Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) (41 page)

Then she turned to face him. “Okay. Grandpop and your mom. Ready?”

“Yep.” He hooked an arm around her waist and walked back through the fields with her. “Who first?”

“Your mom. That way in case I cry again when I see Grandpop, I won’t have to meet her all puffy-eyed afterward.”

Adrian’s mother sat atop a tree-dotted hill in sight of the orchard. Seeing him approach with his arm around Sophie, his mother stood up and smiled, awaiting them.

His mother had long, wavy black hair and tan skin. She had died young enough that she still looked youthful as a soul, with her favorite flowery summer dress setting off her petite figure.

“That’s her, in the purple dress?” Sophie said. “Oh, she’s pretty. How’d you know where to find her?”

“She’s usually on this hill. It’s the highest one around. She always liked tramping when she was alive.”

Sophie laughed. “She liked what, now?”

“Tramping. Walking about, outdoors?”

“Oh, you mean hiking.”

He grinned and elbowed her. “Sure, tease the Kiwi.”

They reached his mother, and she stretched out her arms with a smile, though of course he couldn’t embrace her. “Ade, sweetie! You’re back.”

“Hi, Mum. Had someone to fetch. This is Sophie.”

He had of course told her about Sophie by now, and she beamed to see the reincarnation of Persephone in person at last. “Welcome. It’s so good to meet you.”

“You too.” Sophie shyly kept her hands folded before her. “I’ve never met anyone from Adrian’s real life until now. Almost seemed like he’s been—you know, supernatural forever.”

“Oh, he’s a real human, all right. I toilet trained him myself.”

Adrian splayed his hand over his eyes. “
Mum
.”

From there she did, at least, take them to more acceptable topics, surrounding his young life and the unusual transformation he’d recently undergone.

“I’m the luckiest soul here, hands down,” she said, smug with maternal pride. “To have
my
son be the one who runs this place.”

“It runs itself. I just hang out here. Because I’m weird.”

But Sophie linked her arm into his and pressed her side against him, as if she were proud too.

His mum then asked Adrian if he’d seen his father lately.

“A few weeks back,” said Adrian. “He’s all right. Just lonely.”

“You could bring him here for another visit,” his mum said.

Sophie looked at him in surprise, and he realized he’d never told her about that. “It was a long time ago,” he told Sophie. “Just after I’d eaten the orange.” Then, to his mum, he answered, “I’ll see if he wants to, but he seemed kind of disturbed about the first one. This still doesn’t match his idea of heaven.”

“You get him here,” she declared. “I’ll get the message through his thick head.”

“I don’t know, Mum. I don’t want to be the cause of a…posthumous divorce.” While he paused to think about whether that was the right term, Sophie and his mum looked aside and smiled at someone else. He turned to find the soul of Sophie’s grandfather strolling up to join them.

“Heard you were here,” he said, with eyes only for Sophie. “Hello, sweetheart.”

Sophie, as it turned out, didn’t cry this time. She smiled and made introductions, and launched into the complicated explanation of what she was doing here, including who she’d been in a past life.

Adrian let the two of them drift aside to talk in privacy while he and his mum chatted.

Finally he and Sophie said their goodbyes to their relatives for the time being, and walked down the hill. Sophie slid her arm around his waist while still in full view of Mum and Grandpop. Warming at the display, he draped his arm around her as well.

“I told Grandpop about Mom and Dad’s companionate marriage thing,” Sophie said. “He said he sort of already knew, or guessed. He tells me they’ll be all right.”

“Does that make you feel better?”

“I don’t know. He might have just said that to relax me.”

Adrian looked aside at her downcast profile. “There’s only so much you can do, you know. Keep being their loving daughter. That’s all you ever signed on for.”

“It’s still weird to me, is all.” She glanced up at him, swaying closer. “Only because I can’t imagine being in a marriage like that.” She smiled. “We sure weren’t, when we were married to each other in past lives.”

“Mm.” Nearing the river, he stopped to kiss her. “Indeed. Romantic chemistry much?”

“Whole big vats of it.”

Just wait till you see
, he thought. Indeed, remembering some of those memories made it hard to keep from tackling her on the grass here and now.
Please, Goddess, let her get to those soon.

“So, out of curiosity…” She sounded sober now. “The orange. Where are you growing it?”

“Oh. Over here. Same spot as it used to be.”

He handed her the flashlight and again let her lead the way, to see if she remembered. She did, or near enough. They walked through the orchard, emerging on the other side, almost to the upstream curve of the river. There she stopped and knelt by the tiny tree. It was barely knee high, and its leaves shone glossy in the beam of the flashlight. Only one fruit was left now, a small orange just ripening. Adrian, Niko, Sanjay, Freya—they had all plucked and eaten the first round of fruits, and now this orange was the last.

Sophie touched the orange lightly and quickly with her fingertips, as if it were hot, then pulled her hand away. “So that’s it. Immortality.”

“That’s it. Saving it for you, when you’re ready.” His fingers and toes tingled. Would she eat it today?

She touched the three white blossoms on the tree. “More fruit soon, maybe.”

“Yeah. Another couple of months or so.”

“Good.” She rose. “Then I have time.”

He nodded, not sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.

“So.” She looked at him, clear-eyed and businesslike again. “How do we put out a call for souls who have dirt on our Thanatos peeps?”

He let go of her and waved his arm toward the fields of souls. “You know the language. Give it a try, Persephone.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

O
KAY, SO, NOT A LOT,”
Sophie said as they returned to the river’s raft a couple of hours later.

“Yeah.” Adrian unwound the ropes. “Quentin and Wilkes and the others were weirdos in their youth and unpleasant later on, but nothing technically illegal. At least, not that anyone’s thought of. God, I wish I had evidence linking them to Sanjay.”

“I assume he keeps asking around on his own behalf, since he’s always down here.”

“He does, but so far he can’t find proof we can use either.” They settled onto their knees on the raft, with Kiri alongside them, and Adrian steered them across the river. “What now?”

Sophie sighed. “I’m hungry. Maybe food will cheer me up.”

“Dinner in Greece, then?”

Her mood surged upward. In this lifetime, she’d never been to Europe at all, on the living side. Seizing his wrist, she said, “Ooh, yes, yes, yes.”

T
HEY SWITCHED REALMS,
entered a nearby town, and enjoyed a late dinner at a small restaurant. Neither of them knew modern Greek from any of their past lives, but Adrian had picked up enough from hanging around the region that he could communicate with their waitress, and both Adrian and Sophie knowing Ancient Greek—or something like it—did help a little.

Their table was outdoors on a deck, under a string of lights cased in white paper globes. The sea shimmered and whispered at the edge of town. A street musician played an accordion somewhere nearby. Sophie drank it all in, mesmerized. Meanwhile, Adrian gazed at her in adoration: the shine of the globe lights in her eyes, the way she wrapped her pita around the olives and feta to form a little package to bite into, how she teased him for taking apart his own food into its component pieces before eating it, the silken shadows of her neck and cleavage.

“Think they’d be honored to know they’ve got Hades and Persephone in their restaurant?” she asked after the waitress removed their plates. “Or scared?”

“Possibly neither. Greece has gone almost totally Christian—Greek Orthodox, you know. They don’t care about us old-school types anymore.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I bet they still consider us family.” She smiled out at the sea. “It feels familiar to me, to be here. The way that wind smells…mmm.”

Upon returning to the Underworld, Sophie yawned and leaned against him. “I know it couldn’t be that late in my own time zone, but I’m super sleepy. Must be the ouzo.”

“At least it does something to you. I think I’d have to inject pure grain alcohol into my veins to feel anything nowadays, and even then it’d only last a few minutes.”

“But you and the other immortals were always drinking wine, back in the day.”

He shrugged. “It was the thing to drink at the time. If you could afford it.”

“Which of course you could.” She yawned again. “Okay if I take a nap?”

“Sure. I’ll make up the bed for you.”

In the bedchamber, in the light of a fluorescent camping lantern, he unzipped the duffel bag in which he kept sheets and blankets, and spread them over the mattress.

Sophie looked up at the gauzy black canopy he’d draped atop the four posts. “You had a canopy in the old days, too. Different material. And white back then.”

“Yeah. Keeps pebbles and things from landing on you. And the shop did have white, but I figured black would look better down here. In the old days, black cloth was practically impossible to get, otherwise I’d probably have used it.”

“Pink might be nice,” Sophie mused. When Adrian shot a glance at her, she grinned. “Totally kidding.”

He exhaled in relief, placing a hand over his heart. “Thank God.”

She sat on the mattress and toed off her shoes. “Goddess,” she corrected through a yawn.

“Indeed.” He shook open a comforter and settled it over her legs.

She pulled it over herself, lying back on the pillow. “You going to sleep too?”

“Not yet. I’ll read a while.”

He sat beside her with the lantern, the extra pillow stuffed behind his back, and opened a novel. Within minutes, Sophie was asleep, breathing steadily. He brushed his fingers against her warm hair, as lightly as possible. In the old tongue they used to speak, he whispered, “Sweetest of dreams, darling.”

T
HE MORNING AFTER
feeding Kerberos the blue-colored orange, Hades awoke to the dog planting his front paws upon his chest and licking his face. Hades grunted, pushed him aside, and sat up. “So you’re feeling better.”

He squinted at Kerberos in the dim light of the two ghost dogs he had leashed to a metal ring on the wall. In the perpetual darkness of the cave, they served not only as company for Kerberos, but as night lighting. They were also cleaner and more convenient than oil lamps or flames in the fireplace. (His bedchamber did have a hearth, with a narrow but sufficient vent up to the outdoor air.)

Standing on the goatskin mattress with tail wagging, Kerberos gazed at Hades, panting, looking very much like he was grinning.

Hades examined the dog’s neck, but couldn’t even find the wound. The fur grew smooth all around his throat, and the skin looked healthy when Hades pushed aside the tan hairs to search through them. “Interesting. Let’s remember that blue orange. Looks like a keeper.”

As Kerberos ran around beside him the rest of the day, Hades noticed the dog was moving faster than ever, and no longer limped. In addition, the gray hairs that had sprinkled his muzzle when Hades found him were now replaced by dark brown ones. Could that little orange tree restore youth as well as health? Excited, he turned and began striding toward the cave’s entrance, intending to find Persephone and tell her. But upon remembering she was planning to marry Adonis in a few days’ time, he stopped and remained in the Underworld. The news could wait a while. Best to see how Kerberos fared, and perhaps find willing test subjects another time.

Later, in his bedchamber, he picked up the half-peeled fruit from where he had left it wrapped in a cloth, and ate another slice himself. Cure-all though it may have been, it did nothing, as far as he could tell, to ease an aching heart.

An earthquake struck on the morning of the spring equinox. The shaking and rumbling awakened him. Clumps of dirt and rock from the cave’s ceiling fell and clattered on the floor. Kerberos leaped barking onto the bed. Hades latched his arm around the dog and scrambled backward with him until they met the wall, where they waited, breathing fast, as the earth thundered and jolted around them. Then, finally, the quake died away.

With Kerberos beside him, Hades seized the willow leashes of the ghost dogs to light his way, and rushed out of the bedchamber. He paused a moment to look across the river and make sure the souls in the fields were all right. They were. They apparently couldn’t have cared less about trivialities like earthquakes. That accomplished, he commanded Kerberos to stay in the Underworld, then ran to his chariot and soared out into the sunlight.