The Dark Wife (9 page)

Persephone, Persephone--where are
you
?Oh
, my beloved daughter! Zeus, where could she be? Did you take her? Have you stolen her from me?” My mother wails and beats her chest and scrabbles for ash in the fire as the king of the gods laughs and shrugs and leaves her weeping, alone.

I woke with a start, breathless. My heart felt as if it would break the cage of my bones. I pressed my hands against my face, surprised to find my eyes sore and wet. I’d been crying in my sleep. And my mother—my mother had cried for me in the dream. But it was only a dream.

Woozy, I sat up, detangled my legs from the twisted blankets. I knew where I was, why I was here, but to wake from a nightmare in this cold place, with no green in sight, no sunlight, no birdsong… I felt the weight of the earth pushing down upon me again, and it was only when I lifted my eyes, noticed Hades standing in the doorway, that the weight lifted and I remembered to breathe.

I rose, washed my face, and we walked together; we didn’t speak. I had no sense of the time because there was no sky. I supposed, here, time was irrelevant, since nothing grew, nothing changed. The corridors meandered up and down, ending in staircases so narrow that my hips brushed the walls, and I wondered what it all meant, my life, life itself, that it led to such a strange, dark conclusion.

Hades guided me onto a balcony. Instead of stars, my eyes met uninterrupted blackness.

 “Your hair,” she said, touching the ragged edges that brushed against my ears, one gentle finger grazing against my bare neck.

 “I sold it.”

We watched the sunless morning in silence. After a little while, I stopped expecting a sunrise.

 “I’m sorry,” she said. “There are so many…rules in the Underworld. What is received must be in equal value to what is given. These are old laws, older than me—older than the earth.” Her hands gripped the marble railing. “I couldn’t make it easier for you, though I wanted to.”

I reached out and touched her arm. She didn’t flinch; she didn’t react at all. So I let my hand fall away and whispered, “It was my decision. I rebelled.”

 “What did you say?” Hades fixed me to the spot with an intensity of gaze I had never seen from her before. I felt pinned, spellbound.

 “I rebelled,” I repeated doggedly. “Hermes told me—”

 “Hermes,” she laughed, pressing her fingertips to her temple.
“Of course.”
Her pale face—luminous as a full moon in the dark surrounding us—tightened with agitation. “He is a dear friend but a born meddler. Did he say anything to you about…all of this?”

I hesitated. “All of what? I’m not sure I understand.”

Hades chuckled for a moment, nervously, arms folded over her middle.

 “This…” She cleared her throat and tried again: “This has never happened before. No one, mortal or immortal, has ever
chosen
to enter the Underworld. We don’t know what will come of it.”

My heart was sinking. She seemed different from last night, far away, locked up with her thoughts. I felt very alone.
            So I remembered
Charis’s
face. I painted it perfectly for my mind’s eye, replayed Zeus’ unforgivable violation,
held
the horrid image over my heart like a shield. There were reasons that I had come down to this place, and if I ever forgot them, I would lose myself to despair.

Hades was watching me, but I couldn’t read anything from her steady black gaze.

 
“Persephone, why have you come here, truly?”

 
“Truly?”
I had already told her about
Charis
, about Zeus and his plan to whisk me up to Olympus. Her question had a deeper motive, I was certain, but I couldn’t discern it; she was too distant now. “I came for a chance,” I murmured finally, resolve making the words sound sharper than I’d intended. “I came for a choice.”

She nodded, expressionless. “Yes, well—you’ve come a long way. I hope you find what you’re seeking.” She straightened, shook herself, as if waking from a dream, and then she turned and walked back down the corridor at a brisk pace, beckoning me with a glance over her shoulder. I trotted to catch up. “I was waiting for you to wake so that I could show you the Underworld,” she said, and we quickly wound our way through the palace. I took three steps for every one of hers.

“There is so much here that you must learn, see—
There
is even beauty. It’s not much, but it’s my home.”

I tried to imagine what it must have been like for her, what it continued to be like, her uncountable years underground.
Waking to darkness and whispers instead of sunlight and birdsong.
Somehow, she seemed contented with the gloom, so I didn’t pity her—or myself. Her world was my world now, and I was eager to explore it by her side.

We left the palace and walked together over the hard earth, our footsteps silent beneath the wind of whispered words. I could see, dimly, by the light of the torches, but then something fell over us—like a mist—and I was blind in the thick fog of black. Hades took my hand, squeezed it tightly.

 “There are spells of darkness here that descend without warning,” she said, her voice low, her breath warm at my ear. “Don’t fear them. If you wait a moment, count to ten, they evaporate.” And even as she murmured the words, the darkness began to dissolve, break apart like a flock of frightened bats, and I could see again, gaze at the placid planes of Hades’ face. A path—darker than the dark earth on which we stood—stretched long and wide before us. I noted the far-off walls of the cavern arching overhead, but my eyes couldn’t find the dome, the ceiling, where the walls joined together. When I looked up, I felt a sensation of limitless space, but that couldn’t be true: somewhere above us—far, far above us—grass grew. Unless…

Was the Underworld a place you could journey to, physically find, beneath the earth, or was it another world, like Olympus? I had walked here, found the gate. But my mind couldn’t make sense of this dark vastness, couldn’t connect it in any way to the earth I knew so intimately. Again, I imagined myself caught in a waking dream. Nothing seemed real. Not this path, not Hades’ hand in mine, not those stone mounds up ahead, or the sound of water lapping.

But it was the water that coaxed me out of my thoughts. I knew very little, but I knew this place. Hades drew me to stand near to her on the rocky shore of the river Styx. I looked for
Charon
, listened for him, but we were alone, and I breathed a secret sigh of relief.

 “Here the rivers Lethe and Styx mingle together,” Hades said, sweeping her arm over the waves. “You’ve experienced Lethe waters, their healing capabilities. But one drop from these rivers combined, and you would forget all you ever were, all you ever knew.” Her eyes held mine, the black of them shining, slick as oil.
“Oblivion.”

I shivered, chilled.

“But who could ever want oblivion, something so final, so absolute?” I wondered, mystified, even as we were joined by a…being, a soul, I guessed, thin and wispy as smoke from dying embers. He did not acknowledge us—in fact, he walked
through
us—and kneeled down in the water, bent his head to drink.

When he stood, he turned and stared at me with eyes so empty that I took a step backward, broke my hand from Hades’ grasp, and moved aside so that he would not pass through me again. He did not appear happier in his oblivion, and a moan escaped his throat, the sound so miserable that I felt my own heart seize in sympathy.

 “For all I have seen and all I have done, I would never wish to forget,” Hades said, watching the soul shamble, head hanging low on his shoulders, toward the darkness. “But some do. And it is their choice to make.”

“Hades…” I began, worrying at my lip with my teeth. “There were—people in the river, drowned in the river, when I came over on the boat…and they reached for me, and their faces were so anguished…”

Hades nodded, her eyes lowered so that the long black lashes shadowed her cheeks.

 “Again, an old law—the Underworld is rife with old laws. If you swim into the water, sink into it, the Styx takes you.
Keeps you.
You can never come out.” Hades held both of my hands, positioned
herself
in front of me, so that her nose tipped toward mine. “Those souls tried to cross back over, to return to the land of the living, but the river trapped them. And they’ll be trapped forever.”

I swallowed hard; my eyes glazed over as I imagined the horror. What if I had jumped from
Charon’s
boat? To be captured in such a way, wet, cold, dark…and lost for all time—it was worse than any punishment Zeus had ever devised.

“Don’t go into the water, Persephone. Promise me.”

 “I promise.” My voiced sounded odd, detached.

Hades pulled me along, and I followed after her, staring at the black waves with a new dread.

We walked in silence until we drew nearer to the mounds of stone. They were not round piles of rock as I had first assumed, but dwellings—smallish, dusty, grey caves, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands,
millions
. I couldn’t make out the end of them; they were lined up like a fastidious child’s collection, and they faded into the tunnel of darkness beyond. As we moved among them, wisps fluttered out of the doorways, gathered before us: women, children, men.
Here and there dashed the transparent spirits of cats or dogs, and one of the women rode up on a huffing ghost mare.
The souls observed Hades and me with blank expressions, and though none of their lips moved, the whispers increased in volume and pitch, a tornado of sound.

Hades inclined her head at the crowd. “Persephone, this is the village of the dead. These souls are mortals whose lives expired. Some have been here for days, some since the beginning of time.”

I didn’t know what to do, how to act. I gazed at the wispy form of a young girl with hair the color of clouds, and I smiled my warmest smile, but her face closed up tight, and she folded in upon herself, turning away, hunched like a flower too heavy for its stem.

Hades’ voice rose to speak over the whispers, and she addressed the gathering in a fond manner, more like a mother than a queen. “Here is the goddess Persephone,” she said, resting her hands on my shoulders, “daughter of Demeter and Zeus. She is my invited guest, and I ask you all to treat her kindly, and welcome her.”

Her words were received with awkward stillness, and the whispers buzzed, thick and indecipherable. The souls—so many of them now, and more appearing with every moment—stared at both of us, not with wonderment or even curiosity, but with a mute antipathy. I watched, shocked, as some of the souls sneered at Hades and openly balled their fists.

Still, Hades offered them unruffled words. “Will you not welcome her?” she asked, and it seemed no one would, and I didn’t want anyone to; I wanted to go, to never come back. But then a young woman strode forward.

She was more opaque than her companions—almost solid—dressed in a fine white tunic common to the Greeks, hair bound up with dangling, golden tethers. Her eyes flashed, mischievous, and her legs were bare of sandals, and when she stood before me, she cocked her head and grinned.

“A daughter of Zeus, are you?” she proclaimed loudly enough for an echo. I cringed at the reverberation of my father’s hated name. But the woman’s face held no malice, and her crooked smile softened to one of mild amusement.
“Welcome to the Underworld, goddess.
We”—she gestured widely—“are the dead.”

I was tense, uneasy, surrounded by the gawking souls, and still shaken from my long journey; a nervous giggle escaped my throat. I put a hand to my lips, but the smiling woman laughed now, too.

 “I am pleased to meet you,” she said in a quieter tone, and she gripped my arm with her strong fingers, like the mortal men do when greeting one another.

“Thank you.” I felt a little calmer, though the crowd still stared.

Hades sighed, bowed her head between the two of us, whispered, “They’re worse, Pallas.
Angrier.”

 “I do what I can to quell them, but… They’ve stopped listening to me. They think I’m under your spell…” The woman—Pallas—shook her head and smiled wryly. “They don’t trust me, Hades. But, oh, where are my manners? Persephone…” She took my hand, bent over it, kissed it. Her lips lingered for a moment on my fingers, soft but very cold. I shivered involuntarily, and Pallas threw her arms up in the air.