The Greater Mysteries

Here comes the place where cleaves our way in twain. Thy road, the right, toward Pluto's dwelling goes, And leads us to Elysium. — Virgil, Aeneid

Hither the Victim's Sacrifice

Robin was starting to be as sick of Greece, (or rather the area that had formerly been called Greece) as she was of Storybrooke. In Storybrooke, she felt suffocated by all the words unspoken. In Greece, no one seemed to be able to shut up, though they had nothing much to say.

She had come here for answers to questions: answers that no one seemed to want to share in any great detail. And she was leaving her summer abroad with little more than an excellent tan, a polished mastery of Greek, an ex-greek lover and a current affair with weed.

Robin tried not to think about how she was just falling apart like her mother, only not with the bottles of whiskey, which she avoided like the plague, refusing to drink; unless being pestered by Greek's with wine whom she wanted information from, but with the dissolving of the coil inside her that the joint provided.

It was time to leave, for no one in Greece, however, been able to tell her more than she already gleaned from books in the Storybrooke and the NYC library about the Eleusinian Mysteries. Too much was secret and lost.

Robin inhaled another puff from her joint. In two days time, she would be back on the plane to New York and back to her studies in International Affairs, where she would be preparing for her job at the UN in this troubling time where any visage of peace and compromise was to be embraced because floated away like the smoke in the wind.

The darkness was just beginning to uncoil and her thoughts to evaporate, when a man she did not recognize approached. He seemed to scan her and realized that he should be less wordy and more concise.

"I hear you are the girl who seeks Hierá Hodós."

Robin was suddenly alert and responded in fluent Greek. "Yes, I seek the Sacred Way. I seek more than the road however."

The old man smiled. "I have heard you are seeking more than the kiste and the kalathos as well. But those things must come before you seek the Iacchus Candle. You must be joined to the Mysteries, and then we can talk.

"Of course, are the Mysteries still performed?"

The old man smiled. "Only, if you know who to ask. Any girl seeking the Iacchus Candle must surely be the right person to find the answer. Answer me this one thing first, how did you know about the Iacchus Candle? It has been a family secret for thousands of years."

Robin frowned slightly. What to say, what would not give him the wrong idea, but yet not make him leave her with nothing? She pinched the joint into a butt and placed in on the table with her glass of water.

"Barbarians in Oz told me it existed and a surviving 1/3 of a tome on how to conduct the Eleusinian Mysteries confirmed it."

The man inhaled roughly. "There is no such tome. The penalty for sharing information about the Mysteries with the uninitiated carries a penalty of death."

Robin smiled slyly. She had him now. She mirrored the regal posture of her aunt and waited a few extra seconds while drinking the water, to hold him in suspense. "It an old tome. Written by Kore." She did not even look at him, she did not have to. A man who had not suddenly laughed at the use of Oz in a sentence was no normal Greek. "Kore, Cora, Persephone, Whichever."

"Who are you?" The man whispered. "Are you the one I am to wait for?"

Robin suddenly looked up, her curiously winning over her desire to look in control of the situation. She, however, was well practiced at the smooth and serpentine and quickly recovered. "My name is not as important as my family tree. I'll skip the father's side, it is unimportant to this end, but my mother, ah well, her mother is a Cora, and her great grandmother a Kore, and her great, great, great grandmother is a Cora. Named after our ancestor, a family tradition if you will."

The man sat down in the empty chair next to her. "So you are the heart maiden we have been waiting for."

Robin flinched slightly. Focus on the candle. Do not think about what you are.

Robin shrugged, but the man had already noticed her discomfort. "You need have no fear of what you can do, as long as you have not killed. One can not become an initiate if one has blood guilt. You play a good game, but I can see in your eyes, you have not been stained."

He placed his hand on top of hers and she flinched and resisted the urge to remove it.

"Who are you?" Robin asked softly.

The old man chuckled. "I was wondering when you would ask. My name is Celeus. It is a family tradition too."

Robin nodded. She had studied her Greek Literature and Mythology well enough to know Celeus had been a King that had treated the Goddess Demeter well in her grief and had been the first to be part of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

He seemed to be waiting for her name, with a raised eyebrow.

"Robin." She sighed and looked away.

"A pretty name for a beautiful bird. You do not like your name?"

Robin shrugged. "It was my father's name. He died when I was very young, before I was even named. It..." Robin gave a light sigh and itched to pick up the joint again. "...carries a great weight to it, always defining what I must do."

"Ah, a noble father." Celeus stood up. "The only bars that can truly hold a bird however, are the ones they alight inside of...and you do not seem the sort of person who likes cages. Yet, you find yourself in them again and again. I wonder why that is?"

He began to walk off.

"Wait! Where can I find the Sacred Way?"

The old man turned and smiled. "The path was never about the road. It was about the journey."

Robin gave a soft growl. "Yes, but where do I meet you?"

"Athens, of course. Bring a bakchoi."

Robin stood at the historic start of the pathway with branch in hand feeling a little foolish. All the other tourists much have thought her to be selling something and kept asking what it was.

By night, she was feeling angry and having been so humiliated. Just as she was about to leave however, an old woman holding a lantern approached her. "I think Celeus is foolish to initiate a heart maiden. But maybe, my husband is right. Maybe the healing starts with or without Hades."

Robin itched to ask, but was afraid to break the spell. The woman led the way and she followed quickly. The spent most of the walk in silence, but a 21 kilometer walk was loosening Robin's iron fist on her thoughts.

Just as she was about to descend into thinking about all the tragedy in her family's life, the old woman spoke. "So Heart Maiden, if have indeed no blood guilt, where does your darkness sleep?"

Robin's throat begin to clench and her vision began blurring. She managed to gasp out. "It does not sleep."

The woman turned to face her. "Indeed. It is so thick, it seeks to suffocate you. You do not let it out to play, so it threatens suicide."

Robin's blue eyes flashed cold, but her skin flushed with heat. She clenched her teeth and swallowed a biting comeback.

The old woman shook her head. "It will kill you, you know."

"My darkness?"

"Trying to cage it."

Robin puffed air through her nose in annoyance. "So will letting it out."

The lantern light made the woman's eyes look like the sun itself. "Who is it that you hate? Father? Mother? Siblings? A Lover? It has to be someone close you."

"I am close to no one."

"Hmm... Tragic. The Heart Maiden is without heart."

"I do too have my heart inside of me." Robin protested.

"Too far inside, I see. No dick can reach it."

Robin was stunned for two seconds.

The woman then laughed more like a cackle. "Not even your own fingers can reach it. Though it is clear to see that you try often enough. Good girl, glad to see you are getting some sort of grain from your own garden."

Stupid Baubo. This was part of the tradition too. The dirty remarks.

"There's plenty of Elysium, if you know how to stroke it. Always stroke it before you poke it. Honor the Temple with a little..."

Robin gave a soft growl.

When this failed to get a laugh, the old woman stopped. She gave the heaviest of sighs. " But there is no temple is there? Your body is just a beautiful cage for a beautiful bird. Laughter can come from grief, but you have not even truly grieved."

The woman fell silent and Robin wished she'd say anything, to stop the words from echoing in her mind. Beautiful cage for a Beautiful Bird...

Just as Robin feared she was going to turn and flee in the other direction, abandoning her decade long quest for the comfort of another smoke, the woman turned to her and the sudden flash of the lantern stunned her for a moment.

"Maybe it's time for the kykeon. Maybe we need a moment among the barley and the pine."

They sat down on a large stone on the side of the path and the woman lit a branch of pine needles from the ground. Robin took in deep breaths, trying to steady herself. The smell of pine had always comforted her and she could not figure why. And here they were surrounded by pine.

One year for Christmas, Robin had stolen a piece of the tree and tucked inside her pillow. She hadn't been able to sleep in the many nights before, but with the branch inside her bed, she finally learned the secret to her childhood insomnia. Insomnia, which had begun to return as of late, Robin mused.

She took the offered drink, which smelled something awful. They sat there in silence like buried wheat in the ground, waiting for the night to unsteady under them.

Robin could not remember a great deal of what happened after that. Blurred images of men with light streaming from their hands, a bath in a river, and her Greek being put to the test.

Her hands were covered in dirt, oh yes, in soil, where she had planted something in the fields. Then she had seen green monkeys running around and then she had vomited up bird wings.

Yes, well that had not happened.

Robin moaned and realized she back in her own hotel bed, that there were three missed calls on her phone, and that her flight left in two hours.

She was about to panic when she saw it. On top of her hotel bath towel, right by her bedside, was a Iacchus Candle. She picked it up and she could feel its powerful, but inaccessible magic. A ribbon was tied around it, which simply said, "Hither the Victim's Sacrifice," which Robin knew to be part of the ritual, but was still confusing to her.

Robin threw everything into a suitcase helter skelter like, but the candle she placed in a box she had been storing her hash (which couldn't come back with her anyway and was almost gone.) It fit perfectly and she placed it in her carryout purse. Would it be taken? Could you carry a candle?

Robin made it onto the airplane with seconds to spare and she spent the whole flight back, trying to think of ways to travel another great distance as soon as she landed.

"Neal... Hi, I was hoping you would forgive me for running off for the summer, right after...well...I found it...I know that you were hoping, well...you can either help me, or be forced to. That's really up to you. I know you will be patient. And I promise to take care of you..."

The lady next to Robin gave a weird look to Robin's phone message, but Robin didn't seem to care.