But when we finally left the cocoon of our room, I learned it could not last.
He was so proud and confident when we first left our palace, my handsome husband. So ready to show me the realm we would share, the world we would rule together. We walked the Elysian Fields, hand in hand, sampling fruits from the trees, feeling the gentle breeze against our skin. We made love for hours on the mist-wrapped banks of the Lethe, gasping gently into the thick air as we tried to delay the culmination, to savor each other as long as possible. And we took each other violently, forcefully, in the heat and fire on the cliffs above the Phlegethon, drawing our nails across each other’s backs, screaming our passion across the Underworld.
Mortals assume our realm is separate from the living world, that we are somehow distant and inaccessible. That is not the truth. The underworld is a mere heartbeat away from the living world, lying like a velvet shadow across the entire mortal realm. When there is trouble in the sunlit lands, disease or famine or war, we know it. Often we know it before the mortals, and sometimes even before the gods.
So, despite the constant distraction of my husband’s body, it was mere days before we realized what my mother had done.
THE FIRST SHADES HAD died of exposure, freezing to death in what should have been a constant, pleasant climate. Hades’ brow furrowed at the influx. In the privacy of our chambers, he tried to console me.
“She’ll come around,” he whispered. “The other gods will never let this continue.”
I held my tongue. My heart and body longed for his words to be true; it had only been a matter of weeks, and already he was a part of me, his body as intimate and familiar to me as my own. Already the sunlit lands had lost their appeal, for they did not contain him.
The next round of shades came to the shores of the River Styx gaunt and pained, dead from starvation. The God of the Underworld bit his lip.
“It won’t last,” he told me, his breath soft against my neck. “She cannot hold the mortal lands in thrall.”
“You don’t know my mother,” I replied, and his voice stilled.
The numbers of the dead increased, grew to crowds whose size Hades reluctantly admitted he’d never seen before. The shores of the Styx were crowded, and my heart ached. My husband assured me I had nothing to fear, but his words shifted away from promises that my mother’s curse upon the mortal lands could not continue and became vows that he would protect me. That he would keep me.
“I love you,” I said. “This is my home, and you, my husband. I’ll never leave.”
You don’t know my mother, I thought, my lips a tight, silent line.
PART TWO
WHEN THE CRISIS CAME, it came swiftly.
I was in the gardens of our palace, collecting asphodel flowers. Ruminating. When I heard the thick beating of heavy wings behind me, I knew what to expect. Not death; death would never come for me, as it would never come for all the immortals.
Worse than death.
Hermes, come to collect me.
“Persephone,” he said.
My back stiffened, and I took a long breath before turning to face him. He looked almost apologetic, my one-time suitor.
“You’re to come with me,” he said.
“I will not,” I said, my fist crushing the bouquet of asphodel.
Hermes winced. “This is an order. From Zeus.”
“I am Queen of this Realm. I do not respond to order from anyone.”
Black smoke boiled from the ground around us, and Hades appeared at my side. His arm around my trembling shoulders gave me strength, and the ocean of fear and rage inside me quelled somewhat.
“We’ll both come,” Hades said. Hermes met his eyes and I knew there would be no argument.
I EXPECTED A SMALL crowd, there in the lofty, cold halls of Olympus. My mother, of course. My father, Zeus. Hermes would wait as witness, and perhaps one of two others, pulled by interest or duty.
But the hall was packed when we arrived, and my heart leapt to my throat. My hand crushed Hades’ fingers when the crowd materialized around us. I saw Apollo, cold and distant. I saw Diana and Artemis, my onetime guardians. There was, perhaps, a grudging respect for my husband’s position in their eyes and expressions, but nowhere did I see sympathy. Zeus cleared his throat and came to his feet. He turned to my mother, who nodded but did not smile.
“Persephone,” he said, his booming voice filling the hall, echoing across all of Olympus. “Your marriage is annulled. You will return to your mother.”
I felt Hades tremble as our happy union was destroyed by two sentences, spoken with bored and tired authority. My fingers curled into fists as I scowled at my mother. She met my gaze, low and level across the polished white hall.
I loved her then, as I love her now. But in that moment I also hated her.
“No,” I said, and the word fell like a stone through that august company.
The reaction came slowly, in half-hidden gestures, in an uncomfortable shifting of beautiful bodies.
“Persephone, it’s done,” said Zeus, resuming his position on the throne of Olympus.
“I chose my husband,” I said. “I am Queen of the Underworld now. You cannot annul what has happened between us.”
“What happened between you two is over,” my mother said. “You are a child, Persephone. The man you marry is not your decision.”
Rage swept over me like a red tide as I spun, staring at the audience of the gods in the thin air of Olympus. How I hated them in that moment, hated them all. My mother met my stare, her expression fierce and unforgiving.
They all feared her, Demeter, goddess of the earth. The woman who banished summer, who brought cold and ice to the mortal realms. Even the gods feared her wrath.
On that day, they all learned to fear me.
I’VE HEARD IT SAID springtime is gentle and pleasant, a time of sweet flowers and new beginnings. As though new life came without effort; as though lovemaking were always sweet and honey-flavored. But birth is steeped in suffering and blood, and passion screams and claws at the night.
I am goddess of the spring. And the spring is untamed.
“NO!” I yelled, stepping to the center of the room.
I raised my hands and summoned all I had, summoned the raw, sheer force of living things, the vitality of the earth, the overwhelming need of life to continue itself. I reached for the hard, stony ground of Olympus and brought forth everything, every tiny, hidden seed that had ever fallen, every spark of life since life began.
I brought it all forward.
And the columns of Olympus shook as the ground split open.
Zeus leapt to his feet, his arms outstretched, his power steadying the palace against my onslaught. “Daughter, what are you doing?” he demanded.
Demeter also leapt to her feet. “Water,” she said. “Oh, no. Listen.”
Zeus’s eyes grew wide with shock. “The water,” he gasped.
Springtime is the time of melting snow. And the sides of regal Olympus are layered with snow, generations worth of snow. My blast awoke the seeds and began a fierce, sudden thaw. I could melt the snowfields, melt them all. The waters I could unleash would tumble down the sides of Olympus, churning the soil into a frothy, mud-tinged tidal wave, burying the mortals’ farmland for months.
“I chose my own husband!” I screamed, raging at all of them.
I was buffeted back as my warmth was ripped from the air. Demeter clasped her hands to her chest. “You chose nothing! You were taken from me, taken from all of us! And without you, nothing will grow in the mortal realm!”
I panted, summoning my strength for another assault. I was blind with anger; I didn’t care if I destroyed the whole world, so long as I did not submit to their will.
But the world did not end that day, and it was Hades who stopped us, although his role has been erased from the stories. He reached for my elbow, steadying me, pulling me close to his chest. In his warm, strong arms, the worst of my rage evaporated. He brought me back to
myself, my beloved husband, and then he saved the mortal realm.
“Perhaps we can reach some sort of agreement,” he said. I felt his chest vibrate as he spoke, his voice confident and resonant, commanding attention. I could also feel the wild thudding of his panicked heart, a panic so artfully concealed it was visible only to me, and only because I stood in the shelter of his arms.
Demeter shook her head. “The world needs my daughter.”
“But she is no child,” said Zeus, shaking his head. “She’s made a choice, Demeter.”
Demeter frowned, and her countenance softened somewhat. “Even so. The world needs springtime. I—” She shifted on her feet, appearing uncomfortable for the first time since our arrival. “I cannot bring summer alone,” she admitted.
A ripple of hushed exclamations swept through the shifting crowd. I had never, in my entire life, heard my mother admit to something she could not do. My heart began to soften toward her.
Zeus sighed heavily. “Daughter,” he said, raising his sky-colored eyes to me. “It’s time to come home.”
Hades’s arms tightened around my chest, and I tasted bile in the back of my throat. I opened my mouth to speak, but my husband spoke first.
“She’s eaten the fruits of the Underworld,” he said.
Zeus’s eyes widened. I’ve had millennia to remember that expression, to ponder it. At first I took it for surprise, but now I realize I was mistaken. It was not shock; he knew what men and women did together, knew it better than perhaps anyone else in Olympus. No, he wasn’t surprised to hear those words.
He was relieved.
“No,” Demeter gasped.
“It’s true,” I said, standing tall against my husband’s strong body.
Zeus and Hades met each other’s eyes, and for a moment I realized how very similar they were in appearance. Brothers, I thought, of course, they’re brothers. And like brothers, they seemed to have an entire conversation in those few heartbeats.
“What did she eat?” Zeus asked. “And how much?”
I opened my mouth to say everything, for that was the truth. I’d eaten the fruit and bread of the palace; I drank the sweet, dark wine. I’d tasted every part of my husband’s body, taken all of him into me, the taste of his lips, the sweat of his skin, the salt of his manhood as he came in my mouth in the golden grasses of the Elysian Fields.
“A pomegranate,” Hades said. “Six seeds.”
I frowned. Understanding dawned slowly as another ripple of conversation filled the room. Zeus struggled briefly to suppress a smile.
“Well then,” he said, bringing his hands together. “She can’t possibly leave the Underworld, not after she’s eaten the food there. But we clearly cannot be without Persephone in the mortal realm.”
Hades’s body shivered, very slightly, against my back. He knew what was coming before I did.
Zeus stepped from the dais and walked to us, almost smiling. Almost sympathetic. “Six seeds,” he said. “Six pomegranate seeds. You must therefore return to the Underworld, my daughter, for six months of the year. You will bring springtime to the mortal lands, spending half of each year in the sunlight. Fulfilling your duty. And then, Persephone, you will return to Underworld, where you are queen.”
My mother sobbed then, although the sounds of her grief were quickly swallowed by the buzz of conversation filling the room. Hades and Zeus shook hands and exchanged a few words, their voices so low even I could not make them out. And then Hermes was before us, and I took Hades’s hand, and together we left the halls of Mount Olympus. As husband and wife.
I’VE HAD TIME TO THINK on it, the compromise my husband suggested to save the mortal realm. In all the centuries we’ve spent together, my admiration for him has only grown. We were none of us delighted with the solution, and I still miss my husband when I return to the Earth to bring springtime. It’s like missing a part of myself, living in the sunlight without him. But the world still stands, and every passing day reiterates the basic goodness of creation. I’m glad my mother and I did not destroy the world in our foolish rage. And, although the world denies Hades his due, I remember. I still thank him.
Besides, we do not live in total isolation, my husband and I, during those six months of fecundity and warmth in the sunlit lands. He visits me often, in field and forest, along isolated rivers or in the heart of city parks. He visits me and we come together, our bodies exploding with pleasure, our delight in each other only increasing with the many years. Yes, I gasp as he wraps his arms around me, as I sink my nails into his back and breath him in, pulling him into myself. Yes, I scream as I call his name, call it with all the force and passion of the spring.
Yes. Hades. Yes!
I hope they can hear us in Olympus.
Excerpt from The Wolf’s Lover
THERE WAS A MOMENT of silence before the walkie-talkie exploded with Colin’s laughter.
“Boys, boys,” I said, pressing the TRANSMIT button. “I’m not sure this is the best use of our grant-funded research equipment.”
“Roger that, Boss Lady,” Zeke said over the walkie-talkie. The line fell silent, and then Zeke’s voice crackled again. “And do you think the National Science Foundation would prefer Guns N’ Roses?”
I snorted a laugh as Colin’s voice came over the line, clipped and urgent. “Karen,” he said. “Get the tranq gun. Headed your way, north-northwest.”
My fingers trembled as I pulled the tranquilizer gun off my shoulders and loaded a dart. I couldn’t see anything yet, so I grabbed my binoculars.
It was the black male wolf.
Something must have startled him; probably Zeke, from the direction he was running. I took a deep breath and brought the gun to my shoulder. I was raised hunting; I could make this shot. I held my breath as the black male wolf zig-zagged through the sagebrush bushes and across the low grass. I led him just a touch with the barrel of the tranquilizer gun, waited until he was close enough to make out the golden glint of his irises, and then squeezed the trigger.
The wolf yipped in alarm, and I felt a wave of guilt when I saw the bright red dart sticking out of his flank. He took off again, running away from me this time, although it didn’t take more than a minute for his steps to waver. He disappeared from my sight along the creek as the walkie-talkie erupted with cheering.
“Hell of a shot, Boss Lady,” Zeke said.
“I saw him go down,” said Colin. “In the willows by the creek. Headed over now.”
“Me too,” I said.
I walked quickly across the flats. The wind was picking up against my back, and it smelled like rain. We must be due for an afternoon thunderstorm. We’d have to work fast; the tranquilizer only subdued the animal for about twenty minutes. Where did this wolf come from? Canada was the most likely option, although that would be a heck of a long walk, all the way across Montana—
I was almost to the tall willows lining the creek when I saw Colin. His face was bizarrely pale, and my heart started racing as I sprinted the last few feet to reach him.
“Colin?”
“You’d better see this,” he said.
He took my hand and led me around the willow bushes.
There, on the soft, green grass next to the river, was the body of a naked man. A bright red tranquilizer dart stuck out of his left thigh.
My breath caught in my throat, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. He was, without a doubt, the man from my dreams
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