Harvest Moon (3 page)

He echoed her sigh. Godmother Elena, Godmother Lily, Queen Rosa and King Siegfried had carefully explained The Tradition to both of them before they left Eltaria. It seemed prudent to all of them, given that Leo was a tale just waiting to happen and Brunnhilde was a goddess. It had left Brunnhilde nodding, and Leopold outraged, but with no target to be outraged with. Just some nebulous force that was going to make him dance to the tune it piped unless he learned how to avoid it or manipulate it himself.

“Well, maybe we can find it a whole new path,” he replied. “We've got time to think and plan. Well, you do.” He felt a moment of melancholy. That was the one fly in their soup of happiness. He was mortal. She wasn't.

“Well—it just might be that
we
do,” she replied, her blue eyes going very serious indeed as her brush stopped moving. “I asked Godmother Elena's dragons about other places with gods, and they knew all about this one, and what is more, they had some interest
ing things to tell me about The Traditions here. This Olympia is just
stiff
with ways for mortals to become immortal. That's why I brought us here.”

He sat straight up, grapes and melancholy forgotten. He was hard put to say whether he was more shocked, delighted or terrified. Probably all three at once. “You—what?” he gasped. “You mean—”

She nodded. “We'll have to be really careful, though. Some of the ways for mortals to become immortal are not pleasant. For instance, becoming immortal but continuing to age. Or becoming immortal as a spring or a rock. Or a constellation of stars. Not the sort of thing I want to see happen to you.”

He thought about the first, and shuddered. A bit of waterworks or a rock would be far preferable, and still not something he wanted to think about.

“So how do you go about it without nasty consequences?” he asked. “Or have you found that out yet?”

“Nothing that will work yet, but I expect to. Either we'll find a god-tale, or we'll go introduce ourselves to the gods here and ask. Right now, all I know are the things that come to me in my sleep—when you let me sleep—” she began with a grin.

And that was when the ground opened up behind her with an ominous rumble.

It really
did
open up; there was a sound like thunder, the earth trembled, a crack appeared and the ground rolled back as if two giant hands had pulled it apart. Steam issued from the opening. Leo nearly jumped out of his skin, and both of them leapt to their feet, seizing the swords that were never far from their hands.

A chariot pulled by four magnificent black horses rumbled up out of the chasm; the chariot was black
without a lot of ornamentation; the horses were huge things, very powerful; snorting and tossing their heads as they plunged up the slant of raw earth. The chariot was driven by a man in a long black cloak with a deep hood, who reached up with one hand and threw back the hood of his garment on seeing the two of them there. Leo hesitated; the man was unarmed, and looked absurdly young, barely more than a stripling.

“Well,
there
you are!” the fellow said crossly as his eyes lit on Brunnhilde. “You went to the wrong meadow,
just
like a girl. I've been looking all over for you!”

“I—what?” Brunnhilde stammered, for once speechless. “I think you must have mistak—”

Too late. The man jumped from the chariot, seized Brunnhilde and tossed her into the chariot as if she weighed nothing. She shrieked with outrage and tried to scramble to her feet, but he leapt back in, grabbed her around the waist with one hand to keep her from jumping out, and wheeled the horses with the other hand. Before Leo could do more than take two steps and Brunnhilde start to fight back, the chariot plunged down into the chasm, which promptly closed up behind them, leaving Leo to claw frantically at the earth, shouting Brunnhilde's name.

 

When Persephone finally had woven enough to satisfy her mother, the sun was going down and she practically flew to the meadow on the chance that Eubeleus would be there. Her mother, thank all the powers, had gone off to round up some of her foundlings and had not given Persephone any orders. Persephone didn't wait for her to change her mind. She didn't even stop
to snatch something from the kitchen for supper, afraid that her mother would invent some reason to keep her indoors until nightfall. And by nightfall, her beloved would certainly have left the meadow.

She'd forgotten her sandals, but that hardly mattered, this was Olympia and the paths were thick with soft moss wherever her feet touched them. Neither Persephone nor Demeter would
ever
suffer a bruised foot within her walls. Like the magic that kept the carnivorous foundlings from snacking on the rest, Demeter's magic kept all harm at bay.

Wonder of wonders, her love was still in the meadow, looking altogether forlorn as he perched on a rock with his hands clasped between his knees.

She whistled like a boy, and he looked up, startled, to push off the rock and race toward her. He was quite tall, but it would be difficult to tell how tall he was, since he habitually slouched, as if he carried all of the troubles Pandora had allegedly let out of the box on his own back. His hair was as black as Zeus's but fell about his face in unconfined ringlets, since he never wore the royal diadem of the gods in her presence. People forgot that he was as much a warrior as his brother-god Zeus, but the simple, one-shouldered garment of linen he wore showed off his muscles rather nicely, she thought, especially when he was running. Of the three original male gods, he was really the cleverest, too, though she suspected if she told him so he would just mumble a little and blush.

It's just as well he got the Underworld, I suppose. Zeus would have made a dreadful mess governing it.

Only someone who actually knew him would see the Lord of the Underworld in this sad-faced shepherd, who
looked gratifyingly lovelorn, and whose face lit up in a way that was even more gratifying as she ran toward him. Oh, how she loved seeing his dark eyes shine when they met hers!

They met in an embrace that threatened to become very heated indeed.

He broke it off, not she, but kept his arms around her as he looked into her upturned face. “I was afraid you had changed your mind.”

Persephone snorted. “No, it was Mother. She decided that today I needed to weave. I'm sorry I was too late to be abducted. I hope your friend didn't get too bored. Where is he?”

Hades frowned. “Actually, he drove off, saying he was going to look for you, but he's never seen you, has he?”

“I don't think so.” She shrugged. “There can't be that many blond-haired, blue-eyed immortal maidens hanging about in meadows on the slopes of Mount Olympus. Not that there aren't a lot of maidens, or at least young females, and if they are nymphs or dryads or sylphs, they might very well be hanging about in meadows, but there are not many blondes. Most of them are brown-or raven-haired. I hope he comes back here instead of going back to the stables. We could still go through with this if he does.”

“I suppose you are right. You generally are. But hoping that Tha—my friend does something practical is hoping for a lot. He doesn't think much past his job, which isn't exactly hard.” Hades's brow creased with thought. “Is there any real need for us to go through that entire abduction business?”

She looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean?
I thought it was Traditional, and it would make it harder for Mother to demand me back.” She did not mention the other part, which she was not supposed to know but had deduced.

“Well, yes, but—” Hades waved his hands helplessly. “Why not? You were ready to go, why not just come with me? We might not get another chance. Especially if Demeter finds out about me.” He looked at her with pleading eyes. “We've been tempting the Fates, dodging anything that could tell her. We can't have good luck forever. And I don't want to lose you.”

She didn't have to think about it very long. A solid afternoon at that loom, while Demeter kept popping in “just to see how you are doing,” while that wretched little faun-baby made the most appalling sounds on his flute, was more than enough to convince her that if she didn't get out of that house soon, she would probably be a candidate for the Maenads.

And she didn't want to lose him. Not ever.

“It's a wonderful idea,” she said warmly. “Let's go.”

 

Obviously, Persephone had never been to Hades's Realm before. The passage in proved to be surprisingly uncomplicated, since she was with the Ruler. The most complicated part was when Hades decided it was time to Reveal His True Self.

Hades found a cave, and led her inside, that was when he held up his hand and made a ghost-light. The little ball of light drifted just over his palm, and reflected off his face. She could tell he was working his way up to the Revelation. “Um,” he said awkwardly. “I—uh—I'm not really a shepherd…”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed the corner of his
mouth. “I know you aren't, silly. You're Hades. And the friend who was supposed to abduct me is Thanatos.”

His jaw dropped. He stared at her for a moment.

Now in this position, Zeus would have spluttered, and Poseidon just stared dumbly. But Hades was made of better stuff. After a moment, he began to chuckle.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

“Since about a month after we first met,” she replied, holding tight to his hand. “I knew you weren't mortal. And I knew there were only a limited number of gods you could be. Eros is in love with Psyche, Zeus wouldn't dare come near me for fear of Mother, Poseidon smells of fish no matter how much he washes, Apollo is too arrogant to disguise himself, Hermes could never control his need to pull pranks, Ares is…” She rolled her eyes, and he nodded. “And besides, he's besotted with Aphrodite. Hephaestus is besotted with Aphrodite too. Who did that leave? You or Dionysus. And you always left part of the wine in the jar when we picnicked.”

“And you don't mind? I mean…I'm old…” But the eyes he looked at her with were not old. They were as young as any shepherd lad with his first girl. That look only made her love him the more. “Old enough to be your father, surely. And my kingdom isn't the loveliest place in the cosmos, either. Well, with you in it, it would be, but…” He stammered to a halt.

“We're
immortal,”
she reminded him. “It doesn't matter how old you are, you'll still look like you do now in a hundred years, and then the difference between us will be insignificant. And anyway, it's not as if you were like Zeus, chasing after…well….”

“What do you—oh,” he replied, and a flush crept up his dark cheek. She giggled.

“Maybe I'm
not
old,” she said, “but I am fairly sure that I love you, whatever you call yourself. And I think you are certainly old enough to be sure you love
me.
”

“Oh, yes,” he said fervently, and if it hadn't been that this was a cave, the floor was cold and not very pleasant, and neither of them wanted Demeter to somehow find them before they got into his realm safely, they might just have torn the chitons off each other and consummated things then and there.

But Hades was not Zeus, and after breaking off the fevered kiss in which tongues and hands and bodies played a very great part, he stroked the hair off her damp brow, smiled and turned toward the back of the cave. With Hades holding her hand, a door appeared in the rock wall, as clear and solid a door as any in her mother's villa. It swung open as they approached, then swung shut behind them.

“Are we there yet?” she teased.

He laughed. “Almost. But Demeter can't follow us now.”

There was a long, rough-hewn passage with bright light at the end of it, which brought them out on the banks of a mist-shrouded river.

It was a sad, gray river, with a sluggish current, and had more of a beach of varying shades of gray pebbles than a “bank.” Mist not only covered its surface, it extended in every direction; you couldn't see more than a few feet into it. Tiny wavelets lapped at Persephone's bare feet. The water was quite cold, with a chill that was somehow more than mere temperature could account for.

“The Styx!” Persephone exclaimed, but Hades made a face.

“Everyone makes that mistake. It's the Acheron. The river of woe. The Styx, the river of hate, is the one that makes you invulnerable. When you see it, you won't ever mistake the one for the other. Look out—”

The warning came aptly, as a flood of wispy things, like mortals, but mortals made of fog, thronged them.

Spirits! Persephone had never actually seen a spirit, and she shrank back against Hades instinctively. There must have been thousands of them. They couldn't actually
do
anything to either her or Hades, but their touch was cold, and Persephone clutched Hades's comfortingly solid bicep. “What are they?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper—but still loud enough to sound like a shout over the faint susurrus of the voices of the spirits, too faint for her to make out anything of what they were saying. They tried, fruitlessly, to pluck at her hem, at her sleeves, to get her attention. “Why are they here?”

“They're the poor, the friendless. They're stuck on this side of the Acheron. Charon charges a fee to take them over, everyone knows that. You're supposed to put a coin in the mouth of the dead person when you bury him so the dead can pay the ferryman's fee. It's not much, but if they don't have it…” Hades's voice trailed off as she gave him a stricken look. She glanced at the poor wispy things, and their forlorn look practically broke her heart.

“I have my standards, you know
.” The sepulchral voice coming out of the mist made her jump and yelp, and the poor ghosts shrank back from the river's edge. Hades turned toward the river in irritation.