The Dark Wife (7 page)

Foretold? My heart thundered as she spoke, even as she kept her voice soft, whispered.

“Persephone,” she said, never once pulling her eyes from mine; the intensity within them startled me. “I can help you.”

“But…how? There is no way to—Zeus—”

“Will you come with me, down to the Underworld?”

My heart caught, ceased to beat for a breath.
And another.

“Come to my kingdom,” Hades said, “and you will be free.”

I gasped. “Hades—”

 The implications of the choice she offered me weighted my heart. Did I want this? Could I leave my mother?
My forest?
Is this what Hermes meant, to rebel? I could not be found under the earth; Zeus would not touch me there. It
must
have been what Hermes had in mind. But how had he known?

I didn’t know what to do, and my heart fluttered against my ribs, caught and cornered.

The burdens of the day seemed flimsy now, dissolved, as I recognized in this choice the first true choice I had been given in my whole life. It was sacred to me, a new, young thing, and I held it as carefully as a nestling.

“Hades,” I said again, and looked deep into her eyes, her limitless eyes, and I wanted to fall into them. I wanted to fall into the earth with her.

But then I remembered my mother’s trembling hands.

“I don’t know what to do. Can I have some time to consider this?”

I feared she would say no. I feared she would flick the reins, and the world would swallow up her body and her beasts, and she would be gone from me, leaving behind only her scent and the ghost of her hand in mine.

But she stayed.

She straightened her back and inclined her head to me.
“Of course.
Forgive my forwardness. I feel your pain and can’t bear it. Any aid I may offer you, Persephone, I give it freely.”

I closed my eyes as she brushed her lips to my palm. Even in the sallow light, I saw the sprinkling of gold dust, like a tattoo marking the places her body touched mine. Now she gathered the reins in her hands, and the horses trembled, anticipating their great descent. They held their black heads high, eyes rolling.

“I’ll await your answer,” Hades said, and I moved my hand to my heart.

“Thank you.” I ventured a small, sad smile. “My mother was right about you.”

She tilted her head, raised a brow. “Demeter spoke of me?”

“She said that you’re different.
That you’re good.
You are good to me.”

Something like amusement curled the line of her mouth. “If you’ll let me be, Persephone,” she whispered, so quietly that I had to lean closer to catch her words, “I will be even better.”

I pressed my fingers to my lips.

Her words lingered between us as she raised her hand to me in parting. The horses bellowed and reared, the chariot shuddered, and the entire shadowy assemblage leapt into the gaping pit before me, swallowed whole. The horses’ screams echoed long after the animals, and Hades, had disappeared.

The ground moved beneath me, but calmer this time, and the great mouth cut into the earth sewed itself up, as if by an invisible seamstress.

Dazed, I climbed out of the valley, sought the ocean again.
Move forward
, I commanded myself.
Don’t look back.

I gathered a handful of flowers and carried them to the sea nymphs.

They wove me a crown, as they’d promised, and I wore it, accepted their flattery and hugs, but my heart was lost in a place to which I’d never traveled. The nymphs tried to fetch me back; they sang me sea songs, stroked my arms with their hands smooth as shells. The water splashed over my legs, and I tasted salt on my lips.

I turned to go.

“Stay awhile,” they pleaded.
“Demeter’s daughter, please.”

“I must go home,” I told them, and left, the stars shining the way.

Three: Taken

Zeus did not come that day, or the next or the next. Demeter fretted and paced the bower. Worry made her careless, so that her flowers sprouted strange and poison fruits, and her vines tangled into impossible knots. I stayed away, took refuge in the Immortals Forest.

I found a hollow in an old, forgiving tree, curled up within it, and hoarded my thoughts like acorns.

“You are distracted,” my mother’s nymphs whispered to me, pulling at my hands, my garments. They were worried about me—they knew who my father was. They knew Zeus would come, sooner or later. Perhaps they knew more than I did, for a few
wept
and hid their faces when they saw me. I tried to keep to myself, discovering other hidden nooks—places to sit alone with my conflicted heart.

On the fourth day, he came.

I walked into the bower to see my mother passionately embracing a stranger.

Zeus.

He stood up straight, tall, too tall for the confines of our little home, but the living walls and ceiling groaned and stretched to accommodate his mass. Zeus wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, and my mother, panting, pulled down her tunic without a word or glance for me.

I glared, silent, as Zeus examined my body with his
unfatherly
eyes. My stomach roiled with hatred. I clenched my fists at my sides, took a step back for every step he took toward me. We stopped and stood and stared at one another. It was almost comical, and a crazed sort of laughter bubbled up within me, but I suppressed it.

“Demeter’s daughter,” he intoned wetly. I narrowed my eyes, pushed down with great effort the need within me to deny the title, to tell him,
That
is not my name
. The tension between us propagated like the most tenacious weed.

Finally, my mother moved in.

“Say hello to your father, Persephone,” she whispered.

I bit my tongue so hard that I tasted blood. I could not speak to him, would not, but he mistook my silence.

“The child’s shy, Demeter,” he chuckled, reaching for my shoulders. I flinched when his large hands patted my back, caressed the bare skin there, lingering too long. “You have grown up,” he said.
“Grown up well.
And I am impatient to tell you my surprise.”

I cast a quick glance at my mother, and her eyes met mine, strangely clear—no, vacant. Her hands trembled so that they blurred along the edges. I inhaled, opened my mouth, but Zeus expelled a laugh so loud that I clamped my hands over my ears, horror-struck. The bower reverberated with the sound: leaves shook on their vines; my heart shook inside my chest.

“We have prepared a place for you on Olympus,” he said, grinning, once the noise-quake abated. “You are to come with me, live in my palace on Mount Olympus with the rest of your immortal family.” He spread his arms wide, as if he held within them a bounty of gifts for me.

I schooled my features for a long moment, piecing together his words with care, while my mother stood by and watched, my mother with her unblinking eyes, her tears that began to spill, silent truth-tellers, over her cheeks.

“Persephone…” she began, coughing quietly into her hand when her voice broke. “I have sheltered you, sequestered you, because I could not bear to be parted from you. But now you will learn Olympian history and tradition, culture and poise—any number of things that could never be understood fully with me here on the earth.”

Listening to her, I could not help but think of the talking birds that repeat overheard phrases without any true sense of their meaning. I knew she meant none of this, believed none of this, wanted
none
of this for me. I knew her like my own heart. These words were Zeus’, not hers.

Still, she said, sadly, “You will be so much happier on Olympus.”

I could not help myself; I laughed.

Demeter shook her head, as if to negate her lies, and put her face in her hands, closed her eyes.

I crept backward to the edge of the bower, felt familiar branches press against my shoulder blades.

I was to become the immortals’ plaything.
Zeus’ shiny new toy.
My mother knew this as surely as I did, but how could she stop it? What could she do? In her mind, Zeus was king. Zeus got what he wanted. Zeus had won the game of my life.

More lies.

In reality, Zeus had only made my choice so much simpler.

Fear crawled up my spine, but my tongue was moving before I knew what it would say. “Father,” I said, and the word tasted like bile, but I forced civility into my voice. “Please…I must say goodbye. Give me one more night to bid farewell to my mother, my nymphs. I love them all so much, and I would be heartbroken to leave them suddenly.”

I had never truly spoken to Zeus before, and he considered me for a long, tense while, as my mother paled, bit her lip, folded and unfolded her hands.

“Very well,” he boomed finally.
“One night.
I’ll return tomorrow to fetch you. Until then…” He shimmered in a golden cloud, flashed and was gone.

Gone so completely, I could almost believe he had never been there at all.
Except for the stench of ozone burning my nostrils.
Except for the miserable expression on my mother’s face.

“Persephone…” She looked withered and so lost—Demeter, goddess of all the earth. I shut my eyes, rubbed at my face, tried to slow my catapulting pulse. She gathered me in her arms, and she was crying, and it was all so terrible. My mother smelled of him, of his golden body. His stink made me sick, but I held her tightly.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered, shaking. “I don’t know how to save you.”

“I do.”

I kissed her forehead, twined my fingers with hers. Her eyes asked me questions, but I could offer no answers. What would this desperate act, my choice, mean for her? Would Zeus take vengeance on her? Would he understand—or care—that I had done this of my own free will, that she was not to blame? She couldn’t know where I was going, what I was about to do, because I wanted her to remain innocent, beyond reproach.

So I said, “I love you, Mother,” and she nodded once, twice. She cupped my face in her hands, questing deep within my eyes as if searching for something. Then she simply turned and left the bower.

I was trembling. I knelt down on the soft, sweet grass of our dwelling, breathing in and out the green perfume.

This was my moment, mine alone.

I remembered the way Hades had taken my hand, wept on my hand.

She was strange and a
stranger,
and I would follow her down to the land of the dead and darkness. I would give up all I had known for the possibility…

The possibility of what, Persephone?

I bit my lip too hard, breathed in and out and counted my breaths; there was something comforting in the neutrality of numbers.

Freedom.

That was what I wanted. Was there freedom in the Underworld?

Hades was good. I knew that, unquestioning. She held my hand as if it were broken, as if she alone could mend it. She made me feel shining, like a golden thing. There was something deep and dark and so beautiful about her. When I remembered her sad eyes, my heart flipped.

In a life of no choices, this one brash act could set me on a path toward the freedom I longed for more than anything else on—or above—the earth.