Work Text:
Spring has never felt so far away.
Orpheus bites his lip, tapping out the beat as he counts the syllables in his last written verse. The count is correct but the lyrics—they’re just not speaking to him the way he knows they will when he finds the right ones.
He scratches out the draft again, flipping the parchment over before forgetting he’d already used the other side. The guts of three other discarded verses are scrawled across this one. There’s no room for more unless he plans on literally writing between his previous lines.
He flips the paper again, squinting at the top right corner. If he curves his text a little, he can probably fit another attempt in there—
“Orpheus.” He startles as the door he didn’t hear open shuts behind his mentor, his silver suit gleaming even in the low light of the bar. Orpheus offers him a small wave, setting down his pencil. “How’s the song coming along?” Mister Hermes asks.
Orpheus shrugs. “I’m working on it,” he replies, grabbing a cup and filling it with water for Mister Hermes. “It’s not—” he hesitates. “I don’t know, it’s missing something. A spark.” He bites his thumbnail as he searches for the right words. “My last verse, I thought the rhymes were nice, and the meter was good, but it just—it wasn’t alive enough for a song that’s meant to feel like spring.”
“You’ll get it,” says Mister Hermes, sipping his drink.
“I hope so,” he responds. “The latch on the door is faulty so it blows open every once in a while, and all the cold gets in whenever it does. I can’t imagine what it’s like out there.”
Mister Hermes hums. “It’s been a long winter.”
“Too long,” Orpheus agrees.
“It will end,” Mister Hermes replies after a moment. “There’s change on the horizon. And maybe a tip, if you get me a refill.”
Orpheus laughs and reaches for the cup. “I’m listening.”
“Word on the street is there’s someone new in town,” Mister Hermes says, and it’s unclear whether he’s telling Orpheus this as a member of the community who’s heard rumors from the others or as the god of travelers who keeps tabs on the lost souls that wander in.
Orpheus makes a noise of interest, wondering what tales their visitor might have for him. Talking to strangers doesn’t come easy to him, but he’s always loved exchanging stories with people. The few visitors they’ve had from beyond the meadowlands over the years have spun some of the most vibrant yarns, adorned with demigod heroes and warriors, fallen kingdoms and forbidden trysts.
“I’ll have to play something good if they show up here, then,” he finally says. After all, it would be rude to expect a good story without offering one of equal merit in return. “What do you think?”
Mister Hermes chuckles. “Brother, I don’t think you’ve got a bad song in you.”
Orpheus looks away, laughing shyly. “I don’t know if that’s right,” he says. “You haven’t seen the things I’ve written after too many glasses of wine.”
“No, but I have heard them. Walls here are always thinner than you think.”
Orpheus sputters. “Don’t say that,” he squeaks out.
Mister Hermes huffs at him fondly before patting him on the shoulder. “Go on, then, get to practicing. That song's not gonna sing itself.”
It would be convenient if his songs could sing themselves, Orpheus thinks to himself. Then, he’d at least know what perfection is meant to sound like. He’s beginning to wonder whether he’s got the entire melody wrong, if that’s what’s been bothering him all along. It needs to swell more—or less? Or maybe it’s the tempo. Or the pitch.
Last night, after no new person showed up to the bar, he’d spent the night picking at his song, to no avail. At this rate, it may well be the whole song that needs reworking, he laments. He’s been working on it all winter, and still, he hasn’t written anything he’s satisfied with.
“Finally tired of redoing the same five notes?” Sophus stands behind him, an amused eyebrow raised as Orpheus remembers that the reason he came downstairs early was to finish wiping down the bartops and dusting the sound equipment.
No one really owns the bar—it’s more of a community relic than any one person’s responsibility—but Sophus is the son of the son of the man who designed the original structure, and Sophus himself has been slowly repairing and replacing some of its more dilapidated parts for years, making him familiar with the lot in a way one can only be with their own handiwork. In terms of time spent in the building, however, Orpheus gives him a run for his money, given that he’s lived in the boarding room upstairs for most of his life and has spent many an hour sitting at the bar strumming his lyre or jotting down new couplets.
Orpheus blinks at Sophus, dropping his pencil. “Sorry,” he says, “I just thought of something while cleaning earlier and had to write it down.”
Sophus laughs and flings a rag toward him, the red fabric landing on top of his latest scratched-out draft. “I know how it is with you, darling, don’t worry,” he says, and Orpheus flushes, even though he’s had similar exchanges with most of the other locals at one point or another. Thratta once joked that it was safer to bet on Orpheus getting lost in his songwriting than the sun rising every morning. Even more embarrassingly, Mister Hermes had agreed with that comment, and Orpheus knows for a fact he gets lunch with the god of the sun sometimes.
The fact of the matter is, everyone who knows Orpheus knows he thinks more about music than about feeding himself, and everyone in town knows Orpheus because everyone in town knows everyone else. That’s how they all get by.
That’s why when Orpheus crashes into someone on his way to set up the microphone, he recognizes instantly that the person he’s collided with isn’t Sophus, or Thratta, or anyone else from the meadowlands.
And yet—
And yet, it feels like she’s someone he’s always known.
Windswept ink-black hair curls framing a dark, sun-steeped face with the most mesmerizing eyes he’s ever seen—rich brown with the barest flecks of a stormy gray that match the grays and browns of her outfit. There’s a sharpness to her, both in the angular tilt of her jaw and the piercing quality of her gaze.
Beauty, to Orpheus, has always been best preserved not with visions but with songs, and when he looks at her, his heart sings, a swooping melody that pricks at his throat with how badly it wants to escape his body.
That’s it, he thinks dumbly. That is the tune he’s been looking for, trying and failing to carve out of chord progression out of chord progression for weeks.
And yet, he cannot bring himself to reach for his pencil again, not if it means looking away from—
“Ah, so you’re who I’ve been hearing so much about,” Sophus says with a laugh. “Glad to see you found your way to our fine establishment.”
She lifts her chin before nodding, stiffly. “I was told this was a good place to keep warm,” she says, before carefully adding, “that there might be room to stay for the night.”
If Orpheus could unstick his tongue, he might’ve asked her to stay forever instead of just the night. But he can’t, and so, when Sophus nods and gestures to the woman to follow him to the spare cot they have in one of the backrooms of the bar, Orpheus remains rooted to the floor like a twiggy sapling as an all-too-familiar tune loops in the back of his head.
(It sounds like fate.)
It sounds like spring.
Orpheus doesn’t dream often; he’s wont to get lost in daydreams and imaginings of a kinder world, but his slumbering self seldom wanders like that. If anything, he’ll sometimes wake up with fleeting notes stuck in his head, impressions of songs he has yet to write.
Tonight, though, he dreams in color.
Tonight, he dreams of his mother.
It was spring when she left. She’d led him to the meadow to play amongst the flowers. It had rained the night prior, and with every step he took, more and more dew would cling to his calves.
One moment, she’d been standing behind him, watching him dart through the grass. He’d gotten distracted by a flash of red out of the corner of his eye—a cluster of scarlet blossoms nestled at the base of a young tree—and by the time he’d looked back again, she was gone.
He doesn’t remember what she looks like, if he’s being honest. It’s expected, to some extent, since gods and other like beings are notoriously difficult for mortal eyes to process, let alone preserve, but disappointing nevertheless. And from disappointment is born wistfulness.
In his mind’s eye, he sees her hands, spindle-thin with soft palms and calloused fingers. Musician hands, like his. She’s tracing the rim of a silver cup with one of those fingers as she stares at Orpheus with ghost-pale eyes. The muse is a wisp against the dark rust-browns and blues of the bar, the light not even casting shadows upon her.
She has the same dimples he has in his cheeks, this time, and she’s singing something Orpheus can’t hear, even as he cranes toward her. There’s a crowd gathered around them, and they can hear, Orpheus knows it, but no matter what he tries, he can’t. He was born hers, but she was not made to be his, and even his unconscious self knows it. This aspect of his fate is not lost on him. He knows longing alone cannot change the world.
Longing alone will not change the world he lives in. A little song he sings shouldn’t either, but this rule, at least, seems malleable. If his mother will never listen to him sing again, at least the flowers may.
He’s plucking out the chords of his newfound melody amid the soft chatter of the bar when she strides in, sliding into one of the open seats across the room from him.
She’s shivering. Her hands are wrapped around a black-wicked candle, one that has clearly been lit and relit many times over. “Anybody got a match?” she calls over her shoulder. A few folks shake their heads as Orpheus reaches into his pockets and realizes he has one. He scrambles to his feet to offer it to her, but Mister Hermes already has one outstretched. “Gimme that,” she says, snatching it from his hand, as if afraid he’ll try to take it back.
In the firelight, her eyes sparkle. The golden hue highlights the two different colors in her irises; brown like the wood piled up in the fireplace as kindling and gray like the smears of soot left behind, memories of warmth.
Her eyes flick over to his direction and he knows he shouldn’t be caught staring but it takes him a beat too long to pretend to be interested in his lyre again. When he looks up a moment later, she’s turned away from him.
Orpheus swallows. He looks down at the page in front of him, haphazardly written notes that he probably won’t need to reference anytime soon—all the important parts of his song, they’re all etched into his heart. His hands flit across his strings like they’re being controlled by a higher power. What he needs, now, is the story.
What he needs now, he thinks, is to talk to her. His musician hands reach for his paper, and begin to roll it up. He bites his lip as he twists one end and begins to tear at the other, carefully, coaxing ruffled petals to bloom. He’s no god, barely a man, and she probably deserves better but he’s always been an idealist. And he’d kick himself if she left before he ever had the chance to learn her name. He needs—well, he wants—
“You wanna talk to her?” Mister Hermes watches him knowingly.
The words are out of his mouth without a second thought. “Yes.”
“Go on.” Orpheus draws in a sharp breath, hands tightening around his paper flower. He takes a step forward. “Orpheus,” Mister Hermes adds, “don’t come on too strong.” Orpheus nods. He doesn’t want to scare her, he just wants—
“Come home with me.”
Mister Hermes pinches the bridge of his nose. She gives him the most disbelieving look he’s ever received in his life.
But, she’s looking at him now. She’s looking.
“Who are you?” she sputters.
Orpheus would wring his hands in anxiety if he wasn’t holding out his flower, and because that energy has to go somewhere, it instead manifests as a rush of false confidence as he proclaims, “The man who’s gonna marry you.” Mister Hermes seems to be trying not to choke in the corner, face buried in his hands. Orpheus figures he’s getting ahead of himself some, but there’s something humming in the air, anticipatory, like an audience’s gaze. He can’t help the way his words come out as lyrics.
He can’t help the way the world seems to shiver and sing with him.
She raises an eyebrow. “Is he always like this?”
“Yes,” Mister Hermes answers.
She seems to consider this for a moment. “I’m Eurydice,” she finally offers. He grins.
“Your name is like a melody,” he all but sighs out.
She wrinkles her nose. “A singer. Is that what you are?”
He gestures to his instrument. “I also play the lyre.”
“A liar and a player too,” she drawls out, deftly twisting his words. “I’ve met too many men like you.”
She used his own weapon against him. He’d marvel at her wit if he wasn’t busy shaking his head. “Oh no, I’m not like that,” he says, struggling to re-find his footing in the conversation. It’s been a long time since he’s talked with a stranger, and never one like this.
“He’s not like any man you’ve ever met,” Mister Hermes finally chimes in. “Tell her what you’re working on.”
Eurydice angles her chin at him, challenging. Impress me, he reads in the glint of those dark eyes. Make this worth my while.
Orpheus lifts his head, praying to any higher power that will listen that his words will echo the way he wants them to.
“I’m working on a song…”
Eurydice keeps him at arm’s length.
This is, in fact, a success—she keeps most people farther than an arm’s length away.
She’s not the sort of person who flinches at sudden noises or movement, but she is the sort who seems more than aware of them. Wariness is written across her thin form anytime someone takes a step too quickly toward her. Orpheus fears what truth that wariness may bely. But she’s in no rush to tell him.
Almost all of what he does know about Eurydice, she’s mentioned offhandedly. Once, when Orpheus was young, he’d been hit in the head by a squirrel tossing down a nut husk from a tree, and he’d wondered whether it had been aiming for him; whenever Eurydice offers details about herself to him, she seems to fling them in much the same way. It could be accidental, but there’s a precision to it that Orpheus can’t help but feel is underscoring something else.
“The cot is fine—better than any of the barns I’ve slept in, at least,” she’d told him this morning.
“A man stole my matchbox before I came here,” she’d huffed as Orpheus offered her his own. When he’d balked at the crime, she’d snorted and said it was because she’d threatened to set him on fire.
Orpheus has never met anyone like Eurydice. If her eyes are kindling and ash, her mind is a matchstick. She wields it like a hastily-fashioned weapon, one not designed to hurt but dangerous in desperate hands.
He would never be so presumptuous as to assume he knows what’s going on in Eurydice’s mind, but he would guess it’s a loud place to be. She always seems like she’s thinking, trying to stay one step ahead of the rest of the world.
Honestly, Orpheus is surprised she hasn’t left yet.
Optimistic as he is, he knows there’s little tying her to this place. The two of them orbit each other when they’re in the same room, but he’s well aware that he has little to offer her. She deserves more than he can give her.
All he has, really, is an unfinished song. There’s magic in there, true, but he’s more of a conduit than a conductor of it—he has no idea if it will sculpt wedding bands, or lay wedding tables. He has no idea if it’ll be enough for her.
She hasn’t left yet, but it was a near thing. Yesterday, she found him at the bar, fingers hovering over his lyre, and demanded he sing his song for her.
“It isn’t finished,” he’d pushed back gently.
“Sing it,” she insisted. “You wanna take me home?”
“Yes.”
“Sing the song.”
And he had, because she’s kindling and ash and everything in between, and he’s but a man.
He sits at the bar again, now, not too sure where he stands with her. She’d lit up when he’d handed her that flower—a real one, seemingly pulled straight from the spring of his dreams—and called him ‘lover’ sincerely for the first time, but then they’d gotten distracted by Mister Hermes asking about the melody, and she’d went to bed in her little cot away from his room, not that he’d expected—
“Orpheus.”
His eyes widen as he turns to find her at his side. “Eurydice,” he says quickly, sitting up straighter. “How—” he clears his throat, “—how are you?”
“Have you eaten yet?” she asks abruptly.
He blinks at her before shaking his head, slowly realizing that no, he hasn’t eaten since getting up. He’d been too distracted. “I forgot,” he admits, shrinking in on himself sheepishly.
She lets out a little huff of annoyance. “How are you still alive?” she seems to wonder aloud.
Orpheus laughs softly. “I don’t know myself, to be honest.” Then, testing something, he adds, “If you’re hungry, I’ve got a bit of food in my room?”
“As long as you remember to feed yourself, too,” she finally says.
He lets a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “Alright.”
Two days later, a train rolls into town. Lady Persephone shrugs off her furs the moment she steps off the platform, and for the first time in nearly eight months, the wind abates. Eurydice grins at him, and Orpheus’s world is filled with light.
That evening, he finds Eurydice with an empty cup in her hand. He reaches over her shoulder to take it, meaning to refill it, when she suddenly tilts her head back, resting it on his shoulder.
Orpheus freezes, hand still outstretched. Though he drank enough to get himself tipsy earlier, the sudden contact sobers him up a little more. Across the bar, he spies Lady Persephone chuckling into her drink.
“I liked your toast today,” Eurydice says, not slurring her words but speaking slower than usual.
“I liked your dancing,” Orpheus replies, carefully picking up the cup. “You looked like you were having fun.”
She shrugs, humming a little. “So did you.” She turns her head slightly, so that her breath is fanning against the side of his neck, even though her face isn’t touching his skin. “You always look… brighter when you get to play for everyone.”
His cheeks heat at the thought of her watching him. He’s caught her staring before, but it’s different to hear her admit it. Slowly, he straightens, taking a step back from her. “Thanks,” he manages to squeak out. “I’m going to get you some water, okay?”
She gives him a smile inexplicably laced with sadness. “You’re so nice, lover,” she sighs out.
Orpheus chuckles as he crosses the bar to grab a fresh cup. He feels the warmth of eyes on his back all the while.
Summer days pass in a hazy blur, but summer nights always seem to linger, as if the world itself is slowing just to let them breathe.
They’re out in the meadow beneath a sky of glittering stars when Orpheus musters up the courage to touch her first.
His hand drifts from where it had been rested on the strap of his lyre to the back of her hand. He presses their knuckles together for a moment, questioning.
She looks down at the point of contact. Then back up at his eyes. Ever so slowly, she angles her hand toward his, so that the tip of his pointer finger dips into the flesh of her palm.
Orpheus holds his breath as he slides his hand forward, interlacing their fingers.
Eurydice’s hands aren’t soft. They’re less cracked now than they were a few weeks ago, but they still bear years of old scars and calluses. They’re not the hands of a sheltered musician. They’re the hands of a survivor, a fighter.
She squeezes his hand, once.
Orpheus exhales. Eurydice pointedly avoids his eyes as she whispers, “You’re allowed.”
The nightbirds warble a familiar tune as he squeezes her hand back.
“You never stop, do you?” Eurydice’s sleep-addled voice makes him glance up from where he’d been idly drumming his fingers against her arm to a silent song. Morning light haloes her in his bed, far too small for two if they weren’t pressed up against each other so closely.
He makes an apologetic noise, turning to see her curl into his pillow. “Did I wake you?”
She hums in response. “How many different ways can you possibly tell the same story?” she says, laying a hand over his to stop it from tapping.
“At least a dozen, I guess.” When she raises an eyebrow at him, he looks away. “It’s part of the process,” he defends himself weakly. "I'll know it when it's right."
Eurydice sighs. “I don’t understand you,” she admits quietly. “How do you just—you barely seem to get hungry—it’s like you’re barely alive sometimes.”
He runs his thumb across the back of her hand placatingly. “My mother,” he says haltingly, “she wasn’t—she’s not mortal. I still need to eat and drink and all that but—” he swallows, “—I think sometimes my body forgets, especially when I’m composing.”
“She’s a muse, right?” Eurydice asks after a moment. “Mister Hermes mentioned it before.”
Orpheus nods. “It’s the reason I play so well. I—I have her hands.”
Instead of responding, Eurydice frowns and takes his hand in hers. “You told me you learned to play when you were young,” she says.
“I did.”
“Then you still had to learn.” She holds his hand up in front of them both, letting it catch the light. “Your calluses are your own.”
He stares at their outstretched hands, swallowing. “Before I met you,” he blurts out, “I’d sometimes think the only reason I was put here was to make people happy with my songs.”
“And now?”
“I think I was made to be yours,” he confesses. “You—lover, you’re everything.”
Eurydice draws in a sharp breath. After a moment, she pulls her hand away from his. He sits up, wondering if he’s said the wrong thing; he’d assumed the admission would be romantic, but maybe she’s still warier than he realized, not willing to commit herself. “I’m sorry,” he starts, before she cuts him off, though she pointedly does not meet his gaze.
“I am not everything,” she grumbles. “You poets and your sayings.”
“You are to me.”
“But I shouldn’t be,” she insists. When he frowns, she shakes her head. “Orpheus, you of all people deserve to live because you love life. Not because you can sing well or because you… care about me.”
He bites his lip, suddenly feeling like he’s been cut open in front of her and set to burn. He readily wears his heart on his sleeve, but she’s the only one who’s ever dared try prying it apart so thoroughly. He doesn’t quite know what to do with that. In a desperate attempt to turn the conversation, he asks, “Do you?”
“What, care about myself?” she laughs dryly.
Orpheus shakes his head. “Do you love living?”
She’s silent a moment too long. He fears he’s pressed too hard, struck at something too deep for their fledgling relationship, that any moment now, everything they’ve built will burn away until Orpheus is left with fading embers and Eurydice walks away with the soot.
Eurydice fidgets with the end of one of her braids, mussed by sleep but still impressively intact. “I love walking in the sun. And the flowers you make bloom. And…” she trails off. “I love how it’s been, these past few days.” His heart twists, more fondness filling his chest than he knows what to do with.
“I’ll turn those past few days into forever,” he promises.
Eurydice rolls her eyes. “Finish your song first before you worry about ‘forevers,’” she says, jabbing a finger at his chest.
Progress on his song is slow. He finds it’s somehow harder to write when it’s warm and the weather is merciful—it’s much easier to be lured away from his work by the sight of his lover basking in the sunlight.
Fortunately for his songwriting and unfortunately in every other way, the warmth doesn’t last.
The sound of the train screeching into the station judders through the meadowlands. When the two of them race outside, they find Lady Persephone, mouth pulled into a line as she shrugs on her coat.
Her husband looms on the platform, an imperious shadow over the pale grass. His eyes are stony and gray, and his gaze is likewise full of weight. It sloughs across the field until, for a terrifying moment, it lands on Eurydice.
Dread flares in the pit of his stomach and he shoves himself in front of her without a second thought. Eurydice is laying a hand on his shoulder, whispering something to him, but he can’t hear it—instead, all he can focus on is a strange shifting noise akin to the sound of a bird flapping its wings as it shuffles down a telephone wire. It has no melody but it rings like a hymn in a holy place, like a vow professed to a crowd.
Like a curse placed on a soul.
“Orpheus,” Eurydice hisses in his ear, but he can’t bring himself to respond until after he watches Lady Persephone lift her chin and stride forward, the sunlight following her until it can no longer reach her in the depths of the train. Hades makes a smug noise, and boards after her.
When the whistle sounds and the train pulls away, it’s like a spell breaks. The sky grows dark. The wind picks up.
Orpheus has seen summers come and go—he’s watched Lady Persephone depart before. It always gets colder, true, but usually it takes a few days. It’s never like this, like the flicking of a light switch or the snap of a bone.
“He came too soon,” he whispers. “He came for her too soon. It’s not supposed to be like this.”
Eurydice shivers. “Well, ‘til someone brings the world back into tune,” she says, giving him a pointed look, “this is how it is.”
He swallows, and reaches for the pencil in his pocket, pricking his finger on it in the process. He can’t afford to think about his own pain right now, though. His song is the only thing standing between a cruel winter and everything he holds dear—and he’s barely got the first verse done.
“Where are you going?” Eurydice asks, and he belatedly realizes he’s begun walking back toward the bar.
Orpheus bites out, “I have to finish the song.” He intends for the declaration to come out resolute, but all he can hear is his own helplessness. He thinks she hears it too.
“Finish it quick,” she tells him, a parting blessing from his muse. He doesn’t look back when she bestows it upon him, too entrenched in his own worry.
Somewhere in the distance, three crows caw.
Spring has never felt so far away.
The cold that seeps through the slats of his room stiffens his fingers, making it harder to strum his instrument. He grits his teeth anyway, pushing through it as he clumsily works through the chords that he once played so intuitively. The melody came to him, he reminds himself. He’s meant to play it.
But the more he strums, the harder it becomes. He thinks of Eurydice, the woman who inspired in him that honey-warm tune, but she’s outside, away from the room to keep from disturbing him while he works. He thinks of Lady Persephone, the spring she’s never allowed to usher in slowly because she’s always too eager to shuck off the lingering darkness of the underworld and too short on time to do so anyway.
He thinks of the king of silver and his gray-striped suit. The shadows that bend around him. The name he imposes upon his ghost town, of which no traveler he’s met has ever seen beyond its walls.
Truth be told, Orpheus doesn’t like thinking about Hadestown. It’s a terrible weakness given he’s writing a song about its rulers, but that may be part of the reason he’s been struggling as much as he has with it.
He’s heard all the rumors about the place, about its gods, about its impenetrable walls, always stretching higher and higher. They say within it, Hades guards troves of gold, and the city itself crackles with electricity, never a silent moment. There’s no room for songs in a place like Hadestown, only work. No room for poets, only workers and kings.
Orpheus could never understand a place like that. But privately, he thinks he might understand the person who builds it. It’s been years since his mother left, and still, there is a part of him that cannot help dwelling on how easy it was for him to be left behind. There is a part of him that twists with dread anytime Eurydice is out of his sight, that is disquieted by the knowledge that there are parts of her he does not know.
He is no god, no king, and he would never be so presumptuous as to believe he has any right to anyone’s heart—but he understands the longing. The fear. It lives in him, too.
He doesn’t know how long he spends holed up in his room. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he last ate. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he last saw Eurydice.
But he finished it.
He finished it, and it’s the worst day of his life.
“She called your name before she went,” Mister Hermes tells him, a steely edge to his voice. “I guess you weren’t listening.”
She called his name. She called his name.
He didn’t hear.
“No,” he chokes out, collapsing to his knees.
Mister Hermes leans forward in his seat, seeming not angry, or sad, or even disappointed; the look in his eyes is knowing. Orpheus has never before been so aware that he is speaking to a god.
He’s never before felt so alone.
“So,” Mister Hermes presses, bending down to look him in the eye, “just how far would you go for her?”
Orpheus thinks of a city of oil and coal, of millions of bricks and broken bones. He thinks of crows, of monsters, of the Fates hovering with a hand on his thread. Of death. He’s just a poor boy with a lyre. He couldn’t even convince his mother to keep him. What business does he have bargaining for the return of a soul?
But he thinks of his wife, in the arms of a bitter old man. He thinks of his failure to be the husband she deserves.
He thinks of the way she hesitated when he asked her that question. “Do you love living?”
He failed to deliver on the promises he made to her. He failed to finish his song in time. Something in his gut knows he’s not destined for a happy ending. Orpheus is a poet, not a hero. The gods made him so.
And still, there’s only one way he can answer Mister Hermes.
(And still, he tries.)