The Dark Wife (10 page)

 “I’ve lost my touch with the fairer sex, dear Hades,” she laughed. “Tell me, Persephone, is it because I’m—hmm, how do I put this delicately—dead?” She pressed her hands against her hips and winked.

Hades chuckled, and I turned to look at her, surprised. “Persephone, Pallas is my dearest friend in
all the
Underworld, my faithful companion.”

 “Oh,” I breathed, and my stomach fell. My heart teemed with dreadful feeling: confusion, loneliness, loss.
Loss of what?
Something I had never had to begin with…

Suddenly, I was furious at myself, and I was blushing. I wanted to hide my face, but there were souls everywhere. And what did it matter? Hades had provided me sanctuary, and I was grateful for it, and I had no rights to expect more, to want more—  

 “It’s not what you think,” said Pallas gently, laying her hand on my hot cheek. “Have you never heard my name before, Persephone? Don’t you know my tale of woe?” She spoke the last word with a sardonic twist to her lips, but her eyes were dull, saddened.

 “I’m not certain—I was very sheltered—”

“Allow me,” Hades said, offering Pallas’ shoulder a squeeze. “Our lovely Pallas lost her life in a fit of anger and passion, the most potent of mortal, and immortal, emotions.”

“Too true,” Pallas smiled. “Go on, go on.”

“Pallas was the beloved of the goddess Athena. You are familiar with her, Persephone?”

I nodded. “A little, yes.”

“They quarreled, and in
an…
accident of rage, Athena ran Pallas through with a sword.”

 
“Oh, how horrible!”
I gasped, agape, but Pallas cocked her head, shrugged her thin shoulders.

“I was mortal, weak, and Athena was strong. We loved…” Her voice broke, but she shrugged again, folded her arms. “We loved hard and deeply, and we fought like wild beasts. She was too wise for me, and I was too impetuous for her.

“It was for a foolish reason that we quarreled—so small, so foolish that, now, I can’t remember it. When I died, Hades took pity on me, became a friend to me when I had no one, and no hope.” She patted Hades’ hand, gazed at her warmly. “And Athena…well, even the gods can’t come down to the Underworld for casual visits. I have it on authority, though, that she misses me.” Pallas’ eyes shone. “She took my name, you know.
Pallas Athena.”
She stared down at her unshod feet. “It has been three hundred years.”

My hand found my heart, and it was breaking for her, and I said, “Oh, Pallas,” remembering Athena drunk and fondling the mortal girl on Mount Olympus.

 “It was a long time ago. But I can’t forget it. So Hades takes pity on me. We’ve become friends, I think.”

 “Yes, we have,” Hades smiled.

I offered my hand to Pallas, and she held it, gazed at it wistfully. “I hope we can be friends, too.”

She nodded. “We will. Well, of course we will!” She tucked my wrist in the crook of her arm, grabbed onto Hades with her free hand, and tugged the both of us away from the assembled dead and their strange, sad, whispering village. The sea of souls parted as we passed through, and I was so glad to leave that I smiled widely, caught Hades’ eye, and she ducked her head toward me, smiling, too.

I noted again the solidity of Pallas as compared to the wisps of people we left behind. I could not see my hand through her arm, and her footfalls stirred the dust, just like Hades’ and mine. I puzzled over it, how alive she seemed, save for the coldness of her skin and a barely there haziness.

 “What interests me, Persephone,” she said, as we neared the doorway of Hades’ palace, “is how you came to the Underworld.”

 “I walked here,” I said simply. She chuckled, patted my hand.

 “It’s just unusual… No one, except for Hermes, enters the Underworld unless they’ve died.”

“But why is that?” I asked her. “It was a difficult journey, but not an impossible one, and…” I began to worry that perhaps Zeus would come fetch me, after all, come down here and take me away, punish me, and my mother, and possibly Hades, if he found out where I had gone.

Hades shook her head; her hair gleamed under the torchlight, and her eyes glittered like black stones. “Fear, Persephone. They are immortal, but they fear death more than the mortals fear it. No god or goddess would dare enter my kingdom, because they fear that they could never leave it.”

“And could they leave it?” I
asked,
my mouth dry, palms damp.

“You are free to do as you please.”

“I didn’t mean— I just wondered—
You
said that there are laws…”

I was afraid that I had hurt Hades’ feelings, or appeared ungrateful, but she gazed past Pallas at me and smiled her gentle smile. “You are free,” she said again, “to do as you please. My kingdom is yours, and when you tire of it…your earth will welcome you back.”

My heart fluttered like something loose caught in a wind. I wanted to thank Hades, tell her how much I appreciated all she had done for me, how I cherished her kindness, but the proper words wouldn’t take shape, and Pallas let go of us both to climb over and through the ruins of the fallen tower. “Truth be told,” she said, her back to Hades and me, “the gods are wise to fear this place. There are dangers here, fates worse than death. Have you warned her to keep away from the Styx, Hades?”

“Yes—”

 “Everything dark and unseemly lurks hidden in the Underworld. There are horrors unlike any you might find up there, above ground.”

“You’re frightening her,” Hades said, and Pallas glanced at me, her face apologetic. “I don’t mean to, but she lives here now, and she needs to know… I would want to know.”

“I do want to know,” I said, surprised by the strength of my voice, “and I’m not afraid of being afraid.”

Pallas turned to me, hooted and clapped her hands. “There it is! That’s why you’re here, you and no other. It could only be you…” She nodded at Hades, and their eyes locked in a weighted gaze. Pallas’ lips curled up into a grin. 

We walked through the doorway of the palace.

~*~

I couldn’t sleep. Phantom faces of the souls trapped in the river Styx haunted me every time I closed my eyes. Frustrated, I rose and paced my room. Alone with my thoughts, with the dark, I felt crushed down, and my skin was crawling. So I left, well aware that I would never find my way back through the maze of twisting corridors and staircases.

All was so quiet, a deafening quiet that I could not bear, and I almost longed for the chorus of whispers of the dead. The press of silence on my ears was painful.

 “Oh!
Persephone?”

Pallas—she’d nearly run into me, and she grasped my upper arms to regain her balance.

“I didn’t see you. I’m sorry. I thought you were sleeping.”

“I couldn’t. I hoped a walk might help—” 

“Come, come! I’ve just the thing for restlessness.”

I followed her down a corridor that arced to the left, and she pulled me by the hand into an illuminated room—gold-and-white shifting light—occupied by a beautifully carved lyre and Hades.

Pallas dropped to the floor, folded her legs beneath her, took up the lyre and began to strum, the notes clear and bright, sparkling. She grinned as she played, and her joy was contagious.

Hades crossed to me, questions in her eyes,
the
sphere of light glinting in her palm. I smiled; I was so happy to see her. “I can tell you’re busy; I don’t mean to interrupt—”

But she smiled, stopped my mouth with her finger, and tossed the orb up over our heads; it showered down upon us, twinkling like tiny stars in the night of her hair.

“How…” I began, and then her hand was in mine, and the light was still falling—no, hovering in the air—and Pallas made the strings sing, bliss to my ears. Hades twirled me around, and I was wrapped in shining gossamer strands, dancing with tendrils of light. I felt wild. Hades’ skin glowed, and my heart caught in my throat.

And then she was dancing, too, a whirl of darkness and brilliance.

I moved to the
corner,
lay my hand against the wall, and watched Hades spin and spin. When the music stopped, she sprawled on the floor beside Pallas, laughing, breathing hard,
her
black eyes bright.

I felt like a poor child staring through the merchant’s window at something beautiful, a treasure, I could never afford.

“Good night,” I murmured, so quietly they may not have heard me, and I turned from the room and walked back down the corridor, retracing my sleepless steps. Several wrong turns later, I found my room, and, slowly, I sat down on the bed, stunned.

I knew this feeling. I knew what this was.

I lay down on top of the blankets and closed my eyes to the dark, covered my brow with my hands.

“She’s so beautiful,” I whispered, and I lay there awake for long hours, wondering.

Five: Pallas

“Wake up, Persephone.”

I opened my eyes, rubbed a hand over my face, my hair, unused to its ragged shortness. I blinked to clear my dreams away, and in the dim light of the room, I saw Pallas kneeling beside the bed, smiling at me like someone with a secret. I drew my knees up beneath the blankets and smiled back at her.

“You sleep like the dead,” she grinned, and she helped me to my feet. “Hades is in official mode today—she has to greet some new heroes arriving at the Elysian Fields.” Pallas faced me, hands on hips, as I bent over the basin to wash my face. “She won’t be able to attend to you for awhile, and she
implored
me to look after you. So! Let’s see what mischief we can get up to.”

I tried to hide my disappointment, but Pallas made a clucking sound with her tongue and grabbed my hand, leading me out of the room before I could dry off; rivulets of water coursed over my cheeks. “You’ll see her soon enough, lovely. Tell me—what do you feel for our queen of the dead?”

“Mm,” Pallas replied, mysteriously, and she led me with practiced expertise through the meandering maze, holding her tongue all the while. When we stepped out of the palace, my heart sunk just a little: the great dome of blackness arched above, and the flat, dark plane of the Underworld stretched before us. Soon enough, I knew, I would learn to accept the gloom, but my eyes were so hungry for light that they clung to each torch we passed; the weak green glow was never enough.

I listened to the whispers of the Underworld and followed Pallas along the long, hard path beside the river Styx. When we reached the village of the dead, souls watched us but did not speak to us—Pallas moved too determinedly. I caught glimpses of wisp children staring through carved-out windows, of ghostly men and women clustered together, whispering—always whispering. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I feared I might lose Pallas in the dull confusion of identical dwellings, so I matched my pace to hers.

“Where are we going?” I finally asked when she paused at the roiling river’s edge.

“I want to show you something. Silence, now—I have to concentrate.”

To my horror, she knelt down at a place where water lapped stone and thrust her arms shoulder-deep into the river.

“Pallas, no!
You can’t—”