Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (16 page)

For a brief moment he too seemed to sink away and dissolve with the memory, and then he resumed: “And afterwards, when it is time for spring, she sits down on the Black Throne—only this time she is full to overflowing with the new seed of mortal life—and she closes her eyes and dies again, for all of you, exploding forth in a fountain of birth and rising into the mortal world, to bring all things to fruition and to begin the new cycle of light. This time her energy seeds the earth with the new life force, enacting the great resurrection that is the coming of spring. Over and over she dies, twice every season, and she has been dying thus since time untold.
 . . .”

“I did not know! I am so sorry.
 . . .” Percy looked at the dark God with compassion.

But Hades continued. “It
hurts
her to die. Each time it happens, it hurts her, and it destroys her completely. Even I cannot imagine how it is, for an immortal to be destroyed thus and recreated anew, what immeasurable agony. For, it is such a perfect dissolution of will, of self, and of power, that there is no mortal equivalent. And Death—my own aspect—cannot help her in this. My poor long-suffering love—she is the only one who may not be conducted by the White Bridegroom into the light. I can only stand by and watch her passing. It is my curse!”

Hades wept silently, his face stone, and the cobweb forest of filaments floating in the air all around them stopped moving, so abysmally still the Hall had become.

“And now, I will at last speak of Melinoë,” he uttered suddenly. “Now that you know what Persephone must go through over and over, unto eternity, now you can better understand the beginning of my story where I had told you how Persephone has once paused and questioned her function. One season—over a hundred of your mortal years ago—before emerging Above, Persephone lingered in the Underworld. Instead of sitting on the Black Throne, she stood in the dark resplendent chamber and she pressed her hands lightly upon her richly filled womb and she
birthed
a fine delicate girl of shadows. Out the child came, pouring down between her legs like a ghost, or a bit of gentle vapor, barely moving the fine fabric of her long chiton in passing. She was such a tiny infant, but perfect in every way, except that she was half smoke and half tangible.

“Now, you must know that
nothing
has ever been born before in the Underworld—it is an impossibility, the Underworld being the original barren place, the home of death. And yet, here she was, a girl of shadows, imbued with peculiar life.

“Persephone exclaimed with delight, and she handed me the child, and told me to care for her and look after her until she returned. And then Persephone sat down on the Black Throne as usual, and for once she sighed with contentment, and then closed her eyes and died and then was gone. I admit, I was stunned and still filled with amazement at the circumstances, but now there was also joy at this new wondrous responsibility—my paternity I had never expected, for there had never been room for children in the strange confines of our divine function. I will only say now that the girl of shadows grew and flourished, keeping me wondrous company in the long days while I waited for my love to return Below.

“When Persephone was back, we named our child Melinoë. We cherished her and gave her wonders of the Underworld to eat and drink and play with. For although the Underworld is only a small place—consisting merely of a palatial
house
of seven chambers, and all around it is pure darkness and the bowels of the earth—it has enough riches and sparkling black diamonds to buy all the Kingdoms of the mortal world. Suffice it to say, our daughter grew and thrived, and as seasons passed Above, she became a young woman. She was always shadow-pale and faint and not quite tangible, and yet she was more real for us than any creature of the mortal earth. And as Melinoë spent time with me while her mother was away Above, she asked me questions of both worlds. There was only so much I could answer through the years, and eventually all answers had been exhausted. At last, Melinoë told us that she wanted to see the mortal world for herself.

“Both her mother and I were reluctant at first, and I had my deepest suspicions that this shadow daughter of ours would not survive the journey or the destination. But Melinoë grew sadder every season, and at last Persephone’s heart could not bear it. Neither one of us could deny our child anything for long. And yet, before allowing her to go, I consulted with the other gods. I asked my brothers, Zeus of the Sky and Poseidon of the Sea, and they in turn asked all the lesser gods. One of our divine sisters, the Goddess Hecate—she who rules Choices and Entrances and dark mysteries of the deep equally as she rules the sky, the firmament, and the sea—she strongly argued against allowing Melinoë to visit the world Above. Hecate has wisdom and sense, and her knowledge is thrice as profound as any other deity. I was convinced, but apparently my beloved was not.

“And thus, on the day designated to be the one preceding spring, Persephone sat down on the Black Throne and she seated Melinoë on her lap, and with arms wrapped around each other, my two most beloved ones died together, and were dissolved, gone from me—while I watched, with a feeling that was the precursor of despair.

“What I learned next was my worst fears justified. Apparently Persephone awoke on the Sapphire Throne, carrying spring into the mortal world, but Melinoë did not awake with her. Instead, the girl of shadows dissolved into a fine black powder, like granules of ebony sand. She poured and crumbled all around her mother’s lap, falling on the seat and the floor and staining the fabric of her mother’s chiton. It lay there, the beloved dust of our child, and Persephone was stricken with madness. She railed and wept and fell upon the ground and attempted to collect the ashes of Melinoë. Gathering them the best she could into a clay vessel, she then spent a barren and terrifying spring and summer, followed by a barely fruitful autumn, until she arrived back into the Underworld, holding the vessel with Melinoë’s remains. Here, I was witness to Persephone’s darkest mood, and my own despair, as we mourned our child and attempted to do anything and everything to bring her back to us. Seasons passed, then years. Persephone did not quite recover, and as she grieved she grew darker and more lifeless, while the world Above suffered her frugal springs, and the Underworld bore her desolate winters. At last—and here is where you will recognize the story—at last Persephone’s own mother Demeter and I devised together a means of alleviating her pain, and it involved the drinking of the water of Lethe. Only—we did not know that long before we came to this notion, Persephone herself had tried to cure her mind, and failed, and instead, as witnessed by your Lady Leonora, she apparently damaged herself completely.”

Percy regarded the dark God with thoughtful gravity. “Could it be possible that the water of Lethe acted differently upon her than it might upon other gods? For, according to your own description, she is the only immortal who also dies on a regular basis—and I am sorry, My Lord Hades, but I don’t understand how it is even possible. How is her death enacted?
What
is her death? And is it possible that because she is unique in that way, her drinking of Lethe had such a dire result?”

“It could be so,” Hades said. “Though it is not known how any other immortal would react to three deadly swallows of Lethe, for none had ever attempted it—at least not to my knowledge. However, I suspect—because Persephone is already subjected to absolute death and dissolution twice a year, she is somehow more vulnerable to such damage if it is done to her by any other means than the process of her divine function. The overdose of the water of Lethe must have destroyed her immortal soul.
 . . . And because her soul is the essence of sacrifice and compassion and resurrection, all such things are now broken, and the pattern of the world itself is damaged. Without her soul, Persephone is now a mockery of herself, a dark empty husk, hollow on the inside, with a place that cannot be filled no matter how many armies she commands to destroy the mortal world, or how many lives she takes.”

“Was it Melinoë’s death that brought about the creation of the Cobweb Bride?”

“What happened after Persephone drank the water of Lethe in secret, is this,” Hades said. “Demeter and I decided that the only way to heal Persephone was to make her forget our daughter, her very existence. But—not only was
she
to forget the child, but all three of us would, we who knew of her being and suffered the most. We were aware that some of our memories might inevitably return—yes, even those very memories of Melinoë we were trying to suppress—simply because of who we were and what divine functions we had to perform. But we were willing to make the sacrifice for the moment. The other gods meanwhile were instead to take a great inviolate Oath upon the sacred waters of the River Styx to never speak of her to us or to anyone else for as long as we remained without our memories. And in addition, Hecate was to take the jar containing Melinoë’s poor beloved ashes and she was to hide it from us and from the entire world, and to never speak of its location.

“Persephone meekly agreed to this arrangement—that alone should have been a warning to us that something was wrong with her, that she was willing to give in so quickly. Well, it was done, I am told, according to plan, and then Hecate assisted us and made sure that we drank the water of Lethe properly—just one sip to forget, and no more. First, Demeter accompanied Persephone from this Hall where we all came together originally to agree upon our plan, to her own Palace of the Sun. And there, on the Sapphire Throne, she made her daughter take one sip—all along without knowing that Persephone was practicing a subtle deception on us, that she was already
changed
and soulless, the damage done, and the excess lethal water would have no effect on her whatsoever.

“Apparently Persephone played her deception well, because Demeter was satisfied, and then proceeded to her own quarters in Ulpheo to drink her own portion, supervised in turn by Hecate. Next, Hecate left Demeter in a blink to come here, and she made sure I myself drank the one sip of water while seated on my Ivory Throne in Death’s Keep—this very same neutral place that is neither properly the mortal world nor the Underworld, nether Above, nor Below, but an interim Shadow. It was important that we do this in such order, and that I lose my memory while locked in my Death Aspect and not the other, in order that I re-learn the things of the world without compromising the natural course of death and mortality. For, had I forgotten Death while in the Underworld, things would have been dire indeed for the world Above. Besides, I would remember ‘Hades’ eventually, when the time came for Persephone to come to me in our natural cycle—or so we all thought.”

Hades sighed, and gave a bitter smile. He then shook his head with its raven hair, and again there was the illusion of his locks turning to serpents as they swept lightly.

“What happened then?” Percy asked gently.

“What happened next was not at all what we had expected. It turns out, Demeter without her memory is an innocent gullible fool who knows nothing of her divine function. Even worse, it turns out that Death without his memory is a grim idiot, who also has no notion of the Underworld, or of his true ability. Couple this with the fact that now Persephone is a soulless madwoman who has planned all of our ruin in advance, and what we have is a grisly hopeless mess not worthy even of you mortals much less gods!

“The moment Demeter and I lost our memories, Persephone apparently went directly to her mother, fetched her from Ulpheo, and did something to her, encasing her in bonds of twisted energy. What else was done, I have no notion, for I was, as you know, not ‘myself.’ That part remains a mystery—the details of what my poor broken love enacted to bind her own divine mother and those maidens, and to stop the course of death itself by creating the Cobweb Bride. She must have used intricate dark energies to separate Leonora from her death, and then attach that death to Demeter. This caused the grim
event
you all know as the cessation of death. For, through that one small thing the entire mechanism of life and death was halted. . . . Indeed, by creating the Cobweb Bride, Persephone halted the whole process of living movement—our complicated divine function.”

Percy listened to this retelling of what she
thought
she already knew. And suddenly a frightening new thought occurred to her. “If death has ceased, and all the dissolution that goes with it has paused, does it mean that
life
has ceased also?” Saying this, Percy stared with growing horror directly into the dark God’s eyes.

His eyes—they were tragic.

“Yes . . .” he replied softly. “Now at last you know the true extent of the damage to the world. Nothing can die, and nothing can be
born
. No new crops in the fields, no flowers, no new buds on trees, no new infants to the animals . . . or to you mortals. Not a single new living thing can come into this world now! All is halted! And you thought that not being able to slaughter your food animals, or boil your meat and cook your food was bad enough! Now you know that there can be no new food to replace what is already gone! That which was here at the last Harvest is still viable, for it carries the last of Persephone’s life energy. But after death has ceased, so has life.”

“No new children born to anyone
 . . .” whispered Percy, thinking of her own life and its possible joyful course with Beltain.

“I grieve for you, my beloved mortal Champion,” Hades said. “And no, you may not conceive with
him
, the man you love, not until the world returns to its proper course. And now the possibility that the world will ever be healed completely is very unlikely.”