Asphodel (4 page)

The small crumpled up piece of paper with Hades in black permanent marker fills my vision. Surprisingly, Hades is a God I don’t know much about. I’ve never asked about him and on top of that, mom refuses to talk about the commander of the Underworld.

I recall one story she told me about him centuries ago.

“Hades is the master of deception and trickery,” she’d told me. “When Zeus had problems with the mortals, Hades summoned a beast from the depths of Tartarus to teach humanity a lesson. You see he envied Zeus for giving him command of the realm of the dead. So in return he pretended to use his beast to do Zeus’s bidding, but he’d really only intended to use the Kraken for his own selfish reasons.”

“The Kraken?” I’d questioned.

“A monstrous beast over one hundred feet tall, with fangs as long as spears, and slimy skin with scales.” Mom lowered her voice, a frightening look on her face. “The Kraken could eat a hundred mortals with a snap of its’ jaw.”

“That’s terrifying,” I’d gasped. “What did Zeus do?” I remember that she’d told me that story right before bed time.

“Never you mind.” She’d kissed the top of my head. “You just go to sleep and try to dream of pleasant things.” Trying to dream of pleasant things after hearing a story like that was like asking for snow in the desert. I laid awake for half of the night, eyes wide, glued to the ceiling.

During lunch exhaustion creeps over me and I struggle to keep my eyes open. I lay my head on the cool, hard table and close my eyes. All I want to do is sleep away my fears. Sleep right through my birthday and forget about the voice. The voice that I know will pop up randomly at any given moment throughout the rest of the day.

As my slumber deepens, my mind slips away from me. I’m dreaming, lost in a world that I haven’t been to in five thousand years. I am outdoors. I am running and a gust of wind whips through my hair tossing up the scent of freesia. I suck in lungfuls of the smell of wildflowers, and pluck a bouquet from the earth. Shifting, I peek over my shoulder. I know where I am. I’m in one of the most cherished places of my past, in the field at Enna on the outskirts of Mount Olympus.

Marching forward, a garden of yellow daffodils draws me closer to edge of the field. I bend over, reaching for a daffodil to add to my heaping bouquet when I hear it—the voice.

“Persephone,”
he hisses.
“Come to me.”
I’m perplexed and curious, but at the same time fear swallows me, digesting me like a mammal in an anaconda’s stomach. My spine stiffens. A strangled gasp sticks in my throat. My lungs clench and refuse to expand. Straightening up, my attention averts to a willow tree at the edge of the field.

A man with dark hair stands underneath the tree watching me.

Thick saliva coats the lining of my esophagus, sticky like warm molasses. I try to push it down with more saliva, but I can’t. On the outside I appear to be calm, but on the inside I’m a knot of hysteria. Shrieking, trembling, and sobbing. The man’s face is blurred and I can’t make out his features. He’s dressed from head to toe in black. I lurch forward fighting the better half of myself that’s screaming for me to stay put. “Who aaare you?” I stutter.

He doesn’t answer.

As I close the gap between us I can make out his broad, muscular build. The man tilts his head to the side and I swear I can see a set of eyes as blue as the Aegean Sea. “Are you the voice?” My own voice goes up an octave.

I’m so close to him now that I can make out his profound jaw-line, high cheek bones, and the slightest bit of stubble on his chin. But then, when I’m only feet away he vanishes into thin air. He’s a particle of matter floating in the atmosphere. Invisible. I’m so confused. “Where did you go?” I pivot in a circle, taking in the whole field, but the mysterious man is nowhere in sight. “Where did you go?”

A finger digs into my shoulder and I pivot again. I’m still alone. “Who’s touching me?” Then a hand clamps down on my shoulder and I’m shaking. My whole body is shaking. “Stop it!” I swat at the invisible hand frantically. “Stop touching me!” The shaking intensifies and I feel my whole body convulsing.

“P!”

“Stop! Get your hands off me!”

“P! Damn it! Wake up!”

My eyes snap open. Marisol is inches away from my face wearing a concerned look. I sit up and stifle a glance around the packed cafeteria. “Mar?”

“Are you okay?” Marisol gasps. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Yeah,” I breathe. “I must have dozed off and had some kind of nightmare.”

“I’ll say.”

She gives me another apprehensive look. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I nod and relief floods through me. I’m elated to be in the safe haven of the cafeteria. The dream felt too real and my cheeks are hot, like I’d actually been basking in the warmth of the sun. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” Marisol slides a thick book with a hard cover casing toward me.

I stare at the cover. “Greek Myths for Beginners.”

“I found it in the library,” she tells me. “Remember how you offered to help me?”

“Yeah. My offer still stands.”

“Well, I’m taking it,” she says discouragingly. “I’m terrible in mythology.”

I smile. “Well, luckily for you, I’m not.”

“Of course you’re not. Your name is Persephone for God’s sake. You have to have Greek in you somewhere.”

“Some.” More than she’s aware of.

Flipping through the book, I laugh; amused at how mortals recount the existence of the Olympians if they only knew we could actually vouch for ourselves, I’m sure this would make their literature seem silly. I turn a few more pages and freeze, stopping about half-way through the book. “Oh…” A breath is clogged in the back of my throat. “No.”

Marisol leans over my shoulder, focusing on the image on the page. “What’s the matter?”

I stare at a picture of the fruit I’d received as a birthday gift this morning. The thick reddish skin fills my gaze and I make a shocking discovery. “H is Hades.”

Marisol draws her eyebrows together. “Huh?” She points to the picture, reading the paragraph beneath it. “The book says that’s a pomegranate. Supposedly, it’s the fruit of the dead.”

A queasy feeling ripples through my stomach. “H is Hades,” I repeat robotically. Rising from the table I can feel my knees trembling. I lock them in place as Marisol follows me with her brown child-like eyes. “What’s going on P?”

I’m numb and a feeling of betrayal surges through me. I picture mom’s panicked look when I placed the pomegranate against my lips. “She knows,” I pant as my breaths come out short and raspy. Backing away from the table, I’m hyperventilating. Shock is a brick sitting in the pit of my stomach. I want to spit it out. I want to throw it up. “I don’t feel so hot. I have to go home,” I mumble.

“P, wait! What’s wrong?”

“Just text me later if you still need help,” I tell her. Then I bolt from the cafeteria, sprinting to the exit.

Persephone

T
here’s a sledgehammer in my head pounding questions through my cranium.

Mom…. She has moved me from place to place, and she’s never explained why. She was always giving me vague answers or telling me it was because of the mortals, but it’s not. We’ve been moving because of him—because of Hades.

As I storm toward the exit I’m a jumbled mixture of rage and uncertainty. What does Hades want from me? Why has he been chasing me for all this time?

I glance down at the floor, so involved in my own thoughts I trip, bumping into someone. “I’m sorry,” I groan, eyes still on the floor.

Adonis grips my shoulders. “Easy there.” I lift my head and he gives me a warm smile. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

Sometimes I think it’s odd that he pops up at the most unopportune moments and I always manage to do something clumsy in his presence. Last nine weeks he was in my art class and I accidentally dumped an entire can of red paint on him. I’m normally not like that, but around him all of my coordination dwindles away. Maybe it’s because he’s too pretty and way too nice.

Brent McCall was the resident hottie at Klamath Falls High, with rippling muscles, a perfect Crest tooth-paste smile, and a crown of gold a top his head. Well, he was the resident hottie until Adonis arrived and stole the title. The difference between Adonis and Brent is that Brent is an ass; calling students names, shoving the smart kids in lockers, and walking around like he owns the place. And with Adonis it’s almost like he’s naïve, almost like he doesn’t know how attractive he really is.

I inhale deep and exhale slowly. Warmth sears through me from Adonis’s touch and extinguishes the burning rage. “I don’t feel good. I need to go home.” He smirks at me flirtatiously and I look away. My heart hammers nails into my ribcage and part of me wants to stare at his beautiful smile for the rest of my immortal life, but I’m absorbed by my worries and fear to handle my emotions involving him right now. “Adonis,” I whisper, peeling his hands off my shoulders. “I have to go.”

I brush past him, sprinting out the back exit door and I hear him yell, “Are you going to be okay?”

What I want to tell him is no, Adonis, I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay ever again. Right now, my life is a global catastrophe, an asteroid disintegrating the planet, a tsunami wiping out an entire country. For the last five thousand years, I’ve been moved all over the world. For the last five thousand years, I’ve been lied to repeatedly. I’ve been laughed at, tortured by a voice that I was led to believe was an illusion. I’ve had to pretend to be a million different people when all I’ve really wanted to be is myself.

But I don’t tell him any of that. I can’t tell him any of that. I just keep running and running and don’t look back.

I run until I’m standing in front of my house. Shiny black paint fills up my gaze and I scowl at the
Ferrari
in my driveway. “Freakin great.” My dad is here and I’m one hundred percent sure he’s not here to wish me a happy birthday.

In my eyes, Zeus had earned my respect, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t call him dad and we don’t have any type of father-daughter relationship. Actually, I don’t have any fond memories of him at all. He was just there, hanging around like an antique tapestry hanging on the wall in a person’s home.

Mom had told me once that he never came around because of Hera. Everyone on Olympus knew that her jealous nature could be a vengeful bitch, but I’d always thought that was a lousy excuse, a lousy excuse because Zeus was and always will be the type of God who likes to have his cake and eat it too. As long as I’ve known him, he’s always wanted the best of both worlds. Those worlds being the mortal world and the immortal.

Walking around to the back door, I try to keep all of my emotions in check. I try to tell myself to stay calm, but it’s impossible. Disloyalty, Fury, and ambiguity melt together inside of me and I can hear the crackle from a lit fuse. I can feel the sparks as they scorch my organs. I’m a bomb.  In minutes I’m going to explode.

I slip into the kitchen through the sliding glass door. Locking my knees in place, I try to be as quiet as possible and I strain to listen for the sound of voices. I hear nothing.

The square country kitchen with apple wallpaper is submerged in silence. Then I raise my head, slitting my eyes when I hear movement. Floorboards above me spit out creaks and groans and the sound of footsteps thud down the steps. Panic is a fresh stream trickling through my veins, branching off at my heart. I can feel it beating in my throat.

No…I can’t confront mom yet.

There’s huge part of me that wants to. Confronting her and demanding answers was all I could think about on the run home, but I have a feeling that when mom and Zeus get in here they are going to be talking about what I want and need to know anyway. And what if I confront mom after Zeus leaves? Will she laugh at me again and try to convince me I’m dreaming all of this up? Will she tell me that I’m crazy and this voice is just a figment of my imagination?

Muffled voices carry down the hall. Footsteps pound like the beat of a drum at the executioners block. I can’t let them see me. I spin around frantic. Where can I go? Where can I hide? Turning my head my eyes center on the pantry door. No… Mom checks the pantry every time she walks into the kitchen. One of the cupboards? No. There’s no way I’ll be able to pretzel my long lengthy limbs enough to fit. Laughter rings out like church bells on a Sunday.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse the small round kitchen table with the floral table cloth hanging off the edges. It nearly touches the floor. That’s my only option. So when mom and Zeus are only feet away, I scamper toward the table and dive underneath it.

Persephone

Z
eus flops down in the wooden chair. The legs belch out creaks and snaps as it wobbles unsteadily, and for a second I think it might break beneath his heavy body.

Pulling my knees to my chest I suck in a lungful of air as moms’ footsteps pound behind me. Zeus stretches his legs and accidentally kicks my knee. Pain shoots up my thigh and I let out a squeak, and then clamp my hands tightly over my mouth to keep myself from crying out again.

Zeus stiffens, alert of my presence. “What was that?” he questions suspiciously. He hunches over, gripping the edge of the table cloth and lifts up the plastic covering the slightest bit. Instinctively, I shield my face with my arms as a knot of fear ties itself to the lining of my stomach.

The pantry door swings open and I can hear mom shuffling around in there. “Relax. It’s probably nothing,” she assures him. “This is an old house. It makes noises.” Zeus lowers the tablecloth, sitting upright and mom walks over to the table. A loud clash rumbles through the quiet room like thunder and shakes the table. “He sent her these.”

I tuck myself into a tighter ball as mom sits down behind me, her feet eerily close to my back. He sent her these? That has to be the bowl of pomegranates I received earlier.

“Demeter,” Zeus says. “I think you’re reading into this too much. They are only pomegranates.”