4.
They'll know we don't belong here.
Persephone looked back at Aidon and shrugged. "We're supposed to be a king and queen from Boeotia. Of course they'll think that."
You know what I mean.
They wore simple, undyed himatia as instructed, but he was right. Their garments looked too perfect. They were taller than most Samothracians, Aidoneus in particular, and it didn't help that his spine remained spear straight, despite his desire to blend in.
Adherents wandered the sunny vineyard flecking the ground with goat's milk, nursing and nurturing the dark-leaved vines and their newly budded fruits. In the vineyard's midst was a barren circle, the ground thrice plowed— where it would all take place.
"You brought ambrosia?"
"Yes. He knows nothing will affect us without it." Aidon stopped in his tracks. "Persephone, the last time I was without my wits—"
"That was ergot. No cultus would survive if they used something so dangerous." Persephone pulled back her hood. "But… What if we reveal who we are? Or being who we are, what if we accidentally harm them or the earth itself? I worry this rite will swallow us whole. Hecate was none too happy about it."
"Despite what her worshippers do, she deeply distrusts induced mania."
Mania. Madness.
She peered across the fields and woods, seeking herbs, flowers, and roots that could be useful tonight. The grapes, if fermented. Scattered shrubs with white trumpet flowers, mushrooms of every variety, though most could strike a man dead; poppies, lotus...
"Sweet one." He broke her reverie. "We can turn back, if you wish it— vanish through the ether to Thesprotia, and forget this ever happened."
Persephone swallowed and glanced at the road behind them. I don't want that.
Nor I. He took her hand. I want to be the father of your child and for you to be the mother of mine.
"What names did you give for us?"
"Melia and Dimitris." Aidoneus returned her wide smile.
The temple entrance loomed before them, silent and cool. They crossed the threshold. The main room was bare of decoration. Only a still pool, meant to represent the Mnemosyne, dominated the center. Under the wide oculus above, its reflective light in the dark of the temple reminded her of the Styx. They passed by whispering petitioners, heading for the opposite doors and back into the sunlight.
A silver lyre, perfectly tuned beyond mortal creation, rang through the courtyard. Persephone could feel its notes vibrating through her and echoing through Aidon. Their bare feet padded across the warm limestone. Under an olive tree stood a man with brown hair and a threadbare himation. Supplicants sat on the ground, entranced, hoods drawn over their heads.
"Come," Aidoneus covered his head, and laced his fingers with hers. They sat in the midst of the gathered crowd, listening to Orpheus's newest hymn to Nature and Creation itself.
Eternal, setting all in motion, you are ever turning the swift stream, flowing into all things, circular and ever changing form. You alone accomplish your designs, for you rule over those who hold the scepter…
His voice was so beautiful that Persephone's skin tightened, and his next chord made her breath hitch. A lump welled in her throat. She closed her eyes and felt Aidon relax, leaning into her. She was transported back to grass under her heels and flowers strewn in her wake in carefree days as Kore.
… You are life everlasting, you are all things to all for you alone, you are all, and one, and you bring life to all.
The last chord reverberated through her from all directions. She opened her eyes to the curious sight of the crowd kneeling in a circle surrounding them. Her face flushed. Persephone chastised herself for letting her mind wander so far but no one could see her embarrassment. Their eyes were closed, a serene smile on every face, and their palms lifted toward Hades and Persephone. A chord buzzed through them. She realized that each of them was humming the last notes Orpheus had played. More gathered, kneeling, closing their eyes, intoning the same chord.
The hymnist stopped in front of them. "Rise, brother Dimitris and sister Melia." He plucked his lyre again, and the hum of the crowd stopped. All eyes were on them as Orpheus spoke. "They have come in an act of sacrifice to phanes— the first breath of life itself— to give their life zoe as man and woman, king and queen, god and goddess, father and mother to The One Who Shall Be Reborn. As we all shall be reborn."
"We are the sons and daughters of Earth and starry Heaven," they recited, the words shaking Persephone, "but our parentage is heavenly: know this you too. We are dry with thirst and dying. Give us quickly then water from that which flows fresh from the lake of Mnemosyne."
These were the words Charon had found written on gold in the mouths of the dead. Aidon had told Orpheus they were not true. She remembered what she had told the real Dimitris, long ago, describing Elysion so she could send his wife Melia back to the Underworld. That was before she and her husband had even created it. Hope was necessary. And things could always change…
Persephone took Orpheus's proffered hand, and Aidoneus rose with them and handed him a small leather satchel, containing a symbolic six coins from the heavy talent of gold three supplicants had hauled up from their ship to the temple the day before. The full amount was enough to feed and clothe all of Samothrace for a year. Among the coins was a measure of ambrosia. Orpheus wouldn't be foolish enough to try it himself— it could kill an unprepared mortal instantly.
As the poem came to a close, the crowd stood and advanced on them. Aidoneus visibly tensed. He looked over at her helplessly as a young woman embraced Persephone.
"Mother of the Unborn One."
Before she could react, the woman released her, and another approached and did the same.
"Mother of the Unborn One."
She hugged her in return, and looked over at Aidon, who stood stock still as the men came up and embraced him.
"Father of the Unborn One."
He held tense. Another embraced him, then another. Aidon started returning the embraces of the men, awkwardly at first, then warmly.
"Father of the Unborn One."
The crowd abated until three men and three women remained. They were bent with age, eyes and teeth yellowed, their hair removed by nature and a knife.
"These are the eldest of our order," Orpheus said. "You may follow them."
"You won't need that either," the old priestess Lemnia said.
Aidoneus's face flushed as he dutifully stripped off his loincloth. No one mentioned or looked long at the deep scar across his back. He was curious if the priestess was blind, but he didn't want to peer too deeply into her to know the truth. Mortals seemed to sense when he looked through them. A pit formed in his stomach as she carried away his clothes. He tried to calm his nerves. Persephone glanced up at him, then handed her folded chiton to the woman. Where he was self conscious, she was serene, and thought nothing of her nakedness.
Was this a mistake? Hecate's words had planted doubt in him, and now the seed grew. He shook the thoughts away. A man with lips pursed around toothless gums took their hands in his. They stepped out into the sunlight to a set of steep stairs descending to the rocky shore below. The elder felt along the rope with a palsied hand, leading them downward. Aidoneus reached for the elder's shoulder to steady him.
"Brother," the old man chuckled, "you needn't worry. I have walked these steps every day at dawn for three score years. It's you who should be careful."
"I shall," he muttered sheepishly.
"Well, into the water with you. We must banish all miasma first." The inlet below them was a tumult of hissing foam strewn across the dark surface. Water rose and fell just beneath the last knot of a dangling hempen rope. "Trust me, it's deep enough, brother. A very long way to the bottom to be sure. Submerse yourself fully, then climb back up."
Water here flowed from the frigid Pontus. Persephone stood next to him, her arms wrapped around her against the cold sea air, skin prickling. She grinned at him then jumped, pin straight, over the edge.
Aidoneus waited a moment, then dove in head first. Seafoam and water rushed past his ears, then icy silence wrapped itself around him. He swam upward through the darkness and surfaced, sputtering. A wave crested over the back of his head and he bobbed under it, then paddled with a rising swell to the ladder. Persephone was already grasping for the rope, but her fingers kept slipping and her head vanished beneath the water. He got in front of her and gripped the knot, then hauled her up by her waist with his other arm. Her skin felt slick and chilled in the breeze, and her teeth chattered. The priest took her hand, pulling her back onto the platform, and Aidon followed.
The wind bit, and the sun warmed, drying their skin as they made their way back. There the others waited, with salt and milled barley, fire and water. Aidoneus swallowed. Only six beings in the cosmos— he, and the other Children of Kronos, knew how to make someone immortal. There were many of those same ingredients here.
It's all right, Aidon, his wife said. This is also how the Eleusinians banish miasma.
Aidoneus knelt, and the three men circled him. The priestesses in turn surrounded Persephone.
"Barley," said the dusky man who reminded him of Aeacus, "to cleanse the body of disease. Hunger. And death."
Milled flour fell onto Aidon's wet head, turning his hair matte gray and his forehead white. The toothless one who took them to the shore came next.
"Salt. To cleanse the mind of impiety. Vice. Sacrilege."
Aidon blinked to keep it out of his eyes.
"And fire and water," the thin voiced one said, "To cleanse the household of misfortune. To banish the sins of your forefathers. To banish infertility. For you and for all your descendants to follow."
The man thrust his torch into the basin of water and it sputtered out. He took it, ash and all, and poured it over Aidon, washing away the barley and salt.
"And oil," a familiar, clear voice said, "to anoint you as man, as King, as God, as the Father."
Orpheus poured the vial and Aidoneus opened his eyes. A priest placed a crown of grape and ivy leaves on his brow. He poured oil on Persephone's scalp. "…as woman, as Queen, as Goddess, as the Mother."
After Orpheus gave her a similar crown, Hades and Persephone rose. The priests knelt as one. "Father and Mother of Zagreus, the Unborn One."
Trees stretched their limbs, and flowers arched their stems in response. Roots plunged and twisted, intertwining beneath the dirt. A passing bird left a trail across the sky. What was in that oil?
Phonecian rue, Persephone answered. Her voice pulsed from the earth, and inside him, and echoed in the sky, disorienting him further.
The elders cloaked them in leopard pelts, fastening Aidon's around his hips and wrapping it over to tie in front, and Persephone's at the shoulder and the side to close it slightly at her waist. They looked primordial, like the Titans in their earlier days.
"Rue," Aidoneus said, distantly. "The seeds."
"What do you see?" said the hymnist.
"The trees." Persephone said, "They're breathing."
Orpheus smiled at them as the elders departed. "That is phanes. Life eternal. Just the merest amount, mixed as you required." He turned to Persephone. "You will go into the forest and find a woman there. She is the daughter of a Dryades nymph, and a bee charmer."
"What does she look like?"
"We don't know her face or name. But she always finds those who seek her out."
Persephone nodded placidly as Orpheus spoke. Aidoneus scoffed. The idea of wandering out into the forest to meet a complete stranger seemed to make perfect sense to her, but he felt fogged, and the more he thought on it, the less he could concentrate. Aidon focused on the trees and life around him, and he breathed in time with the wavering visions.
"And she will lead you, and find with you the other elements to add to the unwatered wine tonight."
"Unwatered wine?" His tone was louder and sharper than he had intended.
Orpheus flinched. "It is how we first learned of the Unborn God."
"What am I to do while she is away?" Aidoneus tried to take the edge off his voice.
"You shall wait. In the meantime, you will gather pine for… the fires." The hymnist balked, and Aidon could hear his heart racing. "M-my lord, I—"
"Your tone is necessary, no? This is how the nobility of Hellas humble themselves enough to participate." Aidon paused, waiting for Orpheus to calm. "Remember what I told you in winter: treat us as you would anyone else."
"Y-you'll gather wood by day. Your trials will be revealed under moonlight."
Somewhere, a heart beat beneath the loam. Blood pumped through roots. The leaves exhaled and the abundant small flowers and all their vines winked at her. Persephone shook her head. She knew all the plants in Hellas, what they did, how they worked, which ones could heal or harm, but had never experienced them first hand. How could she? She was deathless— invulnerable to them.
And Mother would have forbade this. A splinter of thought, spoken in Demeter's worrying voice, cried out against it all, but the rest of her walked, peered around trees, hummed songs sung by cicadas. The soft leopard hide felt like her own skin, spots and all, under the dappled sunlight.
Remember who you are.
She was she. Persephone. The Queen of the Underworld and the Goddess of Spring. But she was in the guise of mortality, and needed to remain that way, otherwise all would be lost. She was she. Melia.
"Is it today already?"
Persephone yelped and whipped around so fast she felt dizzy. Her heart thrummed in her ears, her elbow and her rump hit the ground.
"Oh! I startled you. I didn't mean to."
Persephone squinted in the glare at the silhouette, taking its offered hand. She blinked and stood up. The woman before her was short, with befreckled tawny skin and blue eyes, and curls that reminded Persephone of Merope. Her gaze flitted to the surrounding trees and across the ground. Persephone took a deep breath. "It's alright. I was… not sure what I was expecting, honestly."
"I must not look like you imagined."
She thought she would encounter someone with the presence of Hecate or Nyx… Not a friendly woman in a tattered chiton made of woven rush. "I shouldn't expect anything, really."
"That's a relief. Some are so full of ideas that we spend all our time sorting out what they are underneath everything."
Persephone puzzled through what she meant. She spoke as though Persephone would know exactly what she knew. She felt a creeping dread that this girl would find out who she really was, and it would all fall to pieces. "Call me Melia."
"Melia," she said, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth. "I like that name. In Hellas it means 'honey', yes?"
"Yes."
"I knew a Melia once. A daughter of Okeanos. But there must be many Melias. Hmm." She paused and fidgeted. "They told you I'm nymph-born?"
"Yes."
"You don't seem frightened. Some, especially when they're walking the… the path you're on…"
"Well, I've known—" Persephone felt sourness well in her throat. Careful, she scolded herself. "I met a nymph. Only once."
"Good! One less thing in our way. I don't say this often, but… something about you is different." She smiled and extended a hand. "My name is Eurydice."
"Pleased to meet you."
"This way. They build it in a different place each year." Eurydice tilted her head toward the trail. Persephone heard a hum from the tree up ahead, a song, a chant with a single note. Eurydice unfolded a waxen cloth. "You have to come with me for this. Listen to their song and you won't be afraid."
"Whose song?"
"The bees." Eurydice gripped her hand and walked slowly toward the humming. One grazed Persephone's ear. A sting would hurt, but never harm her. For fatessake, mortals could die if enough bees stung them. If they were particularly misfortunate, just one could end a life.
She could get Eurydice killed.
Persephone could kill every mortal on Samothrace with a misplaced thought. She cursed herself. Here she was, her yearning for a child overtaking any sense of caution, playing with plants that could poison, creatures that could kill, and hovering on the precipice of ecstasy, madness, and destruction. She thought about Hecate's warning…
"Why are you scared?"
"I'm not."
" You are. Stop being afraid. Then they won't hurt you."
"What should I think about instead?"
"The baby. Isn't that why you're here?"
"That would distress me more."
"Think about how you would sing to it."
Persephone swallowed. She often thought about conceiving a child, that first moment when she knew that life had taken hold in her womb. She'd talked with Aidon about practicalities like where she would give birth, where they would raise it, how to feed it with breastmilk and ambrosia throughout its first year for it to be as deathless as herself and her husband. But nothing so real as the songs she would sing to soothe Zagreus to sleep. Without thinking, she hummed the song her mother had sung to her, one that the mortal man Iasion had taught to Demeter. The song was hummed to her by Charon on her first journey across the River, by the Fates when she was called to the cave of the Moirai.
One who is twice born, cannot remain your own…
"Keep singing," Eurydice whispered to her. They drew closer, and Persephone started again. She imagined his hair, like her husband's, her own blue grey eyes, his tiny hand wrapped around her finger… tiny bare feet echoing through the great hall of their home… A bee landed lightly on her shoulder, another on her cheek. She swore she was singing in harmony with the din of the hive. Bees flew through a spot of sunlight, leaving trails, weaving a sphere of golden light around them.
Eurydice stretched her hand toward the entrance and let the workers crawl up her wrist and over her arm, each taking flight without a care, as though Eurydice were just another honeycomb. Withdrawing it, she dripped with honey up to her elbow, bees scurrying away. Persephone kept singing, though she heard their song and felt the brush of their wings.
They backed away, waiting until they'd gained enough distance. One last bee flew from Persephone's hair and rejoined its sisters in the hive. Eurydice wrapped the waxen cloth around the honeycomb. Persephone stopped, and shuddered, her mind now free to ponder the swarm and how they had miraculously emerged unharmed.
"See? I've done this a thousand times, and fates willing, I'll do it a thousand more. A sting might hurt, but they won't swarm me. And I know bees can't affect you. "
She froze. "How do you know that?"
"Because you are the goddess Persephone."
"Tell me," he said to Orpheus. Aidon strapped together a bundle of pinewood. "When does this feeling of… strangeness pass?"
"It depends," the hymnist answered. "Tell me, are you naturally uncomfortable around others?"
Aidoneus paused, considering his answer. "Yes."
"And not just of them learning your identity."
"It's a discomfort I feel around all beings," he heaved the load onto his back and trudged through the field. "Save my wife."
"Why her? You've been married a short time. For your kind, I mean."
"It's…" he clenched his teeth. "I'm not sure you'd understand. We have a bond that stretches beyond your sense of history. Aspects of us were and will be intertwined forever."
"Do you love her?"
Aidon dropped the bundle and raised his eyebrows. "I created Elysion with her. An act of creation not seen in this world since the early days of the Protogenoi. That would have been impossible had we not loved each other wholly and completely."
"Embrace that then, and extend it to your whole domain. You hesitate. That is why succumbing to the rite eludes you."
He felt dizzy. Everything that lived and moved within the earth… Aidon closed his eyes. "I hold myself back for a reason. It would be foolish to unleash everything I am capable of feeling. The consequences—"
"What are you afraid of?"
Aidoneus fell inward. Fire and destruction that had leveled so much of the earth swamped his vision. The blood of allies and enemies covered the ground as he leapt ahead of a phalanx of mortals to save the few that he could… cleaving with his sword through the sinews and entrails of a rampaging manticore. Then he saw the wasting famine… the shores of the Styx teeming with the starved and frozen, Charon's boat filled, his own hands wrapped around Hermes's neck… the world above clinging to the barest threads of life, again by his hand…
"Leave that place," the hymnist said, shattering the memory.
"You don't understand—"
"I don't have to. It is the past. It is death."
"Who do you think I am?!" Aidoneus hissed through clenched teeth. He realized that he was gripping Orpheus's shoulders and released him, his hands shaking. "Forgive me."
The color returned to the hymnist's face, and Aidon knew he was choosing his words carefully. "The God of the Earth," Orpheus said, "the caretaker of life itself for those who will be reborn. You are the shepherd of those who wait where all mortal souls originated. And beyond that, even. Look around you."
Aidoneus glanced up, their conversation going unnoticed by the other men who had been hauling bundles of wood to create a series of great pyres strung in a circle around the vineyard. The pulse of life drummed, the ground swelled and breathed.
"These same souls above were in Asphodel when the two of you first came together. These are your subjects, made flesh. Abandon your presumed control. You must be here in your entirety for this to work. Think of what you are capable of when you embrace who you truly are…"
Aidoneus closed his eyes and saw the hieros gamos, the pomegranate trees surrounding him and his wife, the moment that the material world disappeared and was replaced with a profound sense of All, and startling visions of the world as it was and the one to come.
"You brought forth Paradise."
"There exists a veil between myself and others. My siblings… they endured the same torment as I did. But they emerged differently. And what lies beyond that veil, who I truly am… I often worry about what I am capable of doing if it were rent asunder."
"Had you even considered that you are on the right side of that divide, and all of them are still trapped on the other?" Aidon stared off into the distance, watching the mortals move around them. The more he ruminated, the more Orpheus smiled. "Perhaps you should let them in."
Aidoneus spoke softly. "How?"
Orpheus closed his eyes and grew silent. It was likely the effects of the oil, but Aidon felt him tentatively reaching through his consciousness. "Just let go."
Persephone sank to the forest floor, her chest hunched over her knees.
"You didn't say anything or give yourself away," Eurydice said, trying to soothe her. "No one else knows."
"Except Orpheus."
"Who?"
"The hierophant! He promised…"
"I've never even seen the hierophant. My spirit knew you, same as the bees know me. And my mother knew you once— she attended you long long ago, when you were a little girl. The song you sang to the bees only made me more certain."
Persephone lay back on the loam and sighed. "Fates preserve me, did my mother ask every nymph in existence to chaperone me?!"
Eurydice giggled, then looked at the stricken queen. "I'm sorry, but that was so very… Please— no one besides me could know. The man at the temple? Um, Or… Or…"
"Orpheus?"
"Yes. I've wanted to meet him, but… they act as though I were the spirit of the forest, and not a woman, flesh and blood. All of Samothrace regards me so strangely, all my life. Many decades ago I left a mix of plants and herbs at the temple, a special blend my mother had taught me. I thought they might have use for it, but then they started sending women to me. I realized after a time that if someone wants a child dearly enough to venture here, then they can perform the needed labor."
"How did they never notice you?"
"Blending in isn't hard when everyone is cloaked in a white himation. I have my mother's skin, but my father was Samothracian. He was a priest at the temple, long ago, my mother said. She had a hieros gamos with him, and then had me. She was taught by a red-haired goddess who appeared as a girl sometimes, or a crone." Eurydice stared off into the distance, lost in thought.
Persephone's shoulders fell and she breathed again. Hecate. It was Hecate, so all of this was descended from her teachings. The Goddess of the Crossroads had nothing to fear, and her trepidation about this rite was misplaced. "I cannot let anyone know who I am. It could destroy everything."
"I hardly speak to anyone on Samothrace." She frowned, then broke into a laugh. "They probably think I'm a witch. Come. The next part is easy."
As she shed her assumed identity, Persephone began to see more clearly. Honey prints dotted her skin, not unlike the pattern of spots on her wrap. The afternoon sun shone through the veins of the leaves and they pulsed like the veins in her husband's skin when he held her.
Eurydice sniffed around, then removed a few damp leaves and moss-covered rocks, revealing a patch of thin mushrooms beside a pile of aurochs dung. "Ah. Here they are."
Persephone leaned down and plucked a few caps, looked back at Eurydice who motioned her on, then gathered a handful more and examined the underside— purple and white gills, a circle of gold around the edges.
"They're prettier underneath, aren't they? From the top, they look like nipples," she said.
"This is a fertility rite," Persephone said, sitting back on her haunches and staring into the forest. "I feel as though I'm putting the pieces of myself back together, but with herbs and living things." She blinked. "That sounds utterly mad, but…"
"Not to me." Eurydice guided her through the woods, and into the clearing around a fallen cypress. "This next one might look more like a piece of him."
"Aidon?"
"Well, I can't say his name…" Eurydice stopped at a long stalk with a broad cluster of purple flowers. "Come see."
She examined the individual blossoms. Dark eye spots stared back at Persephone from each flower face. A torso hung beneath. Little arms and legs protruded from the body of the bloom, and between them… Persephone tried in vain to stifle her laugh. "It's… that's supposed to represent him?" She sized up the flower, cocking an eyebrow. "He'd be able to fuck me from across the room!"
Eurydice gasped, eyes widened with mirth, and nearly dropped the satchel of mushroom caps.
"Oh Fates, I shouldn't speak about my husband in such a way," she said through her laughter "What must you think of me?"
Eurydice grinned. "You're just a woman here, not the lofty Queen of the Underworld. I'd be more alarmed if a satyrion flower didn't make you think of that."
Persephone's cheeks hurt and she stumbled back, landing in a soft pile of moss. "I'm in the woods, half out of my wits, collecting mushroom nipples and tiny flower men with enormous cocks for a fertility rite!"
Eurydice blushed, a note of panic in her voice. "Oh no, oh no… I'm thinking about him naked. Whenever I pictured the god beneath the earth, he was always on a throne with a crown and dark robes, and now…"
They sat in the meadow and giggled like young girls. Eurydice pushed the loam and soil away from the base. "He won't see the flowers. Only the root."
"The root… they use the root!" Persephone managed another round of laughter. "If it looks like testicles, I don't know what I'll do. I'll never make it through this!"
"You tell me." Eurydice pulled it from the ground and bit her lower lip.
"Bloody Tartarus… no…" Persephone fell over, tears leaking from her eyes. "I haven't laughed this hard in my entire life. Is it the rue oil doing this?"
"Does it matter?"
"No!" Persephone doubled over in laughter. Eurydice tucked the satyrion root into the satchel beside the mushrooms and honey. Their reckless mirth subsided. The ground was peppered with little priapic flower men, the colors of the sky shifting toward dusk. "Fates, is it really almost sunset?"
"Within the hour. Then it will be your husband's turn."
"It feels backward to perform my task in daylight. Women seem more connected to night…"
"All in all, how much does being a woman or man matter? You're both dressed the same, one of you has lips and the other a tongue, and all melds together in the act. If walking on the hard road of what you think you know has yielded nothing yet, then perhaps it's time to meander down a different path."
Eurydice got up and started walking, and Persephone sat for a moment and pondered. She hitched herself from the ground and followed her newfound friend over tree roots and down into a dried up slough.
Eurydice stared forward, dark curls framing a frown. "This part is difficult."
"What's the next ingredient?"
"The final one. Mandragora."
Everything they'd gathered could be poisonous. Her husband's dilated pupils and seizing limbs, the night he'd been poisoned with ergot, flashed through her memory. She shook it away. Eurydice crouched near green five-pointed blossoms, gathered low to the ground.
"Dig until you find it."
"What am I looking for?"
"Your baby. You will know when you touch it."
Persephone raised an eyebrow. As a little girl she'd dug up one with her mother, a little wild carrot with chubby wrinkled limbs. How would she find one that not only looked like a child, but her Zagreus?
Her fingers pushed through wet earth and she swept it away from the roots, exposing a thin, long limbed thing. The soil was hard clay beneath the surface so she piled the dirt atop it, careful of the plants she wasn't going to harvest. The next was squat, with little definition other than a frown. Another was tiny, half formed. "What if I can't find it?"
"It's different for everyone. You will know."
I am here… come to me…
The whisper echoed in her consciousness, as strong as Aidon's but lighter… tinged with her own voice. Quickly, she reburied the exposed roots and squatted down next to another plant. Its leaves hummed and rose under her fingers when she touched it.
Digging carefully, she revealed a round head, eyes closed in sleep. Its chin was tucked against its chest with tiny arms folded around the center, legs folded beneath. In the dim light, Persephone could almost see it yawn, rustle, turning its head in sleep, or sucking on a thumb, or curling a tiny fist around her finger. Her fingers cradled the stem and pulled it gently but firmly from the earth, holding it against her chest. Her vision blurred as she held it for a moment longer, hoping against hope that she would hold little Zagreus by late winter.
"Is it him?"
"Yes."
"Take off your wrap."
Persephone slipped her finger through the knot at her shoulder and spread the skin on the ground. Face streaked with tears, she laid the mandragora in the center. Eurydice placed the satyrion, mushrooms, and honeycomb within, surrounding and swaddling the root. Persephone's felt the chill of evening descend around her, and had no other thought for her nakedness. She wanted only to bear this hard won gathering of roots and herbs safely back to the temple grounds. "And now?"
"Take this to them. They will mix it with unwatered wine— one kantharos for you and your husband, one pithos for the rest who've gathered."
The sky started to turn gold, the trees silhouetted against the gathering dark. "I'm so deep in the forest, though. The moon won't be up for another hour."
"The fires will guide you back."
If he were mortal, his hands would be covered in blisters. The sun had sunk from treetops to trunks while he'd labored, and oranges and pinks had washed across the sky. Beautiful to be sure, but Aidoneus wasn't impressed by the sunsets in the world above. They held none of the penumbral grandeur of the Styx. He rubbed a stripped branch between his palms from top to bottom, just as he had after he was freed, before Hestia had taught them easier ways to make fire.
The wood had been damp, but slowly, slowly it started to steam, then dry, then smolder. He leaned over, blinking through smoke, an ember flickering to life. He blew on it carefully, then lifted the wooden pad and placed it in a tuft of loose grass.
Aidon puffed air rhythmically, each burst producing more smoke. The world vanished and for a moment he was young and on Thera, his hair messily hacked away, his scalp scabbed over and not yet able to heal. Hecate was nursing Demeter back to health with ambrosia. He had been free for two days— reborn from his father's imprisonment— and was dancing that night with a newly kindled flame, building a fire to keep them warm in frozen wastes of his father's ill-tended domain so they could regain their strength…
An aulos played from somewhere on the plain, echoing through the circular pyre. Smoke fanned out and he dropped the lit tinder on the kindling. When the first flames roared to life, the aulos quieted, replaced by the trilling voices of women.
The sun touched the horizon. As the fire spread from the smaller sticks to larger logs, the smoke and crackling sap transmuted the sun from gold, to orange, to a deep red.
Like wine. Like the day he had taken his wife to the Underworld.
"Our order drinks unwatered wine, eats the flesh of beasts, and engages in sexual union on this day, and this day alone," Orpheus said. "All other days, we abstain from all."
"For three years between the rites?"
"For most, yes. Those without bond abstain completely. Those within matrimony are free to share in pleasure and fertility. But they too go without for a month before tonight."
"And are you married, Orpheus?"
"Maybe someday."
"I was… I lay with my wife three months ago, but we've abstained since. And it's been nearly the age of man since I drank pure wine or ate the flesh of animals. My wife has partaken of neither in her lifetime. This is momentous for us indeed."
Orpheus smiled. "Both of you have fasted longer than any of us. You see? Three years is not so long. It's three days since any of these men or women have had food. Including myself. And we've had no drink, not even spring water, since the sun set last night."
A naked woman sauntered to his side, and thrust a thrysos into the flames, carrying its crackling pine cone head like a torch. Aidoneus averted his eyes from her body instinctively, instead watching her touch the flaming pine cone to the tip of another thrysos. A nude man held it, who in turn lit another's. She thrust the blazing staff into a wood pile and waited, smoke shrouding the glow of embers, then at last bursting forth with flame. She swayed, dark hair licking the small of her back like the flames before her, then leapt and twirled.
As pine bough torches lit the fires, sputtering and popping when flames enveloped them, more men and women shrugged off their somber white robes, dancing without rhythm, mimicking the chaotic twist of the flames before them.
"Does everyone disrobe?"
Orpheus nodded. "In this form we were created. It's our natural state. The Greeks in Attica look down on us for this part; especially our women. They call them Maenads. "
"Do you plan to…?"
"Not me. I took no herbs, and will drink no wine. I must be present as a guide. We each take our turn. I volunteered this year," he added with a pointed nod to Aidoneus.
The men and women danced closer, the flame, the wood, their flesh indistinguishable in the fading light.
"The veil you spoke of… lift it. When your bride returns, you will both drink what she gathered. After that she will wait here, as you have, while you hunt a wild aurochs and return with it."
In his bones he had known it would be this way. She had gathered. He would hunt. It was the way of the primordial mortals, before copper and tin, papyrus and glass had drawn them away from the deeper rhythms of the world.
"You must let all go now. Look into the fire. Don't think. Don't suppose."
Another wave of heat washed over him. The flames leapt higher into the dusky sky. One caught his imagination. He remembered Nysa, when he stood with his new wife in the falling snow, the earth coursing through him as she created a gateway of fire through the ether. His body swayed as it had that night. The circle of fires twisted like it had that night, and pale light echoed in the movement of his hips, and twisting arms, calves and shoulders. The covering he had worn that day felt heavy now, a barrier between him and the fire he had built to welcome her back.
Aidon removed the pelt and laid it on a thrush mat the women had woven. This is where we will conceive our son. He buckled, light headed, then came back to the circle, dancing flames and golden skin all about him and he spun, his arms spread, his head tilted back. He drew them all in, his subjects, his equals, his children, pulling them across the divide to join their god and goddess in this act of creation.
I am here… come to me…
It sounded like Persephone's whisper, felt like her, but the voice was deeper, it's tones roaring across the loam and the vines.
He leapt with the flames, never touching the others, but feeling their presence as they let go and followed him in ecstatic dance. The heady smoke filled his eyes, his limbs slackened, he felt only the ground pounding beneath his feet and heavy heat embracing him. He reveled in it, grinned wildly, drew it in. With eyes closed he could see the outlines of the trees, the creatures crawling beneath them.
Echoing through the earth he felt the slow footsteps of a woman, the only woman who'd ever mattered to him, finding her way back through the thicket to his roaring fire. He twisted and bounded through the crowd, his gait reforming, as though he were flame and had walked from it. Aidon stood at the one small opening in the great ringed pyre, his hands outstretched, his palms upturned, welcoming her back…
[section deleted due to site guidelines and FOSTA-SESTA. Please read the full explicit version on AO3]