So Demeter bowed her head a little. “I am called Doso, maidens.”
The four girls named themselves to her: Callidice and Cleisidice, Demo and Callithoe, who had spoken to her first.
“I thank you for your kindness,” Demeter said gravely. “And I shall follow along behind, for I would have you ask your mother if she would indeed find me suitable as a nurse. Not that I doubt your honesty, but perhaps your hearts are a little more open to a stranger than hers.” She choked back her grief. “Mothers are wise to protect their children, for the world is not all a kindly place, and disaster can fall upon the trusting and unwary.”
But Callithoe only smiled. “We will run ahead, Mother Doso, but you will find that our mother will welcome you as warmly as ever you could wish.”
With that, the four girls ran back up the path they had taken to the spring, with Demeter following.
“I don’t know what to do,” Persephone cried into Hades’s shoulder as Hades comforted her. “I barely got the poor thing to get me half a dozen fruits, and now there are only three left, and they don’t look as if they’ll live to ripen! I’ve done everything I could think of, everything anyone in Elysium has suggested…I can’t think of anything else!” She buried her face in the shoulder of his tunic as panic rose in her chest. Unless she could get something she could eat to grow here, her love for Hades and his for her was doomed.
“If it were dead, I would be of more help, my love,” Hades replied, stroking her hair. “The asphodel might as well be weeds—nothing that happens to them ever seems to kill them, and they are the only plants I have any experience with. All I know is that you are doing your best.”
Persephone sobbed into the smooth, dark fabric. Hecate had borrowed Hades’s helmet, which granted invisibility, and followed Demeter to keep an eye on her. They both knew that things were getting rather dire in Olympia, because of the reports that Hecate brought them regularly. Demeter had left the realm entirely, and was playing nursemaid to a mortal king’s child under the name of “Doso,” which meant “to give,” which was certainly an accurate description of her now-neglected duties as the goddess of fertility. From what Hecate said, she was pouring all her thwarted maternal energy into this child. For a little while, Persephone had hoped this would solve their problem; Demeter would be willing to let Persephone go and lavish her attentions on this mortal Prince. But her hopes were soon dashed; Demeter did not return to her duties, and Olympia continued to fail. For once, all the other gods were working together to keep the realm alive, but it was clear that what was needed was for Demeter to return to her duties.
But then something changed. Demeter was doing more than merely playing nursemaid; Hecate got very tight-lipped about it when Hades probed. From what Hecate did not say, Persephone suspected she was pouring something else into him, too.
Immortality.
Of all the gods, only Demeter knew the secret of how to give a mortal true immortality. Aphrodite had tried, and failed, with more than one of her lovers. Many of the others had done likewise. Demeter held the transformation as a closely guarded secret, and if her new charge was supposed to be a substitute for Persephone, it would make sense that she would make him immortal. And again, that seemed a cause for hope.
But once again, that hope failed.
The child’s mother interrupted whatever it was that Demeter was doing, and although Hecate did not elaborate, it was clear that any hope Persephone had that the little Prince Demophoon would take her place were gone forever. Demeter forgave the king and his family because they immediately turned one of their palaces into a temple dedicated to her, but she did not return to them. Instead, she blessed his fields so that his land, at least, would still bear fruit, but she withdrew entirely into her new temple and did not even appear to her new priestesses.
And conditions were still dreadful in Olympia; from being one of the most lush lands in all the world, it had now become a wasteland. The climate was not as harsh as it was farther north—all around Olympia, the season of “winter” only meant that one needed a fire and a cloak to keep warm, and change the usual sandals for boots or shoes. But the last grain and vegetables had dried up without ever producing much in the way of seed, nothing that had been sown since had even come up. Fruit and vegetables that had been half-ripe when Demeter abandoned her post had rotted or withered on the branch or in the ground. Grass had stopped growing; the only things that would grow were weeds that not even goats would eat. All the flocks had been moved elsewhere; even the wildlife had abandoned the forests and meadows and fled over the border to territory where, if they did not live as well as they had before, at least they would not starve to death. Olympia was a realm of rock and dust, withered trees and rank weeds. Even the mortals were starting to abandon the realm.
If it had not been for the warrior-woman’s mate, and Hecate, who had foreseen the disaster that Demeter’s defection would mean, things would have been much worse than they were—but they were bad enough. Yes, food was coming in, but for how much longer? As mortals left, their belief in their gods waned, and the gods themselves lost power. Of course, they still had their inherent magics that they had as half-Fae, but they were losing the great powers they possessed as gods.
It wasn’t bad yet, but it could become very dangerous indeed. As the gods lost power, their old enemies could rise to challenge them anew. Fortunately, the Titans and their king, Kronos, had been cast into Tartarus, and so far, it seemed, the one god who was not losing even a little of his powers was Hades. People still believed fervently in the Underworld and its king, it seemed, even when their belief in Zeus and the rest faded. So Hades was able to keep the worst of the gods’ enemies safely bound here. And he was reinforcing that by sending the barbarian woman down into the pit to remind them that he still had the power to hold them.
But the rest would not be content to reign over a desert with no more power left to them than a common mortal wizard. It could not be too much longer before the other gods would give in to Demeter, beg her to come back and give in to her demand. Which would, of course, be that Persephone leave Hades.
Hades knew that as well as Persephone did. Unless she could somehow manage to get something growing here that she could eat, she would have to give in to her mother and leave him, since it was clear that there was no chance at all to get her to behave rationally about this.
All he could do was hold her.
Demeter would never, ever believe that she wanted to be with him—
This room in Hades’s palace was quiet, dark, but comforting rather than forbidding. Hades’s sturdy presence was just as comforting. She clung to his tunic with both hands. “Your mother…your mother has never been in love,” Hades said slowly. “I have known her since the beginning, you know. From the very beginning, Zeus and Hera were bound. For all her jealous rages, Hera truly loves Zeus—when he’s not letting his goolies lead him about, he really does love her…your mother never had that.”
“Zeus…couch hopping. Isn’t that as much the fault of The Tradition as it is of his own nature?” Persephone ventured.
Hades nodded. “Which is why Hera keeps forgiving him. And why she has remained faithful to him despite everything.”
“But why doesn’t Mother understand if she can see that?” Persephone tried very hard not to sound as if she was wailing.
“That is why she does not understand Aphrodite, who is often genuinely in love, if only briefly. Again, I suspect part of that is the fault of The Tradition. Aphrodite is a little minx, but mortals seem to think that the goddess of love should have the morals of a she-cat, so…” He shrugged.
Persephone sighed. She actually rather liked Aphrodite; because Hades was right, she did love very genuinely.
“The one I feel sorry for is poor Hephaestus. His situation is pure tragedy. If I were Zeus, I’d damn well hold him down and pour Lethe-water down his throat until he forgot Aphrodite.” There was heat in Hades’s voice that Persephone had rarely heard. Then he
shook his head. “Not that it would do any good. The Tradition again. We’re puppets to it. But I am sure that when Demeter thinks of Aphrodite and Hephaestus, she thinks you must feel the same as Aphrodite does for her husband. She doesn’t believe in love, and she assumes you must be as revolted by my looks and manners as Aphrodite is by Hephaestus’s crippled legs. That is why she cannot understand why you would wish to be with me of your own free will.” He cupped his hand under her chin and raised her eyes to meet his grave gaze. “She has reason for this. On the whole, she has always been carelessly treated by men. When we came into the power granted to us by The Tradition, the men received theirs first, and most of us acted like the foolish boys we really were. Selfishly, taking no thought for anything but the pleasure of the moment, and thinking we deserved whatever we cared to take as a reward for ridding this realm of Kronos and the marauding Titans. After all, we were not being cruel, only enjoying ourselves.”
He sighed. She smiled tremulously. It was so like him, to be able to see all sides to something.
“I would have thought you would be furious with her,” she replied. “She prides herself on being the mother of all things, and yet look what she does to her ‘other’ children in her quest to get a single one back! If I acted like she is right now, she’d say I was having a tantrum, and I promise you, I would be eating dry bread and water until I stopped acting like a petulant baby.”
“But you are the only child of her body, my love.” She hoped that he would kiss her, and as if he had read her thoughts in her eyes, he did. He broke it off before she would have liked, however. “As lord of the dead, I see people at their best and worst. I do not like how she is acting—how could I, when she wants to force us apart? But I understand it. What a mother feels for her child is not rational, especially not when she thinks her child is threatened. In a way, this is Demeter acting as we all did when our powers were new and we were drunk with them, thinking only of what she wants, and feeling only her own pain. And I can understand that. I do not like it, but I can understand it.”
He kissed her again, and this time did not end it too soon. Persephone reveled in the bittersweet joy he gave her, knowing that their loving was going to be ended too soon, unless she somehow worked a miracle.
He picked her up in his arms, but just before he turned to take her into the inner chambers, he paused. “I have a thought.”
Her arms tightened around his neck. “I know—”
“Not that sort of thought. I set the warrior-woman to chastising some of the inhabitants of Tartarus who had been giving trouble, but…perhaps that does not qualify as an impossible task. The Tradition is more likely to help us if what we ask her to do is something that seems to be outside of what she is good at. Well, look at what her mate is doing! He’s giving Hermes a challenge with his bargaining and negotiation skills, and Zeus is acting as his assistant in organizing the food distribution. He and she were acting as Heroes or Champions, not as administrators, so this should have been an impossible task for him, and The Tradition is rewarding him with success I would never have predicted.”
“She is very good at breaking skulls,” Persephone agreed, repressing her sigh that this was interrupting their pleasures. Hades would not have said anything at this moment unless it had a bearing on their predicament. “So…you think you should find her something that she is not good at?” Suddenly it dawned on her, what Hades’s thought must have been. “Do you really think she has any idea of what to do with a tree besides sit under it?”
“I don’t know, but I think I will tell her she must help you,” he said, firmly. “It may be she has some skills, but they are not obvious, so by definition, that is an impossible task. And thus, by the rules of The Tradition, having her help you makes it more likely that you will succeed.”
Persephone blinked. The twisted, inverted logic made her head ache, and yet, instinctively, she felt sure he was right.
“I think you are a genius, my husband,” she replied, feeling hope once again. “I think you are more clever than Hephaestus, wiser than Zeus, and have deeper understanding than Athena.”
A slow, gratified smile spread over Hades’s face. With an exuberant step, he carried her off to their couch, and proved just how gratified her praise had made him.
Brunnhilde regarded the death god with a curious gaze. He had laid out what he wanted from her, and why, with all the skill of a master craftsman. “This is not the sort of thing I know,” she replied. “In my land, I served as a sort of Charon on the battlefield, and as a cupbearer in the High Hall. Outside my land, I am better at breaking heads than nurturing much of anything. But I can see your point.” She pondered for a moment more.
She had to give Hades this much; he was patient. He was perfectly prepared to let her think things through on her own time with no sign that he was getting irritated at how long she was taking.
“It is true that it seems absurd to set a warrior to making a tree grow,” she said at last. “And thus, it is the sort of impossible task that The Tradition so loves. It further seems absurd to send someone from the snows of the north to tend a summer fruit. And likewise, to set a battle-maiden of death to bring something to life. I think I see a pattern of three, here, and a pattern of three is likelier to bring success than not.” She thought a bit more.
There were things Hades could not know, of course, because she had told him as little as possible about herself. She wanted to hold on to every advantage she had. She was fairly sure, for instance, that Siegfried, Rosa and Lily knew something of what had happened to her. After all, they had promised to keep an eye on Leo and herself through their mirrors. She was also fairly sure that if she really put her mind to it, she could either fight her way out of here, or summon help from Vallahalia—not a battle of the gods, perhaps, but something smaller, a sudden raid by her sister Valkyria.
But this would turn things upside down here—and while she had been breaking heads down in Tartarus, she had gotten the measure of the things that were imprisoned down there. It was only Hades’s strength, backed by The Tradition, that kept them chained. If she did anything that muddled The Tradition or weakened Hades—
Kronos and the Titans would break free, and bring with them an unpleasantly large number of monsters. The battle that followed would ravage this land, and if Kronos won, she didn’t think he would care to rule over blighted Olympia. He and the others would look elsewhere. She was not going to have that on her conscience.
Finally she nodded decisively. “I like this plan of yours, death god. Summon your mate, and she and I will go to look at this poor little tree. I will see what I can make of it.”
What she did not say aloud—because Lily, in educating her and Leo about how The Tradition worked, had been very emphatic that when you had an edge over The Tradition, it was wise not to voice any part of that edge out loud—was that it was not as absurd for her to tend a plant as it might appear to be on the surface of things. Yes, she was a minor goddess whose main tasks had been to fetch and entertain the worthy dead. Yes, she was, indeed, better suited to wielding her sword than figuring out why a plant would not bear fruit to ripeness.
But despite that, her father Wotan’s wife was the rather formidable Fricka, and despite that she had been known to refer to Fricka as “mother,” in actual fact, her mother—as all of the Valkyria—was Erda, Goddess of the Earth. And unless Bru was dreadfully mistaken, she had the feeling that there was more than a little of her mother’s power in her.
Certainly Bru was reasonably acquainted with the husbandry of a land where there was no goddess meddling with the passing of the seasons, and where it took sweat and hard work to wrest food from the ground. Poor Persephone had likely never even seen a plow in action, much less gotten any notion of what a plant needed; Bru might not have been a patron goddess of farm holders, but she had watched them at work and admired their skill. Maybe farmers in the north didn’t get carried off to Vallahalia when they died—but without them, the warriors would
n’t have the strength to fight, and certainly there would be no mead or beer in the festive drinking horns. Bru paid more attention to some of these small things than her father did, and often rewarded some of these fellows with spoils from the battlefield so that they could make themselves new tools and plows out of them.
“Excellent!” Hades beamed. “If you would wait here, I shall find her and send her to you.”
Bru was not loath to take a seat on one of Hades’s fine, comfortable couches that were placed about the courtyard. She would have expected stone, but instead, there were things more suited to indoors rather than out. Then again, there was no weather here. She rather liked the style of this place. If she and Leo ever were to settle down, she thought she’d get some furnishings made in this measure for their Hall.
Persephone looked both dubious and hopeful when she came out of the great palace to join Bru in the mist-wreathed courtyard. “I hope this Elysium of yours is more pleasant than Tartarus,” Bru told her by way of preamble as she stood up to greet the young Olympian. “While I enjoyed thumping skulls, I didn’t enjoy doing so in a pit so dank and dark it seemed as if night itself would have found itself groping in the darkness.”
“I have not been there—” Persephone said doubtfully.
Bru shook her head. “Trust me, you won’t miss anything if you don’t go down there. Your mate asked me to explain to some of his old enemies just how ill advised their attempts to escape were, so admittedly, I was in the deepest part, where the monsters and the creatures called Titans are, but in a way, the region where mortals are punished is just as bad.” She motioned to Persephone to take the lead, and the pretty little creature nodded and struck off in a purposeful manner. The girl had become very much a woman over the last several—weeks? At least. Maybe months. It was hard to tell time down here, when there was no day or night, and she slept when she was exhausted enough that even the ache of being without Leo was dulled. No matter how long it had been, that ache had not lessened in the least, and only the prospect of seeing him made as “immortal” as herself could have allowed her to endure it. “The darkness is bad enough, but the despair would be enough to make the Fenris-wolf howl with grief.” That despair had come close to infecting her. She’d only kept it away by giving vent to a full-on rage. Tartarus was a dangerous place for someone in her position.
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