by James Welsh
Later that night, Persephone began her escape.
At least, Persephone thought it was night. She was trapped so deep beneath the world that she could never see the sun or the moon shine. When she was in the depths of the Underworld, she knew the day was over though when Hades returned to his throne. He spent most of his time outside of the palace, overseeing the ferrying of the souls across the rivers, or maybe watching the punishments inflicted on those who lived beyond the shores, the souls doomed to an eternity in the Underworld.
However he spent his days, though, he always came back to the palace in the same way. He would carelessly swing the massive doors of the throne room open, not caring that the loud noise woke up the three-headed guard dog Cerberus. He would walk tiredly across the room, sighing the whole way, before falling down hard in his throne. Hades would then cover his face with his hands for some time – Persephone would notice this but never dared to ask why. She couldn’t imagine that Hades had any tears he wished to hide. Nor did Persephone think that Hades was deep in thought. The only thing that made sense to Persephone was that the mortals did much the same in the world above: they too would collapse in a chair after a long day of work and rest their head in their hands. Hades had personally witnessed countless of mortals die during his long reign, and Persephone imagined that Hades had observed the mortals in their moment of exhaustion. Without meaning to, Hades copied his subjects, although he had never known the tiredness that the mortals felt.
And every time Hades raised his head from his hands, he always barked the same order: “Bring me a glass of ambrosia.”
Each time he said this, Persephone did as she was commanded. There were no real servants to speak of, with the royal couple being by far the most solid beings in a kingdom of rotting flesh and ghosts. Persephone never said so, but the first few times she did this, she felt indignant – after all, in her old life in the palace at Olympus, only the servants fetched the ambrosia. But after awhile, she began to drop her silent protests and began to see the commands as favors one would ask another. She began to understand there would come a time when her nursing him would be rewarding – she just did not know how.
But that night, Persephone understood everything: she knew how she could trick Hades, she knew how she could escape to the world above, she knew how she could be free and rescue Zeus, all in the same breath. And it all stemmed from that one cup of ambrosia. Or rather, Hades thought that the cup would hold ambrosia. But Persephone had drained the cistern of the godly drink, went into the palace’s storeroom, took out jugs of wine, and poured the drink into the cistern instead. The ambrosia and wine were so similar in taste and color that it would be impossible for even a god to tell them apart. That is, they were impossible to tell apart until well after: ambrosia woke up a god and gave them a bounce to their step, while the wine tired them out and they were asleep before they knew it.
Hades did not know that the cup that Persephone gave him was filled with wine and not ambrosia. He did not know this when he drank it, not even afterwards when his eyelids felt weighted and he had trouble sitting upright on his throne. And so, less than an hour and several cups of wine later, Hades was fast asleep, his cup on the floor, shattered, the wine staining the stone. His head was leaning heavily on his shoulder, and Persephone was afraid that the awkward sleeping position would wake up the god soon. And so she had to act quickly. She crept from her own throne nearby and slinked up the steps towards the king’s throne. She slowly reached up towards the leather headband that Hades always kept hidden away in his robes. Hades didn’t know, but Persephone had seen Hades place the headband on his head before. Whenever Hades did, there was a pop and he would vanish from view. The invisibility cap was perhaps Hades’ most prized possession – that was one of the few things that Persephone knew about the lord before he kidnapped her.
She pulled the leather headband from Hades’ robes and realized that she had not breathed the entire time she did so. Taking long, shallow breaths, Persephone backed away from Hades, admiring the prize she held in her hands. The cap was so simple and plain, and the palace so shining and decadent, she knew that Hades must have hated the cap. She knew that he loathed it, but she could not understand the point; after all, once you put the cap on, no one could see it anyway. Who was Hades trying to impress when there was nothing to see?
She had no time to ponder the philosophy of the king’s madness, though, and she silently walked out of the room. As she walked, she fitted the headband on her head. As she did this, she suddenly halted – a loud pop filled her ears and the air was squeezed out of her. She gagged for air and collapsed to the floor. It was the first time she had ever vanished, and so she did not know the physics behind it. Persephone did not understand that the cap induced invisibility by pushing the wearer an instant into the future. She was barely a moment ahead of everyone else, and so she was not significantly quicker in reflexes, nor was she able to see much further into the future than anyone else could. But that moment’s difference was enough, as no one could look into the future, and so everyone in the world was blind to Persephone. But Persephone was blinded too: since the others lived in a world just a moment behind her, any creature that lived and breathed had vanished from view. Just the moment before she put the headband on, Persephone could see a sleeping Cerberus on the other side of the room, near the door. When she put the headband on, though, Cerberus had disappeared. The rest of the world, though, the palace, the lands, the waters, the skies, they were still there. Those things did not have to breathe to live because they did not live – they were more immortal than even the gods.
And as Persephone crept past the spot where an unseen Cerberus slept, she was glad that likewise the beast could not see her as well. She still remembered the one time, a year or so before, when one of the dog’s three heads had bitten her. The dog’s poisonous bite was deadly to any mortal, and it would have even stung an immortal a bit. But Persephone had gone for a few days without her precious ambrosia – a punishment, because she could not bring herself to tell Hades that she loved him, because she did not like to lie. And so weakened, the dog’s bite left her in seizures and fever for days, and even when she recovered, a jagged scar was left behind on her leg as a reminder.
Persephone gently opened up the door and walked outside. For a few moments, even though she was protected by the cap of invisibility, she still felt a wave of fear sweep over her. She had never walked through the Underworld alone – as much as she hated Hades, there was little denying that the god was always nearby to protect her in his own twisted way. Now, perhaps for the first time in her entire life, Persephone was entirely alone. She was alone in the physical universe, separated from everything else by a split-second. She was alone metaphorically as well, with no god or goddess nearby to look out for her well-being. It was up to her now to defend herself, and the stakes were never higher. If she could not tell the other gods the truth about Zeus – that he was being tortured on orders from Hades – then the old king would never be rescued, and Persephone would be dragged back into the Underworld once more, perhaps permanently.
And so, she stepped out onto the jagged surface of the Underworld. The ground felt rough and unforgiving beneath her bare feet, but the ground felt like that even with Hades guarding her. And, as she walked towards the shores of the River Styx, her invisibility began giving her confidence, bit by bit. Nothing could hurt her as long as she wore the cap.
That confidence soured, though, when she neared the shore. As the river came into view, she was startled by what she saw. The shore was usually black and rocky, almost as if it was the soul of shipwrecked shores in the world above. Now, though, the beaches were grey and sloping. At first, Persephone thought it was snowing – that would have sounded ridiculous if Persephone hadn’t seen Zeus trudge through snow in the endless tunnels just earlier that day.
But as she got closer, she realized that it wasn’t snow but mist. And she got even cl
oser, and she realized that it wasn’t mist but shades. There were thousands of shades along the shores of the Styx, the spirits crowded so closely together that it looked like a cloud had landed. Persephone had never seen such a thing before, not in all of her trips into the Underworld. No, this was something entirely new and different – the fears that melted from her just minutes before, those terrors were returning to her. The fact that she couldn’t understand the crowd of shades only made things feel worse.
But she had to keep on moving. Persephone took a deep breath and began making her way down the slope towards the shore. Before, she had the advantage of height from the hills, being able to see out over the cloud of spirits and across the river. But now, now she was face-to-face with the shades, at their level. She could see nothing but grey around her. One time, she had walked through a shade by accident. It was during one of her first trips to the Underworld. When she had walked through the shade, she had gasped as if she had lost a few days of her infinite life. She remembered looking down at her hands, seeing how wrinkled they had become from touching the shade. Although the wrinkles quickly smoothed out and she regained her breath, the incident had scared her away from the shades, as much as she pitied them. But now, she had to walk through thousands of them, perhaps even millions, to reach the dock.
But before she began her march, Persephone thought of something and froze – could the shades actually see her? That was something she had not thought of, and now she wished she hadn’t considered it. But it made sense, after all: just as she could see the palace because it did not need a specific moment to live, neither did the shades, because they did not live anymore at all. They were not constrained by time like everyone else was. And since she could see them, it was very possible, if not absolutely certain, that they could see her too. But what could they do? They had no voice loud enough to alert Charon or Cerberus or Hades even of her escape – as if they ever listened to the cries of the shades. And she doubted the shades were nearly loyal enough towards Hades to crowd her and age her until she was shriveled.
And so, bravely and nervously, Persephone started walking through the crowd. She could feel the dust from the spirits cake her face and her arms, the fine powder immediately drying up her pores. She couldn’t see her hands through the grayness, but she could feel her fingertips begin to wrinkle, as if she had been swimming for far too long. She felt disoriented in the cloud, having no idea which way led to the shore now, but it was too late to turn back. She had to keep moving, and so she hurried up the pace, feeling her bones begin to creak, and arthritis begin to settle in. If she didn’t die in that field of shades, she would certainly grow decrepit enough to become a statue. She was reminded of corpses she had seen before, the people frozen in their final movements. She wondered if that would happen to her – she wondered what she might look like: perhaps a woman fallen in the ground, her hand reaching out, clawing in the soil, frozen forever in motion. And that was if she could ever be found – she remembered that she still wore the cap of invisibility, and she wondered with a panic if she would be lost forever, dead but still alive, lost but still very much there.
And then, the gray gave way and the murky river was just a few feet in front of her. She had to fight back the compulsion to kneel over the river and wash her face with the water. She was afraid of falling into the water out of exhaustion, vanishing into its depths like many an unlucky shade throughout history. When she asked Hades where the shades went when they drowned in the rivers, he just laughed and said they were now swirling in a sea of nothingness, lost with no hope of rescue. There can never be a map for the Underworld.
The dock was nearby – Persephone stumbled over the rotting wooden planks and sat down at the edge of the dock, her feet just hovering over the river’s surface. She waited what felt like forever but was only a few minutes. The familiar thud made Persephone turn around, and she saw that Charon’s ferryboat had just brushed up against the dock. Persephone waited until all of the shades onboard had shuffled off and left the dock. Persephone watched them as some disappeared through the winding trails that led to their afterlives, but many simply joined the swirling cloud of shades on shore. The cloud was becoming denser by the moment, and it was even beginning to spin, like furious thunderstorms in the afternoon.
Persephone was so unsettled by the sight that she almost forgot what she was there to do. She hurried onboard before Charon could lift up the plank. As the ferry began to move once more across the water, Persephone sat down and waited for the other shore to appear. She desperately hoped that there wouldn’t be another cloud of shades waiting for her – she simply couldn’t walk through another crowd like that anytime soon.
But as much as she was afraid to look ahead of her, Persephone was also reluctant to look behind. She knew that a few feet behind her, Charon was steering the boat, unaware that there was anyone else onboard with him. She was always unnerved by the crumbling ferryman – every time she entered or left the Underworld, though, she needed his services to cross the river. And true, she was invisible this time, and so was Charon, with both of them separated by a gulf of a split-second. Still, she somehow felt Charon’s mushy eyes bearing down on her through the mists of time, always watching.
Persephone shivered and tightly wrapped her arms across her chest. The libations that dripped down from the world above splashed in tiny drops on her head. She was cold and wet with the sacrificed wine and terrified of being caught. Persephone had never been quite so miserable, as close as she was to freedom.
Barely before the boat touched the other shore, before the invisible Charon could lower the ramp for the waiting shades, Persephone was already climbing over the boat’s side. She landed lightly on the dock, disturbing a few shades on the crowded planks. Gasping a little from touching the bursts of dust, Persephone held herself together regardless and continued onward. She walked through the winding paths, the ground slowly rising below her, the river growing distant behind her. With the river’s lights fading and the darkness growing, all of the old fears began to cling to Persephone. It was a rare moment when she wasn’t with someone, and she had never trusted those lonely moments. She still remembered that moment, long ago, when she had slipped from Olympus to play in the green fields of the mortal world. That was the same afternoon when Hades heard her singing and decided to take her away.
But even with the weight of her terrors, Persephone began to pick up the pace. Just as Hades pulled her along to watch the torture of Zeus’ hunt, she felt pulled at that moment as well. Persephone just didn’t know what was dragging her along: part of her thought it was the love for her mother Demeter, but the other part thought it was her duty to Zeus.
It did not take long for the darkness to thin – Persephone looked down and she saw speckles of light on her arms. Her eyes followed the beams upwards and she noticed that she was in a massive volcanic pit. There was a strong pulse of sunlight far above her, but the sides of the chamber were jagged and steep. She had used that chamber countless times in the past, but it was only with another’s help. Each time she was given to Hades for her months-long captivity, it was Zeus as an eagle who had lowered her down into the chamber, Persephone held safely in Zeus’ talons. And every time Persephone was released from her unwilling service to Hades, Zeus would be there at the base of the pit, waiting for her. And so Persephone had never taken the climb by herself, but she had to now.
Persephone looked around her, wondering where she could begin the climb. And that was when she saw it: nearby, there were deep, wide grooves in the rock. She walked over and curiously examined them; they were rough but certainly artificial. Someone or something had climbed out of that pit before, and whatever it was happened to be a bit taller than her, judging by the space between the holds. Persephone shivered as she wondered what beast had the claws sharp enough to dig through the thick rock. Still, she said her thanks to whatever beast it was, because at least it was a
start.
And so she began the climb. At first, it was easy, and Persephone marveled, never thinking of herself as a climber. But it did not take long for the grooves to become shallower and shallower. Persephone gasped when the grooves above her stopped altogether, and she glanced around wildly in the dimness, hoping to find more holds. She noticed some to her left – the beast must have jumped to the side, perhaps to avoid falling rocks. Persephone had not thought of a rockslide before, but it quickly became a real fear for her. What if a rock knocked off her cap of invisibility, revealing her to the world and to the always-watchful Hades? What if a rockslide knocked her off the steep wall, burying her in the rubble far below? It would take much more than rocks to kill an immortal like her, but Persephone would not be strong enough to free herself from the fallen stone. And she would stay there, trapped beneath the rubble forever, because no one could rescue a girl who was invisible.
It was a real-enough fear that should have made her climb back down. Instead, it was that fear that made her jump to the side, clutching madly for the grooves in the rock. How did I do that? She thought, astounded. She held on firmly to the groove with one hand, her legs dangling with nothing to hold her up. Any other person would have slipped, and Persephone felt like any other person – that was why she felt so surprised that her fingertips were so strong. She felt as if she could have held onto that groove for days. But she had work to do, and so she continued her climb, now at a faster pace than before.
The bulb of sunlight above her grew larger and brighter, bit by bit, and Persephone hurried even more. Still, it felt like hours until she finally climbed over the ridge and touched the world above again. The climb felt like hours to her, even though it was barely even an hour. At first, Persephone thought that she was gasping for air, and so she spent a few moments trying to catch her breath. Then she realized that the gasps weren’t from exhaustion – they were actually gasps of laughter. It was the madness that came with being free.
