The Eighth House_Hades & Persephone

by Eris Adderly

  Fates! What have you done to her?

  “I am so, so sorry,” she said, stepping forward, hands coming up in supplication that only set her mortal friend bowing. “I didn’t know, Polyxene. I didn’t know.”

  “Please.” The woman was shaking her head, eyes still on the floor. “Please, Goddess, you cannot apologize. Not to me.” The hand wringing began, and Persephone had to bite her tongue. “It is a gift for any mortal to have been visited by a deathless god once in their lifetime. And you have returned here, again and again. I am not worthy. I am not.” In her distress, Polyxene had sunk to her knees, and the sight squeezed at something in Persephone’s chest.

  “But this is why I’ve come to you now.” Persephone went to her friend and placed fingertips on her shoulder, a bid for the woman to meet her eyes. “To return your ring. Please,” she said, as Polyxene braved another look.

  “I have come to give you this gift, as I said I would.” She had the ring off her finger and the green gem caught the light as she offered it to the healer. “Take it, my friend, you will have back your lost years and so many more. So many more!”

  Brown eyes dropped, aghast, and the sight of immortality trapped within stone made her retch just as it had the first time. Polyxene wiped at her mouth with the back of a hand and coughed against the condensed distortion of time. The cough devolved into great, racking sobs, and the woman fell forward onto her hands.

  “What is it?” Persephone dropped to kneel beside her. “Are you well?”

  Polyxene smeared tears from her eye sockets with the heel of a palm, her mouth contorted, unable to cope. “My Goddess,” she said, “I … Kings wage wars over such gifts. There are stories. Heroes, I”—dark eyes snapped up to immortal green—“how can you offer this? To me. Who am I?”

  The goddess’s heart poured out onto the ground for this woman. “You are my friend,” she said, her hand still resting on the mortal shoulder. “You are the most worthy being I know.”

  Defeated sniffling accompanied the placement of Polyxene’s hands, palms upturned, in her own lap. “I … I have a grandchild now, I—what will I do?” Her voice had gone soft and her eyes pleaded, wet and unprotected. “Live and live to watch my son grow old and die? To watch my granddaughter do the same?”

  “But you will heal so many. I have watched you.” The logic Persephone had carried into this house kept tumbling from her lips, even as she felt the Fates begin to pluck at it, threads unraveling. “You will use it in a way I am failing to do. It will be you about whom they write stories.”

  “But I do not want stories!” Now the passion was back. “I want … I want …” Her hands fluttered like doves.

  Persephone’s voice came down to a hush. “What do you want?”

  The mortal risked another glance at the ring, but the vertigo sent her eyes back to the floor.

  “I miss my love,” she said. “I miss Iacob. If I accept this gift, my Goddess, I will never meet him in the Underworld. If I alone of my loved ones cannot die …”

  Persephone blinked at her several times and then her chest swelled.

  What are you doing?

  She felt the lump come in her throat.

  Selfish immortal, what do you ask of her?

  This was not a way. Not a way to escape, not by handing her troubles to this Daughter of Man. She could call it a gift; it would alter nothing. Persephone was trying to avoid pain. That’s what this was.

  She sat back on her heels, then on her tailbone, one knee bent and one leg falling straight out in a distressing array for any mortal in the presence of a deathless one. The side of her hand came to her eyes, which were hot and stung. She bit her lip, working to keep it at bay.

  “Karporphoros?” The voice came meek as a mouse, but it called down her tears like the ruin of a dam. “It is the most generous offer I could ever hope to receive,” Polyxene said. “I am ungrateful, I have upset you.”

  “No.” She swallowed, trying to contain it. “No, you are right. This will not be a blessing for you. I am selfish. I only see what I want for myself.”

  A long silence ensued, broken only by small, wet noises of grief.

  “And what is it”—Polyxene dared to scoot closer—“Goddess, what is it you want for yourself?”

  “Not to decide!” The gentle words were too much. Her true mother had never spoken so, and the genuine concern broke her. “My choices are the same as yours!” she wailed. “Abandon the care I owe humanity and return to the Unseen Realm to seek my love, or dance in eternal springtime. Alone.” Persephone knew her face would be red and wet when she raised it to look at the healer again. “I want both,” she said. “I want neither! But this is not a matter for which you should suffer so I might escape my pains.”

  Polyxene’s mouth came open, at a loss for how to respond. Here was an immortal, collapsed, weeping and undignified, so very much not like the statues of gods in the temples.

  You’ve done enough here.

  The ring slid from her finger, her opposite hand gripping it even as Persephone righted herself. She felt the mortal scuttle back from the thing as though the infinite might be catching.

  It had been a push, the first time. Now, as Persephone narrowed her focus, it was a draw. Something in the very humming core of her reached out, sought and took hold; a vast taproot sucking deep and eager at the well of life in the borrowed stone.

  Her hands warmed before going hot. There was no gradual rise toward the event this time. It rushed to join her, like seeking like, unstoppable. The light and life of Olympos filled the goddess until it seemed it must burst from her temples in streams, each toenail, each eyelash, violent with the blaze of eternity.

  Persephone shuddered, head lolling on her shoulder in the clanging silence of the aftermath. Long heartbeats passed before she opened her eyes.

  Polyxene gaped, but the goddess was uncurling a fist from around the ring. The stone sat black and glossy in the dim light, a gift from her husband and nothing more. The goddess offered the jewel between fingers abuzz with her birthright once more.

  There was hesitation, even fear, in the woman’s eyes, but she reached out and took the ring, no sooner clutching it to her bosom than the profusion of thanks began bubbling from her lips. Persephone gathered herself and stood, composure returning with the surge of godhood in her veins.

  “There is one gift I can give you,” she said, “though you may only keep it for a few moments.”

  Polyxene stared up at her while slipping on the ring, too dumbstruck to respond. Persephone gave her a tired smile.

  “You’ll want to close your eyes. That ring was bad enough.”

  When the woman did as her goddess suggested, Persephone found that place. It was the same new source that had been there when she’d fought her own mother at Nysa. The cool inevitability of shadow and stone. She drew her voice along it like a bow when she spoke the word.

  “Hekate.”

  Even with her eyes shut tight, Polyxene gasped at the name. The air in the room condensed and, though she could both believe it and not, twin red orbs of light preceded their mistress into being.

  “Chosen of mmy Lord,” the three tongues greeted her even as their body coalesced into shape. “How may I sserve?”

  She … she came!

  It was enough to collect her own tongue in the presence of the tri-form goddess. “I would ask a favor,” she said. “An assurance for this woman, who is my friend.”

  “Indeed.” At least two smiles curled Enodia’s face at once.

  “Is there an earthly guise you might assume first, Goddess? I fear you may be too much for mortal eyes.”

  “I cannott conceal mmysself in a ssingle physical fform,” said Hekate, “but I nneed not maniffesst a body on thiss plane for uss to sspeak.”

  Particulate darkness scattered in a whirl, leaving only the bobbing torches to confirm the additional presence.

  “Doess thiss ssatisfy?”

  “It does.” Persephone ducked a nod,
eager to proceed. “Polyxene, you can open your eyes.”

  Even the orbs were enough to have the woman clutching her hands to her chest when she saw. The healer knelt, jaw slack, and said nothing.

  “I know you have dominion over mortal shades,” Persephone said. “I would ask you to summon this woman’s husband, Iacob, so she might speak to him and know peace. As you did Iokaste to the mortal Alexios on the shores of the Styx.”

  “Lord Hadess is nnot plleased to havve the dead wanderring outsside hiss rrealm.”

  Polyxene had backed herself against the door to the street, but couldn’t tear her eyes from the hovering torches.

  “If his motives are pure,” Persephone said, straightening, “he will tolerate my wishes in this.”

  Though there were no faces to see, she could almost feel the smiles overlapping, smug. “Vvery good, Daughter of Zeuss. I will nnot be long.”

  Hekate’s lights winked out and the air in the room seemed to crackle. Persephone turned to the healer. “It should be moments,” she said. “I have seen this. You will not have much time.” She tried to soften her expression for the awestruck woman huddling in front of the door. “You should stand, my friend. He will not want to see you afraid.”

  Polyxene gained her feet in a daze and, as if the prospect of seeing her own husband’s shade was too much to contemplate, skipped straight to another timid question: “My Goddess … you say your love is in the Unseen Realm. Hek”—she gulped down the name—“the Lady of the Crossroads named you ‘Chosen of Her Lord’.” Brown eyes searched hers. “Does that mean … is your love, is he …?”

  “Yes.”

  She saw the woman blanche, but it was no more than could be expected. “He is not what you think,” she said. “I have come to learn this.” Who, exactly, Persephone was trying to convince, remained unclear.

  Another presence coalesced and the fiery orbs were with them again, but the arrival did not end there. The shade of a mortal man, distinct but insubstantial, stepped from the æther. Polyxene’s limbs trembled.

  “Iacob?” She stepped forward, tentative.

  He smiled and opened his arms. “Lyxe.”

  Whatever shock came from such contact between planes did nothing to deter Polyxene. Her grip on him was fierce and her tears free. “Sýzygos,” she said, “I’ve missed you. Every day.”

  Beloved. The word hammered Persephone with its demands.

  “I know, love.” His face was in her silver hair. “I know.”

  Iacob’s shade began to whisper a long string of comforts at the ear of his living wife, promises from the dark side of the veil. The woman nodded and tucked her arms in between their bodies, allowing the embrace of a dead man to assure and press her home.

  While the couple stole their moments of reunion, voices meant only for Persephone curled in her immortal ear.

  “Theirss is nnot the only time that growss short,” Hekate said. “Lord Hadess knowss of yourr quarrel withh Demeter.” Persephone inhaled at this, but Enodia continued her warning. “The Unsseen Realmm will not containn hiss wrath. You musst decide, Green One, and eitherr wway you mmust tell him yoursself. There has been a balance ssince the War, but I ffear the planess cannot withsstand himm now.”

  She remembered the fury he’d shared with her through the blood union. A reservoir of power vast beyond comprehension. Her gut twisted into a knot as she watched the mortal souls, reunited for the briefest of moments before her.

  Persephone had to choose, and soon. She could not bring more grief on these people. On any of them.

  “It iss time,” Hekate said, and not just to clinging husband and wife.

  Iacob released his hold first, his understanding more complete than that of his beloved, and Polyxene looked to her goddess, eyes shining.

  “Thank you, Karporphoros,” she said. “Thank you. It is the greatest gift. The greatest.”

  This. This was right. This was so much better.

  “You are most welcome, Good Mother,” she said, “May your family bring you joy, in this life and the next.”

  The woman smiled through tears as her impossible guests receded to other planes. Enodia drew her charge back to the Underworld, and Persephone willed her being toward Olympos.

  Toward the equinox.

  *

  “Then where was she last seen, Messenger?”

  Hades stood in front of his throne, the Elaionapothos hovering at his back in the form of a glossy disk an armspan wide. Though it rose, conspicuous, over his head and shoulders in a dark halo, Hermes knew nothing of its capabilities.

  The swiftest of gods addressed him from the foot of the steps as Kerberos and Hypnos flanked the seat of their Lord. “Her and Demeter fought,” Hermes said, back straight in an effort to present a collected front. “At Nysa.”

  “And then?” said Hades.

  “She fled.”

  Kerberos growled. The Guardian had escorted Hermes this far without incident, but that was no guarantee of the beast’s continued tolerance.

  “To where?” Patience wore thin all around, and Hades saw Hypnos grimace at the current of threat in his tone.

  He can make whatever face he wants. If this sky dweller doesn’t tell me what I want to hear …

  “We don’t know,” said Hermes, glancing from one Underworld face to the next. “Another plane?” The Oil began to change form at Hades’s back. “Surely if her mother had seen,” the Messenger went on, eyes darting, “she would have given chase. Their disagreement was …” He had only helpless gestures.

  The Elaionapothos pooled on the floor.

  “Was. What.”

  Black tendrils extended from the mass and began to slither along the stones toward the fair-haired god.

  “Violent.” Hermes took a step back, but it didn’t matter.

  “Violent?” said Hades. Glossy coils climbed Olympian limbs and circled for grip. The Oil began to slide Hermes toward the throne. Winged sandals, useless in this realm, scrabbled for purchase along the floor, and Hades descended to the bottom step. “How do you know this?”

  “H-Helios!” The Messenger’s eyes were wide, his gaze darting for some ally he wouldn’t find. Hypnos might cringe, but the God of Sleep would not undermine his lord.

  “Indeed,” said Hades, slowing to drive his point home as the Oil pulled Hermes the last of the way. “And did I”—he took a fistful of chiton and twisted—“or did I not instruct you to see her returned to me unmolested?”

  “My Lord, I—”

  “Consequences, Hermes.” He all but growled the words into the Messenger’s face. “I warned you.”

  The æther gave way to the bridge over the River of Fire. Instead of the throne room floor beneath his feet, Hermes now dangled in Hades’s grip, legs kicking over the red maw of the Phlegethôn. The Oil receded to its hovering disk, abandoning the joy of control to its maker.

  Immortal eyes rolled wild at the sight of the terrible drop.

  “Hades!”

  It was a cruel mirror to the way Persephone had trusted him to hold her this way, not so very long ago. The goddess had melted into his embrace and altered the nature of his wishes with her surrender. This Olympian jerked, desperate hands choking the coal-dark forearm, the flailing summation of every reaction the reputation of Hades Clymenus had earned.

  She is the only one. The only one who can see you otherwise.

  “She has eaten my fruit,” Hades said, accusations booming over the crackling grind of the river. “She is my chosen Consort, and you tell me she is gone?”

  “My lord!” The voice of Hypnos came from behind him on the bridge. The god must have leapt the æther in Hades’s wake, following to mitigate disaster. “He is a son of Zeus, my lord. We will start another war with the Olympians.”

  The Lord of the Dead reserved the fury of his gaze for Hermes.

  “I start a war with them?” He had never seen the God of Thieves so bereft of his insolence. It fueled some black fire he’d been ignoring, and Hades felt h
is power unfurl, vast and enticing. “Persephone belongs to me now,” he said, “and they have done nothing but come between us. No.” Hermes squirmed on his hook. “Olympos has started a war with me.”

  Slate blue eyes were wide, and the god could only whisper. “Please.”

  Hades’s smile curled. “You don’t belong here, Messenger.” He extended his arm and Hermes writhed over living rock.

  “Hades! Don’t! No!”

  The clutching hand released and the Swift One fell, the boiling vein of the earth pulsing to claim an immortal for itself.

  It gave him no small amount of grim satisfaction to hear the terror of a god unaware of the rift Hades had sliced open in the æther. Just above the annihilation of the river, the Messenger blinked out of sight. If Hades’s aim was as good as he remembered, the winged sandals and their master would land square in the middle of Zeus’s throne room.

  Let him pass that message along. Vacuous fool.

  “Polydegmon,” came the fearful voice from the bridge, “what will you do?”

  His hands rested on the stone railing and the Lord of the Dead swept the Great Cavern in a single measuring look. At his back, the Oil began to shift.

  “I have ruled in silence, Hypnos.” He felt his desire shaping the weapon. Growing it. Feeding. “They imagine me passive. They will learn.”

  The Elaionapothos unfolded in uncountable directions at once, expanding into something immeasurable. Obscene. Crystal points bristling from the bridge towers warped in the tessellation of power. Stalactites and paráthyra distended overhead.

  Had the God of Sleep a mortal stomach, he would have emptied it. Had the æther not jangled with disruption, he would have fled. All he could do as his lord prepared to rape the balance between planes, was stand on the bridge and will his pleas to the Fates.

  *

  X Equinox