Underworld's Daughter

by Molly Ringle

  “My friend, forgive me,” Dionysos murmured, and let her go.

  She nodded stiffly. “You didn’t wish this upon her. I know.”

  “Never. If I had even suspected…” He scowled at the sunset. “Clearly none of us will sleep in the living world anymore.”

  “No sleeping tonight anyway,” Demeter said. “I for one plan to search all night.”

  “And I,” Hermes said.

  “So will I,” Persephone said. “But I’ll check in with Hades first. He’ll be tearing his hair out. I’m sure he’ll want to take a shift in the nighttime.”

  Which he did. Halfway through the night, she returned to the Underworld and he went out to take over. Other immortals—Rhea, Prometheus, Aphrodite, Apollo—paid brief visits to embrace Persephone and assure her they were leaving no stone unturned, then they rushed out again and kept looking.

  But dawn came, then mid-morning, and still no one found Hekate, nor did she return on her own, alive or dead.

  When Hades returned at mid-day to switch places with her, Persephone clung to him, and he rested his head upon her shoulder. A pair of hot tears dripped onto her collarbone, and he caught his breath in a sob. Tears overflowed her eyes. She stroked his long, tangled hair. “We won’t let them,” she whispered.

  They separated, sniffling, and she held out her hand. “Give me the blades.”

  He handed them over.

  She was climbing onto her spirit horse, about to leave, with Hades and Kerberos standing near in the entrance chamber, when Hermes hurtled down through the cave mouth. He leaped from his horse, flung the reins around a stalagmite, and called to them, “Kerberos! Give me Kerberos.”

  “Why?” she said, bewildered.

  “Oh, gods,” growled Hades. “Of course. We’re such idiots. He can sniff her down, track her. Oak wouldn’t matter to him.”

  “I can’t believe we didn’t think of it.” Hermes sounded disgusted. He clicked his tongue to beckon Kerberos, who came forward. Hermes picked him up, gathering the dog’s wriggling legs under him. “I’ll fetch Dionysos and we’ll take Kerberos back to the festival site and see if he can pick anything up. Meanwhile keep looking, and hurry. Sunset isn’t much longer now.”

  “It’s my turn to look,” Persephone said. “I was going to check the fishing village north of Argos. They’ve been hostile to us before. I imagine Thanatos is strong there.”

  “And it’s my turn to stay,” Hades said, “but I warn you, if sunset approaches and she isn’t back…”

  “Don’t even think it,” Hermes snapped. “We will find her. We will.” His voice trembled in strange vulnerability.

  “Do you love her too, Hermes?” Persephone asked. Exhaustion and distress made her disregard the concern of whether it was a nosy question.

  He swung up onto his horse with Kerberos under his arm, and sent her a swift glance. “More than you’ll ever know. Up!” His horse shot up and out.

  Persephone didn’t have time to mull over that odd revelation. She climbed onto her horse, then paused to look into the eyes of her husband, the soul she loved so profoundly, and right now the only one who fully shared her agony. “If sunset does come, and we’ve had no word…” She clenched her hands on the reins. “You know what I will do.”

  “No,” he insisted. “I’m older. I’ve had more of a life. It will be me, not you.”

  “What good will my life be if you’re nothing but a soul I can’t touch?”

  “What good will mine be, with you that way?”

  They stared at each other, breathing in trembles, tears welling in their eyes.

  “It’s a conversation we’ll have to save until sunset,” she said.

  He conceded, nodding, and stepped back wearily. “Find her.”

  She nodded in answer, and streaked up into the sky.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Dionysos jogged after Hermes and Kerberos, his legs weak. His body was ready to drop after two nights of hardly any sleep, two days of running and searching, and the constant grief and fury at his beautiful friend being stolen violently from him—all in the wake of sustaining at least ten wounds that each would have killed him as a mortal. Hermes looked to be staggering a bit too. They both needed rest. But sunset was speeding toward them in the winter afternoon, and if they were to find and save Hekate, now was the time to push ahead.

  Kerberos’ behavior gave them hope. The dog snuffled along the ground, leading them down the road from the festival site. He passed the city gates without turning in, and they continued winding down the slope, picking one road after another, headed for the sea.

  Kerberos led them out onto a small dock of wood planks. The salt-scented waves lapped against the posts. At the end of the dock he stopped and whined, and lifted his nose to sniff the wind.

  Dionysos and Hermes peered out across the vast blue water. Here and there, the white and brown shapes of boats dotted the surface, coming and going in the endless commerce and travel of the Mediterranean. They looked at each other.

  “We need a boat,” Hermes said. “A fast one.”

  A short time later, for an exorbitant price paid up front in heaps of silver, they had acquired a small ship and six strong men to row it. The ship was perhaps a mere three times the length of Dionysos’ height, and only as wide as his arm-span. It had sails, but the sailors only bothered rigging up one of them, explaining the wind was coming the wrong direction for the others to be of any use.

  They stationed Kerberos in the bow where he could sniff the air and point them in the right direction. The rowers launched the boat into the bay.

  “Is this even possible?” Dionysos wrapped his fur cloak around him for warmth. “Can a dog track a scent across the sea?”

  “Well, he is an immortal dog.” Hermes held onto the edge of the pitching ship as they sped forward. “If any dog can do it, he can. And it’s our last hope.” He turned west to glance grimly at the sinking sun.

  Persephone had failed. She hadn’t found her child. And now the sun was about to touch the treetops on the western hills. If she was to return to the Underworld and have that dreadful conversation with Hades, now was the time. But she knew she wouldn’t.

  She turned and began walking the road back toward the festival site. Best to offer herself up now, on the early side. If she waited much longer Hades would surely come up to find her, or to offer himself as the sacrifice. For the second time in his life, and this time more permanently.

  She wouldn’t let him. He and Hekate would live. It was her turn to receive the blades and the fire, though the terror of the thought turned everything in her to ice.

  She took her gold and amethyst crown from the bag she carried, placed it on her head, then concealed it with the hood of her cloak. She walked steadily, though her heart sobbed and her eyes welled with tears. She longed to embrace Hades and Hekate one last time, and her mother, and her friends. But she couldn’t do so without revealing her intention to give herself up, and if they discovered what she meant to do, they wouldn’t allow it. Besides, now there simply wasn’t time. She would have to beg their forgiveness and tell them she loved them when they came to see her in the Underworld. She closed her eyes a moment, then wiped the tears off her cheeks and kept trudging forward.

  A scowling middle-aged man stood by the path to the festival site, wearing dirty armor and slung with at least five weapons. He blocked her way with a spear. “Special meeting taking place this way,” he said.

  She drew back the hood of her cloak. The crown, along with her face, sparked a flash of recognition in his eyes. “I’m Persephone,” she said. “I give myself up for the life of my daughter.”

  Another heavily armed man, overhearing her, ran up to join the first. They eyed her suspiciously. “If you’ve got friends coming to attack,” the second man warned, “that’s it for your girl’s life.”

  “No one’s coming, not that I’ve heard. Please, take me and let her go.”

  They exchanged a glance, then seized her, co
nfiscated her sword and knife, and tied her wrists behind her back with a heavy chain. They pulled her on a long and twisting path through the olive trees. She could have broken the chain, but there was no point. She didn’t intend to fight.

  They stopped in a clearing where a large fire burned in the center of a crowd of nearly a hundred menacing-looking men and women. The crowd rumbled with low laughter and shrill remarks. Shouts spread the news of Persephone’s arrival, and they surged forward to surround her, grinning and chuckling. An exciting day for Thanatos indeed, she thought gloomily.

  A man pushed forward to stand before her. From how the crowd readily made way for him, she guessed him to be their leader. He was of wiry build, brown-haired with a long mustache and a thin face, and looked to be perhaps thirty years old. He would have been handsome if not for the frightening, insane malice in his blue eyes, and the disgusting teeth that revealed themselves when he spoke.

  “This is the queen of the Underworld?” He bowed, satirically. “My name is Straton. The king of Thanatos.”

  His title was clearly meant as a joke, in parallel to her status, and his companions chuckled malevolently.

  “I turn myself over to you.” Persephone felt a flicker of pride in noting that her voice didn’t shake. “Please send word at once to release my daughter.”

  “Indeed, we have folk ready to do that.” He grinned, with only half his mouth. “But not till we’ve taken care of you. We know how your type can escape at the last minute.”

  Persephone felt it then: Hades approaching, and fast. She closed her eyes in despair.

  “No!” he shouted from down the path. His footsteps pounded forward. The armed villains rushed to surround him, pointing spears at him from every angle. “Stop!” he said. “I’m Hades. Take me. Let my wife go.”

  “No.” Persephone’s voice carried over the crowd.

  The attackers brought Hades forward to join her near the fire. His chest bled through his white tunic from a spear jab, and he let two of the men hold his arms behind his back. But mainly all she could see was his grief-consumed, radiant dark eyes.

  “What a treat!” Straton said. “Well, then. Which of you shall it be?”

  Persephone and Hades faced each other, not quite close enough to touch, their hands imprisoned behind them. She blinked rapidly, trying not to weep. “Please let it be me,” she said.

  “I can’t let it be you,” he said. “I’m not strong enough.”

  “Nor am I.”

  They stared each other down. A tear ran from each of Hades’ eyes. With Persephone’s next blink, two tears answered, falling down her cheeks.

  “Both of us?” he whispered.

  “Together,” she said. “She’s strong enough to bear it.”

  Hades cleared his throat, and glared at Straton. “If we allow you to destroy us both, you must give us your word you’ll end this war against the immortals. You’ll leave every last one alone.”

  “Done,” Straton said, rather too airily for Persephone to believe.

  The hands pulled Persephone’s arms tighter. The crowd converged closer.

  “Assuming,” Straton added, “the immortals leave us alone, and meddle no more in human affairs, and bring no more plagues and evils upon us.”

  “We don’t cause those!” Hades shouted. “You understand nothing!”

  Straton motioned to his soldiers. Swords and knives slid out of sheaths all around with a ringing whisper of metal.

  “Release our daughter,” Persephone said to Straton. “Send word at once, if you have any honor, please.”

  “It shall be done as soon as your sacrifice is completed. We do hope you won’t take as long to die as your mother did.”

  Shock jolted Persephone’s body. “What?”

  Straton pulled a gold crown from his belt and held it up, smiling. Gold wheat stalks and stones of emerald and amber decorated the slender circlet. Demeter’s crown.

  Hades stared in horror at it, then at the tall roaring fire.

  “No,” Persephone said. She couldn’t sense Demeter—that could mean she was in the Underworld, as a soul… “No! You stole it! You’re lying!”

  “Let her see.” Straton waved toward the fire.

  One of the men reached in with a spear and hauled out a burning object. He flicked it across the ground to Persephone’s feet. A charred sandal: one of Demeter’s. She recognized it by the colored string of beads. Feeling she was about to faint, she looked into the flames and now made out the shape of a human arm and leg there, among the scattered parts being consumed by the fire.

  She sagged to her knees. “No!”

  “She offered herself shortly before you did.” Straton sounded smug. “We accepted the opportunity, of course. But we couldn’t send word to release your witch daughter, for those weren’t the terms of the offer. Only the capture of you, the death gods, could do that.”

  Persephone kept her head down, weeping, her ears ringing in unbearable grief. Against her will, her mind conjured images of this butchery. Had Demeter come forth with grace and courage, her head held high in her usual indomitable way? Or had she tried to plead, to reason with them, to no avail? And then what had they done to her? We do hope you won’t take as long to die as your mother did. Persephone prayed Straton had only said that to torment her, that it wasn’t true, that Demeter hadn’t suffered long…but she would be able to ask her soon. Cruelly soon.

  “You’ll still die,” Hades growled at Straton. “Sooner or later. And when you do, you’ll burn for centuries under the Earth, and the forces that will put you there are far greater than Persephone or me or our daughter or anyone who’s ever lived. They’ll go on whether or not we’re alive. You’re fools. Murderous fools.”

  “So you claim,” Straton said, “but we don’t really know, do we. Come. Let’s finish this.”

  The hands hauled her up.

  “Persephone,” Hades implored, suddenly sounding tender.

  If Demeter could face this doom for the sake of her granddaughter, then so could Persephone for the sake of her daughter.

  She lifted her face as she stood. In a quick burst of strength, she and Hades pulled away from their captors and came together for a tear-flavored kiss. The hands grabbed her again and pulled her back.

  “We’ve had a good run, darling,” Hades said.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  She drank in the sight of his warm, living skin, his face and body. “See you in the Underworld.”

  Then a burst of pain incapacitated her—she’d been stabbed through the back, was being stabbed again and again. A blade shot out from Hades’ chest in a spray of blood. He choked out a cry.

  Someone bashed her on the side of the head, and she collapsed to the ground, fuzzy stars and a sheet of red spreading over her vision. Pain and pain and pain, and screaming—her own and Hades’ and others’—and it went on forever and ever.

  Then with a flood of calm, the pain and noise vanished and the world was born again. The twilight sky arched serene above the treetops. She stood alone in the wild forest. She lifted her hand and looked at its translucent glow. Though her heart still sobbed, it was a muted pain now, tempered by love and wisdom. The serenity of the dead.

  She felt the Underworld pulling her almost as strongly as the Earth used to pull her living feet downward. But she lingered to wait for Hades.

  In a short time, his soul appeared. His tunic and body and face were clean again, handsome and eternally young, though sadness radiated from his eyes.

  “So you came here first,” he said. “I’m glad. It means you suffered a shorter time.”

  She took his hand. She could grasp it, and though she couldn’t feel its texture the way she used to, it provided a comforting tangible presence within her own. “We’d best go to the Underworld,” she said. “They’ll be looking for us.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Curled up half-asleep in the long December night, her back against the still-sle
eping Adrian, Sophie closed her eyes in anguish. Persephone may have acquired the serenity of the dead, but living biochemicals still teemed in Sophie’s brain and body, and tormented her with grief.

  It couldn’t end like that! Persephone’s and Hades’ lives couldn’t be cut short that soon, that brutally. But the memory spoke true in its cruel, blunt pictures, and flowed seamlessly into the memory she had already glimpsed several weeks ago.

  Persephone walked, or rather drifted, beside Hades in the Underworld’s fields, both of them souls. She found she was wearing the red cloak and white gown and wreath of flowers she had been wearing when she eloped with Hades. The fabric and blossoms all looked as bright and fresh as they had looked that day, more than twenty years ago. Her violet-shaped amethyst necklace was back too, though in the living world the necklace must have been stolen by Thanatos by now, along with her gold crown.

  Hades also wore his garments from their wedding day, cream-colored tunic and purple cloak edged with jewels, and his gold crown with the narcissus tucked into it. Her handsome bridegroom, restored to her.

  They passed the edge of the orchard, and she gazed sadly at the graceful trees she had planted and tended, and now couldn’t touch.

  “Our deaths served their purpose, as long as she’s all right,” Hades said.

  “If only we knew it worked,” she said. “If only we knew what happened to her.”

  Souls kept approaching and following them, curious and sympathetic to find the royalty of the Underworld newly dead among them.

  Persephone turned to the small crowd and asked in the Underworld tongue, “Please, can you find my mother Demeter?” Now that she lacked an immortal body, she couldn’t sense souls anymore. She had all the memories the pomegranate had given her. All the souls had those. And she had gained a certain clarity and calm she had lacked before. But her vibrant sense linking her to her immortal family had fallen dormant. As Hekate had once put it, a perfect immortal body was required for that ability. Souls found each other here merely by cooperative asking, and seemingly by an unconscious pull sometimes too.