Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories)

by Ringle, Molly

  “But when I remembered we had put some of it in the clay jar, then it hit me: people can sometimes take seeds they find preserved in ice, or in archaeological sites, and plant them again and grow them, even after thousands of years. It had been done. I’d seen articles. So I told Rhea, and we went to the tunnel where it was hidden.

  “The passageway, the tunnel, was really narrow and full of rocks, and she had to pick me up from the chair and carry me in until I pointed out the right spot. The hole was still all blocked up with big rocks that I couldn’t move, but she could. She cleared them away, and…it was there. The clay jar.” His heart beat faster, just as it had that day, knowing he held an object that was last touched millennia ago by their hands—Persephone’s and Hades’.

  Sophie’s hazel eyes were round and stunned. “Did it have owls on it?” she whispered.

  Their gazes met. Affection and pride for her swelled up in him. “Yes. We’d painted owls on it, amongst other things.”

  She blinked, looking overcome, and lowered her face. “I can’t remember much, but these little flashes, they keep happening.”

  “They’ll get stronger. That’s how it works.”

  “Tell me what color the owls were.” She stared at the middle of the table.

  “Why?”

  She looked at him. “I remember what color they were. But I want you to say it. I want to see if the memory’s real.”

  He held her gaze. In that moment, the wonder and the longing for wisdom in her face transformed her into the Persephone he had loved. Souls could do that, surfacing and shaping a person’s features so that if you looked closely, you recognized a long-gone face. He’d caught glimpses of it on Sophie before, but never as strong as this, and it took his breath away. He recovered by carefully drawing another breath, and answered, “Purple. They were purple. We…were going for dark blue, like the evening sky, but paint colors didn’t always dry the way we wanted back then. Blue was hard to make.”

  She seemed unable to speak. The reflection of the candle flames glimmered in her eyes. She only nodded.

  Their glances separated. Sophie sat back, and gazed in abstraction at the apple she still held.

  Adrian cupped both hands around his water bottle, as if it were the clay jar. “When Rhea and I opened it, we mostly found shriveled-up dusty things, impossible to recognize. But the seeds were there. They have an unusual shape, so I knew them right away. They were as dusty and mummified as everything else, but we figured it was worth a shot. We took them back to the orchard, found the area where they used to grow, and planted them. Gave them water from the river.”

  “And they grew.”

  “One did. Two years later, it produced the first…parts you would eat.”

  “Fruit,” she filled in softly. “I know it was fruit.”

  “Yeah. Fruit. So I had two years to decide whether I’d eat one. But I knew all along that I would. And one day I finally did.” He let a pause fill in for the day of cramps, burning sensations, tingling pains, and aching thirst while the fruit took its effect. “It healed me. Went through my whole body and changed me into something almost invincible. I stood up, out of the wheelchair. I could walk. I could run. I could lift those big rocks I couldn’t move before. I could do…everything.”

  He snapped his fingers at his side, and Kiri got up and came to rest her chin on his lap. He fed her part of his sandwich bread. “Once I made sure it wasn’t going to kill me, I gave Kiri some too.”

  Sophie gasped, scooting over toward Kiri. “You have an immortal dog? That’s so cool!” She reached down to stroke Kiri’s ears. Kiri serenely licked Sophie’s fingers.

  Adrian smiled, tossing Kiri a slice of roast beef from his sandwich. “I didn’t want to live forever if I couldn’t bring her along. She deserves it more than any of us.”

  “Rhea must have been happy. More immortals to keep her company at last.”

  “She was. You can ask her about it yourself sometime. But nowadays there’s a danger in hanging out with us. In fact, there always was. We just didn’t realize it for a while.”

  Sophie settled back into her seat again, looking troubled once more. “The opposition?”

  “Yeah.” He decided he might as well give her more information, if they were trying to get to her through Jacob. “They’re called Thanatos. It basically means ‘death’ in Greek, or maybe ‘mortality’ was more their idea. They started in ancient times, and have been around all these centuries. Basically they think no one, ever, should be immortal.”

  Sophie crunched on her apple, brows furrowed. “It is a dangerous thing you’ve discovered. Easy immortality—what if that got out? The world would be overpopulated in no time.”

  “Absolutely, and I agree, it shouldn’t get out. But does that make immortality wrong altogether?” He rested both elbows on the table. “If you surveyed the world on the question, about half—if I estimate right—would say they like the idea of immortality and would like to have it themselves, please.”

  “That’s way too many immortals.”

  “Right. But another, say, forty percent would say they don’t want to be immortal themselves, but they wouldn’t mind a few people being immortal, just for variety.”

  “I assume you like those people. They’ve got your back.”

  “We do like them, whoever exactly they are. But the last ten percent are against immortality for anyone. And a tiny portion of them are freakishly against it. Some for religious reasons, some for practical concerns like overpopulation. And they have, in fact, tracked down immortals and…killed them.” Adrian’s voice faltered. He wasn’t sure he ought to burden Sophie with this yet. Then again, she’d best know what she was up against.

  Her face tensed as she gazed at the table, the line of her cheekbone as lovely as any marble statue of a Greek goddess. “That’s what happened to the gods in the old days,” she said. “They were killed.”

  He nodded. “Not to give you nightmares, but it takes a lot of force and effort. These people have to be determined. Basically, immortals have to be burned up in very high heat, or torn to pieces, or both. These days, explosives do the trick.”

  She looked at him. “Who’s been killed these days? You said someone had.”

  He swallowed, debating how much to say, then gave in. “Apollo. He was reborn in India. He was a journalist, rather famous. Had a wife and grown-up kids. You might have seen me talking to him in the Underworld, while you were with your grandfather.”

  She nodded. “Guess he was interested in seeing me.”

  “Indeed. Reminded me I shouldn’t be sharing the secrets, but said he could hardly blame me, given how cute you were.”

  She smirked at the compliment, and Adrian continued, “Rhea found him not long after finding me. It didn’t take much convincing for him to eat the pomegranate. We met a few times and became friends; stayed in touch online. He was the next, after Kiri and me, to eat the immortality fruit, even though it meant becoming strangely young, which kind of freaked out his wife and friends.

  “He didn’t care. He thought it was awesome, and wanted to share the news with people. And that was where he got really unlucky. See, being Hindu, he went to some of his gurus to tell them about it, figuring they’d be able to appreciate stuff like a spirit realm and an immortality fruit better than most.” Adrian scraped together his sandwich crumbs, then let his hands fall still. “Turned out one of them was in Thanatos. He confronted Sanjay in private and made some threats, but none of us understood how dangerous this cult was until too late. Until after they…planted a car bomb and murdered him.”

  “You’re sure it was them?” Sophie sounded shocked.

  “The guru visited his widow afterward and told her it had happened because he ‘defied nature.’ It sounded dreadfully like claiming credit for the attack.”

  “He should have been arrested.”

  “There wasn’t enough evidence. We’ve tried, and we can’t find it. It’s maddening. Sanjay was in Afghanistan at the
time, for work, and we suspect the group used local terrorists, whose names we don’t know and whose language none of us speaks. Even if we did know who they were, there’s no guarantee anyone could find them and get them to confess. Those people are good at hiding. Just ask the CIA.”

  “But why didn’t this make bigger news?” Sophie asked, outraged.

  “A car bomb in Afghanistan? It was just taken to be part of the fighting. And the notion that Sanjay was immortal, well, that’d be insane-tabloid material, wouldn’t it? News like that wouldn’t get out unless some immortal was really determined to prove their abilities to the world. Trust me, after what happened to him, none of us are. The only ones who believe it are this select group of fanatics. And Sanjay’s widow.”

  “Wait, what about your family? They must know you were healed. How much else do they know?”

  Adrian nodded, a flicker of homesickness stinging him. “I kept it secret from my dad as long as I could. I didn’t think he’d understand. He’s always stressed; and anyway, he’s a devout Christian and I wasn’t sure he’d like this notion of me hanging around with a Greek goddess. And when we started growing the immortality fruit, well, I didn’t tell him that either, because I didn’t want to get his hopes up—that I might get cured.”

  “So when did you tell him?”

  Adrian smiled faintly. “The day I got my legs back. After eating the fruit. I walked in, no wheelchair, and said, ‘I have some things to tell you.’ He was, um, gobsmacked.”

  “But happy, I would think.”

  “Yeah. Happier than I ever realized he’d be.” Adrian ran his fingertips along the table’s surface. “After explaining everything, I asked him, ‘But doesn’t it bother you, from a religious standpoint?’ And he said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, this is the work of God.’ Of course I emphasized that we shouldn’t tell people the truth. We spread it about that I’d got some fancy new ‘treatment’ that got me walking again. But then the real trouble started.”

  “Thanatos,” Sophie guessed.

  He nodded. “They started sniffing around Wellington, looking for me. Probably they tracked me through messages between Sanjay and me.”

  “And you said someone tried to kill you?”

  He looked into her anxious eyes, then lowered his gaze. “A guy shot me and Kiri, in the park one night.” While Sophie sucked in her breath, he added, “Clearly it was just a warning. If they wanted me dead they’d have used a rocket launcher, not a gun. He incapacitated me long enough to tell me they knew about us and that we’d better get lost and not make any more immortals, and that if I showed up in the living world again I would be dead.”

  She emitted an unsteady sigh. “Okay, I see why you avoid our realm so much.”

  He leaned down to pet Kiri again. “Also I suppose they were testing us. Seeing what would happen if we were shot. They still might not know Kiri’s immortal—she didn’t regain consciousness till after I’d switched us to the other realm. But now they definitely know I am.”

  “And that’s why you moved to the Underworld.”

  “Yes. And it’s why I can’t visit Dad much anymore.” Adrian chewed the side of his lip, recalling the whole mess. “I crept back in that night, Kiri and me covered in blood, and unfortunately he was right there, and got the whole scary visual. So I couldn’t break it to him gently. The long and short of it is, I was terrified someone would kill him too—maybe bomb our house—so I told him I had to leave. ‘We have to pretend we’ve had a falling out,’ I said. ‘Tell everyone I’m an ungrateful, arrogant sod who’s gone off on his own, and you’re having nothing to do with me. Tell them whatever you have to.’”

  “But you do still see him?” She sounded sad on his behalf.

  “Occasionally. And I have my mate Zoe transfer messages between us, texts. Her parents are a software engineer and a security expert, so she’s pretty certain she’d catch anyone trying to spy on her.”

  “So are you guys keeping track of what Thanatos is doing?”

  “We’re trying. But we ourselves are not terribly good at being hackers and spies. Except Niko—he’s got the knack.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Now we’re getting into things I shouldn’t tell you yet.”

  “Why not? You’ve told me about the fruit of immortality and where it grows.”

  “Yeah, but they learned that from Sanjay already, and they can’t get into the spirit realm. Nor can you.”

  “But from Sanjay they probably know how many of you there are, and what your names are.”

  “No, they don’t seem to be sure about those things. They know about me, because of my correspondence with Sanjay. And they know about Rhea, though they can’t find any current record of her, because there isn’t one. And they have strong suspicions about others. But I shouldn’t tell you all their names either, or how many there are, because…it’s dangerous information.” He decided against specifically saying they might torture her to learn it. If they did, he vowed silently, he would go against his decision not to instigate violence, and kill the torturers himself.

  She stayed silent long enough that he suspected she had guessed about the torture scenario. “I’ll definitely avoid them. But I don’t know yet if I’ll become one of you, either.” She set her apple on a napkin. “This is a very deep and difficult offer you’re making me, you realize.”

  “I do realize.”

  “I’d need more time to think about it even if I knew everything.”

  “Yes. Which you don’t.”

  She nodded, tracing figure eights on the table with her pinky. “This is sure making me want to dream about Persephone, though.”

  “You’ll get there soon. I’m eager to have you reach those memories myself.” And not just because they were highly likely to put her in a romantic mood…but that was the larger part of his motivation.

  She looked out the window. “I’m pretty sure Jacob, at least, doesn’t know the truth about those so-called detectives.”

  “Oh, I agree,” said Adrian. “I doubt he does know.”

  “He did honestly seem to think you were stalking me to kill me, or something ordinary like that.”

  “Well, I promise I’m not.”

  She tried to smile, but nervousness evidently wiped it out. “I don’t know if I’d trust you one bit, if it weren’t for all these dreams and memories.”

  “Yeah. That’s why I had to get the pomegranate into you.”

  Her smile stretched more this time, and she looked at him with fresh curiosity. “How did you find me? Or how did Rhea find you, and all the others?”

  “Another immortal ability. We can sense certain souls, ones we’ve made a deliberate connection with in the past, as long as the connection was made when we were immortal.” He decided not to explain about how it required an exchange of bodily fluids—either by a blood-brothers kind of process, or the rather more fun and clothing-free way. “If I concentrate, I can single out a sort of hum, or vibration, and home in on it, for those select people. It was easy enough to track you that way.”

  “So the day you kidnapped me, that probably wasn’t actually the first day you saw me in person. You must have tracked me and found me before that.”

  “All right, a little.”

  “Tell me again how you’re not stalking me?” But she grinned as she said it.

  Bowing his head, he smiled. “I was at your high school graduation, because that was a big crowd and no one would notice. And I bought fruit from you once at your fruit stand. That was all. No peering into windows or anything.”

  She looked intrigued. “From me personally, you bought fruit?”

  “In July. You were working the cash register.”

  “Why don’t I remember this?”

  “You remember everyone who buys fruit?”

  “No. I just feel like I should have noticed you.”

  “It was a busy day. Heaps of people. And I was disguised, hat and sunglasses and stuf
f.” Also, he hadn’t dared speak more than a few words to her, for fear she’d notice his New Zealand accent and pay too much attention to him.

  Someday he might even tell her how hard his heart had pounded at being closer to her than ever before.

  “What did you buy?”

  Her question surprised him. “Er…apples. Plums. Strawberries; you guys had a special on those. Oh, and tomatoes.”

  “Good memory.”

  Regarding her? Of course. Clearing his throat, he crumpled up the sandwich papers into a ball, and blew out the candles. “I’ve told you enough for one day. You need to go to sleep and find out more.”

  She watched him stuff the napkins into the paper bag. “And in the meantime, keep dating the guy who’s being approached by people who might try to kill me? Plus go to class and maintain at least a 3.5 grade point average? And be there for my family when they need me?”

  “You’ve got it.” He stood and offered his hand to her.

  She scowled, but took it, and let him pull her to her feet.

  As she picked up her coat, Adrian added, “Text me whenever it gets too much. You’re my priority for now—making sure you adjust all right.” Actually she was his priority forever, and had been in life after life. But again with the problem of sounding like a stalker if he said that.

  Adrian held her coat while she slid her arms in, then put his own coat on. He opened the Airstream’s door, letting in a gust of air that smelled of wet fields.

  Sophie followed him outside. “By the way, who was Nikolaos, back in the Greek god days?”

  “Haven’t you guessed?”

  She thought about it a moment, then laughed. “Of course. Hermes.”

  “Yep.” Adrian felt an ages-old glimmer of envy at the fondness and amusement on her face. The trickster’s charisma always drew people to him, women especially. Even when he was screwing with your life just for laughs.