Radiant Darkness (6 page)

   I must be turning pale because she nods and says in a gentler voice, "I know. Death, decay—they make me shudder, too. I don't know why your dreams sent this image, but it doesn't belong here. Just pull out the threads and start over. No harm done."

   I barely hear her. I need to know more. "Have you been there?"

   "The underworld? Certainly not. It's closed to all the gods but Hermes, who guides mortal shades to its borders. Hermes—and his companion Death."

   "What's it like?"

   "Stop it," she says, as if she were talking to a toddler. "This morbid curiosity is unbecoming in a girl." She waves a hand toward the gate and the groves beyond. "
This
is your world: olives, lavender, poplars, figs. This is all you need to know. You're safe here. Undo this weaving now, and all will be well."

Undo it? My best work ever?

   "But Mother, the eyes, the teeth, aren't they good? Can't you see the power in them?"

   "You don't need that kind of power."

   She snatches the shuttle from my hand and starts to pull out the golden thread. Row by row. Soon the blazing eyes will be gone forever.

   "Don't!"

   I grab her hand and try to pull out the shuttle. She's got it by both hands now and she's pulling and I'm pulling. Her breath is short and her eyes are blasting fire, and here come those damn thunderclouds on the horizon and that stupid wind carrying the scent of rain, and
I don't care
. I won't let go.

   "Give it to me!" I shout.

   "Never!"

   With one hand I'm holding the yarn, trying to keep it in the weaving, and with the other I'm grabbing the shuttle, and then—snap!—the yarn breaks and my mother and I tumble back out of the shade into the glaring sun. We're both panting, staring at each other. She's won the shuttle with the golden thread. She looks at it with disgust, then throws it on the ground. She stalks into the house.

   I'll pay for this later. I know I will. The wind is so strong this time. But even in its threat, it carries the smell of the lake, and something else. Something sweeter. The scent of narcissus, blowing over from the meadow.

   I go back under the overhang into the cool shade. The loom is a wreck. The fabric is snagged, the remnants of the pattern pulled askew. And all the hanging threads, the ones that show you where you're going, are tangled.

S
he appears at my door, all golden hair and floating white dress.

   "You may leave your room now. I hope this experience has taught you a lesson."

   "Yes, Mother. I'm sorry."

   Anything she wants to hear, I'll say. Anything that will get me back to the meadow before another day goes by.

   All yesterday I was trapped in this room, watching the sun rise, and peak, and set. Staring out the window with nothing to do but repeat his name over and over and over. Hades, Lord of the Dead.

   The name he never told me. And I know why. Again, I picture Leda and her amorous swan, and a bitter taste fills my mouth.

   "I think I'll go down to the lake," I say, feigning indifference, "if that's all right with you."

   She stands aside to let me pass. "Yes. Thank you for letting me know."

   I stroll out the door and down the path, trying to look nonchalant.

   The air is stifling, full and floral, and I want to clear it away with a knife. I glance back. The house is out of sight, so I walk faster.

   Hades. Ruler of every mortal shade and one-third of all creation. I intrigue him, do I? My hands clench into fists.

We have some talking to do.

I burst past the plum trees into the meadow. Hades is sitting on the edge of his chariot, smiling. Then he sees my face and stands. Abastor looks over and flicks his ears warily.

   "I know who you are." My voice is as taut as an overstretched rope.

   "Good."

   How can he look so calm? He takes a step toward me; I take two back.

   "Good?" My fists tighten at my sides. "How can you say that? You never even told me your name, and now I know why! You were deceiving me! Letting me think you were some river god, just like Zeus with his little disguises. You were lying!"

   He shakes his head, but his eyes stay on mine. "I never lied to you."

   He walks up to me and takes my hand, trying to open my fingers. I yank my hand back.

   "Nothing is complete with just one side," he says, pressing closer. "You said so yourself. You stroked the earth as if you heard it calling from below. But now that you know who I am, you fear me, hate me, like all the rest of them. And you wonder why I waited to tell you my name?"

   Now his face is only inches from mine; his words, relentless.

   "I'm used to scorn. Gods and mortals alike shun what they can't see. They don't want to think about the fragile thread binding body to soul. They hear a sick woman's wail and they think of me. They bury a maimed soldier and they think of me. They call me lord of the maggot and rotting flesh. And you wonder why I waited to tell you my name?"

   He pauses, lifting a tender hand to my cheek. When he speaks again, his voice is suddenly intimate. "But I thought you, and you alone, understood. I heard you say it yourself: everything needs change. Life needs death to quicken against. Yes, I waited to say my name, waited for you to know me as I am. But how can you say I deceived you?"

I'm starting to melt toward his hand. I force myself to

turn away, gathering my anger around me like armor. Then I whirl back to face him.

   "Why don't you go try that smooth voice on someone else?" I say. "Fear? No! But if I'd known who you are, I would have seen the rest of it, too. You're not serious about me! No, a lord like you—with a third of all existence to rule—you need a r
eal
queen by your side. Someone who knows about power, and palaces, and the ways of mortals and gods!"

   I glance down at my bare feet, my simple linen chiton. Then I glare back up into his eyes.

   "There I was, just floating along on your charm, all innocent, not thinking beyond the next second by your side, the next touch of your hand. But as soon as I heard your name . . ." My voice drops low, a whisper of breeze in the storm's lull. "That's when I knew you'd never take me with you. And I realized that's what I wanted all along."

   How
dare
he smile? The storm whips up again. I step closer, my fist raised to pound on his chest, and now I'm shouting at him: furious, humiliated, devastated by my loss.

   "So you've been playing with me, that's all! Waiting for me to ripen, like a plum, until I was ready to kiss you—or more!—and then you'd be gone. As if I were a toy! A game! That's it, isn't it? Well, isn't it?"

   He doesn't answer, just grabs me. And then he's pressing into me, wrapping me in arms as strong as bronze, and his mouth is on mine, hot and hungry, filling me until everything else disappears—the meadow, my anger—and this is all I want. It's all I want forever.

"Persephone." His voice is soft and deep and endless. "I came here for one reason only: to ask you to be my queen."

   He runs a broad hand down my back, and when it's at the base of my spine, he pulls me even closer. He chuckles softly in my ear. "Do you know how hard it was for me to wait? I wanted to toss you in that chariot the moment I saw you and finish convincing you later."

   Yes, I think. Kiss me now; convince me later.

   He tilts his head so he can look in my eyes. "But I couldn't. You had to know me first as a man, not a god. Because you have to choose to come with me. Otherwise your power might not survive the crossing, and I'd be a fool to risk losing that. I want all of you."

   "My power?"

   I must look confused. He gently loosens his hold.

   "Let me show you something."

   He raises a hand and points at a tree by the meadow's edge. In front of my eyes, the tree turns brown: leaves shrivel and flutter and fall in piles, branches crack and shatter on the ground, the trunk collapses into fragments and dissolves into swirling motes of dust. A few seconds, and it's gone.

   Two brown leaves settle near my feet.

Hades looks at me carefully. "That's my realm. Death."

   I pick up one of the shriveled leaves and rub it between my fingers.

   "But you!" he says eagerly. "You have the opposite power, a bursting green energy, the power in the fresh shoot just starting to uncurl."

   I shake my head, but he keeps going.

   "Together, we make the cycle complete. And that means more power than either of us has alone. No, I don't need a sophisticated goddess, and neither does my realm. I need you."

   He lifts my hand and unfolds my fingers. The edge of the leaf is tinted with the slightest shimmer of green.

   "But that happens all the time," I protest. "It's just the vale! The power you want, the energy—that's my mother, not me."

   "Does your mother have these eyes?" he asks, his hand near my temple. I shake my head. "This lithe body?" The hand runs down my side. "This mouth?" His finger traces my lips. Again I shake my head.

   "Then I'll take my chances," he says. "Because you're the one I want."

   The next kiss sweeps the world clean away—his arms enveloping me, his breath filling me, the feel of his skin and his mouth and his beard and his hands. . . .

   "Come with me now," he murmurs in my ear. "Be my queen. I'll set a golden crown on your raven hair."

A crown? Me?

   He sees my expression and laughs. "Don't worry. Ruling is easy. I'll teach you." He pauses, then adds, "But there is one more thing I should tell you. When you come, there's no returning to Earth. It's forever."

   Forever. I don't like that word.

   "I don't see why," I say. "Hermes crosses back and forth when he wants."

   "Not when he wants; when he has souls to guide."

   Abastor snorts impatiently. Hades glances up. He puts his arm behind me and turns me firmly in the horse's direction.

   "Some things I can't control," he continues. "I can't come to Earth whenever I want, either. The rules stretched so I could fetch you home; they won't bend again." He starts guiding me toward the chariot. "And what's the need? We want to be with each other, forever."

   He's in total command, so sure of what he wants. So sure what I should do—

   No! This time I'm going to make my own choice. I stop and he has to stop with me.

   "I need time to think," I say.

   "Don't think too much." He leans in close so his soft voice fills me. He knows his power. "Come now."

   His words pull me in, his arms enfold me; my body is already saying yes. But somehow I reach deep and find enough brain to say, "Tomorrow I'll tell you yes or no."

I
move away from the dark window and slide two brooches from my shoulders, weighing one in each hand.

   This one—the one in this hand is my bed, the same bed I've slept in forever. It's my trunk, my mirror with a handle shaped like Aphrodite, these covers I wove. It's Kallirhoe's gentle stream and Ianthe's perfume. It's the way the air sparkles when Galaxaura blows the mist away.

   And the other—the other hand feels light with not knowing. What is it like down there in the underworld? Dark, smoke-filled caverns, maybe, lit by flickering torches and filled with moaning, writhing human souls? He called them shades—I bet they don't even look human anymore. How does anyone rule over puffs of smoke? I should have asked. I seem to be good at not asking.

   I drop my closed palms to my sides and walk the six steps to the other wall, turn, and walk back, trying to imagine a crown on my head.

   But Hades is no phantom. He's solid and real. He's what matters, not all the rest. I close my fingers tighter around that brooch, and now both hands are weighted as I walk and turn, walk and turn.

   It's much later when my mother passes the door and sees me pacing. A line of concern wanders across her brow.

   "Is something the matter?" she asks.

   "The matter? Nothing's the matter."

   I try to wash all the feelings off my face and leave it as clear as the lake.

   "It's late, past your bedtime. Why are you still up? Something must be troubling you. Let me help."

   She has a hopeful expression, almost pitiful in its eagerness for me to let her in. She's really trying. I know she is.

   But if I tell her . . .

   His kiss sweeps over me again, so strong I have to struggle to stay on my feet. If I tell her, that's what I'm giving up: that kiss, those eyes burning into me. Not to mention any chance of ever living my own life.

   "Is it Admete, dear? Is that what's bothering you?"

   And then I know. I've made up my mind.

   "Your cheeks are flushed." She walks over and places her cool palm on my forehead. "You should spend tomorrow in bed, resting."

   She pulls back the coverlet and steps aside for me to lie down. She pulls the covers up to my chin. "Sleep is what you need."

   I let her kiss my brow. Then it hits me: this is it. I'll never see her again. I grab her hand and press it to my cheek.

   "Well!" she says, smiling. "Good night, Persephone."

   Softly, too softly for her to hear, I whisper, "Good-bye."

Across the field in morning sunlight, hugging the trees and vines, slipping into their shadows, staying far from the path that passes by Kallirhoe's stream. I hear laughter down by the lake, the splash of an oar, voices rising and falling like ripples. I hurry in the other direction. They mustn't see me, call to me, ask me where I'm going. Up ahead, where the olive and plum trees open into meadow, I see the glare of light reflecting off gold. The chariot. Black horses grazing, their glossy coats shining in the sun. And Hades, pacing.