Dead Beautiful (17 page)

“Dying, fading, diminishing,” I say. A beetle detaches itself from her robe and scuttles under my desk. “Don’t leave that one, will you?” I say.

She makes a kissing sound. “My sweet,” she calls. The beetle re-emerges; she picks it up and tucks it into a pocket. “Dying?” she sounds doubtful. “She is the daughter of immortals, immortal herself, I should think.”

“I think I know dying when I see it,” I snap. “It is my area of expertise.”

“Quite.” Her eyes return to the fire. One of my orchids — the one nearest her — leans towards her. I glare at it; it rights itself. “What would you have me say?” she asks.

“For want of her mother, my wife is dying.”

“Wife?” Once again she looks at me sharply.

“She carries our child.”

“Ah.” Hecate smiles. “Congratulations. That is good news.”

“It will mean nothing if Persephone dies.”

“No, no.” She turns back to the fire. A cloud of midges rises from her person, hangs in the air, then settles back onto her. “Nothing. But what can Zeus do?”

“Send Demeter here. It’s been done before— mere mortals have made the trip —”

“Oh, he won’t like that.” She shakes her head emphatically and settles on the chair opposite me. “Too risky. The Goddess of Fertility in Hades. It’s an uncomfortable situation. If anything were to happen to her, if she were to be stuck here permanently — which means, if she were to be as good as dead —”

“Why would she be ‘stuck’ here, as you so diplomatically put it?”

“Unseen circumstances,” she replies obliquely.

“I am master of my realm. I will guarantee her safety.”

Hecate gives me a sidelong glance through narrowed eyes. “But can you guarantee your own behaviour?”

I stand. “What is this? Is this an accusation? What do you mean?” I demand.

She turns away, unimpressed by my outburst. “Those in love often act irrationally. To save your wife and child, you might take measures. You must suspect, Hades, that your recent behaviour hasn’t met with widespread approval upstairs. To force the issue you might, well…” A vine of some sort twines up her arm. She fiddles with it absent-mindedly, wrapping it around her finger and unwrapping it. “If anything were to happen to Demeter — the ‘mere mortals’ you speak of are restive, what with the current conditions and they might turn away from us. To you and me it wouldn’t matter, our powers are older and deeper than their beliefs, but for many on Olympus it would spell destruction.”

“Yes, yes, I know all that.” I walk away from her, yet am drawn ineluctably back to the fire, to her, to my connection, to my hopes.

“But Demeter doesn’t have to come here. Persephone can go there. She’s perfectly capable of travelling between the living and the dead,” Hecate says.

“She said you told her that. But how do you know?”

“I recognized it the first time I saw her. It’s something in the eyes, a dark light — yes, I know it’s an oxymoron — some hunger. I never told her mother — I knew it would worry Demeter. The Olympians do tend to favour the light, all this talk of ‘the light of reason’ and the like. Apollo gets far too much air time, in my opinion, and they give Dionysus short shrift. The upstairs crowd has never been completely comfortable with the darker realms. That said, Persephone can live perfectly well upstairs or down here.”

“But she shouldn’t be traveling back and forth to Olympus in her present state.”

“No, that would be inadvisable.” She falls silent. The only sound in the room is the hiss and crackle of the fire. Its brightness makes the surrounding shadows appear darker than usual, great, bottomless wells of gloom. “You must bring Persephone to one of your caves,” she says finally, “to one of the entrances to your realm. Choose one, and I’ll bring Demeter there to meet you.”

Restless, I pace the room. I try to think of a suitable meeting-place, but Persephone’s pale face keeps swimming up before me, her eyes closed, the half-moon bruises beneath them growing darker minute by minute. “The one near the bend in the river,” I burst out, fixing on the first that comes to mind. “Near Persephone’s fields of flowers. Do you know it?”

She chuckles, a ghostly sound, like branches scraping against a window on a storm-filled night. “I know all the wild places.” She stands, snaps her fingers. Several small, dark, many-legged shapes scoot towards her and disappear beneath the hem of her robe.

“It must be soon,” I say. “She grows weaker by the day.”

“Tomorrow at dawn, then,” she says. Is there an echo of laughter in her voice? I search her face but see only sympathy there. She bows with utmost civility. “Until then, Hades” she says, and is gone.

Demeter

“His wife? I don’t believe it for a second. He took her against her will. She’s not his wife, she’s a prisoner.”

Hecate is sitting on a fallen log. Around us trees crowd in. We are in a clearing in the middle of a forest. She is checking over baby rabbits the mother rabbit has brought to her. She plucks one up, pulls back its upper lip, peeks into the mouth.

“I think not,” she murmurs, turning the small body over so she can see inside its ears better.

“What?”

She checks its tail and underneath. “Oh, don’t start, Dem. You know you’ve been an overprotective mother. Do you really think she would have told you about Hades when she knew how you felt? You forced her into secrecy.”

“Overprotective? Me?” Clouds start to darken the sky.

Hecate gives me a look. She sets the small one down, pats it on its bottom so that it hops back to its mother, then picks up a second one.

“What is that look supposed to mean?” I ask.

“First off, settle down,” she answers, scrutinizing the rabbit. “Enough with the clouds. You don’t want to get into that with me — stirring up the weather. I taught you all you know, and we both know who would win in a show-down, unlike that great galoot upstairs who thinks he’s such a hotshot, but couldn’t hit the side of the Parthenon at 20 feet.”

I drop onto a nearby rock. “O.k., but what do you mean overprotective? It’s always been just her and me — you know her father was no use. I’ve only ever wanted the best for her.”

Hecate works a tick free from the rabbit’s haunch, then sends it after its sibling. “At a certain point,” she says, watching the rabbit family disappear into the woods, “wanting the best for her means letting her make her own decisions.”

“I did,” I protest.

She shakes her head. “No, you didn’t. You tried to manipulate things — you and Hestia, you two old bats — although the bats of my acquaintance have more sense than the two of you have shown. You should know better. That demi-God is no match for Persephone — thick as a brick, he is. If she’d married him she’d have gone nuts with boredom inside of six months. She had the wisdom to know that, more wisdom than you. Would you have been satisfied with Derek —”

“Darryl.”

“ — whatever. Would you?”

Suddenly a mushroom sprouting from the tree closest to where I sit becomes fascinating. “He’s a nice young demi-God,” I say.

“He is. He’s as nice as the husband your mother picked out for you. But you weren’t satisfied with him, were you?”

That hurts.

Hecate leans towards me. “The truth does hurt. You wanted nothing less than the top dog god — Zeus. Can you blame Persephone for choosing the best as well?”

“The best? He’s ruler of the dead. What sort of husband is that?”

“He’s one of the Big Three. And he loves her.”

My eyes lock on her. “What?”

She nods, pats the empty space beside her on the log. “He loves her,” she repeats as I move over to sit beside her. “I was there this morning, although you wouldn’t know it was morning, down there. He’s distracted with worry, can hardly keep still, can’t think straight.”

“But Ruler of the Dead.”

“Hades is a fine individual. Measured, steady, fair-minded. Beneath that admittedly dour exterior beats a passionate heart.” She gives me a sly grin. “He’s a much better choice than Zeus was. He will be an excellent father to your grandchild.”

“Grand —” I am so surprised I almost tumble backwards off the log. Hecate steadies me. “ —child?”

She nods, pulling a bur from my gown.

“I’m going — I’m — I —” the words sputter and die in my throat. My hands are on her shoulders, I stare into her eyes.

“Grandmother is the word you’re looking for,” she says. “Yes, congratulations. You’re going to be a grandmother.”

Suddenly tears flood my eyes, stream down my cheeks. I am barely able to breathe for sobbing. Where the tears land, small green sprouts appear: apple, orange, almond, plum.

“But,” and suddenly Hecate’s tone is serious, her hand on mine, “she needs you. She is pining for you. Hades is worried she may fade away, may die, in fact, for want of you. He has sent me to find you, to ask you to come to her.”

“Of course.” I stand, straighten my gown, pat my hair in place, dry my eyes and cheeks. “Let’s go,” I tell her.

Persephone

We ascend slowly, rising toward a pinprick of light. I feel as though I am waking up, swimming out of sleep through layers of dreams, fears, worries and hopes to wakefulness, to the hard and tangible certainties of the daylight world. Or as if I am surfacing from a dive, rising through the dense weight of water toward Poseidon’s silver shield that separates his realm from the air-bound world.

Hades is beside me, supporting me. I am a bit faint, but also excited. I lean on his arm.

At first the point of light is very small and faint against the surrounding shadows, but as we get closer it dilates, pushing away the gloom that presses on it.

I see the utter blue of the sky, wispy clouds scudding across it high up. All is light, all is movement. I hear the rush of wind, the whisper of water, the husky thrumming cries of cicadas. All is song.

At the edge of the light — I recognize the place now, it is the cave near the river — stands my mother. I see her as if for the first time. In a way, it is the first time I have really looked at her. Before, we were always together, and her face was more familiar to me than my own. How old she looks, how tired. Has she always looked like this, or has worry about me aged her?

When Hades and I reach the cave, my mother and I fall into each other’s arms laughing. “I missed you so much.” We both say it at the same time, which makes us laugh some more.

“How are you?” she asks, holding me at arm’s length. “Let me look at you. Ahh,” she says, smiling, and gathers me in her arms again. “It’s so good to see you.”

“And you,” I say, feeling myself swallowed in her embrace. I lean against her and feel her strength. We stand that way, pressed to each other, for a long time. Then I pull away.

“Mother,” I say. “This is my husband.” I take Hades’ hand and pull him forward. He has been standing in the cave’s shadows.

Her eyes darken. For a minute I think she is about to say something cutting. She has a sharp tongue — I have seen it myself. But she pauses, swallows the angry words that rose to the tip of her tongue, and nods in his direction.

“Hail Demeter, daughter of rich-haired Rhea,” he says, more formally than is required. He keeps his voice low and even. I can tell he senses her anger.

“Oh, Rich One —” she begins, but he stops her words with a wave of his hand.

“Hades will do,” he says.

“Hades, then.” Her tone is ambiguous — hard to tell if she is polite, or angry.

“Your daughter returns to you,” he says.

Mother’s eyes move to me, then back to him. “I am glad.”

He bows, then turns to me. He lifts my hand to his lips. Over my hand, our eyes lock. His gaze burns bright, then his eyes fall, he straightens and says, “You know how to reach me.” The next instant there is empty space where he was.

I turn to Mother. It is as if a storm has passed and dark clouds have cleared. She smiles easily and the worry I read on her face has evaporated. Laughter plays in her eyes. “Come, come,” she says. “You must tell me everything.”

I stand on the breathing earth and energy flows into me. The heat of the sun sits on my skin and throbs in my veins. Smells stir memories that flood my mind. It is as if I am awakening from a long, smoky dream.

“I would love,” I say, “to see my flowers.”

Her smile falters. There is a moment’s silence. “Of course,” she says presently. “But don’t be disappointed. They are not as you left them. I had so much on my mind …”

As we walk I hear how she first realized I was gone, the terror that took hold of her inch by inch.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have told you.”

Her eyes shine with unspilled tears. She smiles through them. “It doesn’t matter,” she replies. “You are here now, that is all that matters.”

“I wanted to tell you,” I continue, “but I thought —” you would be angry — I don’t want to say that — wouldn’t understand — not that, either. 

“It’s all right, it’s all right.” She doesn’t seem to notice my hesitation. “You’re back.” She loops her arm through mine and we walk together as we used to.