Chapter 19 Persephone
Persephone
The darkest of nights allowed for me to creep about before any soul knew I’d returned.
With the morning light, I prepare to see my mother first. Nervousness pricks the tips of my fingers.
I imagine she realized I left of my own free will and that those who carry whispers from the Underworld to Olympus would tell her I sat by his side and ruled.
The soft breeze blows a stray hair from my face as I look out into the pale blue sky leading the way for the sunrise.
My mother is not so easily seen from my rooms, but I can see her tending to a garden.
Her sage robes are adorned with a wheat wreath.
She grows poppies and plucks them into a wicker basket.
I imagine the spell she wishes to cast knowing the properties of poppies.
The color matters of course. And the deep red narrows it down.
It won’t be for sleep or dreams as those would be blue.
Love, fertility, or a prophetic dream if she places them under her pillow.
My heart breaks wondering if it’s a spell for me. If it is, I hope she knows her magic is powerful, but I’d always return to her without the pull of her spell.
“My queen!” Beatrice cries from behind me, startling me and pulling me from my thoughts. With a quiet gasp, she shuts the door to my rooms hastily behind her. “You have returned,” she rushes the words out with disbelief.
“I have—” I swallow the lump in my throat and regain my composure. “I didn’t plan to be long; I do wish I’d had more time and thought so I could have prepared you.”
She bows her head, her hands clasped together and pressing against the cotton apron she wears over her simple cotton gown that falls to the floor.
“All is well now that you are home,” she responds with ease.
When she lifts her gaze to me, I note the dark circles, and guilt rises once again for leaving in secret.
I know she worried. So many left with questions.
I will do everything in my power to never do that again.
“What can I prepare for you my lady? Tea, nectar, or wine?” she offers.
There isn’t a thing I care to eat or drink until I’ve spoken to the one person who I’m certain I’ve hurt worse than Beatrice by leaving unannounced. “I saw my mother in the garden. Will she be in soon?”
“No.” Beatrice’s eyes go wide. Her fingers tug on one another as she speaks. “She’s been tending to the gardens since she discovered you were not here.”
I give her an apologetic look and take her hand. “Is everything all right?”
“It is all right for the moment, but I cannot say it will remain that way for long.”
“What happened when I was gone?” I swallow hard, guilt churning in my gut.
“Zeus spoke to your mother.” Beatrice takes my hand and guides me to my changing room.
The gown I wore to leave the Underworld will not be the one I wear to speak to my mother.
Beatrice seems to understand that, because she begins helping me out of it.
“It was a spectacle, both of them blaming each other. He convinced her to give you time.” She lays the black gown aside and slips a clean robe over my head.
It’s blush in color and soft and elegant.
“She has given orders not to disturb her.”
“Yes,” I agree, watching myself in the mirror, wishing I could find Hades yet again within mine rather than my father’s scry. “I will rest a bit more, then. I certainly need it,” I add and then take in a steadying breath.
“Do you need food? Drink?”
“Both please,” I answer. My body hums with the change in scenery. It is like having a candle lit inside me. The powers I can access here carry a different sensation than those of the Underworld, and I notice it most when I have just arrived in either realm. It’s heady. As if my magic misses me.
Beatrice slips out of my rooms and returns a moment later with fruits and a honeyed nectar. I have both at the table and find myself tired and yawning as soon as I’m finished. I’ve been restless and it’s showing.
Beatrice leaves me, and I climb into bed.
Tired as I am, I cannot sleep.
The early morning is quiet, with the waxing moon not yet a sliver still lingering. Even so, my mind will not quiet. I toss and turn for some time before I sit up and look toward the grate.
The mirror is still here. I stare into it imagining my love watching me. Maybe with my power growing I do not need to sneak to my father’s scry. Maybe I can will this world to bend to my needs. Maybe…I dream.
With a gentle murmur, I wake, blinking away a sleep and a dream I can't quite remember.
Beatrice is there when I wake. She helps me into my blush gown and settles the wreath of roses onto the crown of my head.
She dresses me as the queen I am here, and when she is finished, I go out to meet my mother.
She’s still in the garden. I cannot tell if she ever stopped tending to them.
“Mother,” I speak to gain her attention.
My mother looks up, and her face is transformed by her shock. “Persephone.”
She rushes to me, accidentally kicking over the basket in doing so, and I hold out my arms for her embrace.
If she is cross with me, it doesn’t show.
There is only love between us. There is only warmth.
I watch her as she gets closer. This is my mother.
There is so much love in her eyes. So much care for me.
It has torn her heart out to think I was missing or stolen from her.
Our conversation will not be a confrontation, I decide. It will be a plea. I will ask her for this favor as a daughter asks a mother for a blessing. Although the very thought of it sours my stomach.
Her arms close around me, and she pulls me into a tight hug, her arms shaking. “Persephone,” she whispers into my hair. “You were gone.”
“I was,” I tell her. “But I was fine, Mother. Please. Don’t fear for me when I must go.”
“You must not go,” she utters but doesn’t relent her grasp.
Her arms tighten around me even more. Instead of pulling away, I hold her back just as fiercely. This is what she needs from me. I will give it to her before I ask her for what I need.
And I do need it. I need for the realms to be balanced. I need for Hades to be reassured. I need for all the death and strife to end, and for my life to be…
Mine. I want my days and nights to be the life I desire, and the life I must have been destined to live. As queen of the Underworld and the goddess of life. Both are to be mine, she must understand.
When my mother shifts, I release her. Her hands linger on my upper arms for a moment, then she drops them to her sides. Her gaze looks over me as a mother does.
I offer her a hand again. “Come inside and talk to me, please.”
My mother glances at my hand, then at my face. The sun rises higher above the garden walls, shining its light onto my mother’s hair. Her eyes are red. She looks as if she hasn’t slept, and she is thin, as if she has been forgetting to eat as well.
It is brutal, the guilt that I feel at this moment. Had I told her though, I don’t believe she would have relented. I don’t think her state would be changed.
That is always how my mother has been. When she focuses deeply on her plants and her tending, she puts all of herself into the work. Only this time, she is not focusing deeply on her plants. Not only on her plants rather.
She is focused on me, and where I will go, and if I will be taken from her.
That cannot be the way. I won’t ever be taken again, my leave is my own doing.
“Come.” I hold my hand out again and wait. At first I think there is a chance she’ll refuse to speak with me about this. She may turn to her plants. She may say they need her. That she left them to seek revenge in the mortal realm, and now she must put things right. She may try to delay.
But then my mother lets out a soft sigh, brushes a lock of her hair away from her face, and puts her hand in mine.
“Tell me about the flowers,” I request from her as we leave the garden. “Tell me what is about to bloom.”
My mother obliges easily. If there’s one thing she’ll speak of at any time it is of harvest and florals.
She tells me, her tone absent, as we walk the cool halls to my rooms. I draw my mother down to sit on a chaise with me and listen to more about the flowers in the garden beds.
The flowers we might plant together. The ones she has already planted and has watered carefully, so that the gardens here will be properly balanced again.
With the mention of balance, I sit up straighter.
“Mother,” I say, when she falls into silence. “That is what I want to talk to you about.”
“The garden beds?” she whispers, nearly mocking me with her head tilted. Sadness still lingers in her gaze.
“Balance.”
Her lower lip trembles. “Persephone. You cannot mean to leave me for the Underworld.” Her words are a hushed whisper dosed in fear.
“Please listen,” I start.
“I cannot hear you say goodbye for the last time.”
“I won’t.” I’m quick to cut her off as tears threaten to spill from her tortured gaze. “What I mean is that the realms need balance.” I look into her eyes, keeping my expression calm. “The souls in the Underworld cry out for it. The mortals on Earth cry out for it as well.”
“There is already balance,” she argues.
“But the realms will not be healed until there is true balance, Hecate has told me.”
“What more do they need?” Her eyes narrow, and her face, which had cooled once we were out of the sun, goes pink. “I have not kept anything from the mortals this time, and you cannot accuse me of causing harm to the souls of the Underworld. They followed the path they were meant to take.”
“Of course I do not, Mother. You could not have harmed any soul in the Underworld. You would not.”
“I would not!” she cries, and I hold her hand until she catches her breath.
“I would not,” she says, softer, though we both know what she did when she could not find me.
She would cause harm to the mortal realm.
Mothers would do unfathomable things for their daughters.
I know this to be true. I know, in my own heart, that I would do the same for a daughter of mine, and more.
“What are you asking of me?” she questions.
As my throat tightens, I take a deep breath and meet her eyes. “Only that you let me go.”
She waits for me to say more. When she realizes that is my only request, she blinks as if she is just waking up.
“Go to the Underworld?” she says, her voice wobbling between flat and breathless. “You know I will do anything to stop those who wish to take you to the Underworld to never be heard from again.”
“No—that is not what I mean. I do not mean for you to let someone take me there. I am asking that you let me go there, to be—”
“To be with Hades?” She is horrified. I can see that in her eyes. “The man who stole you away?”
“Think about it, Mother. For a moment. The events that unfolded. Think about what happened with the wine.”
My mother’s eyes go dark with anger. “If Zeus has poisoned you again…if he has poisoned your mind—”
“He hasn’t,” I say quickly, then reach for her hands once again.
She’s distraught and on edge. The trauma clouds her judgment.
“Mother, he has not. But he did. He poisoned me. He tried to take my powers from me and make me into a mortal. That was not because of Hades. If it is anyone’s fault that I was in that position, it was Zeus’s. ”
“Then it is Zeus who should pay for what he has done!” My mother tries to stand, but I keep her with me. “It is Zeus who should suffer my wrath.”
“He has power over this realm, and the gods and goddesses here. He has power over the mortal realm as well. He is god of the gods. But he did not destroy me and he cannot. He will not and he should know that now.”
My mother softens, reaching out to stroke my hair. “Because you were born with such powers, Persephone. Because of the prophecy.” My mother purses her lips. “That he would be eclipsed by one of his children. That they would grow stronger.”
This realization seems to make time stop.
Even my heart pauses beating. Fear? My father poisoned me out of fear of my powers?
As if I would use them against him! I would never have done such a thing.
I had no reason to think I was in danger on Olympus.
I thought he would be disappointed to learn that I could not find the powers that had been foretold. I thought he would want more for me.
His fault is his ego. It always has been and always will be.
The realms will never be the same to me now. I saw my father as powerful, and he does indeed have power over the gods and goddesses of Olympus and over the mortals.
His powers have not protected him from his fears. He thinks one of his children will surpass him, and he cannot stand the thought.
It made him poison me.
The rage I thought I let go emerges once again, but I breathe deeply for the sake of my mother. “I am not his only child.”
This, too, makes everything look different in my memory.
I think of Athena saying he only tries to kill his favorites to my mother and wonder how many times he has plotted against his children.
If he plots against all of us. If he fears all of us because we might one day discover that we have powers he cannot dream of.
For how could he dream of something new when he spends all his time watching to see if one of his children is stronger?
I am stronger. I have never poisoned someone innocent out of fear. I never would. I have surpassed him already. If Zeus stood in the courts, I would suffer great difficulty sentencing him.
“But you are one of the most powerful,” my mother says, and drops her hands back to me. “You are my daughter, Persephone. And whether you have powers or not—”
“I have them. I found them.”
“I know it. But they are not the most important part of you. I would fight for you if you were a mere mortal. I will fight for you no matter what.” The softness disappears from her face, replaced by determination.
“If what you desire is to dwell in the Underworld, then I cannot prevent you from going there. But if you are away from me where I cannot reach you, there will be consequences. My grief will be felt and I cannot help it, my child. In the times you are away from me, the mortal realm will feel the loss. I cannot and will not change that for that loss is too real and too significant to be ignored.”