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The first time she makes it—the trip that given a score or so of years will become one of the great annoyances of her long, long life—Persephone is a girl. Hades, her hard-won husband, is as young as he’s ever been and as young as he’s ever going to be; down south they ride, way down, and all the while he’s got her cushioned in his lap, got his arms around her, got his mouth against her neck and in her hair.
Persephone, she’s filled up: with his feel, his smell, his darkness and his bulk and the way it all enfolds her, encloses her, holds her tight. Sometimes she thinks, this is it. All is as it’s meant to be. Summer maiden and lord of death, don’t they make a picture, crisp-lined like Aunt Hestia’s glossy city magazines. Don’t they fit together, don’t they set each other off just right. But that’s only what she’s thinking half the time. Other half, those lines ain’t so crisp. Who knows where she begins and Hades ends—Persephone’s crushed, clenched so tight that the gravel in her husband’s voice rumbles through her own. Then she wants to sock him in the jaw and jump off the train, off the track. Out in the wilds there’s no plan for her. No one thing she’s got to be.
“Who do you think I am?” She smacks his shoulder playful-like, but the blow lands hard. “You think I’m gonna break?” Ain’t no way, lover. Not me.
Well. Hades, he takes her face between his two hands and he looks at her. Looks to Persephone like Apollo or even Dionysus, her randy, soft-handed cousins, for all Hades’ palms are rough and he smells like rust and he’s already full gray, going white at the temples. “You are my wife,” he says, wondering, such a spread of possibility in those words, such a promise. You are my wife, and I will love you. I will keep you ‘till the end of time.
Doesn’t seem like such a hard deal. Not then.
Persephone’s mellowed some by the time the tracks plunge them into the darkness underground. Laughing quietly, not as sharp as she could, she turns to kiss the curve of his shoulder. “This is who I married, huh?” The black of his suit soft on her lips, his body all unyielding under it. “This big softy?”
He’d stiffen up at that if the both of them weren’t half-drunk already on dandelion wine. Hades is so much of a man, the kind of man who thinks his kingdom and his factories and his promises of wealth won her over. He’d be happy if that were the truth, or thinks he’d be happy—doesn’t want Persephone to let on that if she looks at him just right, squints her eyes, tilts her head, she can see someone else, someone who’s been buried in the dark of him since before the world began. Hades wants her to see him as he sees himself. Always has. Like it wasn’t her poking at that buried softness that led him on in the first place.
“Ain’t much of a king now,” Persephone murmurs. “But—” she kisses him again. “I don’t recall that I asked for a king, now did I?”
“For you.” Hades pinches her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Only for you, lover,” he says, and there’s a warning there and Persephone laughs at it. The man’s a pure fool at least half the time, but Ma and Uncle Zeus and all the rest help her if she doesn’t love him.
“Only for me.” She loves him so much, she’ll take the train and she’ll take the darkness. She’ll smuggle light of her own down into Hadestown, spring and summer light, rich and fresh like Ma’s yellow butter. She’ll plant a garden. Hades’ll stand by the gate and wait for her to open it. Persephone sees it clear as day, knowing the damp and green growing smell of Ma’s garden and all he and she got up to in there. (You’re gonna get me dirty, you may as well lay me down in this dirt. Come here. Come here.)
She shifts, uncurling her legs ‘till she’s straddling her husband’s lap. Hades shifts along with Persephone, same as he ever does—she has him now, the whole weight of him in her arms. This old man, her man. His breath rasps quick and hot. Persephone whispers, tender as she only ever gets in these first few moments, “Come on, come on,” and together they reach where they’re supposed to be going. They always do.
(Back in the day, those long-ago and far away and molasses-slow dog days of summer, Persephone was the only one who ate his pomegranates. Every year the men from the railroad would haul a crate full up to Ma’s doorstep, grunting and cussing all the way. Persephone got the idea it was some kind of bet him and Ma kept going, though if the bet had anything to do with the taste of the fruit Uncle Hades was nothing but a sore loser. Fruits from Ma’s garden—sweet spring strawberries, blackberries fresh off the cane—burst in your mouth and wetted your tongue like drops of new rain. These pomegranates were big enough, swollen, hothouse-grown things with no taste to them, nothing besides their fullness.
There’s the food of the Underworld for you. Ma clucked her tongue. She never did sound smug, only exasperated. All that trouble for a mouthful of dishwater.
Persephone would wipe her lips, look down at her sticky fingers and the stained front of her dress. Ain’t so bad.
She was just a kid. Not enough brains in her or bust on her to even be full girl, and wasn’t she already aching for something beyond the garden gates, something way down the dust-red road.
Ma scoffed if she were in a bad mood, smiled if she weren’t. Back in the day she loved her brother, and she still might. Persephone’s not sure. Figures it’ll be a long time yet before she is sure, before Ma is either.
Ain’t so bad at all.)
When the train’s wheezed to its last stop and they’ve finally made their way out, Persephone tugging her skirt down and Hades fixing the buttons of his suit jacket, here comes a whistle, softer than the train’s, sly and low. Hermes waits on the platform. Got a face on him like a tomcat’s once it’s lapped up all the cream.
Persephone blows him a kiss. Hermes catches it, blows it right back. “Storm’s coming, little sister. You think you can weather it?”
Hades, who hasn’t paid the man any mind up to this point, snaps, “Hermes.” More of a growl, all told.
“Hey.” Persephone lays a hand on his arm. He ain’t holding her anymore, her husband, ain’t hung on her neck down here in his booming, glittering kingdom. Hadestown, where the lights never go out and the miners never stop their mining, nor the singers their singing. She can hear them already, snatches of this and that floating up from the streets, from the open doors of the bars and the speakeasies. Music, tired laughter. Life, light, even deep down in the dark.
Hades’ hand settles in the crook of her elbow. Not much of a singer himself, not her man. Her songs, though. Hades listens to those like she’s the first as ever’s sung them to him, and from what Persephone hears now...hey, it’s nice enough. Little rough around the edges, scraped a little thin. She’ll have to see what she can do with that.
She’ll have to see what she can do with that, Persephone thinks, linked up paper-doll-like with her husband, grinning at Hermes, spring and summer and grass-stained knees, bare feet in a kingdom of picks and sharp rocks. Mine, she thinks, mine as much as his, but what she means by that is, Light, this place needs light, needs a garden, sun’s warmth and growing things, needs some tapping feet, some joyful noise. Ain’t natural, is it, ain’t quite right, not yet.
Not yet. She’s here now. Things will change.
Our Lady of Ways, they’ll call her, Our Lady of Means. Our Lady of the Underground. Dread Persephone. And she’ll be known for the light that leaves the world every year when she comes down, for the sunshine she smuggles to her husband’s bone-weary workers in smeared glass bottles, for the coins and the lives she palms from them as payment, for her husband, the fights of theirs that rattle the world above and leave mortals and gods both shivering in the cold. Hades, Persephone’s hard-won husband, the man she’ll love as much as she hates.
Not yet. She ain’t there yet, though she’s closer than she knows, and so now Persephone grins at Hermes, who grins back, his grin as sharp as hers and hers as sharp as his. “Brother,” she says, “I look like the kind of girl who can’t hold on to what she’s got?”
Hades squeezes her arm, warm weight and a grim anchor.
Could be Hermes’ grin softens up to a smile, though Persephone wouldn’t bet her last dollar on it. “You look like a girl who’s a long ways from home.”
“Do I?” Change is in the air. Creeping in slow as spring, and if her husband’s pure fool, Persephone’s just fool enough to think the rest will be easy. She married him, didn’t she? Ate her six seeds and more; what else can he want from her? What else do they need? “Not for long,” she says. Promises. Feeling Hades’ eyes on her, Persephone turns and stretches to kiss his gray-stubbled cheek.
Not for long. The words burst between her teeth and stain her lips like pomegranates.