“At first I thought him an idiot,” Hecate said, drawing a grape into her mouth as she rested an elbow against a great heap of tasseled pillows. “But he’s actually quite clever.”
Persephone listened politely, as she always did, but never found she had much to contribute. For Hecate’s part, this never bothered her. She was content to talk and talk until she’d spent up all her thoughts.
“I’m not so naïve as to think I’m his only lover, but I wouldn’t mind admitting I’m probably one of his favorites,” Hecate continued.
This sparked Persephone’s interest and she interrupted Hecate’s monologue about Hermes’ nicely rounded backside to ask a rare question. “You think he has lovers besides you?”
“I know he does,” Hecate laughed, popping another grape. “There’s really only one other whose affections I need to compete with, but he’s mortal and should die any time now.” She caught the look of confusion on Persephone’s face and paused. “What bothers you? Is it my wishing a mortal’s death? It doesn’t matter in the end, does it? If Hermes is keen to visit me in this place, he’ll certainly visit Ganymede, and that silly little cup-bearer will probably be given special placement in Elysium, too.” Her sigh was put-upon. “I’m sure Hermes prefers me.”
But Persephone was not bothered by Hecate’s ill-wishes to a cup-bearer. “If Hermes loves you,” she began, “why would he have multiple other loves?”
Hecate’s laughter returned, as did the steady popping of grapes into her mouth. “Love has nothing to do with it. Perhaps Hermes loves me, but all gods entertain multiple lovers. The snakes. Name me one god, one man even, who is consistently faithful to his love. Odysseus loved Penelope, but he still bedded every nymph between Troy and Ithaca.”
“Hades is faithful,” Persephone said quietly. When she noticed the look on Hecate’s face, she stuffed her mouth with olives.
“Hades is faithful,” Hecate repeated carefully. “Have you lain with him, Persephone?”
“No!”
“Then ask yourself this: what good does it do him to be faithful?”
“He’s not sought company elsewhere,” Persephone insisted, although now she was doubting herself. She was not with him every moment of every day, and at night she was not with him at all. She’d never considered any of this before, but the idea of Hades running off to be with someone else had her crushing an olive in her fist.
“Sweet Persephone,” cooed Hecate, touching her hand. “Does it upset you?”
“I’m not upset,” she said, though the olive would have argued otherwise.
“You are,” Hecate gasped. “The thought of Hades being unfaithful has made your pretty face go blotchy. Dear child, do you know what this means?”
Persephone thought it meant she’d lost her mind. She’d gone too long without sunlight and now she was taking unnecessary vengeance on innocent olives. “What does it mean?”
“You like him.”
“What? No.”
“You have feelings for Hades,” Hecate declared with a cackle. “You want him all to yourself and don’t want anyone else to have him!”
“No, that couldn’t possibly be true.”
“It is! It is! There is a sandal for every foot, as they say, and I suppose someone, eventually, had to be Hades’ sandal.”
“I am not Hades’ sandal,” Persephone argued, but even as she denied it, she knew it to be true. Somewhere, in the midst of hating him and tolerating him, she’d grown to like him. She cherished his company. She looked forward to seeing him. She kept finding opportunities to touch him and grew morose when he did not do the same. “Oh my,” she sighed, drinking deeply from her cup. “I do like him. A great deal, I’m afraid.”
While Hecate continued to laugh, Persephone questioned whether like was too tame a description. But beyond like, there was something far scarier, and she refused to admit it to even herself, especially not about a man who, besides being gentle and patient with her, had never physically proven his affection. And Persephone, as she was suddenly realizing, craved that physical proof.
“Hecate, what shall I do?”
“He is your husband,” replied her friend with a smart quirk of her lip. “I’m sure he would be thrilled to know his wife likes him.”
Persephone shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly. Not after trying so hard to dislike him. I would look like a childish fool.”
“Have you considered that you are a childish fool? One must embrace oneself.” Hecate brightened. “Have I told you about the time Hermes embraced himself? He was sitting right about where you are now.”
When Persephone saw Hades again, she saw him through eyes cloaked in affection. It was a nightmare. She thought her staring unfathomable before, but now she was much worse. She could not take her eyes off him. His beard was impeccably trimmed (had it always been so?) and his body was lean and strong (had his robes always clung so tightly?). His voice was a deep, melodic song that burned her blood, and his fingers wrapping around the stem of his goblet were long and thick and—
“Persephone, are you unwell?”
She jumped, staring wide-eyed at Hades, who was staring back at her, similarly startled. “I’m fine,” she answered, turning from him to fan discreetly at her hot face.
“Did you have a nice time with Hecate today?” he asked.
She choked on the wine she’d just sipped and, after a moment’s hesitance, he patted her back worriedly. The touch only made her fluster worsen. His hand was so broad, and pieces of his bare skin touched pieces of her bare skin, and it was entirely overwhelming.
She shifted uncomfortably on the throne and tried to keep her voice from shaking too badly when she answered him. “Hecate is always a comfort,” she said, even if she’d been far from comforting on this particular day.
“Good,” said Hades, and when he took his hand away, he did so slowly, letting his fingers slide across her back until their warmth left her completely. “Your comfort is important to me.”
She nodded meekly. “How kind.”
“If you ever wish for more comfort,” he continued, still watching her carefully, “and feel you do not receive it from Hecate, I would be happy to . . . comfort you.”
“I find Hecate very comforting, thank you,” Persephone quickly answered, the confusion on her face matching the confusion on Hades’.
“All right. There is nothing, then, that you wish to tell me?” His voice was odd, his wording stilted and strange. He was more bumbling than usual, which equated to quite a lot of bumbling. “As your husband, there is nothing you can’t tell me. No confessions I would greet with ire.”
All this talk of comfort and confessions had Persephone rising from her throne. She would need to excuse herself soon, before she succeeded in embarrassing herself further. “Is there something you wish to confess to me?” she asked briskly.
“Nothing I can think of, if you’ve nothing to think of either,” he answered.
“Well, I’ve nothing to confess.”
“Fine. Good.” He stood as well.
The pair of them were fidgeting messes of suspicion, and one eyed the other doubtfully. When Hades excused himself, Persephone thought him awfully eager to go to bed. If that was, indeed, where he was going.
In the middle of the night, crazed with wild thoughts, she crept down the palace hall and listened outside his bedchamber. Then she silently pushed open the door and peered inside.
There was no one within.
She shut the door and leaned against it, positively fuming. If he was not in his bedchamber, and he was definitely not in Persephone’s, where was he and what was he doing—other than proving Hecate absolutely right?
She found an answer in Hermes the following day, when Hades had still not returned and she was slouching in her throne and braiding a strand of hair in front of her face.
She heard the flutter of his sandals before she saw him. He was hovering above her with a mischievous
smile, and she was not in the mood for mischief.
“What is it, Hermes? Do you bring a message from my father? Does he wish to marry me off to someone new? Has my mother abolished olive trees?”
“Nothing like that,” Hermes said, waving off her guesses as if they were outrageous. “I just thought you might like to know where your husband is. Or,” he coughed, “whom he is with.”
Her fist pounded the armrest of her throne. “It’s true? He’s strayed from me?”
Hermes made a show of wiping an invisible tear from his cheek. “It saddens me, as well, to know this of my dearest Hades. Though I’m mostly sorry for you. Hecate told me of your affections.”
Persephone cursed Hecate beneath her breath, but now was not the time to feel embarrassed that Hermes knew of her deepest feelings. Now was the time to feel rage, and she felt it most thoroughly as she rose from her throne. “Tell me. Better yet, Hermes,” she stepped towards him, smiling darkly, “show me.”
“You really wish to see?” he asked, but he looked thrilled when she took his arm and braced herself for travel.
“Take me to this lover of his,” she demanded.
“Very well,” said Hermes. “Who am I to deny a queen?”
Their journey was so swift, she wondered why Hermes had not traveled with her in this manner when he’d led her from the Underworld back to her waiting mother. She decided most of it probably had to do with the theatrics of riding on a chariot. The sight of a well-placed chariot, after all, could be a very dramatic thing, as it was now, when Hermes flew them just beyond a riverbank in Attica, and Hades’ dark chariot and black horses were half-obscured in a patch of tall, dead grasses.
“He’s here?” she whispered as Hermes fluttered to the ground to land them both. The ground was dry beneath her feet where it was not wet and cold with snow. Demeter had proven true to her word, and in Persephone’s absence, Greece was a cold and lifeless place. But Persephone found herself with hardly any patience for exploring, not when Hades’ chariot was here.
She did not see the man himself, but she did see a woman, splayed beside the river further down the bank. She looked far too pleased for Persephone’s liking.
“You,” she said, coming up on the woman fast. “Who are you?”
The woman, whom—Persephone noticed as she drew closer—was also a nymph, huffed at the intruder, clearly irritated by the interruption of her lying about half-dressed. “I am Minthe,” she drawled. “Who are you?” She squinted up at Persephone and suddenly sat up, her eyes widening slightly in recognition. “Core?”
“Persephone,” growled Persephone. “Hades is my husband.”
Minthe looked at her blankly. “Are you expecting a sorry or a congratulations?”
“I would not expect either from a mere plant.”
“What are you talk—”
In an instant, the nymph dwindled down into a small, green plant. Her sweet smell floated through the cold air and was a pleasant tingle beneath Persephone’s nose.
“I cannot believe you just turned her into an herb,” Hermes said, sounding shocked for once in his life. He crouched in front of Minthe, rubbed his fingers over her leaves, and brought them to his nose to sniff. “As delicious as ever,” he sighed, before sending a rather cross look at Persephone over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t you call this sort of reaction a tad extreme? I didn’t even know you could do this.” He gestured to the little plant.
“I am a goddess,” Persephone said. “People would do well to remember it, as would silly nymphs who seduce my husband.”
“Hades, take that thing off and tell her,” Hermes said.
Persephone didn’t understand. She replayed his words in her head and still did not understand.
“Hades,” Hermes groaned.
A sigh sounded behind Persephone, and she felt a little puff of breath against her neck. With a gasp, she turned around just in time to witness Hades appearing out of nowhere. In his hands he held a familiar looking helmet. On his face he wore an unfamiliar expression of triumph.
“Hades!” she exclaimed. “Were you spying on me with that terrible helmet?” A worse accusation flittered across her mind and she slapped at his chest. “You were sleeping with that nymph!”
Hades arched an eyebrow and pointed to the little green plant. “That nymph?” he asked.
“Do not deny it. Hermes told me!”
“He told you because I told him to tell you,” Hades said.
Persephone moved away from him after realizing he was standing very close. “Why would you do that? Did you wish to hurt me by flaunting your affair in my face?” She felt close to tears and despised the persistently uncomfortable tugging in her chest.
Hades reached out to her but she backed further away. “I was not having an affair with Minthe,” he explained, finally beginning to grow a little sheepish. “I only wanted you to think I was.”
“That’s almost as bad!” Persephone cried, though the tugging in her chest lessened considerably.
“How else was I supposed to coax any truth out of you?” he asked. “I was walking in secret amongst my subjects yesterday when I accidentally came upon you sitting with Hecate.”
“Spy,” she sneered.
“Liar,” he countered. “I heard you tell her you had feelings for me, but that night you refused to admit it. You would have me go on forever thinking you hated me. So I asked Hermes for his help and we concocted a way to make you confess.”
“This has proven nothing but your wickedness,” she insisted, blushing furiously.
“I disagree,” Hades said, smug smile returning. “You turned my supposed lover into a tiny plant, Persephone.”
“While we’re on that,” Hermes interrupted. “Any chance you can turn her back into a half-dressed nymph?”
Persephone turned her glare on him. “Is that really what you want? Hecate would turn her into something far worse.”
Hermes huffed in offense, pulled Minthe up by the roots, and flew off. Persephone and Hades didn’t even notice.
“You spied on me, not once, but on two different occasions,” she hissed. “Or have there been more? How often do you sneak around in that helmet, your ‘most prized possession’?”
“Only once on purpose, I swear it,” said Hades. “I overheard your confession to Hecate completely by accident.” He took several steps forward, trying to close some of the distance she’d put between them. “Persephone, enough of this. I apologize for my plotting, but you cannot deny your feelings for me any longer. Let’s set aside this façade of indifference and allow ourselves some happiness.”
“I am not indifferent,” she said, knocking rudely into his shoulder as she stomped past him towards the chariot. “I hate you, in fact. Now take me back to the Underworld before my mother finds out I’m here and turns me into some ivy so I can never leave the earth again.”
At that, Hades hurried hastily after her, and for the second time in her life, she rode on Hades’ dark chariot, flying through a crack in the ground and disappearing into the shadows below.
Her temper was nearly spent by the time they stopped in front of the palace, but then she saw the helmet in his hand as he exited the chariot and it flared to life again. Too exhausted to yell at Hades any longer, she fled to her room and slammed shut the door. She went to the window, glaring at the false sunlight and the grove of black poplars. What angered her most was not Hades’ spying—though it was despicable. It was her reaction to it that upset her. It was the way she felt for him that upset her. It was the way he’d heard her confession and she’d yet to hear his.
She knew well that he liked her. He treated her kindly and had claimed to hear her laugh from above, and he often called her his wife and his queen, and he gifted her jewels and poplar groves. But he’d not taken Persephone in his arms, looked her in the eyes, and told her he wanted her and only her. He’d not tried even once to consummate their marriage. He’d not confessed his love for he
r, so how did he think it fair that she confess hers to him?
Because she did love him, and it was dreadful. Just dreadful. She feared she adored him more than even the narcissus. And all Hades claimed to adore was his hideous Helmet of Invisibility.
She tapped her fingers against the windowsill as a plan slowly crept into her mind. She had to smile at herself. Not long ago, she never would have considered herself a clever creature, or an angry one, or a spiteful one. But as Hecate had said, one must embrace oneself. Core may not have been those things, but Persephone was. She was those things and more, and she would have her confession from Hades, one way or another.
For a land meant strictly for the dead, there were a lot of mortal visitors who were very much alive, and Persephone tended to run into all of them. On a day shortly after Hades’ trickery with the helmet, she was in the garden when a man ran into her, literally, and they both went crashing to the ground.
He held a lyre in his hands—Hermes would be pleased—and there were tears in his eyes. After he’d helped her up and they’d dusted themselves off, he’d explained to her that he’d played the music for Cerberus, putting the guard dog to sleep so he could sneak into Tartarus. He was there for his wife, who’d recently died from a snakebite. Persephone believed him, though she warned him of the fate of Sisyphus if he was being deceitful. She told him he could take his wife and leave—knowing full well Hades would disapprove—and the only condition she put upon the arrangement was that, once he had his wife and they were on their way, they could not look back until they were out of the Underworld. The man ruined their escape by trying to sneak a glimpse behind him at his wife and she slipped back into the Underworld. Foolish man. He would have to wait until his natural death now for them to be reunited. Persephone didn’t feel too badly about it. She’d given them every chance, and behind Hades’ back, too.
Ganymede and Other Romantic Short Stories from Greek Mythology Page 13