The Dark Wife (22 page)

If this plan failed, if it went wrong…we would lose everything to chaos.

I turned, resolutely, and marched toward the center of the plains of the Underworld, the place Hades had taken me to when she let me into the fields. A sea of the dead followed in my wake, dragging Pallas with them. I clenched my jaw and steeled myself to walk calmly, slowly, with the dignity of a goddess, but I faltered, tripped over my own feet, and every part of me was trembling. My mind felt jagged; I could find no solace in it.

What if sight of the fields didn’t convince them? They clung so stubbornly to their false beliefs. Could they be swayed?

Would Hades be safe?

She had to be safe. That’s all I wanted.

Hades needed to survive this. She needed…she needed…

My heart contracted. I didn’t even know if I could find the fields. I didn’t know how to open the door to it. Pallas had said that only Hades could open the door.

What made me believe that I could do it?

A feeling.
A compulsion.
A hope.

I had no answers, no guarantees, but I was determined to trust my heart. It was all I had left.

When we reached our destination, I said nothing, thought nothing. I fell to my knees, raised up my hands, and I prayed (who do goddesses pray to?). I said, “please,” and I envisioned the Elysian Fields in my mind, remembered the way the sun had warmed my skin there, remembered the soft shushing of the wheat, and, most of all, remembered Hades—my Hades—kneeling before the grieving mortal on the ground, offering compassion and gentleness in a place that scorned her for it. I remembered the taste of my tears.

I tasted them again now.

My eyes were closed, and I was weeping, but when the change came, when the light fell over me, I wiped my hands over my face and rose.

Wheat, everywhere.
Wheat and the dead, the dead I had brought here, and when I turned to look at them, I noted how different they looked in the light. They were translucent, and their eyes squinted, their backs hunched; few of them would meet my gaze.

Frightened.
They were frightened.

I watched them, and I tried my best to understand them. They had wanted this for so long, had pinned all of their hopes to it. They didn’t want the Elysian Fields to be a land of misery, as Pallas and I insisted it was. They wanted it to be a home. In the end, all they wanted was a home.

I found Pallas in the throng, and her mouth was sagging; she implored me with her sad eyes.

I shook my head, determined. This would work. It had to work.

“Come,” I said, moving through the wheat, pushing the dry stalks aside, “and listen.”

We walked, and the fields darkened around us, darkened with crouching bodies, and we heard their wails.

Sadness punctured my chest, wormed into my soul. I felt too weak to go on. I wanted to fall to the ground and give way to my own grief.

But I didn’t. I thought of Hades and I swallowed my weakness, led the dead deeper into the wheat.

Some of the heroes looked up at us, wonderingly, with watery eyes and faces streaked with tears. Most of them failed to notice us at all; they were too lost in their sorrow, sobbing or screaming, or both.

As far as the eye could see, farther, as far as the illusion of field and sun stretched on (forever and forever), there was misery, pain, the deepest of sufferings: an eternity, with only regrets for companions.

I covered my ears to block out the keening, the weeping, but I could not bring myself to close my eyes. I turned around and regarded the dead villagers, noted their shock and their horror, and, worst of all, their disenchantment.
Their loss.

They had been hoping for paradise, and now they knew that there was no such thing.

Hageus
stood, stunned. Her eyes found my face, and her mouth hung open, but she seemed incapable of speech. She gestured at Pallas, and her captors let her go.

She fell to her knees, and I hurried to her, held her up,
smoothed
the hair back from her face.

“Will it be all right now?” she whispered to me, leaning against me, her hands clasped around my shoulder.

“I think so. I don’t know.” I inhaled deeply. “But I think so.”

We both turned our heads, surprised, when one of the villagers, a teenage girl, pushed her way out of the grey, mournful crowd. She wore a ripped garment; her dark hair twirled down the center of her back. She gazed at me for a moment, and I couldn’t guess her thoughts—her eyes were so empty.

And then she did something astonishing.

She kneeled down before one of the heroes.

He was rocking on his knees, rocking back and forth, back and forth. He wore dented armor, and his face was too young to be so scarred.

“It’s you,” the girl told him simply.

He hadn’t noticed her, not until she spoke to him, and now he blinked, as if waking from a dream, and gazed at her face.

“No…” His voice was high, small, like a child’s. He edged backward, his heels scuffing in the dirt, but she grabbed hold of his wrist, whispered, “It
is
you.”

And the man began to weep.

“Please forgive me… I never meant… I didn’t know… I’m so sorry.” He crawled to her, on his hands and knees, and pressed his face against the earth. “Oh, forgive me, please, please forgive me…”

I watched their exchange, dumbfounded. The villagers were silent as they looked on, too.

For a long moment, neither the girl nor the hero moved. Emotions flickered over her face in slow succession—surprise, fury, pain, melancholy—until, finally, her features smoothed, were blank. She stood up, and she looked down at the man’s prostrate form.

“I forgive you,” she said thoughtfully, forming each word with care.

The man slid up from the ground, sat back, looked up at her, blinking away his tears.

“I don’t know how you could,” he said.

“I’ve had a long time to think about it.” Hesitantly, awkwardly, she leaned over and patted his shoulder. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. I’m over it.” She almost smiled. “It’s over.”

I shook my head, amazed. They had known each other in life. And they had found each other here, and, perhaps, resolved their pain.

They continued to sit and stare at each other, the girl resolute and clear-eyed, the man astounded.

A cry rang out from the throng of villagers, and an old man—thin and tottery—emerged,
  tripped
, ran, and threw himself down at the feet of another of the heroes in our midst. He gathered the boy—who had been wailing, screaming, unceasingly—into his arms, and he held him, whispered to him, until the boy was silenced, and the old man wept on his shoulder.

Gradually, like birds breaking from a flock, the dead dispersed, wandered off, searching for souls who had gone missing, or for those who had done them harm, perhaps taken their lives.

I witnessed, with streaming eyes, profound moments of kindness. A little girl offered a hug to a hulking soldier. A sobbing wisp kissed the face of a man who had lost his legs but still had arms to wrap around her and hold her close.

Forgiveness, sympathy, empathy, love.
The outpouring of emotion made me weak-kneed. I had steeled myself for a war, and, instead, here was its opposite: peace, given and found. I sunk down beside Pallas on the ground, and we leaned against each other, heads bent, simply breathing.

“Persephone?
Pallas?”

I looked up quickly, shielded my eyes against the imaginary sun.

“Hades.”
Everything I felt for her, all of the love in my heart, tumbled from my mouth in the shape of that one precious word.

 She stood over us; I basked in her shadow.

“Persephone, what happened?” She knelt down, gathered me into her arms, pressing her mouth to my ear. I shook my head against her. I couldn’t speak. If I told the story now, I would fall apart, and I had to keep my composure for a little while longer, until I led the villagers back, until I knew that we were all safe.

“It happened,” was all Pallas offered, and when Hades looked at her with a tilt of her head and an arch of her brow, she added, simply, “And it’s over. It’s all right.
Thanks to Persephone.”

Hades’ eyes roamed my face. “But—how—”

“
Shh
,” I smiled at her. “It’s all right.” I drew her lips to mine, kissed her lightly,
cherished
the warmth of her, the scent of her, for a short moment. Then I stood, hands on hips, to survey the altered Elysian landscape.

The screams, the moans—they had been replaced, for the most part, with hushed, murmuring voices. People sat in small groups and spoke quietly, sharing healing, or the beginning sparks of it. I was so weak with relief, I was uncertain what to do, but Hades rose and put her hand in mine, and that was all I needed.

“Pallas?”

I turned my
head,
cast my eyes about for the woman who had spoken.
Hageus
.
Her gaze slid over the three of us, as Pallas stood up, beside Hades and me, and she grimaced.

“I wanted to…”
Hageus
looked up at the sky, squinting in the light. “I wanted to apologize. I was wrong. You were right. I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you. I’m sorry…” She sighed heavily.

Pallas stared at
Hageus
for a very long moment.

The dead uprising could have ended in ruin—for Hades, for Pallas, for the Underworld itself. We both knew this, felt this, a yawning abyss of alternate reality, of what could have happened, what almost did happen.

I squeezed Hades’ hand and swallowed the lump in my throat.

Finally, Pallas lifted her chin and stated, simply, “I don’t lie.”

Hageus
nodded,
her expression remorseful. “But I know someone who does.”

Pallas’ eyes flashed. “Tell me.”

“
Charon
—he was the one. He told us that Hades had a plot against us, that she put her friends in the Elysian Fields and shoved the rest of us in the village.” She glanced at Hades, quickly looked away. “He said she was responsible for everything wrong with the Underworld, and that if we joined together, we could overpower her…end her…and we would have the wonders of the Underworld to ourselves.”

Her eyes skipped over Hades’ face again. “We were going to kill you. We thought it was the only way.”

Hades’ expression did not change, but her grip on my hand tightened. “
Charon
told you this, to do this?”

“Yes.”
Hageus
shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably. “He told us that you were cruel and that Zeus was kind, that Zeus wanted to make things better for us down
here, that
he wanted to assume control over the kingdom of the dead…to help us.” She swallowed. “
Charon
told us how to kill a god. He told us to throw you in the Styx.”

“Wait,” said Hades, holding up her hand. “Go back…
what
?”

“I’ve told you all I know,”
Hageus
sighed, eyes on the dirt. “We believed that the Underworld was a dark and terrible place because you made it that way, to torture us. But now…” She held out her arms, to the fields, to the souls surrounding us. “Now I know we believed a lie.”

Hageus
left us, and Hades, Pallas and I stood facing one other, stunned.

“Zeus is behind all of this,” I breathed. “He used
Charon
like a puppet. He’s trying to steal away your kingdom. Hades—” I stared at her, open-mouthed. “Zeus tried to kill you.”

Hades held her head in her hands, and she shook it, back and forth. “That’s—no. He’s done some terrible things, but…death?” She swallowed, whispered in a voice that broke my heart, “Where do the gods go when they die? It has never happened before. He wouldn’t wish that on me. He couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t he?” Pallas whispered.

I offered my arms to Hades. She leaned toward me, and I embraced her, held her, as she stared over my shoulder at the fields, silent.

I was silent, too, but inwardly, I raged. Zeus would answer for this. Somehow, someday, I would make him cower before me, in the name of my love. I swore it.

When we left the Elysian Fields, Hades did not close the door to it, promised to never close it off again. It shimmered and
shifted,
a golden land in the center of the dark plain. Now the dead—the villagers and the heroes—could come and go as they pleased.

Hades had told me, once, that there were rules, that she was bound by Zeus’ decree to keep the heroes in and the villagers out. But things had changed now. Hades had changed. Dark shadows crowded her eyes.

She walked with purpose before Pallas and me, and we followed, side-by-side, mute. Our feet carried us over a long straight path pointed toward the river.

Together, we approached the rocky banks of the Styx, and together, we waited for
Charon
.

And he came.

His boat bounced over the churning waters, aimed in our direction.

Charon
knew. He knew, and he stood there as he always did, pole in his hand. His shape was dark, darker than the waters beneath him; the only hint of movement and color was the wretched blue eye.

It stared at us.

“What did you do,
Charon
?” asked Hades, and there was pain in her voice, but also power, anger. I shivered.

“I did what I needed to do to claim what is rightfully
mine
,”
Charon
answered in a dozen voices, voices he had stolen from coinless, desperate souls.

Hades did not hesitate. She stepped onto the boat, slowly, deliberately. “I
made
you,” she whispered. “You were my creation, fashioned by my own two hands, with my breath for life. And you betrayed me.”

“What would you have me do, goddess? Bow down before you?” He laughed his horrible laugh. “You offer me nothing, and Zeus would make me a king of this place. I would have made a proper ruler. I would have shown them the true face of fear…”

Hades stared at him, her shoulders square,
her
fingers loose at her sides. “What do you want,
Charon
?”

“Power,” he hissed, but she held up a hand to him and shook her head.

“No,” she whispered.
“Truly.
What do you want? Tell me, and I will give it to you.”
Pallas gaped at me, eyes wide, and I covered my heart with my hand.

Silence slithered, sinuous, and expectant, like a world holding its breath

Charon
broke it with a single word: “Freedom.”

Hades held out her arms to him. “You had it, have always had
it.
You could have gone anywhere, anytime. You could go now.”

But
Charon
swirled, a maelstrom of unspent emotion. “I was created for no other purpose than to ferry this boat. It is all that I am.”

“
Charon
,” said Hades, “I made you complete, with a heart and a soul. You are not bound to me. You can step out of that boat at any moment and walk away, if you truly want to.”

His voice was sad, surprised, when he whispered, “I do.”

Without a word, Hades held up her hands, palms flat, and light collected between her fingers, forming a sphere that glowed so brightly I had to blink and look away.

When I could see again,
Charon
—the shifting, seething, foggy mass of him—was gone, replaced by a dim, wavering soul, a soul like any other in the village of the dead.