Hey guys! It's me again!
We were talking about meanings in class and the subject of lullabies came up, particularly this song. It got me thinking about the origins of it.
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
THIS STORY WILL BE PRETTY CREEPY! IF SOME OF YOU CAN'T OR DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH THIS KIND OF STUFF, GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN! GOING ONCE! GOING TWICE! GOING THRICE! THERE'S NO BACKING OUT NOW! YOU RISKED IT!
Disclaimer: I do not own PJO, HoO, or anything you recognize. I also do not own 'Ring Around the Rosies'.
ENJOY! *sinister laugh*
"Father?"
Hades looked up from his paperwork and faced his son, who was standing nervously in front of him.
"Yes?" he asked, raising a brow.
"I was wondering if... if you could tell me something about the Black Plague. You know, for school," Nico hesitantly said.
Hades stared at him blankly. The boy paled, if that was possible, and began rambling to save his skin.
"I mean, if you don't want you don't have to. I just thought it would be easier to just ask you and—"
"Sit, son. I will tell you something that has never been told before. I am sure you have heard of the nursery rhyme 'Ring Around the Rosies'?" Hades asked.
Nico nodded numbly and sat down across his father.
"Well, there was this daughter of mine. Darina, her name was. Before she was born, I got into an argument with Dionysus. When Darina, Rina, we called her, was born, he cursed her with a mental illness, causing her to spout out sentences and sometimes songs of her own creations at the most random times.
"We loved her nonetheless, her mother and I. Regardless of her mental condition, she was a very nice girl. I still remember the despair there was when she contracted the Plague way back in the seventeenth century...
"Son, the story I am going to tell you is for your ears only. Do you swear on the River Styx you will tell no one about this?" Hades asked.
"But father! I need this for school and—" Nico started to protest.
His father glared at him. "Hush, boy. Do you swear?"
"I do swear," Nico grumbled, unhappy he wasn't getting the information he wanted.
"Very well," Hades breathed, and he got ready to delve back into those dark times.
"Rina, please. You have to eat."
"If I eat, mother, would you let me go play with Mary?" the little girl asked, pleading with her big dark brown eyes.
Her mother sighed. "Yes, darling. But you must eat first," she said patiently, used to her daughter's incessant need to move about.
Rina gobbled up her food and bolted outside, shouting a "Thank you, mother!" On her way out.
The woman smiled and shook her head.
The little girl, only nine, ran up to her friend who was wating for her by her small wood cottage.
"Mary!" she cried gleefully. "I made it!"
"Perfect! After you," the other girl said, running after her friend towards a small hill, where several other children were on.
"Mary, why on earth did you bring her?" one of them said when the two girl reached the top.
"She is my friend!" Mary answers coolly.
"She is not welcome here. Not with what we will play!" a boy hisses.
"So then tell me, dear Thomas. What exactly are you going to play?" Mary retorted, glaring at the blonde in front of her.
"We are playing Hide-And-Go-Seek. God knows this girl here can't keep quiet even if she wanted to. Always saying and singing things in random... Work of the devil, I'll say!" Thomas said smugly.
"I am not!" Rina burst out.
"Then prove it!" Thomas exclaimed. "Play with us and keep quiet! Only then will we believe you!"
"I will. I will prove you all wrong," Rina blurted without thinking.
Thomas and the others started laughing.
"You all hear that? Rina the devil's spawn thinks she can change her ways!"
"Stop it! She is not the Devil's child!" Mary screamed.
"Keep quiet, Mary! It is bad enough you are friends with her!" one of the children screamed back.
"Well, if she will not play, then I shall not either. Come, Rina. Let us find some place where you are accepted," Mary huffed, dragging her friend by the arm.
"The nerve of those insolent people! Shunning others when they do not deserve to be shunned! I promise you, Rina. I will show them. I will show them all someday!" Mary ranted.
"They have pretty rings, the sick. They have pretty pink rings around their eyes," Rina said slowly, seemingly to no one. Her face took on a rather disturbing expression: eyes blank and wide open, lips set into a wide yet somewhat sinister smile.
Mary stared, horrified, at her friend. She's heard of the times Rina gets her supposed 'cursed speeches' moments, but has never witnessed it firsthand. Now, she wishes she hadn't.
"Rina, please, stop! You are scaring me!" Mary whispered.
"And these flowers! You do not think it is useless to carry them around? All they will ever do is fill up your pockets. Why, I have to get rid of these horrendous red flowers!" Rina continued, reaching into her pockets and pulling out a handful of posies, throwing them on the ground. Mary's eyes widened and she crouched down to hurriedly pick up the discarded flowers. She stuffed them back into her friend's pocket.
"And then they all fall down, the sick, regardless of the red flowers in their pockets. They are useless, these red flowers. They do nothing. The people, they still all fall down. I wonder. I wonder if I will also fall down. I wonder if I will also fall down," she finished. All that time, Mary was nervously backing away from the scene. From the smiling girl in the middle of the road, who was spouting unmentionable things out of her mouth. Then, all of a sudden, Mary spotted a dark figure near her friend's hand, on one of the sacks next to her hand. She shrieked.
This shriek seemed to take the other girl out of her trance. She looked around, seeing her friend a distance away from her, a look of horror etched on her face, her blue eyes set in an expression of utter fear. Her finger was pointing at something. Something that was found near her hand. Rina looked down and let out a shrill scream.
Next to her hand, standing on a dirty white sack, was a big black dead rat.
Rina ran to her house.
"Rina? Darling, what is wrong?"
The coughs from the other room continued.
"Rina? Rina, dear, what is happening?" the woman asked, worried for her daughter. She scampered over to her only child's side, and touched her forehead.
"Oh, my lord! You are burning up! Could it be...?" the girl's mother wondered, scared for the fate of her child. "Did you get close to a dead rat, yesterday?"
The girl was thrown into another violent coughing fit. She nodded feebly.
The woman's hands flew to her her mouth and tears started flowing down her face.
"No," she whispered, choking on her own sobs. "No. My baby girl."
"I am very sorry, mother. I truly am. But I could not stop my curse from taking over my being. I did not realize I was standing next to the corpse of the malevolent rodent," the girl said calmly, trying not to cry alongside her already weeping mother. "There is just one last question I would like to ask you. And I will never ask you anything, ever again."
"I am listening, daughter. I always will," her mother answered breathlessly.
"Was my father the Devil? That is what everybody is saying," the nine-year-old asked, her big brown eyes filled with anticipation, satisfaction, and a shadow of unexplicable fear.
Her mother shook her head. "No, my sweet. Your father was a wonderful man. He was certainly not the Devil. He was the greatest man I had ever met, and I will not trade my chance of knowing him for the world, especially now that I have you," she answered. "But now, the only other thing that is precious to me shall be taken away. Curse fate for doing this to me! Why must it torture me like this?" the woman whined in despair.
"It is alright, mother. I shall meet you on the other side somewhere in the near future, I am sure. I will not be lost forever," the girl said before she vomited out thick, red blood.
A few days have passed. The poor girl could not do anything other than lay in bed all day. Black spots have appeared on her body, buboes* grew on her neck. Her fingertips and toes have become gangrened, and she could not rid herself of the constant malaise she felt. Her breaths were heavy, her coughs were violent and continuous, her fever skyrocketed, and she constantly disgorged abundant amounts of blood.
Her mother sat next to her, eyes red and swollen from crying. She watched her daughter go through yet another seizure and curled her fingers tighter around the bedsheets fisted in her hand.
"Ring around the rosies..." she heard her daughter sing. Rina's face was set in that expression she always took on whenever this happened. Wide eyes, large, maniacal grin, her head was slightly cocked to the side. The girl lifted her hand up and traced the outline of her eye with a gangrened finger.
"A pocket full of posies..." she continued, throwing the dried flowers out of her pocket, crumbling them to hundreds of little pieces.
"Ashes, ashes, we all fall down," she finished. And then she stopped moving, the expression still set on her face.
"Do you have any last words, ma'am?"
The woman nodded. She opened her mouth and sang the song her daughter sang.
"Ring around the rosies
A pocket full of posies
Ashes, Ashes
We all fall down," she sang. And she watched her daughter's body get lowered to the ground.
"But I thought that song was invented about two centuries later," Nico pointed out.
"That's when it caught on, boy. And even then, they altered the lyrics," Hades answered.
"So what they say is true? It really is about the Black Plague?"
Hades nodded solemnly. "Do not forget that you swore on the River Styx that you will not spread the word, do you hear me?" he reminded sternly.
"I won't. Thank you, father." The boy stood up, bowed, and traveled out.
"Hello, father," the girl sitting underneath the poplar tree greeted upon the arrival of the imposing god.
"Hello, daughter," Hades said.
"You do not normally visit. Why the change of heart?" the girl asked with narrowed eyes. "I have told you countless times I shall not try for rebirth."
"I am aware. I have come to tell you that I have shared your story with my son."
"Ah, yes. That little song has certainly caught on, hasn't it?" she asked to herself and laughed hollowly. "Perhaps it was the fact that I sang it mere seconds before my death? I have been told my expression was very disturbing."
Hades shrugged. "Perhaps. Are you sure you do not want to try for rebirth?" Hades asked.
The girl smirked. "As if my decision would change during the course of the last five minutes. Or the last four centuries, for that matter," she said, her eyes shining in amusement for the first time since she died.
"You could try for Elysium, then," Hades pointed out.
"I like it here, father. It comforts me to know that mother is also roaming these endless fields, even if she does not remember me," the girl answered.
The god of the Undeworld sighed. "Very well, then. I will see you in the near future."
"I doubt it, but I shall hope. Goodbye, father."
Hades walked out of the Fields of Asphodel, mouth quirked up just the slightest bit.
*- Buboes are part of the symptoms of the Bubonic plague. They're huge lymph (White-ish fluid found in these buboes) swellings commonly found in the neck, armpits, and groin area. Take my word for it and be satisfied with this rough definition. DON'T LOOK IT UP! THEY'RE ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING! USE YOUR READER MIND AND JUST IMAGINE!
How was it? Please leave your feedback in a review.
The warning up there was just a precaution. A lot of my friends have said this idea was kinda creepy. Not tryin to make it creepy, just taking their word for it.
REVIEWS MAKE ME HAPPY! Please?
~XxYesterdayTodayTomorrowxX
Edit:
Oh yeah, I know Nico doesn't go to school, but just pretend for the sake of this story, kay? Let's say Chiron made him go or something, or just associate with Keys. (My other story). Thank you to Guest reviewer Qwerty for reminding me.