Chapter 11 Persephone #2
Silently, she lowers herself into the lounge next to where I stand and gestures for me to take the opposite one. I oblige. As she does, the prayers from the mortal realm rise again, as if something had been holding them down. Persephone, a voice cries, desperate, and then another.
Why me? I think, in spite of myself. Why do you ask me for help? Why not one of the other gods? The better gods?
And then my mother’s voice from my childhood comes back to me: there are no better gods or goddesses, my daughter—there are only differences in our gifts.
I do not realize that I have closed my eyes against the prayers until I have to open them again. When I do, I draw in a breath and meet Aphrodite’s piercing blue gaze.
“Persephone,” she says softly. “You have changed, sister.”
More prayers rise. I wait for them to quiet. One voice is louder than the rest and very clear. Persephone, please, please, end the pain! End our pain. Persephone, do this for my family. For my children. We cannot bear it anymore. End our pain.
My eyes prick with tears. I know one truth; I cannot save them all but perhaps I shall meet them in the Underworld and offer them peace then. When it fades away, I take a deep breath. “Those in the mortal realm beg for me to end their pain.”
“Will you?” Aphrodite questions. Her tone is slightly off, and I wonder if the prayers she hears have changed.
If some of her disciples plead with her to save them.
Although she is the goddess of beauty and love, she is also a warrior, and all the world knows it.
She has a vicious side of her, and without it, beauty would not be fought for or fought over.
“I—” More prayers come, these ones quieter than whispers.
They are…fighting. Arguing among themselves, I think.
I hear my mother’s name. I hear Hades’s.
It is Demeter, one insists. It is Hades, another shoots back.
It is both of them! This third voice is more sure of itself.
They have both turned on us! They are killing us for sport!
Our lives are only a game to them! Watch—they will keep killing us until there are none left to remember what they have done.
War breaks out among us. They play and we end up fighting and blaming each other!
The voices overwhelm me on the balcony. My limbs refuse to stay still. “I must go inside,” I confess to my sister, and I grow lightheaded.
Aphrodite rises with me, offering me a questioning look, and we go inside and down the hall to a smaller chamber with a clear pool of warm bathing water in the center.
The windows are cut in slits, so the light falls over the water in a pattern.
On shaky legs, I take a seat at the pool’s edge, and so does Aphrodite, although more gracefully.
I envy her beauty. She knows it so. This is one of the ways to reach the mortal realm.
I get glimpses of it through the water. A roof on fire.
A harvest rotted in the field. Someone screams. The vision is one that turns my stomach. I never wanted this.
“I do not know how to end their pain,” I murmur.
“Are you certain?” Aphrodite questions, her gaze on my face begging me to meet it. “You do not look so certain, Persephone.”
“I am certain,” I swallow thickly, my stomach feeling hollow, “that I cannot end all their pain.”
“Yet you frown when you say so.”
“I frown because…it is complicated.” It is more than complicated.
The choice before me is not one that seems as if it has an answer.
Not one that would end the mortals’ pain.
If I chose my mother, Hades will wage war on all the realms. If I choose Hades, my mother will wage war on any realm she can reach.
No one wins. Pain ensues. And I am the cause.
“There you are,” my mother says from behind us, entering the chamber.
My body sits straighter at her voice. My heart races.
She brings the scent of the garden with her.
Sun and soil and flowers. “I thought you might have gone, Persephone.” Her voice cracks at my name.
Her eyes are red-rimmed and her face gaunt.
The bags under her eyes tell the story of restlessness.
My heart breaks at the sight of my mother.
The prayers pick up again. Many of them have my mother’s name along with mine. “I have not gone.” I tell her and nearly choke on the words. Yet. The last word that failed to slip through my lips: yet.
I reach my hand out to my mother, and she comes to sit on my other side, peering worriedly into my face. “What disturbs you, my sweet daughter?” she asks, but surely she knows it is not one thing that plagues me.
Hesitantly, I answer with a partial truth. “The mortals,” I murmur, her hand still in mine. “They’re asking why you have forsaken them.” My lower lip trembles as I dare to look at her. Meeting her eyes and knowing her truth.
My mother furrows her brow, her lips pursing in regret. I watch her try to deny it—try to clear the expression off her face—but she cannot. Have I been here long enough to persuade her to show mercy to the mortals?
“Mother.” I squeeze her hand. “Do magic with me.” A smile, although soft and one that doesn’t reach my eyes, slips onto my face.
“Magic,” Aphrodite repeats, kicking her feet playfully under the water. “I do love it so,” she reminisces.
My mother’s face lights with love. “Persephone,” she says. “You’ve never—”
“I didn’t have a chance to ask you before. I did not know enough of my own powers.” Aphrodite peers at me as though she knows I have a secret, but she doesn’t interrupt. “I thought I might never get the chance to do this with you. Now we are together. Will you?”
She suddenly looks hopeful and shy, as if she also dreamed we might do magic side by side but never had the courage to admit it. “It is time to welcome harvest back to the earth,” she muses. “Would you like to call it with me?”
I cannot help it. A grin spreads across my face, and my power grows in me. This is the greatest pleasure for my mother, and for me—
For me, it is almost the greatest. I do not know yet if it would surpass what I might find in the Underworld. Dread creeps in at the thought.
I shake off the comparisons. When my mother offers me her other hand, I take it.
I can feel Aphrodite watching us, excited for what is to come.
Perhaps the start of a truce. Perhaps with my mother’s healing, whatever Hades has done will not feel as heavy for the mortals.
Maybe they can live with his pain so long as they do not feel my mother’s wrath.
It is a balance. One I can provide. Hope flows through me.
“For the good of all and to the harm of none,” we whisper. Together, my mother and I start the spell, our eyes closed, our hands held by one another.
“With our whispers, seeds crack to listen.
“With our hands pressed, warmth touches the earth.
“With our hearts open, the harvest grows.
“It provides and our spell is met. It feeds life and our divinity is blessed.
“So mote it be.”
The mortal realm will be green and lush with new growth as it should be. It has never known such death before. Such coldness. The harvest will grow under the soil, ready to be at its full height soon enough.
With hope renewed, I glance into the pool of water and see the vision we have made.
The chill that crept along the ground is already thinning.
It will retreat fully soon, leaving the soil open for planting.
Green buds appear on the tips of tree branches.
The last of the storms my mother cast will leave the land, leaving water behind them, and the rivers and streams will carry that water to where it is needed.
I see the spring that will be, with all its green shoots and early petals and small leaves on the trees.
Spring. What a word. I see birds returning to their homes and pecking at puddles of water in the sun.
I see people walking outside their homes and stretching, tipping their faces toward the sky.
It is already happening. It is almost ready to begin.
It is not here yet, and it is all around us.
We return life to the mortal realm, which has been so hungry for life. We tell the life that waited there, under the ground, that it is time to reappear.
My mother stops withholding it. She lets the earth begin again, without interference. She plants life through her spells and her powers, and she will let it grow once again.
When it is finished, she’s still holding my hands, but she has closed her eyes, and she is smiling.
My heart races with giddy joy. My hands shake. Truly, I did not think this would ever be mine to give to the world. If it is only this once, I will treasure this memory forever. But then there’s a thud in my chest. Is she only offering this truce because she intends to keep me here?
“That was wonderful,” I say, my throat tight with emotion. “Thank you, Mother, for doing such beautiful magic with me. I thought the chance was lost to me. I—” I am so overwhelmed that the truth comes to the tip of my tongue without any thought behind me. “I thought these powers were lost to me.”
My mother opens her eyes, confusion in her gaze. “Because of the Underworld?”
“No. From…” I start but I’m all too aware of Aphrodite’s presence. Perhaps that’s why my mother plays coy. I straighten my shoulders, no longer wanting to hide the truth. “From whatever caused my powers to weaken before that. Remember how I feared becoming a nymph?”
Aphrodite laughs. The sudden sound startles me. “Because you took them back, didn’t you?” With her neck arched, she leans back, as if casually playing with me.
I stare at her. “What do you mean?”
“You took them back,” Aphrodite repeats. “You knew they were being stolen by the wine, so now you refuse to drink it. It is a lovely trick.”
“The wine?” Chills run down my spine. A subconscious truth writhes within me, begging to be released.
Aphrodite’s eyes go wide, and she puts her fingertips to her mouth as if she has said this by mistake and then smiles delightfully.
“The poisoned wine,” she whispers. “The wine our father gave you.” Her blue eyes spark.
“You took your power back because it was never something he could take, only a piece of you he could wish to dull. Much like what Hades has done. He can never have you if he forces it.”
Anger blisters along my skin.
“Hades cannot have you fully if he forces you. These selfish gods. And all in the name of love…” She sighs, peering longingly into the pool as a mortal pair embraces with the fire closing in around them. “Their prayers are as foolish as their actions.”