– they've kept the truth / about Persephone a secret / burying it deep below –

 

”I must go soon,” she whispers.

”Do not,” he answers, and counts her ribs with steady fingers. She stays. It is warm beneath the earth, and she is as a flame. He; what she consumes.

.

He sits on an ebony throne. Wherever she walks she crushes bones beneath her bare feet. They turn to splinters, to ash, to dust. She smiles. He does not often smile. The job does not lend itself to humour, not to him. He has handsome features all the same: a strong jaw, a hawk-like nose and dark eyes. The line of his lips fall easily into a frown. She enjoys him. Enjoys most when he watches her, rather than their kingdom. When he does, he smiles.

Once, he told her of their averted eyes and the names they would mumble to appease him: Clymenus, Polydegmon, Eubuleus, in fear that his true name would call him to them. That he would ascend on them with all the wrath the stories hold. He spoke of Olympus too. The gods none the better with their glances of disgust and nothing further. Loneliness, he said. She laughed. She grasped his chin in her hand and whispered in his ear. ”Look at them, husband. Look at the mortals who fear and worship you. Look at the Gods who do the same. They do not look at you because they worry you will look back.”

She pressed her lips against his and stained them red.

”Stare them down,” she said, ”eat their hearts.”

.

She has many worshippers. People who walk the earth with songs and sacrifice just for her. None are as talented or dedicated as he; who would with her permission press her down onto their bed and give her more than a kingdom of bones. More than any mortal could. ”Hades,” she sighs.

It always was unclear who conquested whom.

.

He is singing. For moments unmeasurable in time, here where it does not pass as much as punish, she listens. His voice is damp earth and overflowing riches. He is more, more, more. In his hand the little green bud quivers and opens; a child’s blinking eye. Beneath her bones, blood thrums in recognition.

”I must go soon,” she says. His hand falls the flower falls, he bows his neck. She places her hand there. ”Sing to your flowers, husband, they do enjoy you.”

”I will sing until you return,” He says. Their eyes meet.

”You cannot.” She digs her fingers into his neck and places her forehead against his temple. ”How will the guilty ever respect you?”

He smiles and his smile is hers, at any moment it might burst from her veins dressed in thorns. ”I will sing from a throne in the kingdom of the dead.”

”Hades,” she says, and in the upperworld snow lies heavy and cold. “I must go soon,” she says, and the world starts to melt.

.

She walks. Beneath her feet are no bones, just dark and damp earth. Where she lingers flowers stretch up through rock and mud towards her. They are ready. They have been waiting. The air is sharp and she exhales pumping adrenaline. The trees around her quiver in excitement and when she laughs, here, birds turn their faces towards her. Their beady eyes light up. They ruffle their feathers and take to the sky; the sun is nothing on her.

”Persephone,” her mother says. She pretends not to hear. She is listening to the music that makes the world stretch up its arms and creak and sigh. Wake up. Wake up. Bees have started to land on her arms. If she places her hand on the grass, new new new grass green and sweet and weeping, she imagines she hears his song too: rumbling in the deep caverns where spring has hid.

She aches for him, but flowers are winding around her ankles and bees are tickling her ears, and she is glad.

”Spring is late this season,” Demeter says.

”Spring was having sex in hell.”

Her mother frowns. Persephone kisses her cheek and leaves the colour of life on her skin. An eagle cries in victory and tumbles through the warm air. He knows what glory is come. ”I must go now, mother. Helios is smiling and I have many things to create.”

She does not think they understand. Vines wrap around her skin, thorns dig deep to find blood, her feet thump the rapid earth and it grows and grows and grows. She does not think they can smell the earth on the leaves the way that she does. Doubts that they can touch a petal and sense the flesh and blood it used to be. Spring is violent, and hungry. Death is not an effect, it’s a cause. A bud opens in Hades’ cradling hand and when she walks on the green ground, she is walking on her husband.

“There is only death there,” her mother had said, once.

“No. There is all the rest.”

She dances under every sky she can find, and there are a lot of them. Dances until she can barely see through the foliage dressing her. In women’s hair she places flowers, and they dance with her. Even though they cannot see her they know she is there and her presence gives them absolution. Catharsis. Where she picks the flowers, the roots grow an eager new one. They all wish to prove themselves. We can create, the animals say, and search for each other, filling the air with mating calls; we can grow, the trees say, and wherever anyone looks there is green, and fruit, and nuts. More, more, more, they say.

.

“Dread Persephone,” they whisper, those who dare. All the others say Kore, Melitodes, Aristi Cthonia. Awful Persephone, they whisper, and in the next breath honour and thank her.

.

The gods squabble. Zeus rapes a mortal. As Hera’s rage takes the form of petty and terrible vengeance, Persephone sighs.

Earth is bursting at the seams. She crushes an apple in her hand because she can. When the little black seeds touch her skin, they burst and unfurl and become. Six apples fall out of her hand and where they land she knows new trees will soon grow. Abundance, no one is hungry. Except for the Queen of Hades.

.

”You are weary and restless,” her mother tells her. ”Look at the trees, the colour is draining from them.”

She weaves a wreath of flowers to bring to her husband. Aconite, crocus, lily, larkspur. Her husband has his favourite flowers and she likes to indulge him. No asphodel, however. There is enough asphodel in the underworld, she keeps telling him.

”Must you leave so soon?”

Soon. Two of the three have almost passed. The wreath starts sprouting purple blossoms in her hands and she smiles. He will enjoy them.

”I will miss you, mother,” she looks up at her. She is beautiful; as abundant and giving and terrible as she was when she scoured the earth in rage searching for her daughter. Persephone may bring life to the earth, but her mother is the harvest. She is the beauty and life and glory and mother of civilisation. Every table is her pyre, every meal is her offering, every child is her child. It is not always the simplest thing, being the daughter of a mother. ”My husband longs for my return.” She says. Somewhere a leaf falls playfully to the ground. She can feel it. She will never know the taste of what follows. Her tongue will be drenched in the taste of him.

.

“Mother, you never learn.”

Demeter is angry. A cold wind rips at their clothes. Her mother thinks she owns her. Olympus thinks she will deign to bend. Hades knows better.

“They whisper my name in both fear and worship. I am both flower and bone. My mouth and hands are stained with red and he gave me half his kingdom. You think my bed is cold. You think my husband stole me from you. You are wrong. He saw in me the hunger which you cannot see, and he offered himself. I will walk the underworld and consume it. I will know what it is to destroy. I will grind life to dust between my willing teeth and drink the blood of the damned. He will be just, I will be cruel. And next you to go Olympus look around and see: they will turn away from us as we sleep with the souls of the dead. But we will sleep far better.

“Watch me, mother. Watch me rule. And then ask me again to stay. I wonder if you would still have me, when you know how I long to eat the world raw.”

.

His face is stern as he stands, watching the river Akheron, hand placed on the back of the beast. This is a god, she thinks, and he is mine. Cerberus has noticed her already. One of his heads is turned towards her and he bares his teeth in welcome.

Bones start to crack under her as she walks. How she missed them. His eyes go to her and– “Persephone.” It is a prayer, a chant of worship. “You are returned to me,” he says, and tastes like pomegranates under her lips. Soft lips, sharp teeth, warm tongue. She places the crown of woven flowers on his head. She runs her hands through his hair. He smiles.

”I have sung you a new garden,” he says.

“Do not mind they won’t say your name, husband,” she tells him, “Hades is mine.”