The Queen of Flowers and Roots

by Io

  When I reached the inlaid door at the top of the stairs I became aware of a mild sense of wonder. I wondered how I had arrived at that point. My feet were not used to shoes, as soft as they were, they hurt me.

  He dismissed the nymphs without talking, just with a gesture. Leuka started to protest, but Mint took her by the arm and pulled her away with her, out the door. He closed the door behind them with a soft sound. The bridal chamber was lit by torches more than could be counted. As I approached, I saw that the fire had no heat. There was only the light, which pooled as thought inside a temple. The bed curtains were drawn, the sheets were in dim light.

  I do not recall how I got there. The roots of my flowers were so deep?

  I went to the windows to watch the eternal dawn, or the eternal sunset, depending on how you wanted to interpret it. It was wonderful, impossible to deny that. But a paradise that is imposed ceases to be paradise, even if it is beautiful.

  You are wrong, whispered a little voice inside me, for you, none of this is really imposed. Weren’t you thinking about him when you asked your father not to have to marry?

  I wondered how I could be so naive as to think that he would have granted my wish. Certainly, in his eyes that union was adequate. After all, Hades was his older brother, while I was only one of the daughters, even among the favorites. To give up on me to maintain good relations with him would certainly not have required much effort. He would not have come to my assistance.

  No one would come. My mother. Beneath the sod turned over by the plow, she could not help but beat her breast and weep, before disowning me to cancel the dishonor. My sisters, for as courageous as they were, they would never have challenged the god of the Avernus, and I could not blame them. Mint and Leuka were even more helpless than me. If I had tried to flee with them, only to have them both killed.

  It was bad to think that no one would come to rescue me, but it was worse, much worse, to think that they would not have tried in any way to save me.

  Because I was waiting for them. And I hated it. Almost without realizing it, I made the glass slide on the

  shutters They opened meekly. It was not locked. We were very high up, but I’m not a mortal; what would have happened if I had thrown myself down? They would have taken me back, groaning and wounded, they would have healed me, and Hades would get what he wanted anyway.

  If I had not thrown myself off, instead...

  In the Elysian gardens, the trees were lush. There were splendid pergolas and vines heavy with small white grapes that I had never seen before. I looked at them with curiosity, and as I looked at them, they began to grow, to grow, to produce shoots as thick as a wrist, with large leaves and elastic boughs. They clambered up the wall, they clung to the gutters and gargoyles, and covered the railings. When I held out my hand to touch them, the tendrils had already reached me.

  I noticed that the colors of the sky were dimming, and that the stars, strange stars, unknown to me, lit up one by one. The eternal night does not darken the Elysian fields. If anything, when the colors gave way to the sky dotted with flickering lights, it seemed to be right in the middle of the universe, so as to make me think that if I stretched out my arm, I could touch galaxies and comets.

  He was coming. He had denounced me when I had begged, had given me refreshments when we had arrived, but the concessions were over. For his part, and mine.

  And I could not stand it.

  The vines of the Elysian fields were very friendly, happy to help me; I was their goddess. My descent was mild, easy.

  I was beyond the palace walls, the immortal meadows, so fast that I was almost disorientated.

  I was a rabbit that sees the approaching hunter, lies down waiting for the final blow... and, all of a sudden, is shaking his ears as he watches the trap open, freedom right there, all the more incomprehensible because it is unexpected. That disorientation was mine, but it was short-lived.

  I kicked off the slippers and ran down along the slope to the stream. I leapt over with one jump, climbed the hillside. I reached a grove, I dived in there, I went out the other side, and kept running.

  I ran at breakneck speed, under the soft light of the stars of the Elysian fields, and then ran again and again and again.

  Buds that blossom, buds that shine

  I had no destination.

  To return to the banks of the river was useless, to overcome the utopian wall of tears. The Elysian fields seemed endless, there was no way to cross them. The wind was not what I knew, I did not trust it to let it carry me. I risked returning to Hades’ apartments, under the obsidian vault, on the cold alabaster, in that court of strange creatures, with my sad maids to serve me.

  I told myself that I had escaped from him. The grass, the earth, the trees, the flowers, and all the birds that lived in that place, reassured me a lot more than he. I have escaped from him, I told myself.

  In fact, while running away from his palace, I was hoping that he would find me. I had hoped so on the surface, I was hoping in the Elysian fields.

  And he, of course, he found me.

  I was leaning against a tree and was catching my breath, strands of hair had escaped from the careful combing, the silk was all creased. I had a sheen of sweat on my forehead and my hands, the slight starlight, seemed pale to me. But I finally felt good. When darkness seemed to deform, in front of me and around me, I smiled.

  A voice from up high, exclaimed, “You won’t believe, I hope, what you have made it so easy!” There was a point, a cut-out of the sky on top of

  hill, where the stars were not shining. At that point, the figure of Hades emerged, striding, he descended toward me.

  He had no helmet or armor, and the short tunic stood out darkly on his marble-like complexion. I thought, once more, that the statues of the temples, magnificent and perfect, had to have that aspect, when the sculptor, after the finishing touches, had placed the chisel and taken a step back, to admire them. Athletic forms, knotty muscles, tendons that seemed to quiver, all inexorably white stone, it was the color that made them bright. This was Hades.

  His sword hung from his side, like any king who is outside their walls, and a crescent-shaped object, which I did not waste time looking at, because I turned around, I hid behind the tree, and with a mocking laugh, I ran away.

  At first , he had caught me by surprise; it was one of the few ways, perhaps the only one, to catch a nymph, let alone a goddess. In the meadows, through the trees, among the flowers, we are in our element, and even though I was in the kingdom of Hades, the Elysian fields were still a place I felt comfortable to move.

  I fled, making fun of him.

  I mocked him amid the flowering bushes, went through the arched bridges over streams, wandered the gazebo, I discovered rock gardens of exotic and wild beauty, almost fell into its darkness with no way out, when I was enchanted by the sight of the afterlife nymphs, who sang with the sweetness of sirens. They were beautiful, the Elysian nymphs. There was no reason why Hades had stubbornly followed me. But he gave me no respite, he urged me, in absolute silence in which I did not hear a single twig break, a loose leaf, and never answered my challenges, while I derided him and told him he was old and he did not deserve what he could not catch, as if being a god could confer greater privileges greater than those of any other silly and vain male.

  You are a king, but you can not reduce me to obedience, and you will not succeed. You are a king, but you cannot have me.

  I ran away laughing.

  I came out from the thicket, tousled hair on my shoulders and back, the tattered robe – I could not seem to stay tidy, with him around – and almost fell because of the momentum, to find myself on a rock, just above the waves. I made a pirouette to avoid the wet and mountain stream, in the direction of the thunderous noise, because upstream the flow increases and as it increases it makes it more difficult for the pursuer. But, alas, not only for him. I had to stop to see the waterfall.

  It flowed from a crack in the rock, with boulders t
hat formed a huge step all around, and the moss grew in giant patches, up to where I was. I touched it with my bare feet, expecting it to feel cold and clammy, but nothing in the Elysian fields is cold and clammy, and it was like pressing on a duvet. It was soft. The splash of the waterfall had the color of liquid silver, and orchids grew in the reeds on the other side, where the water was calmer. In the shadows, the shapes of sleeping swans and herons could be glimpsed. It was a beautiful place.

  And I was trapped.

  I could not climb those rocks before he reached me, and if I had returned to the forest, I would have met him. The prospect made me laugh even more. I might have been able to dive, and I might have, but I hesitated a moment too long, and the trap closed on me. His arms were the insurmountable limit of all my rebellions, as I had known all along.

  Before he picked me up making me helpless I decided to play hard all the way, and slipped a foot between his. It worked too well because Hades had his own plan to lift my weight, and in practice he tripped on his own. We fell without being able to do anything, I was laughing without being able to stop, he was beneath me, silent as always.

  For a moment I was lying on him, our faces very close; I could not resist and kissed the surface of his lips. His body tensed in every muscle, ready to grab me, and then, taking advantage of the soft texture and yielding moss, I pushed him to escape him.

  “Oh, no, that’s enough...”

  I felt a large hand with long fingers, clutching my calf. He propped up on his elbows to pull, but now that he had caught me, I had no hope, and in a moment I found myself trapped beneath him. He pressed my legs between his thighs, my arms pinned to the ground, and I was helpless.

  Well, almost. I had taken a liking to mocking him.

  “You’re shamefully slow,” I exclaimed, “if I had not stopped because I was in a trap you would never have caught me!”

  “I will always have you end up in a trap, then.” He said, and I had the satisfaction of seeing that, at least, he was short of breath. I tried to free myself, without the slightest success.

  “I hate smoked meat,” I said at random, “and I hate the cold in your palace. It’s much better out here!”

  New satisfaction: he seemed genuinely bewildered. I increased the dose.

  “And I’m not a queen, put that into your obsidian head! I don’t know anyone at your court, I had never even seen, your court! Not...”

  His black hair formed a curtain around him, and was all around me, when he looked down and closed my mouth with his mouth.

  If he had whipped me, my body could not have had a more intense reaction. I felt a shudder, from neck to toes, a red-hot tremor that burned me, he incinerated me. Perhaps thinking that I would try to escape, Hades clenched his thighs and hands stronger, I completely froze, and there was nothing left for me but to submit to his desire for me. The desire within me.

  When, eventually, the kiss faded and stopped, I could not open my eyes. His grip was beginning to hurt me, but before I could tell him, he let go of my arms.

  I felt that the laces had melted.

  On impulse, I raised myself on my elbows. Hades pushed me down, but without brutality, indeed, almost gently. He unhooked the clasp that held up the shoulder, making it fall. He untied the laces of the bodice. The neckline widened, lengthening to the belt. I clutched my arms around his body.

  “No,” said Hades, and he took my wrists, to make me remove it.

  I had no more wish to joke, and the urge to beg, to ask him to spare me, clashed with another impulse, different and more ancestral, perhaps more powerful, because I did not try to cover myself anymore, even when he put his hands on my hips and lowered the peplum, releasing all the laces. The outdoor air of the Elysian fields was warm and sweet on my adolescent skin. But I was ashamed, very; with a flash, I was sitting, I almost escaped him, and I writhed in his grip, even if my attempt to escape was weak, unconvinced. By now I had no more energy.

  The slight ping of his belt opening, the soft thud when it fell on the grass, they made tears well up in my eyes. I was afraid of what would happen. I was afraid of not being good enough.

  “Why me?” I could only whisper, so as not to have to listen to the rustle of silk slipping away. “I have nothing to do with your kingdom.”

  “No, Persephone?”

  His lips on my throat were hot, the smell of magnolia mingled with another smell, the smell, that of a man, not a god. I found myself with my arms around his shoulders, without knowing how. On feeling his hands covering my breasts, I moaned.

  “What could a root possibly want, if not its own flower?”

  I could not answer him. He left me to free himself of his clothing, and I did not try to get up and run away again. It had been a game, and play time was over. I touched the sword when he abandoned the belt on the grass, and then, curiously, the curved object attached by a short chain. It looked like a drinking horn, but it was so fine and inlaid I wondered if it had another use. In the Avernus everything was strange and different.

  It was only after a long, long time, I realized that not to have thought, even for a moment, to grab the sword for a final defense at the cost of him turning it against me. It was his, he could kill the gods, but it was not even in my mind, despite being afraid. Mine was not a fear that you can face with sword in hand.

  Hades returned and took me in his arms, and darkness engulfed me.

  I trembled for fear of what I was afraid of at any moment, the pain, the blood; nonexistent in my experience, the gods grabbed goddesses and everything happened in a few moments of terror. I stiffened as he bent me down, onto soft moss. It will soon end, I thought, still a little longer and it will be over.

  But Hades seemed to be in no hurry. He was never in a hurry. Gradually, the tension left my muscles, and I stopped being afraid that his hands were on me, from one moment to another, they stopped being reassuring, relentlessly coming closer to the moment before the deflowering.

  When he lowered his head onto my breasts, I enclosed him in my arms. His hair was tousled from the race, and so fine that it escaped through my fingers. It gave me pleasure, it crossed my body densely up to my throat, but it was a pleasure that did not satisfy me, it was not enough. To understand, almost made me afraid; if there was more, and dimly knew that was so, I was not sure of being able to handle it.

  “I thought... we would return to the palace.”

  Hades’ hands were on my belly, I felt his thumb tracing the contours of my navel. When he left me, the cold air on my hardened nipples made me gasp.

  “You wanted it to be here. It will be here.”

  He looked at me again, with eyes like fire, then the darkness of his hair covered my belly, while his hands separated my thighs. When, to my surprise, I tried to get away, he held me. I could feel his breath hot on my skin. No choice but to accept what he wanted to do to me, to finally give in, I caught hold of his hair, pulled it even when the pleasure invaded me and made me lose myself, while the god of the Underworld traced hills and valleys over the center of my body, and rivers and seas and waterfalls, without a moment’s respite, until he heard me call out. Then he came upon me.

  I had no more fear. I girded his neck with my arms, let him fall on me, I welcomed the aggression of his pelvis, thinking that I did not care about the pain, nothing, because if what he wanted was pleasure, if he could have it from me, he could have it. I wanted that he had that pleasure.

  There are cries that a girl can call out only once in a lifetime, but I stifled mine against his shoulder, as I struggled not to withdraw, even if the pain was worse than what I had expected, but I felt him press against the barrier to my virginity, he pressed hard, and suddenly it was over, an unbearable tearing, he arched me as if to reduce it, but of course did nothing to alleviate it, and I sank completely into the pain.

  I don’t know how it is for mortals. I know that for me the pain was unbearable, because my body had learned what pleasure was, and I felt, that flowed through the pain, thr
ough the pain, I felt pleasure and when Hades came to kiss me, to hold my breasts between his hands, I felt so strongly that I thought I could not bear any more. I clung to him and I am sure I hurt him because I used my nails, but he didn’t stop or even slow down, and I felt I would die, even the gods can die, if it is the god of death who kills them, and if that was not death, I did not know what was. It was as if a huge bud had started to germinate inside me and bloom, scarlet red, so bright that I feared, at any moment that it would tear me inside. I felt completely broken, and I felt reborn, and then, after an interminable and brief time, it ended.

  Hades leaned over me, leaning on his elbows so as not to crush me, breathing against my hair. His gasp was heavy, tight. Hesitantly, I lifted a hand to touch his face.

  He seemed aroused. He sat up, freed me from his weight. I felt like he had abandoned me, I was afraid. But he kept looking at me.

  “You’re pale.”

  “Look who’s talking,” he laughed. I gathered up around me what had been my body, until he caught hold of me, and pulled me up too.

  “This is the most important night of my life. You could also say something more meaningful.”

  He seemed to consider this. “You run fast.”

  I gave up. I had hoped he would speak of love I was that naive, and innocence was behind me now.

  “It will always be like this?”

  “No,” Hades said, “I will never cause you any more pain.” The implication was that I would not have to endure the suffering of

  childbirth, because death is unable to generate life. He smiled, a little cynically. I could feel the pulse of his body, the scarlet bud that shone within me, his semen between my thighs.

  “Careful with these promises. These are things that not even a god can be certain about.”

  “He can, if the spinners of fate of men and gods live in his house.”

  I remembered the three women I had seen on my arrival at court. “And then you know everything that will happen in the future?”