“The trees create their early fruit,” she said, her mind filled with a vision of the dark soil coaxing the new seeds to spring forth, their leaves to unfurl above the fertile ground. “The blossoming trees spread their sweetness. The fallow season is passed,” she said, drawing him closer until their hands interlocked at their sides. “The rains are over and gone. My beloved is mine, and I am his.”
She was reminded of when he’d shared the Key with her, how close they had needed to be— within each other, skin to skin and thought to thought— for it to pass to her. With just the touch of his fingers, she felt that same current flowing between them, the unrelenting pulse of life beneath them, drawn to and from the earth. The Styx wound through their veins, the seeds unfurled, their hearts beat, their bodies warmed, their essence was imbued with all the energy that coursed through the worlds above and below.
She felt him thicken and rise between them and molten heat charged from her womb. He trembled as he lifted her chin, then canted his head until his lips met hers. She shook as she shared his kiss, overpowered by the sensations coursing through both of them.
He feathered his lips along her neck and felt her pulse echoing in his veins. He could feel the trees surrounding them, the fruits growing heavier on their branches, the seeds ripe, the fruits pregnant with their multitudes.
“Come, my beloved,” he said, his voice rasping, “my beautiful one come with me.”
He knelt down and kissed her womb just below her navel, and their minds were simultaneously filled with visions of creation, and the visions from outside the Cave of the Moirai. He sat in the center of the grove before her, his phallus rising from his lap, his hand reaching up to hers, beckoning her to join him in the center of their circle. She grasped his fingers and straddled him, his arm holding her aloft as she slowly made her descent. Aidon held her against his chest and she hovered just above him and wrapped her legs around his torso, trusting his supporting arm. The tip of his phallus prodded her vulva, waiting and ready for the final words of the rite to be spoken in unison.
“Put your hand in my hand,” they said together, grasping their left palms between them. His voice shook. “Put your hand on my heart. Sweet is the sleep of hand to hand. Sweeter still the sleep of heart to heart.”
He released her and she opened to him, their last connection made, their bodies shuddering together. Persephone threw her arms around his neck and whimpered in his ear, her voice no longer under her control. “Oh, my God…”
“My Goddess,” he whispered roughly against her cheek. Aidon lifted her up with aching languor before dragging her down upon him again. They cried out together, sensations expanding. The grove filled with their presence, concentrating their pleasure and charging it back through their bodies. Their hearts slowed as one, echoing the timing of each thrust. Their breathing synchronized. Their eyes closed and they felt everything. Their eyes closed and they saw.
The seeds burst above them, the drops of juice ignited, fire trailed from them like falling stars as they dripped to the ground. A breath, a thrust, a heartbeat. Hades and Persephone were surrounded with light and flames, the branches spreading with white fire. She held him, he held her closer. Sensations became an inseparable whole, a graze of skin, a brush of lips, fingernails digging into flesh, hardness, softness, every chill that raced up the spine and every flash of heat, all fused together.
The fruits above them opened one by one, bathing them, anointing them. Fire rushed across their skin. It poured through their souls, merging, coalescing. It burned their laurel crowns and the sparks flew off like innumerable stars, surrounding them. They moved in perfect unison, building and destroying, ceasing and starting, crashing through each other. Flames licked and consumed them, lost to one another in holy fire.
They saw themselves distantly in visions— the past. They were an infant being ripped from Rhea’s arms, her screams wild, her eyes red as she tried to wrest the babe from her husband. They were born a second time, expelled by Kronos into the midst of war. They were at the great meeting and the hieros gamos on Olympus, and Persephone’s conception. They ran carefree through the fields. They sat on the ebony throne of the Underworld. They were within their first dream, shared in Eleusis. They were falling, falling through the earth, holding each other in the darkness of Erebus.
They were ferried across the Styx.
The good mortals— the ones who were especially brave or kind. There’s no place for them? Persephone had said.
They shared the Key.
And sacrifice their usefulness to the world above? Won’t the living world only deteriorate if we cloister them here? Aidon answered.
If they decided to leave, they would have that right. And new souls are made here every day. They can take the place of those who wish to stay. People can change, Persephone reminded him.
If we could, what would we do differently? What would you want? Aidon asked her.
She will have warmth; and light, Persephone had said to Dimitris. A place where soft breezes will fan her skin and there will be grass under her feet, trees to shade her, and cool water to drink. She will laugh and smile, and know no pain or fear ever again. And one day, a day long from now, Fates willing, you will be reunited with her.
They were the seeds. Spring rose from the earth, melting the snow, a thousand crocuses, a field above filled with asphodel. She gripped her husband’s hand to create them, his soul reaching through hers, replenishing the earth with her. Somehow she’d known then— she’d known all along. They carried the seeds of the world below to the world above, then carried the fruits of the living world to the land of the dead. They were the single narcissus opening in the grove and the flowers bursting forth in the Plutonion. It was their doing— always, together.
The future. Hades and Persephone sleeping amid narcissus dappled with sunlight. Both are in their antechamber where he is kneeling before her, his fingers reverently tracing the curve of Persephone’s swollen womb. And another vision, where she is holding a swaddled infant close to her breast. A girl with white curls is gripping her finger and toddling beside her through the palace garden, where they meet with Aidoneus who is holding a smiling little girl with messy dark locks perched atop his shoulders. She pulls his hair. He looks up at her with the eyes of a proud father and laughs.
The future. Persephone and Hades on the Styx, her doubled over in pain and clutching her womb, her shaking hand stained with blood, Hades holding her, panicked and trying to reassure her all at once, Charon crying out for Hecate. Persephone weeping inconsolably, crumpled on the floor, a wooden box shrouding a beating heart clutched to her chest, begging them not to take it from her. Hades staring up into Erebus, watching a thousand, thousand flaming scrolls rain down from the mortal world and into his kingdom, his face contorted into helpless anguish. Persephone running to his side to comfort him.
The future. The mortals. War and the fall of Ilium. Conquest. Famine. Slavery. Death. But amidst the darkness, the light of understanding. Tolerance. Wisdom carried by well-rested souls. A distant city, a great library, a great many peoples coming together. Ignorance, destruction, a stupor of thought, then a great rebirth. Time lumbers on, and the world changes with it. Loud, enclosed chariots without horses and immense, towering buildings crowding against one another. Some are squat with columns taller than those of the grandest temples, billowing dark smoke into the air. The temples of the gods above lay in ruins, stripped by wind and sun. They are forgotten. But in Eleusis, a bustling inn with strange glass ovens and metal mechanisms and oddly-clothed people staring at tiny, brightly lit tablets. Aidoneus and Persephone meet there dressed like the mortals, greeting each other with a kiss before sitting down at a table by a window.
Silence.
The present. They opened their eyes. They opened their eyes as one. They were themselves; they were each other. Aidoneus and Persephone saw darkness, absolute and endless, then rills and sinews of light twisting like faint branches all around them. One point, bright
er than all others, rushed toward them, expanding in their vision— carried closer without effort.
Stars wheeled and danced below them, winding in a slow gyre. The wonderment of it all stunned them silent, and in that moment they knew. They were witnessing All. Life, Love, all things that bound existence. They were darkness and light. Rebirth and death. Male and female, in perfect conjunction with the power to make and unmake the cosmos itself.
Male and Female. Hades and Persephone. Names, an unending chain of what that duality of creation represented to all mortals coursed through them. Chaos and Void. Gaia and Ouranos. Anu and Ki. Shiva and Shakti. Ku and Hina. He and She. They were a thousand other names, to a thousand other peoples, with the power and responsibility of all creation at their fingertips. Their own private wishes seemed small and petty compared to this great expanse of Everything. Totality. Conjunction.
The twisting arms of the great spire of light streaked past them in their brilliance, filled with stars and worlds beyond account or reckoning. They saw the outlines of seas, the snow-capped peaks of great mountain chains with shining rivulets trickling down their sides. The thin layer of night sky clung to the earth, its edges cast in sunrise and sunset, and the shallow seas and deep oceans wrapped around an endless, curved expanse of earth. They were so very small, but their burden and purpose were great. They knew so much and so little.
“They need Us,” She said to Him. “And We need them. We must take them into Our care.”
“They are tired and need rest,” He said. “Their lives are short.”
“You asked me once,” She whispered, “what I would change.”
“Yes,” He said. He felt Her thoughts within His and wanted to stay forever, perfectly connected and enlightened, but knew that They couldn’t. Their responsibilities to all the souls, living and dead, were too great. “And so it shall be. Let Us give them that comfort. Against all the cruelties of the world.”
“How will we do that, Aidoneus?”
“Together.” She felt his arms around her again and his breath against her ear. “Let go, Persephone.”
They surrendered. Her body crashed against his and their consciousness fell through sky and water and land, down through cracks of molten earth, through darkness and light until they stopped, silent. Aidoneus and Persephone stilled and shuddered, utterly spent, and collapsed into sleep and dreams in each other’s arms.
***
The trees, their fruits, the seeds of the earth watered the ground. A great mist hung above their sleeping forms and as they dreamed, earth and sky birthed themselves and turned to gold.
The sun rose high, the moon followed, walls crumbled and turned to dust and the grasses beneath them covered the ground, spreading out from the roots of each tree. They grew, against and over each other, teeming with life.
The sun rose, the moon followed. A new shoreline lapped with tides cycling in and out and endless islands rose from the waters. The moon set, the sun rose. They lay underneath the expanse of light and dark, the growing trees and shrubs, the flowers, the creatures they nurtured.
Under the wheeling heavens, trees and grasses, forests and meadows grew up. The sun, the moon, the sky, the earth, cycling, reeling, turning over the length of a thousand millennia set against mere moments. An endless flash of dark and light, setting sun, rising moon, aeons of time dissolving into hours.
It was done. All went dark. The dream of creation was ended.
A meadowlark twittered on the branch above her, and a breeze, warm and fragrant, drifted across her face. She felt the rise and fall of his chest under her cheek, his arm wrapped around her. She cracked her eyes open and her vision was filled with wavering yellow and white. When she blinked they came into focus. A thousand narcissus flowers bobbed in the breeze. Persephone stirred, and was immediately pulled back into the arms that had encircled her all night.
“Too early, wife,” Aidoneus mumbled. The lark called out for its mate again and he opened his eyes, confused, then squinted. The sky above them was as blue as sapphires. He froze and tilted his head up. Their dreams… He leaned forward on one elbow, his heart racing. “We…”
“Are we in the world above?” Persephone sat up. Had the hieros gamos transported them? She rubbed her eyes. Above them, pomegranate leaves shook in the breeze, and dappled the grove with sunlight. Beside them, under the thick growth of narcissus flowers, a gouge scored the earth. “Aidon! We’re still in the grove! How…”
“Stay here,” he said, his brows knit with concern. Aidon squeezed her hand, and walked to the edge of the grove, peering out through the branches toward the palace. There sat their home and gardens, the stone wall, all just as they should be. He stepped outside and circumnavigated the trees. The grove itself glowed brightly, brimming with sunlight. “Persephone?”
“I’m here!”
Aidoneus pushed the pomegranate branches aside and entered the grove again, squinting in the sunlight. His eyes were wide, and he surveyed their surroundings, astonished. “Wife… we’re still in the garden, in our grove, but…”
They stood, holding each other close. The markings he had made in the earth were still there, as were their clothes. Persephone grasped Aidon’s hand, his jaw hanging open as he contemplated the ritual. Their connection, the expanse of the cosmos. Their desire to take their place as caretakers for the mortals, to offer a reward for a life well lived. Aidon walked beside his wife, hand in hand to the green edges of the grove. The stone wall at its side had been replaced by thick shrubs. She pulled back a branch to reveal what lay beyond. Hades and Persephone stood awestruck.
Before them was a great meadow teeming with grasses and wildflowers, butterflies and bees humming from one bloom to the next. The sky was blue, interrupted by small puffs of white clouds. A deer bounded across the field, followed by a few more, and doves flew from branch to branch between oak and ash trees. Trees bearing pomegranates and olives, figs and apples, and exotic trees with peaches, walnuts, and oranges dotted the landscape. Persephone took a cautious step outside the grove, Aidon following close behind, her hand intertwined with his. They soaked in the sunlight.
Beyond the great field, waves crashed against tall cliffs, much as they had on Thera so long ago. Lush islands dotted an aquamarine sea, stretching out to the horizon. He closed his eyes and felt the sea air on his face, heard the waves pounding the rocks, and the distant cries of pelicans and cormorants.
Persephone poked her finger into the warm earth. Roots took hold and dark green leaves spread out from her fingertips. She lifted her fingers and wound her wrist upward, the stalk creeping toward her hand. A bright purple bloom sprang from the top.
She remembered her first day in the Underworld and all her ill-fated attempts to make asphodel bloom in the great fields. But this was not the Fields of Asphodel. It was somewhere else. A fiery copper butterfly drifted in from the grasses and settled atop the flower. Persephone grinned.
This place was within the Underworld, and yet a world apart from it. It was rebirth: an everlasting realm of life encompassed by death: a new, third portion of Chthonia. Through the hieros gamos, Hades and Persephone hadn’t created a child.
They’d created Paradise.
Persephone observed their surroundings, understanding the weight of what they’d ushered into being. “This is meant to be the mortals’ place of rest and reward, Aidon. What should we call it?”
“Elysion,” he replied without hesitation. Her eyes widened in surprise and he kissed her on the forehead. “After Eleusis. Where I fell in love with you.”
Her eyes filled with fresh tears and she wrapped her arms around him. Aidoneus stroked her hair, then cupped her cheek and kissed her, holding her close as another breeze rippled across the grass and their sun-warmed skin. She laid her head against his shoulder, watching the little butterfly fan its wings and suckle at the thistle. “The Elysian Fields…”
He rested his arm across her shoulder. “Not what I’d imagined we’d awaken to, either. The Fate
s laugh at our plans, sweet one. Or so you told me once.”
Persephone sighed. “It will take time to gather all the worthy souls who belong here. Surely those already sent to Asphodel deserve a second chance?”
“You and I will find them together, my love. Though… I don’t quite mind having Paradise to ourselves. At least for today.”
She giggled, and he herded her toward their grove.
“And perhaps my plans, my certainty that we can’t have a family, are also laughable,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“If you and I can create an entire realm of life in the Underworld, sweet one,” he said, turning again to survey the Elysian Fields, “then making a baby should be easy, no?”
She guided his face down to hers, his lips upon her lips, tasting their shared joy. Aidoneus wrapped his arms around Persephone, lifting her up onto her toes. She took his hands within hers, tugging him back to the shelter of the grove. “There’s no harm in trying.”
This tale continues in The Good Counselor.
Acknowledgements
This novel, and the one before it, Receiver of Many, is the culmination of one of my lifelong goals: to publish a book that people liked. I started posting the first draft of Receiver of Many online for free, every Wednesday at midnight in serial format and the reaction I got from my readers blew me away. They, dare I say, loved it… And supported me through the entire process from its initial debut in Fall of 2012 to the last posted chapter in Fall of 2014. For those who read this for free and bought it anyway, this book is for you.
I want to thank the folks who patiently took the time to review and provide feedback on each chapter of the first draft, namely, C. Thome and L. Wilder. Next, I want to thank Sophia Kolyva, who was my greatest resource for most of the Greek translations, and helped fix my atrocious Greek grammar. Efharistó polí! And much thanks to fellow authors M. M. Kin, Eris Adderly, Titania Oliver, and several others who provided encouragement and insight.
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