Underworld's Daughter

by Molly Ringle

  Nature was no better than Thanatos. Unfeeling rather than malicious, but still deadly. No wonder she longed for home. Home was the definition of safety. But Sophie couldn’t go back to her old way of life now. She could only try to create a new security, a settled life of a different sort, if that was possible.

  Even with her happy marriage to Hades, had Persephone missed the sweetness of her childhood home, and longed for more domesticity, more familial warmth awaiting her at a steady home she could count upon? She had. Sophie recalled it easily enough. In the past week she had let her memories carry Persephone’s life along several months, enough to watch the joy in Poseidon and Amphitrite’s family as they and their three immortal daughters spread inspiration and assistance throughout the coastal villages. A large happy family, in the sunlight and open air—it did appeal to Persephone with poignancy, even though she had traded that life for Hades and the Underworld, and wouldn’t reverse her decision for anything.

  That night, in her dreams, Sophie finally reached a certain important decision in Persephone and Hades’ life.

  They had been married nearly a year. On his way back to the Underworld, Hades dropped in on Persephone, who was visiting a young woman she had known in Demeter’s village. The woman had given birth to a baby boy a few months earlier, and when Hades walked up, Persephone was carrying the baby around the garden, bouncing him gently on her shoulder as she talked to her friend.

  Hades approached and smiled. “You look good holding a baby,” he told her.

  She hardly remembered the rest of the afternoon. That promising remark reverberated through her head, muting all else.

  Later that evening, Persephone stood naked by the bed in the cave, tipping cloudhair seeds into her palm from the cloth bag. The light of the oil lamp flickered on Hades’ body as he rested among the blankets, watching her.

  She regarded the seeds, then looked at him again. “I could skip them.”

  A smile spread on his lips. The lamplight twinkled in his eyes. “You could.”

  Eager to see results, Sophie sped the memories ahead. She blurred past more suspicious and pleading villagers, more angry shouts against immortals, and more fawning worshippers who were calling her “their” goddess. It took a few months, and lots of skipped doses of cloudhair seeds, before the new moon came and went without Persephone’s monthly blood accompanying it.

  Not long after that came a morning when the prospect of bread and goat cheese for breakfast turned her stomach. Everything smelled too strong. Dried mud clung to Kerberos’ fur from some romp yesterday, and he stank like a swamp. The smoke from the hearth was chokingly acrid. The cheese’s odor was unendurable. Without a word to Hades, who was eating contentedly by the hearth and feeding Kerberos his scraps, Persephone walked out of the bedchamber. She seized a leashed ghost dog to light her way. She crossed the river on the raft alone, and sought out the only thing that sounded good: a pomegranate from the orchard.

  Sitting against a trunk in the dark forest, she nibbled the sweet, crunchy seeds. Her head and stomach and breasts ached for the first time in a year. Soon Hades came after her, holding a torch, and crouched beside her. He stuck the torch into the ground. The flame danced, revealing hope and concern in his face.

  They gazed at each other a long moment while she swallowed the seeds.

  She drew his hand to her breasts. “A lot larger than usual, aren’t they?”

  His breath skipped out of him in wonder. “Now that you mention it. Then…”

  “Considering I couldn’t stand the sight or smell of cheese—and I could smell it from a league away—and considering the skipped period…yes. I think we can safely say yes.”

  Hades tumbled forward, collecting her enthusiastically but gently in his arms. He kissed her face, breasts, and belly until laughter and weeping overtook her at the same time. Absurd tears: yet another sure sign of pregnancy.

  From her future perspective, Sophie knew both she and the baby would survive, but Persephone and Hades didn’t know it yet. She was the first to try having a child after becoming immortal from the orange. Perhaps the fruit had limits? They tried not to worry, for in every respect the pregnancy was a normal and straightforward one—Persephone knew it from her training as a healer. But the concern lingered, especially in Hades, who now treated her with a delicacy that sometimes moved her and sometimes irritated her.

  She worried too. All this Underworld-grown food she was eating, what would that do to the baby inside her? Surely no infant had ever received nourishment like that in the womb before. Would it give the child unexpected powers? Or produce a monster, like ones from legends? When her dreams shut off past memories and let her brain produce its own fancies, Persephone dreamed of giving birth to a Minotaur, or a sea serpent, or a giant bat.

  Demeter chuckled when Persephone told her about the dreams. “My sweet, every pregnant woman dreams such things.” She was ecstatic at the prospect of becoming a grandmother, and assured Persephone the pregnancy looked absolutely fine, nothing to fret about.

  Even so, Persephone suspected Demeter was only saying such things to calm her. Panic didn’t help anyone, a pregnant woman least of all. She did believe she’d survive the childbirth itself, given her new strength and the fact that Amphitrite had survived her births even while mortal, with Poseidon as the father. But women sometimes bled to death afterward. And who knew what the baby’s condition would be?

  “These are the herbs to stop bleeding,” she told Hades, every few days. “You mix them into—”

  “Boiling water, and use enough leaves to cover the bottom of the cup, yes, I know.”

  “And if I’m not conscious enough to drink it—”

  “The wet leaves can be used as a poultice. And Demeter and Rhea will be there. They’ll know what to do.”

  Demeter still wasn’t speaking to Hades, of course. Not the way she used to, at any rate. It drove Persephone into a heat of anger, and she marveled at the complexity of relationships with parents, how you could love and need them so much, and be so irritated by them at the same time.

  Her worries reached their highest peak during her labor. When the pains began their rhythm, right on schedule with the moon cycle she had estimated, she had Hades take her straight to Demeter’s house. Demeter sat with her while Hades rushed out to fetch Rhea, and soon brought her back too. Night fell and the pains worsened, and all Persephone wanted to do was make it stop so she could sleep. But Demeter kept urging her to walk circles around the garden, leaning on either her or Hades’ arm.

  What if she died? Hades and Demeter would hate one another forever, and all because of her. She’d reside in the Underworld and would be able to speak to them, but she’d be a dispassionate soul, ethereal, of little help.

  Too exhausted even to cry, Persephone rested in her husband’s arms. Her trembling legs barely held her up, and her huge, taut belly ached. “It shouldn’t hurt this much, should it?” she said.

  Demeter rubbed her back, and soothed her by pressing her thumbs into the places that ached the most, low on Persephone’s spine. “It hurts like blazing hell, I know. But you’re almost there. Don’t worry, immortal women birth babies fast.”

  Rhea chuckled. She waited near them, holding a lantern. “It’s true. Thank the Goddess for our strong muscles. And you’ll recover quickly, too.”

  Hades only murmured, “You’ll be fine, you’re doing so well.” He kept walking with her, and held her and fetched anything the other two women required. He showed remarkable courage, Persephone thought through her haze of pain, considering he must have been remembering his first wife, who had died in childbirth along with their baby.

  That wasn’t a useful thought for Persephone to be pondering, though, nor Hades either.

  But Demeter and Rhea were right: Persephone’s immortal muscles took over, and sooner than she expected, the other two women brought her into her old bedroom and told her to kneel on the blankets and cling to Rhea’s arm. Then the pains dropped away and Demete
r beamed and lifted a perfect, wiggling, crying infant to show the parents. “A girl! Well done, my darling, oh, well done.”

  Persephone forgot to worry about bleeding to death, and indeed hardly noticed the passage of the afterbirth at all. Demeter bustled about taking care of nurse duties, changing blankets and swabbing off Persephone’s skin and tucking clean cloths between her legs, assuring her the bleeding looked normal. Meanwhile Persephone, like Hades, was entranced by the little girl in her arms. They cooed to her and laughed in wonder over her, and tried to teach her how to latch her mouth around Persephone’s breast.

  “Black hair, like you.” Persephone stroked the baby’s fine hair.

  “A beautiful goddess, like you.” Hades’ curls were in a tangle; half of them had fallen out of the string he had tied them back with. Instead of the jewel-hemmed garments that usually proclaimed him lord of the Underworld, tonight he wore an old length of threadbare wool pinned over one shoulder, in preparation for the blood and sweat of childbirth. He looked perfect to Persephone: a glowing new father.

  But the baby was the most perfect of all. Having swallowed a few pacifying gulps of milk, the little girl opened her green-gray eyes and locked a surprised-looking gaze upon Persephone’s face. Persephone basked in the look while her companions crowded around her bed to view the baby.

  “He’s right,” Demeter said. “She is a goddess.”

  Persephone glanced at Hades, who acknowledged the kindness with a grateful smile both to her and to Demeter.

  “I shall inform the others,” Rhea said happily. “But I won’t let them come disturb your sleep. No one will be allowed till tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Thank you so much, Rhea,” Persephone said.

  Hades rose to thank her as well. Demeter gave him instructions on symptoms to watch for in mother and child, since she would be sleeping a while and he insisted on staying with Persephone and the baby during the night. Persephone listened without absorbing many words. She drank in the sight of her daughter, marveled at the softness of her cheek, and smiled in affection at how the baby grasped her finger when Persephone touched her palm.

  After Demeter kissed her and the baby, and went to her own room to rest, Hades sat on the bed beside Persephone. She moved over to accommodate him. He stretched out alongside mother and baby. The little girl fell asleep atop Persephone’s chest, in her wrapping of soft wool.

  “There’s something I haven’t mentioned,” he said, “because…well, in case anything went wrong. But her soul—I’ve been able to sense it for a while now.”

  “Of course you can. She’s your child. I can sense her too.”

  “More than that. I know her soul from before. She was the baby I lost. The son my wife had, on Crete.” While Persephone gasped in surprise, Hades continued, “I haven’t tracked him before. I never really knew him, and there was no point getting attached. But now…it would seem he’s been sent back to me. To us.”

  Persephone carefully moved one arm from beneath the baby and slid it around her husband. “I’m so glad.” She kissed the side of his head. They gazed at the sleeping girl. “It’s odd, isn’t it. How sometimes parents’ and children’s souls find each other again, in the same arrangement as before, and sometimes they don’t. When I was Tanis, Demeter was already alive, and I was someone else’s daughter. What ever became of my mother and father from then? Or any other life? I might never know.”

  “Indeed. We only sense people if the connection’s made while we’re immortal. In all the mortal past lives, we’ve no way to find our loved ones, other than asking about them in the Underworld.”

  Persephone slid down and rested her head on the pillow. Moving with the utmost care, she set the swaddled infant between herself and Hades. “Maybe we’re meant to love lots of people as our children, or our parents. Surely the world would be better if we thought of more people that way.”

  “I like that.” He settled onto his side, regarding his daughter sleepily. “What shall we name her?”

  “My mother’s name was Hekate, when I was Tanis.” Persephone rested her forefinger upon the baby’s swaddled body. The tiny chest rose and fell in quick, regular breaths. “She was so proud of her daughter going off to become a priestess. And so devastated when I died. I like her name.”

  “Hekate,” he echoed. “I like it too.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Adrian almost crashed the bus into the Siskiyou Mountains when his dad called—using Zoe’s phone—and told him the news.

  “The police? And the government?” Adrian said. He steadied the reins with his free hand, smoothing the bus’s turbulence. Thank the Goddess that Sophie wasn’t with him, or he might have got her killed by that startle reflex.

  “Someone gave them an anonymous tip, yes,” his father said. “That you’re out of the country, and traveling round the U.S., without clearance from either country to do so. They wanted to know if it was true.”

  “Anonymous tip,” Adrian echoed in bitterness. Quentin probably had no idea he spent most of his working hours placing anonymous tips against dangerous people. By some twist of irony, she’d done the same thing to him—now not only with Sophie’s father, but with the government of his home country. “You told them you didn’t have a clue where I was?”

  “Yes, the usual story. We’ve fallen out, he’s out there somewhere, I haven’t heard from him.”

  “Good.”

  “And of course the cult themselves has been sniffing round again.”

  A chill of fear traveled up Adrian’s arms. “Oh? How so?”

  “Eerie man showed up at work the other day. Skinny, tweedy bloke in his fifties. British, I think. Asking had I seen you lately, and did I know you were involved in operations that would end the world.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “I said, ‘Yes, you’re completely right, he’s on a path to sinful destruction and the mere sight of him makes me sick. Catch him and lock him away if you can.’”

  “Oh, Dad. He believed that?”

  “He did. I’m a better actor than you know. I told him you’d been seen up round Rotorua. Perhaps pursuing your Maori heritage or maybe just snowboarding. He got a gleam in his eye and took off straightaway.”

  “You shouldn’t play double agent,” Adrian said. “It’s really dangerous. The kind of damage they could do to you if they found out…” He shuddered.

  “It got him off my back, and threw him off your trail. Besides, he can’t prove I didn’t hear you were in Rotorua. So don’t go to Rotorua, lest you were planning to.”

  “I wasn’t.” Adrian sighed, calculating his options. “Nor will I show up much in New Zealand at all, I suppose, if everyone lawful or not is looking for me. Oh, well. Wasn’t as if I could have moved back home anyway.”

  “We’ll still find a way. We’ll sort this out.” His father sounded anxious, and Adrian felt guilty for the empty-nest syndrome he was inflicting. Hard enough for his dad to get used to his formerly paraplegic son turning super-strong, and to accept the existence of an Underworld that clashed with his timid Christian upbringing. Quite unfair that not long after that, Adrian had to leap out of his home for his dad's safety, thanks to the killer cult on his trail.

  “I don’t know, Dad. I’m, uh, rather a lot different from normal people.”

  “You’re better, you mean.”

  “Not exactly. My life can’t quite fit with the living world.”

  Yet he was dragging the excellent and still mortal Sophie into such a life. What kind of monster was he?

  Zoe wasn’t having the best day when she finally uncovered Hekate’s life.

  Her job at a nearby college, helping other students with disabilities learn about the resources available to them, felt more and more disingenuous. Pretending to be blind behind dark glasses, running her fingers over Braille and leaving the computer’s audible voice commands switched on, deliberately feeling round the edge of desks as she moved about the office, resisting comments on people’s
shirts or jewelry even when she wished to compliment them but wasn’t supposed to be able to see them—ugh, it got harder by the day.

  Then today the police visited. She was expecting them to come eventually, but the interview still made her sweat through her black shirt. She assured them, in concern and bewilderment, that she hadn’t heard from Adrian in months and didn’t know where he was. No, she had no reason to think he’d leave the country, but she wouldn’t really know. They hadn’t spoken lately; he’d been kind of an arrogant twerp, and acted too good for his old friends. So, no, she had no clue what he was up to. They thanked her, urged her to call if she did learn or remember anything, and left.

  Goddess above. Lying to the police! A crime in itself.

  All the changes to her mind and body after those fruits had shredded her life into brightly colored madness. She now saw why Adrian had become such a restless, distracted mess after eating that pomegranate.

  But did she wish she’d never eaten it herself, nor the orange? No. She couldn’t go so far as to wish that. Her expanded sight—both physical and inner—was too breathtaking to give up. It was only that she, like Adrian and everyone else who’d eaten those fruits, had increasing trouble fitting her ordinary life into this new giant canvas.

  She hurried home and flopped onto the ground under the titoki tree in the back garden. The warm spring sun soothed her closed eyelids.

  She reached back a little further, and there it lay: Hekate’s life, a golden ancient tome, ready for her to blow off its dust and crack open its covers.