Dionysos' tale

"Your mother?" Ariadne rose her brows. "I thought she was dead! "
"You're right, she was." Dionysos replied. "Before I got her back. "
"How? "
"Hera helped me doing it."
"Wow! I'm impressed. And confused."

I know, I better tell the tale from the start. But first I'll see to it that dear mama gets a hot bath and some nourishment before Zeus is here to make her immortal." He looked into the eyes of the petite woman in his arms.
"Don't worry, mother. It will be all right."
"Dion, my son. You keep telling me that! I hear you. And I trust you! You have got me this far. Now take care of your wife, she's been worried about you I can tell. "
"Mother..."
"I'll do all right, sweetheart, put me down now."

Dion obeyed and then he turned to Ariadne:
"Go have the nymphs heat up some wine for us. Then I'll let you know what happened. "

¤*¤*¤ Dionysos tells ¤*¤*¤

Athena's plan went like this: We were going to turn reality around. I was going to Hera with an amphora of wine telling her what I had learned about Hebe and Herakles.

"Your daughter and her beloved fear Zeus," I said, looking at the eternally elegant queen of the gods who was sitting opposite of me in the living room sofa in her Argos home. "So I come to you to ask you to help them. "
"And why are they not coming themselves, but sending you as an emissary," Hera replied, scratching the head of her pet peacock with perfectly manicured fingers.
"Because the bad old history between you and Herakles. He fears you will not help them, but Hebe trusts you. She asked me to go. "

"No offence, but why you, Dionysos?"
"Because of what we both have in our glasses, milady. Honestly, your daughter wanted me to soft you up. For Herakles' sake again. "

At that moment I felt a bit of a tension in my stomach when Hera kept silent while giving me a stern look with her dark, round eyes. The only thing heard was the sparkling of the divine fire in the heath and that bird ruffling his wings. Then Hera suddenly threw her head back and laughed heartily.
"I guess it's something in the genes. You're all of the same plotting kind. And I admit I'm nothing different. Nevertheless I appreciate your honesty, Dionysos. I'm going to help you. And my daughter. Herakles I care nothing for, but I don't want Hebe to be unhappy. Faithes should know that she hasn't had it easy growing up around her step father. "

"Will you talk to Zeus then?" I asked.
"I will, Hera said. But first I want to see the loving couple, to make sure that this is for real. Don't misunderstand me, Dion, but I'm not in the mood for practical jokes and drinker's puns. "
"This is no joke, I assure you, Hera!"
"Good! Now go get my daughter and her desired one. "

I did as told, and then Hebe, Herakles and I ended up having a similar discussion as the one we had had with Zeus earlier in the day. Finally Hera turned to me:
"I appreciate what you have done for my daughter, Dionysos. If you support me against Zeus in this case I'm going to grant you a wish. Zeus gave you your Ariadne last year. I can do as well as that. Or even better. "
"Really? I rose an eye-brow. "
"I know you believe I was the one behind your mother's death. That's only partially true. I just wanted the poor thing to know who she really was sleeping with. That she was as betrayed as I had been all the time. I was devastated by Zeus' treachery, and I felt hurt and rejected. I wanted his love back and I thought that with Semele gone..."

"But you have his love", I pointed out.
"I know that. These days. I know he will never be faithful to me, but he loves me in spite. He even accepted little Hebe in the household because he was so scared of loosing me. All the same, I'll give you Semele back. "
"How's that going to happen?" Hebe asked. Her eyes, so much alike her mothers, looked from Hera to me and then back again.

"I'll show you how to enter the Hades, to get past Styx and the monster Cerberos. And I'll tell you what to say to Hades and how to get Persephone on your side. She's the key, she holds Hades' heart in her hands. He's so scared of losing her. Remember Eurydice. Although you're going to have to do a lot better than poor Orpheus, and I know you can do that. "
"And then?"
"Persephone will lead you to Semele and you will bring her back up. "

"But can you make her immortal?"
"No, only Zeus can do that. That's why we have to trick him. We'll have to change Semeles identity upon arriving up. "
"Now what is this?" Herakles asked. "Are you trying to set up my father somehow?"
"No, only distract him, so he won't bother with you two. I will claim Semele a special priestess of mine, who has the borderline magic needed at Olympos. He will agree upon making her immortal for two reasons."
"Which are?" I asked.
"He owes me a favour plus he will want her."

"How do you know that, mother?"
"I know him all too well, Hebe. She's just his kind. After all he wanted her once. Her beauty is preserved down under so for Zeus she will be a wonderful enigma. Too hard for him to resist. And slightly familiar. Now, let's get to work! I'll send Dionysos down to fetch Semele..."

¤*¤*¤

"Here is the place where you will enter the Hades, Hera painted strange symbols on the rock overlooking storming waters some hundred metres down. Translucent crimson and yellow paste, A triangle surrounded by a circle surrounded by a square. And around the geometric figures she painted numbers and signs.
"What will this do?" I asked her.
"They're formulae of quantum magic. Upon chanting them, your divine powers will unfold the dimensions, open up an interconnection to the worlds we so mundanely refer to as 'Down under' or simply 'The Hades', even if Hades' kingdom is only a fragment of that vastness. "

I looked at Hera, she seemed so different now. Gone was the queen, replaced by the witch in a plain, orange tunic, brushes and colours in hands and her jacaranda hair tied back. For a second I was scared that this was all a trick, that she was getting rid of me. Then I remembered that Athena was around spying upon us somewhere, and if she had feared some foul play from Hera she would certainly have intervened one way or the other.

But nothing like that happened. Instead Hera told me where to stand, and what to chant, then she let go of me, and I was using my voice to conjure up magic so ancient and so powerful that my hair rose at my neck and my lips ran dry and almost cracked. First nothing happened. Then the reality seemed to sway and bulge around me, and I saw fissures in front of me. Fissures which opened up and became a thin membrane still separating this well known world from what was beyond.

Then even that one cracked and I saw the spookiest place I ever could have imagined open up in front of me. It was like a tunnel trough living materia, mostly dark but shining of hues I had no name for. Its sliminess seemed to try to leak into this present world, threatening its atomic order.
"Go in there!" Hera said. "Now! Or we will miss this opportunity window and have to start all over again."

With knees of dough I obeyed my queen, entered into that strange cataract, and trough it I travelled inwards or downwards of whatever. Memorized chanting took me across what was obviously the Styx, an outlandish, dark and almost oily liquid with fume looking like human blood and obviously inhibited by large, scaled beings who swam just beneath the surface, sometimes breaking it with their long, slithering movements. Somewhere in the distance I saw something that might have been Charon's raft, and I remembered what dad had told me about that strange being. Charon had been old already at birth and never done anything other than taking dead souls over the Styx. A hybrid between upperworld god and underworld being, no one knew where he came from or how he had been concepted.

On the other side of Styx waited the Cerberus. The being looked only the slightest like a dog. I didn't bother with it though. Orpheus had sang to it, for whatever reason I didn't know. Most certainly to show off, to show Hades and his wife what he was able to do with his magic voice. Putting a monster to sleep convinced them of letting Eurydice go. But I had Hera's seal in my hand, and that one even the king of the underworld had to subject to. In spite of that I was still nervous about the thought of facing the dark deity.

I had left Styx behind and passed through an area where up and down seemed to be in constant shift and where light and dark seemed to be the same gray haze. White noise was filling my ears, like from a huge waterfall, until I realized that it was my own blood I was hearing, enhanced by the strange acoustics around. The acoustics of the fifth dimension. Hera had warned me of this place, it was the place where mortals were affected so hard that they forgot their life above. This was the Lethe.

Yet I didn't forget, I only felt a bit nauseous and Lethe gave way to an apparently endless dessert of red sand. Here and there I saw the souls of mortals walking in aimless directions. Suddenly I thought I had made a mistake and was returning up again, because to the left of me the gray 'sky/roof' suddenly opened up and I saw a sun and drifting clouds on the bluest sky imaginable. Then I realized what I saw. That was the Elysium, the island of the blessed souls. For a short while I saw the island with its green meadows and blossoming trees, then the gray-red heaven closed itself again. Instead I saw a shiny, dark tower in front of me, endlessly rising up into eternity. That was the castle of Hades.

It took me forever to get there, it was farther away than I had thought. But finally was I facing Hades and his queen. Not in a throne room like my father's, far from it. They were resting on crimson cushions in a dark cavity, lit by a strange cold form of divine fire in orblike lanterns and surrounded by alien beings that were beautiful and scary at the same time.

But it was the divine couple I was looking at. Hades looked oddly normal, a pale man with dark, long hair, tied back in a ponytail over a narrow face with a pointy chin and slightly slanted eyes, perfectly human save for red irises. A single, snow white lock fell down over his forehead. And Persephone. So different from the happy-go-lucky girl at Olympos. Here she was quite and solemn, looking centuries older. A crown of gold covered her brown hair and her face was white like ebony, all the freckles gone.
"Son of Zeus I salute you," Hades spoke. "Time works different here, so we already know what you have come for. "
"Yes, Semele, my mother. "

Hades nodded to his wife:
"Show her."

Persephone rose and took my hand, guiding me across a gallery of dark pillars and trough a heavy steel door that opened up as soon as we came near it. Inside was an almost empty room, bathing in yellow light. In the middle of it stood an altar of some transparent material, and upon it a female form was resting.
"Hades knew," Persephone said. "He knew she had to go back up. So he put her to rest upon arrival. She has been here for almost fifty of your years now. Although in this chamber less than a week has passed. She's as pristine as when she came down here. Not even a trace of what killed her remains. You can take her and go back right now if you want, Dion."

Then she threw herself in my arms.
"Dion, I miss you so much. I miss you all so much. Mum, Dad, all my sisters and brothers. Your lovely wife – and all the rest of them. Even Ares. Well almost even Ares. I so wish I could come back up with you now. On the other hand I love Hades so much and I know how lonely he is when I'm not around, how much he suffers. He was always the different one, he still is. I guess I'm the only one who understands him."

"Dear sister if you want to come up, I can take you too..."
"No, but I can't. I can't leave Hades now, it's too early. Besides... "
"Besides what? "
"It's probably gray, cold and gloomy up there. And I hate the winters. Now take Semele and go before I change my mind and run away with you." She giggled a bit, showing a trace of the Persephone I knew from above. The girl. Kore.

I gave her one last hug, then I went over to the glass altar and picked up the beautiful woman resting there. The one who was obviously my mother. With her in my arms I began the long journey home.