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When he drew the lot of the Underworld, he didn’t say a word.
It was the first time he could clearly hear the Fates, the first time he could really see the strings of their work in progress.
First son into the darkness of your father’s belly and the last one out.
The sullen one.
You know the shadows.
You know suffering.
Close to death you have been.
It is to be yours.
The three voices followed him underground, across the rivers, to the empty lands of Erebus that would one day know the shades of mortals. The paradise of Elysium would be for the heroic, the Asphodel Fields would hold the souls of those who lived ordinary lives, and Tartarus, the deepest underground, already with Titans and monsters in residence, would be for those who deserved punishment. His only company in those dark lands was the gods who came before him, all strange and insular. Charon, the boatman of the Acheron and Styx. Thanatos, Death himself with his dark wings and skull-like face. The Titan witch, Hecate, who had freedom to go where she pleased because she sided with Zeus during the war. The Blessed Ones, waiting for victims to torment. And those three voices in the back of his mind.
With all the riches of the underground at his disposal, he could have built a fortress the likes of which he imagined Zeus was making for himself on Olympus, but he was unaccustomed to grandeur and did not feel deserving of it. He built only a gate at the entrance, a large reception hall with an obsidian throne to judge from, and a small home for himself. And he was alone.
He got to know the others who dwelt there. He got a dog to guard the gate. He lost himself in numbers as his population grew. But he was no less alone.
Over time he would forget what lead him to go above, but he knew he was meant to find her.
He watched her drawing plants from the ground, manipulating them until they suited her, the sun beaming down on her golden brown curls and tan skin, and a voice in the back of his mind told him who she was. But in spite of knowing, he held tight to the helmet that concealed him from her eyes and thought he might just watch her for eternity, undeserving of such youth and beauty.
He wondered if it was that same knowing that caused her to approach him, her eyes staring hard like she was trying to see him. He stayed face to face with her as she followed his every step. He would step right, and she would step left. He would step back, and she would step forward. He stood still, barely an inch between them, and he couldn’t get away from how beautiful she was up close, how the smell of flowers emanated from her, how she gave off warmth that comforted him in a way the sun never did.
“Unseen one, I know you are there,” she said with a challenge in her voice.
Clever girl and tougher than she looked: exactly what he would have hoped for if he could have imagined himself worthy of such a goddess. He wondered if she knew him too from the title she used, and it was with only that hope that he removed his helmet with shaking hands.
“Come home with me,” he said softly, the king’s voice replaced with that of a man humbled.
“Who are you?” she asked in awe, her voice gentler than it had been before.
“The man who’s going to marry you.” Although it was declarative, he said it more as a question, his confidence mere illusion as he got down on his knees before her. “I’m Hades, king of the Underworld. Come home with me.”
She sank to the ground as well, calmly imploring him to prove her right.
“Who am I?”
As she had addressed him before they met, he could feel the answer to her question. It was not the name she was called, but it was the name she was meant to have, a name mortals would tremble before, a name fit for a queen of his realm.
“Persephone.”
Her eyes grew wide and ran over him slowly, taking in the full weight of what this meant. After a minute she still had not spoken, and he knew this was another cruel trick of the Fates.
“I’m sorry that I do not meet with your approval. Please have pity on my heart.”
“You do!” she insisted, taking his hand lightly in hers. “I’m sorry that I –”
“You are more beautiful than any goddess, your abilities more important, and soon you will be more powerful . . . as my wife.”
“How the world will be,” she murmured, her eyes gaining a far off look even as she stared at him.
He knew what she could see because when he looked into her eyes he saw it too: the green world that had never known death turning cold and unforgiving, but becoming all the more beautiful when its time of prosperity returned, and the fields of Elysium that could not compare to their worldly counterparts awash with flowers and ripe fruit under her skillful hands.
He would never be a poet, but this union of contradictions, their union, this rhythm the world would know, needed something to commemorate it. All that slipped from his lips was a wordless tune, nonsense the likes of which he always ignored for order and figures. As he sang he felt something soft in his hand that wasn’t clasped in hers: a red flower, simple but vibrant. Creating life was not a power he possessed.
He admired the flower and then looked up to see that she was crying tears of happiness. When she reached up her other hand to wipe them away he saw that the grass under her hand had withered. A goddess of life bringing death.
He put the flower behind her ear, clasping her face in his hands so he could wipe away her tears. The deal was already done. She kissed him, and he laid her in the dirt.
--
Because their marriage started in the light, Persephone worried in those early years if the darkness would always stifle the passion they had in the garden.
Every year he came for her on time with all the expected pomp of his station and cold propriety that she didn’t know what to make of. He escorted her to the Underworld with a chaste kiss on the hand and the expectation that she would be weary from travel and wish to sleep in her own bedroom for some indefinite amount of time. He impressed upon her that the domain was just as much hers as his and delighted in the things she grew there, but his joy at seeing her and her accomplishments felt more like the approval of a foreman than the love of a husband. They had conversations about everything small and large in their worlds, conversations that she could never have with anyone else, and yet it deepened only their friendship and mutual rule.
She didn’t have the words to express her fears and found herself instead trying to show her love in gestures. She grew large pomegranates in the Elysian orchards as a reminder of her vow and pointedly offered them at meals. She scattered flower petals around her bed as an invitation to intimacy. She brought wine from grapes she grew in hopes that it would loosen him up, but his tolerance was far stronger than hers.
And slowly they moved towards each other, chaste kisses on the hand moving to the lips and becoming less innocent as their six months together went on. But every autumn they had to start over again.
Until the year she reached her breaking point.
“You say you love me, Hades, but every year you act like I’m untouchable. I give you all these signals and it takes months for you to act!”
He looked up at her shock. “I do love you. More than anything. I was trying to show I respect you. Do you not believe what I say?”
“Fewer words,” she said, climbing into his lap. “More actions.”
--
When their honeymoon phase started he hoped it would never end.
“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” he asked with a smirk after a particularly lascivious monologue from his wife about all the things she had been anxiously waiting to do with him.
“You know very well, husband, that I do a lot of things with my mouth,” she purred, and he couldn’t believe he had wasted so many years treading lightly around her, afraid that she would never return to him if he made a single misstep.
He found it harder and harder to spend six months away from her. The summer would endure a cold day or two when he couldn’t stand it any longer and distracted her from her work, not long enough to cause any problems but just long enough to keep him going until autumn. Or at least that’s what he said to her and to himself. In truth his little trips to the surface only made him long for her more.
It was easier to come for her, but it was also harder to let her go. In the beginning they decided that she would leave the Underworld on her own so he wouldn’t linger on up top, and they said their goodbyes at the river. Every year it was more and more tempting to just board the boat with her, to just follow her out into the sun, to just ask her to stay a little longer.
But then she was gone. And he was alone again.
--
As night descended, she wondered if she made a mistake.
The equinox: day and night in equal amounts. She had been watching the sky every day. She had said goodbye to her mama, to her friends above, to her gardens, the trees, the sun. She changed her dress to his colors in anticipation, and she waited in their spot all day. But he never came.
Her hands worried the grip of her basket, wearing raw from the straw fibers. Inside were bottles of wine. He had told her he really liked last year’s vintage, so she made sure to have plenty to surprise him with.
She told herself that she shouldn’t panic, that he was probably just so busy that he couldn’t get away on time. She was often too busy above herself to pay much mind to the affairs of men. Maybe there was an epidemic that was keeping him occupied. But he was always so punctual, obsessively so. He told her often about how he counted down the days until he could come for her.
But then she remembered her mother’s warnings. She remembered how his brothers were and the suggestion that he could be the same. For a while he may stay faithful, her mama warned, but look at the stock he comes from. Six months is a long time.
Six months is a long time, she agreed uncorking one of the bottles and sitting down on her luggage. She couldn’t go back inside and let her mama know what happened, so she hid herself by growing a dome of plants so thick they blocked out the sun. Tears ran down her face as she took a drink. A goddess can cry for eternity.
Her dress was dirty by the time he arrived the next day, every bit the garden girl she once was before she became a queen. When she heard the sound of his horses, she hid all the empty bottles in her bags and tried to clear the tears from her face, only serving to smear more dirt on her cheeks.
He looked so remorseful when he stepped down from his carriage that she wondered how she ever could have suspected him of betraying her.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, dropping to his knees. “The war . . . there were so many shades . . . I tried to summon Hermes to get a message to you . . . Please forgive me.”
Persephone smiled brightly and sniffled, hoping he wouldn’t see how red her eyes were. The king would kneel to no one but his queen, his dehydrated, flushed, dirt-caked queen.
“It’s okay,” she said, pulling him to stand up. “Got to spend a bit more time in the sun.”
She saw something flash in his eyes at her remark, but he didn’t comment and instead pulled a brooch from his pocket, a flower with red petals made of large gemstones.
“A token of apology and my love,” he said, holding it out to her.
“You didn’t need to bring me anything. Just having you finally here is enough,” she said earnestly.
Still she pinned the brooch to her dress, which was soon on the ground.
Later when they had made it to their home, she asked him where the brooch came from. He told her he asked two shades from the Asphodel Fields, a miner and a jeweler, to make it. They had been overjoyed to do something that reminded them of their former lives and said they were honored to make a gift for the queen.
--
When the weather above is hostile to men, the Underworld’s numbers increase but he has her there to work with him. With her presence above, men thrive and fewer die, and the only way to stop from thinking about her is to throw himself into his work. Work keeps him focused.
He knew his reputation already, the most diligent of the gods, the one sure to take his job seriously, and with her gone, it was the only thing he had. So he counted the shades endlessly, created files on them, questioned the security of his Underworld if living men, heroes destined for Elysium but mortals nonetheless, could manage to breach his rivers, his gate, his dog. Chaos would ensue if the shades were to encounter the living, or worse, if they managed to get out. It wasn’t natural.
He vowed to make the Underworld safer and more organized for the shades.
And in the silences he questioned his wife’s life above ground. He knew that even though she could grow some things underground, even Elysium couldn’t compare with her gardens above. There was no substitute for the sun underground. She didn’t have anyone underground to spend time with other than him. And why would that be enough?
First son into the darkness of your father’s belly and the last one out.
The sullen one.
She was so disheveled whenever he picked her up, the world above so disordered and unpredictable compared to the Underworld. A queen, his queen, should want for nothing.
He remembered the time he had given her the brooch. She had said his present was unnecessary, but she had put it on anyway and it looked lovely on her.
He vowed to make the Underworld more beautiful for her.
He could kill two birds with one stone.
Work had made the shades feel human again. He would give them a choice.
That year he came for her earlier than ever before with his first invention.
--
She was quiet on the ride underground, her eyes taking in the lavish interior of the train carriage he had made especially for them. She hadn’t been ready when he arrived, both because he was so early and because he had arrived in the metal beast he was so proud of. The train carriage was private, he told her, but she knew what the other carriages were for and she couldn’t help but think it was so much more impersonal than when he came for her alone with his horses.
But he was so pleased with himself that she didn’t want to say anything about his new transport, even as she watched his train filling the air with smoke. The timing however, she wouldn’t leave alone.
“You should have waited a few more weeks, Hades,” she implored, reaching across the table to take his hand. “This is so much more than the day or two early that you’ve been doing lately.”
“I couldn’t wait to see you, lover,” he said, kissing her hand and she did find herself smiling.
Until they got off the train.
“What happened to the river?” she asked in horror as she realized they were already at the front gate, which was starting to look taller than it had in the past.
“I buried it for the tracks,” he explained. “The whole thing is streamlined now. Charon can drive the shades all the way here, and Hermes just needs to tell them where to wait.”
She liked the river. She had memories of the river: chatting with Hermes on her way there and Charon once she was in his boat, holding her husband in excited anticipation as their house would come into view at the beginning of autumn, floating flowers as she left so they would wash up on the shore and remind him of her love.
Was her husband so unsentimental? Did all those moments they had mean so little in the face of progress?
“Did you do all this yourself?”
She knew he had built their home and the gate, or the gate as it once was, but he had years to do that. It had only been six months. Well, almost.
“I had help,” he said vaguely.
He wrapped his arm around her and started to lead her towards their home, but she couldn’t help looking over her shoulder, trying to find the origin of what sounded like pick axes ringing.
--
The premise of Elysium had always bothered him. The bad were punished in Tartarus, the majority were given monotony in Asphodel, and the heroic, not just good but those with notoriety, were rewarded with Elysium. No rewards for being decent, for doing one’s job, for being a productive individual. Elysium was so sparsely populated anyway that it wouldn’t suffer from dissolution. Persephone had used it as an additional garden but her flowers didn’t even look cared for anymore, her fruits so shriveled and neglected. He wondered if it was because she finally gave up trying to grow anything as beautiful there as she could above. He wondered if he could build something better than the world above with his new workforce.
Judgment of shades was much less complicated now. He told Persephone she didn’t even need to attend. The only options were work or no work and many chose the option of having a purpose in making their eternal resting place better instead of standing in a field with nothing to occupy them. Making the shades forget with the waters of the Lethe River had been another aspect of his job that he was never fully satisfied with, but they were so much more miserable facing idle eternity with the burdens of living. Now it was an even more beneficial elixir. When he first started his building projects, he had tried to find out what the shades had done in life so he could put them in complimentary jobs. It became easier to give them a drink from the Lethe first so they would forget and be happy anywhere they were placed.
After his usual daily activities of planning and judging in his office - the reception hall was a relic of the past - he found himself sitting on his balcony overlooking the realm. The game of dominos that he and Persephone had been playing before she left was still on the table. He remembered how she had stared over the balcony with a distant look and said, “This isn’t our kingdom anymore. This isn’t the Underworld. This is . . . Hadestown.” He reminded her that it was her turn to play. She had been drinking a lot that day.
He remembered too that he had given her a crown of precious stones earlier that day, but she still wore the crown of black flowers that she had worn since the beginning. They didn’t speak of it, but he laid awake all night thinking about it.
She seemed to be pulling away from him more and more, and it made him wonder if the Fates had finally come for payment. He, the one who knows suffering, the one who knows the shadows, could only deserve her love for so long.
It was still a while until autumn, but he had to go to her.
--
She still loved him, she would always love him, but they didn’t touch anymore outside of a perfunctory kiss on the cheek or a held hand. When she started drinking to forget all the things he did that she couldn’t fathom, it made her want him like the old days, grasping desperately for the man he once was. Now she was morose whenever he was around, and alcohol could only do so much.
That was why she saw the tattoo for the first time when she walked in on him changing. The snake tattoo on his right arm was a byproduct of his days before her, a symbol of healing as a cover for an old war scar. Above it was her name, a tacky but sweet gesture during their honeymoon period. But this was something else. The little bricks covered his left arm, spanning across his shoulder, and even as she stared at his back, she saw a new one appearing. She hated that she didn’t even have to ask what they meant.
He caught her staring, and she was transported to another time when she would have made some mildly lewd comment in the hope that he would abandon his efforts to change and sweep her off her feet. Instead, she hid her revulsion and walked away, out of their home that was much larger than it used to be, down to the wall. No one called it a gate anymore. Nothing could get out.
Down at the base she saw a shade laying bricks and something about the shade reminded her of when she was a young girl.
“Can I ask you something?”
The shade nodded, her face neutral but attentive as if she knew the importance of listening to the queen. Still, Persephone hoped her inquiries wouldn’t be fruitless in the face of the Lethe’s powers.
“Do you like working here? Would you choose not to work if you could?”
Nothing registered in the shade’s face for such a long time that Persephone thought about giving up, but just as she started to turn away, the young girl spoke.
“I couldn’t survive in the world above, weather being what it is. My home was destroyed in the floods, and I think that was how I ended up here. It’s hard work and not what I pictured, but I’ve heard Mr. Hades say it’s for our protection so we can be free.” The girl’s voice was thin and weepy.
When she finished talking, Persephone pulled out a flask of gin and drank it down, fighting back her own tears. She then filled it back up with Lethe water. The girl would need something stronger than alcohol to get through the day.
“Drink up, sister.”
--
He looked down at the flower in his hand, a carnation his wife had taught him, a symbol of love. Maybe deep down he had known that the first time he made one.
This boy, this Orpheus, and his impossible request. The rules of the Underworld, Hadestown, whatever it was, were finite. The dead can’t leave. If he let every shade that had died have a second chance at life, the natural order of the world would fall apart. Although even as he thought it he heard a voice in his head, his wife this time, telling him that he had been messing with the natural order of the world for too long anyway when he started breaking their six month agreement. How many shades would have never started working in Hadestown if he hadn’t started keeping Persephone from her work above? The girl Eurydice, for one, but he would never know for sure.
He looked up at his wife, gazing pleadingly at him. He knew what her answer would be. Back when they used to judge together, she was always the more sympathetic to needy causes and the more ruthless to those who deserved punishment.
Back then they used to dance together all the time.
He knew he would have walked into the Underworld for her had he been in the boy’s place. He would have done it then, and he would do it now. But he was always chasing after her.
It was then that the answer occurred to him. Orpheus could leave with Eurydice, but she would need to walk behind him and he could not turn around to make sure she was coming. It was a test he had failed every time he broke the six month agreement. It was a failure he deepened when he tried to make the underground better than the world above, only to make his wife a stranger in her own kingdom.
But if this young idealist fresh with love could overcome his doubt that his lover would stay with him, maybe he could too.
--
She sits with him in the garden where they met shortly after she left, but he hasn’t come to take her back underground.
“He didn’t make it. They were almost out. The girl is still crying in my office,” he says, his rumbling voice soft, unshed tears in his eyes. “You haven’t seen the boy?”
“I could look for him,” she offers, and he nods.
It hasn’t been so long that she can’t read some of his silences.
“Just because he didn’t make it, doesn’t mean . . . You sent me back in time. And you’ll wait for me.” She holds out the flower he had given her when he made that promise, a little wilted from its journey above. “We have millennia on our side, lover.”
“Lifetimes of mistakes.”
“Always time to rebuild, to tear it all down and start from the beginning.”
She gives the carnation back the vitality it had when he first made it and leans over to tuck it in his vest pocket.
“When it starts looking worse for wear, you come get me and I’ll bring it back to life for you.”
With a little smile, she runs her hand down his chest and kisses him slowly, hesitantly, out of practice but with memory guiding their movements.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve done that,” he murmurs when they break apart, his voice low and husky as he moves his hand up to submerge it in her curls.
“And maybe there will be more when autumn comes,” she says, a finger tapping right beneath the flower in his pocket, “but for now we’ve both got work to do.”
He nods in solemn assurance, but his head moves in closer until their words share breath.
“Then one more for the road.”