She directed a beetle to snip off a particular bud and drop it into a swarm of waiting ants, when she felt a tremor pass through her—and a sensation as if something had just been cut off from her as that bud had been cut from the tree.
Bud? she thought, and then, in something like Panic fear—Kore!
She whirled and ran as she had not run since she was a child herself, in that long-ago time when she played in the fields with the sheep tended by her shepherdess mother—ran back to her villa, and stopped, panting for breath, hand pressed against her aching side, in the door to the weaving room.
The loom was unattended except for a kitten playing with a ball of yarn and a faun curled around a basket of sleeping hedgehog babies, poking at them with a curious finger to see them stir.
“Where is Kore?” she demanded of the hooved child, who looked up at her with startled eyes, his mouth forming a little o.
“M-m-meadow?” he stammered.
Demeter ran to the meadow where Kore was used to playing. There was nothing there, nothing but a scatter of blossoms.
Nothing at all.
Gingerly, Hades approached the squirming bag. The very fabric looked angry. “What did you do, Thanatos?” he demanded.
“I did what you asked me to do,” Thanatos replied, looking indignant and sullen at the same time. “I looked for an immortal maiden with yellow hair in a meadow. I found lots of maidens in meadows, not many with yellow hair, and only one immortal. So I took her. You said she wouldn’t fight me, that she was expecting to be abducted, but she fought like five she-goats! I’m bruised all over!”
“You’re a god, Thanatos, heal yourself,” snapped Hades. “Who did you rape?”
“I didn’t rape anyone!” Thanatos yelped.
“You know what I mean! Who’s in the sack?” Hades bellowed.
“How should I know?” Thanatos shrieked back.
“Oh, for—” Persephone pulled the little dagger she used to cut fruit out of her belt, stalked around them and went straight to the bag. She bent over and cut the rope holding it shut, then leapt back with the grace and agility of a young doe.
The bag writhed, a pretty foot and a long, strong leg emerged with a vigorous kick, then the rest of the young woman fought free of the fabric, with only a momentary glimpse of something the lady probably would not have wanted strange men to see. A pair of extremely blue eyes beneath a mass of tumbled golden hair blazed at all of them, and it was only Hades’s quick thought to cast a circle of magic around her that saved them all from the tiny bolts of levin-fire those eyes shot at them.
Thanatos yelped again, jumping back automatically.
“Well,” Hades said slowly. “Definitely god-born.”
Persephone approached the circle slowly. “One woman to another,” she said, getting the captive’s attention. “There has been a dreadful mistake. I’m going to cut you free now so we can explain it, all right?”
The woman glared for a long, long moment, then slowly, grudgingly, nodded. Persephone glanced at Hades, who dismissed the magic circle with a little twirl of his fingers. Then she knelt beside the woman and first cut her wrists free of their rope, then handed her the little knife so she could get rid of the gag herself.
When the woman untangled herself from ropes and sack, she stood up, rubbing her wrists. She did not give back the knife.
She was taller than Persephone by more than a head; she was nearly as tall as Thanatos, and he was not small by either mortal or godly standards. As she glared at them all, he stopped sulking and began gawking.
Then the gawking took on a bit of a leer.
“Well,” he said, looking aslant at Hades, “if this one isn’t yours, can I have her?”
The words hadn’t even left his mouth before he was dancing in place as levin-bolts peppered the area around his sandaled feet. She was tossing them this time; they looked like toy versions of Zeus’s thunderbolts. Fascinated, Persephone wondered if one day she could learn to do that.
Persephone clasped both hands over her mouth to restrain her laughter, as Hades merely folded his arms and watched. Eventually the woman wearied of tormenting Thanatos and allowed him to stop capering to her crackling tune. She stood with her fists on her hips and looked them all over, ending with a glare at Thanatos.
“I’m no one’s property, god or mortal. And I’m married,” she said shortly. “Another suggestion of that sort, and I’ll aim higher. And maybe with the knife, too.”
Hades gave her a short bow, equal to equal. “Your pardon, sky-born,” he said so smoothly that Persephone could only sigh and admire his manners. “The gods of Olympia are…somewhat free with their favors, as often as not.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Some wouldn’t consider that a ‘favor,’” she retorted dryly. “Now, what, exactly, am I doing here, and where is here in the first place?”
Hades and Thanatos began speaking at once, and the stranger’s head switched back and forth between them to the point where Persephone feared she was going to get a cramp. “Wait!” she cried, holding up her hand. Both men stopped. Hades bowed.
“My name is Persephone. I am the daughter of the goddess Demeter. My mother is—” she made a face “—overprotective. This is Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, where the dead go.”
“Ah!” The woman’s eyes brightened with understanding. “Like Vallahalia. Go on.”
“You are actually in the Underworld now, to answer your second question,” Hades put in. She nodded.
“I managed to catch sight of this lovely maid, and—” Hades reached for Persephone’s hand. She let him take it, blushing. “I asked the king of our gods, Zeus, for permission to wed her. He agreed, but cautioned me that her mother would never let her go.”
Persephone nodded. “She thinks I am still a child,” the girl said sourly.
The stranger nodded, sighing. “All mothers are like that, I think. I begin to get the shape of this. I take it that you decided to abduct her?”
Hades hesitated. “Not—exactly. That is more in Zeus’s style than mine.”
“He courted me!” Persephone said proudly. “And as if he was nothing more noble than a shepherd’s god, or one of the minor patrons of a brook or grove, so I wouldn’t feel as if I had to yield to him!”
Now it was Hades’s turn to blush, as she squeezed his hand.
The stranger’s cold eyes warmed a little. “I begin to favor you, god of the Underworld. So. This still begs the question of why I am here.”
“My mother is the Earth goddess, Demeter. Fertility,” Persephone said pointedly. The woman’s eyes widened.
“Aha! So you complicate things by sending another in your place to take the maid. So that she does not know who to curse, and you may garner more allies to soothe her before you reveal the truth.”
“Exactly.” Hades beamed.
“And because he did not know the maid—” she eyed Persephone “—there cannot be many yellow-haired wenches among your people. You are the first I have seen in this place. I can see where there would have been a mistake.” She nodded, satisfied. “Well, with that settled, I forgive you. You can take me back now and in return for this insult you can help me and my Leopold with a problem of our own.”
“Uh…” Hades bit his lip. “This is where things become…complicated.”
“Complicated?” The woman’s expression suddenly darkened. “What do you mean by complicated?”
“Thanatos is the god of death, you see—” Hades gestured helplessly with his free hand at the hapless Thanatos. “That was why he was supposed to take Persephone. She’d be dead, and have to stay here, you see—”
“But I am immortal!” the woman shouted, making them all wince.
“Well, er, yes. But gods can die—” Hades freed his hand from Persephone’s and it looked to her as if he was preparing to cast another protective circle.
“I—!” the woman roared—and then suddenly fell silent. “Damn it,” she swore. “We can. Baldur did. And I w
as supposed to die to bring about the fall of Vallahalia—”
“So…er…you can’t leave. I mean, I just can’t let you go, you see.” Hades gestured apologetically. “It would be a terrible precedent. People would be coming down here all the time, demanding that I turn this shade or that loose. You see?”
“Yes, damn it all, I do.” The woman gritted her teeth. “But I am not staying here. If I have to, I will fight my way out.”
Hades and Persephone exchanged a long look. “I think she would,” Persephone whispered.
“I have no doubt of it,” Hades responded. He ran a hand nervously through his dark curls. “I think we need to figure a way out of this.”
“Yes,” the woman said sharply. “You do.”
Demeter stood in the middle of the open meadow with both hands clenched in her hair and her heart torn with anguish. Of all of the things that could have befallen her daughter, this had never, ever occurred to her. That Kore might, in some childish fit of pique, run away—yes, that she had thought of, and put barriers around her own small domain so that Kore would be turned back from them if she tried to cross. She had carefully kept Kore out of sight of the other gods once she began to mature, so that none of them would have been tempted to steal her away. The lesson of Hebe was plain there; Zeus had fancied the child as a cupbearer, and whisked her off before her mother could say aye or nay.
So who, or what, had stolen her child? Where had she been taken?
She did not stand in anguish for long; if there was a single being that knew, or could find out, everything that went on between heaven and earth, it was Hecate. Hecate was one of only a few Titans who had been permitted by Zeus to retain her power. To Hecate she would go, then.
With her thoughts in turmoil, and her heart in despair, she did not even notice that in her wake, the growing things were beginning to fade and droop.
She paused only long enough in her kitchen to gather up what she would need; the roast lamb from the supper Kore would not now eat, poppy-seed bread, red wine and honey. She caught up three torches and sped to the nearest crossroads, a meeting of two paths that her flocks and their shepherdesses used. With a flat rock for a table, the three torches driven into the ground around it and lit, Demeter laid out the meal, and waited, slow tears tracing hot paths down her cheeks.
As darkness fell, she heard the slow footfalls of three creatures approaching; two four-legged, one going on two feet.
Through the trees, a golden glow neared; as Demeter waited, holding her breath, the light took on the shape of a flame, the flame of a torch held high by a figure still obscured by distance and the intervening foliage and tree trunks.
Soon, though, that dark-robed figure paced slowly and deliberately through the trees; on either side of her was a huge dog. As she drew near, the stranger slowly removed the veil covering her head, revealing that she was a gravely beautiful woman of indeterminate age, taller than Demeter. It was Hecate. Demeter’s mouth was dry, and she could not manage to speak for a moment.
“What means this, sister?” Hecate asked. “Why do you invoke me as if you were a mere mortal?”
“I did not know how else to call you quickly, elder sister,” Demeter whispered, and her voice broke on a sob. “Oh, Hecate, it is my daughter, my Kore! She has been taken from me, and I do not know where nor how!”
Hecate blinked with surprise. “This is a grave thing that you tell me,” she replied. “And a puzzling one, for I know you fenced your child about with great protections. Tell me what you know.”
While Demeter related the little that she knew, Hecate listened carefully. “I think,” she said at last, “that we should go to Mount Olympus. If there is any being who would have seen your daughter stolen, it is Helios, and as the sun has set, he will be with the other gods, feasting.”
She held out her hand to Demeter. “Come. If Zeus has been up to some mischief, or countenanced it, he will not dare to deny the both of us combined.”
Demeter took Hecate’s hand, and Hecate passed the torch in front of her from left to right. The world blurred for a moment, and when it settled, they stood in the forecourt of Zeus’s palace.
But Zeus and the other gods were already occupied—with one very angry, and seemingly very powerful, mortal.
“What have you done with my wife?” Leo shouted again, holding down his sense of shock and surprise that no one had struck him dead with a thunderbolt yet. On either side of him, the Vallahalian horses pawed the marble, striking sparks with their hooves, tossing their heads and snorting.
“Ah…” The fellow on the throne looked down at the tip of Leo’s sword, which was unaccountably glowing. “We haven’t done anything?” He glanced around at others of his sort who were gathering in the twilight, while torches and lamps lit themselves. “At least I haven’t. Have any of you lot been stealing mortals this afternoon?”
A chorus of baffled no’s answered his question. Leo wasn’t backing down. “We were minding our own business, when someone came up out of the ground in a chariot drawn by four black horses,” he thundered, taking full advantage of the fact that his wrath seemed to have taken them all aback. “He said something about ‘I’ve been looking all over for you,’ grabbed my wife and dragged her underground. If that wasn’t a god, I’m a eunuch, and you are the only gods hereabouts, so what have you done with my wife?”
“Impeccable reasoning, Father,” said a rather stern-looking young woman in a helmet and metal breastplate in addition to the usual draperies. In her case, the draperies covered a disappointing amount, from her collarbone down to the ground.
His conscience chided him for that thought; he put it aside. Besides, she was carrying a spear and looked as though she knew how to use it. “Four black horses? Then it can’t have been Helios or Apollo,” the young woman continued. “It’s unlikely to have been Hephaestus. That leaves only one possible candidate.”
“Two, if you count Thanatos. Hades lets him drive, sometimes,” the man on the throne corrected with a sigh. He turned his attention back to Leo and was about to say something, when there was a soundless explosion of black smoke, and two more women appeared at the edge of the courtyard. One, dressed in a dark blue drape, was visibly distraught. The other, dressed in black and carrying a torch, with a huge dog on either side of her, looked sterner than the young woman in the helmet.
“Hold, Zeus!” the black-clad one intoned. “Hear now the pleas of Demeter, whose daughter has been foully riven from her this day!”
“What, another one?” exclaimed a young man, who was dressed in sandals with wings on them and not much else, exclaimed. “There hasn’t been this much excitement around here since Zeus turned into a swan!”
The man on the throne colored, and the oldest-looking of the women glared metaphorical thunderbolts at both of them.
“Or was it a bull?” mused the irrepressible young man, glancing slyly at the chief of the gods.
“Hermes!” the young woman in the helmet hissed at him. The oldest woman glowered.
The woman in dark blue—Demeter—wept. Leo shifted his weight uncomfortably, but—damn it, I was here first. He firmed his chin and stood his ground.
But at this point all the gods started talking at once. The males were adamant that whatever had happened to Demeter’s daughter, they had nothing to do with it. The females had started to group themselves around Demeter and the other one. Clearly, this was turning into a potentially ugly situation.
It was broken up when two literally radiant young men appeared in another explosion of smoke, this one white instead of black. “Hail Zeus!” said the handsomer of the two. “Ha—“
He did a double take.
“What in the name of heaven and earth is going on?” he demanded.
The gods all started talking again. Finally the young woman in the helmet silenced them all by pounding the butt of her spear on the marble, which rang like a gong. Leo blinked. That was certainly an interesting trick. And effective.
“Ha
il Apollo,” the young woman said, with no hint of mockery. “This mortal came before us on god-horses, making a claim that one of the gods falsely stole his wife away. He had not done making his testimony when Hecate appeared with Demeter, saying that Persephone was also stolen. That is the long and the short of it. However, now that you are here, you—or rather, Helios—are in a position to answer both those accusations, for Helios sees all things.”
“Most things, wise Athena,” said the other young man with a slight bow. “In the matter of Persephone…” He hesitated.
“Speak, Helios!” the woman in black commanded him sternly.
Helios sighed. “Much as I hate to break a mother’s heart, I did see Hades take Persephone. But it looked to me as if she went willingly.”
Demeter let out a wail that woke tears in Leo’s eyes, and at least half the gods’ as well. “No, great Zeus, this cannot be! Hades? Lord of Darkness and Gloom and Death? He is no fit mate for my golden child!”
Helios coughed. “Ah, gracious goddess, I hate to contradict you, but Hades is ruler of the Underworld, the third part of creation, and is the brother-equal to Poseidon and Zeus himself. If he isn’t worthy, no one is.”
“Then I shall linger here no longer!” Demeter let out a heartbroken cry and fled, vanishing among the gardens and marble edifices below. The woman in black watched her go, broodingly, then turned to Zeus.
“I would learn the truth of this myself, Zeus,” she declared.
“By all means, Hecate, do as you please.” the man on the throne said weakly. “Don’t mind me, I’m only the king here.”
With a sardonic smile, the woman in black vanished in another poof of black smoke.
Now Helios turned to Leo. “As for this mortal…” he said, his brow wrinkling thoughtfully. “Ah, yes. It was Hades’s chariot that took his golden mate. But it was Thanatos who took her.”
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