Chapter 11 Persephone
Persephone
I must scry with Hades. It was my last wish from my father. Just a little time to appease my mother. A little time before I will obey the law of the gods and return to the Underworld.
As I wait, I’m tortured. My mother’s vengeance wrapped in a curse struck through Olympus before vanishing.
She will not stop. I know it so. I could feel her agony in the last look she gave me.
She thinks there’s a way around what is written but there’s not.
I’m hopeful that Hades may see reason, because she does not.
It is as if the loss of a loved one has turned her mad.
Although I still exist. I will thrive even. But she feels nothing but pain.
She’s not left the courts and her arguments are screamed for anyone who cares to listen…which is all of Olympus save my father.
She claims the divine law not to be fair as the seeds were only eaten as I was leaving.
One foot in and one foot out. Half she screams. But she does not want me halved.
She wants me to choose. To choose her. To choose war against my lover for the sake of betraying a binding law.
“Hypocrisy!” she screams, saying someone broke the law to abduct me.
She blames Zeus, she blames Hades, and with the way she looks at me, I fear she begins to blame me as I do not fight beside her.
No one else speaks to me. The gods and messengers bow their heads and avoid my gaze. They do not wish for war, and I believe they blame me more than anyone else.
And then there are the voices. The prayers come at all hours of the night.
I do what I can to soothe those who call for me, but I cannot reach them the way I can reach the garden beds on Olympus.
I send my best thoughts, my best spells.
I sing lullabies and incantations for them.
I tell old stories about persevering through hardship.
I remind the mortals, as often as I can, that the world renews itself.
That there will always be life after death.
But with so much death upon them, they pray for a different side of me.
For mercy in the depths of hell. They pray to me, to aid them in ways I knew not how until Hades wrapped his arms around me.
My hand falters at their pleas. Because I’m not there. I have no power in the Underworld while I reside in Olympus. They need me. The prayers are nonstop and they cry for me to help.
At night, when I’m falling asleep, the prayers get louder. I pull a pillow over my head to block them out, but simple cloth and feathers will not stop the sound. Those pleas are directed to me. Right into my heart.
“I know,” I whisper to the sobbing woman.
She is crying so hard that I cannot understand her words.
They may only be the frantic prayers inside her mind, but her crying interrupts it just as it would interrupt her voice.
Fire, she cries. Fire destroys us, please, we need water.
We need— Her prayer breaks off into more tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
It pains me to hear these prayers. What am I supposed to do about a fire? I want to ask. How can I save you? I do not know. I cannot grow flowers to cover a house and put a fire out. I cannot call clouds to come pour rain on what is burning, that is for Poseidon.
I sit bolt upright in bed.
I sit at my altar for hours, asking for rain from Poseidon. Surely he has heard the pleas. My own pleas go unanswered…for he does not wish to go to war. Helplessness falls upon me. It is either Hades’s or my mother’s doing and given my mother’s powers… Hades.
No. I whisper the disbelief under my breath.
The prayers never cease. It seems there are more of them, overlapping so that I cannot understand the words. I concentrate hard on my magic. To bring life to hope. To remind them that life is precious and there are cycles, but there is always hope. Tears prick my eyes.
Is this not war against my own lover? To defy the fear he’s created for them?
If it is, then I must also be at war with my mother, to defy the starvation she’s also delivered to the mortal realm.
They will learn of my betrayal. That I bring life to hope.
But that is balance. And I will not fail to do my part.
With new conviction, I work my magic and the storm that brews in the Earth realm flows through my veins.
We will not give in so easily to death and darkness.
I do not know when I finally drag myself to bed. The prayers still come, but exhaustion takes me under. There is no rest, for I am far too depleted.
There’s a lull in the morning, I think, because it is the silence that wakes me. I sit up, rubbing at my eyes, trying to settle my racing heart. Perhaps my magic worked even in my sleep. My soul is restless.
I swallow a harsh lump in my throat, wet my dry lips, and throw off the covers.
I bathe and dress, blinking heavily. I have not slept very long, but another morning is here.
On the horizon in the distance is a beautiful sunshine, a golden hue against a pale blue sky.
As if my father no longer fights. Leaving the war for only my mother, my lover, and myself.
With shaky hands, I brush my hair and pull it back from my face with a golden tie, then sit down at the table in my room to eat.
Bread. Honey. Water. None of my father’s wine.
It is difficult to eat, but I force myself to do it.
I need to keep my strength and my wits. I need to keep trying with my mother, and even with my father.
Most importantly, I need to make a decision.
Any life who consumes the seeds is condemned to remain in the Underworld for all time.
It is law. My fate is sealed. Although it is not what the Fates promised me. Absently, I chew and swallow another bite of bread.
They will call you the queen of death.
Those who love you torture souls in your absence.
The world is at your mercy.
Dropping the rest of the uneaten bread, I know war is not what I wish.
The world is at my mercy, yet I cannot help them from Olympus in a way that will stop the destruction.
I can soothe and comfort them and send my well-wishes to the mortals who are suffering, but I have not been able to stop my mother nor Hades from making them suffer.
I can breathe new seeds into the earth and call them to grow, but I cannot replace land that has been destroyed.
There is only so much I can change from Olympus.
The same is true in the Underworld.
I was learning to use the powers that dwell there and make my own enchantments. If I return, I may be able to bring different comforts to the souls there.
But if I am in the Underworld, the life-giving powers I have on Olympus will be gone. I am torn in the most brutal of ways. For my children need me in both life and death.
And if I refuse to go to the Underworld, I will never have those powers again. I need Hades to promise me or else I fear the prayers will bring me madness.
You ate the seeds. He owns you.
Anger prickles at the thought. How he dared to wish to own me. Yet, in the back of my mind I hiss the truth: I own him just as well.
My mother believes she has her own claim on me.
I am her daughter. I will always be her daughter, whether I dwell on Olympus or the Underworld or in the mortal realm.
We will always be bound by that tie between us, and I do not want to sever it.
I do not want to lose her forever. And if this law is to be abided by, I will never see her again…
The very thought breaks my heart. I cannot live without her, and I know she feels the same.
My mother or Hades? Either choice brings war.
The powers of life or death?
Placing my hands on the table, palms up, I take a steadying breath. How do I choose? If I hold the power of life in my right hand and the power of the Underworld in my left—
Which do I give up?
I cannot put either of them down. I cannot even imagine it. Yet Hecate says I must.
I turn my left hand over, imagining a life where I never go back to the Underworld and almost immediately flip my hand back.
Leave Hades forever? No. No! I cannot. Not when I am his queen, and he is my king. Not when he lets me sit at his side and thinks of me as his equal ruler. Not when he gave me everything I needed to understand my own power. Not when I love him as I do, wholly and true. He is my heart’s other half.
I flip over the other hand, imagining that I am leaving behind Olympus.
Never seeing my mother again. Never bringing life to a garden bed or a field in the mortal realm.
Never comforting the mortals who have prayed to me for life and hope and beauty and who believe in me.
They call out to me when they are in distress.
I turn that hand back over, too. How could I leave them all? How could I let them pray to someone who was no longer even listening? That would be abandoning a duty that I have as the goddess of rebirth and renewal. Goddess of life and yet now, of death.
I open my eyes to find that they’re burning with tears. Ruling at Hades's side had not felt like giving up all hope of my powers, but choosing to stay on Olympus forever feels like giving up an essential part of me. The decision is impossible.
I rise from my chair, the wooden legs protesting as I do, and go out to a nearby balcony where I can feel the wind on my face. I breathe the crisp air for a few minutes and allow it to cool my heated cheeks.
Then footsteps approach, startling my aching heart, and I turn to see Aphrodite coming onto the balcony. My sister. In her long pink silk gown and crown of red roses. She’s ever a vision of beauty. I did not expect to see her. Not when so many avoid me. I wait for her to speak.