Destroyer of Light

by Rachel Alexander

  “Greetings, Kindly Ones,” she said, dipping into a low curtsy.

  “So formal, little one…” said Clotho, the woman with the spindle. The wool felt she twisted in her hands was so dark and fine it was nearly invisible.

  “She is only showing respect,” Lachesis said, pulling the thread from Clotho’s fingers as it was formed. Aquamarine, bolder than any dye, flooded through the newly formed thread as she determined its length.

  “The Theoi have no respect for ananke. Including this one.” Atropos snipped the measured piece and twisted the end to keep it from unraveling. “If she did, she would not be here.”

  Persephone swallowed. “I… I respect ananke.”

  “Do you now…” Clotho said. “Even if it meant the end of the cosmos itself? Even if all you loved ceased to be and everyone you knew turned to ash?”

  Her lip trembled. She had no answer.

  Lachesis smiled and measured a new thread, this one emerald green. “Don’t worry, little one. None of your kind can answer those questions honestly.”

  Persephone recalled Aidoneus’s revelation that coming and going at will from the Underworld was not possible, thanks to her new role in the world above. She expelled a tense sigh. “What am I?”

  The three paused and glanced at each other. “It is not often we hear that question.”

  “Because most think they know.”

  “She knows too, but there are many answers for her.” The spindle spun again and more thread passed between their hands.

  “The Destroyer.”

  “The Maiden.”

  “The Queen.”

  “A mother…” Lachesis’s voice said. “You are mother to many, little one.”

  “And mother to none.”

  Persephone shifted uncomfortably. Of course they already knew what her most pressing question would be. “Mother to many?”

  “Half the year, when you nourish, half the year when you comfort.”

  “But the little threads are in your care, always.”

  “And what about my husband?”

  Atropos looked to Clotho. “The seeds cannot return to the earth without them.”

  “Either of us?” Persephone asked.

  “Your husband. And you. You do not play your role alone.”

  “He is your equal and counterpart. In this you saw the true nature of the cosmos.”

  “Together you are mother and father. Rulers of the eternal realm, male and female.”

  “The seeds of the earth are passed from him into your care.”

  “It was ever to be that way.”

  “Maiden no more, yet you are the Maiden when you walk the Earth. The little threads still call you Kore—”

  “They are too frightened by my real name,” Persephone said. “They dare not call on She Who Destroys the Light.” Mother to many. Mother to none. Together you are mother and father. She swallowed hard, afraid of what they would say to so direct a question, but she needed an answer. “Will I ever give Aidoneus a son?”

  “The earth is your womb, Aristi Chthonia.”

  “But as for your own hystera…”

  “…the gift and sacrifice of fertility is yours to share with Hades…”

  “The King and the kingdom.”

  “For just as the earth cannot harvest without your mother…”

  “…it cannot replenish without the sacred union of Aidoneus and Persephone, or your journey between this world and the world above…”

  “…and for so long as the seed rises to the earth to spring forth as new life…”

  “…that new life cannot take root within you.”

  Persephone could say nothing. Her head tilted forward and she felt tears fall onto the damp ground. She wept immovably, silently. She felt the black sorrow— the finality— wrapping itself around her heart, but she refused to give in. There was no room for sympathetic appeal of any kind here, least of all that achieved by sobbing. For all their implacability as governors over the dead, Hades and Persephone were as reeds bending in the wind compared to the Fates. She knew this. Still, the tears fell.

  “She doesn’t ask to change her fate,” Clotho observed as she twisted the fibers together.

  “This one is wise,” Atropos said with a sharp snip of a dark red thread. “She understands ananke.”

  “She knows and accepts that we are only its stewards,” said Lachesis as she drew out another long piece behind the one cut by her sister. It became a golden yellow in her fingers.

  Clotho looked up, the small flame faintly lighting her compassionate, ancient face. Her fingers still nimbly worked the spindle, turning the wool into thread. “Child, take heart. We have not finished speaking.”

  “We never finish speaking.”

  “So much weight given to words already spoken. Too much weight.”

  “What do you mean?” Persephone said, quietly wiping her face with her shawl.

  “There are infinite threads.”

  “Woven in infinite patterns.”

  “In our basket lie the threads for Hades and Persephone’s children.”

  Persephone snapped to attention. “What?”

  “Not immutable.”

  “Not yet, at least.”

  “So much still to undertake before they can be woven.”

  Her tears started again, only this time they welled up with hope. “We will have children then…”

  “Woman, take heed,” said Atropos. “We have not finished speaking.”

  “We never finish speaking.”

  “The words, they do not weigh enough. The threads are already heavy.”

  “Words are words. Threads are threads. And those threads can spoil to felt once more to spin again.”

  “Please just tell me!” She cried, wavering between hope and oblivion. Hecate was right. She shouldn’t have come here.

  “Patience,” they said in unison, their voices dark. Persephone shuddered and dropped slowly to one knee, then the other, the cold mud seeping through her clothes.

  “My apologies, Sparing Ones,” Persephone said, planting one hand in front of her and bowing her head. “Forgive me. I only seek to make sense of what you say. If there are threads for our children—”

  “One, who is twice woven, cannot remain your own.”

  “Two, the ether bound, who shines the torch in darkness.”

  “Three, the blessed harbinger, who reaps the reaper’s heart.”

  “All at last aeon’s end,” they said together, “And all to end the aeon.”

  Persephone stood slowly, watching the Fates’ handiwork, one thread twisted, another snipped, hands moving, measuring, casting a wealth of colorful strands one by one into the straw basket at Lachesis’s side.

  Three children…

  “I… you said…” Persephone stammered incredulously, “I-I don’t understand…”

  “We know,” they answered in lilting, sing-song unison.

  Lachesis spoke the moment Persephone began to step back. “She is going to leave, now.”

  “She thinks she’s heard enough.”

  “Should we tell her more?”

  “No, let her go.”

  “There remains much to be done…”

  “…by two in the dark.”

  Persephone didn’t know if the Fates were dismissing her, or if she was actually preparing to leave. It didn’t matter, she realized. She curtsied once more, and lifted the hem of her peplos out of the mud. The low light outside beckoned her. As she stepped closer, the horizon brightened, becoming daylight, then grew brighter still. The clouds grew distant and wind whipped across the barren ground.

  She breathed in the icy air, shaking like a newborn, and squinting as she emerged. Hecate stood beside the cave, her cloak wrapped tightly around her, the ends flapping in the gale. Persephone licked her lips, ready to apologize, ready to tell Hecate she was right, she shouldn’t be here—no one should be here.

  “I know,” the Goddess of the Crossroads said quietly before Pe
rsephone could speak. She extended her hand as the wind grew stronger. “Come,” she said, “that is our sign to leave, and we should do so before it comes to pass.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “The creation or destruction of the cosmos. I don’t know which. Perhaps both. All these aeons and it is still unclear to me when we are.”

  Hecate closed her eyes and the ether swallowed them whole, the whirl of the Void a comfort. When the Goddess of the Crossroads finally released her, she was standing alone in the throne room. There was no mud staining her dress or caking her sandals. Her hair wasn’t damp or blown out of place and the room was still flooded with darkness, just as it had been when she left it. Persephone turned on her heels, and ascended the narrow staircase, eager to return to the safety of her bed.

  26.

  “He was a runt. Hecate thought that Echidna would kill him when he was born, so she gave him to me to keep and to improve my mood, I think.”

  “A runt? I can’t even imagine him being called average, much less a runt!”

  “His paws were enormous— I knew how big he would get one day, but for a time he could fit in my lap. Would curl up on me and fall asleep when I was judging shades. Three little heads snoring in unison, with three tongues poking out. He wasn’t a very intimidating guard dog, at first—”

  “Obviously,” she guffawed.

  “It’s too bad he outgrew his spots…”

  “Is that why you named him Cerberus? I’d wondered…”

  “Yes,” Aidoneus said. “Not very creative, I know.”

  “At least you didn’t name him ‘Three Heads’!”

  He laughed and moved closer to her. Their conversation had meandered wildly since he’d settled beside her. They had spent the morning and afternoon making love, talking about everything and nothing, and sampling the bounty sent to the Underworld by the mortals.

  Aidon felt as though the intervening time hadn’t passed at all, that they were as they had been before the pomegranate seeds, when she was supposed to be his for always, instead of this strange half-life they would play out until the end of time. He knitted his brow momentarily. The thought that in six short months she must leave again drove needles into him. He pushed it from his mind and focused on her instead, committing to memory every hair that had been pulled out of place, every eyelash framing her slate blue eyes, the gentle slope of her nose, the soft bow of her lips. The pain faded the more he studied her.

  Persephone lay on her stomach, propped up on pillows and a soft black fleece, her arms folded under her chin, relaxed and sated, and gazing at him. Aidon leaned on his left arm, lazily tracing shapes on her back with his index finger. She smiled at him.

  “You’re wondering what in the world I’m doing right now,” Aidon said.

  “You read my mind.”

  “Not a hard thing to do these days.” He bit his cheek. Something worried her, something increasingly palpable. He gave her a concerned look.

  She giggled.

  “While you were away I got a head start on learning how to write to you in the old tongue.”

  She relaxed again. “So is that what you’re doing to my shoulders right now? Writing to me?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “What does it say?”

  Aidon slowly traced the outlines of two glyphs, sounding them out as he wrote them. “I love… you…” he whispered. She buried her face in her hands and smiled, feeling her cheeks flushing hot, then turned back to him. He drew three more symbols, quicker and with a practiced hand. “Pers-epho-neia.”

  “Persephoneia?”

  “It was the closest I could get in their language. And it’s graceful. It suits you.”

  Persephone blushed again. She rose up on one elbow, but he gently pressed her shoulder back to the pillow, stilling her so he could continue writing.

  “Will you…” He drew the next two symbols and whispered as he traced their patterns into her skin. “…marry me?”

  She froze. “What?”

  “Will you marry me, Persephone?”

  “I… we… Aidon, do you mean a wedding? We’ve been husband and wife for eight months, now. Far longer, if you consider that we were betrothed aeons ago.”

  “By the laws of the world above. We are both quite aware those can be broken at will.”

  “But we’re still married. We just spent the whole day doing… married things.”

  Aidon laughed, then drew in a slow breath. “Persephone, I never asked if you wanted to be my spoils of war, or if you wanted to be the bargain I made with Zeus and Demeter. I ask you now, as my equal, as rightful Queen of the Underworld, if you want to be my wife.”

  Her face fell. He was serious.

  “I never asked your permission.”

  “Aidon—”

  “I didn’t. I stole that decision from you when I abducted you. I wish to return that choice to you.”

  She was quiet, then shifted again to sit up, facing him. “My love, when you announced at the welcoming celebration that we would have a wedding ceremony…”

  “I know. I knew as soon as I said it that I should have discussed it with you first.”

  “You know that I love you, Aidon. Perhaps after all this, after Minthe, my mother… Should we wait?” In her heart, she didn’t want to wait; she wanted him to say ‘no’. But she needed to confront him about the truth first… and delaying that was far more comfortable.

  He sensed the doubt in her voice and raised an eyebrow. “If that will make you more comfortable, we can postpone. Do you still want a ceremony?”

  “I do.” She hesitated. The time to speak was now, but she swallowed the questions raging inside her and gave him a nervous smile. “Maybe a smaller ceremony? Instead of inviting everyone who lives in our kingdom?”

  Aidon chuckled. “Anything you wish. We can even have just the hieros gamos itself, if that is what you want. Alone. Without anyone bearing witness.”

  She felt her breath catch and tears clouded her eyes.

  “Is that what you still want, sweet one?”

  She nodded. “I do. I do, my love. But I’ve seen the Rite and its lasting bond… go terribly wrong. My parents…”

  “I am not him. You are not her.”

  “I know. But why is the ritual so important to you?”

  “Because I want to seal myself to you. Permanently.” He rubbed her back. “I have wanted to since the night we shared the Key.”

  “To bring us closer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am already bound to you, Aidon. What more?”

  “I trust you and I love you. I want us to relinquish everything that separates us, every possible thing that could stand between us.”

  “Truly?”

  “I swear it.”

  It was inescapable now. Persephone took a deep breath. “Aidon, if we are to go through such a ritual, if we are going to bind ourselves to each other completely, then we need to know and consider everything about each other. You told me once that you would tell me the truth, you swore upon the Styx to do so, and I likewise should do the same for you.”

  “You don’t have to, my love.”

  “Yes, I do. I certainly don’t want to be less than you, but I don’t want to be some statue set upon a pedestal, either. I am as imperfect as anyone else.”

  He felt his stomach drop, worrying where this could lead. “I will accept it then.”

  “Good.” She stared at him and took his hand within hers. “I, Persephone Praxidike Chthonios, Queen of the Underworld, Goddess of Spring, swear on the Styx to tell you the truth, no matter what the consequences, and withhold nothing.”

  He nodded and brought her hand to his lips, kissing it.

  “I need the same from you, Aidoneus. That you will withhold nothing and tell me everything.”

  “Everything,” he said. “I swear it in turn.”

  She took a deep breath. “I visited the Fates.”

  He froze.

  “I asked them about chil
dren…”

  Aidoneus stood up from the bed and paced the room, his hands raking his scalp. “Hecate took you, didn’t she? I swear by the Styx, when I see her next—”

  “You’ll do no such thing. I demanded she take me, Aidon. Just as you once demanded she take you.”

  “Then you know.”

  “That it is more than likely that we cannot have—”

  “That I lied to you.”

  “You didn’t lie to me, Aidon. I never asked.”

  “But I knew. I lied by omission, Persephone.” He exhaled with a shudder, then stood still, his jaw clenched.

  “Aidon…”

  “I know what they said!” His voice broke. “Gods above, of all the truths my father ever tried to use against me, it was that staying here, becoming ruler of the Underworld would make offspring, heirs, a family, impossible.” He stared at her.

  “What if it’s not true, my love?”

  “It is true and I made it so. I ate the asphodel to bind myself here for penance! But I didn’t realize until after I’d done it that consuming the food of the dead, making this place a part of me… Then you… Persephone, I stopped you from tasting the pomegranate for a reason that morning in the grove. If you had eaten that seed you would have shared my fate,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “But I didn’t tell you why I stopped you because I thought I would lose you. And when you ate the seeds on your own…”

  “Aidon…”

  “You’re a goddess of the earth. Of fertility, for Fate’s sake, and the consequences of eating the food of the dead are eternal. My silence, my cowardice robbed you of…” He turned away from her and went silent. His back shook and his head dipped as he crumpled forward. He tried to take in a full breath and calm himself. “I’ll go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The palace is yours. This is a vast kingdom. You were meant to rule here, and during the winter I can find another corner of this realm to—”

  “Aidon, stop,” she said, her voice firm. His fists were at his sides, his muscles taut, his knuckles white. Persephone rose and walked across the bedroom to him. As she approached tension knotted his body further. “Face me. Please face me, Aidoneus.”