The Queen of Flowers and Roots

by Io

  Something passed over the stillness of his features, and the embers in his eyes seemed to spark brighter, as if someone had blown on them. Only much later I realized he was surprised. He did not expect that answer.

  “The roots?” He repeated flatly.

  “I wanted to understand. I did not want to offend you,” I whispered. As if to take stock of the situation, Hades turned and turned Aristaeus’ body over with his foot. His head fell back on the other side, disjointed from the rest of his body, a horrible thing to behold.

  “He has gone to visit me. I don’t tolerate similar bacchanalia, in my house or around my altar.”

  I didn’t know what else to say, except to apologize. To him, indeed, the words seemed to have no effect.

  “He said he was the son of Apollo...” He gave me a quick glance that I did not know how to decipher.

  “Apollo do you fear him?”

  “I fear his revenge,” I admitted, “will result in pestilence, the mortals will suffer...”

  “He will not do anything like that.” I wondered how he could be so certain; but, he turned the question over in my mind, and he certainly would have felt that to be an offensive insinuation. Instead I said,

  “I did not think a god, albeit minor, could die.”

  “The gods can die,” Hades said, “if I have to kill them.”

  I remained silent. It was an argument that scared me too much to ask for an explanation. I sat up with Leuka, but as soon as she had glimpsed Hades cloak, she returned to clinging to me, in tears and trembling.

  “I am in your debt, uncle.”

  He looked down, and following his gaze, I realized that my robe had been torn in the scuffle. It hung on me in miserable strips, showing my thighs and breast, because of the torn laces, at the front and on the sides. There was not much to see, I was a little girl all angles without even one curve, but all the same I pulled them around me, full of shame.

  “Now I have to go back to my mother.”

  Hades looked me in the face, and this time I was sure to have made a mistake, because the play of shadows on his face gave him a distant, but unmistakably sweet expression. For a moment he even seemed on the point of smiling.

  “You’re still a child.”

  I thought it was the answer to my wish to return home and he heard me say,

  “Not as much as you think!”

  “Go back to blessing the flowers, Spring, and don’t even think about what is at their roots. You’re too young for such mysteries.”

  “What do you mean by that...”

  I paused, because Hades had turned his back on me. He had gone to step over Aristaeus’ body, he covered it with his cloak; when he passed over, I saw that the body had become yellowish and dry, as if it had been dead for weeks. The skull was evident under the taut skin, and his lips were shriveled, showing all his teeth. In their sockets, under the wrinkled eyelids, there was nothing. I looked away with a shudder.

  As he walked away, I saw that he was putting his helmet on. All around us, the night was again only night.

  “He’s gone,” I said softly to Leuka, “now you can look.”

  With a stifled sob, the nymph straightened up. She had great black eyes and brown hair, naturally curly that had become matted in the race. I smoothed them for her, at least to remove her hair from her face.

  “It was horrible,” she whispered trembling, “to face the underworld...oh, little lady, it was horrible!”

  She wiped her eyes, and struggled to compose herself. She was afraid, but also courageous, like all nymphs, and took my hand to lead me to the creek. I said,

  “Not so bad, Leuka. The Avernus is not as horrible as they say, and he saved us tonight.”

  Respectfully, she did not contradict me, but what she thought was clear. Sometimes even the nymphs died. I reflected that if her fate were to end up in the Avernus, my uncle would have his work cut out for him, to drag her down below. The poplars beat hard.

  The scent of mint announced that we had arrived much before we had been swept away by the nymph who had first saved me; who had returned to rescue us, followed by a battalion of extremely angry girls and no less angry satyrs – though they were anything but gentle, a satyr would never have murdered a nymph who had refused him.

  “You have been saved! We could not find you, it seemed that you had disappeared into the shadows!”

  “Oh, Mint, I fully understand you! If only you knew.”

  I left Leuka the task of telling the newcomers about the incident, and she left me to be lead by the nymphs to the source, to recompose my clothes and replace the flowers woven in my hair. They were very happy to have me as their guest, and listened with great interest to the report of our misadventure. I sat among them, nodding my head, and contributed nothing, making them think I was still upset; and partly it was true.

  Because I could not stop thinking about how the mantle enveloped his shoulders, of the folds of darkness beneath which sparkled the armor, black armor, black mantle, white leather, embers in his eyes, the ineluctable immobility, upset me, in a new and strange way. He had made me cover my still flat breasts causing me a strange turmoil in the stomach, as if he had touched me, rather than just looked at me. You’re still a child rang in my ears as a humiliation.

  I went back to my mother with my arms full of beauty of the night or mirabilis, a gift from the mountain nymphs, and with a painful throbbing in my breast, the gift of the darkness of the mountain. Silently I accepted the reproaches for my imprudence, to have gone out among mortals without a suitable escort, and for not telling her where to find me, as I was still a child. I did not defend or justify myself.

  I did not apologize.

  I did not tell, either her or others, what happened that night I saw the roots for the first time, and the dark god that ruled them.

  When, in the summer, for the first time I became a woman and my father began to speak to me of marriage, I asked him to spare me, as he had spared my sisters. I wanted to emulate them and I wanted spring to remain pure, it was the reason I told him.

  The one that I told myself I did not express in words.

  My father was upset, but could not be unjust, and deny me what he had granted Athena and Artemis; only, he said that if my request was dictated by an infatuation for a man who could not marry me, I should not be hasty in making promises. Time would diminish such a foolish feeling and I would become more reasonable, and it certainly have worked in the same way on him, weakening a bond that existed only in the imagination of a young girl.

  How wrong he was, the Aegis.

  The White Narcissus

  Not far from the walls of Enna there is a lake called Pergo.

  The water is deep, and I have never seen, anywhere else, so many swans on the waves of its current. A forest crowns the waters, enveloping them all around, and with its fronds it shades, like a pavilion, from the strong rays of the sun. In the shade of century-old trunks, where the light filtered through the leaves, spring never matured into summer, and the ground was always damp, dotted with flowers. It was my favorite woods.

  My mother was far away, on the cultivated fields that had the same golden color as her hair, and my sisters who know where. They were combative goddesses, my sisters: I knew that Athena did not hesitate to take sides in war for the cause she believed to be right, while Artemis lived unconquered, in the shadows of the thick forests, and forbade any mortal to touch her, or even to see her. Sometimes she joined me on the edge, where the meadows began, she sat down with me and told me what she had seen while I plaited flower belts for her nymphs.

  “Man is hateful, sister, wicked and arrogant! He deserved what happened to him!”

  She wore a tunic and hard boots for hunting, a bow slung over her shoulder and quiver on her back. Her dogs were greyhounds with velvety eyes and sharp fangs like the crescent moon, no mortal could approach them; but with me they were docile. I caressed them and put flowers on their collars, and they shook them away.


  I was silent, while Artemis spoke out. I answered my sisters rarely, when they spoke. I became silent, absorbed. My body seemed a stranger to me, ever since I saw breasts pressing against the linen tunic. Legs, that in my loose girl’s robe now only covered the calves, were covered with soft flesh, on up to the hips, so that I no longer dared wiggle and squirm as before, when I was playing. I had the feeling that there was no more innocence in me. Even my dreams were strange.

  I slipped stems of yellow iris into the collar of the alpha bitch, while Artemis was telling me about an ungodly mortal who had entered the cave of the spring when she was washing, when she was tired after the hunt.

  To soothe her I said, “Maybe he did not do it on purpose.”

  “Maybe he was in search of the cool and met you by chance.”

  “Oh, he did it on purpose, have no doubt: he had heard my nymphs, and came in to spy. When he realized he had been discovered, instead of apologizing, he laughed! Can you believe that? He laughed at me!”

  I gave up trying to defend him, “he should not have done that.”

  “Oh, certainly he won’t do it ever again. He deserved it, believe me: like father, like son. I avenged an old wrong, nothing else.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know who the father of Actaeon was, the ungodly who spied on the mysteries of the moon?”

  I shook my head, and I was thinking of how the moon shone when in the heavens. When the night was really black, and in that darkness anything could happen. A root does not have anything to do, with the light.

  “He was born from the one who caused the death of Eurydice, the hamadryad the result of your noble mother! He chased them to use her violently, and the poor woman, in escaping, stepped on a snake that killed her. Her lawful husband was left devastated, they say that since then he has never ceased to sing and play music in the hope of touching the heart of the king of the dead.”

  At the mention, my hands jumped in such a way as to cause the flowers to scatter on the grass. The ones that I was not quick to pick up, dried up and became immediately black, but my sister was too preoccupied with her story to notice.

  “This will never happen, but at least Eurydice has been vindicated, her assailant was dispatched relentlessly, while spying on the Mysteries of the Avernus. He is gone forever, and mortals will never hear from him again. So much the worse for him! Not even our brother Apollo dares to act, since he irritated the Lord of the Underworld.”

  I looked at the withered flowers, shivering in my depths, and I could not tell if the words of my sister made me tremble, or if it was how ready he was to take what I had offered.

  With a small voice, I asked,

  “But how are they called then, the mortals of that infamous breed?”

  “Actaeon is the name of the wicked one cursed, torn to pieces by his own dogs, and Aristaeus his father, the fool who profaned the altar in Ilia... sister, are you alright? You’re suddenly pale...”

  “All right,” I lied, “just that... the altar at Elis actually belongs to the king of the Avernus. Perhaps it will remedy the wrong suffered by Eurydice’s husband, he will let her return...”

  Artemis stood up with the agility of a young greyhound, she took up her spear.

  “Oh, don’t count on it,” she said, carelessly, “the Cronids of the underworld is ruthless; he doesn’t let anyone leave his kingdom. He will never make an exception.”

  I did not answer, and this was acceptable, seeing that we were speaking of a god that nobody named, resorting to panegyrics and superstitious metaphors. After the greetings, Artemis returned to her forest with her dogs, leaving me to my flowers.

  On the shores of Lake Pergo, which some call Pergusa, I was braiding a belt from the daffodils, which grew on the marshy banks.

  The buds with which I adorned my wrists had bloomed, and spread their most delicate scents. My breasts were impatient roses, and for some time I had started to fasten my hair with the tendrils of morning glories, to show the delicate line of my neck. My robe was formless for girls. I could no longer bear the feeling of linen that floated everywhere, instead of staying on my forms. I was no longer a little girl. Not any more.

  I braided the last narcissus and lifted the belt to examine the result.

  “What do you think, Cyane?”

  The nymph of the source of the same name was selecting the most beautiful flowers for me, smiled.

  “Magnificent, or divine; but, if I may offer a suggestion, I would accentuate the natural beauty of the flowers with a different color, right in the middle, or with a scarlet rose. I’ve seen a very nice one, on the other side.”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t want roses. Roses belong to Aphrodite, not to me.”

  Cyane bowed her head in respect. Everyone knew of my wanting to remain chaste, and Aphrodite was resentful, as if the virginity of Zeus’ daughters was an insult that had been addressed to her personally. She, perhaps, would have understood, and I was filled with the idea of confiding in her... but no; even Aphrodite, when she had loved in disregard of the laws of gods and mortals, had fallen into the trap that Hephaestus her husband had made, when he suspected her adultery with Aries. Not even she could subvert the laws of creation. My mother was a law of creation. You could not ask her to accept the unacceptable.

  Certain types of love could not flourish in the light. They radiated love in the darkness, and that’s it.

  I got up, placing the belt of daffodils on my hips. So tight, the robe was even shorter, and I even discovered my knees, but I decided it was all right the same. No one ever came to that part of the lake, there in the shadow of the great volcano, where there were no paths or temples. Not even the satyrs were interested in the beauty of the site, given that, it was so close to the water; all the nymphs could escape them in a moment.

  I walked on the grass, away from the noise of the nymphs playing, and I was thinking of my dreams.

  There was always someone asking me to marry them, in those dreams, but I could not see who it was. But I could see, very clearly, that the question was directed to my father, not my mother. This would be obvious if we were mortal, but my mother could not be overridden with impunity; they were few, very few, to have sufficient authority to be able to think of not considering her.

  “I want your daughter.” Which one? Forgive me, I have so many... “ Thunderous laughter, which the other party had not joined.

  Only my father enjoyed his humor and the lesser gods who were trying to get into his good graces.

  “Your daughter with red golden hair and the eyes of a newborn fawn. The one crowned with flowers that smells of spring. You’ve got it from our sister Demeter.”

  My father’s laughter died, in the silence after that show he said dryly, devoid any sense of poetry. That voice held no praise. He was describing me.

  “Persephone? You’re joking right?”

  “I am not familiar with jokes.”

  “But... but...”

  “You consider me unworthy, perhaps?”

  “Of course not...but...”

  “There are obstacles to the union?”

  “Do not harass me! Her mother never liked you to begin with. And, forgive me, but I said that you would be better suited to Athena, or Eris, or...”

  The flat voice interrupted him. It had interrupted Zeus, lord of all the gods, and Zeus had allowed it:

  “No. I want Persephone, none other.”

  I reached up, while my breath came in gasps.

  I often woke up from those dreams, the words in my mind, the confusion in my heart and in my belly a turmoil that I could not explain. Many had asked my mother for me, and she had rejected them all. My desire not to marry was in agreement with her selfishness for wanting to have me near her, in the quiet certainty that no one, god or mortal, would have dared to ignore Mother Earth, at risk of arousing her indignation.

  I never wondered what she would have said, or done, if it had been me to accept a proposal.

  “Of all my daugh
ters choose the most foolish and fatuous, almost a dryad nymph? A young scatterbrain, who instead of revealing her Mysteries thinks only of playing with flowers!”

  “You know nothing of her Mysteries, nor her thoughts. They belong to her, they belong to me, to no one else.”

  A short pause, as if my father needed to put his thoughts in order.

  “You’ve been hit by Eros. I can find no other explanation.”

  “I do not find explanations, find an answer. She’s a woman now. She is old enough to marry.”

  “I find no explanation or answers, but certainly even obstacles, if that’s what you are pressing. Not for me, at least. However I cannot ignore the will of a goddess like her mother, and her mother will never consent.”

  “Oh,” the flat voice was, for a moment, almost trembling with amusement, “for that matter, it is a problem that is easily solved.” I walked more quickly, on the edge of the lawn. There was less light and more moss, which from the moist soil will climb into the trees, as it would darken on the northern side.

  There, where the bark was always soaked and blackened, I stopped, with the breath knotted in my throat.

  I knew that I’d never counted for much, for my father. He guided peoples and created kingdoms, generated gods and ruled the lightning; what did he care about the delicate nectar that nourished the bees, pollen that fertilized the fruit, the relief of the spring, after the unbearable darkness and cold of winter?

  What do you know, my father Zeus, of the silent roots, which in the eternal darkness of an underground unknown to him, pushed up the life that nourished all mortals and immortals?

  The petals fall to make room for fruits. For life to follow death. For death to follow life. It was all so simple, I thought, that maybe it was true I was foolish, because such simple things can be understood only by those who have a humble spirit like a flower, which only exists because, without it, there can’t be anything else.