I woke out of the soundest and most emptily dreamless sleep I'd ever experienced. The last thing I could clearly remember was letting hot blinding tears fall into water so hot it hurt my skin, and curling up on my bed with the heaviness of my wet hair weighing on my neck. This was not my bed, I realized as I stared upwards at what appeared to be a canopy, grey figured shimmery material like silk; I was enclosed in curtains, there were dark carven poles at the corners of the bed.
Ah, I thought wisely, I must still be asleep, because this is a dream. Somewhere inside me I was aware of the possibility that it wasn't a dream, but it was distant enough to let me remain content with the fantasy of my surroundings.
I uncurled myself. The bed I lay on was soft and warm, the grey material of the sheets—I was pretty sure it was silk, and began to enjoy the dream—smooth and sweet beneath my skin. There were at least four pillows, which represented immeasurable luxury for a girl who was used to sleeping with one pillow if she was lucky.
I wasn't tired; my headache had gone, the distant sick feeling in my stomach and throat had dissipated with the headache. I felt better than I had in days, in fact. I threw back the covers of the dream-bed and slithered out through a gap in the curtains.
My mind had never furnished me with a dream this complex and detailed. That part of me which was more and more aware that this was dangerously real shifted and turned over in my skull, but with the single-minded assurance of the very young I ignored it. The room in which I had woken was enormous; the floorplan of my mother's house would easily have fit within its space without scraping the ceiling or touching the walls. Great floor-to-ceiling windows filled one wall, arched at the top; their bottom quarters would open to give onto a balcony. Everything was in shades of grey; palest pearl to darkest Payne's grey, the room gave the impression of the interior of a soft-furred pussy willow bud. I could see the curve of a bathtub through a connecting door, and a wardrobe stood in the corner. A fireplace complete with fire sat across from the bed; one wall possessed a grey marble sidetable heaped and covered with food.
At the sight of that bounty, my stomach awoke and began to make impolite noises. I thought vaguely that dream-food couldn't possibly be bad for you, because it wasn't real, and wandered over to the banquet set out by an unseen hand. There were pomegranates, which for some reason I had a deep craving for, and there were golden breadloaves and grapes like heaping piles of amethyst, and crystal phials of fantastically jewel-clear liquids. I reached for a pomegranate.
Something like a thunderclap went off in my head. For a moment the world went utterly black, and howlingly loud, and I could neither feel nor hear nor see anything. I floated in a void, and then there was a voice, quiet and deadly cold, and it spoke to me, and it said, Your name is Persephone, girl. Your name is Persephone. You will stay here forever if you taste of that fruit. Of any of Hades' fruit. You do not belong here.
Hades? I thought suddenly, my blood feeling shockingly cold in my veins. But this is a dream. Isn't it?
That part of my mind which had been yelling at me ever since I had drifted out of slumber in the great grey bed suddenly shrieked. Yes, Hades. Hades. Hades. You're in Hades. Look around you. It's all dead. All of it is dead, Kore, and you're going to be dead too if you don't get out of here right now.
I opened my eyes and found that my fingers had stopped short of touching the pomegranate's fragrant skin. My hunger muttered within me, closing a fist that I couldn't ignore for long. I pulled back my hand and pinched myself sharply in the soft flesh of my upper left arm; pain arrowed up my neck into my skull, but the grey room didn't shimmer and dissolve. I ran to the great windows, beyond which I could dimly see through sheeting rain the edge of a range of black hills, on which dark poplars grew. The glass was cold and solid beneath my fingers. It was real. I knew that if I swung my hand at the glass as hard as I could that it would shatter, and that the glass would enter my flesh, and that the blood that would flow, bright and too red in the grey light of the room, would be real.
I put my hands, suddenly hot, to the cool glass, and let my forehead fall to rest against the surface of the window. It was real. I was in the domain of Hades. Aidoneus. The Rich.
I don't know how long I remained there, my eyes closed, deeply aware of the bone-cold of the windows and the deep unwillingness to believe what I needed to believe. At length I became aware that someone was watching me; that I was no longer alone in the great grey room with the bed and the fireplace and the pomegranates like pouches full of rubies.
Slowly I turned my head. He was standing in the doorway, leaning against it as if exhausted, impossibly tall. His face was not unfamiliar, and after a moment I knew why; because I had seen him before, regarding me silently amidst the mist of morning, and standing by the side of the road as my friend's lover drove us down the hill. The man with the white hair and the dark eyes, the man who wore black, the man who never spoke to me, merely watched me, with eyes so dark I couldn't really see them, beneath arched dark brows, veiled by the fall of snowy hair.
"Hello," he said, rather embarrassedly. "Er. Welcome."
"Why am I here?" I said thickly through the tears. Something akin to pain flickered across his features. He made as if to come forward into the room, and thought better of it.
"I don't know how to explain this," he began. I sank to my knees, slithering down the coldness of the window.
"You stole me, didn't you," I said to the floor, thinking of the boy at the party, the strength of him, the dreadful inexorable will, the hands on my body. "You stole me."
"Yes," he said, not looking at me. There was nothing of strength in his voice at all. I raised my eyes to his face.
"Well," I said. "Let's get it over with." I got shakily to my feet and made my way to the bed, sinking down on its edge with a gruesome parody of an alluring smile. He frowned, not understanding, and then comprehension flashed into his face, and horror followed fast behind. I allowed the hem of my robe to slither off my shoulder.
"Gaea, no," he said, appalled. "No, Kore, I would never....I don't....I..." He disengaged himself from the doorway and crossed the room in three or four quick strides, to stand beside me at the bed's edge. I closed my eyes in anticipation as his icy fingers neared my flesh, but his touch was warm and soft, and I felt him gently pull the robe back over the curve of my shoulder. "Kore," he said as quietly as possible, "I'm not good at this sort of thing. I....love you, you see, and I am dying for you. I will die if you leave me; I have been dying this past many months because I have only been able to see you in the temporal world, which drains me of what strength I have. I would never touch you...like that. The boy at the party....."
"That was you," I said quietly, realizing. "You pulled him off me."
"I had to," he said with an edge of desperation. "I couldn't let him do you like a cheap whore. Not you, Kore; not any girl, but especially not you. I've loved you for a very long time now."
"Who are you?" I raised eyes that were no longer terrified but almost angry to his face. He was so pale, like a man made out of snow, the shadows beneath his cheekbones blue, his eyes sunk deep in darkness. "Who the bloody hells are you? Why are you doing this to me?"
"My name is..." he began, and stopped. "Call me Aidon. It's as accurate as any other."
Aidon, I thought. Aidoneus. Hades.
"You're him?" I demanded. "Hades? Lord of the Underworld? The King of the Dead?"
He nodded, shamefacedly.
"Oh, shit," I said, furious. Shocked, of course, but furious. I had never believed in Hades, any more than I'd ever really believed in Zeus; but presumably unless this man was a very rich nut, he was probably who he said he was. "Shit. You scare the living hell out of me by materializing out of nowhere and watching me, then you steal me from my own room and expect me to stay here in this bloody grey mansion all alone with you because you have a crush on me? And if you're who you say you are, oughtn't you to be ruling your domain rather than mooning after some ugly teenage girl?"
He was quiet, for a long time. I kept my gaze steady on his face, and he would not meet my eyes; rather, he withdrew his hand and rose, swaying a little, and walked silently to the door.
"Are you going to let me go?"
"I'm afraid I can't," he said. "If I let you go, I will die."
"You're a god," I said acidly. "You can't."
"You're a god too, you know," he said. "It is possible for us to die."
"What?" I demanded. But he was already gone, his black shadow fading as the mass that cast it faded. I got up, my head swimming with shock and fear and anger, and ran to where he had been, but there was nothing in the doorway except a single white rose.
Two hours later, I had bathed and dressed in the least ridiculous of the gowns I had found in the wardrobe: a pale cream shift with a few aquamarines and sapphires strewn at the neck and hem. The grey silk sheets from the bed were tied together in a long rope with the bedcurtains and the most sturdy of the cloaks, knotted firmly around the stone parapet of the balcony outside the great windows. Rain still lashed the side of the mansion. I took a deep breath and closed the window behind me, beginning the long climb down to the ground.
Wet silk, I discovered, was extremely slippery. It was all I could do not to slither down my makeshift rope like a bead down a string and end up spread all over the marble terrace beneath me. When I finally reached the bottom, more or less intact, I was faced with a larger and perhaps more dangerous challenge: how the bloody hell to get out of Hades?
This must be the fields of asphodel, I thought absently. It certainly wasn't Elysium; no sunlight beamed down on the happy ghosts of brave warriors. No lava was currently falling from the skies, either, which sort of ruled out Tartarus. It was all just grey. Dark and soft and grey, like a new puppy's ear, only not half so charming.
I untied the bottom cloak and wrapped myself in it. From here there was only one way to go: down. Great marble flights of steps curled away to the poplar-covered plain below.
The rain was grey. It was colored. I noticed it when I raised a hand to push sodden hair from my face and saw it glistening and running with greyness. Every damn thing about this place was grey. More than ever I wanted Mother and our comfortable little house where everything was warm and crudely made and full of the essence of living things. Here nothing was alive, except perhaps myself. I hurried down the steps, reaching the plain at last. There was a sort of avenue cut through the poplars, and I followed it, making good speed despite the weather, because there was no mud. There was grey moss on the ground which appeared to soak up the worst of the rain.
I began to wonder if there was nothing but wet grey plains in Hades. It seemed remarkably likely. When I looked back I could no longer see the marble palace; dark poplar trunks encircled me. It was as if the palace had never been. I looked ahead, and the same poplar trunks stretched as far as the eye could see.
Oh, well, I thought. Better to be trying to escape than lying on that (comfortable) bed and eating fruit and reading novels, in the house of an insane god. Yes. Much better.
What had he meant? I wasn't a god, I was merely the daughter of Ceriss the wisewoman. There had never been any mention of divine influence in my background. I was merely
(Persephone)
Kore.
I forged ahead, the sodden hem of my cloak dragging horribly on the wet ground. Hunger closed an insistent fist inside me, and although I tried to ignore it, I knew by the shaking of my hands and the vague lightness of my head that I'd have to eat soon. I was aware that there was no lightening in the steel-colored sky ahead, nor in any direction; there was no indication that there ever would be. This was perhaps not the best idea I'd ever had, I thought distantly. Damn it.
An hour or maybe three later, my heart shivered with surprise as I saw a glimmer of light in the distance ahead of me. Barely perceptible, it limned the edges of the poplar trunks and brought a surge of hope into the back of my throat. I began to hurry, gathering up my soaking skirts, trotting through the wet forest. Grey rain still fell, veiling the source of the light from me, plastering my gown and my hair to my skin. I was cold; my fingers were stiff and white, clutching the folds of heavy cloth with numb desperation. Still something of dream floated through my perception of this place; I didn't really feel as if this was me struggling through a poplar forest under a steel-grey sky, escaping from someone I didn't believe existed.
The light was growing brighter, casting a sort of black rainbow in the wet air; silvery-grey spectral colors drifted above my head. I thought vaguely How beautiful, without slowing my pace. Something told me that if I stopped to look at it, I might never escape this world. I hurried onwards, pushing through the forest. Another hour must have passed before I found myself standing at the top of a steep incline.
The light, a faint pearl-grey, was gleaming through the cracks beneath a pair of great carven gates. The gates reached up into the drifting clouds, beyond the reach of my sight; they were flanked by a wall of shifting grey mist that I just knew was more solid that it looked. The light flickered and played beneath the gates, cutting in long sweet blades through the wet air. I breathed deeply, tasting the bitterness of the grey rain in the back of my throat, before beginning the slippery descent to the plain below, and the gates.
They were made of horn, or something. Carved horn, smooth and slightly warm to the touch. The carvings seemed to writhe and twist as I looked at them, and after a moment I found myself not trying to follow those movements; they were not meant to be seen. The gates had no handles or knobs. I looked around for some clue as to how to get through; finding none, I simply set my hands to the pale gold-grey surface and pushed.
Nothing happened. I thrust my shoulder at the gates, and they didn't budge. Moving back a few steps, I ran at them and managed to nearly knock myself out; it was like running into a stone wall. It was impossible. The gates remained as solid as the rock beneath my feet; the light dripping from between them seemed to glow brighter every time I threw myself against the unyielding surface, mocking me.
I had never been locked inside anywhere in my life. When I was a baby I had been allowed to wander freely in the gardens while my mother worked; growing up, she had always explained dangers to me and allowed me to explore the limitations of my world. Now, as I pounded ineffectively against the smooth carved gates, something frantic and new overtook me; I couldn't get out, I was trapped here, I was a prisoner, I was suffocating in the constant rain. I threw myself against the gates, my vision suffused with the impossible motion of the carven dragons' heads and inhuman faces that swirled beneath my fingers. I scrabbled at them, begging them aloud to let me through, let me through, until the pale gates were stained with my blood, and my world was shivering and shaking around me. I don't remember what happened then; there was just a great roaring in my ears, and the gates seemed to be running away from me down a long tunnel, and I slid away from them, down into darkness.