The Dark Wife (28 page)

“What I needed to do,” I said wearily, heavily. She hadn’t seen; she didn’t know what Zeus had intended to do to me. I swallowed and bit my lips—bruised, the skin broken—as she looked down at me, bewildered, her face pale and exhausted.

Zeus always gets what he wants, she’d told me.

Not this time.

I stared down at the ground, at the vines that began to curl at my feet, flower buds bursting open as I gazed at them. There was a heady feeling that rushed through my body then, as I plucked a flower I had grown, held it out to my mother.

She took it, silent.

“What now?” she asked, as if I knew, as if I had any answers.

“I don’t know,” I said, truthfully. The flower blossomed again, two-headed, in my mother's open palm.

I felt pain and emptiness and heartache and sadness and a hundred thousand things as we sat close, together, in the starless dark of night.

But I felt no fear.

~*~

My mother's urgent shaking woke me, her hands on my shoulders, fingers gripping my skin tightly.

"Persephone, get up," she muttered, pulling at my arms as I toppled off of the grassy cassock. "You have to get up. You must see this…"

I stumbled after her, out of the bower and into the cold morning. She stood like a sentinel, back straight, not stooped, pointing up at the sky.

And there, above us, Olympus crumbled.

The towers fell apart; the palace shattered. Only the gods could see Olympus, but it had never looked so close or so fragile. It was falling, and it was breaking, and Olympus was the realm of Zeus, and I knew, in that moment, that it changed as he did, a reflection of him.

I shook, could not stop shaking, as I took my mother and I embraced her. Her eyes were far away, and when she spoke, her voice was regal, soft, calm. "We've been expecting this. He has been slipping in power." She looked at me, really looked at me, holding my shoulders out at arm's length. "We have a meeting place; the gods will be gathering there. We need to discuss what to do now…" There were tears in her eyes, but she did not shed them, and my mother smiled. She was beautiful.

"I have to go." I kissed her cheek, wrestled out of her embrace, grinning like a fool. It was over. Zeus' reign of power was over. Maybe I weakened him enough; maybe the other gods found him afterward… Did it matter? It did not matter to me.

I ran through the forest toward the entrance to the Underworld, and I could not breathe deeply enough; for euphoria pumped through me, and my legs moved swifter than wind, and I floated through the Immortals Forest like a dream, until I was in the center, in the heart, and through the gateway and the door and down the path, like lightning, like light. I could not run fast enough.

I was in the hallway for a year and for a heartbeat—I do not remember if the barge was there, or if I called it up. What mattered was that I was in the Underworld, on the other side of the river Styx, and I paused to catch my breath, to breathe, and my heartbeat thundered against my chest as a very cool, sallow wind brushed my cheek, and I stood up and straight and tall. I was queen here now, too, and I knew its secrets: only ill winds blew in the Underworld.

"Persephone!"
Pallas was running toward me, eyes wide. She embraced me quickly, and then she was pulling me toward the far wall. "Persephone, he came for her—he came because of what you did to him."

It was not fear but the daughter of fear that came and ate me up, then. It was anger.

"Zeus," I whispered, and started toward the wall, but Pallas was shaking her head, pulling me back. I plucked at her fingers on my garments, and I ran; we ran together.

I heard them before I saw them, heard the great keening from a thousand throats, from a hundred thousand. The dead cried out, and when I saw it, I stopped, I had to stop. There the dead gathered, and there was Zeus in the center, and there was Hades, standing above the others, and I heard her before I saw her, for the very ground of the Underworld shook from her great and terrible whisper.

She said, "You will not harm what I love ever again."

The dead cried out in one voice, and they began to move. Zeus cried out, too, and it was a scream of fear. I ran toward them, Pallas at my heels, and I did not know what to do until everyone and everything stopped.

"Persephone!"
Zeus and Hades called out together, one in fear and one in triumph. Hades leapt off of the outcropping of rock, and in a moment, she was in my arms, but Zeus cried my name again, and my eyes snared his.

"Persephone," he yelled, bellowing as the dead pressed against him, swarming him with their bodies. He reached out his hands to me. "Persephone—
tell
them I am not all bad."

I opened my mouth to speak, but Hades shook her head, drew me closer. "You are not all bad. No thing is," she said, and again the rock and earth resonated with her words, until they sunk into our very bodies, humming through our bones. "But stories repeat, and your time has ended. It will come again.
But not now, Zeus.
It's over."

"I cannot stand to be in there!" he screamed, and I knew then what the dead intended, saw the opening to the pit of
Tartarus
in the wall of the Underworld, saw their progression, saw Zeus' ultimate prison: the cell he'd crafted so cunningly would now be his home.

And the earth came up and seemed to swallow him. One moment, the king of the gods stood on the plains of the Underworld. And then he was gone, the dirt shaping itself once more into the entrance of
Tartarus
. Gaea had taken him back.

 With a single voice, the dead cried out. Hades swept me up and held me close, never to let go again, as the sound rose about us, a crescendo of jubilation.

"Welcome back, my queen," she said, and dark eyes shining, Hades saved me.

After

I’m walking along the sidewalk, ballet flats soggy, rain pelting my hair, my jacket,
my
jeans. I turn up my collar and touch the rail lightly as I run down the subway steps, tracing with my hand the mosaic on the tunnel wall.

Down here, it smells of piss and unwashed bodies, fast food containers and designer perfume, and the warm rain makes the stench worse, and water pours in little rivers down the stairs to mix with the grime of the walkways, with the dreams and depressions of an entire New York City.

They follow behind me like the tail of a kite, a line of dead streaming through the throngs of the living.

That’s the pact, that’s what was decided, after the fall of Zeus and the Immortals’ War. It was millennia ago, but we still hold by it. Hermes herds the dead six months out of the year, and I gather them, guide them during the other six months. It’s my job, my purpose, and if there weren’t rules, the world would fall apart. I believe in keeping promises.

Like lost children, they follow me. I coax them along, smiling over my shoulder.

My heart is floating, rising within me as I move through the turnstile, the creak of metal like music.

The queen of all the dead, my beautiful wife, is waiting for me.

I’m coming home.

It’s far down from the edge of the platform to the tracks, and a sign tells me to mind the gap, but this is when the magic begins, and the people milling about don’t quite see me, not as I truly am, and the ghosts are right behind me, a billowing tribe of mortals who have found commonalities in their joys and miseries, who are now one, one, one, who will come with me, willingly, to the land of the dead, who will create for themselves there a new sort of a life, an existence steeped in possibility.

I hear him barking before I see him. If anyone on the platform looks, they observe a great, slobbering mass of a dog bounding, desperate, nudging at my hands, but I see his three dear heads, his monstrous eyes rolling with pleasure at sight of his mother. He’s come to fetch me, he’s so ecstatic, and I pet him and laugh as he leaps ahead, races to the Underworld to herald my arrival, barking out with his three mouths that I’m coming, I’m coming…

I bury my hands in my pockets and move deeper into the subway tunnel that turns, seamlessly, slowly, into the entrance to the Underworld. My jeans transform into a dress as red as pomegranates, and my hair streams behind me, and I laugh out loud, anticipation giving my heart wings, and I can no longer wait—I’m running beside the tracks, running because everything I need, crave, want lies before me, below me, down, down, down.

It is the autumn equinox, the feast of Persephone, and—bound by the oldest law the world knows—I’m keeping my promise. I’m coming home.
To her.

FIN

About the Author:

Sarah Diemer is a Persephone girl.  She tells stories, makes jewelry and runs around after several animals in a lovely, purple-
doored
house in the country.  She likes to think she is funny.  When not up to her elbows in glue and words,
she
hula hoops and gardens, dresses up like a fairy and recites poetry when she thinks no one is looking.  She loves her wife more than anything in the universe.  You can find out about her new novels, take a peek at the
jewelry she makes out of old fairy tales and generally see several sparkly and interesting things at her site,
http://www.oceanid.org
, or her blog,
http://www.muserising.com
 

Connect with the author at:

http://twitter.com/sarahdiemer

Facebook
search:  Sarah Diemer, Indie Author

The following is a sneak peek

from
Sarah
Diemer's
next novel,

Ragged:

A Post Apocalyptic Fairy Tale

Coming,
Summer
2011!