by James Welsh
As the gods far above dove into a new world, so too did Zeus. The former king was still very much alive, but in a newer, rawer fashion. His godly glow – which could shine through any darkness – was now gone. His new aura was the panicked cloud that stretched from his lips, the exhalations of terror following him in the coldness.
And he had every reason to be terrified. He knew that one moment he was looking at his daughter Athena in the world above, the next he was dragged down into the Underworld. He had sudden visions of ships sinking, as ship and crew were buried in the ocean’s pitch, never to see sunshine again. Yet, it was not the Underworld that terrified him – Zeus had been there before and knew it well, having overseen the punishment of his Titan parents and the shades he personally damned.
What frightened Zeus truly was that he was in a deep chamber that he had never seen before. And he felt that he should have been aware of the vast cavern at least, because it was too alive and dangerous to be hidden away. After all, a lion that has fallen into a pit can still be heard for miles around. It couldn’t have been a new addition to Tartarus, the sprawling prison for the damned just beneath the Underworld. It could have not been Tartarus, because Zeus had done nothing to deserve it.
Still, what Zeus was trapped in looked and felt like a hell enough. By the dim light of a torch somewhere, Zeus could barely make out the outlines of walls all around him. The air was dark and furious, a steel wind driving against him, almost blinding him, almost deafening him. Specks swirled about his face, stinging his cheeks, drying out his throat every time he inhaled. Zeus did not know it, but he was pushing into a blustery snowstorm. He did not know it was snow, because he had never felt snow before – his eternal warmth had always evaporated any moisture around him that was not ambrosia. But now he was feeling the snow, and it frightened him.
And the air, the air smelled like rotten apples – Zeus did not know it, but he was smelling the thick stench of poison. It was a perfume that sank down from the Underworld above him, the deaths of millions fermenting the ground until it was a harvest of the end. Through the foulness of the sour apple orchard, Zeus thought he could smell a new scent. He didn’t know it, but this new scent was that of skeletons, scrubbed clean by the things that squirm and crawl.
Zeus would have held his nose with his left hand – he would have shielded his eyes with his right arm – but he had already put all of his limbs to work. The windblown snow had pushed thick drifts of the stuff against him. Every step tired Zeus, as he had to trample and push his way through waist-high snow. He tried to climb atop the snowdrifts and run, but his incomprehensible weight only dragged him downwards. And so Zeus had to swim through the snow.
And why did Zeus have to run through the swarming snowdrifts? What had scared the king of the gods so much that he had to flee through the dark caverns? Zeus could hear howls, and they did not belong to the wind. He took quick glances behind him, and he regretted doing so each and every time. Through the dimness of the cavern, through the white sheet of wind and snow, he could see a pack of dark figures storming after him. They moved like men, but Zeus could tell that their heads and arms were far from human. There was something wild to the creatures, something snarling, something that was all teeth. If Zeus had only known how close he was to the truth: the creatures were tortured hybrids, their upper-half wolf, their lower-half human. They were constantly on the move, never tiring, never gasping for breath. No, they breathed like the wind, always on Zeus’ neck, and they moved like the gusts too. They were close enough that Zeus could hear them actually speaking with one another. It was not wolf howls, but it was some obscure language that not even Zeus knew, and he thought that he spoke every language in the world. But Zeus did not have to be one of those creatures to translate their babble. He knew what their yelps meant: Kill, kill, kill, eat, eat, eat.
At one point, Zeus felt air press against his arm. He thought it was more wind, coming from another direction, when he peered into the whiteness just ahead of him and saw something black plunged into the snow. He yanked it from the ground and he realized that it was a spear. The lunging wolves not only spoke but they also could throw spears. And yet Zeus had never heard of such a beast.
Feeling a burst of strength, Zeus stopped his retreat and turned, spear in hand. He saw a jaw of glowing, jagged teeth jump towards him. He jabbed in the darkness and he thought he heard a howl, he thought that he had impaled one of the terrible beasts. And then there was a loud tearing sound, and Zeus screamed. He clenched his arm, feeling a steady stream of ichor gush from him. He thought the pain he felt when Athena accidentally killed him was terrible. But this pain, it was something entirely new, within its own class of torture. The cut immediately felt poisoned, and there was a wrenching motion in his arm muscles. It was so sharp that Zeus felt someone was ripping his arm off. And then there was a sudden blankness, a numbness from his shoulder to his fingers on his left arm. Zeus, horrified, wondered if his arm had actually fallen off. The time from the bite to the wrenching pains to the numbness was less than a second.
With his good arm, Zeus pushed himself away from the beast, feeling the creature’s scaly hide pressed against his palm. Zeus forgot how tired he was for a moment, and he paddled fiercely through the waves of snow. He knew that his bitten arm had not fallen off, because the sensation slowly began returning to his arm. But with the sensations, the agonies filled him as well, until he felt as if his whole being was on fire. But the burning pain was good, because that meant that his arm was his once again. And that was when he realized that the long, deep wound in his arm had already healed. Even if he was still a god in the world above, Zeus doubted that he would have healed so quickly. No, there was something healing in the beast’s bite. But Zeus realized instantly that this unexpected blessing meant damnation. He knew that when – and not if – the beasts had finally caught up with him and pinned him helpless in the snow, they would chew him to pieces. And, since the wounds they dealt would heal almost immediately, then Zeus could very possibly be eaten alive for eternity.
With that in mind, Zeus tried desperately to pick up his pace. But the growls and snaps behind him didn’t fade – instead, they were still consistent, still very nearby. Zeus’ old godly vigor would help him for awhile, but he felt even that beginning to slip away. It would be only a matter of time before he finally collapsed in a heap of exhaustion, offering himself as a feast for his pursuers.
Half of Zeus thought it was a small blessing that wherever he went, it was downhill, the cave somehow sloping in all directions. If it wasn’t for the fact that the snow was so soft, he could have climbed above it and simply rolled and tumbled downhill. But the slope was just enough to give him some momentum. The other half of Zeus knew, though, that for every step he took, it was less downhill and more downfall. Every step not only wore him down, but it took him further from the world above that he loved so much.
As Zeus tripped and stumbled through the blinding snow, he did so not knowing that he was being watched. He would have never guessed it, since the snow was so white yet so dark, and he could barely even see the wild beasts chasing after him. But there was a long crack that ran the entire length of the cavern. The tear in the stone was too narrow to be easily noticed, and Zeus certainly did not have the time to look. But the narrow crack was still there, with a pair of silvery, beady eyes, watching.
Hades scampered through the narrow tunnel that paralleled the hellish cavern. As Hades ran, keeping pace with the chase, the stone floor crackled beneath his mighty weight. Without taking his eyes from the sliver cut through the rocky wall, Hades hissed, “Hurry, my love, hurry!”
Behind Hades, Persephone tried desperately to keep up. She was not used to running to begin with – her shins felt sore after every dash – and she would have gladly stopped to rest and breathe. But Hades’ gravity was too powerful, and he pulled her along without him even noticing.
“Don’t you want to see
what happens to your Zeus? After all of this time of him keeping us apart, we are finally getting our revenge!”
Hades turned and, grabbing Persephone by the hair, pushed her until her cheek brushed the tunnel’s wall, and she could see the chase through the slit in the rock. Behind her, she could hear Hades’ panting – she had never heard him breathe so hoarsely before. Was it from his run? Or was it from the exhilaration?
For the first time, Persephone could see Zeus’ punishment. She saw the tall, dark figure striding through the deep snow, and she saw the blobs chasing him. They kept almost catching up with him, almost.
Bewildered, Persephone turned. “What are those things?”
Wild-eyed and looking past Persephone, at the chase beyond them, Hades said, “Men of the past, shades so far gone from their human bodies that they go insane from the thought of being men again, even if that means devouring men.”
For the first time he noticed Persephone’s confusion. He smiled. “My love, how else can you become one with something? Do you not drink ambrosia to stay the beautiful immortal you are?”
“Yes, but I…”
Hades silenced her with his venomous eyes. “Your Zeus has kept us apart, not knowing the pain of separation, not knowing that the pain of reunification is just as agonizing. Doesn’t the world cry when your mother Demeter wakes it up from its winter’s sleep? Now, Zeus will know that you don’t rip apart something that will have to be put together again. Don’t you agree?”
Persephone thought No but said, “Yes.”
“Good. Now let’s hurry. I don’t want to miss the moment when Zeus falls.”
And with that said, Hades continued his run down the tunnel, trying to catch up with his running brother. Persephone exhaled sharply and continued her run as well, although her legs were lead beneath her, and her stomach was sinking. All she could think about was all of the things that Zeus had done for her and her mother over the years. Persephone could still remember the time when she was younger, much younger, and Demeter gave her a beautiful emerald for her birthday. And Persephone had loved it dearly, tossing it up in the air, watching the sunlight glitter through the stone. When the emerald caught the light, all she could see inside of it was a vast field in the spring, where the greens almost seem to breathe. But one day, as the young Persephone jumped and laughed and threw the emerald in the thin air on Olympus, she tripped over a rock. She could only watch in horror as the emerald bounced across the hard ground and disappeared over the edge. Persephone thought that she would never see her beloved stone again, and she cried madly – it was the first time she ever experienced loss of any kind. Demeter saw this happen, but she didn’t dare climb down the mountain to retrieve the stone. She could not abandon her daughter on the mountaintop while she was gone, and Demeter didn’t want to take Persephone with her into the mortal world, which was so ugly and imperfect. But Zeus had heard the commotion and he swept out of the palace. He listened for a few moments to his sister Demeter apologize for the noise and explain what had happened. Then, before Persephone’s astonished eyes, Zeus had turned into an eagle and flew down the side of the mountain. Demeter wanted to lean over the edge and see Zeus fly, but Demeter didn’t let her, although at that point they all still believed that a god could never die. When Zeus returned minutes later, the emerald tucked in his eagle’s talons, Persephone loved him as if he was her father.
It was a lifetime of charity that began with that falling emerald and almost ended with Hades’ first kidnapping of her. When Persephone was snatched from the fields that fateful afternoon, when the mouth of hell reached up and swallowed her whole, Persephone thought that she would be lost forever. She had heard the legends of the Underworld from the other gods atop Olympus. The way they spoke in fearful whispers, as if saying Hades’ name too loudly would beckon the death lord, made Persephone think that no one, not even Zeus, would dare challenge Hades. And yet, Zeus did that – he was the only one who strode confidently into the Underworld to demand her back. No other god, not even Persephone’s overly protective mother Demeter, would have done the same for her. And although Hades had tricked Persephone into staying six months of the year with him in his gray kingdom, that still meant that Persephone had the other half of the year in the sunshine and freedom. And for that, Persephone loved Zeus even more than the time he retrieved her precious emerald.
But while Persephone loved Zeus for her free months during the year, Hades hated Zeus for taking away his only love for so long, even if Persephone was forced to return to the Underworld. This ran through Hades’ mind as he ran through the tunnels. He called out, more to himself than to Persephone, “My brother has never understood the shame from taking orders. He has never had to bow to anyone, pledge loyalty to anyone, back away from anyone. What would he give now, to save himself from my beasts? How long must he beg for mercy before he learns humility? How long?”
“I don’t know…my king,” Persephone gasped as she ran.
Somehow, Hades spoke as if they were taking a stroll, not running breathlessly through a thousand corridors to follow the chase through the cave. “He has taken my life away from me before! He has taken my life, and he has never seen what pain it caused me! To be separated from you, my love – that is at least a death. But Zeus never knew, he never understood. Now, though, his life is over, for good –”
Hades stopped once more and spun in a circle. Persephone skidded to a halt in front of him, nearly slipping on the smooth floor.
“His life is over now, but I am here to watch it happen. So ask me, my love, who is the more understanding? My brother or myself? Who has taken the time to understand that his decisions are very real, that they can ruin others?”
“You, my lord, you are the one who understands,” Persephone squeaked.
“Exactly! Exactly.”
Hades was lost in his thoughts for a moment. Then, snapping himself out of his daze, he snapped, “Let’s hurry! We’re losing him again.”
As Persephone followed once more, she felt a sickness grow inside of her like a child. She almost collapsed, she was so overcome with the nausea. But the feeling didn’t come from the run, although that weakened her enough. No, the sickness came from watching Zeus being inches away from an infinity of agony, the jaws of the wild beasts threatening to tear apart his immortal limbs. And even from there, even through the blustery snow, even through the cracks in the cave walls, Persephone could tell there was fear behind every stride Zeus took through the deep snow. That fear did not belong to Zeus, it could not. Persephone could not imagine how that Zeus who stepped into the Underworld unchallenged, solely to rescue her, was the same one that she saw running for his life.
And yet, as terrified as Zeus was, Persephone did not find his courage. She wanted to rescue him, just as he had done for her sake so many years before, but she did not know how to begin. She could not even talk back to her captor Hades. She could not tell him that she was not his wife, that she could never be his wife. She would always remain Demeter’s daughter, as long as Demeter lived, and Demeter was immortal. She could never bring herself to abandon her mother – for as much as Persephone needed Demeter’s protection, so too did the mother need her daughter’s needs. They had defined their lives through each other, and so they were incomplete without each other. It was that mother’s love for her child that became their duty to uphold. But her duty to the lord Hades, that was not love, it could never be.
It was a mother’s love that made Persephone realize that she needed to find a way back home. She had to do it on her own, because Zeus could not rescue her anymore. And since Zeus no longer sat on the throne atop Olympus, Persephone knew what Hades surely knew: that no other god could dare make Hades relinquish his queen. If Persephone did not break free, she would never be free. And so, as Persephone ran to keep up with Hades, she began planning on how to run away from him.
Book 9