Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories)

by Ringle, Molly

  In the happiest lives she was married to the person with Adrian’s soul, and in the unhappiest, they had to spend most of their time apart, attached to other people. It was both romantic and unsettling.

  More nights, more dreams. More languages. More check-ins and warnings from Jacob.

  On the following Monday, the first of October, she walked back to the dorm after class, navigating the crowds of texting-and-walking students. The wind sent spicy-smelling maple leaves swirling off the trees to land around her feet, reminding her of the myth of Persephone, whose abduction kicked off autumn.

  So what if I really was Persephone once? she thought. As she recalled from high school literature classes, myths endured because all women could feel they were Persephone, Demeter, Aphrodite, Hera, the Virgin Mary, Kali in destroyer mode, or a multitude of other choices, depending on their circumstances. And men could cast themselves as Hades, Zeus, Adonis, Jesus of Nazareth, the Coyote Trickster, or whoever else fit.

  Adrian had probably drugged her, making her imagine all this past-life nonsense. In particularly vivid detail, true, but who knew what kind of drugs they were dealing with here? Maybe a trip to the student health center was next in order.

  Still, she felt a tender beat of her heart every time she dwelled on those old names. Persephone, Hades. Indistinct flashes of images flitted in her mind. A large purple flower, a fruit with sky-blue flesh like no other fruit she’d ever seen, a slim golden crown with amethysts on it.

  Melissa was out somewhere when Sophie entered their room. Sophie dropped her backpack on the floor, pried off her shoes, and stretched out on her bed, letting her spine recover from hauling textbooks around.

  Her phone vibrated, startling her.

  I confess I’m dying of curiosity about what you’re dreaming and remembering, Adrian texted. How’s it all going?

  It had been over four days since their last text interaction, which had been another brief Everything okay?, with her answering, Yep, just busy. Classes and all.

  Sophie felt she owed him a more detailed answer, but her heart pounded in fear. Who to trust? Adrian, who was apparently also Hades—a mythological god of the dead and a selfish abductor? Or Jacob and his detectives? Or neither?

  Her stress burst its restraints and took the form of boldness. She dialed Adrian’s number.

  “Hi,” he answered.

  “I’ve been told you’re wanted for kidnapping several girls. Maybe killing them. Give me a good reason I shouldn’t call the police and get you the hell out of my life.”

  After a second of silence, he snorted. “Killing girls now, is it? Ah. This from the nice people trying to kill me.”

  “They approached my boyfriend. Actual detectives, wanting him to look out for you, to protect me.”

  “Right, I doubt they were actual detectives. Do you have a minute? Can we meet?”

  Sophie leaped up to pace the room. “I think I should hang up and call the cops.” But she didn’t, and knew she probably wouldn’t. She was too keen on hearing what he had to say.

  “If I’m wanted for crimes,” he explained, “it’d be easy for you to find out. Go ahead, call the police in Wellington. Ask them about me. Ask the FBI, ask Amnesty International if you like. There’s nothing, because I haven’t done anything.”

  “Except drug me. Whatever you put in that juice is making my brain go nuts. How do I know it isn’t all hallucination? You could have planted these memories in there.”

  “I couldn’t plant the entire German language in your head, could I?” he returned. “Or Hindi, or Cantonese, or all the others you’re surely remembering now.”

  She stayed silent a moment, already knowing he was right. In addition, those web searches verified lots of the historical information she had remembered so far—details she had certainly never known before. “So why would they say you’re dangerous?” she asked. “Why scare Jacob like that?”

  “To recruit people to catch us. To draw them in with tales of—of poor innocent girls raped and murdered by sadistic maniacs. Who wouldn’t protect their daughters and girlfriends from that?”

  “But—” She whacked her fist against her closet door in frustration as she paced by it. “What do they really want, then?”

  “I told you. They want to kill me. And Niko, and the few others like us. But they wouldn’t get a lot of help from normal people, would they, if they led with, ‘We want to hunt down immortals and blow them up into tiny pieces.’”

  The silence thrummed between them on the line. Sophie’s feet slowed at the image of people getting blown up, but it was a different word that brought her to a stop altogether. “Immortals?” she repeated.

  Another few seconds passed, then he breathed a quiet laugh. “Haven’t you got that far back in the dreams yet?”

  Legs weak, she sat on the edge of her bed. “I kind of have. Not as far back as Persephone, but from what people have said between lives, I’m getting hints…I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

  “Will you let me come see you?” His voice was gentler, kindness taking the place of sarcasm.

  “First tell me…if destroying you is what they want, then what is it you want?”

  “We want to help people. Really we do. The souls in the Underworld, people who were murdered—we can give them the justice they never got in life. The plants in the other realm, there’s all kinds that don’t exist in the living world. There could be a cure for cancer. We just have to look and learn. No one alive has been in that realm for ages. There’s so much we could do.”

  “Okay. But what do you want me for?”

  It took him a moment to respond. “I want a few good people to spend eternity with. And I want Persephone to be one of them.”

  Something in the words, and the way he said them, struck a chord deep inside her. Tears welled in her eyes, unexpectedly. She blinked them away and tried out a laugh. “You’re not going to get much help if you lead with that.”

  “Don’t I know it, love.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  ADRIAN SLIPPED INTO THE LIVING world and found himself face to face with Sophie. The Oregon sky was gloomy gray overhead. It was dinner hour here, and the smells of the busy restaurants surrounding their designated corner made his mouth water.

  Sophie held up a white paper bag solemnly. “Sandwiches.”

  “Cheers.” He gathered her in his arms and switched them to the spirit realm. This time she didn’t feel so stiff and resistant; she let herself lean on him as her balance shifted.

  Kiri wagged her tail when they appeared. The poor dog had never quite reconciled herself to his new habit of vanishing into thin air. She didn’t like it much better when he carried her along, either. He reckoned the sudden change of smells, to a sensitive dog nose, was too jarring.

  He let Sophie go and knelt to ruffle Kiri’s fur. “It’s all right, girl. Here we are.”

  Rain fell in a quiet but soaking drizzle. Sophie drew her hood up. “Why is it raining here when it wasn’t in the other world?”

  They set off across the meadow. “My theory is that cities and traffic affect the weather, putting stuff in the clouds. Here there aren’t cars or people, so the weather does different things.”

  “I’ll buy that.”

  Kiri darted ahead, running until only the tip of her tail was visible in the high grass. They followed her through a thicket of evergreens. Adrian stopped on its other side, turning to Sophie with a proud smile.

  She took in the shiny, rounded silver caravan sitting there, alone in the wilderness. “An Airstream?”

  “Yep. Picked it up yesterday. Don’t worry; it can’t go anywhere. The horses aren’t hooked up to it.” He opened the door for her and was gratified when she climbed in after only a second’s hesitation.

  Kiri leaped in after her, and flopped onto the dog bed he’d bought as part of the preliminary furnishings.

  Sophie pushed back her hood and looked around the caravan’s interior. “Did you steal it?”

 
“Not at all. I paid for it.” Adrian shut the door, and unzipped his coat. “Niko and I rented a truck, hooked this up to it, and drove it to that car park near your dorm in the middle of the night when no one would see us. Then we each picked up one end and transferred it here.”

  “Ah.” She set the bag of sandwiches on the table, and peeled off her wet coat. He took it and hung it on a hook inside a closet. Settling onto one of the bench seats, she ran her fingers over the dated but clean upholstery. “Psychedelic orange and yellow flowers. I think my parents used to have a carpet with this pattern.”

  He pointed inside a kitchen cabinet. “Contact paper to match. All quite retro. Of course, I don’t have electricity. Have to pick up a generator for that. But for now…” He pulled a pair of white pillar candles from the cabinet and brought them to the table.

  She peered out the tableside window to where the bus and horses were parked, a few trees away. “Well, it’s definitely an improvement over that pathetic bus.”

  He grinned, and sat across from her. “You dare to suggest the bus isn’t a choice vehicle?”

  She looked at him with a skeptical lift of her eyebrows. “Isn’t Hades supposed to drive a chariot?”

  “Yeah, but there weren’t any left over from the old days, so I’d have to build one.” He scratched a match against its box and lit the two candles. “I decided something bigger would be better, to transport large items—like taking furniture to the Underworld. Niko and I found the bus in an Auckland wrecking yard and nicked it.”

  “So that was auto theft.”

  “Not technically. We left money. No one was ever going to drive it again. It’s got a fabulous new life most buses will never experience.”

  Sophie smirked, opening the bag of food. “Fine. It’s a sweet ride.”

  “Speaking of money—for the sandwiches…” Adrian plucked a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and slid it across the table to her.

  “You sure?”

  “I can’t bear to steal from a uni student. Besides, I owe you. Last food I gave you was um, tainted.”

  She acknowledged that with a shrug, and pocketed the bill. “How do you pay for stuff? Or buy food, or trailers or things? If you can barely enter the real world without these people coming after you? Doesn’t seem like you could hold down a job.”

  “I can’t hold down a traditional paying one. I consider ‘Underworld bloke’ to be my job now. But the opposition, the secret society, they’re small, and they don’t have spies everywhere. I try to avoid spots they might expect me to be, but I can usually get into the living world long enough to buy groceries and things without anyone noticing. Plus Niko sometimes runs errands for me in exchange for a diamond or a sapphire. There are parts of the Underworld with gemstones literally falling out of the walls. We use those if we need money.”

  “I thought I saw that. Handy.” Sophie pulled out two wrapped sandwiches, a bag of corn chips, and a pair of Fuji apples. “That’s in the mythology. Hades owning the world of riches. Because mines are underground.”

  “They got that bit right, sort of. I only take stuff from the Underworld, though, not mines in the living realm.”

  Sophie glanced at the food. “So even though you’re immortal, you do eat? And everything.”

  “And everything.”

  “Would you die without food?”

  “No, I’d just become weak. Knackered. I prefer to eat. And I don’t like human blood at all, so that puts me above some immortals.”

  She looked startled. “Vampires are real?”

  “No. I was only joking. At least…” He paused and frowned. “I don’t think they’re real.”

  “Forget them for now.” She took two bottles of water from the bag and set them beside the food. “I want to hear about you. How did you become immortal?”

  He picked up the bag of chips. “Well…like you learned on the Internet, I was hit by a car when I was five. Was never supposed to walk again. Naturally that was hard enough on Mum and Dad. Then when I was eight, Mum died. I don’t have any siblings, so it’s just been Dad and me.”

  Sophie looked sympathetic, as people usually did when presented with his history.

  Adrian cleared his throat, and dumped the chips into a pile on a paper napkin. “But I got Kiri around the same time, and she improved things.” He tossed a chip to the dog bed, where Kiri snapped it up. “By the time I graduated high school she was getting old, and I wasn’t sure what I’d do without her. I mean, I’d get a new dog, but it would be horrible to lose her.”

  Sophie picked up the paper-wrapped sandwiches. “I cried for a month when our dog died. Even though we already had a new pup. Um, roast beef or ham?”

  “Roast beef. Thanks. Then one day when Kiri and I were at the park, this tall African woman walked up to us. At least, she looked African, and had some kind of accent I couldn’t place, so I assumed African.”

  “The woman we met in the Underworld,” said Sophie, unwrapping the ham sandwich. “Rhea.”

  Adrian glanced at her, smiling. “I never told you her name.”

  She took a bite, and pondered that as she chewed. “I’ve talked to her in the Underworld between lives. She knew me as Persephone. But she wasn’t a soul down there—she was alive. The only one alive.” Her voice went quiet in wonder at that sentence.

  It was too sad a story, how Rhea had come to be the only living person in the Underworld. Adrian was glad to stick to the subject of his own recent immortality instead.

  “So, in the park, she sat down in the grass and talked to me,” he continued, peeling the wrapper off his own sandwich. “I kind of suspected she was mental. Some of the things she asked me were bizarre, old-fashioned, especially when it came to modern technology and medicine. And how traffic worked.” He chuckled. “But in other ways she seemed so wise. She was interesting, the countries and people she talked about. We talked a while, then she said, ‘Can I show you something?’ And she had me get Kiri up on my lap. She picked us up like we hardly weighed a thing—wheelchair, me, and dog—and, pop, away went the civilized world.”

  Sophie nodded to the window. “She brought you here?”

  “The spirit realm, yeah. Untamed New Zealand. I was freaked out, of course. But I also thought it was sweet as.”

  “Sweet as what?”

  He grinned. “Just sweet as. Kiwi slang. Means brilliant, excellent.”

  “Oh.” She lifted her eyebrows a moment, chewing a bite of her dwindling sandwich. “So did she take you to the Underworld?”

  “Not right then. She let me look around a bit, and explained that this was a world most people never saw until they died. She said she’d take me home whenever I liked, but if I wanted to meet her again, she had somewhere even more amazing to show me. So the next day I arranged to be gone a few hours, and she came and fetched me. She hooked us all up to a spirit horse with these vine things—no bus or anything, just us hanging on to the wheelchair—and off we launched. The journey itself was amazing enough. But then we got to the Underworld, and that was the coolest yet. Even without knowing I was Hades.”

  “But you did eat the pomegranate that day?”

  “Yeah. She took me into the forest—the orchard. She said most of the original trees had died, and the ones there now had sprouted up on their own from the fallen seeds. She wasn’t sure if these pomegranates would still work the way she expected. But if they did, they’d make me remember it all.”

  “How long did it take you to decide?” Sophie sounded a bit sad, and he felt a flash of guilt again for taking away her choice in the matter.

  “I didn’t hesitate. I said, ‘Give it here,’ and ate it. My life…it’d been quiet, kind of lonesome. A lot of reading, thinking, wishing I could do more. I only had a couple of friends, and felt like I should keep Dad company when I could. But he’s quiet too. And besides, I was growing up and would have to find my own way. Basically, when Rhea offered me a fruit that would give me interesting new dreams, I felt I had nothing to lose. Only
excitement to gain.”

  She thought about that as she picked up an apple and polished its skin with her sleeve. “Were you right?”

  He raised his eyebrows as he considered. “I did gain excitement. I don’t regret knowing everything I know, overwhelming as it is. But later came the problems.” He paused and took a long breath. “More on those in a minute. So—I was trying to go on with my ordinary, sleepy life in Wellington, still in the chair, while my mind was exploding with all these past lives. When I got to the one about Hades, I could hardly keep still. His lifetime was…amazing. And I was getting really frustrated, being able to know so much yet still be unable to walk—or explore that other realm. Only immortals can switch over; I couldn’t get to it unless Rhea brought me. And I had her take me over a lot, all the way to the Underworld, just to explore. That’s where I remembered something.

  “There was a time once when we—Hades and Persephone—put some keepsakes in a clay jar, and sealed it, and hid it in one of the caves.”

  “A time capsule?” She bit into her apple with a crunch.

  “Basically, though we didn’t call it that. We’d heard of kings and queens doing such things, to commemorate who they were, and their…love for each other.” He practically spluttered the words, and focused on pulling the cheese and the tomato slice off his sandwich and eating them. Go easy on that stuff. She has a boyfriend, as she kindly reminded you.

  “What did we put in it?” She sounded interested, at least.

  “Oh, a number of small things, which I’ll let you remember in your own time.” He smiled at her, accurately predicting her eye-roll and grumble. “But one of them was this plant. See—I guess I can tell you this—most immortals back then were born that way. Just a thing that happened to a small number of people. No one knows why. But there was one other way to become immortal, and that was through eating a certain…food. A plant.” He glanced guardedly at her. “You’ll dream about that soon too. Thing is, that plant had died out in the Underworld long ago. And, like the pomegranate, it only worked there.