The Queen of Flowers and Roots

by Io

  Now I ask you, mortals, to make this effort of your imagination, knowing that neither Hades nor Demeter wanted to give up on me. The love that moved them was immense, their boundless pride. Neither would yield, and neither of them could deny their divine rights. Zeus had done his accounts well.

  What need would the surface have for the goddess of spring, during the winter months? That I stayed with Hades, who wanted a queen on the throne, and in his bed. I would be back at the turn of season, to heal the world through the joy of my mother, and then be picked up by my husband at the first autumn frost. It was the only compromise possible,

  to satisfy the pride of both. Both, for different reasons, had accepted.

  And here’s the imaginative effort that I ask, oh mortals: how is it possible that someone believed that I would accept a monstrosity such as that?

  I moistened my lips once, twice, three times, before being able to speak. When I succeeded, I turned to Hades, not to Hermes:

  “It’s a joke, right?”

  “No.” I could only shake my head, unable to understand

  fully.

  “Your health does not allow you to live in the Avernus,”

  Hades said, flatly, “there is no sun for you, neither is there the ambrosia of the gods, in this palace of alabaster and obsidian.”

  I wanted to ask if he thought I was so stupid as not to know that there was no sun or ambrosia in the Avernus, but I was incredulous.

  “So I should... I should spend the summer on the surface, to return here after the harvest? The plan is this?”

  “This is the decision of Zeus, your mother, and mine. There is nothing more to be said.

  The words of Hades fell on me like a condemnation. And they were.

  I shook my head again. I was hallucinating. From a certain point of view it even made sense, I tried to figure out what... my health. He was the one who cared.

  My health.

  I almost burst out laughing, high and hysterical laughter, right there, with my hearth behind me, facing the lord of death and the messenger of the gods.

  Somehow, I managed to restrain myself, even though the tremor in my voice was so clear that I hated myself:

  “I was in the cave of the Weavers, I saw the thread... Hades, come down with me, you will see it also, and you will understand.”

  An eyebrow lifted on the impenetrable face of my husband, but only for a moment. My hopes were destroyed at the very moment in which I felt them to have been born:

  “I went down to look at the Fates before accepting this agreement, my queen. I saw the thread that separated into two. Your fate could not be clearer than that.”

  I could only look at him, aghast. I thought I’d exploded or passed out, with the effort not to laugh, because it was amusing, really funny, it was a hilarious, that appearances were so tragically against me, when the reality though was only my own.

  I managed to control myself, but staggered so that Hermes moved, as if to support me. He stopped at the fierce look from Hades, and it was he who came forward.

  “You see, Persephone. You have to go. It is the best solution for you, too.”

  “No!”

  I clung to his arms, as I had done so many times, clutched it as I could, as I had done so many times. I had never had more need.

  “It’s not like that Hades, it is not so! I thought we... I thought that you and I... you...”

  He calmly talked over my desperate babbling:

  “I’m not rejecting you. I would never. You will go back to your mother to regain your health, and when you return down here, you will reign the Avernus at my side, as my equal. Keep your mind and heart calm, my queen; you have nothing to fear.”

  It made him look so sensible, so reasonable, that for a moment I thought that it was sensible and reasonable. I tightened my fingers on his arms, searching for hope.

  “For how long? When will this end?”

  “It is the decision of Zeus. The agreement is final.” I stood frozen, paralyzed. They were gods.

  Final was eternal.

  For a horrible moment I wondered if fate could not be changed: if the appearance, followed up to that point, it could not become a reality, and destroy me completely. Destroy the warp. Destroy all of us.

  “Hades,” I said, desperately, “please listen to me. Things are not as you think, grant me permission to speak, just you and me, I know something that will change your mind. I beg you!”

  These were the only words I could say, but I knew they were the wrong words at the very moment I uttered them. Hades’ face hardened. He pulled away from me abruptly, almost angrily.

  “Is what you still have not enough, Persephone? I have gone along with all your requests, I did it your way, and this is the result. Do you think the Lord of the Underworld is your obedient servant, eager to fulfill every whim? Haven’t you understood yet who you’re talking to, my queen.”

  I sought quickly to make up, to find an opening. I had managed in the past, when it was less important than now.

  “It is because I know who I’m talking to that I ask you to listen to me. My health is not in danger, I’m fine. Please listen to me!”

  His face did not change, nor did it soften. He would not listen to me. What is the use of doing that? It was done. He would never have presented himself to Zeus to renegotiate the terms, pride prevented him; my father would not have made it easier either.

  I could almost imagine it: Zeus, my brother, Persephone will not like this solution, so we won’t do it. If he said she did not want to do this because, going back and forth between the surface and the Avernus, the humidity would rust all the clasps, would sound less ridiculous, to the ears of the Heavenly Father.

  His voice sounded inexorable when he sat on the throne:

  “Hermes, I am trusting you, to take her back to her mother. Needless delays, considering that Demeter return the

  courtesy. I want her back in the Avernus on the Autumn Equinox, not a moment later.”

  I stepped back, realizing that the effects of Zeus’ decision were immediate.

  “You get rid of me like this? On the spot?” In response, Hades turned away.

  “Take her away, Hermes.” I felt the strength in my legs fail me, I had to sit

  on the bench before the fire. In the marble tub there was still water for my medication, and I remembered its warmth, when I fell asleep that night... it was a bad dream, it had to be.

  Hermes, it is said to his credit, gave me a look of genuine sympathy, the only one that I received on that terrifying day. With his pleasant voice, he turned to the Lord of the Avernus,

  “The divine Persephone has had a shock, sire. Give her time to understand, leave her to say goodbye to her nymphs and to prepare proper luggage fitting to her rank. Not even a servant is sent away, with a few abrupt words of parting.”

  It was a rebuke to a husband who did not try to sweeten the separation, but neither Hades or I took the slightest notice: because he just wanted it to end quickly, and because I would not have found any comfort even if he had hugged me, kissed me, swore eternal love and if he had told me he would have counted every hour, until my return.

  I returned to my mother. I went back to the sun, the light, to life, as the world needed life. And then, I would go down to the Avernus, to love death. I spent half of my life torn by nostalgia for the other half. And it was the best part of that situation.

  The scenario that was painted before me was so frightening that for a moment I thought of having lived a long, long dream: I was still in Elis, was a child and I was smashed against the soil and the humus of the forest, matted and ragged, a little girl all points without

  even a curve, but divine, so beautiful that the man who could not have me had destroyed me. Aristeus strangled me, and I groped, unable to break free, to find a way, some relief.

  The night would not have saved me this time. No one could have saved me. I was alone.

  I tried for the last time, my voice so cracked t
hat I was the first to be surprised that I had not yet burst into tears,

  “Why don’t you listen to me? Why won’t you listen to me?”

  Ah, if only I had half the eloquence of Hermes, although this time it didn’t show. If I had a tenth of the effrontery of Pirithous, at the cost of incurring the same sentence. But I had nothing of my own, apart from the truth, apart from the bare facts, which are not myth, are not divine law, and could not tip the scales in my favor even by a hair’s breadth... in favor of that thread that separated, the thread that became two.

  Without turning to look at me, still with his back to me, Hades laughed in my face.

  “Listen to you? And for what reason?”

  “Maybe I know something that you have all ignored,” I hissed between clenched teeth, “maybe it would have been the best choice to listen to me before dividing my remains, like a heifer after the sacrifice.”

  Hades finally turned to face me. His eyes were still as the darkness at the bottom of the abyss. His face was the color of parchment. He had not shaved, and looked older, though of course it was not possible. There were harsh wrinkles on his forehead, and the corners of his mouth. He was suffering, the Lord of the dead and the Underworld. He had agreed to suffer for eternity, for my sake.

  But not me.

  He was aware of that. He was aware that his pain had nothing to do with me, and he closed his lips. He said,

  “Take her away now.”

  I took a deep breath, struggling to push away my pride. I had rejected it many times, and each time I had done so it irritated me more. By now he was furious. He burned.

  I pushed him for the last time, the last attempt,

  “Please, Hades. Listen to what I have to say. Just give me a minute.”

  But Hades walked away from me, threw aside the drapes, went through them. I heard his footsteps echoing in the hall, more and more distant, fainter and fainter, until I could hear them no more.

  I found the strength to follow him, to scream my truth at him, my own.

  I could not find the strength to make another step.

  In the ensuing silence, deafening and cold as Tartarus, I let pride that I had pushed aside, return. It filled me completely, as all of them were filled, the immortal gods, who decided and did not let them be swayed, either by love or pity, and lived as a disgrace if by chance someone succeeded in swaying them. I covered myself in my pride, I wore it like armor. There was nothing left to do. There was no one left for me.

  I was alone.

  I closed my eyes, and my eyelids fell, I felt the tears well up and fall.

  “Divine Persephone. Majesty.”

  Although he was my half brother, and no less divine than me, Hermes did not take misplaced confidence. He was trying to make things easier, for what little he could do.

  “I will wait for you outside, divinity. Take all the time you need to prepare and to understand. It is not as bad as it seems.”

  No, it’s worse than it looks.

  “I have been cut in half,” I answered rigidly, “they have made me the servant of two masters. “O it’s not what it seems?”

  “Your husband has agreed not to deprive you of sunlight, queen. And your mother... are you sure you don’t want to see her again?”

  “Of course I want to see her again.”

  To allow me to go visit her, like any mortal, was a subtlety too frivolous, for my father? Did he believe that I wouldn’t know how to tell my mother that the visit was over, that I would return another day? Any peasant is able to do that. But by Zeus, evidently, the goddess of spring was worth less than a mortal with hands calloused by the harvest.

  But they, the peasants, knows my true value. Knows they must pray for the harvest to come, and it’s not you, my father, oh certainly not you.

  “So, you see that is the best possible compromise.”

  How wrong you are.

  Because it has finally come; talk would not have helped. My truth would not have smoothed out anything. Indeed, I would only have made things worse. I would have given them one more reason for the argument, and what a reason! Humanity would have been exterminated, I would have had the lives of all mortals of that time on my conscious, and it would not have changed anything anyway. Final is eternal.

  Left alone, I did not think about escaping.

  Climb along the vines of paradise, kick off my shoes, run at breakneck speed, it only served to make them catch me, load me kicking onto the chariot, to be shipped, like an object. Hades would not have listened to me, and even if he did, then things would have got worse. The decision had been made.

  Instead, I sat down again in front of the fireplace.

  “I was torn apart, with their love. They destroy me, for love, and destroy those who love me, for an even greater love.”

  The fire flickered, danced, it modeled into the form of a woman, with sparks falling everywhere, filling the floor with ash.

  As beautiful as the warmth of home on a winter night, with brown hair held back by a circlet of gold studded with garnets, and a peplum with no strap knotted over the breast, Hestia stepped out of the flames. I smiled to see that she was barefoot.

  “It’s really is freezing in here,” she said, looking around, “you must not have had an easy life, my niece.”

  “It could not be easy, aunt, if one gives the heart to one of the sons of Cronus, and their body is the result of the union of another two of them.”

  I offered her honey and fruit, along with a little of Hades favorite wine – when I tried to taste it I had been assaulted by retching, and by a miracle I had avoided the disaster in front of him – but the goddess of the hearth shook her head. She came up to me and hugged me.

  “I cannot stay,” she whispered, and I closed my eyes to the warm, sweet scent of her body, a peculiar scent, only hers, “no one except the messenger of the gods, can get into the Avernus without permission from the god of the dead. Your hearth, darling, is the first spark of heat in this dead realm, since time began.”

  “You have my permission,” I replied piqued, “in this realm of souls and roots, I’m the queen. Does it really count for nothing?”

  Hestia smiled her little smile.

  “If something mattered, dear, I would be the head of Olympus, I was born first of all, and not Zeus, who is the last of us.”

  “Right,” I said bitterly, “everything you have here has been conceded by my husband, all that are on the surface comes from my mother. I am nothing: my usefulness is reduced to comfort the goddess of life, after having given pleasure to the god of the dead.”

  Hestia hugged me a little tighter. Her embrace was warm, not possessive. Not even Mother Earth had ever hugged me like that.

  “No, I did not mean that, Persephone. No one can understand you better than me, I made my choice when we were still prisoners of Time who had swallowed us, I could have let my brothers die, I could have allowed despair to consume them, because desperation kills the gods. I could have done that and remained the only one. I made my choice, and the world became what it is. You have been called to do the same, that’s all.”

  Hestia lives wherever there is a home, a family, a group of people who love each other. My arrival in Erebus was needed to carry that heat to the palace of alabaster and obsidian, and even that was so obvious that it had to be fools like me to figure it out. It seemed that I was the only fool, at that conclave of the gods.

  Hestia stroked my hair gently.

  “The gods dictate and impose themselves, dear, and you are not a nobody: you are a goddess.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  The mild warmth of my hearth went back to stroking my face. Then, with a calm that resembled the calm of Hades, she freed herself from the embrace to take her leave. I asked her.

  “Don’t you want to meet your brother?”

  “I’ve already met him,” was the reply, “he brought this fire here to warm you.”

  The flames closed behind her and around her, like a bud;
when they returned to open, there was nothing left in the red flower. For me, that hearth, was now empty.

  I looked at the fruit tray that Hestia had left, but there was a stained-glass bowl full of pomegranate seeds, and on only looking at them I had the impression of running into a wall of nausea.

  Ascalafo, the loyal subject of a husband who had been willing to cut me in half, so as not to see me languish from weakness, if only he knew what damage he had done by talking about those six pomegranate seeds.

  Six pomegranate seeds. I couldn’t believe it. That insignificant myth, for the insignificant goddess that my father thought I was!

  I shut my lips and sat down in front of the purest rock crystal, smooth and shiny, that I used as a mirror.

  Calmly, I removed all the gems, bracelets, rings, the beautiful ruby necklace. I disentangled the diamonds from my hair, which fell around me loose, naturally wavy, reaching below the golden-plated belt. I could no longer stand them. I unhooked, the rest next to the casket, where they remained glistening. My robe floated loose, like that of a girl, and I sighed with relief, feeling my hips free from constriction. I got rid of the shoes and placed my bare feet on the cold marble of the palace of the Avernus. The flowers I had on my arrival were placed on the shelf, all fresh, immortal and beautiful. I had not worn them, and did not put them on now. Instead, I took up the cloak, it turned me into a slim figure, dark in the twilight, and I wrapped myself in the veil.

  I did not take anything. There was nothing I wanted, except for Hades, and I could not have him. As for what I needed, it was already within me.

  I left the royal chambers passing by Hermes without a word. I knew the way.

  It was the others who did not know it.

  The cap of invisibility

  Except when Charon had to ward off Hades’ horses with the oar, as they had gathered around me whinnying softly, my return to the surface took place in the most perfect silence.

  I took the horses muzzles between my hands, one by one, and leaned my forehead against theirs. I called them by name, one by one.