Hades and Seph

by Eileen Glass

  Seph shakes his head.

  “Two young souls—though they look old—the new ones usually look ancient—well, they decided to use your wedding as an opportunity. They saw that Hades was distracted, by you of course. And they found out that Cerberus, the big hound dog, was kept in the stable so that you could get married without getting bit or something. These two young souls are trying to escape back into the upperworld now. They’re running for their lives, trying to find a place to cross the River Styx.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Yes. It happens as often as a mother or father or son feels a purpose that they need to return to in the upperworld. Even at the cost of angering the most merciless god.”

  “And what happens to them? What if they do cross into the upperworld?”

  “If they can get there, they will go to Tartarus. A place of eternal punishment.”

  Seph frowns. He does know about Tartarus, of course. Everyone does. Hades is infamous for the eternal punishments he’s given the giants, Tantalus, and others. The ones in Tartarus are mostly mortal or creature souls, but they are sent there by Zeus, and everyone remembers that Zeus (and Hades) can keep a god tortured in Tartarus forever. The stories are enough to make sure that the rulers are obeyed among the other gods, and challenges do not happen often.

  “It makes him that angry? That somebody would try to leave?”

  Seph hasn’t directly thought about escaping yet, but the gravity of this question pulls on his soul.

  “Yes, young king. So don’t you do it. These young souls are stupid in my opinion. What Hades will do to them if he catches them before they escape is not that bad compared to Tartarus.”

  “What is that?” Seph asks, wondering who it was really that he made love to last night. “What does he do to them?”

  Thirteen

  “Cerberus, my good boy! How are you?” Hades says excitedly, unlocking the stall where his large hound is kept. The animal stands on two legs with its front paws sticking out of the gate bars, three muzzles pushing through to lick him up.

  The middle one gives a frustrated bark and howl, the sound sorrowful.

  “Oh, I know, boy. I know, I know.” He has to swing the door open slowly, and the big dog walks with it, not understanding the physics of his imprisonment right away. Until the door is out far enough, and then the hefty beast drops to the straw-covered floor with a whump. He barges at the open space, and the door slams out the rest of the way. Hades only has time to put his hands up before he’s downed by the happy, impetuous beast.

  And though he’d rather not be picking straw out of his hair, it’s only a matter of seconds until he’s on his back on the dusty barn floor, guarding his face from three slobbery tongues and awful breath, while also trying to pet the hound in reciprocation.

  “I missed you too, boy. Aah! I’m sorry I had to keep you in here!”

  The hound paws his guarding arm away and snaps a bark at him.

  “I only had to do it because you’re such a bad dog! You’re such a mean good boy, aren’t you?”

  The hound hops off at last and turns a circle beside him, indicating he would like his rump scratched, which his master does for him as he sits up.

  Hades would look a lot more kingly and regal if it weren’t for his hound, who seems to be convinced the god is just as rowdy and common as he is.

  “We’ve got to go on a hunt today, boy,” Hades says to the ear of the left one. It is difficult to scratch all three heads at once, and they demand equal attention.

  The word hunt does not trigger the dog immediately, though usually he would run to the horse and start looking back, as if to say, Hurry up!

  He is too distracted by the appearance of his master, and no doubt wonders why he was locked up in the first place. Cerberus will usually sleep in the room with him, curled up to the right of the bed. And since Hades has ended his relationship with Minthe, he usually wakes up to the hound ‘sneaking’ into bed with him, his paws on the mattress, inching his snouts closer and closer to give Hades sneaky, playful, good-morning licks.

  “You’ll be in the stable for awhile, boy. I’ve got romance in my life now. Do you smell him on me?”

  Perhaps, perhaps not. The dog does have a preoccupation with his clothes, but that’s likely because he wants to learn everything that Hades was up to while he was imprisoned.

  “He’s going to be your new master, boy. You’re not going to like him, I know. He’s not going to like you either. But pretty soon you’ll be back in the palace where you belong, yeah? If we have to… Maybe we will stick Seph out here in the stall instead, eh?”

  Not really, of course.

  But possibly. If he finds out that Seph doesn’t like dogs and isn’t willing to change his mind, well then…

  Easy problems first.

  Hades stands and starts to brush himself off, but there’s just no way to get all the straw and dirt off of places.

  “Hunt now, boy. We’re going on a hunt!”

  The dog turns in a circle, whines, and yaps. He rears up to two legs again, holds briefly, tongues lolling out adorably, and then bounds in a circle around Hades’s legs.

  “Yeah, we better go get them, huh?” Hades says in his dog voice, bending over to pet him again. “Let’s go bring them home! Come on!”

  He trots toward the open doors, where Alfric and a stable hand are waiting. The stable hand holds the horse, one of his black steeds who sits with a back leg cocked and her ears back like she’s grumpy to be kept out of the pasture this morning. She tosses her head to remind the stable hand that she’s inconvenienced.

  And Alfric waits with two sets of manacles, the long chains tangled and drooping from his arms.

  Despite his small size, Alfric is only truly happy when he’s being helpful.

  “Thank you, Alfric,” Hades says, bending to take the heavy, rattling burden from him. He winds them up in his hands and slings the loop across the front of the saddle. One ear flicks forward on the horse. She knows that sound. She knows what they’re doing now, and she shuffles her feet.

  She’s going to get to run.

  Cerberus bounces toward the gate, growls, and looks back. Hurry up!

  “On the day after my wedding, too,” Hades says with a groan and pulls himself up onto the horse.

  “Sorry, my king,” says the stable hand, Taushev. He is a quiet boy who still to this day only says yes or sorry and my king. He looks at the manacles with fear.

  He was a runner once himself.

  With a nod to him, Hades kicks the horse to trot toward the paddock gate, which another stable hand is already opening. They gallop through and gain speed as they follow a path around the palace that leads to the banks of the River Styx. Cerberus bolts like mad with his ears back, streaking toward the trees.

  Hades chuckles to himself for how silly and excited the dog looks. He likes to work, his loyal dog. Like Alfric, he likes to help his master. For that reason, he is always excited to go on a hunt, and Hades usually gets his news that someone has run off by his excited dog yapping and turning in circles in front of him.

  The horse huffs steadily, her neck bobbing with her gait, and easily takes the narrowed, curving path into the trees. They’ve done this enough times that she could follow it blind. Soon the path will meander out, sticks and debris appearing in the way, but his horse has most of the forest memorized too, especially the riverbank, where she can hop over every errant rock and root.

  Hades loves his broad, winding river. The River Styx. It’s as deep as the ocean, possibly, and all manner of things reside within. Enormous creatures who haven’t existed in the mortal world for longer than when the giants were around. They are older than he is.

  And sometimes there is the Goddess Styx herself, of course, who the river is named after. A quiet, compassionate type, she is a great animal keeper and looks after the aquatic beasts. She is also sometimes helpful in pointing the way to one of his strayed citizens.

  He doesn’t
sense her in this area of the woods today. He shall have to rely on Cerberus and the speed of his horse, who has a harder time keeping up the further they get into the rocky, untamed woods.

  Then he hears the joyful howl of his hound catching the scent.

  The two souls are the same ones he pointed out to Seph as they traveled to their wedding. A man and a woman. Not a couple, but they are from the same part of the Earth, a place Greeks haven’t discovered yet. They’re quite overwhelmed by everything, but their village leaders know their culture, and their village has others from that continent in it.

  This is not a huge comfort. The souls come from different times. When the citizens of Elysium run off, it is because they feel alone. Some purpose pulls them back. Usually it is the love of some family member who needs them. Or sometimes they are just not happy here.

  But they drank from the River Lethe, and they swore the oath to be his citizen. They swore to forget and renounce their earthly life. Hades made it very clear that they are his.

  He hears a frightened scream up ahead and urges the horse to pick up speed. There are only moments now. He hears the dog howl happily. And then there is a growling, yapping roar in the trees as Cerberus catches the prey.

  What condition his errant souls are in when he gets there will depend on how quickly he gets there.

  His horse bounds into a small clearing amongst the trees, and Cerberus has the woman underneath him, his three heads biting, shaking, and tearing her flesh off the bone. Blood flies off his jaws and teeth as the woman, appearing elderly, raises a weak arm to stop him. She beats on him with a frail fist. This only causes Cerberus to tear at her arm, two heads wrestling for dominance of the limb like they’re squabbling for a bone.

  Her blood is ink black and pools all around her. Blood is imagined by the souls, who don’t actually have physical bodies. Those rotted in the upperworld shortly after their death. But his errant citizen can certainly feel herself bleed. She can feel the dog’s teeth in her flesh and his claws digging rends against her struggles.

  Old souls are much harder to catch. They can be wandering in the forest for days by the time Hades catches up to them. And they greet Cerberus’s violent vigor with an amused smile.

  An old soul of Elysium cannot be caged in by their king. That is why the hunt is so important. A new soul is like a new babe, but one who is destined to be absolutely free of anything you say or do. Their training must be harsh and realistic. If Hades was to jump off of his horse, shoo Cerberus away, and act like a doting father, she would not be afraid enough to never run off again.

  He made mistakes in the early days.

  Now he pulls in the horse, doing a half circle around where she shrieks and screams, wailing to get away as vividly as if she were a live woman attacked by a real dog.

  “Shh, woah, there now,” Hades tells the horse and pats her neck. She turns her ears back distastefully for the screams.

  “Please! War chief, please! Mercy! Call off the dog!”

  She reaches for him, and Cerberus claws into her back, biting her neck and clamping down on it hard. In the upperworld, he would hold her like this a few minutes until she died. In this world, she only continues to wail and bleed, trying to fight off the dog. But she is handicapped by her own memory of her elderly, feeble strength.

  The other two heads bite her arm and shoulder.

  Hades walks the horse up close to her and then dismounts. He takes one set of manacles with him and does not call off the dog as he approaches.

  “Stop him, please! I will die! It hurts! He’s killing me!”

  Hades lost many sweet children who didn’t fear him in the early days. Those were his mistakes. He hates himself just thinking about it. Of course they wandered! What sort of child behaves a father who doesn’t punish them?

  Fatherhood took hundreds of years to learn and hundreds more to perfect. Now Hades is an expert, and he has no reaction to her cries.

  Going to one knee, he captures each wrist in the manacles.

  “Let go, boy!” he says, standing with the chains in hand. “We’ve got another to catch! Go on!”

  Cerberus puts her down, stares a moment with a happy, ink-dripping grin, then bounds off.

  The man, wherever he is, will suffer the dog’s attack for longer, until Hades can be there.

  So be it.

  “Get up,” he tells the woman, pulling on the chains.

  “I can’t walk!” she sobs at him in her language. Hades knows all the tongues of men, including the ones they’ve forgotten. “P-please, chief! Leave me! I’m maimed! He crippled me! Just leave me!”

  All of this is said around a lot of wailing and gasping. She’s in so much pain, she can hardly speak.

  Hades drags her. His horse snorts and takes a few reluctant steps forward to meet him.

  “I can’t walk! Chief! I’m no value! The dogs broke my back! They tore my leg!”

  Indeed, her soul body is bent and maimed in several places. But he doesn’t answer. Hades lets the new souls believe that their bodies are healed and the memories taken by drinking from the River Lethe. When the truth is, it is their own mind that cures such things. This is not a secret he wants getting out.

  With her on the ground, he mounts the horse. He nudges her into a walk, and the wailing old woman is dragged, broken and bleeding, her screams rising in fresh pain. It is easy here, for now, in the clearing. Going over the rocks and roots, all the way back to the palace they ran all night to flee, will be a long journey of agony. And they will take it slow. One step at a time.

  Neither she nor any of the younger souls in Elysium will be inclined to run again. The newest babes, of course, will always need the lesson.

  Fourteen

  Seph only pretends to be asleep, as he hears the door to the den open and close. A soft, almost imperceptible voice says, “Undress me here. So we don’t wake him.”

  And an answering female voice says, “Yes, king. Wine for you?”

  “Yes. A lot of wine, Verah. Thank you.”

  “I will get it for you, sir,” says a child’s voice, the loudest of the three.

  “Go with him, Sefkh. Help him carry.”

  Then there is only time to wait. Hades stays in the den for some time, while a figure quietly enters the bedroom and places objects that clink on the opposite nightstand, where Hades will sleep. He hears the sound of pouring liquid, and then the figure leaves.

  Seph opens his eyes just enough to see an adolescent young man carrying the wine goblet back. Hades can be seen through the open door, his shirt being removed, his hand reaching for the wine goblet as soon as his arm is free of a sleeve. He tilts his head back, taking a hearty gulp.

  Seph wonders about the events he heard from Minthe. They must be true. A nymph doesn’t have any reason to lie about this. And Seph knows the rumors of Hades. Neither the mortals nor the gods speak of him often, and if they do, they’ll try to avoid saying his name. Yet, somehow, everyone knows the name Hades. That isn’t an accident.

  And everyone was entirely too pleasant and too vague all day, as Seph inquired, Where was his husband? When would he be back? What was he doing?

  Minthe gave him the straightest answer. Even another lamp lighting nymph in the palace only said, ‘He is doing what a king must be doing, my king. And he will be back when he is done, my king.’ Repeating titles of respect is something his mother’s nymphs do also when they must give the goddess some news that will upset her. This nymph also added, ‘He wants to return to you quickly, for his task is necessary but unpleasant. He will be with you as soon as he can, my king.’

  The nymph was probably just telling him the same thing in a different way, trying to say something closer to what Seph wanted to hear because he wouldn’t stop pressing for details. But that little phrase has stuck in his mind, and Seph wonders whether or not the nymph bent the truth a little? Or if this was genuine information.

  ‘He wants to return to you quickly.’

  And then, ‘Don�
�t wake him.’

  It seems he’s being foolish at first, watching the pale god let Verah take him out of his pants. Seph’s breath deepens, and he thinks that surely a god who wanted to spend time with him would ask for Seph’s help with that? Seph would do it gladly.

  He’s been missing Hades. Even hearing about the hunt and how Hades drags souls injured by his dog back to the palace to heal, their walk being their punishment, has not dampened this emotion that yearns for the dark god.

  He would not call it love. Rather, for now, it is a mixture of fascination, fear, and hoping to be loved.

  Fear because the longer he is away from Hades, the more his mind has analyzed and twisted the memory of their lovemaking. He wants the dark god in bed again. Just to be close and be in private, not necessarily for physical pleasure.

  He feels like he didn’t truly meet Hades until they were both naked in this room. He would like to meet his husband again and decide for himself which interpretation is correct. The unfeeling monster that Minthe described? Or the slightly playful, alluring god that Seph remembers?

  Something in-between?

  Seph shuts his eyes and makes sure his breath continues steady and slow as the naked god turns to the door. He hears footsteps, and then the door closes. When he peaks out of his lashes because he can’t help himself, his husband’s face is hidden by the bottom end of the wine goblet.

  Then he crosses to his side of the bed, sits, and Seph hears the wine pitcher pouring again.

  “Three pitchers. Smart, Sefkh,” Hades mumbles to himself. And every glass downed is followed by the sound of pouring.

  Seph realizes the fault in his plan of stealth. Pretending to be asleep might let him observe the dark god unknowingly for a few moments, but those moments will only be spent drinking, and Hades may soon use the aid of the wine to pass out.

  So he sits up and mimes a yawn. “Oh, you’re back.”

  Hades looks at him over his shoulder. “I did not mean to wake you.”

  “No, it’s okay. I, uh, wasn’t sleeping that deeply anyway. Obviously. Uhh. Where have you been?” He shrugs as if he doesn’t care. But he really, really wants to hear this. And he wants his husband in bed with him again.