Forbidden Feelings

            I've been in the underworld for as long as I remember… I died when I was only 17, just after my first child was born –she died too, but I've never found her. I've heard stories of her, she's happy I suppose. I don't really want to know her. She's a part of my life that I no longer have, a life I've long forgotten. The underworld does that to you sometimes. There are some who remember everything about their lives, their names, their ages, their children, their lovers, and their passions. I don't. I only remember my name, and the vague details of my death.

            My name is Acacia, the name of a tree…I remember this as well because it is not a usual name in Greece. I am unusual I suppose, for a Greek. Light hair, pale skin, a bony sort of figure, but that probably comes from being a worker rather then a lover, which seems that all blondes are lovers, Aphrodite for example… Pure blonde, and there isn't a man in heaven nor hell that can say they haven't lain with her at least once.

            Anyway, my story isn't about Aphrodite and her lovers, it's about me, and…well, alright, I suppose he isn't my lover, so how about my one and only desire, and of course, Persephone.

            I stood outside of the palace walls, watching and listening as Hades, my heart swoons just to think of his name, readied his black horses and flaming carriage. I knew what he was about to do, he was going to steal away Persephone from her mother, kicking and screaming. I could see it all now –the earth opening with a spew of hot lava in a beautiful flower field where Demeter saw to her nature and Persephone painted the flowers, laughing and giggling –oh how I hate Persephone, even now, thousands of years later.

            He was waiting until the right moment, when he could snatch her away and laugh as Demeter screamed, and Persephone cried. I watched him leave, and I slid down the wall of the castle to sit upon the dirt, watching the sky open up allowing him onto earth. I could not hear what happened above us on the grounds that I do not ever remember walking. I did see him return with her, a beautiful girl in a beautiful powder blue gown that touched down to her beautiful bare feet… If I was bold, I would have spat in her face.

            Hades called me personally after he had gotten his wife settled into his abode. They had been married in the sacred alter in the middle of his kingdom among his weeping dead –they cried not for joy of the marriage of their king and their new queen, but really because that is all the dead have, their tears. Persephone wore a gown of silver and gold thread that I had helped to make. I even tied the laces of it, sealing everyone's fate. On her wedding day, her own tears were gone, and she was this sullen shell of a woman. I would not have been sad. I would have wept myself to marry her husband. What a fool Hades was, which is bold of me to say, I know, marrying Persephone only because of her beauty and her innocence.

            After the ceremony I took Persephone back to her chambers in the castle and helped her change out of the gown.

            "May I speak to you?" She asked, which caused me to laugh. A queen asking to speak to a mere peasant! It was preposterous!

            "I suppose so." I said, carefully folding the gown over the back of a straight back chair. "Your secrets are safe with me." I chose a night gown of the purest white for her wedding night, and helped her into it, once again tying the back laces for her. As I did so, I began to think that maybe being a maiden for Queen Persephone would not be so bad, after all…once I knew her secrets, I could always use them against her in my plot at her husband.

            "How long have you been here?" She asked me.

            "A very long time, my queen." I replied, removing her shoes for her, and placing them neatly on the floor near the door.

            "Do you like it here?"

            I was quiet. The question caught me by surprise, "I suppose I do. I know nothing else anymore."

            The Queen was quiet as well for a moment, but she again spoke. "Hades is very cold…"

            "Everything is cold here." I replied curtly.

            "What is your name?" She asked. I had been waiting for this.

            "Acacia."

            "That is a beautiful name." Persephone told me. "Much prettier then Persephone."

            I was quiet, and let her think what she would.

            "Acacia?" She asked, standing as I tidied her room.

            "Yes, my queen?"

            "I will only speak to you…will you keep my words to yourself?"

            "I speak to no one else, my queen. Your secrets are safe with me." I vowed. Until I find a use for them. I told myself silently.

            "Thank you." She smiled at me, which was a rare occurrence.

            In the following days I learned much about Persephone. Hades made her sit with him in his throne room and listen to the woes and cries of the dead, but at night when all was peaceful, she would come to her rooms where I would be waiting with a fresh night gown.

            "Do you know what he said to me?" She was obviously very angry on this evening. Her tone was harsh and she was nearly ripping her hair from her head with her brush. I pried the rough comb from her fingers and began brushing her silky hair myself.

            "What is it?"

            "He called me his darling Persephone and told me how long it has been since he heard my voice. Oh, you should have heard it! All sickly and sugary. How you all can stand to hear him! To have him hear you! I told him I only wished to speak to my mother –I would never tell him about you, my dear Acacia –and do you know he told me I was never going to see my mother again. I told him right then and there that he would never hear my voice again, EVER!"

            "That's quite a tale." I mused.

            "That's not all. I threw all of my jewels that filthy mongrel has ever given me to the floor and walked away. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the gardens until he came to find me."

            I finished with her hair and helped her into a fresh night dress. She was growing pale, and sickly, but I knew she would never eat from the food of the dead –she was smart, this Persephone.

            "I have seen the new dead that wander in, Persephone." This was the first time I had ever dared to use her name. "They all have starved on earth. Your mother is cursing the land into a white hell. There is no food, no animals…nothing can survive. They say it is because of you. Don't worry my queen… Your mother soon shall have you back on earth where you belong."

            Persephone was quiet, and I worried that I had been to frank with her.

            "I don't belong here, do I?"

            "No, Queen Persephone. You are growing weak. Before long…you will not be with us…even the living in the underworld must die."

            Persephone gulped.

            "I am sorry, my queen. I have said to much." I finished with her lacings, and combed back her hair again to perfection. "Please, don't listen to the tales of a woeful girl."

            "How did you die, Acacia?" She turned to look at me.

            I felt my gut tighten. "We don't talk about that here."

            "I'm sorry." She whispered, and turned back around.

            "Go to your husband, Persephone. He is waiting for you."

            Persephone was quiet for the next few weeks, she spoke not even to me, and I was one of the few she ever saw besides her husband. Rumors circulated the kingdom about Demeter and Zeus, and Hades, and a large fight over Persephone.

            It was near the beginning of spring, and the earth was still covered in ice and snow that Persephone came into her chambers laughing one evening.

            "I am going home." She smiled at me. "I am finally going home, Acacia!"

            "I am very happy for you." I smiled. And it was true.

            "Acacia! You have no idea how happy this makes me! I have been waiting so long for this! I can't wait to get out into the sun, and see flowers and trees, and animals again."

            I pursed my lips. It was cruel of her to speak of these things, of being released when I, and thousands of others, where staying behind.

            It was on this evening that I decided to talk to the castle gardener. He was known for hating Demeter, and I believed that I could use that to my advantage. I sauntered over to him in my crimson red servant gown. My feet were bare, and my hair was tied up upon my head.

            "Hector…" I couldn't resist turning on my charm, and sliding a smooth finger across his scaly jaw. He pounded his shovel into the ground and looked at me.

            "What is it Acacia? Don't play your games with me…"

            "I have heard tales, being in the castle, Hector…" I whispered in his ear. "The Queen is being returned to her mother…Demeter."

            "Demeter…Oh, I hate Demeter." His voice grew cold.

            "I know, my dear Hector…" I sighed, putting an arm around his shoulder, and leaning in closer to him. "We need to stop it, we need to make their lives miserable…don't we?"

            "I would love to ruin Demeter…You know that." The gardener looked at me. "What do I need to do?"

            "Persephone is very happy, Hector… All you need to do is get her to eat this…" I plucked a pomegranate from a tree. "Just one berry, and all of Demeter's dreams come smashing to the ground she loves so much."

            Hector looked at me, and grinned. "You are sure this will work?"

            "Once a someone eats the food of the dead, Hector…they are here for ever."

            I heard the man's evil cackle as I walked away, a special pomegranate in my own hands, just in case.

            The next day I ushered Persephone away from her packing and out into the gardens. It would be my pleasure to pack for her… I knew I could make her life miserable, and it was my only goal in this afterlife. I watched from the window in her chambers as Hector approached her as she smelled the flower of an apple tree, and I heard him speak to her.

            "My dear…" His voice sent chills even to my spine, in a good, prickly sort of way. "Would you like something to eat before you go? After all, you do not want to return to your mother hungry and malnourished do you?"

            Persephone did not even think before she took the half of the fruit he gave her, plucking six of the berries and eating them. The juice stained her fingers and tongue. My heart leapt in my chest, and I grinned.

            It was then that I noticed Hermes, the messenger of the gods, swoop down and knock the cursed fruit from her hands. He had come to take her back to her mother. The plot grew thicker.

            "NO!" His voice shook the entire castle, and I grasped onto the bedpost to keep from falling. Of course, it was to late. Hector laughed at him, and I saw him walk away with the rest of the fruit, and his gardening tools. Persephone had fallen to the ground, and Hermes now knelt beside her. I moved closer to the window to hear.

            He was whispering to her, "My sweet Persephone…you have eaten the food of the dead…" She gasped realizing this, and looking at her berry stained hands. Her head fell to her knees and she wept, knowing what she had done.

            Hermes brushed a lock of her hair aside, and comforted her, "Do not worry, sweet Persephone. The king of the Gods shall hear of this gardener's traitorous deed." My stomach tightened…surely Hector would not be punished…  surely he would not tell that it was my idea… I had no time to worry about that now.

            I flew from the Queen's chambers then out to the garden where Hermes was walking from Persephone's hunched figure.

            "Take care of your Queen." He lashed at me, and I fell beside her, not wanting to anger this man.

            "Of course." I had no idea how to address the messenger of the gods… My Lord? Sir? Your Highness? Hermes? I didn't need to have worried because he kept walking into the throne room.

            Hades was called into a meeting with Zeus and Demeter about Persephone. I stayed with my queen and we spoke in the bed chamber she shared with Hades. It was a grand room, everything carved from the finest of materials. She looked stronger, because she had begun eating ("Why not eat, since I'm already cursed?", she had told me). She hugged a pillow to her chest while she spoke.

            "Do you miss your life on earth?"

            "I don't remember my life on earth." I held a ripped pillow on my lap and was sewing it.

            "Nothing?"

            "Very little…" I told her.

            "…Acacia? I know you don't like to talk about it…but…how did you die?" She asked. Her eyes were wide, and questioning.

            "Child birth." I told her. "I bled to death."

            "Do you know what happened to the child?"

            "Died soon after I did."

            "Was it a girl?"

            "Yes." I pricked my finger with the needle, but no blood came from my veins.

            "Have you met her?"

            "No. I don't want to either."

            "But why?" She asked.

            I looked up at her. She looked so pure, and so innocent. I found myself hating her a little less.

            "Because…that is something that is forgotten. I don't want it back."

            "What do you think they'll do with me?"

            I shrugged. "I don't know…Cut you half maybe." I winked to let her know I was kidding.

            Persephone didn't find my joke funny, but didn't say anything.

            "Look, they'll probably either keep you here, and give your mother visitation."

            "She'd never come. She hates it here. She had to come here once when I was young for a council meeting… She came back, and complained for weeks about how wretched this place was."

            "Give it a feminine touch then." I sighed.

            "Easier said then done."

            "You just have to have a way with the king…"

            "Do you? Have a way with the king I mean."

            "What do you mean by that?"

            "I'm not blind, Acacia. I see the way you look at him."

            I swallowed and continued with my sewing, "He is my king. I admire him."

            "You do more then admire him, Acacia. You don't need to lie to me. I don't love him."

            "You don't know him yet." My hatred had returned. She no longer looked innocent and childish. She was grown, and was taunting me.

            "I spent months with him…I know him."

            "I have spent years with him, and the only time I have ever spoke with him was when he told me to look out for you. I do not love him." I got back to the subject at hand.

            Persephone turned to the window, to look out over the kingdom. She had angered me and she knew it, but I had probably angered her many times before as well. It was payback.

            "It's okay to love him, you know." She told me. "Someone should."

            "Don't you love him?" I asked, tying off the thread on the pillow.

            "I suppose in a morbid sort of way…but really? I don't want him. There were others before him that I fancied…but…he's the one that got me, I suppose."

            I bit my tongue to keep from lashing out at her. She didn't deserve him…but I suppose I didn't either.

            It was a long time after Persephone left that I finally became bold enough to make my move on Hades… but that is a story for another time.