"Tomorrow we leave for the Immortal Alliance Conference," his Shizun said softly, cradling his tea cup in one perfect, slender hand. It was a cold night for spring, with rain coming down heavily in gusts. The wind outside made the bamboo outside creak loudly as the thick stalks swayed and ground against each other in the storm. "This master hopes Binghe is as prepared as possible. I will have a gift for you in the morning, so please be up early and prepare only a light breakfast of cut fruit so we have extra time before departure."
"Yes, Shizun."
"You've finished all your reading, I hope? The bestiaries on demons? They will help you at the conference."
"Yes, Shizun," Binghe repeated. Of course he'd read the books! Shizun had asked.
"Good. One final tale then. I was… torn. There are so many tales, but we are out of time. I thought perhaps Orpheus' quest to save his wife's spirit might suit, or maybe how King Arthur gained the mighty sword Excalibur… but they do not really… I thought of the best one I possibly could, and I hope it will be illuminating. This master hopes Binghe will learn and attend closely to the themes in the story I chose in the end."
"Always, Shizun!"
"Once upon a time," Shizun began, "there was a beautiful young goddess named Persephone, a goddess of flowers and springtime."
Binghe choked on his tea, with an ungraceful splutter that left his dabbing at his face. "A goddess of springtime flowers?" he asked. He knew that was the popular euphemism for the many varieties of flowers that inflamed uncontrollable lust in those who inhaled their scent or were sprinkled with their intoxicating pollen.
"I… what?!" his Shizun spluttered. "You know what? That actually makes a lot of narrative sense. Sure, I can work with that. But do keep in mind that Persephone herself was just a sweet and innocent maiden. Just a pure little flower maiden! It's a key part of the story!"
"Yes, Shizun," Binghe said, trying not to blush.
"Right, so she was… uh… dancing and frolicking through a field of flowers with her handmaidens, which suddenly sounds so much worse now," his teacher said, with a small chuckle hidden from view behind his bamboo-patterned fan that did nothing to conceal the sweet sound of his laughter.
"Then suddenly a great rent in the earth opened up, and a dark chariot emerged drawn by pitch-black horses, driven by Hades, a Demon King. He, uh… fell in love with her instantly." His fan covered his face shyly.
"Springtime flowers," Binghe agreed, with a knowing nod.
"Ahem! So, seizing Persephone around the waist, he dragged her onto his chariot and absconded with her back into the chasm that led to his underground demonic realm. The rift in the earth instantly closed up behind him; she had no way to escape now. He left all the handmaidens behind to weep and cry and run to tell Persephone's mother, Demeter, of her daughter's abduction."
Two stories with travelling to a demon realm, Binghe noted. I wonder if I'm Persephone or Hades in this story? Shizun usually makes me the main protagonist, though the Scheherazade story was an exception to that rule. Hmm. Persephone was described as young and innocent and pretty, and I think 'my' character has been described that way in every single story so far. Well, except for Scheherazade, which I think is so exceptional because it was scene-setting for the rest of them, and even then, the Emperor started out as very naïve. So, Persephone's probably me!
"Demeter was maddened with grief at the loss of her daughter, and wandered the earth in search for her–"
"Shizun, since she should have known her daughter was in a demon realm, why was she wandering the earth?" Binghe asked.
"Hmm, good question. I suppose because those kinds of rents between the planes are rare and unpredictable, and she was searching for one so she'd have a way in. And perhaps because she didn't know which particular realm her daughter was in."
"Like those rifts to different parts of the demon realms or the Endless Abyss that sometimes open up in real life, Shizun?"
His Shizun paused and gave him a meaningful, approving look but said nothing as he continued with his story. "Demeter was a goddess of the fruitful earth and the harvest, and she neglected her duties in her grief. Wandering across the world with a lit torch gifted to her by the goddess of magic, she searched for a way to find her daughter, and meanwhile the earth declined in her wake. Trees lost their leaves, plants withered, and the earth grew cold and barren."
"Like the coming of winter?"
"Exactly like winter. This is a myth about the origin of the seasons, at its heart."
Binghe nodded understandingly.
"Mortals began to starve and added their prayers to Demeter's, appealing to the king of the gods, Zeus, to intervene.
"Meanwhile, down in Hades' realm, the king's wooing of Persephone wasn't going quite as well as he'd hoped. Being of better moral character than his frankly appalling brothers, while he'd abducted Persephone he didn't want to force her to his bed, but instead strove to win her as his willing bride. He showered her with jewels and called on the talented spirits of the dead to entertain her with songs and dances, but she was sad to be stuck underground and wanted to return to her mother's side. Hades tempted her at last with a walk in his garden, full of rare plants and delicious fruiting trees. She was a goddess of – oh dear – springtime flowers, after all, and loved plants. Hades split open a pomegranate, and tempted by his sweet words and her own hunger, she ate a few blood-red seeds from the pomegranate."
"An excellent wedding gift," Binghe observed. "Pomegranates bring good luck for bearing sons."
Shizun sighed. "This is all coming out sounding a lot more suggestive than it sounded in my head, when I practised this story earlier. Where was I? Right, so Zeus visited the couple in the underworld, and said that Persephone would have to be returned to her mother, for the sake of the world. But Hades smugly pointed out that she had eaten some pomegranate seeds, which tied her to his land."
"Was she pregnant, Shizun? Or married? Had they exchanged any bows?"
"I… no, I don't think so, not pregnant. Though I think she became the mother of some winged demons later on. Anyway, maybe she was as good as married; the gods in these myths never seemed to bother with any kind of formal ceremony. To be honest I'm not sure why the rule was how it was. However, a trope found in several stories I know is that eating food in another realm sometimes traps you there."
"Is the fruit symbolising fertility significant, or perhaps the blood-red colour of it, Shizun? Or both? Demon marriages sometimes include an exchange of blood," he added, with a blush. He hoped his Shizun wouldn't ask how or why he knew that; the answer was Meng Mo. Suspicious of Binghe possibly having some demonic heritage, the Elder had lectured a bit about unions between demons, and how they differed from mortal pairings. Mostly they seemed a lot more violent and possessive.
Binghe also wondered if her eating seeds a man gave her was a thinly concealed metaphor for more intimate activities than sharing a piece of fruit, but he didn't know how to ask that without embarrassing them both.
"Perhaps it was significant," his Shizun said, in a carefully non-committal way. There might be a good guess in Binghe's questions somewhere, if his Shizun had to avoid answering him. Or not. There was no hidden smile this time. Interpreting his teacher's expression was an imprecise art at times!
"So, Demeter had to settle for a deal with her new son-in-law; Persephone would stay with her husband for four months of the year – some versions of the myth say six – and the remainder of the year she would return to the surface, ending her mother's cold winter of mourning, and bringing spring back to the earth. She would not be trapped in Hades' dark realm forever, but she would forever after remain the underworld's queen."
Shen Qingqiu's tale came to an end, and the two of them finished their tea, lost in their own thoughts, listening to the rain battering the roof and the creaking of the bamboo. Binghe was the one to break their silence.
"Shizun, in many of your tales there is a… wandering or disloyal spouse. What was Hades and Persephone's marriage like? With her gone from his side for at least half of the year, this one wonders about their marriage and their fidelity."
"Interesting question! I would say they were happy, actually. Happier than most of the gods in this land's stories, who were notoriously, uh… fickle in their attentions. Many of them routinely cheated on their wives and regularly forced their attentions on anyone who caught their eye, even the unwilling or married. While it wasn't the best start to marriage, Hades was, by comparison, a remarkably respectful and faithful husband, and gave all his attention to his queen alone."
Binghe was pleased to hear it. He was pretty sure Shizun was Hades, in today's story. He liked to think that while cheating spouses had appeared a few times in Shizun's story, that their inclusion was a warning that Shizun valued faithfulness. Speaking so positively of a king – two, if you included Scheherazade's Emperor – having only a single beloved wife was really remarkable, given how plentiful the harems of such highly-ranked men tended to be.
"Thanking Shizun for this Emperor's story. May this disciple help Shizun with his hair again tonight? It would be good to ensure it is free from knots to help guarantee swift preparations for our departure tomorrow," Binghe coaxed.
"Very well."
Binghe's hands lingered longer than they needed to, combing out then braiding his Shizun's hair for bed. Since Shizun didn't mind, Binghe felt at liberty to fuss over his hair longer than was necessary.
Eventually, however, he ran out of excuses to linger. "Shizun, could you tend to my hair too?" he asked, a lump forming in his throat at the daring request. "There are a few knots at the back that are difficult to untangle unaided."
"Ah! This master never considered you might like me to reciprocate. Of course, Binghe. Your hair is so soft and fluffy, it will do well to be braided too if you want to keep the knots out while you sleep."
Binghe hummed with happiness at Shizun's tender care. Just like that of a loving spouse. A servant might tend his master's hair, but only lovers would brush each other's hair.
-000-
His rambling notes that night reinforced many ongoing themes, but one was altered.
He crossed out 'disloyal spouses' and changed it to 'importance of loyalty in a spouse' as that felt like a better reflection of the underlying theme. Only Guanyin's story omitted that theme, though she did display great loyalty to her father despite his sins against her. With a bit more reflection on Gawain's brave show of loyalty to his uncle the king, Achilles' heartbroken loyalty to his 'friend' Patroclus, and Demeter's despairing loyalty to her lost daughter, he tweaked that motif a little more.
Then he wrote out his list in order of commonality of the themes, in hopes it might help him identify the patterns better.
Ongoing themes: royalty/nobility (all stories), importance of unwavering loyalty in a partner/relative (all stories), Shizun/me as characters in stories (all), making a deal (5 out of 6), Shizun-character fearing/facing death (5 out of 6), accepting yet escaping fate (5 out of 6? - not sure about Achilles), magical cures for the uncurable/prevention of the unstoppable (4 out of 6), demons acting in non-dangerous ways (4 out of 6), silence/secrets connected to suffering (4 out of 6), magical weapons (3 out of 6), unconventional/forbidden love (3 out of 6), surviving mortal blows (3 out of 6), cut-sleeves (2 out of 6).
He scribbled down a puzzled note about the pomegranate, too. Pomegranate – blood, seeds, and fertility – eating this fruit tied her to the demon realm every winter. He felt it meant something to Shizun, but he wasn't sure what.
The theme of non-dangerous demons was increasingly marked. It was very reassuring that Shizun felt that demons could be good, for over the years Binghe had increasingly thought it likely he had some demonic heritage of his own. He feared Meng Mo was right; he wouldn't be as good as he was at demonic cultivation without at least some demon blood in his family line. He was abandoned to the Luo River, after all; perhaps out of shame from bearing a child of mixed heritage as he'd often presumed was the case. He wondered again if it was his birth mother or his father who was a demon, or some more distant ancestor.
Had his demonic mother abandoned him for being too weak? Or had his human mother – possibly a noblewoman, and hopefully not a woman from a brothel – been unwillingly forced to bear the get of a demon, discarding her shameful offspring as soon as she could leave her bed? Unwilling to drown him when the moment came, but too disgusted to keep him. Did his Shizun know the answer? Was he trying to hint at his knowledge, with his tales of half-demons and the various mixed marriages and romances of gods, mortals, and demons?
So long as his Shizun didn't reject him for his heritage, none of it mattered to him in the end. He only had one true parent, and his real mother had loved him beyond anything. She had always urged him to see his coming to her as a blessing from heaven, not as the result of some deep shame. The thought had always brought him comfort when he was young, and it did still.
As he drifted off to sleep he wondered what Shizun's gift the next morning would be. He honestly couldn't think of anything he wouldn't value if it came from his teacher's hands.