by Eileen Glass
He tries to be gentle, since she has shown nothing but overwhelming love for him.
“Why are they not looked after better?”
She pats his back, which may be a signal of some kind. It feels familiar.
“Wait until we get home. We’re almost there.”
And so the horse continues past sad, decrepit homes with smoke rising from fires. He has never seen orange fire until now, and Hecate has stopped him from touching it once or twice. His mother told him the story of how a god named Prometheus gave humans the ability to create fire of their own, different from the underworld nymphs, and she seemed perplexed the entire time she was telling it.
This was something he was supposed to already know.
So Seph supposes there is a difficult conversation coming up. Often his mother looks into his face, or even grabs him by the elbow and turns him, like she’s looking for differences. She has found none, except for what’s missing in his mind.
They come to a place with a large decorated gate and a winding cobblestone path that takes them past many storehouses and fields. It is all neglected. But gradually humans arrive, peering at them, looking down the road, and then several run toward the large house. Now this looks like an acceptable home. This is something Hades would make for Elysium, but inside, he already notices the ways it is different.
There are a lot less flowers growing in planters and pots for one thing.
A lot less windows, sitting areas, and shelves for scrolls too.
There are no dogs that greet them in this place, though they did go by a pen of cattle, a pen of goats, and more. For some reason, despite the fact that the humans are starving, they did not slaughter these of hers.
Withered slaves clothed in rags guide them into the dark home. The lamplighter is an old man, and he struggles with his chore. Seph offers to help, but his mother takes him to a couch instead.
“Slaughter one of the bulls,” she tells the servants. “We will have a feast and then retire to our beds. Draw baths for us as well.”
“Mother, I will draw the baths,” Seph says, for he can’t imagine the stick humans carrying much of anything.
“Oh, Persephone,” she says, and puts her hand on her hip the way he remembers. “Sometimes I know it’s you. And sometimes it’s like I’m talking to another man. You didn’t always call me ‘mother,’ you know. Unless you were mad at me or there were others around.”
“I will see to the baths,” Hecate says, though her voice is weary. Seph nods to her, acknowledging, and then addresses his mother.
“Well, I am mad. How can you just let your people starve and die like this? How can you not even care?”
“Shh,” she tells Seph, patting him on the back again. Seph is reminded of how mothers hold and pat their babies when they get fussy. She looks at the servants, clearly concerned that they may have heard. “Let’s go upstairs and talk there.” This is more like an order of Zeus when he’s decided to stop being friendly.
Seph climbs the stairs. He does not know what Hecate’s limits are. But he trusts her. Neither she nor Hades would have let him come to Demeter if he was in true danger. Zeus was always the most dangerous threat. The goddess of the harvest was secondary.
And so he goes alone, and his mother climbs up after, grabbing her dress up around her knees.
It is strange to see physical beings behave in physical ways. Most of the girl souls forget this habit, and they’re dresses drift instead of catching under their steps.
They arrive at a room Seph immediately knows is his. There’s a cage in one corner. He becomes fascinated with the furniture for a time, putting his hands on everything, opening every drawer. There is a mural of a fruit tree on one wall and many grapevines trailing up another window.
“Did I paint?” he asks. And he knows she knows.
“No, Seph. Why would you ask me that?” She looks lost, shaking her head.
“Something happened to me since I last saw you…” Hecate’s name is on the tip of his tongue. He turns away from the murals and looks at her, expecting to see accusation. He thinks her eyes will be narrowed and her lips will form a scowl of hate. You deceived me! she might say.
But instead it is a sad look. A horrified look, almost. And she wipes her cheeks.
Her tears do not seem fake, though her reaction is strong.
“I knew it.” As she approaches Seph, it is not to attack him but to embrace him. Seph puts his arms around her uncertainly. Having seen her enormous form sitting between two mountains, he wonders why she chooses to be smaller than him.
“You’re not the same boy anymore, are you? Come, sit over here,” she leads him to the bed, and she sits close.
Seph can’t remember her, though he looks at the simple bed and the fine (though dusty) bed coverings, and he thinks that he should. He grew up here, with her. And he almost feels like he can see her kneeling there, at a time when the room was warm and she was looking healthier than she is now, telling him stories about his family and all kinds of strange things.
But he can’t actually see it, so maybe it is just his imagination.
“Tell me what he did to you,” she says, touching Seph’s cheek and petting down one of his arms.
There are things about her he doesn’t like. Her lack of concern about the humans almost makes him certain she can’t be a loving mother. But she is warm and concerned otherwise, and it seems genuine.
“Your father will get him back,” she says. “Whatever Hades has done—I’ll make sure Zeus listens. There has to be retribution. How did you escape him, dear boy?”
Seph almost laughs at her suggestion. He gathers up her hands and holds them in his lap, trying to reassure her.
“It is not Hades who hurt me. And I am still happily married. Mother, I was attacked by a nymph.”
Confused, she echoes his words. “Nymph? A nymph working for Hades? Who would do—” She shakes her head. “No, not a nymph. You are a god. Their species would not…”
“It was a nymph, Mother. An ex-lover of Hades.” And he tells her all about Tartarus, how he was lured out there, how he saw the boats, and how Minthe tempted him near the edge with the threat of harm to himself.
“And where was Hades?” she asks angrily, squeezing Seph’s hands tightly.
“In the upperworld because I sent him. He discovered a pet I had, that I brought with me. A small rabbit.”
She looks at the cage.
“He had to send the little rabbit back because living things cannot subsist in the underworld, and I wanted Hibus to go to a good home. Minthe used the opportunity to lure me away, and I suspected Hades was hiding something from me in Tartarus. I wanted to learn the truth. And so I did.”
“I’ve never liked that place,” she says, shaking her head. “It keeps Gaia alive, for one thing. I don’t know if she can still feel pain in her state, but to keep her blood running like that…” She looks around the room solemnly, and Seph knows she is measuring the essence of Gaia. The beauty of the physical world versus a goddess she may have met as a babe. Gaia slew herself shortly after Zeus was born.
“You do not want the world to continue?” Seph asks, and he knows her answer will form his opinion one way or the other. The hard part will be convincing her to cooperate with Zeus when the powerful god himself has already failed.
“It is not that. I love this world. But Gaia was…” She has no words. “Well, she was just as beautiful and magical as all her little creations now. These are her dying dreams, you know. Everything that’s taking shape is her invention. She was a storyteller in the old world. In the darkness that was bleak and empty, I sat in her lap and heard stories of color and magnificent things. I don’t like to think of her dying. That is all.”
“Then you should want the world to continue,” Seph says. “For she is not dead until the Earth is gone.”
It is time, and Seph bites his lips nervously.
“Mother, I came back for one reason only. I need you to stop punishing t
he world and letting the humans starve and freeze to death. Even if you miss me, the suffering you cause is not justified. I…”
He realizes he is going to lose. But how can he argue with such a fanatical mindset? He shrugs in his own thoughts and decides to ask.
“How can I convince you that all this human suffering is not worth it? That the world and everyone in it, even the mortals, are worth more than your attachment to me?”
“Is that what you think of me?” she asks, surprised. She does not let go of his hands yet, so he assumes he hasn’t offended her deeply. “Persephone, you knew this about me before you left. How much of your childhood is gone now? What do you remember about me?”
“Nothing at all. So please explain.”
She nods. “Persephone, you and I are the same. I don’t know if the other gods realize it yet or not. It’s something I never talked about. I was born into a powerful family with dueling brothers. Fortunately, the attention was not on me.”
“What do you mean? I saw you turn into a mountain.”
“Yes, but my magic manifests without my will. The same as you. When I am upset, I grow. When I am happy, my warmth spreads. The plants and animals thrive around me. That is how I am the Goddess of the Harvest, my son. And truthfully, I’m not even sure if it’s I who am doing it. I never had the ability to warm the Earth until you came along! I thought it was you, working your magic through the womb within me. I thought you would be the God of the Harvest when you were born. I thought you would be powerful and magnificent.”
She smiles at him. It is proud and not disappointed at all.
“And you were.” She squeezes his hands, reassuring him. “But not powerful.” She shakes her head. “That part remains a mystery. I only know that I became the goddess of the crops and the fields while I was waiting for you. And then I thought you might be creating it still, but your magic has not manifested in any noticeable ways. Besides your warmth. Seph, I don’t know if you are doing it or I am doing it, but the entire world was ice before you.”
Sixty-Six
As the weeks pass, Seph learns to plow again. He learns to sow the crops and the different methods of tending them. The sun is out every day, and though the area is still frigid for awhile, snow and gray skies disappear.
Humans gather outside the manor boundaries, and they are the sickly, desperate sort. His mother worries about him going out there, exposing himself to filth and diseases, whether he is a god or not.
“You may spread it to our healthy staff here,” she says as an excuse, but Seph ignores her, and she never presses too much.
Seph shares what he can with the people outside every day. And it is not enough. It is never enough.
But Seph looks into their yearning eyes, he sees their skeletal forms, and he does not despair. These will soon be free of all suffering. He only goes and shares so that the citizens will remember how Persephone is a good king, and they might like to stay with him for eternity in Elysium.
He meets a man one day in rich but frayed clothes, shadows around his eyes, but an optimistic expression.
“I heard what happened to you,” he says. “The nymphs told stories of your abduction all over the countryside. Are you okay? Was it bad?”
“The underworld is a beautiful land of peace,” Seph replies. A practiced response, for he does not want any of these frightened children to pass away crying. The food does not grow quickly enough to save them, though the Earth is growing very warm very fast. Neither he nor Demeter have direct control over this magic, but it seems that urgency is applied.
“You will like it so long as you’re dead first,” he says with a little bit of joviality. “Hades is a stern king, but so long as you stay within the borders, you will pass eternity untroubled there. You will find many loved ones and be without suffering.”
The man nods once and slowly reaches for his hands. Seph gives them, and the man says, “I understood when you had to leave. And I understand now why gods and humans should not mix. Here I was worried about getting gray alongside you—and now you’re king of the underworld! I can’t keep up with that.”
He smiles, and Seph wishes he could say the man’s face is familiar. They must have had a connection. But there’s nothing there, and so Seph says, “In the underworld, gods and spirits are nearly the same. You don’t ever grow old. Only your physical form on Earth does.”
And later in the day he asks his mother if he ever had a mortal lover or close friend while he was here.
“You fell in love with the boy who delivered apples. But Seph—you fell in love with a lot of boys.”
She makes Seph laugh.
While she is grating in certain ways, there’s a lack of decorum that Seph has never had with anyone else. Not even with Hades. His mother speaks bluntly and sometimes thoughtlessly, and Seph finds himself becoming comfortable around her.
He learns the reasons for her apparent cruelty.
“Persephone, they die so fast, it is nearly worthless to be attached to a single one.”
“They are each unique and special, Mother. And if they don’t return to Gaia to be reborn, if they choose Elysium instead, they might live longer than you and me.”
He sees a mild look of surprise on her face when he tells her this.
“Huh,” she replies.
And though it is a quiet victory, Seph gets the sense that he settled something longer between them. Some fight he cannot remember. Possibly about the man he may have had a love affair with.
Demeter is nicer to the humans around him after that. She is also still quite spoiled and every bit a noble god woman who expects her baths to be drawn and her mantle to be dusted. But she was never outright cruel to begin with, just indifferent, and now she is simply more personable.
Several times when some task is performed, Seph sees her notice the human doing it and she says, “Thank you.” She is even making an effort to learn their names.
They have disagreements sometimes, such as the sharing of food beyond the manor boundaries.
“We need our slaves to be strongest,” she says, “For they will be working the grain mills and harvesting the crops. Honestly, there is nothing we can do for those outside right now. Some will survive until summer, and those will be the ones we feed after. They will repopulate.”
But Seph finds himself able to deflect her arguments. The words come to him easily.
“Perhaps you see them as only human, spending brief lives in your existence. But they are my subjects, Mother. I will rule over them in Elysium. And I say they are fed whatever we can spare, as long as I think it will help. I will choose the ones. I can see who is almost alive and who is almost dead.”
He can tell she is uncertain around him sometimes. But she never asks him to leave. And she never expressly criticizes all the ways that he is different. Instead, she tells him a lot of stories about the old Seph. And he gets to relive himself through her.
“Hey,” he says one evening, “did I ever have a pet cat?”
She blinks several times and her lips roll inward as if she’s thinking of words she’d rather keep silent. Until she says, “Yes. A cat. Leto or something. He lived a good life. Why do you ask?”
“Huh. Well, I just remember being mad at you about him. I don’t know why, but I was quite worked up about it. Do you remember that?”
“No, I can’t remember…” she says vaguely. But moments later she confesses a sad tale in which Zeus surprises her in the courtyard and his cat hid under a bush that got crushed.
“I am so, so sorry.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he tells her, and he refills her cup with wine. It is different in the upperworld. Worse. But it helps him get through the evenings when all he can think about is Hades. “It was a long time ago. And you didn’t mean to.”
“I liked that kitty…” she says quietly, sipping. And Seph is reminded that sometimes he sees a youthfulness in her, and in all the gods actually. Even Hades, and of course himself. For the mind does
not truly age the same as the body does.
And then comes a long night. There are many long nights.
Hecate prods him sometimes, saying, “Are you still fawning over that jerk?”
And he can always force a laugh for the dismissive way she says it. But then one night, when it is very warm and no one in the house sleeps with a blanket anymore, Hecate sits up on her sleeping matt in his room and admits, “I miss spending days with the little one. Adonis. He was a little angel, wasn’t he?”
Seph musters a sleepy snort. “A typhoon, more like. Assuming he isn’t talking to you—at the top of his lungs by the way—I can always find you two in the library by following the trail of paper and forgotten scrolls.”
“He is lively,” Hecate says with a smile. “He will grow into a beautiful man. With passions.”
And Seph is only mildly curious at how she would think of him like that. To a god, the lifetimes of humans go quickly, and so if she is interested in Adonis, ten years or so must not seem a terribly long time to wait.
“Hades is a beautiful man with passions,” he says to get a rise out of her, and it works. He and Hecate have become great friends while they wait for the crops to grow. In the entire upperworld, he and Hecate are the only ones who miss the realm of shadow, coldness, and death.
Well, not the only ones, as he discovers one day when he wakes up to his mother rushing around the house, getting ready for travel.
“Persephone, please stay here and look after the fields without me. I’ll be back in a week.” She kisses his cheek hurriedly. “Promise me you’ll keep safe here. And see that the cows get fed plenty, since I think they’re all carrying double.”
Seph doesn’t wonder much about where she’s going until Hermes visits the next day.
“Your mother’s not here? I guess she got the news early then.”
“What news?” Seph asks.
Hermes looks hesitant to tell him, but after a little silence he says, “Ohhh, it’s nothing. Just a… a little rumor about a nymph acting as a guide to humans who want to travel to the underworld. She asked Artemis to find him… in the mountains.”