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-1-
The road to Hades is not where mortals think.
Persephone walks the path, which: for all the ways the world has changed in hundreds of years, it remains as it always was. The path is always the same and it always begins in the forest, though which forest may differ. Last time, she walked back down from a cursed sea of trees, embracing souls who got lost along the way and leading them home. The year before, she found the path to the underworld through the forest on the Rhine, gathering pine needles and fir twigs to decorate Hades’ hearth with.
This year, she walks an old path far from home. It calls to her, as one path always does. This one is winding through old, impossibly old mountains. It’s a path she thought would call her sooner than it has; beneath the mighty mountains lay Tartarus, the cursed land that segregated hectonchaires in their time, strange monsters birthed by her great-grandmother. Her husband buried them far from Mount Olympus, their massive bodies distorting the earth above. The hectonchaires are there still: the original tenants, deep in these mountains. And Persephone walks their path, knowing that the mighty mountains are but one way home. Sometimes, she stops walking and presses a hand down to the moist ground, feels the warmth of their breath in the damp soil as they turn, hungry-mouthed, toward Persephone Carpophorus, the fruit-bearer — but she does not allow them to surface. It is not yet time for them to meet.
Instead, she stands and dusts off her fingers. She resumes her trek, walking down the mountain lands of what is now Kentucky (how funny a sound, she thinks; this year, she mumbles it under her breath as she walks the trail, Ken-tuck-ee, Ken-tuck-ee, Ken-tuck-ee). She has been here before, of course — like mankind, Persephone is a wanderer at heart. All paths wander and meander – sometimes through cities and rivers, regrets and hopes, light and dark, but only one path leads to her winter home.
The only home any of them have, in the end. She walks and she walks and she walks, until she comes to a path where all divergent paths lead to one.
-2-
The path to hell, humans have written, is a solitary path best traveled alone. They are wrong.
She usually completes the first leg of her journey alone, but not the second. Humanity often accompanies her, regardless of the mood she’s in. At first, she found the shades a terrifying reminder of her journey; now they are only companions. She finds comfort in them; they, too, were pulled here without warning. She prepares to see them in the beyond, taking one last deep breath of fresh air before committing back to the world below.
She presses her hand to the door of a cave; it should be cold but it warms to her touch. The realm, like the man, is pliable to her caress. She walks down the path and she touches the walls as her eyes adjust — blinding sunshine to ill-starred night. Her stomach twists in a desire for what is already gone, but she swallows and continues ahead.
It has always been dark here, though he has done his best in the centuries since her marriage to make the place more welcoming, the moment of her transition less bizarre. This year he has gone for a golden theme; Hades Plouton has feted his halls in elaborate golden petals and ferns, living up to his name. She plucks a small metallic flower and puts it in her hair, knowing he will be pleased by her acceptance of his offering. She does not have the heart to tell him that gilded cages are no less binding. She suspects he already knows.
Shades filter past her in her journey; discombobulated Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and more filing down to her shores. They are all her guests, and Persephone Poludegmon, she who receives many, smiles upon them. Most of them who come no longer keep the old ways, but fortunately Persephone has many names, and she recognizes all her children.
She is growing closer to the point where she will become, once more, the queen of the realm; the barking of her dog alerting her to her approach as he keeps the shades on the straight path. Once, she had feared Hades dog; but now, she knows the dog would allow her passage.
As if to prove the point, Kerberos barks happily at her return; the shades filter past him quickly, perhaps relieved she occupies the dog’s time. The dog of hell flops onto his belly and she pets him; like most things in Hades’ realm, the dog is far less fearsome in her presence. It scares her still, sometimes, the power she has here; she is Hades’ equal, in a way neither Hera nor Amphitrite is in their own realm.
At the end of the hall of gilded earth, the path widens unto the shores of the river Styx. This year, Hades has painted the shoreline with strange, silver sand for her; an approximation of an ocean from a man who has never been to one. She pities him for that, but they both know there are limits of where they can go together. Hades’ hall is not a self-imposed exile. The spot where he last came up – where he took her – no longer bears fruit. She doubts Enna’s field ever will bear fruit again. Her mother holds grudges, and so does Hades.
Hades’ beach is festered with souls, all those who have not been able to pay the ferryman’s coin to cross. There have been so many waiting in the last few centuries; humans have forgotten the old ways. Fortunately, god’s marriages allow certain privileges, certain transmutations of powers. She needs to only think of him, feels the familiar tug of Hades’ powers in her palms, and coins appear.
She plies Hades’ gold, putting coins under tongues. An orderly queue forms, because in Hades’ realm, the shades learn quickly to stay on the right side of their iron rule. She would like to change the rule about the coins, but such traditions are hard to break and Hades breaks his rules for so few. She presses coins into shades' palms, emptying Charon’s shores of the stragglers. She could go ahead of her subjects, but, because their fear is visible on sniveling noses and wide eyes, she nods toward Charon to take them first. Let them see that not all deathless gods are cruel; rigid, yes, but not unmerciful.
It takes a few trips for him to ferry them over to Hades' shore and she makes a note of the delay; she will tell Hades it keeps her from him longer, and see if that is enough to make his unyielding heart melt. While she is waiting, she stares at Hades’ beach. It is a kind if terrible gift; he knows that to be here is hard for her. He has always been aware of her sacrifice of the world above. She wonders, as she always has, if it is hard for him to make that sacrifice. When she had asked, once, whether he regretted earning her mother's wrath, he said it did not matter. He did not much care for the above ground, anyway. That had been that. She supposed Demeter might — might — let him go to Olympus, but neither of them has ever been fond of Olympus. In a way, it is a mercy she ended up here – she cannot imagine what it would be to be Apollo, Aries, or Athena’s wife; she has no patience for the family disputes, and they all cheat at Petteia anyway.
In so many ways, she knows, she was lucky. But, still, she thinks, it would have been nice to be asked if she had wanted to rule such a dark place, if anyone had ever thought to ask what she wanted in the brokerage of her marriage. She was taken against her will, and perhaps the fault is hers for never asking mother to speak of her match (for Demeter would never give her willingly), or Hades fault for taking her without mother’s permission, or mother’s fault for never telling her what she was always meant to be, or father Zeus’ fault for…really, many, many things, but most importantly of all, not communicating to any of them.
She shook her head. She should not focus on things so long-gone; her abduction was very long ago. She has made her peace with her fate. Mostly. She looks at the impressive waves in the silver soil Hades has crafted for her as Styx burbles at the shore. Styx does not exactly lap at the shore, for it does not behave like the water above. It is water, all right, but it is brackish and cloudy and full of oaths and secrets. She drops a toe in and it fizzes and bubbles around her; she does not walk further in.
Once, she thought it bubbled because she was an above-creature trespassing upon its wet abode, but now she knows that isn’t the case. It is meant to be a comfort; a bit of the above welcoming her back to the down below.
The clapping of an oar on a boat diverts her attention; Charon finally has room for her.
“Good to have you back,” Charon says when she finally boards the boat. He had once been far more taciturn, but since she gives him the majority of his trade these days, his attitude has become far more subservient to her. “Slow days, without ye.”
“Ah,” she says; she offers an obol, though he, of course, takes her for free. She does not say it is good to be back, for the gloomy halls and hallow spaces leave little room for joy. Already she misses the sun, the seas, and the sand: the crumbles of silver, the gloomy churn of Lethe and Styx, and even the low lights ensconced in golden flowers cannot compare to the sheer variety of natural life and light her mother has prepared up above. It is not a right and natural place, the underworld, and Hades tries and tries and tries to make the majesty measure up to the up above and never quite makes it right. But she does, as always, appreciate the effort.
She feels the leaves caught in her clothing crumble as she and the boatman row their way toward the city of Dis in agreeable silence. True to form, he says nothing as her clothing transforms, her chthonic powers coming to bear; green turtleneck and practical jeans becoming the familiar peplos and chiton. These, she wears for him: he has always preferred the older style.
“Welcome home, Persephone Praxidike,” Charon says as they breach the other side of that silver shore. He holds his hat in his hands as she stands upon her lands, a sign of respect that she acknowledges with a small nod. She is severe, as befits a queen, and he does not expect more than her nod in return. With age has come acceptance of who she is, what she is, what she must be.
She is the Praxidike, exactor of justice. That is the problem of being a part-time underworld god, she thinks: no matter how she feels, she has her duties to attend to.
And so does her husband.
-3-
The road to the city of Dis is shorter than humans think it is. There are so many stories of it being a hard and difficult climb, surrounded by hazards, and none of them are true. Every year her walk here is a bit different; the six months she goes up to the surface, Hades goes crazy, tries to find more and more ways to make it more to her liking. He tries hard. She cannot fault him for that.
This year, it is a cozy village road, with lapis lazuli and sapphire skies and diamond moons. It reminds her of her girlhood in the Elysium fields, and she is sure that is in the intention. Her heart tugs as she thinks of Hades, six months alone, painting the world under the world just for her. It is almost welcoming, in that anything in this strange world is welcoming. He has done a great deal to it since she first came on the back of his chariot, all those years ago.
When she first came to the underworld, it was black, blacker than darkness itself. He hadn't bothered to form anything to his realm, not then. He’d had no muse before her. She had screamed, and wailed, and beat against his helmet and his breastplate, and hard-hearted Hades had not let her go, had told her their marriage had been arranged with her father, but she saw only blackness for his realm: it was dark, and it was cold.
She’d put her hand up from his chariot and she’d seen it vanish into the pitch and she had screamed, startled. His arm had wrapped around her waist, as oppressive as it was comforting, and she’d fainted. This is the first memory she has always held of them: her kidnapping, her weakness.
But her second memory is truer of what she has known of him as his wife: by the time she awoke, he had created torches, installed bronziers of hardened ore with bits of the Phlegethon. At the time, it was a mark of how alien he was to her, to need to make adjustments to a realm just so she could see her barren new home. Now, she understands: having been below since time immortal, her uncle-husband’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness. It had been an oversight, nothing more; perhaps the same was true of her marriage charter. Her eyes had gotten used to the darkness, and his gentleness too.
It had simply taken her a long time to see either, unaccustomed as she was to looking for it.
She drifts through the city’s streets, admiring his handiwork this year in what passes for the gardens of the dead. It is more sparse at the ground versus what he has made of their (lack of) sky; copper mushrooms and granite turnips brush against the asphodel and dirt path through the city, and she allows a few to become real, nourishing nightcaps and buttonshades. It’s a frivolous waste of power – they will die, as all things down here die.
Except herself and her husband, of course. Not them, never them; king and queen eternal when all the other Gods will be laid to waste, the eldest son inheriting the final kingdom. When her father made her queen here, he sealed her eternal responsibilities: she will live long after every Olympian dies. She does not look forward to her lord father becoming one of their many guests; Zeus will find it odd to find himself him without a castle. She knows there is a chance he will endevour to take her husband's place, but between uncle and father, she knows where her loyalties will lie -- though such will bring her mother to weep.
Hades has no grand castle. He has never quite enjoyed ostentation in that way, which she appreciates. She had no patience for her father’s grandstanding as a small child hiding by her mother’s skirts; she has less patience still, now. She walks up the cliff face past dozens of souls, who part for her in reverent grace or confused shuffling. It is not Olympus in its golden glory; this is a more natural path, one simple incline to a cliff upon which sits two chairs and three staircases, each a path to a different land within their land. On the other end of the cliff is eternal darkness, primordial and terrifying.
She does not look down into that deep and eternal pit as she climbs. There are some steps even Gods fear to tread.
She feels the ichor in her veins sing, as it always does when she is close to him. It is a reminder from the fates of their destiny-thread; wound together until the very end of the time. She comes to the top of his hill and she finds him, her heart speeding a bit at the sight of her husband on his own throne. He has been working hard, she sees immediately; he is pale, skin mottled like marble, eyes hard as flint and yet they turn to softness at the sight of her. He’s dressed in a more modern style for her – a black suit, with a black tie, and black shoes and socks and no doubt black pocket square tucked in his suit jacket. Color is something he loves but struggles to replicate outside of his stones. His eyes take in her look, and though he is too stern to smile, she feels the warmth of his heart as his hand delicately reaches for her own.
“I missed you,” he says, in a low and deep murmur. His voice is as dry leaves upon empty paths, and she wavers not at all as she takes her place beside him. Her throne is threaded with golden vines this year, she notes; she wonders, sometimes, if he still feels guilty for how she came here and what she gave up to stay. She takes his hand, the closest to a kiss he’ll ever give her in public.
“Thank you for the flower,” she whispers, and sees the hand of the king shiver in hers in return. He loves her with a more brilliant and electric love than father Zeus loves Hera, than Poseidon loves Amphitrite. Their gazes wander; they fall too far in love with the realms charged to them. She understands that, now; it’s easy for them to take a mortal woman or man, dance in a human skin for a few weeks while nurturing a quick love affair.Their realms need little tending, are not streaming with new arrivals to situate and old rivalries and squabbles to settle.
Hades has never forgotten his responsibilities. And neither does she.
“It suits you,” he says.
“Could say the same for your suit,” she replies, squeezing his hand as she beckons the first shade to approach for judging. Hand in hand, they weigh out the final justice of the underworld for thousands of new arrivals. Once her most hated duty, now simply one of many. The reaping, she has found, is as important as the sowing; the beginning as important as the end. For is it not true that though her husband once married her without her will, that he has not tried for the past millennium to make her allotment better? Is it not Hades, the eldest, who received the least-wanted realm but the deepest riches? Such creatures as them are prone to taking the long view, and their judgments of humans are no different: every person is a contradiction, more complex than mother’s morality or father’s fancies.
Their people come from everywhere, at every age — though fewer children this year, she notes with approval. It is a good start to the half-year: no souls are Tartarus-bound, not yet. And though there is no sun and no sky down here, she sees each clearly. She isn't aware of how much the unused muscles tax her until she realizes her legs ache and her heart burns. She has not to say a word of her distress; Hades grabs her hand and leads her back to their home.
It’s different every year, their home, as he keeps trying to refine it to her interests. This year, it is a cottage in a field-maze thousands of miles along; emeralds and citrine taking the place of the cornstalk and wheat. It is a monumentally beautiful scene, one even stone-cold Aphrodite would weep for it had a man done this for her. It moves Persephone's heart to pity. He is, she knows, afraid that she will leave, that one year she will simply not return and Zeus will shrug his shoulders and say that Hades has had his chance. It will not happen – Persephone, too, has her responsibilities. But it is easy to forget that, she knows: she is her father’s daughter, as much as he is her father’s brother. Capriciousness is in their blood.
She reaches out and opens the door; rich wood from a tree so old she cannot even name it anymore. She crooks a finger and leads him in; he shuts the door quickly and presses his long face to her neck, his stern façade crumbling into a hidden passion. She folds fingers into his unruly hair as his beard scratches her cheek and is rewarded with a whimper. It is the most mysterious part of winter for her; how even the smallest of touches seems to produce such a powerful response in him. His fingers fumble for the lantern – he doesn’t need it, but she needs the light for the moment and he needs her. Flame sparks quickly in their lantern – and of course, it still is a lantern, for he keeps to the old ways. She doesn’t complain; she likes the warmth.
It’s still always cold down here. She can see her breath, and holding him brings little warmth to her. Though he blocks most of the view, she can see plants in terracotta planters. She reaches out to touch a leaf, suspicious, and chuckles as she hits synthetic leaves.
“I tried the real ones first, but…” Hades says, by way of apology, and she sees it all too clearly: the king of the dead, panicking in a huddle of brown leaves thanks to Demeter’s curse, and it makes her a bit sad even if she chuckles. She feels the shadow of a smile on her throat as he nuzzles her. “Thankfully, Hermes can prove useful. If chatty.”
“He’s always chatty.” She strokes his cheek. “It’s part of his role, you know.”
“Mm. So it is.” He changes the topic as he breaks away from her for the first time, pulling a long slice of iron from the soil and refining it into a knife. “How’s your mother?”
“Still mad,” she says, creating a pomegranate from nothing. “You’re still ‘that man’ to her, you know.”
“Demeter always did hold grudges,” he says, watching her split the pomegranate with his knife. Certain rituals must always be done; this tells them how much time they’ll have. Seeds spill out: five perfect arils fall into her hands. An early spring, then. It satisfies her, but she sees him flinch a bit, so she holds up a finger, gently procuring the sixth aril.
“Careful,” he whispers, but his lips twitch into a rare smile. “My younger brother is rather fond of his rules, you know.”
“Our secret,” she says, eating all six before he can talk her out of it. The pomegranate vanishes; if Zeus has a quibble with her actions, he chooses to ignore it. There are no thunderclaps down here. Zeus hasn’t seen her since the drawing of lots between her husband and her mother anyway. She does not mind. There are worse fates with Zeus than to be his neglected child.
And it is better to be a neglected child, she thinks, than a neglected wife. Hades' arms circle around her and she feels comfort; as comfortable as one can be in a death-god's cold embrace.
“Come to bed?” Hades asks, voice heavy with love. She swallows and nods. He warms at her touch, grabbing her hand easily; she has gotten better at not flinching at the coldness. The mixing of their fingers as he leads her feels somewhat profane as he leads her back to their bed.
He lights the lantern with a wave of his hand; petals are strewn on her bed. Rose petals, just plucked. It’s another bit of home in a land so far away, and nothing he could have done for himself. It’s a romantic gesture, but a damn sad one.
“Hermes again?” She asks, sitting down and delighting in the smell of roses as she holds petals to her nose. She misses flowers already, will miss them for months now. She savors it and he watches her for a long moment, saying nothing.
“He has his uses,” he says finally. His eyes are wet and soft, and his hands are shoved in two fists, and she knows he wants, more than anything, to touch her. And though doing so will destroy his gift, she wants him to; wants to hear him whimper and cry and break against her, to be her partner and hold her as she tries to forget everything she loves above: mother, the trees, the flowers. She wishes her mother and husband could have made a better compromise; she wishes neither was so uncompromising. She wants to take him to the ocean-shore, claim him upon the waves as her own. She wishes mother would come here, to the shores of the Styx, at least; wishes that they could feast on the sweet fruits of the eternal harvest in asphodel and light.
But she has long given up on dreams such as this.
She lays down in his roses, smiling deeply as he stands above her. It's only then that she notices the mural above her that he's made -- a lantern glowing in bright topaz, the flames light in rubies, and all around them shining onyx. Of all the copious displays of his affection, this one is the one that tightens her throat. She thinks of him working along these six months, pulling minerals and ore from the earth, bedecking an entire realm just to try to make it tolerable for her.
"You look lovely," he says, quiet as always. She wonders if he sees his handiwork shining in her eyes.
“Then come to bed,” she says. “What are you waiting for?”
“They’ll die. I wanted - I wanted you to have a bit of above, for a while at least. I can’t — “
“Come,” she says, curling a finger. He is her husband, and her friend, and once her abductor, too, but in the realm of their bed, she has always held all the control. “Your queen commands.”
With that, he needs no further permission to crawl into her bed; the roses crumple under her, their sweet scent turning cloying as they blow away. She catches the frown on his face, and reaches up, planting one hand on his iron cheek. "Kiss me, husband. I have missed you," she says, and then he is on her. He presses a kiss to her lips, and life and death intertwine in their bed: shoots of flowers blossom around her, decay, and crumple to dust. His kisses taste of mossy caverns, dry plains. It is a bittersweet commingling; their bed is a sterile one, yet their union is but part of the fertility dance of the land above: things grow, die, and grow again. But here, nothing grows but the heart.
And perhaps that is enough, she thinks, running her arms across his back as he kisses her like a man in the grips of a fervent prayer, as she scratches her fingers through the death god's back and hears him cry out her name. Perhaps in the darkness, a gentle hand holding a lantern will be enough.