The Dark Wife (27 page)

Everything smelled white, was white and cold and stark, and the
sky
—so blue, it broke my heart, made me gasp. But I didn’t care about any of it.

I stared down into the Underworld…and the trees here, the earth, the beautiful sky paled and paled and paled and paled. This was no longer home to me.

“It’s winter,” said Hermes gently, turning me about, walking with me across the meadow, into the tree line. “Come…”

I walked, and it was all so bright, blinding, and I stumbled once, twice, across the trunks of fallen trees. Hermes caught me the first time, but not the second, and my hands landed in the white drift, the frozen water—snow, Hermes said.

I didn’t get up.

I huddled there, shivering, for a long moment, my hands flat on the frozen ground. I was cold, and the wet seeped through my tunic, and Hermes was reaching for me, but I didn’t get up.

And then something happened. Cracks spread in the ice, in the snow, beneath my fingers. And twining up and out of the cracks, on stems new and green,
came
flowers. They were white, with lovely bobbing heads and soft petals.

I stared down at them, uncomprehending.

The earth still loved me, still knew me, even though I’d abandoned it and had been gone for so long. It was a comfort. It calmed and centered me, though I carried a dead feeling in my belly, though I had left Hades and, with her, my heart.

And now, now, now I had to see my mother—and my father, the liar, might be there, too.

We crossed the Immortals Forest in moments, heartbeats,
wingbeats
, as Hermes carried me over the earth. We found my mother’s bower too quickly, and I felt the earth rise beneath my feet as he nodded to me, face expressionless, flickering in and out and disappearing. He’d told me to rebel, and this was where rebelling got me, back to where I started, more broken than I’d ever been, alone, at the edge of a dark future.

I pressed Hades’ stone against my heart—it was warmed, now, from the heat of my skin, and I thought of her, far, so far beneath the earth, and I took a deep breath, and I entered the bower.

“Persephone…” My mother gathered me into her arms and—so
softly,
I almost didn’t hear it—began to weep against my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” we both said, again and again, and then I was holding her, wrapping my arms tightly about her shoulders. But she pulled away, stooped, doubled over with weeping, and I felt the immensity of pain within her—heavier than the world that she bore on her back.

Zeus gets what he wants.

The shape of what had happened, above world, while I’d passed my time below it, began to form in my mind like jagged barbs. I gazed at my mother. My mother—what had Zeus done to her? The pain within me gave way to a burning spite, and I sat down, weak, on a green cassock that molded to my body, growing up and around me,
vining
,
flowering
. This bower was the only green thing left in a wintered world.

“Mother,” I said, trying to find my voice. “Mother…what happened?”

She wiped her face, shook her head, knelt down before me and brushed her hand over my forehead. "It doesn't matter now. But, Persephone, what happened to you?"

“I left,” I told her. “I left you.”

Her eyes were bright. “You did a good thing. You did what you had to. I'm glad you did it, Persephone. It saved you, I think.
For awhile.”
She leaned forward, pressed her lips against my ear. Her whisper was softer than breath: “You shouldn't have come back.”

She smelled of crushed flowers, broken earth. I stared at her wide-eyed, but she shook her head, pointed upward.

Fear descended upon me, a dark shadow dangling in the cavity of my chest. My mother gathered my hands in hers and bent her head. She shed tears upon my fingers.

~*~

I dreamed I was in a round hole in the earth, walls of dirt towering overheard. I could see a sliver of moonlight above, but the walls were closing in, and dirt rained down upon me, and I couldn’t scream, because the earth filled my mouth, and I was buried, buried, lost.

I woke, the sensation of suffocation too real, and I coughed for a long moment into my hand, in the dark. My mother was gone from the bower, melting snow and ice, reseeding the planet—as she had been ordered to do.

By Zeus.

I lay in the dark—the safe, familiar dark—and imagined myself somewhere else. What was Hades doing now? I tried to sleep again, tried to call up dreams of her, but I couldn’t relax. I paced the tight confines of the bower, and—skin prickling in the cold air—walked out into the night. All was silent, save for the soft shifting of tree branches as the snow melted and fell. There was a sharp scent in the air, of blood, and I could scarcely see my hand before my face.

"Persephone?"

A dream.
I was dreaming. I was still lying in my bed, asleep, and I dreamed that Hades—that Hades was here—

I stiffened, as she spoke my name again.

No. This was real. I was awake.

I turned to her, heart rattling against my bones. And a third time, she said it, my name, syllables dripping like honey from her tongue, and I was running in the dark, slipping over the ice, tripping over the dead, tangled vines and into her arms.

"You're here," I whispered, reaching up, feeling the planes of her face beneath my hands. I didn't know what else to say or do; I pressed my head against her breast, heard the steady heartbeat there.

"Of course I'm here," she laughed easily, holding me at arm's length. It was a sudden movement, and it was too dark to see her clearly, and my breath caught in my throat. I stared at her, transfixed.

Her black eyes, even in the darkness, shone.

"Hades?"
I whispered, reaching for her again, tracing my fingertip over her lips. "Am I dreaming?"

"Surely not," she laughed again, a laugh clear as bells, and she bent her head to kiss me.

Her mouth was hungry and hard and pressed roughly against my lips. I broke away, heady, desperate for air, but she drew me close again, held me too tightly, hurt me, and I pushed against her shoulders, pushed her away. She stepped backwards, swiping the back of her hand over her mouth.

"My Persephone, precious Persephone." She offered a conciliatory hand to me as my pulse thundered in my head. "You look lovely, so lovely. And what a pretty necklace that is around your lovely neck."

There was a roar in my ears, all around me, as my mind raced with thoughts of swans and bulls and
shapeshifting
gods. "Do you like it, Hades?" I
whispered,
my voice sharp as claws.

"It's very pretty," she said again, reaching for it.

“Don’t you dare touch
it.
”

I didn't know what was happening—the earth was moving, crumbling apart, and the roaring had escaped my head, now rushed and wailed all around us, and the trees shook, snow falling in heavy clumps, and I pointed my hand and called the liar by his name.

"Zeus," I whispered, and everything went still.

"Don't be foolish," said Zeus evenly, still wearing the shape of Hades. It was perverse; he held out his arms to me in a gross mimicry of my wife. "Don't you know me?"

"You monster."

"Well—"
  And
Hades’ face melted, morphed, and as the skin sloughed away, fell all around him, Zeus began to glow. He dazzled, but I would not shield my eyes. I stared at him with bare loathing; I was so full of it, I tasted its bitterness in my mouth.

We watched one another, Zeus and I, like two animals preparing for a fight. He glowed enough to light the forest around us, but I kept my eyes on him, on his contemptuous face.

"You see, I am king," he said, "and kings do as they please. If you try to stop me, if you will not let me have my way, my dear daughter, then I will have to do…things. So sit still and play nice.” And he came for me.

It began as a tiny spiral in my heart, the fear that grew and grew and chased me in circles. “What things?” I asked, trying to summon the confidence that came with rage, but it hid from me, and I stepped backward, cringing.

“It must have been frightening for you, when the dead revolted. Was it, Persephone? Now, how hard do you think it was for me to put those events in motion? How easy do you think it would be for me, now, to wave my hand, to destroy
her
—” he spat the word “—and her entire rotting kingdom? I permit it to exist simply because I need to put the dead somewhere. But I could find another place, another
lord
, and easily.”

“She’s one of the elder gods, older—and far
wiser
—than you.” I glared at him, though I still trembled. “You couldn’t destroy her. You wouldn’t dare.”

“I have destroyed better than her.” He snorted. “A goddess no one thinks of, except with scorn. A goddess no one worships because they
fear
her—little do they know…” he laughed, eyes alight, shining. “Now, to get what I came for…”

He reached for me—he grabbed me with his enormous hands, and he tore my tunic, and he put his mouth on my skin, and the blood pounded and rushed in my ears, a crescendo so white hot and terrible that it poured out of my hands, out of my eyes, out of every inch of my body, a white hot light that turned green at the last possible heartbeat.

Zeus had tortured my first love, and he had stolen me away from Hades, plotted to murder her. He had abused my mother, and how many other mothers? How many people had he hurt? Was there anyone who hadn’t been scarred by him, by his selfish whims?

Hades had compared me to the stars, and I felt like one now, burning, burning—so hot, I had to explode.

Zeus held me still, but his mouth was open wide in shock, and when he realized what was happening, what was about to happen, it was already too late. There were newborn vines and briars all around us, flailing and whipping and spiraling about him, dripping with silver poison, wrapping around him, tightening, squeezing, dragging him away from me, far enough away for my leaping heart to calm.

He bellowed in rage, twisted out of the vines’ grasp, even as more and more roared through the hole in the earth I had created with my wrath, tightening, lengthening,
knotting
around him. He tore them off, and they grew again, over and over and over.

I leaned against a tree and watched him struggle.

Finally, mired so deep, encapsulated in the green, heaving mass of feverish life, he cried out: “I yield, I yield!”

I didn’t trust him—how could I ever trust him?—but my anger had seeped away, sated. I sliced my hand through the air, and the vines stopped writhing; they grew slack, cut themselves off at the quick, so that Zeus had to disentangle himself.

He struggled and
cursed,
flung words at me too terrible to remember.

When he stumbled out of the heart of the growth, his body was lacerated, bleeding, silver poison leeched into his skin, making it translucent and blue.

It would take his body long to overcome this poison—the poison of my hatred for him. He had to limp home now, or risk weakening beyond anything he’d experienced ever before, perhaps beyond the point of healing.

“You will suffer,” he murmured as he stared at me, eyes flashing, dangerous, a vicious, wounded animal. I raised my arms, aimed them at him, and the great god Zeus flinched and cowered, moving quickly, tripping as he ran away from me, into the darkness. I collapsed on the cold, vine-strewn ground, shaking.

My mother came. I heard her running up behind me, crying out my name, but I closed my eyes, pressed my hands to my face. “Oh, Persephone, what have you done?” she whispered, drawing me to her. “Oh, Persephone, what have you done?”