The Dark Wife (6 page)

What would happen to me after this stolen hour?

I couldn’t think of it. I couldn’t.

I found a patch of violets and plucked one of the little purple blooms.

What would Zeus say to me? Would he even remember
Charis
?

I plucked another flower.

Hades had kissed my hand…this hand. She had sprinkled it in gold dust. I plucked another flower and gazed down at my fingers. There was still the shimmer of gold upon them. I wanted it there always.
Always.

I plucked another flower.

“Rebel,” Hermes had told me.

I plucked another flower.

Soon, my skirt was filled with petals and leaves, fragrant with sweet, sun-warmed perfumes. I held the gathered fabric tight in my hands, flowers grazing against my arms, my fingers, soft as skin. Flower and flower I gathered, as if under a spell. Finally, languorous, awake from a dream, I raised my heavy-lidded eyes.

I was in an unfamiliar valley, a round bowl of earth with trees edging its rim, cupping the grass and wildflowers that flourished down and within. I paused near the bottom, petals fluttering from my skirt, and turned to go. I had wandered too far in my enchanted searching; I no longer heard the cresting of the sea.

I took a few steps backward, and then I saw it.

It was red, bright red, red like mortals’ blood. I watched it move, back and forth, borne up on a wind I could not feel. It enticed me.

I needed this flower. I needed to take it.

As I stepped forward, I felt the earth shift beneath my feet like sand, but still I reached, wrapped my glittering hand around the flower’s stem. Its petals were thin, like parchment.

I plucked it, brought it to my nose,
breathed
the scent of it: sweet but faint as dusk light.

I breathed it in again and felt the ground give way.

I rolled and fell in a rain of flowers. The earth shook like a wild mare, desperate to be rid of me, and I cried out, clinging first to a jagged bush, then a broken root. I slipped, let go, screamed, certain I would be swallowed down like a grape by my own earth, my mother’s earth. Would she know? Would she find me, buried so deep?
Or would I be lost and aware for all time—an immortal seed, never growing?

But then it stopped—the breaking, the shifting.

It stopped.

And I breathed in and out and coughed a cloud of dust.

The dust was multicolored and separated into shafts of light from the lowering sun. I stood, or tried to, and grimaced when I saw how my right ankle twisted beneath me. Gods are not impervious—it would take an hour or more to heal the bone’s break. I sank down and picked crushed petals from my skirt, the red flower long gone, and forgotten.

I knew of quakes, had experienced them before: the earth rears up and moves like an animal, impossible to seat.

But this had been different somehow…and strange.

The dust began to clear as I sat waiting, impatient. Darkness had amassed in the center of the valley, and as my eyes made sense of it, I made out a gigantic, gaping hole carved into the earth. It was as wide as the gates of Olympus and had
not
been there before. I rose and steadied myself against an outcropping of rocks, waiting, watching.

I heard it before I saw it rise out of the maw, before I saw the twisting metal and the sparking hooves. It came as a rumble of thunder, and up through the hole burst two wild black horses in harness—and behind them, a heavy chariot, dark as the night sky.

At the helm stood Hades.

I sank down to my
knees,
felt my ankle turn painfully beneath me, as the horses reared, as they screamed into the darkening sky, tossing their heads like monsters. When the chariot settled on the earth, Hades jumped down and placed a hand on each of the beast’s necks, whispered softly to them, so that they pricked their black ears in her direction, gentled, stood straight and quiet. She smiled with such fondness.

From the chariot floor, Hades gathered a faint, dark wisp, coiled like rope. It uncoiled when she touched it, long and thin, snakelike. It shimmered in the struggling light as she gathered it close to her chest, as gentle as a mother. She spoke a few faint words that I could not hear, and she lifted her hands over her head. The wisp spiraled up into the sky and began an ascent toward the dome of the heavens. It glittered, winked in and out of sight, and was gone.

Hades watched the sky for a long moment, while I watched her.

When she lowered her gaze, took in the destruction of the valley with her eyes, she took me in, too: crumpled on the broken ground, dead flowers my companions.

Her face, as before, was a mask of white marble, unreadable, but for a single instant, her mask cracked, and I saw—surprise?
Excitement?
I couldn’t tell for certain, but she took a step toward me, waving her hand.

“Persephone,” she said, her voice whisper-soft. “Why—why are you here?”

“I was…gathering flowers.” I blushed, feeling childish, and gestured lamely at the crushed petals on the valley floor. She gazed down at the headless stems and flattened flowers, uncomprehending.

“Gathering flowers,” she repeated.

“For crowns.”
I bit off the words, staggered to my feet and turned to go, limping, but she stayed me, stepping forward and wrapping her fingers about my wrist. I jumped, startled.

“Forgive me,” she whispered, but she did not let go, her fingers yielding and gentle on my skin. Here, standing so close to one another, and so removed from the over-perfumed mob of Olympians, I breathed in her scent, and it soothed me. She smelled of the earth—good, kind earth—and of hidden pools of black water, deep-growing things.
Dark, familiar.

I chewed my lip as she stared down at my ankle, as her brows drew together and her eyes filled with concern. “My arrival injured you.”

I shook my head. “I’ll heal.” But she was kneeling down, touching the swollen circumference of my ankle—so gently, like the wing-flutter of a moth.

Without a word, Hades stood, turned from me and moved back to her chariot. I watched, mystified, as she opened the waist-high door, reached down and in and retrieved a rough-hewn box. She hurried back with it, knelt down at my feet again.

“This won’t hurt, I promise,” she said. From the box, she withdrew the smallest of glass flasks, carefully removed the seal, and a dark gathering of liquid, black as ink and cold, dripped from the bottle onto my ankle.

I watched, mesmerized, as, within ten flutters of my eyelids, my bruised skin regained its regular hue, the swelling deflated. I put my weight on my ankle, and it offered no complaint.

“Remarkable,” I breathed.

Hades stopped up the flask and put it back in her box, smiling.

I held my breath, peering down at the goddess of the Underworld. I had been wrong before. She
was
beautiful. I felt my awareness of her beauty like a pain, and I feared she would notice
,
would ask me what was the matter, so I cleared my throat, rubbed at my eyes, grasped for plain words to break this spell.

I said, “What was that?
That liquid?”
            “A single drop from the river Lethe, a river of my kingdom.
Its waters steep with forgetfulness, oblivion. So that drop—” She gestured at my repaired ankle. “It made the bone forget it was broken.”

“Ah, clever!”

She rose, holding her box beneath her arm, and again she smiled. It was a small, shy smile, unassuming. I had never met another god or goddess with so gentle a manner. I stared at her, and I was not sorry for it.

“Thank you,” I murmured. “You are very kind.”

She shrugged; the stone mask again fell over her features. I felt a pang deep as an old root. I watched her as she moved back to her chariot, the box in her arms. “As you said, your ankle would have healed on its own. I simply quickened the process. It was through my carelessness that it happened at all.”

“Is this…is this how you always come up from the Underworld?” I was grappling for words. I wanted to speak with her longer,
keep
her longer, if I could. Like a pup, I followed after her to the chariot; she stepped up and in. I placed my fingers gently upon the dark carved rim, as if, by holding my hands there, I could hold her.

“No,” she told me. “I rarely rise to the surface. The true door to the Underworld is deep in the heart of the Immortals Forest.” Hades waved toward the trees, toward my home. “But it is long to travel, and I had an urgent matter.” She grimaced.

“Urgent?” I remembered the snaking wisp, how gently she had guided it to the sky.

“A soul came down to my kingdom by mistake—it wasn’t his time to die. So I brought him back.”

“You journeyed all this way for a mortal’s soul?” I could not hide my astonishment. I had had little interaction with humans, but gods generally viewed the mortals with varying amounts of contempt or indifference. There were a few, like my mother, who loved their worshippers, but not many, to my knowledge, and certainly none who would have undertaken such a voyage, from the Underworld to the face of the earth, for the good of a single soul.

“Of course,” said Hades, and repeated, “It wasn’t his time.”

We stared at one another for a long moment. I smiled.

“That was kind of you,” I said, finally, weakly, because I couldn’t find words true enough to convey the depth of my admiration.

She had been gathering up the reins but paused now, lowering them back to the rim of the chariot. She reached down and took one of my hands, bent her head and brushed her lips against my palm.

My hand was streaked with earth and yellow pollen, and I wanted to steal it back from her, ashamed, but I couldn’t bring myself to break this connection. Her face rose before me, her black eyes bright.

I gazed into those eyes, wondering what thoughts brewed behind them.

She was silhouetted by the clouds, by the glow of the sun above the bowl of the valley, orange and red, a disharmony of brilliance against the paleness of her skin, the limitless darkness of her stare.

“Zeus is coming to see me today.” My words surprised me; I hadn’t meant to speak them. But I felt so safe. Hades had been kind to a mortal, and I was hungry for kindness. So—haltingly, head bowed—I told my story. I told her of
Charis
and Zeus, of my mother’s plans for me. I told her that Zeus meant to bless me, and that I desired nothing he had to offer.

I told her that I had no place to go.

When I finished my tale, I did not feel better, but there was something new and clear amid the shadows within me, and I recognized it with gratitude: relief.

Hades had not spoken a word since I began. She had simply listened. But she opened her mouth now, dark eyes shining, and a single tear traced down her cheek. It fell on my hand, glittered there. “I am so very sorry, Persephone.”

Her tear in my palm—it seemed a precious thing.

I was exhausted, spent, but I nodded my thanks and turned to go. Someone else knew now, knew of Zeus’ travesty,
Charis
’ tragedy, and that was enough.

“Wait.”

Hades tugged at my hand, and I felt the pulse of her heart there.

“Do you believe in coincidence, Persephone?” She bent her head down, and I tilted mine up. Again, that scent: dark, never-known places; smooth water; earth secrets. She did not wait for me to respond—I did not know
how
to respond—but continued, “I don’t believe that paths cross by chance. I don’t believe that two people who were foretold to join fates could, randomly, stumble upon one another a day after their first meeting…”