Dazzling Brightness

by Roberta Gellis

  While Nerus and her mother had been speaking, Neso had come softly to Persephone’s side. She put her arm gently around Persephone’s waist. Subdued by Nerus’s gaze but still boiling with terror, which begat hate and anguish that could find no escape through the impervious lining within her, and afraid to withdraw her shield, Persephone was hardly aware of the woman. She permitted Neso to draw her toward a small table on the other side of the bed, but she shuddered and turned her head away as she passed her mother.

  What love did she owe Demeter, who had lied to catch her in a trap? She had lied about her Gift too. Persephone was sure now that Demeter had known about her Gift for a long time, even though Hades had not wanted her to hate her mother and had tried to soften the truth. Love! All her mother loved was her own comfort. She did not think of her daughter as a person, only as a well of power into which she could dip whenever she wanted so she would not have to draw on her own strength. Who could love a well? No wonder Demeter had refused to name her. Why bother to name something you used like a rag to wipe up dirt?

  She heard the chair opposite the one in which Neso had seated her move and she lifted eyes containing nothing but hate. Demeter wanted power, did she? Well, she would give her power, enough to burn her or burst her. Fortunately, before her shield dropped she saw that it was Nerus in the chair, not her mother. Somehow the old man had gotten Demeter to leave the room. Now his strange eyes held her. Without any pull to resist, her shield thinned and softened and the rage inside her rebounded only sluggishly from the less-confining walls. Nonetheless, with no other emotion available to her, fury still dominated.

  “Eat, Lady Persephone,” Nerus said at last.

  “Whatever is in the food of Plutos cannot be leached from the body or the spirit by the food of the outer world,” Persephone snarled.

  Nerus smiled. “I do not think it can be.”

  Lack of stimulus stilled the rage. She was walled off from everything except the warm glow that was her memory of Hades. She yearned to let that envelop her as it had in the past. Looking around, Persephone saw that Neso was also gone.

  “Help me escape from here,” she whispered. “I have seen that you pity me, and I know you are kind. I have chests full of gold and gems, gowns of such fabrics as you never saw and for which a woman would sell not only her body but her soul. My husband will give you anything you desire—

  Nerus had been shaking his head from her first word and at last she desisted. “What would your escape accomplish?” he asked gently. “Do you wish to bring down Olympus and see Hades die? I am sure you came to the outer world in the hope of convincing your mother to make her peace with Zeus. What difference does it make whether you convince her here or there?”

  Persephone blinked at him stupidly. Not only was she sealed off from emotion, but words and ideas seemed to ooze only slowly into her isolation, “Hades believes I am in Olympus,” she whimpered. “If he learns I am not—” Tears spilled over and ran down. “He will think I lied to him.”

  “Persephone, was he not with you every moment from the time Hermes came to you?” Nerus reminded her patiently. “You could not have conspired with Hermes while you were still in Plutos, and afterward you had nothing to offer him. Hades might blame Hermes for deceiving him, but not you.”

  Persephone stopped sobbing. “How do you know we were together every moment?”

  Did Poseidon have a spy amongst the dead? And if so, how could that spy send news faster than Hermes’s leaping? She felt very confused by such thoughts, but if Poseidon had a quick way to send a message to one of the dead, could she not use the same spell to tell Hades what had happened? Even as she wondered, Nerus’s laughter proved the idea worthless.

  “I am called a seer,” the old man said. “But I do not need my ‘vision’ to know that. You are very much in love, my lady, and I do not believe even a man with a stone heart could resist you. Besides, Hermes told my master and your mother about Hades’s reaction when he first suggested an exchange of priestesses.”

  The breaking of even so new and tenuous a thread that could have bound her to Hades crushed Persephone. Isolated as she felt, telling Hades where she was had seemed the solution to all her problems. Hades would know what to do. Somehow he would have managed to come for her, even if he could not travel through water. She felt even more desperate and alone now than before the idea had come to her.

  She looked listlessly down at the table. The plate before her was a huge shell, fluted at the edges and whiter than snow. She had not the smallest inclination to touch the food in it; she hardly saw it. By then she had finally made sense of what Nerus had first said when she asked for his help to escape. He was right, of course. Even if she were more of a prisoner than she had expected to be, even if her mother was a liar and a leacher of power, she must try to reconcile her to Zeus.

  She could not blast her—not her own mother, who had kissed her and held her hand when she was unsteady on her feet long before her Gift could have been manifest. That impulse was not only born of a rage caught inside her shield but was the kind of ultimate stupidity generated by the dullness the shield generated. What good would it do to kill Demeter? she asked herself slowly. If Demeter were dead, who would bless the seed and the fields of Olympus? Would the Goddess manifest Herself in another of the priestesses so that Olympus no longer needed Demeter? More likely the Goddess would withdraw altogether from a place that bred a monster mad enough to murder her own mother. A mother was sacred no matter her faults.

  Nerus was right, but time stretched before Persephone like a vast empty grayness. She now admitted to herself that she had not remembered just how single-minded, how selfish and closed into her own desires Demeter was—or had not wanted to remember. Now she was not sure whether she would ever be able to make her mother believe that she truly loved Hades, that he had done nothing to force that love—except offer her personhood and respect and show her the aching need within him, not for power but for a lover to share his life and the rare beauty of his realm.

  Bleakly, Persephone rested her eyes on the strange curled things in the plate. They conveyed nothing to her. All she could think was that the only path left to her was to convince Demeter that the old Kore was truly lost to her, that she would never drink at that well of power again, that the longer she kept Persephone prisoner, the more the power would be withheld. That would take a long time. Demeter would not be easily forced to give up her dream. Persephone knew she had time. What she had forgotten was the horror of being shut inside herself, and as long as she was anywhere near her mother, she could not let down her shield.

  Nerus, watching the horror grow in her, said, “You will be reunited with your husband.”

  Her eyes lifted to his. “How long?”

  “That I do not see. I only see that you will reign long and happily in Plutos.”

  “If that is my fate, will you not help me send Hades word of where I am?”

  “I cannot help you in any way. My master has the ability to make his servants sorry for irritating or disobeying him. He…does not love the King of the Dead. It will be his pleasure to keep Hades’s beloved wife as long as he can.”

  “But you said I would be reunited with Hades, so Poseidon cannot keep me forever. I will be staying for several moons in any case. I only want Hades to know where I am.”

  “I told you what I saw because a seer cannot lie about his visions, but I see no more than what I told you. If you think some effort must be made to bring about the end you desire, you must decide what that effort should be and make it yourself. I will do what I can to make you comfortable on Aegina and, if you are interested, tell you what I can about the island, but I can do no more for you.”

  He smiled suddenly, a tight-lipped, mischievous smile, so that his last words stuck in Persephone’s mind, not so much that he could do nothing for her as his remark about the island. At first she rejected the idea angrily. She wanted to get off Aegina, not learn about it. Pulling her eyes away from his gaze,
they found the curled white things in her plate.

  “You want me to accept Aegina and you fill my plate with grubs?”

  “They are not grubs but a very lively fruit of the sea. Try one. I promise you will find the flavor enticing. And an empty stomach does not make for clear thought.”

  Unfortunately, although Nerus’s promise about the flavor of the dish set before her held true, a full stomach did not help clear Persephone’s mind. It remained clouded, ideas seeping through long after a conversation had ended. Three days of angry confrontations with her mother brought her no nearer her purpose. She had the uneasy feeling that she was doing something stupid, but the fact that her mother insisted more confidently each time they spoke that she was bespelled only made her angrier and more aggressive.

  On the fourth day her mother did not come to her room, and when Nerus and Neso brought her breakfast, the old man told her that Poseidon wished to speak to her. Nerus was subdued and said little, but an odd glance or two from his strange eyes pierced the thickening wall inside Persephone and reminded her of what he had said, both about Poseidon’s power over his servants and his dislike of Hades.

  The warning was enough to keep Persephone from trying to enlist the sea king’s aid by speaking of Nerus’s vision or using the rational argument that he should want to help his brothers—one to restore fertility to Olympus and the other to recover his wife. Locked inside herself, she could feel nothing from him and could not guess what other argument or promise of reward might move him. She was puzzled by Poseidon’s behavior. First he stared at her long and hard, then he rose and took her hand, seated her, and while he was making what seemed to her completely idle conversation—asking if she were content with her chamber and the servants’ attentions and suchlike—he wandered about and looked at her from different positions.

  She knew what he was doing should mean something, but inside her shield she felt not only unresponsive but dull. In fact, the wall inside her seemed to be growing thicker and harder each day. Suddenly more aware of that wall and unable to understand what Poseidon was saying to her at all, Persephone began to panic as she had the first time she erected a shield. She stared blankly at Poseidon when he came close and laid a hand on her shoulder, her mouth gaping open. She began to gasp for breath. Poseidon let her go and summoned Nerus. The old man’s gaze and touch calmed her, but as soon as she was again alone in her room, she frantically tore open the hateful thing inside her and crumpled it away under her heart.

  The relief was enormous. She ran about the room, examining the odd but attractive furnishings, comparing the chairs of polished bone to those of lightened stone and fancifully bent metal in Plutos. Although she was alone, she exclaimed aloud—for the pure joy of hearing a voice unimpeded by a barrier—over the dressing table with its top and drawer handles of mother-of-pearl. But the mirror, held between the halves of an enormous shell, was nothing—a small round of polished metal that discolored and distorted her face.

  She wept a little over the memory of Hades’s struggles to make the mirror now in her dressing room, which reflected a full-sized perfect image. He had never stopped trying until he found that a thin, thin melt of pure white silver onto the flat polished back of a cooled sheet of melted white sand would give the perfection he desired once the front of the sand melt was also polished flat.

  The weeping ended when Neso came in bringing linens that she had received back from the washing women in the town. Glad to see anyone, Persephone smiled at her and said she would help fold and lay away. To make room, she lifted out a box of jewelry and an armful of her gowns. She laughed at the young woman’s astonishment over her clothing and jewels, speaking with warmth of Hades’s and Arachne’s skill, and when Neso said she must go and they were packing away the gems, Persephone offered her a tiara of gold and pale emeralds that matched her sea-green eyes.

  “I could not,” Neso breathed.

  “Why not?” Persephone laughed. “I have so much, and this piece befits you far better than it does me.”

  “It is so different,” Neso said, stroking it. “I have pearls of every kind, strung and set in shell and bone, but nothing like this. Oh, will you take pearls in exchange?

  “Why yes, I would be happy to have pearls,” Persephone said, sensing—with a thrill that she could sense—that the offer was sincere. And then, again recalling Nerus’s warning and suddenly concerned that her careless generosity would make trouble, she said, “Please tell King Poseidon what we have done. I would not want him to think I am trying to subvert his servants, and you have been so kind to me despite my sullenness.”

  “You were grieving,” Neso said. “I understood. But one cannot grieve forever. I will tell Poseidon about the tiara.”

  No, Persephone thought when the young woman had gone, one cannot grieve forever. She did not miss Hades less nor long less for her home in Plutos, but the shock of his absence did not shake her so brutally each time she thought of him—and with her shield gone, her memory of him was not the only warmth in her life. She had enjoyed the time Neso had spent with her, and, she thought with some satisfaction, she had handled Neso well and had her goodwill. That might be valuable sometime in the future.

  Not that she thought Neso would help her escape or get a message to Hades—nor would she ask it of her and bring Goddess only knew what punishment upon her—but ships must travel to and from the island. Neso might be willing to gossip about the ships and their ports of call. Persephone’s heart jumped and she ran to the window and leaned out, straining to see more of the inlet below the town. Ships there were, and many empty jetties—

  “Kore! Beloved! You have come back to me.”

  Persephone whirled around to see Demeter halfway across the room, arms open. Her shield exploded out, the tears she had made in it gone as though they had never been. She saw the change in her mother’s face as Demeter stopped, mouth still parted to speak endearments. Persephone was not now so dulled as she had been in her earlier encounters with Demeter—first with fatigue and then with isolation—and she perceived what she had been doing wrong. Her behavior had made her mother believe some act or spell of Hades had stifled her power and that attempts to break that spell brought on spell-induced rage in her helpless and ensorcelled daughter. She walked past Demeter and carefully shut the door. She meant to speak gently and explain that she alone controlled access to her power, but bitterness welled up and, being confined, filled her.

  “You told me I had no Gift,” she said resentfully.

  Her mother’s eyes opened wide. “But my love, you have not, at least, not any Gift you can use.”

  Knowing she could not understand very well, Persephone carefully memorized that answer to reconsider later. “You are wrong, mother,” she said. “Hades taught me just how to use my Gift.”

  Demeter froze for a moment, her lips thinned with anger, then she came close and grasped Persephone’s wrist, speaking in a whisper. “That is dangerous! Very dangerous!” She softened her grip and stroked Persephone’s face with her other hand. “Beloved, I never took more from you than flowed out freely. If you pour out your Gift into someone else, you could give too much and harm the mage or, worse, drain yourself to illness or death. And if knowledge of such a Gift was spread, every mage would try to seize you. They would fight over you, tear you apart rather than let another have you…”

  “Yes, indeed, mother. That was the first thing of which Hades warned me, which you never did. And his first concern was to teach me to shield that Gift within myself so that no mage can feel it or draw upon it.”

  “Except him!” Demeter said bitterly.

  “Oh no.” Behind the shield a rich satisfaction welled and brought calm and more clarity to Persephone. “Hades has no more power over me than you. If he needs strength, he must ask. I am free to give or withhold as I please.”

  “Oh, you are allowed to think so, I am sure. I am equally sure that when he asks, you give whatever he desires.”

  Persephone was silen
t for a moment as she tried to understand the remark. When she did, memory was swift and she smiled. “That may be so, mother. I do not know how I would respond if Hades asked. I am only sure that I have lived with him nearly two years and he has refused my offer of power more often than he has accepted.”

  Now she freed her arm from her mother’s grip, but gently. All the ideas she needed were inside her head already; she did not need the slow collection of outside thought and she was able to make a plan. Instead of pushing Demeter away as she had done previously, she took her mother’s hands in hers.

  “Mother, it is over. I am not your shadow or your tool any longer. Look at me. See me for what I am— Hades’s Dazzling Brightness, a person, a woman.”

  “You are my Kore, bespelled but coming back to me.”

  “No, mother. I am Persephone.”

  “You are my child. My body was racked with the pain of bearing you. You owe me love!”

  “Yes, and I am willing to love you—when I am treated as a daughter, a grown-up daughter, instead of as a prisoner. A prisoner owes her captor nothing, and I will give you nothing at all as long as I am confined to Aegina. Tell me that you will go back to Olympus and quicken the seed and bless the fields, and I will go with you gladly. Tell me I will be free when that duty is done, and I will help you as I used to do. I will even stay until after the celebration of the spring solstice. And if you need me, I will come each year for a few weeks at that time, so long as I am free to live the rest of the year with my beloved husband Hades in the underworld, which has also become very dear to me.”

  “Never!” Demeter shouted. “I will never again give you up to that stone-hearted monster who has changed you into a monster like himself.”

  Persephone caught the denial, although she did not yet understand the exact form. She had one more step to take in her appeal. “Mother, do you not wish me to be happy? Whatever the reason, I am truly happy as Hades’s wife. And I must go home soon after the spring solstice. If I do not, Hades will swallow much of Olympus down into the earth. Surely—