2. Chapter 2
Chapter two
Corre
C orre smiled, her cheeks full of the iced cinnamon bread freshly pulled from the oven. Her mother snorted and shook her head. “How is it that you can eat an entire loaf in one sitting? Do you have a secret power I don’t know about?”
“I don’t know. I just love your cooking,” she said with a laugh, tearing off another piece of bread and letting her teeth sink into it as she hummed in delight.
Her mother chuckled and sauntered to the stove, where a thick potato chowder was bubbling to a boil. The older goddess stirred the heavy soup absentmindedly, singing softly to herself.
Corre’s hands stilled. “What is that? It sounds familiar.”
Berenice smiled, still stirring. “I’m surprised you remember it. I haven’t sung it for quite some time.” She tapped the spoon against the rim of the pot and tasted the tiny drip of soup that stuck to the wooden rim.
Corre looked back at her half-eaten hunk of bread, focusing on the melody. It was a memory like smoke. It was so familiar, but when she searched her mind, racking it for a concrete moment to grab hold of, there was nothing to grasp. Nothing but the vague knowledge that it existed somewhere in her past.
“Did you make it up?”
“No,” Berenice said as she plopped the spoon back into the burbling chowder.
“Is it well known?” A stupid question. If it was well known she wouldn’t be asking about it. Plus, it seemed strange. Like it was intimate in some way. She supposed it was a valid question after all. Maybe it was a song known only to the humans, and somehow her mother heard about it in her travels while creating the plants and trees in their various lands.
Corre lived a sheltered life. She didn’t know a lot about the world, despite all her research and questions. She knew the other gods and goddesses, but the humans seemed to have such rich lives all their own, unlike those of her kind. They seemed to do a lot more than she did, despite the fact that, without her, their world wouldn’t grow. Without her and her mother, they would die.
Still, she envied them. Their communities, their songs, the freedom to choose their own destinies.
“No,” her mother’s voice cracked through her thoughts. “I actually learned it from you.”
A lump wedged its way into Corre’s throat. “From me?”
The room fell silent, and an unsettling chill snaked down her spine.
“When you came to me,” Berenice started, her voice almost reverent, “you sang it every night as you fell asleep. I tried to comfort you, but you wouldn’t let me. Not for a year or so. You just wrapped yourself in the comfort of your blanket and sang that melody, sometimes with words I’ve long forgotten.”
Corre shook her head, her rose-gold hair sweeping across her shoulder blades. “Why can’t I remember?”
Berenice let go of the spoon and turned to face her daughter. She wrapped her petite arms around Corre, squeezing her tightly against her chest. When her daughter wrapped her arms around her, too, Berenice finally spoke. “Sometimes we lose parts of ourselves when we have to face new lives.”
The young goddess frowned, pulling back slightly to look into her mother’s chestnut eyes. “But…why did I stop?”
Her mother cupped Corre’s face with her slender hands. “Maybe you didn’t need it anymore.” Berenice’s smile widened, but there was something off about the glimmer in her eyes, and Corre couldn’t stop thinking about the song. That familiar melody.
She forced a smile. “You’re probably right. It’s nothing.” But something in her stomach turned.
Berenice’s hand fell away. “Good. Now, why don’t we eat? The chowder should be ready.”
Corre nodded, a smile dimpling her cheeks, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that accompanied that song.
“Did you leave any bread to have with the soup?” the older goddess asked with a laugh.
Corre’s eyes fell to the remainder of the loaf, but her stomach twisted and her ears fogged.
“Corre?”
She looked at her mother and forced another smile. “Yes, there’s plenty. Let’s eat.”
Choking every bite down until supper was over, Corre made sure her true feelings didn’t show. A smile stayed plastered on her face as she spent the evening the way she always did—spending time with her mother in their little cottage in the middle of the glen. By the time Berenice brought out a book of Olympus’s history to teach Corre more about her place in the world, the young Persephone’s cheeks started to ache. But still, she kept smiling, trying her best to ignore the aching for a memory she couldn’t grab hold of.