by Io
Yes, I ended up watching Hades intent on his ablutions, I was certainly unnecessarily frightened, I had been anxious for nothing. The wrath of the god of the Avernus had so frightened me that I had been unable to think clearly.
If I look back now, I smile at my innocence.
I realized only after a long, a very long time, how much I had influenced Hades, that night, and how I succeeded in what had never been able to be done by anyone, before me, allow his mind to be changed, and his attitude.
If I had not torn that promise from him, the underground shadows would have been showered onto the surface, the gates of Hell would have opened wide to engulf cities and populations, the darkness of Erebus would have swept into the world of the living. And the answer of Mother Earth would not have been less strong, nor would the action of Olympus been restrained.
That evening, I avoided humanity being wiped out in a war between the gods, and I ask humanity to bear this in mind, considering what happened next.
I went back to get close to him.
“And what are your conditions, my husband?”
“Zeus consented to the union, when I asked for your hand:
He must assume his share of the responsibility.”
“He’s never been too eager to assume his
responsibility.” He grinned, he knew what I meant. My father
was good at sowing children, much less able to manage them. Half of them went bad with no hope of saving them.
“Nevertheless he must arbitrate in this dispute, seeing that you don’t want me to solve the question definitively. You can even release me from that promise, if you don’t care for it.”
Hades always knew how to silence me. He splashed warm water in my face, for revenge, and was quick to escape, before he would catch me to drown me, or submit me to one of the many tortures in which he excelled.
Standing on the edge of the bath, I repeated that he was shamefully slow.
“They would never have kidnapped me, just to make a point,” I exclaimed, and I escaped him again when he came out of the bath, “they had caught me buy surprise, but as soon as I was thinking more clearly, they got what they deserved!”
“And you will have also, no doubt,” he said, mounting the steps, “remain my wife and you must obey me, just to make a point.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and ran away. But I ran to the bed, which, I suppose, does not have much to do with ensuring that Hades would renounce his powers, as it was all the more urgent, much more so after they had tried to take me from him. His pride did not allow for a reprieve. It was night, it was dusk, it was the Underworld.
And it bloomed, and shone. I no longer had any doubts.
Seen from inside, the door seemed to be an opening to a cave. After all, the entrance could be seen from a distance, but the interior was dark, the eternal darkness of Erebus.
The women were barefoot, dressed in dark robes, no ornamentation. The youngest could have been the mother of an adult daughter, the oldest her grandmother. The two younger ones tended to the thread, they coiled the ends to the spindle. The thread seemed to be golden and shining. The third woman did nothing. She sat between the other two, in a quiet position, waiting. Her old face, surrounded by loose, white hair, was serious, perhaps a little sad, but mostly indifferent. In her hand she held a pair of scissors.
“Cut.” She said to the youngest. “Just a little more.” Said the old woman. The youngest unwound another thread.
“Is that all right?”
The old woman raised her scissors. the light snap of the cut sent a shiver down my spine, although I expected it.
I had left Hades sleeping deeply, under the light of the Elysian stars. My body, linked to his, now had the same pallor: impossible, when we were bonded, to understand where his started and where I ended. I had a plan, not to wake him, I was dressed, I was wrapped in the heaviest shawl I had, and I went down into the basement of the palace. No one asked me anything, no one stopped me. I was the queen.
The cut thread fell to the ground. It twisted like a snake, then the Old One raised it on the tip of the scissors and approached one of the frames. There were many, large and small, they disappeared into the darkness of the cave, full of golden and glowing warp threads that intertwined, intersected, knotted with other threads. They were interrupted, leaving holes in the plot, or swelled and tapered, in complete chaos. Yet, if you looked at the whole and not the details, each canvas appeared neat and perfect.
With a flick like a small fish, the warp yarn jumped and began to tangle with the already tightened threads. The Old One chuckled.
“A short life, but worth living. They are always the most vivacious.”
I was not sure if she was talking to me, since she didn’t even look at me, but I asked anyway:
“He died when you cut his thread, or is he about to die?”
“Neither one nor the other, queen,” was the reply, the Old One still didn’t turn towards me, “he will die when the time comes for him to die.”
“In a short time, then.”
“For a goddess, the longest of mortal lives is always not very long.”
I decided to come right to the point. Also on the surface the gods are lost in the sound of their own voices and their thoughts; there in the afterlife, it was even more extreme.
“I came to see a warp. Please show me.”
The woman with the spindle got up. “Over here, oh queen.”
“I do not even know which warp I want to see.”
“Everyone wants to see only the warp where
their own thread is woven, my sovereign.” I had to admit that this was so. Seen up close, the Three
were only middle-aged women, neither beautiful nor ugly, and their eyes were no different from those of other creatures in the Avernus: black and deep as the wells of the universe, imbued with cosmic consciousness. Looks like that, now, no longer bothered me.
“You know all these warps, then?”
The Old One decided to look my way, “We don’t know any of them.”
The middle-aged woman nodded, “We don’t know any of them, no.”
The woman with the spindle sighed, “If we knew, we would not be here.”
I frowned. I don’t understand.
“Everyone has a thread, oh queen.” Said the Old One.
“All are woven into a warp, my sovereign.” Said the
woman of middle age.
?Except us.” Finished the woman holding the spindle, and she
threw it across a couple of times, drawing another bright thread. “I understand,” I lied shamelessly, “but then, how do you
know which warp to show me?” The Old One sighed, “To know and to understand are two different
things, queen.” The middle one pointed out, “We know everything, but we
don’t know anything.” The woman with the spindle pointed to the cave, to invite me to
follow her, “The gods know everything, but know nothing.” And mortals may be able to know and understand everything, I concluded wryly to myself, looking well and to keep the conversation going. I did not want to talk to them. In the silence the cave was full of echoes, the voices of the Three were the reverberating whisper of ghosts.
‘My’ warp seemed to fill the entire wall.
It was very large and, I noticed, several threads coming out of the warp frame, to thread themselves into those next to it, in front or behind, above or below, becoming part of the textures that followed or preceded. The woman with the spindle followed my gaze.
“Mortals and Immortals look alike, oh queen: no one knows how to stay in their own place, ever.”
“I thought it was you who wove destiny, and that all we had to do was follow it.”
“It is so,” she confirmed, “but weaving is not deciding.”
“And who decides?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” she admitted
giggling, and spun the reel to obtain another thread to be wound
onto the spindle.
I decided to dedicate myself to looking at the canvas, leaving the Mysteries who did not belong to my kingdom – whatever it was. I had to admit to be in a very peculiar situation: how many times, in the course of the immortal eternity of the ages, could spring descend into the dungeons of the Underworld, to look at the world’s destiny?
It happened that one time. And, from that moment, everything changed. I did not need to ask what my thread was: in the
multicolored texture, thicknesses and lengths, the white alabaster thread had a translucent glow. The frames overlapped, and I did not see where it began, but by following frame to frame, I noticed that one point was linked to another thread, more often, without any brightness, black as the deepest abyss of Erebus. The two threads wound round each other, they intersected closely, became inextricable. I ran my gaze along the path on the frames, and saw that, at some distance, my thread seemed to have turned gray, it was so close to the black wire. Or maybe it was the black wire that seemed to have become gray. As I said, at that point, they were too united to be consider separate entities.
I suddenly stopped when I saw that, in the midst of a particularly complex and chaotic texture, full of torn threads and coarse knots, my thread was split into two.
“What does this mean?”
The woman wrapped a little more thread around the spindle. The coil on the reel was now small, little more than fluff. “I do not presume to know the fate of my queen.”
The point where the white thread was separated was impossibly tangled, I did not understand anything: the black thread was crushed in a vise, one gold was interwoven into the texture, and others, of every color and thickness, formed a giant knot, involving warp and weft together.
At the end, the thread split into two continuous parallel lines. One remained white, tied to the black one; the other had, it seemed to me, absorbed part of the dark thread into itself, and the result was a beautiful pearly color. There was no other thread of that color, or of that silky luster. In that color was something that touched me deeply.
Each of the two threads were interwoven with others, of every color and thickness, and with black thread and the golden, shining, including that of my mother; but I saw that they did not return to meet, indeed, they continued along the warp, moving further and further away.
When the gray thread was finally separated, going to end up on another frame, there was a magnificent confusion of colors that looked like the delirium of a lyre owned by the Muses, I had to stop.
I looked at the other, who continued her roughly linear plot, intersected with black thread, with that of the golden, and with others. I followed it with my eyes until it disappeared into the darkness at the bottom of the cave, and I decided that was enough.
So is this really it.
It was so simple, I thought, that it was necessary to really be a fool like me, to arrive there.
I turned to the woman, who was finishing drawing out the last thread from the mass on the skein:
“The king has already seen these warps?”
“The kind lost interest in our work a long time ago, Oh queen.”
I wondered if I should be offended because Hades did not care to know the fate that awaited us, but he had more pride and was certain that I would have been his bride, queen of the Avernus. He took it for granted that our threads would remain entwined. Not that he was wrong.
I wrapped myself better in the cloak and covered myself with a veil, turning into a shadow among shadows. Without asking another question, without saying goodbye, what sense does it make to hail fate? Nobody will ever be released from it, even the deities, I turned around and went back to where I came from.
Hestia’s Hearth
The eternal dawn of the Elysian fields rose. It flooded the royal chamber with a soft light, in a variegated, poignant melancholy way in which paradise recalls the good things you’ve left behind, while it offers you others.
All the blessed are melancholy, in paradise. It is part of their happiness, and contributes to their happiness. I will never understand that paradox very well. As Hades told me, the gods are not made to understand mortals.
The Lord of the Underworld was absent. He had taken his helmet with him, and this could only indicate that he went where he had forbidden me to go. All that remained was to wait. I sat on the bench before the unquenchable fire, and held out my hands to ward off the chill of the underground from my bones.
Time passed, while I warmed myself. I do not know how long. The dawn was shining and filled the alabaster and obsidian chamber with color, but my cloak remained black, my skin white, and I was aware of the change that was waiting for me, or so I thought. I was not sure. And I was tired of not having any certainty.
“It’s happening now, right?”
My breath, however slight, made the tongues of flame dance.
“Please,” I whispered, “if you are deciding my fate, please, show me.”
The flames writhed, as if protesting.
“You’re his sister. I’m his daughter.” The core in the middle of the hearth was dark red, hard and
pulsated. It looked like a beating heart.
In the red heart of the fire was a woman’s face, sweet and feminine, with garnet gems in her hair and a slight smile.
“It will change the world, my niece. It will change you.”
“I’ve already changed. Only the Olympians do not change, it seems.”
“It’s not in our nature. Demeter is my sister, Hades is my brother; Hera and Poseidon and Zeus are my siblings. I remember them just when they had come into the world, frightened and helpless, devoured by Time that had begotten us. I have my siblings close to me, I saved them in the heat of my breasts. I love them with all of myself, all the same way. No, the Olympians do not change.”
“Then you can not change their differences either, since no one asked me what I thought.”
At the resentment that I could not conceal in my voice, Hestia, goddess of the hearth, smiled a little more.
“They were already what they are. Demeter dispensed life, Hades ruled death. This was to save us, in the bowels of Cronus, and later, when Zeus tore our prison, they continued to do what they had that saved us. I followed their example, nothing else.”
I put out a hand to the red heart of the fire, and the heat made my skin tingle.
“I’m afraid, aunt. I’m afraid I will not make the right choice.”
“You do not have to choose. It is a privilege that few can boast.”
“It is not a privilege. It’s a burden.”
I pulled the cloak around me, although I no longer felt cold. It was an instinctive protective gesture; to protect my body, my bud.
My thread, divided into two.
“I was born after, aunt. I was born when the weather started to flow, and things changed. I’m not one of the Olympians. I never wanted to be.”
She tilted her head in the fire, her ringlets waved. She wore a tunic without a shoulder, stretched over her adolescent breasts, and looked very young and very old at the same time: as old as the world, as old as the first heat of the burning hearth from the first man, the first cave where he had found shelter, when the gods were children and the only protection was the heat from the their older sister. The first to be born, the first to choose.
We looked at the two extremes of that choice. Hestia then said, “The world will change. It will change you. It will change who you love.”
“It will be. That which changes can blossom, and can shine.
It is not for this that you protected your brothers from Time, why didn’t you consume him?”
The goddess of the hearth threw up her hands: a gesture not of surrender, but of affection, as if to embrace me.
The flame red heart filled with voices.
“If I a mother do not mean anything, or Zeus, was not been moved at least for your daughter. Who was kidnapped and dishonored it doesn’t matter; but make her return to life!”
/> “Persephone is my wife. She will remain on the throne of the Avernus, Demeter. Rest your heart.”
“You! Damned, evil kidnapper of innocent girls, you...”
“Come on, siblings, calm down now. Demeter, sit. We are here to resolve the matter, not to aggravate it further.”
“How can it possibly be made worse, Zeus? What do you want, Hades?”
“Truly, sister, it is possible to make it a lot worse, whereas you sent two mortals to kidnap my wife.”
“She’s not your wife, unworthy brother, race of... Zeus, of something!”
“We will not speak any more about what happened, Hades; you have damned my son, but in the name of our blood ties and the wrong done to your hospitality they did, I will forget what happened.”
“My royal brother is too kind to recognize the right to defend honor. Yes, Demeter?”
“The honor of a robber, assaulting an innocent girl to rape her in a realm of eternal shadows. So is this, your honor!”
“Take care, my patience is limited...”
“Come, come, Hades, Demeter; sit down. I haven’t called for you because you were to come to fight, you’re both my siblings and I wish that this unfortunate situation could be resolved in a satisfactory manner for all. Demeter, to answer your righteous protests, both you and I are bound by affection and sense of responsibility towards this daughter... why are you smiling, Hades?”
“Nothing, brother. Continue, please: I have always loved the sincerity of your speech.”
“Yes, well... Demeter, if we want to call things by their name, here it is not an evil, but a regular marriage, and I am not ashamed of such a son-in-law, as you should not be ashamed. The realm of Hades is as vast as mine, and if there is a more noble birth than the children of Cronus, well, I don’t know. Persephone could not have concluded a more advantageous marriage than this.”
“A kidnapping would be a wedding? Zeus, you realize that your brother, your, why don’t you recognize him as mine, has dragged the daughter of Mother Earth to languish in Erebus, without being able to ever again see the sky?”