Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction based on the Young Wizards series by Diane Duane. No undue claim nor material profit is intended.
Authors' Note: The Young Wizards series incorporates the idea that most stories from most mythologies have truth in them on one level or another, and this gets more literal as you head toward "deeper" or more central realities. It also mentions Greece as a place where tales of a pantheon grew up because it took the Powers in charge of fiddling with it longer to finish up and go home. We were discussing what happened to a wizard who failed Ordeal when Persephone came to mind....
Yes, this leaves us with a rather more generally malevolent Hades than is really authentic, but with the Defender as Prometheus saying she "never had to steal" the fire, we think there is room to play.
Yes, posting this under my penname feels very odd, thank you.
Looking Toward the Light
by Alan Sauer and Persephone
Persephone thought she saw the sun again and knew she must be dreaming. Hallucinating, rather. The false visions had started -- she didn't know how long after he had brought her here. There were no days. There were only time and the pangs of hunger.
She walked through the mockery of a garden in the dark as she had walked through the fields out in the sunlight.
The Power who had called her, Demeter, had warned her not to go too far from the center of their work, or outside the area they were protecting directly, and to watch for tricks. The Lone One wished more deaths and had tried time and again to ruin the crops here; trees he had long borne a special enmity for, and Demeter protected her oaks fiercely, but corn was her special project now and Persephone's affinity too. Kore she was called, affectionately, a maiden wizard. Her Ordeal had been to help heal the blight on the corn, and prevent famine, but she had seen it wither as she was drawn down into the ground.
There was no light here, though she could see nonetheless, but there was a garden. A barren one with no fruit or flowers, until the day -- the time she had seen a bud on the sapling of a pomegranate tree.
Had she truly been here long enough for a tree to bud and bloom and bear fruit, she should have starved and died already, though Hades made her come to his table and tempted her with the finest of foods regularly. At least she thought it was regularly. She felt dizzy too often to be sure, even though this was the only way she to guess at measuring time. Even despairing that she would ever have the chance to leave, she resisted; it had even grown a little easier of late, as the rich smells began to make her feel sick. Likely he'd realize it before long and try simpler fare.
The pomegranate, though. It smelled lovely. Persephone blinked, her vision of the garden fragile through the imaginary sunlit field.
The flower smelled lovely. Its scent drifted to her on the breeze and she looked up from her spellwork, telling herself how after all she had been working quite a while and needed a break so she wouldn't make mistakes.
She would go and have a look at the tree and its lone fruit one more time.
She followed the scent upwind. She would take a walk and find out what was blooming. Perhaps she'd even move it, if it agreed; something that smelled so marvelous would surely be a delight nearer her home, and the farther she went the more apparent it became that it must be near the edge of the protective spells if it was even within them.
Persephone hoped it wasn't far without. Not beyond arm's reach, to be specific. She caught sight of something very near the barrier spells and hurried forward; this was it, indeed, and the plant -- something almost a low bush, but not woody enough, rising in graceful lines from the ground and opening into the single most beautifully colored flower she had ever seen -- was entirely worthy of its scent.
She approached it and stepped close, breathing in the heady scent that was strong enough here she nearly sneezed. She spent a moment staring in delight at the delicate shades of the petals, almost luminescent, before she murmured to the plant in the Speech and reached out to stroke it. Something told her that there was wrongness here; she had best find out how to put it right. Perhaps the plant would let her take it home.
She stood beneath the tree, looking up at the fruit. Only the one. She reached for it, vision blurring with a wash of dizziness again as she stretched upward. She was so hungry.
Her hand closed on the flower's stem. It stung. Persephone looked down and saw the symbols for protection in the Speech on the ground next to her feet.
On the wrong side of them.
Her hand closed on the fruit and tugged it free; she picked at it idly, tearing the skin with her nails and picking shakily at the seeds. It smelled so good, sweeter than the flower, though she dimly knew that it didn't, that fruit grown in the sun was better than this. But she had never been this hungry. There was only the one fruit; if she destroyed it and scattered it in bits on the ground she would no longer be tempted. That was why she kept on, now holding six seeds in her hand as the lightheadedness came back.
The flower in her hand forced her fingers apart, growing into the form of a tall dark man as beautiful as it had been and terrifying, with a long-fingered hand of his own that she couldn't let go of because it had clamped over hers painfully. Hades. The Lone One. She had been fooled by his fair form and her own desires and now was in his grasp; this surely meant her Ordeal was failed. As his shadow fell over her, she clapped the hand he did not hold over her mouth in horror; she bit her lip and tasted blood on her tongue.
It was sweet.
The imaginary sunlight vanished and she drew her hand away from her mouth.
And she heard laughter in her heart --
Persephone dropped to her knees, the fruit spurting sticky juice and seeds over her skin as her hand clenched convulsively, and retched. She didn't know how long she knelt there, shaking, her fingers in the dirt, until her eyes watered and the back of her nose burned and she couldn't remember how it felt not to have her body trying to turn itself inside out.
At last, her mouth too dry even to spit, she stared blindly at the ground and wiped her lips with the back of her -- relatively -- clean hand.
The seeds stayed.
Hades never came to look for her, even when she made her way to Lethe and scrubbed hands and face clean -- with her mouth tightly shut, though she thought longingly of forgetting this day had ever happened. He would remember. She had no doubt he knew.
Her stomach cramped occasionally in the time that followed, and she fancied the seeds were striking out roots.
Twice failed.
*****
Whether because he knew he'd won or because not enough time had passed, Hades had not called her to another meal before what Persephone had given up expecting came to pass: the bright Powers came for her. First the messenger visited, and then her patron Herself came storming in. Persephone knew when she came, for without moving the ground trembled under her feet as if it yearned to bring forth life. She was on her way even before they both summoned her.
"You have someone who should be under my care."
"She is mine." His voice was smooth.
Persephone shuddered as she was drawn to stand just between the two Powers arguing over her head.
"Look, you can't just GRAB her."
"She grabbed me." Hades was smug. "And why not? You lot do it --"
"Fine, I'm taking her back."
Persephone squeaked involuntarily as Hades took her firmly by the arm. "Time-share, at best. She accepted service."
"I said, I'm taking her back. Come along, girl. We might still be able to save some of our work."
"Why don't you ask her? Getting away from autocratic demands like that was, as I recall, why she decided to stay with me in the first place . . . ."
"That's not true!" Persephone blurted.
"Certainly seemed that way at the time. But then, perhaps I misread your acceptance of my hospitality and gifts."
"You dragged me here --"
"Child." The harvest-Power sighed and took her wizard by the shoulder. "To whom have you given Oath?"
"To Life," she whispered faintly, "and to you."
"Do you want to stay here? Serve him instead, at the least by leaving the famine unhealed?"
"No."
"And yet, she did sup at my table, and treat with me in despite of her Oath, which gives me a claim. She is less yours than she was, by her free choice."
"Kore. Is this true?"
"I have not eaten at his table --"
"Then come with me, and don't look behind you." For someone in charge of growing plants, Demeter could be very impatient.
Persephone shut her eyes and tried to fight back tears, expecting the Lone One's voice any second -- but he didn't speak, even when she took a step after Demeter and felt the bright Power's strength fall around her with a green-and-gold smell of corn ripening under sunlight. It was true, she hadn't eaten at the table -- not literally . . . .
But that wasn't the key, and her stomach cramped again -- she hadn't felt hungry since eating the seeds, but she hadn't felt satisfied either. If he would let her walk out free, then he must have reason. What would she do to the corn if she left with a lie under her tongue, and what would happen when at last she had to return to death?
"But I ate six pomegranate seeds." The words felt very cold on her lips, and the air unnaturally still around her, and not in the kindly waiting way of a spell. "In his garden."
Demeter turned back slowly. "Nothing fruits in his garden."
"Something did."
"All your growing things . . . inspired me, sister." Hades smiled. "I thought perhaps your servant . . . former, possibly . . . might appreciate the taste."
Persephone bowed her head as Demeter's gaze grew scythe-sharp; the harvest-goddess was perfectly capable of being deadly if she chose, and the look she cast on her brother would have withered most mortals, so what the failed wizard actually wanted to do was duck. She bit her tongue hard, even though she didn't know what she would have said to him if she'd loosed it, and wondered dismally after she swallowed whether her own blood counted as making things worse.
"Poison may taste sweet to the starving, unfortunately," Demeter said icily after a moment.
"You wound me, sweet sister."
"That would be nice. Persephone, come with me."
Her head snapped up in bewilderment. "What?"
"Come with me. Or have you made some other agreement with him?"
"N-no . . . ."
"The thing about seeds -- and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, dear sister, as this is your area rather than mine -- is that they grow. I'm very interested to find out what these seeds will sprout, out there in the light."
"Seeds sprout only when the conditions are right, and the digestive tract is not ordinarily the best environment. She will have to return to you." Persephone shuddered at the words. "In the meantime, however, you brought her here without actually killing her, and I will have her complete this one wizardry at least before you claim her."
"I can be gracious in victory, and what's one famine next to this? I will be seeing you again soon, my dear."
Neither of them replied, and Demeter reached up to the stone above them as they reached it, pushing through as easily as a sprout through soft earth. Light broke through to them, gloriously, and Persephone closed her eyes as the tears filled them, and kept her head lowered until she had spent the last of her wizardry into the corn.
The light hurt her eyes, and her skin stung as it fell on her after the cool dark air below. She knew that this should not be surprising, that it always took time to adjust to brightness after dim . . . but everything seemed far too acute, and in despair she wondered if it was because he had marked her and made her a thing of the dark, or because she had marked herself and knew she must go back.
The corn healed and grew, except in one circle. She stood just inside its edge.
Persephone lifted her head at last and stared straight at the sun, letting his rays stab into her eyes, until all she could see were black spots that glowed with colors she couldn't name swimming in a sea of rainbow tears. She didn't need to see to step downward as the earth opened at her feet, nor to know when it closed above her head.
She noticed, as her feet reached the smooth ground of the realm of the lost dead, that she could see them very clearly in spite of the blinding afterimages of moments before. She'd lost her last vestige of the light, then, and she lifted her head with a dismal certainty of whom she'd see.
"Greeting and welcome, fair one," Hades said with a wry, triumphant smile. "Make yourself at home."
Fairest and fallen. He was possibly mocking that. Probably. Then again, he might actually like tearstains. "Greeting and defiance," she replied dully. Now and forever. The words sounded empty to her own ears.
He arched an eyebrow. "A bit late for that, don't you think? This needn't be horrible. You can even have wizardry, of a sort, if you want it."
"Not from you."
"No? Well, perhaps you'll think differently in time. We have plenty of it, after all."
"May you grow sick of it." That was, perhaps, the worst; she had been "granted" a peculiar sort of immortality and had no chance, unless for some reason he chose to destroy her body, of reaching the less gloomy kind of death.
She'd heard one could see the Elysian Fields from here. Apparently it was some arrangement similar to the punishment decreed for Tantalus.
"Another pomegranate, perhaps? They can't harm you now."
"I'm not hungry." She might be eventually. She wasn't really sure. She wasn't sure if there was any point to eating here, or to refusing food now. "And they grow sweeter in the sunlight."
"I'm afraid sunlight is in short supply. But all the treasures of the earth can be yours."
"The best are the ones that grow from it."
"And yet you let them go."
". . . I know."
"But there's much that you can have, still, if only you ask for it. The darkness is no less beautiful for being dark."
"I tried to blind myself in the sun before I came back." A foolish thing to admit, perhaps, but surely he knew already if he wanted to. "Darkness is one thing. To be shut away from the light entirely . . . . And your gifts are only ever misery."
"Light?" He raised a hand, and the walls glowed, soft cave phosphoresence. "There is light here, when I wish it. And had you reminded yourself about my gifts earlier, you would not be here now, so I see little point in torturing yourself about it now."
"I'd have thought you'd find it amusing." She was lost, here in this pale glimmer that couldn't have nourished a blade of grass. She didn't know how to defy him from here.
"If I said I did, would you stop?"
"I don't know." She shrugged. "You lie, after all."
"Sometimes." He slipped into the Speech with icy precision. "But I did not bring you here to suffer."
Persephone shuddered at those sounds on his tongue. She didn't want to be redefined, or not by him . . . . "What else could you expect?"
"To profoundly inconvenience my sister by the loss of you, mainly. Your suffering is your own choice; I can't make you see the advantages to your situation." He smiled. "Well. I could. But it wouldn't leave you fit for much."
She didn't particularly consider herself fit for much now, but decided against saying so. "She'll find someone else." True, but so was the fact that she had inconvenienced all the brighter Powers by her foolishness, as well as betrayed them.
"That's true. Probably already looking. Not much of an inconvenience after all, are you?"
She sighed. "I hope not."
"Pity you're so easily replaced, or she might have put more of an effort into saving you."
"Hardly worthwhile, if I haven't sense enough not to need it." She wondered if it should bother her that she had very little trouble believing that even though she knew very well that it had been an effort . . . .
"And here I thought the protection of all life was their mandate. Don't you count?"
She laughed softly and a little bitterly. "Since you began your games, life is given to life and for life, and feeds on itself, and there is, I think, only so much they can do if one is foolish enough to waste itself."
"Perhaps. But for all I was among the strongest of them, I am only one -- they might have saved you, if they'd wanted to."
"If I had, as you said, reminded myself about your gifts sooner."
"I've been banished before. By humans, much less my own family. If my sister had decided to reject my claim and take you back by force, there's little enough I could have done about it. I suppose she simply didn't care enough to try."
"Somehow I doubt that," Persephone muttered. She didn't quite look at him. "I know what I did. I know what the rules are, or enough of them to know where I went wrong." Banishing him, she thought, would be nice. Although she'd probably still be stuck here.
"They made the rules. They could change them if they wanted."
"Not all of them . . . if that were their approach, I'd think they would have scrapped everything you did and started over by now."
"I suppose so. Perhaps I should leave you to, as the expression goes, think about what you've done?"
"I'm sure you'll do what you like."
"I generally do. What will you do?"
I was thinking mope. Maybe sulk a little for variety. He could probably hear her think, couldn't he. "I don't know."
"Well, then, remember that I have offered options. And as I am your host . . . if you call, I will answer." He turned and walked into the shadows beyond the pale glimmer of the walls, and vanished from sight.
She was not going to call for him. She might, possibly, be driven to eat again, if she had to. But no company at all, or that of shades, had to be preferable to his.
Of course, repeated pointless questions might annoy him. Of course, actively annoying him might end in her being actively tortured, and it was probably preferable to avoid that.
Persephone stood for a while staring at nothing and eventually wandered over to peer at the phosphorescing wall. She wasn't sure why it was doing it.
She sat down cross-legged and began to concentrate on growing mold on it. Since she didn't have any at hand and no longer had magic either, this was likely to take a while.
*****
The realm of Hades was as dark and bleak as he remembered, but in the "god's" absence, mold had crept along the walls, and the shades of the lost dead -- which had mostly been for cosmetic effect anyway -- had long faded.
The Lone One walked slowly through the caverns, until he reached the place where the mold was thickest. There were signs of her here, thousands of years of footsteps wearing paths in the stone, but she had likely hidden at his approach.
He stood there for a time in the silence, then made light -- real light, soft and golden, the kind his sister had taught him to make that gave strength for its own bearing -- and called softly in the Speech.
"Are you there? Please come out."
There was no apparent response for a moment, but he could feel something change -- the air wondered with her what was going on, and then a shadow among the shadows stepped into the light that washed it back into a girl. Blinking, but not looking away; still golden-haired and very, very pale after so long in the dark, with greenish-black streaks on her hands from where she'd handled the mold. "Where else would I be?"
"Where do you want to be?"
She stopped to think about that, no doubt assuming it to be a trick question, and spent a long few seconds looking at him instead of at the light. "Why do you ask?" she replied finally, then thoughtfully, "You look different in this."
"I am different, and not just in this. It's been . . . a long time. And I'm asking so I'll know where to take you." He smiled crookedly. "I'm not entirely sure what the rules are, so if it's the mortal world you might not be able to stay long -- it's all different anyway -- but I think you would still have a place with my sister."
"I rather doubt I'd be much use to her." She sounded almost entirely indifferent; she'd taught herself at some point not to care, or at least to believe it didn't matter if she did enough to say so, in an effort to avoid the pitfalls of despair over the things he told her that were just close enough to the truth to be hard to disbelieve. This in itself had been a victory of sorts at the time, though he had carefully skirted the reason he recognized her defense as a form of the despair she was trying to fight. It had been a very long time since she had admitted to any interest other than the mold and being uncooperative.
Hope had risen irrationally at this, though, perhaps aided by her having seen no one for so long that even his company was perversely almost welcome; quick on its heels came anger, and she took a step back. But only one.
"That never really mattered. She loved you, even after she lost you." He chuckled softly. "Love like that doesn't give up easily."
"I know she did," Persephone said at last, "or I remember knowing, anyway. I thought you didn't believe in it."
"I didn't." He shrugged. "Everything changes. Sometimes it even changes for the better."
She touched a knuckle to her lips lightly, almost absently. "This is new," she said half to herself, then more distinctly, "What happened?"
"I . . ." He paused. "To make a fairly complex story shorter . . . I lost."
Persephone showed a glint of humor for the first time in a few millennia. "I think you may have compressed that a bit too far."
"Well, true . . . One young wizard gave me a path back, and another gave me the will to take it, and my family welcomed me home."
Her eyebrows shot up. "This is an interesting definition of 'lost.' . . . Though . . . I suppose it does explain your attitude and words now . . . ." She stepped closer again, this time within arm's reach, and looked up at him. "She did tell me they wanted you back."
"They did. But it's . . . not as simple for me as it is for them. There's too many of me still doing harm."
She lowered her eyes and considered this for a moment. "And you would have seen it as a defeat . . . any other time I've seen you. It's been a while," she added, "I think."
"Several thousand years by mortal time. I'm sorry."
"I'd lost track."
"Not much to keep track of. Or with." He smiled. "I see you finally got the mold coming along."
"I'm not really sure how. . . . I don't think it would mind if I left." She still sounded rather uncertain about the idea, but she glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the Elysian Fields.
"It's not very far away," he said softly. "We could go now, if you like. The light doesn't hurt if you don't look away."
She looked back at him, then down at her hands again. "It does from outside, if you aren't allowed to go in. But it makes rainbows."
"I should say, it doesn't hurt if you belong there. Do you want to see where the rainbows come from?"
"Yes."
"Come with me, and I'll show you." He grinned. "And then we can surprise my sister; I think I forgot to mention where I was going."
"Are you sure --" she began, then broke off.
"What?"
She gestured toward the pomegranate tree that had only ever borne one fruit.
"What I did, I can undo. That's the way it works." He smiled sadly. "Sometimes the price would be too high, but not this time."
"Oh. . . . Thank you." She turned and started, not toward the window on Timeheart, but toward the tree. It had never been a large one; when she put her hand down to the trunk just above the root, she could nearly close her fingers around it. "The asphodel doesn't mind," she said reflectively, "and the mold likes it here, but this wants sunlight . . . ." She looked back up at him questioningly.
"What I did, I can undo. Or redo." The cavern shook, much more gently than seemed appropriate, and the ceiling cracked open, bathing the tree in sunlight.
She laughed through dazzled tears and let go of the tree, straightening up and touching her fingers to the bark again just for a moment. The leaves whispered, "I'd say you can go with him safely enough now, in that case," as they rustled and turned up toward the light.
"Considering it's the first time since I've been here he offered me a choice about going," she told it, "I think so too." She brushed crumbs of dirt out of her hair and came back toward him.
"I'll make sure it has enough light and water," he said apologetically.
"That's good." A little hesitantly yet, she took his hand. "Do we go now?"
"We can wait if you'd rather."
"Not really," she said quickly, then looked down at where his hand was glowing faintly through hers. "I think I might have failed a third time after all." The words were almost inaudible. "After all Demeter said, once I had to stay here, I wonder if I was supposed to learn to love you."
"I don't think I was ready to be loved yet. So if that's true, we both failed. Doesn't matter now."
"I suppose not. Will there be anything else I can do?" she asked a little wistfully. "From there . . . to help, I mean . . . ."
"I don't know. But I can find out, if you'd rather I ask."
"If I could, from somewhere else, I really ought to go there instead . . . ."
"Don't you think you've earned a rest, at least?"
She looked at him rather blankly. "I failed my Ordeal and spent the last several thousand mortal years, as I believe you said, not doing much of anything. So . . . well . . . no. I don't see how."
"Well . . . we'll see what my sister says. The way I see it, you've been locked in the dark for the last several thousand years, which is enough to deserve a vacation failed Ordeal or not."
"I'd rather be able to do something useful. . . . But I shouldn't complain."
"If you want to complain, complain. I certainly won't stop you. And I'm sure there is something useful you can do -- I just don't know all the rules."
"I don't want to complain. I want to help. I'll ask." She blinked. "I would have thought you would know."
"It hasn't been that long since I came back. And I've been spending most of my time on Earth as it is."
"Oh. I suppose I always thought you must know how everything worked to keep muddling it up."
"Ha. No. You might say I kept muddling things up because I didn't understand how everything worked, or was supposed to."
She smiled a little at that. "I thought you just didn't like it."
"That too."
The light from the Fields was growing almost tangible as they approached; the glow he had made blended into it and was part of it, which made the girl catch her breath -- and the rainbows in her eyes weren't from tears of pain this time. "We're really . . . ."
He grinned at her. "Welcome home."
*****