said, “mortals die on their own, I believe he doesn’t hurt anyone... I’ve never even seen him. He doesn’t willingly leave his dominion.”

  Athena always knew something more than us.

  “They say that when Typhon shakes the earth, causing earthquakes, the king leaves his kingdom, because the mortals turn imploringly towards him; it happens in the darkest nights, in Samothrace, or Elis, on top of mount Minthe. The ones who follow him offer him black bulls and rams, because so that he will return and chain Titan to his torment, before he causes our cities to collapse.”

  “This is a good thing,” I said, “and if they ask our father or Poseidon instead, who also shakes the ground with his trident, it means that he listens to their prayers.”

  Artemis scowled expressively, but Athena never left only half an explanation:

  “He accepts the tributes, but does not listen to anyone’s entreaties, and the officiating priests, keep their heads turned, because to look at the lord of the Avernus, without his consent, means death. This is why he always wears his helmet, which makes him invisible to the eyes of gods and mortals. And now enough talk about him.”

  I became a little sad. The roots feed the plant, but no one ever sees that; confined in the darkness and silence, motionless and in complete solitude, they don’t take part in the rapture of life and joy that exists thanks because of them.

  Once my mother told me that the most beautiful flower Mirabilis that exist grow in Elis; on the darkest nights, when the moon disappears to search for her lover and the stars recline on the soft curtain-like clouds, they must be marvelous.

  With a sudden movement, of those no
t used to gentleness and therefore truncate their action to move quickly, Artemis picked up the spear and put it in my hands.

  “You can decorate it as you want, let me see, but just this once.”

  It was her sincere wish to comfort me after the scolding, as she believed she had saddened me I smiled at her.

  “You will like it so much that you will ask me to do it forever.”

  “I doubt it. Flowers are not for me, though I like to look at them, but only yours, because they are the most beautiful.”

  “Yes,” Athena said, sitting down beside me,” show me how to plait the stems, little sister. I want to learn how you do it.”

  It was me, who taught Athena the swallowtail weave, and she taught it to the mortals, so they give her the credit. It doesn’t matter, of course. Someone teaches and someone learns, you can only count on this.

  Someone taught me that roots exist, and I learned.

  When you discover you have roots, it is not possible to continue to live pretending that you do not know about them.

  On the darkest night, when the moon disappears in search of her lover, and the stars recline on soft clouds like curtains, I left my mother’s home and ran to Elis, in search of the scent of the Mirabilis and of the roots on the ends of the stems.

  Bitterness

  I looked away when I saw the flashing blade, but I could not help but hear the lowing of the bull, or the spasmodic pawing at its death.

  I lamented inwardly and covered my ears. I was a fool not to have done so at once, and now it was too late. But I didn’t care for the sacrifices, and I had never been present. I found them repulsive, even though I had never expressed my thoughts out loud. I was probably the only one on Olympus who thought so. The sacrifices are much appreciated by the gods.

  I often thought of not having much to do with Olympus. What did spring have to do with the harsh and steep summit, always hidden by clouds and pierced by the lightning, of my father’s Sky? Everything I loved flourished in the soil, that fed them. High up on the peak, there was only cold air and bare rock, the only smell was that of the sacrifices of the mortals, which made my stomach tighten with disgust. I was sure there were no roots, on Olympus.