9. Nyssa #3
My eyes darted around the clearing instinctively, searching for a familiar pair of silver irises. But Caelus was nowhere to be seen, probably still somewhere deep within the Bone Field. Unless Thallo wasn’t actually the first to find the tree.
“Please, Hades,” Thallo whimpered, having crawled to his knees. He stared up at the colourless sky, praying to someone I knew would not deign to answer. “Please return her to me. I’ll do anything. Anything you ask!”
Demeter’s grief had apparently led her to my father thirty years ago; it had led her to begging the lord of death for a favour.
Didn’t she know he’d have given anything to keep Persephone for himself?
That even the King of the Underworld was powerless to stop death from claiming its chosen souls?
It was Persephone who’d had the rare gift of rebirth, not Hades.
And she couldn’t bring her own soul back, could she?
Thallo fell silent.
He sat so still, I questioned whether he still breathed. It seemed Apollo wondered the same, because he placed a palm on Thallo’s back, monitoring for inhalation, and nodded to himself.
Finally, Thallo straightened and blinked, as though waking from a long sleep.
He bowed his head, whispering quietly. I couldn’t make out his words, but I did latch onto my mother’s name again.
Frowning, I watched him rise and walk slowly towards the boundary line of the forest. None of us moved to stop him.
With a crackling snap , Hermes appeared before Thallo. The god of travel swivelled his head, taking in the clearing and those who stood within it. He pouted with distaste, then clasped Thallo’s arm, clicked the fingers on his free hand once, and vanished between blinks.
I loosed a deep sigh.
So: fruit, pain, sadness.
Then I could return home.
Let’s get this shit over with.
“Temporary truce?” Archimedes offered.
Aros begrudgingly agreed, and Archimedes went to work climbing the enormous bone tree. When he reached a branch fifty feet up, one heavy with fruit, he shimmied along its length and tore off a golden heart.
“Hey, Aros — how’s your catching arm?” he called.
Aros grinned with delight. “That depends. How’s your aim?”
Archimedes returned the smirk, tossing the golden fruit down, precisely into Aros’s cupped hands.
He caught it gracelessly — stumbling forwards under the weight of it.
Howling laughter echoed from above as Aros’s lips flattened and his cheeks roared to life.
He handed the golden heart gently to Aphrodite, who stared at the pulsing fruit in horror.
The next projectile landed in his hands a second later.
This time, the god of war was prepared for its ostensible weight.
He tossed the fruit to Apollo, and another to me.
Archimedes threw down two more before leaping from the tree, landing firmly on the ground, and stirring up a cloud of ash in his wake.
The golden fruit was warm against my palm, pulsing softly and glowing faintly. I grimaced, just as Aphrodite had. She was still holding it at a distance, like it was a stray cat and she was at risk of being bitten.
But today, the only things being bitten were the heart-shaped monstrosities within our fingers.
I met the eyes of every champion, each pulling similar expressions of apprehensive disgust. Likening it to a shot glass of foul medicine, I figured the best way to approach it was quickly.
Even so, I hesitated a heartbeat before sinking my teeth into the fruit’s soft flesh. The taste of it was sharp and bitter, souring instantly on my tongue. For a moment, nothing happened, just as it did for Thallo. Then the world fractured, like the broken bone trees behind me.
The forest dissolved into a grey mist. The champions along with it. My knees hit the ground forcefully. Ash swirled in the air, clung to my skin, burrowed deep into my lungs, and stung my eyes. Above, the sky burned a deep crimson, as though Helios’ sun had scorched the heavens themselves.
I tried to stand, but a heaviness settled around my shoulders, like a blanket weighing me down.
A woman’s scream tore through the silence, sharp as a battle cry. When I clapped my hands over my ears the sound didn’t stop. Because it originated from somewhere within me .
It was grief, pure and crashing. Eternal and suffocating.
Demeter’s sorrow.
This was the pain she had buried when she tore her tormented heart from her body. This was what she carried, every moment, between her daughter’s death, and her desperate act of sorrow.
I felt it tear through me, dragging its icy claws through every vein and nerve. Visions flashed through my mind. Empty cradles, children’s laughter cut short... a girl with hair the colour of wheat.
My mother.
Demeter’s daughter.
More visions flooded my mind — crops withering in mourning, rivers running dry, snow that refused to relent, and storms that washed away entire villages. Mortals had paid the price of a goddess’s grief, and I felt how that, too, had ravaged her heart.
Tears tracked down my cheeks — tears I had no recollection of releasing. My heart began to slow, matching the same, broken pace of the dead orchard. A tempo not sustainable to a living, breathing being.
It was killing me.
I realised all at once what it had taken Demeter months to recognise.
I could not fight her grief, and nor could she.
I could not mend her broken heart, and nor could Hades.
I could not undo the act that brought us all to this very moment, and nor could Zeus.
I could only withstand the weight of her sorrow and offer to carry it with her. And so, I bowed my head, praying to the goddess of harvest for the first time in my immortal life.
I see you, Demeter. I feel what you bore. I see what you have sowed.
I have witnessed how you loved her — so fiercely the mortal lands shattered alongside your heart.
But I also see how you tore yourself apart to fix it for them.
You said it yourself:
Grief is the price you pay when you open your heart to love.
And you loved my mother fiercely, didn’t you?
Three agonisingly slow heartbeats passed before a whisper flew by on the wind.
I still do.
And just like that, the torment ended — her words lodging in my blackened soul.
Her pain echoed my own, though perhaps hers ran deeper.
She had borne her. Raised her. Known her.
Having lost her not once, but twice. Both times to death, in its various forms. Whereas I had never met her, not that I could remember.
All I’d ever known was her absence, and the presence of my father’s unrelenting sorrow.
I opened my eyes to the other champions, each in various states of sorrow and pain. Each clambering uneasily to their feet.
I couldn't bring myself to meet their eyes, especially not the gloating god of thieves. Not with all of them ruminating on the one person I could barely speak of. And especially not after learning the truth about her sacrifice, from the one who took her life.
Reining in a sob, I hurled myself through a hastily-made arch of shadow, landing squarely in the rainbow-coloured living room — my mother’s room — and right into Charon’s waiting arms.
He said nothing, just clutched my leather-clad skin and waited for the sorrow to pass, as it always did.
It seemed I had already learned the lesson Demeter carved into Olympus’ future ruler:
Grief is a season too.
And all seasons must eventually end, to make way for what comes next.
In whatever form it must take.