Underworld's Daughter

by Molly Ringle

  “No, I mean you get out of here and you do not come back, and you stay away from me, and the Underworld, and Sophie, until I decide I want to lay eyes on you again.”

  Niko swung around. Derisive amusement twinkled in his eyes. “Oh, you’re banishing me from the Underworld? You have such powers, do you?”

  “You have the rest of the world. That should be enough.”

  “You’ve said it yourself, Ade: you don’t own this place. No one does.”

  “Well, I was here first.” Adrian said it with deliberate clarity.

  Niko snorted, but turned and strode toward the river. He paused once to call back, “You know, it wasn’t even the only lovely surprise I had for you. But never mind. I suppose the rest will have to wait. Goodbye.” He walked off.

  The souls of Rhea and Sanjay, along with Sanjay’s living widow, watched him go. They looked conflicted, but no one spoke to stop him.

  “Adrian,” Freya said. “He wouldn’t have done it if he thought Sophie would eat the orange so soon. He acted rashly, yes, but—”

  Adrian folded his arms. “I don’t want to hear a defense.”

  “But I think you’ll find,” she said, “that he acted out of love, not malice. And it’s going to be a good thing on the whole.”

  “Did he tell you?” Adrian asked her. “Did you know?”

  She hesitated, and cupped one hand in the other. “Not until after he’d done it.”

  “At which point you still didn’t tell me.” Adrian swung away and walked toward Sophie. “Maybe you ought to go too.” He tossed the words to Freya with cruel casualness over his shoulder.

  Freya’s sad gaze met Sophie’s. Sophie only looked blankly at her, then stared at the pale ground. Rhea was dead, the orange was gone, Niko and Freya were not the great allies they had appeared to be, Tabitha was immortal, Adrian hadn’t told her about Tab’s past lives, Sophie had to find a new place to live, and she did not get to become immortal today. Nor tomorrow, nor for a couple of months, or however long it took for the fruit to grow. And who knew what Thanatos would try in the meantime?

  All she wanted to do was sink to her knees and cry, or scream in frustration. But she felt the quiet, reverent gaze of the souls all around her, and even now, in her pathetic mortal state, she considered herself their honored representative—in some sense even their queen. A queen didn’t behave like a whiny kid. She blinked as she stared downward, willing the tears not to rise.

  “All right,” Freya said. “We’ll talk later.” When Sophie finally glanced up, Freya had walked away. Her blonde head made a bright spot in the gloomy fields as she retreated toward the river.

  Adrian stood before Sophie, head bowed. He looked up at her, and their gazes held a moment. Most of his anger seemed to have dissipated; he looked sad and preoccupied.

  “Well,” she said. “I guess I should go too.”

  His brows lowered. “Why? Aren’t you staying the weekend?”

  “I have a lot to do. Find a place to live. Talk to my best friend about how she’s immortal, see how that’s going. You know. Stuff.” She knew she sounded cold. Too bad. She couldn’t manage any kinder mood right now.

  His shoulders drooped lower. “You were right. Is that what you want me to say?”

  She stared at him in incomprehension.

  “You said we shouldn’t trust Niko,” he added. “Just the other night. Well, you were right. What can I do now?”

  “Like I said, take me home. I have things to do.”

  He shoved his hand through his hair, and paced a few steps away and back again. “A minute ago you were ready to spend eternity with me. Now you hate me. Why? Was I too rough with Niko? I’m sorry for that, but—”

  “It’s not that. I didn’t like it, no, but I know he deserved it.”

  “Then what?”

  “It would’ve been nice of you to tell me my best friend was Dionysos. What else haven’t you mentioned?”

  He drew in his breath, as if controlling another outburst. “That information—who everyone was, who they are now—it’s dangerous. Surely you see exactly how dangerous it is, after everything Thanatos has tried to do to you.”

  “Yes! They’re trying to beat me up anyway, even though I don’t know everything. So why not go ahead and tell me? What difference will it make?”

  “You’ll remember it anyway. Quite soon. It would’ve been a—a lovely surprise when you realized—”

  “A lovely surprise,” she repeated. “Just like Niko was planning.”

  His eyes darkened. “Don’t compare me to him.”

  Sophie looked away and stared without focus at an ash tree with violet-white leaves. She didn’t apologize, and neither did he.

  He sighed. “Look. It’s been a rough week. Wouldn’t you rather relax here a day or two, then go back?”

  She calculated time zones. If they left now, it’d be the middle of the night by the time they arrived in Oregon. She’d have to sneak into the room where her treacherous roommate Melissa slept, and stay there. No, unbearable. Sleeping next to Adrian would be a challenge, but it was better than sharing a room with the girl who’d reported to the cult members of Thanatos about her.

  “I’ll stay here tonight,” she said. “But I need to get back to the living world tomorrow, first thing.”

  He said nothing, and Sophie returned her gaze to his. He closed his eyes and lowered his face. “Fine. Whenever you’re ready.”

  He didn’t try to touch her when they climbed into bed. Sophie kept her back to him, beneath the black canopy in the chamber.

  “Look, I’ll answer whatever you want,” he whispered. “Just don’t shut me out this way.”

  She had plenty of snippy answers prepared, mostly regarding his not telling her important things like Tabitha being a god’s soul. But those responses crumbled away when she reached for them, showing themselves the pointless, flimsy things they were. He was right. Telling her earlier wouldn’t have helped much. It might only have caused her further confusion, in a time when her mind was already undergoing enough chaos. And she still would have learned about Tabitha eventually.

  What made her withdraw into herself was a more basic and pathetic matter. She spoke the truth, in all its self-pity.

  “It’s not that I’m shutting you out,” she whispered without turning. “It’s that I don’t belong here. I’m mortal. I didn’t want to be, but I am, so I still belong to the living world. I have to sort out my life there.” The ache in her chest swelled until tears stung her eyelids. “I need a backup plan, because apparently I can’t just join you here like I hoped.”

  Adrian latched his arm around her. His face pressed warm against the back of her neck. “You can, you always can. Please do.”

  “And do what? Drop out of college? Tell my parents I’m studying abroad at some place I can’t give them an address for? Stare at the orange tree and wait for it to grow faster? And even when another orange does grow, then do I drop out and leave the real world? I don’t know! I didn’t think ahead far enough.”

  He sighed. For a minute or more he said nothing, only held her. She found his fingers at the center of her chest and laced hers into them.

  “You’re right,” he said. “We’re supposed to help the living world. That’s been the point all along. And you do need backup, people there to support you and give you a normal life in case anything ever happens to me. Which Thanatos is doing their best to ensure it will.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Don’t say that. We can’t live in fear of them. That’s…letting them win.”

  “Yes. Which is why you should ignore them as much as possible, and tend to your regular life. And be fantastic at it.”

  But he sounded so somber that she couldn’t answer with any words of comfort or agreement. She said nothing, merely held his hand, and didn’t sleep for a long while.

  Chapter Three

  You say Kerberos ate one of them?” Persephone knelt and examined the small fruit tree. “And that’s why he’s
so strong and healthy?”

  “It’s my best guess.” Hades gathered up her hair and lifted it out of the way, then leaned down to nuzzle her neck.

  “Mmm.” She closed her eyes a moment. It had been ten days since the spring equinox, most of which time had been spent attending celebrations and moving Persephone’s belongings to the Underworld. Demeter assisted in packing and carrying items, coolly as ever, but refused to take them all the way down into the cave.

  Fortunately the new couple had other friends who were delighted to see them married. Hermes and Aphrodite had squealed like excited children and hugged them tight, and insisted on being the busiest helpers when moving Persephone’s possessions and setting up furnishings for her in the cave.

  Zeus and Hera threw them a grand feast, and all the immortals gave them gifts. Persephone’s favorite was the crown Hephaestus made her: a slim gold circle with amethyst violets that matched the flower on her necklace. She had worn it for at least part of every day since.

  Adonis, too, had been full of congratulations and embraces for her. He must have been relieved, Persephone thought in amusement: surely he had been as unenthusiastic about the idea of marrying her as she had been about marrying him. He hadn’t made or accepted any proposals at the equinox festival, so he remained officially free and single for the time being—if you could call someone “single” who was as devoted as ever to Aphrodite.

  Persephone and Hades’ nights and private daytime moments, meanwhile, had been devoted to the kind of activity he was trying to engage her in now. She knew she’d give in soon. But she hadn’t visited the orchard in months, and wanted to study her dear plants a bit longer first.

  She plucked the only ripe fruit left on the tree, its skin a bright yellow-orange. “Let’s see, then.”

  “I’m not doing a good enough job distracting you?” His hand stole into her tunic from the side and enfolded her breast.

  Persephone elbowed his hand away, but she leaned back to press against his body. He murmured in gratification. She cut into the fruit’s peel with her fingernail and sniffed the fresh aroma, then licked her fingertip. “Tastes good. Oh! It’s blue inside.”

  “Didn’t I mention that?”

  “No. And look at the seeds.” She squeezed one from the wedge she had pulled off. “They’re shaped like starfish.” The five little points protruding from the seed certainly differentiated it from the usual oval-shaped fruit seed.

  Hades rested his chin on her shoulder. “I hadn’t noticed. Strange.”

  Persephone bit into the blue flesh and sucked up the juice.

  “Don’t!” He swatted her hand down.

  “Only tasting.” She smacked her tongue. “It’s safe, I’d say. No burning or stinging. Actually rather delicious.” She tore off a small piece of orange, passed it to her other hand, and popped it into her mouth before he could stop her.

  “Argh—no!”

  She swallowed it. “Only a tiny bite. Relax. I’ve missed my orchards.”

  He pointed at her. “No more today. Not till you see how it goes.”

  “Understood.” She fit the remaining piece of wedge back into the fruit and laid the peel on top of it. After wrapping the fruit in a cloth, she tucked it into her small bag and set it down. “What shall we do now?”

  He settled forward onto his knees, crowding her backward in her crouch. He kissed her, and they sank until her back met the crackling leaves and sticks on the ground. She slid her hands up his back, beneath his cloak. “Won’t we shock the souls, behaving like this?”

  “They usually don’t enter the orchard. You know that. Besides, it’s nothing they haven’t seen in a hundred lives already.”

  “True. I have daydreamed of touching you while we walked here together, all those times.”

  His mouth moved hot down her chest. “Touch me, then.”

  That evening, while chewing on a bite of roasted pork, Persephone paused and stuck her tongue into a space between her back teeth. She and Hades were sitting on the beach outside the Underworld, beside a bright fire of driftwood.

  When she set down the skewer of food and poked a finger against her gums, Hades glanced at her. “Something stuck in your teeth?”

  “I think.”

  He broke off a toothpick-size splinter from his wooden skewer and offered it to her. She accepted it, and he returned to eating his own pork wrapped in its grape leaf.

  But it wasn’t meat stuck in her teeth. The space was where an upper molar had once been, pulled by Demeter when Persephone was fifteen. It had been infected at the root and causing her agony, and the removal of it had been torture. But after a few days of tenderness, Persephone had become used to chewing without that tooth and life had returned to normal.

  The strange thing was that tonight the tooth seemed to be growing back. Those hard points felt like the surface of a molar breaking through her gums. Adults didn’t regrow teeth. In addition, her injuries from the earthquake long ago—her crippled leg and the scars on her arm and face—had been tingling all day. Ever since eating that bite of blue orange.

  The symptoms alarmed her, but she kept them to herself, reasoning that they were likely to go away as the fruit’s properties worked themselves out of her system. If they got worse, she’d tell Hades.

  “Kerberos!” Hades jumped to his feet. “Good lord. How in the world?”

  Persephone looked up. Into the reach of the firelight Kerberos backed toward them, dragging a huge log with his mouth. In fact, it was an entire fallen tree, its trunk so big around that Persephone’s arms wouldn’t have circled it by half. Kerberos had his jaws clamped into one of the lower branches. The branches stretched far out on both sides, and scored deep lines in the sand as the determined dog hauled the tree along. Its top stretched out somewhere into the darkness of the beach. It would be one of the tallest trees around if righted. The wood was sun-bleached and bare, indicating the tree had fallen years ago, but it still surely weighed more than any normal person or dog could have budged.

  Hades stopped Kerberos and pried at his jaws until the dog let go of his treasure. Hades took hold of one of the branches—he didn’t even have to kneel, as the tree lying down rose as high as his head—and tried pulling the whole thing himself. It took some grunting and effort, but he did move it a bit. “How did you do that?” he asked the dog.

  Persephone walked around the fire and crouched to stroke Kerberos’ head. The dog panted happily, but didn’t appear tired from his effort.

  Persephone’s hip no longer hurt, though it always used to when she crouched like this. Only the light tingling remained, which now was beginning to feel more like healing than harm.

  And her lost tooth was growing back. And the scars on her face—she ran her fingers up them to check—were disappearing, smoothing away into her skin.

  Her heart beat fast. She began to tremble.

  “I think this dog is more than healthy,” she said. “I think he’s immortal.”

  Persephone and Hades stayed up late. This time, rather than entwining and kissing, they were watching.

  “They’re definitely disappearing.” Hades held a bright oil lamp near her cheek. “The scars were much clearer this morning. And you say when you walk…it feels better?” Even now he was too tactful to refer directly to her limp.

  She stood from the bed and tested her weight on what used to be her weak leg. It felt sturdy and lithe, just like the other leg. She walked across the bedchamber with careful steps, unaccustomed to relying upon both legs equally. “No limp,” she concluded, moving faster as she acquired practice in her new gait. She returned to Hades and lifted her tunic to the hip. They both examined the sleekly muscled line of her leg, so unlike the skinny and awkwardly angled limb she had lived with for so long.

  Hades laid his palm on her hip in fascination. “What’s happened to you?”

  She giggled in sudden buoyancy, swooped down, and seized him. She lifted him off the ground and held him higher than her head, laughing anew at
the shock on his face. He planted his hands on her shoulders and wriggled back to the floor without difficulty, but kept staring at her.

  “I’m immortal!” She leaped on him. He caught her with a grunt, and staggered backward. “See? I was never strong enough before to knock you off balance. Let alone lift you.”

  “Darling.” He set her down and cupped her face in his hands. “I married you as you were. I was prepared for you to age, to…to die eventually. You were prepared for it too. It’s still all right if that’s what happens. I don’t want you to hang all your hopes on this idea.”

  “You’re saying you’ll still love me if it wears off tomorrow? Thank you, dear. I’ll still love you too.”

  “I’m serious. What will you do if it wears off?”

  “Eat another blue orange,” she said. “And one every day after that.”

  “The tree doesn’t have any more right now.”

  “Some green ones are ripening. And obviously we’ll have to plant more.”

  Hades stroked her face on the side where the scars were vanishing. “You know I wish for a lifetime of health and strength for you. I always have. But we don’t know how long this magic will last, for you or for Kerberos. It’s late. Let’s get some sleep and see how you feel in the morning.”

  “All right.” She kissed him. Then, for fun, she picked up the large wooden chest where he kept a heavy assortment of weapons, clothes, and precious stones. She tossed it up over her head, caught it, and set it down again.

  Neither of them slept that night with all that played upon their minds. But she felt livelier in the morning than she’d ever felt after a sleepless night. As they walked toward a nearby village to buy food, she danced alongside him, unable to contain her energy.

  “You should try shooting an arrow through me,” she said.

  He looked at her, aghast. “No.”

  “I’ll jump off a cliff, then.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Or perhaps Rhea’s willing to stick a knife into me like she did for you.”

  “Why are all your ideas so lethal?”

  “Because how else will I know I’m immortal?”