Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (18 page)

“This moment, when we have just come apart and are about to separate again for more than two interminable seasons, is the soft gentle moment of utmost, bittersweet despair. For a brief span, this is the time when our desire is at its lowest and has been satiated, and our burning need retreats to a low simmer in order that we might perform the last part of our divine function. The Longest Night is over and although it is still deep winter, my love must leave me now and ascend to the world Above, to prepare the world for spring. As the Father of the new life, I stand up and help her put on the robe, and I take her to the chamber of the Black Throne. We kiss one last time, and as I taste her succulent lips, already she is lightening, paling, shedding the rich chthonic darkness of her underground coloration, even as she sits down on the throne and prepares to die into mortal life.

“She looks at me one last time, and her brown eyes of the woodland doe are now aerial blue. She closes them, and exhales softly.
 . . . And then she gasps for breath and shudders in the death throes and agony of her sacrifice—an impossible immortal transformation, a material dissolution of her in every sense. She fades away; her flesh turns to vapor and a memory of smoke, for she is torn apart at the fine level of pure immortal energy. And finally there is only one sharp point of light that comes to an infinite focus in the place where her divine center is, between her heart and her swollen womb, in her solar plexus.

“Afterwards, the Black Throne is empty. I stand there, empty also, drained of all joy, weary and barely satiated for a brief moment. My deepest color, that of the Black Husband, has now faded into a softer darkness—my skin is no longer matte black vacuum that swallows all light, but has attained its normal reflective sheen gently hued with silver, washed by her light—and I am back to my usual self, the Lord of the Underworld. All points on the surface of my flesh are still aroused, still impossibly alive. But now I am all alone in the subterranean silence of my intimate realm. The Underworld is suddenly closing in on me, stifling me in its intimacy, in my own counterpart to her agony—the loss of her for another two seasons.

“I look up, casting my gaze at the ceiling of black diamonds and primeval tree roots and bare ebony rock, where, in the infinite distance overhead through the layers of the earth is the world Above. I know she has been carried away there, together with the divine energy product of our love and the living seed from my body, the only portion of me that emerges Above always. And I imagine her, coming back to life and waking up on the Sapphire Throne, its heliotrope and lavender and blue hues surrounding her in a living cocoon of light, of splintered rainbows, as though she is in the cradle of her own eye. She stretches her supple body, bares her fecund breasts, spreads herself wide and
exudes new life
, while the world receives her fierce bounty in the aptly named Hall of the Sun.

“And then, as I think of it all, I begin to burn again. My desire for her is back, from a faint low simmer to the hell inferno. It will remain thus, only ever growing, until she returns again in the fall and the cycle begins anew.”

Hades became silent.

Beltain, listening to the voice of the dark God, had almost ceased breathing. In the new silence of Death’s Hall, he now regarded Hades with a measure of understanding and compassion.

“And now you know the truth, mortal man,” spoke Hades at last. “You know I cannot resist her, and after our brief union, for the rest of the time I burn for her who is my Black Wife. Here is a lesson to you—do not envy the gods; pity us, for we are fixed in our divine function, while you are free to do as you please. We
must
be wise whereas you
may
be fools.”

Beltain watched the stilled face of Hades, the bitterness in his immortal eyes.

“Furthermore,” continued the God, “this time, this season, the Longest Night has not even been
consummated
yet! Persephone, my broken love, has not performed her divine function, has not died on the Sapphire Throne and did not come to me in the heart of autumn. Instead, all these months, she has remained Above, enacting destruction upon the world and setting in motion the rest of the events you already know. Indeed, on that very same night that could have been our Longest Night, the Cobweb Bride was robbed of her death and the world’s death had stopped. Thus, I burn in the hottest black flames now, weakened by my own excess of virile force, and the Longest Night is still here, malingering, waiting to be enacted, and it will never come to pass. Each day and night is the same moment in the heart of winter! Can you not feel it, mortal man?”

Beltain nodded, feeling the undeniable truth of what was being said. The winter seemed particularly brutal and unending this year.
 . . . And now he knew the reason why.

“What will happen now, Lord Hades? Where have you sent my Percy?”

Hades straightened in his seat and looked at the black knight with sudden weariness. “What will happen now is the
unknown
. I will send you directly after my sweet Champion, fear not, at least in that regard. But I had to keep you back in order to impart to you this dark side of things. You must know this and be ready for what comes ahead.”

“I have heard enough, Lord of the Underworld,” Beltain said, blushing once more. “You have made me look inside my own self and now I see the burning darkness inside me also. And it makes me afraid of what I might do, of what I might be capable of.”

“Hah! Good!” Hades stared at him with his very black eyes. “It is good that you are afraid of desire, because it is what can rip this world asunder, and very likely, ultimately will. But at least now, mortal man, do not say you have not been warned properly!”

“I say only this—send me after my Percy,
now
. And I will study this desire and find a way to subjugate and control it.”

In response, Hades’s bitter laughter rang in echoes through the Hall of bones.

“Controlling your dark desire is the task of a lifetime, brave mortal! Take it from me who struggles with it every waking moment and yes, even in my dreams—you are much better served controlling its individual urges. Let the underlying fire burn low and steady in you, for it powers you to true action. Without desire, you will be nothing. Do not subjugate it, and yet, do not be ruled by it, only
inspired
. And now, enough revelation! Close your eyes, Beltain Chidair, and go to join your love!”

Beltain shut his eyelids, and saw in the last instant how a gale wind arose around the Ivory Throne and the pitch-black figure of the dark God faded out of existence, his hair standing up wild with coiling snakes, and the cobwebs trembling.

In the next instant, Beltain faded out also.

P
ercy opened her eyes and found herself standing in the snow. Lord Hades had sent her to a very familiar place, a narrow street in Letheburg before a freshly painted red door of a storefront with a cheerful window and a slightly lopsided shingle hanging overhead. Yes, this was Rollins Way, and this was Grial’s house.

Brr, it was cold! Early morning, just after dawn, and the dusk of night and dreary overcast hanging heavy in the dark grey sky. And Percy was wearing only a light summer dress from Tanathe, while all her warm winter clothing was back at the D’Arvu villa
 . . . and so was Beltain.

She had left
him
behind.

Starting to shiver in the freezing air, she stood gathering herself, sharply aware that she had left Beltain more than a hundred miles away. It was a strange protective impulse that had made her briefly run to Lord Death and leave her beloved behind, as if she wanted to spare him any unnecessary trouble and effort. After all, she had planned to return back to him immediately, as soon as she was done telling Lord Hades what she learned.
 . . .

But now, she had this new task to perform on behalf of Hades. And without Beltain at her side, she experienced a peculiar new, pronounced feeling of being alone. Percy had been solitary for as long as she could remember, even when surrounded by her family, and it was rather ordinary to be thus—and to be satisfied being thus. But since Beltain, she had become acutely aware of the difference of her life
before
and
after
.

She was locked in a moment of indecision—had she done the right thing to leave him, even for a few hours? Indeed, what would he think? Would he worry on her behalf?

Percy admitted to herself that in some ways she had simply bolted. It was simply too much, this overwhelming sense of
love
, of being wanted, of
union
with another. And her reaction was in part a kind of primal senseless panic. Because, on a small secret level, she was also afraid of the extent of her own feelings for him.

But now, here she was, in front of Grial’s house, likely the best possible place to be for a girl who had lost her mind in the way that she had, over
him
. Grial would help in so many ways. And surely, Grial would direct her toward finding the Goddess Hecate.

Percy inhaled a stinging lungful of icy air, and knocked on the red door. “Grial! Hello there! Anyone home?”

A few moments later there was a fumble with the latch, and Lizabette opened the door, wearing a plain woolen housedress and a kitchen apron covered with flour. Her face was still puffy from sleep. There was a bit of flour there also, on her cheeks and chin and the tip of her sharp nose.

“Percy Ayren!” she exclaimed, and her expression was more than her usual slightly supercilious one, with the addition of nervous darting eyes. She glanced behind Percy to see if there was anyone else there with her.

“Morning, Lizabette,” Percy said, holding her arms around herself and rubbing them. “May I come in, please? It’s freezing, and I need to talk to Grial.”

“Come in, by all means,” Lizabette said, stepping aside to let her in. “I am not even going to bother asking what in Heaven’s name you’re doing, dressed like that, without a coat or shawl, or how you got here—for I am sure this has something to do with the horrid Cobweb Bride business and the odious Death’s Champion business. However, I am going to prepare you in advance for what you are about to learn—”

“Is Grial in the kitchen?” Percy interrupted her, as they walked through the cheerful front parlor, and there was Marie, folding blankets and pillows on the sofa.

“Percy!” Marie exclaimed with a smile and a look of happy surprise. However she also exuded an additional high-strung nervousness that was beyond her usual timid self.

“As I was saying,” Lizabette resumed. “You need to prepare yourself—”

“Percy! Persephone Ayren!” Catrine and Niosta, followed by Faeline, came running out of the kitchen, all wearing aprons and flour in their hair and on their faces. They looked half-crazed because they had been giggling, and apparently someone must have
thrown
flour, because there was no other explanation for the amount of it in Niosta’s curly dark hair that now looked like an unkempt version of a powdered wig.

“Oh, for shame!” Lizabette exclaimed, seeing the flour-covered Niosta, and forgetting whatever else she was about to tell Percy. “I leave you for a second and you all go crazy! How can you find it in yourselves to waste all that precious flour, with the world falling apart, and no more sustenance to be had soon! We’ll starve, and you are playing with the last of our food!”

“It ain’t your food,” Catrine retorted. “It’s gonna be pies an’ tarts for the soldiers.”

“Even more reason to conserve it! Now, check the cinnamon and sugar sauce in the pan, make sure it did not boil over—did you stir it properly, Faeline?”

“Where’s Grial?” said Percy, interrupting Lizabette’s tirade.

There was abrupt silence. They all stared at Percy, and then Niosta put her hand over her mouth, and her eyes were very big. “Oh, Lordy, Lord, she doesn’t know yet, does she?”

“Know what?” Percy stared at them and felt a sudden bolt of alarm. “Where is she? Where’s Grial?”

“Grial is not Grial
 . . .” Catrine uttered cryptically.

“What?” Percy was beginning to frown, and it was all becoming ridiculous. All of them had the strangest expressions; even Lizabette was being all weird.

“Grial is an immortal goddess!” Marie suddenly announced. “She transformed into a beautiful ancient goddess and told us her true name was
Hecate!
”

“And now she’s up on the city walls, doing some magic stuff for the King an’ the city of Letheburg! And Claere the dead Princess is with her!” Niosta added, wiping flour from her eyes with the back of her hand.

Percy was stunned. “Oh . . .” she managed to say, then took a step and almost tripped on someone’s abandoned clog shoe in the middle of the parlor.

“We’re making apple pies for the soldiers!” Faeline said. “The Goddess Hecate told us to keep making pies, even though after last night’s sorcery the city is now protected against the dead army and the soldiers can get some rest! But they can still use a bite to eat! I bet you anything they’ll become magical pies when Hecate gets back—”

“So . . .” Percy mused, while her mind was racing. “Grial is Hecate. No wonder Lord Hades told me
I know her already
. Lord in Heaven! But it makes a wild kind of good sense, after all. We all thought Grial was a sorcery woman, didn’t we?”

“Aye, we did!” Niosta said.

Lizabette nodded. “It was certainly a shock, but it made perfect sense. And now, what an honor! To be here, in the kitchen of an actual Grecian immortal! I admit, I am still mortified and at the same time elevated spiritually—”

“Do you think she will return shortly?” Percy asked, taking a seat on the sofa.

“Dunno,” Catrine said. “Could be any moment! She’s been gone all night after popping in here briefly for suppertime. Said that the city walls were all safe now, and all thanks to her Imperial Highness, Claere!”

“And then she left again,” added Marie. “She said not to wait up—”

In that moment there was a loud brash knock on the door.

The girls started, and Lizabette immediately started to wipe flour off her apron and pointed to the others meaningfully to do the same.

“That doesn’t sound like Grial—I mean, Hecate!” Marie whispered, and her expression was frightened.

“Yeah, that’s ’cause she doesn’t use the door any more!” Niosta said, stomping her feet to get more flour off her head.

“I’ll get it. . . .” Percy stood up and went to see who was knocking.

She opened the door, and there was Beltain. His hair was tousled as if he had forgotten to pat it down when rising from bed in a hurry, and he was dressed lightly in the same summer clothing from the day before, but seemed heedless of the cold despite wearing a thin linen shirt. His handsome face was expressionless like stone, a hard countenance filled with what she recognized as anger.

“Oh!” Percy exclaimed, and felt an immediate pang of almost painful affection at the sight of him.

“Percy!” he said in turn. And immediately his face came alive.

“What are you doing here?” She stared at him in a mixture of overwhelming joy and guilt.

“I could ask the same of you! I awoke when you were leaving, and I followed you through the shadows. I was there when you talked to Lord Hades.
 . . . And then he sent me here directly, after you. Why did you go without me, girl?” He spoke in haste, with emotion. And his anger, she understood, was not directed at herself, but was merely a form of worry.

“I am sorry
 . . .” she mumbled. “I did not want to disturb you, and I simply had to speak to Hades and tell him what Lady Leonora said—”

“And this could not wait until I was up and at your side?”

“I think I was—afraid,” she replied. “I don’t know what made me rush like that, and I am so sorry! Truly, I did not think! I am an idiot, My Lord!”

She had wanted to say “my love,” but felt a little strange uttering it in front of the girls. Because the whole lot of them came out, peeking through the door, until Lizabette said, “For Heaven’s sake, have His Lordship come indoors already! You’re both standing neither here nor there, and letting in the freezing cold! And yes, you
are
an idiot, Percy Ayren.”

Beltain stepped through the doorway into Grial’s parlor. “So, is Mistress Grial here?” he asked, glancing around him at the girls and the spots of spilled flour on the floor.

And they all told him. For the next several minutes they were speaking all at once, regaling him with the unbelievable information about Hecate who was Grial.

Beltain and Percy both listened, and Percy finally said, “I am here because Lord Hades wanted me to see Hecate about something.”

“Yes, I know,” Beltain said softly. “I heard.”

“Goodness, have a seat, Your Lordship!” Lizabette fussed meanwhile. And Marie started to clear the pillows and bedding from the sofa.

“Anyone want some tea?” Catrine asked, heading into the kitchen.

“Tea! Ah, now that’s a perfectly splendid thing on a chilly morning like this, dumpling! Let’s all have it!”

Grial’s sonorous ringing voice sounded from the back of the parlor, and the rocking chair was suddenly creaking with motion. . . . Everyone started and turned at the sound of it, and there she was, Grial, or better to say, Hecate, even though she was in her mortal aspect, seated in the wooden rocking chair, and smiling at them with an eccentric grin.

Percy looked and did not know what to say. The same familiar dark eyes, warm and comfortable, the same wildly frizzy hair, the plan coat, her funny wide-brimmed winter hat with its knitted scarf earflaps.
 . . . Hard to reconcile all this with the notion that this indeed was
Hecate
.

“Percy!” said Grial or Hecate. “How good to see you again, my dearie! Did Hades send you to me now?”

“I—yes—how did you—” Percy stuttered and was even surprised at herself and her own dumbfounded reaction. Considering how many gods she had met already, why was it so odd to meet Hecate? Maybe because this was motherly Grial, someone she had come to care for and trust like a friend, and it made it oh-so much more peculiar?

“H-Hecate
 . . .” Percy said. “I am glad to see you, and please forgive me, but I don’t know if I should call you—that is, what should I call you?”

“My dear Persephone Ayren,” said the Goddess, looking at her with her very dark human eyes that were both warm and unreadable, containing somewhere in the very back a bittersweet sorrow. “It matters not what you call me, because I am still Grial, just as you are both Persephone and Percy. So let’s make it simple! Now, tell me, what has happened with the Cobweb Bride? Any progress there? Have we found the poor creature yet?”

And Percy told her the events of the last few days, shyly skipping the part about her new intimacy with Beltain. But as she carefully gleaned over those personal events, it seemed that Grial read precisely through her words and saw into her secret mind and heart. Indeed, a very warm sense of profound understanding emanated from the ageless goddess, as she glanced at Beltain and Percy. Even Beltain, seeing Grial’s wise appraisal, started to blush and averted his normally steady blue eyes.

“.
 . . And so I am told to ask you for the jar that has the ashes of Melinoë,” Percy concluded. All the girls were staring in rapt curiosity.

There was a pause of silence. Outside the window was a grey overcast morning. Hecate looked at Percy thoughtfully, while her chair continued to rock softly.
Creak-creak
.

“All right, I will let you have it, my dear child,” Hecate said. “Now, go to the kitchen and look in the pantry, top shelf—no, second shelf from the top. Should be a blue ceramic jar with a cork stopper and a bit of gold glaze. Bring it here.”