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The Music of Silence
From the moment he was born as the son of a goddess, the protectress of all song, they all knew he would rise to greatness. He was blessed by Apollo, music himself. Every evening, the palace of the king of Thrace, his father, would be full of travellers coming from everywhere, all crowding against each other to hear his music. The gods themselves had listened to him sing. His life was a performance, and he was content.
But Orpheus was not happy. His songs bled loneliness and dissatisfaction in their every lyric, their every note; he poured out his desperately longing heart to the people who stood enraptured before him, and he walked away every night feeling emptier than before. Those were the nights when, as he lay in bed unsleeping, he wondered if there would come a moment that words would not leave his lips, music would not come from the instruments he played, because he no longer had a soul to pour into the art.
And then he met her. She brought colour to his dark life. She lit the fire in his soul once more, that had been extinguished through years of monotony and performance. She was everything he needed, everything he had ever wanted. She could not hear; she did not speak, and there was no part of her that Orpheus did not love. The companionable silence they could share together held more meaning to him than anything he had created for the crowds. Orpheus met Eurydice, and he loved her to silence.
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It was a cool, dark night when he first saw her at the edge of the city, where the palace borders faded slowly into wild forest. Just beyond the borders of Thrace, there was an oak tree three times as wide as he was, with low, sweeping branches that felt more like home to Orpheus than his own quarters inside the palace. It was there he was sitting, staring at the starlit sky and gathering his thoughts, tumultuous from a long day, when he heard dry branches crackling a distance into the trees. It could have been a fox, or a group of particularly brave bandits, warned the thoughts that ran idly through his head. But he was used to ignoring the rational side of his mind, which spoke of logic and numbers.
Noiselessly, he jumped from the oak and crept towards the sound. The sight he beheld was a figure beaten bloody, thin to the point emaciation. A shout died in his throat - he didn’t want to startle the girl.
‘Pardon, my lady,’ before she had passed on, his mother had been adamant that even the most ragged stranger deserved to be treated with the utmost respect, unless they had proved undeserving of the courtesy. She did not give any signal as to having heard him, preferring to continue wandering in ignorance of his presence. He spoke even louder, and when she still did not hear him, he began wondering whether the beating she seemed to have taken had damaged her hearing.
The girl jumped high enough that he could look her in the eye when he stepped out of the shadows of the trees. Her eyes widened until it would have been almost comical under other circumstances, and the part of Orpheus that was an artist, that paid attention to every detail on every person and thing, noted that the starlight had turned her eyes as silver as the full moon.
‘Are you in need of any assistance, my lady,’ Orpheus asked again, this time making sure to enunciate his words as clearly as he could. She tilted her head, and he knew that she understood him, at least partially. But then she shook her head and kept walking through the forest, her head held high. He’d first met her when she had just come to Thrace, running from her father and his anger. What was he supposed to make of her?
The next time he journeyed to his oak tree, he brought a basket filled with fruit and bread and medicinal salve. The thought that he might run into her again wasn’t at the front of his mind, exactly, but it was there, somewhere. In a poem, he would have called that place his heart. As he approached his tree, and kept walking past it without another thought, Orpheus knew that he was searching for her, and would be left still searching until she was found. Luckily for his unhardened feet, it only took him the better part of an hour before he saw her curled against the trunk of a slender poplar tree, eyes open. She startled when she saw him, and though Orpheus tried to smile at her, the expression was twisted from anxiety from an unknown source. In a poem, he might have called it the admiration of a young heart.
She stood with feline grace, dusting off the rags she wore as though they were made from the finest silks. Orpheus felt a slight tremor in his voice as he introduced himself and his purpose for visiting, holding out the basket of food. The girl cocked her head as though she only understood about a quarter of his words, and took the basket gingerly, as though she were afraid that he had filled it with snakes.
‘My name is Eurydice.’ she said under her breath, her pronunciation unlike anything he had heard before. Though the realisation should not have taken him so long, he was glad when he came to it all the same. Deafness was not a crime in Greece, but it was regarded with the same fear and suspicion that would arise with anything an able-bodied person could not experience for themselves. He smiled at her, and this time it came out right.
‘Do you have a place to go to for the night?’ he asked.
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When Eurydice did not come home with him, despite not having a roof over her head, Orpheus found his visits to the forest happening more and more frequently, his hands loaded with more and more goods. After that first visit, he entirely stopped pretending that the purpose for his walks was anything other than seeing her. A quill and parchment made themselves permanent residences in his basket, so they could speak without speaking. Her words on paper were eloquent enough that Orpheus, with all the time he spent locked in his room scribbling lyrics, could only gaze at them in stunned admiration.
As days turned into weeks, as Eurydice found a home that kept the rain out, and as his heart continued to pull him towards her, Orpheus felt himself falling.
He knew he loved Eurydice after he had been singing for hours one evening to entertain the visiting King of Sparta. Spartans were always the most tiring guests he entertained, with their single-minded love for bloodshed, and their refusal to appreciate the finer points of art. Orpheus had been tired, his voice had been hoarse and his heart had been hurting. Every day was the same - the people would come to hear him sing, no one would ever come for him. Inevitably, his thoughts turned to Eurydice, who would never hear him sing. Selfishly, he found himself grateful for the fact. It would always be that she was with him for who he was, not who he projected himself to be, and it was that realisation that allowed him to admit that he loved her.
He wouldn’t tell her, of course, not until the knowledge ate away at him from the inside, filling his soul with a longing he couldn’t quite name. It didn’t take long, not more than a few weeks.
He would never forget that moment, when his words were met with a blank look, and he could feel his heart, which had made a home at his sleeve, drop to the hard ground. But then she had thrown her arms around him, and that heart had made itself a home in her palms.
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Even as they began to dream of a life together, Orpheus did not lie to himself. His father was the king, and Orpheus was expected to marry well - love was not supposed to be part of that carefully worked out equation. Day after day, he found himself at the foot of the throne, words of love and devotion and marriage begging to be released from their eternal prison in his mind. Day after day, he made himself excuse his wandering feet and trail back into the shadows. There was no doubt in his mind that there would be no happy ending for him and his beloved.
So it was not recklessness, or stupidity, or ignorance that led to him fleeing his life of luxury in the dead of night. A life with Eurydice was a synonym for happiness, he was escaping from the shackles of performance to a heaven on earth.
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They had barely been married a month, still settling into their new life as farmers on the vast olive tree plains of Ithaca, when the Ochia snake bit her.
Later, he could recall a gasp, a shatter of porcelain on tiles, but the memories had come too late to be useful, and even then, he could never have been sure if the sounds had been conjured up by his mind at a later time. In that moment, there had only been dense silence in his ears, as he greeted neighbours at their door.
Their house was quaint, to put it respectfully. In all honestly, Orpheus and Eurydice had spent hours moaning over the state of the woodwork, the lack of spaciousness, and the complete absence of commodities one becomes used to at the heart of a city. In the meagre four rooms they could call their own, it was near impossible to be alone for more than an hour, and it had been less when Orpheus ventured into their farm looking for her. He had screamed when he saw her, lying stiller than the silence in his lungs when he looked at her, unable to breathe. If he had not known better, he could have mistaken her lack of movement for the grip of sleep, the paleness in her skin as sun-sickness. But he did know better.
Eurydice was sprawled out on the ground of their courtyard, her limbs splayed unnaturally upon the hard ground. Her dress was covered in mud, and there were earth worms making homes in her hair, that had been so beautiful.
One moment, he was standing over her, his body casting a shadow upon her figure, and the next, he had sunk to his knees, weeping, broken. His neighbours found out soon enough, it was hard to hide any news in their small town, and though their condolences were filled with sympathy, there was an edge of relief there, too. People died, that was life, and they had to count themselves lucky that it wasn’t their loved ones who had been taken too early.
Orpheus was alone again, and without her soothing silence beside him, there was nothing to smooth his edges, that were ragged with grief and despair.
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Soon, all of Greece knew Orpheus’s sorrows. After her death, Orpheus sang constantly at the altars of the gods. He sang to Hades, the god of the dead, for Eurydice’s return, of the unfairness of her death, of how much life they both had yet to live. On his obsidian throne, Hades laughed. There was no fairness in death, there was no sense in death; it just was.
He begged another chance from the king of the Gods, Zeus himself. His words, that still felt heavy and wrong in his mouth when she was not around, wafted upwards to the god’s absent ears. Zeus was king, and he had better things to do than hear the countless, endless failings of humanity.
Orpheus wept his sorrow for days at the empty, alabaster temple that belonged to the goddess of love, Aphrodite. His eternal love was so adamant, continuing even in the face of death, that the goddess herself was moved to tears; she hadn’t seen devotion like this since her own son had met his beloved. This was her domain, and this man was deserving of her blessing. ‘Go to Hermes, he knows the way,’ she told him, and Orpheus knelt at her altar, shaking with gratitude. He didn’t leave immediately, giving himself up to the service of the goddess of love for the next few days. He had no money, and if he did not respect her aid, well, Aphrodite was known for her love of wild boars for a reason, and Orpheus was fairly certain he would not look good with a pair of tusks.
Orpheus travelled for days; he visited every temple and every altar built for Hermes, but found nothing but other lost souls and misery. He had given up; he was willing to go back to Thrace in disgrace and beg forgiveness from his father. He had no pride, he had no shame, he had nothing without Eurydice.
It was when he was walking a dusty, worn road in the middle of the night, hawks flying overhead despite it being the dead of winter, when Orpheus met him, for what better altar for the god of wanderers, than the most well-travelled road in Greece? Orpheus would have walked right past him had he not been holding his famed caduceus, nine feet tall and made from shining Laurel wood, with two twin snakes curling around its length. Hermes was dressed in a travelling cloak, pulled high over his red-gold hair, and sturdy sandals that would have been normal were it not for the feathery white dove wings that rested against the sides of both shoes. He was mumbling to himself, head down and looking for all the world like any other weary traveller on some unknown journey.
Hermes turned around, just as Orpheus was about to approach him.
‘Oh,’ said the god, in a gravelly voice fit for the old body he was wearing ‘So you’re the poor sorry soul Aphrodite decided to take pity on today.’
Orpheus stared at him, struck dumb and speechless.
‘I pity you, boy. Every single time she decides that some couple is just too cute together, they end in tragedy,’ the God continued.
‘Forgive me, Lord, but I have endured enough tragedy for a lifetime - there is nothing worse that she could trial me with.’
Hermes laughed, ‘So you think, but I don’t think you remember the tragedies some of Aphrodite’s other heroes suffered.’ He shrugged, and laughed again at some private joke Orpheus was not privy to. Still, the god offered him help, albeit grudgingly, as he seemed to recall a favour he owed to the goddess of love.
‘Remember, the underworld is beneath us, everywhere.’ Hermes said, waving his arms around and nearly hitting Orpheus in the face. Orpheus resisted putting his head in his hands. He might not look like it, but he had to remember that Hermes was a god, no matter the form he had taken, and that meant he deserved the respect that was vital when communicating with any deity.
‘Yes, Lord, but I need to bring Eurydice back here, in the world of the living,’ Orpheus said, hoping he wouldn’t get blasted into a pile of musically inclined dust.
Hermes rolled his eyes ‘Yes, but to get her, you need to go there, boy.’ he said, ‘and the ferryman is not as nice as I am, so you will have to take another, longer way down.’ one of the snakes that were wrapped around his staff hissed, blinking sleepily, and Orpheus tried to stop from flinching. Snakes threw him back into the shadowy realm of memories, faster than he could stop them from coming, and it would not do show weakness in front of Hermes.
‘Rocks have ears, and so does grass, and dirt and everything from here to there, Orpheus,’ Hermes said, and for the first time, Orpheus could see the power lurking beneath the old man’s surface.
‘They have ears, and you have sway over anything that can hear you. Use that.’ Hermes said, and he was gone in between one blink to another.
Orpheus slept right there that night, maybe two steps from the road, more tired than he had been in his memory, both physically and mentally.
As the sun made its way up from the milky blue horizon, Orpheus woke to a feeling of purpose in his chest he had not felt since Eurydice had left his side. Everywhere he went, beings came to him, asking for a performance. His voice was renowned everywhere he went - it was inescapable, and he had always resented his father for making it so. But this time, he wanted to give a show, to whoever was listening.
Orpheus called on the most powerful opening charms he knew, that came straight from the mouth of his mother, Song herself. He sang of opening and malleability and he sang of death. He sang until he was sure they knew what he was asking of them, and then he waited. He didn’t have to wait for long. The ground beneath him began to shake, and Orpheus had to resist the urge to run and scale the nearest tree, to put as much space between him and the pit straight to hell as he could. But he stood his ground, and a cave began to open, looking barely more than an entrance into the deep underground, which, to be fair, was exactly what it was.
He took a deep breath, and began the trek into the underworld.
There were no steps, there was no path, there was no light. The Earth might have opened under his song, but the road it revealed was not one meant for mortals to travel upon. One could barely call it a road, a path inclined so steeply downwards that Orpheus had to crawl on hands and knees, with treacherously loose gravel and rocks that seemed designed to make him slip and tumble into the inky blackness that swirled under him. He didn’t know how far he had to go, but instinctively, he could tell that to fall down this pit would be to fall into the bowels of hell itself. He was close to retching in an effort to rid his body of the fear and nerves that he was sick of carrying with him, his limbs were shaky with effort after the shortest of time spent descending.
The nymphs of the rocks, of the plants and of the soil, who had come to hear his song, waved to him, disappearing one by one despite Orpheus’s shouts and pleas for them to stay, for them to let some, any, light through; with the nymphs disappeared the sun above him, and the hope that he might be able to go back home easily.
He was blind. He couldn’t see anything, and it made no difference whether his eyes were open or closed, because there was only darkness. His breath was coming out in short bursts, his limbs were moving in staccato bursts that he had little control over; Orpheus knew that if he succumbed to a panic attack in this pit, he would never see sunlight again. He stilled. Taking a deep breath, Orpheus began to hum. It was a simple melody; one his mother had used to sing him to sleep when he was very little. Orpheus timed his movements with the song - he would move his arms, and then his legs, again and again and again until he completely lost track of time.
There was only this in his life, this wretched descent that was his present, that had been his past and that would be his future. In the dark, he could barely remember what the upper world looked like, and the thoughts in his head were muddled by a haze of pain and weariness that seemed to have taken up a permanent residence inside his skull. His eyes hurt from staring endlessly into nothingness.
Eventually, Orpheus began to see a paler, greyish mist hanging to the walls of the tunnel. Tiny, ghostly white weeds began appearing in the dirt, and for some reason, Orpheus found it hilarious that the closer he got to the land of death, the more life seemed to be appearing. The tunnel opened up in a wider cavern, and the slope levelled out into a field. He could finally walk straight; his back ached from spending so long in cramped quarters, and his legs shook from exertion, but Orpheus made himself keep walking. He was too close now to stop, and besides, he had a feeling that if he stopped for too long in this misty otherworld, he might never start again.
As he walked, Orpheus began hearing a whisper that came from every direction, a syncopated series of voices that sounded like a hundred people who had been without water for years and then been forced to speak. The mist had thickened, and sometimes it would solidify into a vaguely humanoid shape. Orpheus shivered, but he was too tired to feel anything other than a dull sense of fear and disgust when he realised that the mist was all that remained of the millions, billions, of dead. This was what happened to the people who lived normal lives; these were the fields of Asphodel.
He felt the exact moment he reached the grounds of Hades’ palace, even though there was no discernible difference in the lands, apart from a sudden increase in the poplar trees that had dotted the barren landscape of Asphodel. The looming palace of bone white quartz surprised Orpheus, maybe because he expected a pitch-black fortress, a citadel fit for death himself, and what he got instead was a daintily carved castle that seemed fit more for a young princess than who was waiting for him inside. Or, it could have been the ease with which he entered said palace - there were no guards, no courtiers, in fact, there was no trace that the castle was inhabited at all.
And yet, he knew he was in the right place. The air seemed to get warmer, smelling of loam and living things instead of the dry, sour smell of Asphodel. Growing on the palace were miles worth of vines, sparkling an unnaturally dark green. As he grew closer, Orpheus realised that each vine was not alive, but carved from emerald, with glittering flowers of diamond and ruby. He had grown up in a royal household, but the opulence, the arrogance with which the precious stones were used jolted his heart.
A woman was standing at the entrance to the palace, a sliver of a thing, more a girl than a woman really, but Orpheus was still cautious. The underworld was ruled by strange and terrible beings, and he hadn’t come this far just to be torn apart by a hungry demon. The girl had hair as white as corn silk that was longer than she was tall, and when she lifted her face to meet his, it was all he could do to not scream out loud. Her face was rotting and withered like a corpse that had lain out in the open for months; she had no eyes, just empty holes, and her young skin was papery and peeling off her bones. Struggling to keep a straight face and not run away screaming, Orpheus approached her and knelt.
‘My lady,’ he said, unsure how to proceed.
The girl regarded him, a melancholy air seemed to surround her, ‘My name is Melinoe,’ she said, and her voice was that of a young girl., ‘I am the goddess of ghosts and peaceful death.’ Orpheus stayed silent.
‘Most people don’t even know I exist,’ she continued, ‘you would think they would all be praying to me for a peaceful, easy death, or pardon for their sins in the underworld, but I do not get the respect of mortals.’
‘I prayed to you when my step-mother died, for safe passage into Erebus,’ Orpheus said, realization dawning on him. Objectively, he knew that gods could appear as whoever they wanted, but it was still disconcerting to see a deity who had been alive for millennia take the shape of a girl younger than he was.
‘I remember you, Orpheus,’ she said. ‘You treated me with respect, and I will now aid you for it. You will have an audience with the King and the Queen.’ Orpheus could have wept with relief.
The black marble floor was veined with rivers of gold, and his steps echoed down the halls, lined with gracefully arching polar trees. There were shades, the spirits of the dead, inside the palace, but the only beings of flesh and blood seemed to be himself and the goddess of ghosts. Soon, they entered a chamber larger than any room he had ever been in, the ceiling was lost in the darkness, tall enough that mists had gathered where clouds would have been above ground. The walls were covered in tapestries of the fields of punishment, where the most evil souls went to be tortured for eternity, and the Isles of the Blessed alike, and Orpheus almost got vertigo as his eyes scanned images of heaven and hell placed side by side. Precious stones glittered everywhere, so that the whole room seemed to be constantly shifting as the light bounced off different gems.
The King and Queen sat on their thrones in front of him. Hades was what one would expect from the King of Erebus; his skin was so pale he seemed made from alabaster, and his robes seemed stitched from shadow, a colour so dark it seemed to be almost liquid. Orpheus glanced at Persephone, who was incongruous in her velvety red dress with green hems that were stitched in the pattern of leaves. Her skin was dark, and when he looked at her face, he realised that as summery as she seemed, she was also the Queen of the Dead. Her irises were so black he couldn’t tell where her pupils ended; the planes of her face were cut with a fine knife, so that she was all edges, and shone with a terrifying beauty.
At some point, Melinoe had left his side, and Orpheus was all alone as he walked into the throne room and faced the King and Queen. He knelt at the foot of their thrones.
‘My lord, my lady, I am Orpheus.’ he said, hoping that they wouldn’t hear the tremor in his voice. ‘My wife was taken unfairly from the living, and I have come to take her back.’ He hoped they wouldn’t blast him into a mote of dust, just for daring to show his face in the underworld.
What he didn’t expect was for Hades to start laughing. After several tense minutes of silence, The King started to chuckle, quietly at first, but soon he was guffawing.
‘Boy,’ he said, and there was nothing funny in his voice anymore, ‘if I were to let you go back to the world of the living at the command of every pathetic mortal that crawled in my home, the world would be overrun with you pests, and there would be nobody in my realm. Do you not realise that I should kill you where you stand right now, for your insolence?’
Orpheus took a deep breath. If the King decided to kill him, he would still be able to be with his love, even if it was in death. As he prepared to plead his case, another voice interrupted him, ‘And yet, how many living mortals have arrived at your throne, begging for someone back?’ Persephone asked her husband, lifting her brow, ‘because, as I seem to remember, this man is the first.’ Orpheus could have sworn he heard a trace of laughter in her voice, as if she found the whole situation hilarious.
He couldn’t read the King’s face but finally, he spoke. ‘If I am to make such an exception for you, Orpheus, then you must prove you are worthy.’
‘Perhaps he could swim to the bottom of the fiery river Phlegethon and return with the scale of She who lives there?’ Persephone suggested. Orpheus would have sooner accepted death than the hideous torture laid out for him; he should have known that Persephone was not really on his side, gods always served their own agendas. Hades smiled, ‘Or he could entertain us, my dear? I’ve heard that he is quite a musician.’
‘I would be glad to, your highnesses!’ Orpheus piped up, before another method of torture could be put forward. At least this he was fairly sure he could do, he had performed for gods before, after all. Both gods looked at him as though they had forgotten Orpheus had ever existed.
Finally Persephone cocked her head, ‘It had better be a show to remember, mortal,’ she said.
And so Orpheus sang. He sang of longing, of fear and sadness and a life not worth living. He sang of love never seen, gained, and lost. His song was interspersed with moments of silence that, to him, spoke more than his verse could ever put forward. At some point, he closed his eyes, singing of the underworld; the riches buried beneath it and the shades that roamed its fields, from the damned to the blessed. Orpheus sang, and he sang, and he sang.
He opened his eyes to a sight that would be burned into the eyes of history from thereon to the end of the world. The queen of hell reclined on her throne, openly weeping, her husband looking grave, his composure stretched almost to the limit beside her as they took in his song, his heart. The pale, ghostly poplar trees that made elegant archways and led to hallways within the palace were wilting and dropping in response to Persephone’s grief. Orpheus had managed to shake the very foundation of the underworld. It wasn’t enough.
‘So?’ he asked, his voice sounded jarring in the living silence that choked everyone in the palace, hoarse and scratchy from the song. ‘Can we go back?’
Hades sighed, ‘I have never willingly let a soul go back to the living, boy,’ he said, his voice so deep that the ground vibrated in time with his words. ‘The only ones to escape the hand of death have been the gods, it has been this way since the beginning of time.’ Orpheus couldn’t breathe. He had come all this way; it couldn’t have all been for nothing.
‘And yet,’ Persephone started, and Hades turned to her. ‘There has also never been a living soul in Erebus,’ she said, ‘every day brings with it the chance for new possibilities, and is it not our duty as gods, to reward virtue as we punish sin? This boy has ventured where nobody else dared go to save his love from what nobody can recover from, and he deserves a reward.’
Hades seemed to sink into his throne, ‘do you know how much paperwork that would mean?’ he grumbled under his breath, and then he spoke to Orpheus, ‘you can thank Lady Persephone for her ever giving kindness. Had it been up to me, you would have joined your beloved in death - an early death. Nevertheless, as my queen has decreed, you shall have Eurydice back, and you both shall live happy, prosperous lives.’
As he stood silently up on weak legs, Orpheus thought idly that it was a feat for him to still be capable of walking for what he had done. For once, his words had abandoned him, and he could only hope that the tears sliding down his cheeks were a testament of his gratefulness.
‘Thank you, your highnesses, I am forever indebted to you,’ he managed to choke out, his throat clogged with unreleased sobs. He glanced around, and his eyes caught on a sliver of a shade, another remnant of a person like those he had passed on the fields of Asphodel - one that hadn’t been there before. It was barely there, more a patch of mist than anything that was, or could have been, human. It was what was left of Eurydice. He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. He was frozen there in that moment, gazing at what remained of his only love. Hades’ voice startled him from his thoughts, and he once again turned his eyes to the floor beneath him.
‘But all good things come with a price.’ Orpheus had paid. He had paid so much, so many times. He had paid with his own sweat, his blood, his tears, his life. With what more could he pay?
‘And every hero must stand trial so that he may deserve his prize. Like Heracles, Jason, and Theseus, in order to take your place as one of those heroes, you too must face your fears, Orpheus.’ With what more could he pay?
Hades stood up, ‘You may take her home with you, but you may not look back at her, you may not call out to her, you may not touch her, until your feet are aboveground, and the sun falls upon you both. Your trial, hero, is one of trust. You must trust that I will keep my word and send her up with you. You must trust that she will be able to make the journey. You must trust in powers you have no control over.’ He must pay by giving up control over his life. He must pay by giving up the one thing he still had left.
Orpheus raised his head, and his gaze met Hades’ eyes. Hades did not have pupils. Twin flames that were darker than black burnt in his eyes. His irises were blood red. They were the eyes that haunted the dreams of even Zeus, the King of the gods. They were the eyes that even Heracles, the bravest mortal to ever live, who had been immortalized among the gods, had failed to meet. They were the eyes of the devil. They were the eyes that Orpheus met, fire for fire, and held as he accepted Hades’ challenge.
‘Alright,’ he said simply. Orpheus bowed to the gods, and turned on his heel, ready to go to the above world as fast as possible. He couldn’t wait to see Eurydice.
Through the corner of his eyes, he saw as the shade standing in the corner of the palace disappeared silently, as if it had never been there at all.
‘Go on, and she will follow you,’ Persephone said.
Her tears had dried, and she was the picture of cold dignity; a nod of her head and he was dismissed.
‘Good luck,’ Hades said, he seemed unhappy but resigned, slumped in his throne. Orpheus wondered whether the King of the underworld was feeling some remorse for Orpheus’s trials. Whatever the case was, Hades said nothing more, and Orpheus bowed low before leaving the throne room without looking back.
As he left the palace of the underworld, and came face to face once more with the seemingly endless rocky fields of Asphodel, dotted with ghostly polar trees and the shades that flitted from one trunk to another, Orpheus wondered which of those was Eurydice. He took a breath. All he had to do was get out now, and they would both be safe. He started walking, and soon he had settled into a rhythm. He could almost forget about the niggling doubt at the back of his head, telling him that Hades couldn’t be trusted, that if he just glanced back quickly, maybe nobody would notice.
Orpheus closed his eyes, not trusting himself to stop walking. One step in front of another, he told himself, trying to clear his head, one step in front of another until you reach sunlight, and then you can look back. From time to time, he thought he heard the rustle of wings above him, he didn’t know what it was, but he didn’t dare look for the fear that he might see her face. He would be fine. She would be fine. They would be fine. Eventually, he reached the tunnel that led them upwards, back to the world above. He released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. They were almost there.
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There. A patch of blue sky finally came into view above his head. A few more minutes and he would finally be free of the darkness that clung to the walls and the ground and the air of the underworld - the darkness that had started to leech into him. Orpheus’s mind went blank. He, they, had made. They had done it, they were free, they could do anything. Orpheus had never felt joy, felt elation, like this. It consumed him, he could think around it, he couldn’t breathe around it.
He looked back.
She was exactly as he remembered her, hair dark enough to blend in with the shadows and eyes as luminous as the great blue sea. She looked starved, but her face reflected the joy he had felt mere moments ago.
‘Eurydice.’ he whispered, knowing she didn’t hear him. Orpheus ran to her, not caring that he could have lost his footing and tumbled into the great abyss, the great unknown. He threw his arms around her and held her for the first time in almost a year. She was cold, and her hair was already turning into smoky wisps that blew away with the wind. She was disappearing. She was disappearing because of him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, feeling his breath on her clammy skin. She just smiled and took his face in her hands.
‘Orpheus,’ she said, before her body faded, leaving behind nothing but wispy white remains that Orpheus found himself gazing at dumbfoundedly.
It took him hours to make the short climb back up to the ground. It was all he could do to stop from flinging himself down into the dark, just to be with her in death. But all that would have done was tarnish her name, her memory. He couldn’t do that to her. His body shuddered with every movement he made to climb; his breath was coming out in short bursts that more resembled broken sobs than anything else. When he finally came up above the lip of the tunnel, it closed instantly, the ground rumbling and shaking before the dirt walls started breaking, falling away into the underworld until all that was left was a minor depression in the green field.
The sun was blindingly white, but Orpheus did not welcome the bright warmth as it did him. The air seemed too dry, too warm. The colours were almost garishly bright. The openness of the upper world made him feel naked and vulnerable, but most of all, it made him feel alone. It made him feel so terribly, crushingly alone, and with that came the guilt. He could have cried, he could have screamed and clawed at the Earth, demanding some divine justice, demanding his beloved back. He could have done a million other things that were heroic and cowardly, and they would all have been acceptable, human responses.
Instead, Orpheus sang. He did not sing of sadness and self-pity though, as he had before. He was done with sadness; he was done with feeling like the world owed him something just because he’d lost someone. So what? Hundreds of people lost loved ones every day, and they couldn’t even try to bring them back. No, the world didn’t owe him anything. He, however, was in deep debt. He owed the world and its people and its animals and its plants, but most of all, he owed it to Eurydice, to tell the world of her. Her beauty and her virtues and her deeds. So he sang.
He wandered the known world, singing constantly of his love, who had been greater than him and anyone else he had known. He spread her legacy everywhere he went, and with his songs spread his own reputation. Orpheus was known for his love and his song.