Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) (19 page)

Then he turned and watched his island, his only home and entire world, dwindle in their wake. Aside from Rhea, everyone there thought he was dead, killed for a good cause. He whispered a prayer to his old household gods and goddesses to keep watch over his family and neighbors. After the prayer he stopped and wondered, for the first time in his life, who or what those gods and goddesses really were. He had always assumed they were spirits who sometimes took the form of fantastical beasts (or part-beast-part-humans), the way the old stories had taught him. And of course they were invincible. But if he himself was invincible, then what did that mean?

It felt sacrilegious to think of himself as anything like a god. He couldn’t be. Gods were supposed to know everything, and he knew virtually nothing. He hoped these others, to whom Tanis was taking him, could tell him what he was. And he hoped the real gods and goddesses were still up there, in their intangible, omniscient spirit forms, watching over him as they sent him on this journey.

Tanis leaned on his arm. “Let’s find a spot to sleep.”

They lay down behind a stack of lashed-down crates carrying cargo to Greece. Like the other passengers, they used their bundles as pillows. An extra cloak covered them both for a blanket. A spare sail had been strung overhead to keep off the rain and wind, but in the space between it and the walls of the ship, Hades could see a deep blue line of sky, sparkling with stars. The sea spray left the taste of salt on his lips. His senses full, he fell asleep.

The journey took several more days, their progress slowed by the many ports the ship stopped at. Hades filled the hours marveling at the Greek landscape and at the vast sea and its frolicking creatures, and talking to Tanis, who had made the voyage several times by now. As the ship sailed along the coast, she pointed out villages and landmarks. Finally they disembarked at a bustling port, its narrow docks so full of people that Hades was almost knocked into the water a few times as they walked toward shore.

Shouts and conversations filled his ears. The Greek language dialects were similar to that of Crete, but pronounced differently enough that he couldn’t decipher half of what he heard. Tanis, being a native, took care of the trading for them, procuring them breakfast and extra food. From the heavy pack Hades carried for her, she brought out Egyptian jewelry and jars of Cretan honey and oils, and bartered them for fruit, cheese, and yogurt.

They ate in the shade of an olive tree overlooking the sea, then she led him out of town and into the mountains.

It was another few days’ journey, interrupted by overnight stays in the homes of villagers and shepherds, before they reached their destination. In the shreds of a late-morning fog, they stood at the foot of a great mountain, its top hidden in clouds. The chilly, pure air rolling downward suggested snow at its peak.

“Here’s where mortals like me stop.” Tanis pointed at a grassy, narrow track between the boulders. “Follow that goat path. The immortals live on top of the mountain.”

Hades stared with consternation into the fog. “But what if I get lost? What if I can’t find them?”

“You will. Or they’ll find you. And if the clouds clear, you’ll see their houses easily enough.”

He turned to look into the face of the brave, sweet woman who had brought him farther into the world than he’d ever been. He halfway loved her already; the painful memory of his young wife had faded further with every day he spent in the company of someone so lively and charming. And besides, it was now clear he’d never find his wife again. He had knocked upon the door of the spirit realm and had been denied entrance. He felt he’d been given permission—even encouragement—to restore his interest in living women.

“Will I see you again?” he asked Tanis.

“I’m not sure.” She sounded regretful. “I will if I ever have reason to bring anyone else here, or deliver a message from Rhea. But it’s not likely to happen often.”

“If you do come back, try to find me. And if I ever return to Crete, I’ll find you.”

“Again, not likely.” Despite the discouraging words, she stepped up and kissed him on the lips. “But I hope to see you. You have great things ahead of you, Hades.” She glanced upward at the slopes of Mount Olympos, her eyelashes lifting. “Climb.”

He climbed. Alone, in eerily silent, cold fog, he wound upward along the goat track. He found no living thing along his way, only rocks, tough little trees, and ferns. The air thinned and chilled, feeling bizarrely light in his lungs, but his legs carried him up the mountain without effort.

When he reached a pass between two boulders, a voice arrested him.

“Halt!”

It was accompanied by the unmistakable creak of an arrow being stretched into a bow. An arrow wouldn’t kill him, of course, but he didn’t like the idea of being impaled by one, all the same. He halted, hands out at his sides, and looked up.

A woman, her dark brown hair cut to her earlobes, rose from her crouch atop one of the boulders. A gray cloak the same shade as the rocks camouflaged her. Her dark eyes stayed aimed at him, as did the arrow from her long bow. She stepped soundlessly from rock to rock, descending until standing in front of him. “And you are?”

“Hades. From Crete. Rhea sent me.”

The woman lifted her eyebrows for a moment. “Did she? Why?” She sounded to be from the Greek mainland, and he found it difficult to understand her.

“Because I’m like her. She said I’d find more of you here.”

She lowered the bow. “You’re immortal?”

Though still uncomfortable with the word, he nodded. “I offered myself as the sacrifice at the palace, at Knossos. But the axe and the knife failed to kill me.”

She bobbed the arrow, still nocked. “I could test again with this.”

“If you must. I’d rather not.”

She gestured to a rock the size of a full-grown cow. “Lift that.”

He stepped to it, crouched, slid his arms around it, and picked it up.

Finally she lowered the bow. “All right. Put that down and come meet the others.”

Chapter Sixteen

W
HAT
A
DRIAN REMEMBERED ABOUT THE
next two to three decades was a mini golden age of learning. The immortals educated each other and taught the new ones who arrived, all the while expanding their understanding of their own powers and of the world at large.

Hades was the youngest immortal, of course, when he entered that collection of stone dwellings atop Mount Olympos. The two oldest, who were obviously a couple based on both their affection and their constant arguments, were Hera and Zeus. They hailed from Crete as well, and had been sent to Greece by Rhea—who, they maintained, was far older than they. Even Rhea herself wasn’t sure how old she was, but it certainly extended into the centuries. That boggled Hades’ mind, being barely seventeen himself.

Hera and Zeus were in their seventies. Poseidon and Demeter, another couple, at least off and on, were in their sixties, as was Athena. Artemis and Apollo were in their forties—Artemis had been the one aiming an arrow at him that first day, and she and Apollo behaved like the closest of siblings, though technically they weren’t. Despite their various ages, all of them looked nearly as young as Hades, and were all beautiful and fit.

“If you’re immortal, why bother posting guards?” he asked that first night.

Hera snorted. “We’re tired of big-muscled mortal idiots ambushing us just to see if they can defeat us and steal our belongings. They can’t, of course, but they’re such a distasteful intrusion.”

As things stood, legends and fanciful stories circulated about the group of “gods” living on Olympos, who sometimes made mundane appearances in nearby villages to buy food or wool or building supplies (or to visit lovers), and who invited only the most exotic and mysterious visitors to their dwellings. These guests were usually scholars or travelers who could tell them things about the world, or teach them new languages.

Sometimes the immortals were summoned by royalty in various cities, and hired to defeat a marauder or rival with their superior strength. Merely a few such jobs had supplied the little group with more jewels, clothing, and fine weapons than they would need in twenty years, and kept their homes luxuriously outfitted. Nonetheless, the average Greek’s fear and mistrust surrounding their existence made them stay apart, hidden away on the mountain.

Hera and Zeus proposed changing all that, a few months after Hades joined them.

“If we go down and live among them,” Hera insisted, “we can improve the people’s lives with our knowledge and get some proper respect. And not have to live up here among the snow and fog.” She brought up the argument regularly, tugging her woolen cloak around herself in disdain for the inhospitable weather of the mountain. The others always conceded the appeal of her proposition, but put her off by insisting on gathering more wisdom and enjoying their freedom a while longer. For, surely, if they descended to live in palaces, with mortals crawling all over as servants, their lives would quickly become a series of petitions and tedious ceremonies.

“Just ask Rhea,” Athena pointed out.

“Yet she stays on Crete, enjoying her power as priestess,” Hera returned. “Why shouldn’t we do something similar, but more openly? Proclaim ourselves as the immortals we are?”

“It seems wise to investigate our powers and limits further,” said Demeter, “rather than seek glory.”

“Speaking of powers,” Hades ventured, “there’s an odd sensation I have regarding Rhea sometimes. I can somehow tell where she is—I mean, in which direction, and roughly how far. It’s like isolating where a birdsong is coming from, sort of.” Feeling young and foolish, he blushed as they stared at him, and he added in almost a stammer, “Does—does anyone know what I mean?”

“Oh, yes.” Hera sounded almost bored, and smoothed a fold of her cloak. “Zeus and I have that. Don’t we, dear?”

“Indeed.” He smiled.

“I think we all do,” Demeter said, “with people we’ve—loved.” She and Poseidon exchanged uneasy glances and looked away again. Hades gathered their relationship was rocky at best.

“But I don’t love Rhea,” Hades said. “We barely know each other.”

Zeus chuckled. “I don’t think love is technically required, only a certain connection. If you understand me.”

Hades’ blush deepened. “No, we never…did that either. I was married, but my wife is dead, and with her…” He paused, thinking. “I suppose I felt it when she was alive, but I can’t be sure.”

“Yes,” said Demeter. “It was the same for me and my children, though it comes and goes.” She’d had children at a younger age, as had many of the others; they were grown up now and living elsewhere, probably assuming their missing parents were dead. “Perhaps there’s some kind of blood connection.”

“Oh,” Hades said in sudden understanding. “A blood connection. That could make sense. Rhea’s blood and mine must have mingled. When she sacrificed me, I mean.”

Zeus laughed. “Next time, lad, put the knives away and try it the other way. It’s much more fun.”

“But for me the sensation comes and goes, for no apparent reason,” Demeter reminded him.

Hades and the others admitted it did for them as well.

“So all we know is that our understanding and powers clearly have their limits,” she concluded.

The mystery of the sensation vanishing and reappearing was solved within the year, though. One day Poseidon strode in and announced, “Oak.”

When the others stared at him in incomprehension, he clarified, “Oak blocks the feeling of sensing one another at a distance. When the person enters a thick oak forest, or goes behind a wall of oak planks—in short, when oak is between the two of you, that’s when you can’t sense each other.”

He had, he explained, discovered this while walking through a grove of oaks and thinking of various loved ones. The group of immortals easily tested it with nearby trees and wooden boxes, and found it true. It wouldn’t be the first time a plant turned out to have significant properties, but it was one of the most ordinary and commonly found examples.

Meanwhile, as far as the little group could tell, nothing could kill them. They didn’t know why they had been born this way. (And never would know, Adrian could attest from millennia in the future.) But each of them had undergone at least one injury or attack that should have killed them, only to recover miraculously fast; and none had ever caught so much as a sniffle even when plagues swept their towns. In the villages, people were already calling them “gods,” and the immortals were beginning to consider the idea. Obviously they weren’t the old gods, who’d been around forever (not that anyone had personally met them), but maybe they were some kind of new gods.

There were downsides to this invincibility. While they seemed to be able to master the living world, they had no way of knowing what happened to those who died. They all had relatives and friends who had passed on, whom they grieved for. They posed the question to each of the wise philosophers they pulled off the travelers’ road, and gathered a world of theories, but no definite answers.

Among those departed souls, Hades was sad to learn, was Tanis. Two years after arriving in Greece, Rhea herself paid a visit. He asked after Tanis, only to learn her ship had sunk on her journey back to Crete just after leaving here. All lives were lost.