A/N: a...timely update? what is this? Many thanks for all the reviewers who took the time to look at this, Charlie Chaplin 2, one mourning dove, TheZopistuttle, blackpen, N, and V. It really helped me keep going. Replies are coming!!
Chapter 8: Tartarus
And she stood there with Cerberus, the scene almost domestic – the mistress and the master's hunting dog – Kore tried to plan, but could not think. The land whispered questions and then kept silent. She was no mistress here; captive, yes, and prisoner – not mistress, or secret-keeper, or one to be told its mysteries. The land ruled her, guided by dark paths she knew not, transforming her to a dark thing, unfit under sun and wind. This was her challenge, make fruitful the barren ground though her own touch be death.
She sought to bring joy to hell, Kore had told Hades.
Was this her hell, then – to remember joy but be its opposite, to see life only in its leaving, and be her own dark sister?
Perhaps there had been two of her, on that sunny day when she fell. And the other Kore had not fallen, but stayed in the flowering valley, and had returned to her mother. The other Kore had not cut herself on the diamond eyes of the Lord of the Dead; the other dance and sang, and did not know darkness.
From a small tremble, a slight shake which drew a sprinkle of sand from the mountains – descending with the soft melody of the brook in the spring – from thence, the earth shook until it roared.
Sky quaked, the ground roiled up in rage, and Kore was breathless, thrown against the sand and huddled there beside one giant paw of Cerberus'. The river Styx threw flung its inky depths into the sky, which descended like a shower of dark missiles. Dark waters welled up from the sand in putrid springs, flowing about her ankles, staining her dress, burning like hot acid into the wound in her foot. Kore shrieked and pulled herself upright against Cerberus, though he shook his heads and roared.
"Mother –" she whispered, fearfully, futilely against the dark fur, and then – because her mother was not here, and her mother would not be coming – "Hades!"
But he was already by her side, setting her on the back of Cerberus with a grip that brooked no argument. The dog he calmed with a wave.
The land bubbled grimly about them, a marsh of dark decay, and the sky was dark with fumes and dust of mountains, leveled now. The stench of long death filled the air, curling up from the pits.
"What is happening?" Kore gasped, choking on her very breath.
He stood ankle deep in black water, his face ghostly pale.
"Tartarus heaves," he said.
She watched, shivering against Cerberus, as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Tar lapped about his feet as against a statue. His head was tilted, as if listening; his hands were fists at his sides.
Was he lord of this world, she wondered, or its servant?
"They have seen you," he said, "do not touch the water."
And then she, too, heard it. Not a voice, or any sound, but it sprung forth from the silent depths of the black earth, the sullen bubbling of the murky water: a prayer – or desire, or lust, or yearning – so strong that her bones shook with it.
Warmth.
Breath.
Blood.
They wanted her; she was not enough, but she would suffice.
Kore had been prayed to; she knows the soft, laughing voices of young girls, fluttering like leaves on saplings. But this – oh it was more than she had never thought – drawing across her like a wall of water, pouring into her and filling her eyes and mouth. Voiceless it roared until she was deaf, until a pit opened before her feet and all she felt was the dark air rushing – fast and faster.
There was Hades; she felt him – freezing it with fire, waking it with pain to bind and to restrain, iron ropes and stone chambers glowing red-hot with anger. And behind it, the crackling, icy crystals of fear, like the dangerous thawing lake of late winter.
Oh yes, he feared.
Then the voices disappeared, and Kore was pulled out of her trance, for the Hades standing guard roared suddenly, and fell upon his side and clawed at the sand. A snakelike arm wrapped about his foot, trying to pull him down. Kore did not even think; she leapt and fell off Cerberus's back, and, taking her knife, began to cut away at the thing. It was no animal, nor plant, but like the sands itself winding around the foot of its lord, and cutting the sand did little.
"Here!" he held out his arm.
She gave him her hand then, not because he was the only thing left between her and that deeper dark, but because he had reached for hers.
The snake disappeared as suddenly as it had come; and the sand began to spill downward where it had faded, and the ground grew soft under them, as if they stood upon a running hour glass. It was Hades now who pulled her along as her feet gave way; then lifting her, and she sat atop Cerberus again.
"Do not touch the water," he breathed, his face gaunt with pain, and looking down she saw with horror that the vise had left burn marks on his heavy boots, and charred skin showed under them, livid and raw as the wound he still bore upon his breast.
The earth settled and the sky cleared, and the black waters receded. Where the ground had reached for him, there was now a gaping hole, a well falling into the dark.
"Tartarus?" The word itself was fear.
"Yes," he said, faintly.
A silence, while they breathed.
"I have touched the water," she whispered.
And he, turning, saw the wound burning black and red and purple upon her foot.
