Alcestis (16 page)

“This grows tiresome,” Persephone said. “My lord has told you that your sister is not fresh in his mind. He does not lie about the dead, Alcestis. You cannot ask more of him. If I can help you, I shall, but I know no more than you. The realm of the dead is full of lost siblings. Did you think your sister would be waiting for you at the river’s edge?”

“I thought I would be able to find her.” A swell of feeling came over me, of the sort that might have preceded tears. I put my hand to my cheek, expecting it to be wet, but my fingers pushed into dry softness and I shuddered. “I must find her.”

“Why this urgency?” Persephone asked. She looked tense; I hadn’t seen that expression before, a crinkling around the corners of her eyes that made her look mortal and worried—as if she harbored fears that could oppress her adamantine heart.

“Do you truly not understand?” I asked, disbelieving.

She shook her head slowly. The piece of golden hair fell along her cheek again, brushing at the edge of her mouth.

“Did your goddess mother wait to search for you when you disappeared?”

“She did,” Hades said, and Persephone and I turned in surprise. “She asked the help of Zeus first, and that is how I won.”

He sat languidly on the stone bench, the line of his mouth set. How strange it was—a god sitting before me, lord of all I was, and I had not looked at him since Persephone had begun her speech. I hadn’t hidden my eyes out of fright or respect; I’d just ignored him, as Persephone did, more easily than I had ever ignored Admetus. He exerted no force on me and demanded no attention, and fearsome as Persephone was, his blank patience unnerved me more.

I began to speak, but he waved me quiet.

“It is the truth, and my wife would be wise to admit it.”

Persephone too was momentarily silenced.

“Speak, wife,” he said. “I do not forbid it.”

She gave him a look that seemed to say, as if you could forbid it. When she spoke, she directed her words to me: “My mother knew her place. And you, Alcestis of Pherae, you ought to know yours.”

I saw myself perched on her lap like a petted child, my mouth moving and my eyes alight with joy. She’d have me tell my story until she was satisfied, and she would never be satisfied. She’d train me to speak on her command, laugh on her command, breathe on her command. The brush of her hand against my wrist would restrain me and the brilliance of her smile reward me. I would be her maiden.

I took a step back blindly, and the vision disappeared. Persephone was frowning, a slight wrinkle between her neat brows, and her eyes were storm dark. She shifted, cloth whispering, and Hades seized the back of her neck as if she were a kitten, his hand buried in her golden hair. Her mouth came open slightly, but she made no sound, and he said nothing either.

“I thank you,” I said in a faint voice, “for your hospitality, my lord, my lady. But I must go.”

I fled the megaron. The hallway seemed ever dimmer, as if clouds had gathered outside the translucent walls of the palace, but I ran through it and burst into the entry hall and out through the doors to the courtyard. The familiar tug in my chest tightened to a wrench as Persephone called me back to her. But I would not go.

The adamantine gate shrieked when I passed beneath it. Down the road I ran, up the crest of a hill I hadn’t seen before. The landscape had changed. At the edge of the hill I stood and looked out across the asphodel fields, at the crop of shades swaying mindlessly through the flowers. The Acheron flowed black in the distance. I thought of Hermes there, across the river, slipping in and out of the underworld with shades wrapped in his cloak. If I crept to the riverbank, past the sad hound in his cave, would the ferryman take me across? I could show him the pink prints of Persephone’s fingers as my fare. Then I would wait for Hermes among the shades and beg him when he landed with some newly dead girl, beg him to take me back. I’d hide in a cave for the rest of my years if I must, never see my husband again, nor his parents, nor my brothers, never see Pherae or Iolcus. I’d be silent all my life.

I raised my eyes to the blurry ceiling of the underworld, but Hermes did not come.

If I could find some face that had not crumbled into senselessness. If I could find my father’s mother, once more. If I could find Hippothoe—

I cried out my sister’s name.

No one answered. I called again, my voice coming harsh from my throat, loud as a shout in battle. This was my battle, and I did not care if the gods in the palace heard me, if they paused to marvel at the depth of my sadness. I would call, and she would come. It was simple. How had I not thought to try this before?

“Hippothoe,” I called, “Hippothoe, it is your sister—come!”

Then I heard another name called in the distance, an Achaean name, a man’s name. There was another stretching silence, and just as it grew hollow, a man cried out for a woman. Then came another shout, the sound of the names achingly similar— another, this time a man’s name, and then three names in succession, each ending in a swallowed sob as a mother bellowed for her lost children.
Where have you gone?
she moaned.
Where
have you all gone?

Before her pleas ended, another howl had begun. Names rose across the underworld like wisps of flame, burning and smothering in an instant, never answered by a shout of recognition or a screech of joy.

In the field of asphodel, I lay down and listened to the dead voices calling.

12

THE ASPHODEL BENT over me like the arch of a vault. I lay with my hands flat over my eyes, slivers of gray light sliding between my knuckles. Some of the names sounded familiar, but surely it was only the system of naming among the Achaeans—surely I didn’t know as many of the mourned dead as I thought—surely I couldn’t know so many.

The calling of names slowed, then ceased, one last wail dying in the still atmosphere:
Larisa
, cried some woman, some sister or mother or lover. I had known a Larisa in Iolcus, a village girl who’d drawn Acastus’s eye, with a head of soft black curls and eyebrows like straight painted lines of kohl. For months I had seen her around the palace, waiting in the courtyard or by the gate, never speaking to anyone but my brother. She’d borne him a child. I remembered the head maid talking of it to one of the slave girls; the babe had been sickly, and they’d said she’d never find a husband among the village men. The slave girl had whispered: perhaps she’ll try the god of the sea.

I tried to imagine what it would be like when I found Hippothoe: how delighted she would be, how loud her laugh would sound in this quiet darkness. She would look as I remembered her, all bones and curls and joy, and she would throw her arms about me at once, and I would not slip through her embrace like mist, nor would she slip through mine.

I knew I should rise at once and go to find her. I should walk across the underworld, determined and untiring, until she appeared in my path. In my wanderings I would seem no different from the other shades stumbling aimless through the fields.

I couldn’t make myself stand. I was afraid of the shades; I was afraid of finding Hippothoe, even as I wanted nothing more than to find her. If I loved her, I thought, if I truly loved her, I would’ve found her already. The next thought blossomed in my mind like a poison-petaled flower: if she loved me, she would have found me.

I scrambled up from the dusty ground. But when I stepped out of the asphodel field onto the road, I took only a few strides before stopping, unsure which way to go.

I turned back toward the palace, the fortress, their stronghold. I felt Persephone’s thrall, and I hated myself for sitting lumpen and stupid in her power. But still I wanted her near me, wanted her to help me and hold me.

“For what do you wait, my lady?” The voice was pitched like a youth’s, but coarse with age. An old man’s shade leaned on a staff, one arm hooked around it as if he still needed it to bear some of his weight. He was gaunt as a sail stretched by wind, and his shift hung slack from his sloping shoulders, but his beaky nose and narrow face remained unblurred. He had spoken as if he knew me, but I did not know him.

He stood waiting for my answer, his mouth half open in an expectant smile; he had died without losing his teeth. He was looking over my right shoulder, not at my face nor even at my hands, as a shy man might have done. I took a step away from him and he tilted his head as if listening. His eyelids fluttered and his mouth opened and closed with a slick little sound, but still he gazed toward me with his hatchling’s smile, his hopeful and unfamiliar face.

He was blind.

“Who are you?” I asked him, before remembering that he might not know his own name. “What were you called, when you lived?”

The old man’s eyes found my face. “Tiresias,” he said, and his eyelashes flittered again when I flinched in surprise. I’d heard his name when I was alive, but I’d known it as a word in a song, something to be painted beneath a figure on a vase: Tiresias the seer, an idea unconnected to the man. He continued, “Also the seer, also the blind man, also the woman. As you are called Alcestis, also the sacrifice, also the wife. And what do they call you, those who live within?” His eyes slid away toward the palace. “You would like to go back, I think.”

He was right. I wanted to return to the palace, wanted to hear the goddess call for me, to feel that pull inside my rib cage. I’d been wishing for it even harder than I had been wishing for my sister’s presence. I looked down at the ground, ashamed.

“Come, come,” he said in his hybrid voice. “This is not my purpose.” He was a rare shade, to have a purpose, to remember it.

“Say what is your purpose then,” I said. “Or tell me mine. I think I have lost it.”

The old seer came closer and reached out with his free hand as if he intended to touch my arm. I drew back. Even in the low light of the underworld, I could see the milky film in his eyes. His gray hair hung lank. For a moment I thought he resembled Admetus’s father, and then I chided myself—they were both old and frail, that was all. They looked no more alike than Phylomache and I had, both being young women. But they did share a look of frustration and weariness.

“You do not understand,” Tiresias said. “I cannot speak to you so clearly, though I would tell you truth. I will say what I can and it will not be enough, but it may serve.”

I was growing frustrated too. “I do not see what you mean.”

“No,” he said, grimly amused. Then he said: “This morning at dawn I dropped a sword in the river.”

“What?”

“This morning at dawn I dropped a sword in the river.” He spoke forcefully, but his words still made no sense to me. He had not been a warrior or a king.

“Grandsire, I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t look for swords—I am looking for my sister. Can you tell me where to find her?”

This time he shook his head, mouth tightly clenched. There was a long pause. I looked back toward the palace. Would she never call me in?

“The wind shall come and knock the eggs from the nest.”

I waited.

“They will split on the ground,” he said anxiously. “The eggs will split. Do you see?”

I realized why I had thought he looked like Admetus’s father: they shared the exhaustion of struggling to force a distorted mouth to form language or to coax a prophecy from a cursed tongue. This was the oracle’s anguish. “I see,” I said. “Tell me what you can, Grandsire.”

He lifted his head, and though his pale eyes were difficult to read, I thought he looked grateful. “The first arrow may not be so bad, but the second one pierces deeply,” he said.

There were no weapons here, save Hades’ spear and the ghostly blades of the heroes in Elysium. I nodded, realized he could not see me nod, and said, “Yes. Is that all? Can you tell me more?”

“That is not all,” he said, shifting his grip on the staff and thumping it on the ground in frustration. “That is not all.”

His anger worried me. What more had he to tell me? What might I possibly need to know here, other than how to find Hippothoe? “Grandsire,” I said, “my sister—”

“No,” he barked. “Guard the fruit,” he said. “You must be wary.”

“Of the fruit? In the garden?”

“Yes,” he hissed, obviously relieved to be able to answer. “The snake coils within the flesh, waiting to strike.”

“That I know,” I said, relieved in turn. Was that all he sought to warn me against? “The queen herself has shown me the fruit, and eaten it before me, and tried to tempt me with it, but I’ll have none.”

Tiresias bowed his head silently, his brows drawing together in worry. My relief faded. I had been proud of myself for resisting the pomegranate, but I’d had no stomach for the fruit. That was no great triumph. And here was the seer, struggling, still trying to tell me of some danger that had followed me into the underworld.

“You unnerve me, Grandsire,” I whispered, and the old man laughed, a weary sound, and pressed one hand to his stomach as if the laughter pained him.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “For that you must pardon me. I cannot help it. To you I must speak all wisdom and no sense.”

“I’m sure your words will aid me,” I said uncertainly.

“Then you are more certain than I.”

“Grandsire, my sister,” I said again.

Tiresias lifted his head, his eyes like pits of mist. “I cannot help you,” he said.

He turned away, feeling the ground before him with his staff. I felt I should rush to him and lead him, for even in the underworld the ground had dips and rocks and other dangers, but he continued down the road without erring, as easily as if he could see.

I watched him until he’d vanished into the muddle of shades traveling the road, another gray figure among a gray host. I thought over what he’d said: swords and bird’s nests and arrows, fruit in the garden. He’d talked of loss and wariness, as if the dead had anything left to be stolen. Knocked to the ground and split open, he’d said. I’d been split open when Hippothoe died, and when the wound had closed and the scar had formed I had become impenetrable. Nothing could get in.

I couldn’t dismiss him, couldn’t forget what he had said. He was Tiresias, the seer, who had spoken to men who now graced the benches of the Elysian feast or curled despondent in Tartarean cells. He must know more than I.

And yet, for all his warnings, I thought, he had not told me to beware of the palace.

I walked toward it. The gods were inside, I knew; the palace looked different when they inhabited it, the smoky color of the walls lighter and more reflective. Their presence lit the building from its center, where they burned on their twin thrones.

I wouldn’t go to Persephone’s garden, but surely I might go into the palace to wait in the great hall. They would not grudge me that; any weary traveler could rest in a hall for a while. I could tell Persephone of Tiresias’s strange pronouncements. She would be pleased, I thought, to know that he accorded her such a dangerous role in my story. She’d be thrilled to play the part.

I ducked quickly beneath the silent gate, hoping to avoid waking it—I thought of it now as a great metallic beast—and went to the great doors of the palace. I pulled lightly, but they held fast. Again I pulled. The doors would not admit me.

I looked out through the gate to the asphodel fields, biting down on my lip, though it only stung a little. Fury rose in my throat and sank into a chill drain of humiliation. So they would not let me in—so Tiresias had warned me for nothing. So I was to go and take my place among the shades on the road, the nameless wanderers, the mass of dead, and when I began to forget what Tiresias had said and what Hippothoe’s laugh sounded like and why I had given up my life for Admetus, perhaps then Persephone would emerge from her crystalline hold and seek me out. Perhaps she would seize me, as Hades had seized her, and sigh over the sad conclusion of her favorite tale.

I turned toward the forest behind the palace; I couldn’t stand the idea of walking that road again. I would look for Hippothoe among the trees. She would not like the crowds of dead in the fields; they would make her uncomfortable, the way they gathered and nudged like lambs.

I walked along the side of the palace, skimming the wall with my fingertips, the stone just a faint chill. I went beyond the length of the central hallway and came to the palace’s end. From the outside it seemed dismal and small, more like a tomb than a citadel. I turned the corner and looked into the bleak woods, the dull spaces between the dead trunks, the dull shade forms within them. Beside me the palace wall split and a window grated open.

I meant to walk by without looking in, but I heard something as I passed—a crackle in the air like Zeus contemplating a pitch of lightning. I looked and I stopped and I leaned on the ledge of the window, dizzy, my fingers curled over the stone.

They had not bothered to change the feast table back into thrones, though they’d swept the platters onto the floor. Hades lay upon the table, his head dangling over the edge nearest the window and his black hair streaming down, and he was moaning like a speared beast, a long, slow cry pushed out of his chest. Why had I not heard him from the courtyard? How could the walls have kept in that sound? And Persephone—the queen of the underworld sat astride her husband as if he were a beast, her head thrown back and her golden hair spread silky over her bare breasts. Their bodies were the color of milk. Her brilliant eyes were lidded and sharp teeth flickered in her open mouth. She bent, hiding her face, and Hades howled. I gripped the window ledge harder. A tremble started in my stomach and slipped to my thighs, between them.

They were moving. She was moving. I’d done that, to sate my husband; my hips knew those motions. But we were no gods, and I hadn’t moved so fast that my body blurred, hadn’t hauled my husband up and pushed him down so hard his head cracked against a table. There was a slick of blood on Persephone’s ribs, a seeping mark on Hades’ neck. Darkness slid over their skin like roiling clouds.

I saw his hand on her hip, the press of his fingers into her flesh. She was lean as a boy but for the curves of her breasts, sleek flanked and narrow and filled with frantic energy. Hades, beneath her, was beneath my notice. I saw him only as the cause of her pleasure and her fury. And she was furious as a tempest, chanting something, words I could not understand that sounded like curse and prayer at once. I would’ve given all the wisdom of Tiresias’s warnings to know the words that fell from her lips. She had her hands in Hades’ hair now, her chin tilted up and her long, fine neck glowing white, no adornment there but sweat, and when Hades surged up to kiss her, I wanted to kill him for hiding her from my sight.

Did her lips still taste of the fruit? If he bit at her tongue, would her blood have the sweet savor of pomegranates? I watched the twisting of her limbs and the twisting of her face, her beautiful clear features going taut and sharp. Never did I think: I should not be watching. Never did I think: what I’m seeing is wrong. It was more beautiful than anything I had ever seen mortals do.

The walls of the palace grew brighter, brighter. Persephone’s voice had gone high, spiraling. Hades convulsed beneath her and she screamed and stilled, her eyes flying open, gray shot through with flame. She saw me. Perhaps she had seen me before; perhaps she had been waiting for me, as I had been waiting for her. Her lips closed and opened, wet, shiny.

Alcestis
, she mouthed, and the room exploded in light.

The window trembled and slammed shut. I pulled my hand away just in time to save my fingers and stumbled back—but I hit something and spun with a gasp. A silent gray crowd was gathered behind me, watching the flickers and bursts of light within the palace. I was only one of them, part of the audience. When she said my name it was a song, a performance meant to draw me in. I could trust nothing from her mouth.