The older woman had always acted out of love for Persephone. There was no reason to question her motives or reasoning now. “Very well. Continue.”
Hekate took up the tale. “Once Hades had beaten Cerberus, it didn’t take him long to discover the terrible pull of the lodestone or that the only way to escape it was on horseback or riding in his chariot. I imagine you felt the draw of that rock in your time here?”
“I have. It’s . . . terrible,” Persephone said as she carefully washed Hades’s lower legs.
Hekate continued. “I heard, though I did not see, the mad dash Hades made for the Upper World that day. By the time I reached the road to see what caused such a tremendous noise, he was already on the ferry with his chariot and horses, poling his way across. I left the Underworld then to lift the burden of Hera’s persecution as much as I could from poor Alkmene and her babe, Herakles. I had not the time to wonder what happened to Hades but was surprised when I returned to the Underworld to find him here.”
Hekate handed Persephone a cloth with which to dry Hades. As their eyes met, Persephone asked, “Did he make his way to Olympus? And if he did, why didn’t he stay there?”
“Because he was still the ruler of this realm. So long as he’s Cerberus’s master he can’t bear to be out of this land for too long.”
Hekate’s words slayed a hope Persephone didn’t even know she had. “If I’m to be Hades’s wife, I must make my residence in this place?”
Hekate gave a single solemn nod.
Persephone closed her eyes for a moment. Then, opening them, she asked, “What was Hades doing when you returned to the Underworld?”
“Seeking out the mysteries of his kingdom by speaking to the Titans in Tartarus and ferreting out the few older Gods like me and his mother who had escaped Zeus’s wrath. None knew a great deal about the Underworld, but by putting their bits of information together Hades was able to come to an understanding of his realm. After that, he traveled to the Upper World, sought out the few men and women among the Achaeans who would consent to serve him, instructed them in proper burial rites, and exhorted them to spread the word among mortals so no shade would be abandoned on Styx’s banks. Upon his return to the Underworld, Hades judged the souls he’d already brought across the River Styx and sent them to whatever eternity they earned. Those who retained their building skills, he put to work on his palace and the Temple of Judgment. At the time of Aecus’s death, Hades placed him on the throne there. After that, Hades’s sole occupation was conveying shades across Styx which he did until Charon took up those duties.”
Persephone crossed to the other side of the bed, fetched the oil Hekate had conjured, and poured a little into her hands. “Why did Hades not simply use one of the shades to work the ferry?”
“I believe the duty filled his days and made them pass more quickly.”
Persephone settled herself next to Hades’s head and spread the oil over one of his shoulders. “Why then did Hades make Charon Immortal?”
Hekate dropped down on the bed by Hades’s feet. She remained silent for so long Persephone thought the old Goddess had slipped into sleep. “Hekate?”
“Patience.” Hekate huddled into her shawl and drew her arms tight around herself as though she felt chilled. “Hades’s original intent wasn’t for Charon to be the ferryman.”
“What purpose was he to serve then?”
“In seeking knowledge of the Underworld, Hades became friends with a river God here by the name of Kokytos. Kokytos had a daughter named Minthe with whom Hades formed an attachment.”
Here then was the mystery of the second woman solved. Hades had taken another nymph as a lover. Something must have gone very much awry between them long ago, however, for Hades had said Kokytos ended their friendship and Hades also stated he hadn’t been with a woman in many years. A seed of satisfaction sprouted in Persephone’s chest. Leuke and Minthe had held his regard for a time, but no other woman could or would ever mean as much to Hades as she.
Persephone shook herself free of her thoughts, concentrating once again on Hekate as the old woman continued speaking. “Minthe was … discontented with her lot. She hated living in the Underworld and longed to dwell among the Olympians. She believed a connection to Hades would provide her with the status to become part of that elite group. However, Hades was much too scrupulous to leave off his duties to live with her there. She told Hades that if another subdued Cerberus, Hades could make that person caretaker to this realm and Hades would be free rule it from afar. Hades refused to force some hapless mortal to the task and he and Minthe had many bitter arguments about it. When Charon ate the food of the dead, though he was a living being, Hades saw in him a way to free himself from his duties here and make Minthe happy. Hades went immediately to the Upper World to collect Charon and conveyed him to Zeus’s palace so Zeus could make Charon Immortal.
“Hades waited in the Underworld while the rite was performed. In that time, he was a different man, smiling, laughing, at ease in a way I’d never seen him. He and Minthe, for the first time, seemed truly content with one another. When Hades left to collect Charon, it was apparent he had already shaken the burden of the Underworld from his shoulders. I watched him go with trepidation for it is seldom so easy to escape one’s fate.” Hekate put out a hand. “Give me the oil. I need a task while I tell this next.”
Persephone passed the vial to Hekate. The old Goddess poured a small amount of oil on the leg farthest from her and began to work it into Hades’s skin. “I heard Hades return with Charon and hurried to the palace to wait their arrival. Hades called for Cerberus. Then all was silent for a very long time. So long I thought Charon had failed in his task. Then, I heard a cry of such great joy I thought my heart would break, and I knew the Underworld had gained a new guardian.”
“Why then is Charon not warden of this place?” Persephone asked.
“I’m coming to that.” When Hekate poured oil onto Hades’s other leg, her hand shook so that it spattered onto the bed. “They came to the palace. Hades made me known to Charon and asked me to advise and aid him in his new role. I agreed. Then, though it was getting onto dark, Hades and Minthe boarded Hades’s chariot and set out for Olympus. Charon bid me stay at the palace and retired to his bed. I was leery of the new ruler, however. There seemed a darkness about him in spite of the sheen of Immortality that overlayed his skin. It frightened me and I crept off to my cave to sleep instead. During the night I heard Charon calling for Cerberus. I have no way of knowing, but I believe he intended to command the beast’s serpents to bite me and put the water of the River Styx in my veins. I kept my peace and kept to my cave, wondering why Charon wanted me insensible for nine years.”
Hekate lowered her head and the light caught the angled bones in the older Goddess’s face, leaving her eye sockets and the hollows of her cheeks in pools of blackness. Persephone reclaimed the oil from where Hekate had placed it and began to anoint Hades’s chest, keeping her eyes down. Hades’s battered body was preferable to Hekate’s haunted visage.
Voice shaking, the old woman continued, “The next day, Charon went to the ferry as Hades had instructed. I followed, taking care not to be seen. When he reached Styx, rather than shuttle the shades, Charon merely sat on the bank and watched them. They called out for him to take them across. They begged. They wept. They tore at their hair and skin and flung themselves to the ground, rolling in paroxysms of grief and still he did nothing.”
Persephone raised horror filled eyes to Hekate’s face, too stunned to speak.
Abandoning her work on Hades’s legs, Hekate pulled her shawl more tightly about her. “I couldn’t understand it, for the agony the shades feel he felt also, but he seemed to take some sort of malformed satisfaction from their pain and his own. The next day he traveled to the River Lethe where those sentenced to the asphodel meadow partake of its water if they wish. He commanded Cerberus to bring down any who attempted to drink and again he squatted, watching, like some monstrous, misshapen toad, as the shades were brought to the very depths of despair by his denial of their one mercy. And so, it continued. Day after day he caused greater torment and misery to those who already suffered under the burden of so much.”
Hekate’s entire body trembled. Persephone left off her ministrations to Hades, drew closer to Hekate, and ran a soothing hand up and down her back, as the older woman had done so often for Persephone when they lived together in Henna and Persephone was in need of comfort.
Seeming to take strength from the contact, Hekate calmed enough to go on. “Charon made his way to Tartarus and found there all the blood and pain and anguish he could ever desire to satiate his dark need. I left him then, intending to go to Hades and tell him all that had befallen those whose plight he had worked so hard to lessen, but I found I couldn’t leave. My abhorrence of this place had grown so great the lodestone now held power over me. I hid in the palace, shifting from room to room to stay out of Charon’s sight, but always breathing in the scent of the misery and pain on which that grotesque being seemed to thrive. Finally, Hermes came, as I knew he would, and I begged him to bear me away to Olympus.”
Hekate went silent again and for the first time since she began this tale, Persephone wished the older woman wouldn’t continue, but continue she did. “I found Hades there, flowers in his hair, Minthe curled under his arm, Zeus laughing at his side, naiads and dryads at his feet as he told them some story to brighten their eyes. He says he hasn’t a way with words, but our Hades is a storyteller is he not?”
Persephone gave a small laugh that ended in something akin to a sob. “He is.”
“I truly didn’t recognize him for a moment, such a changed man was he. And then when I did, I could hardly bear to go forward with what I knew I must. I parted that divine company and pulled Hades from its midst, pouring my cup of sorrow into his ear even as they still laughed behind us at the jest he’d only just finished.”
Hekate leaned forward and buried her face in Persephone’s chest for a moment as though the remembrance were more than she could bear. Persephone put her arms around the woman and rested a cheek on top of her head.
After a time, Hekate shook free of Persephone’s embrace, straightened, and went on with her tale. “He merely nodded when I finished, went to Minthe, and told her they must return to the Underworld. Minthe tried to dissuade him and Zeus joined in. Neither understood when Hades explained why he had to go back . Finally, in anger, Zeus commanded Hades to be gone then and good riddance to him. Hades put out a hand to Minthe. She spurned it, turned her back on him, and walked away. It was apparent her desertion devastated Hades, yet he didn’t hesitate even a moment before going to the stables to fetch his horses and chariot. The naiads and dryads and lovely young Gods and Goddesses all called to him to come back. Hades looked neither to the right nor the left and spoke not a word in response to their inducements to rejoin them. They finally fell silent, struck at last by his quietude and his stern countenance. Yet, as we left Olympus’s heights, I heard the silence behind us fill with laughter and chatter as quickly and easily as water closing over a thrown stone, Minthe’s ringing out loudest of all.”
That then was what had gone awry between them. Minthe had deserted Hades at a time when her companionship would have meant so much. And perhaps Kokytos blamed Hades, however unfairly, for the loss of his daughter to Olympus’s illustrious company. Minthe’s desertion had likely cost Hades one of his few friends in this place, just as Persephone’s mad dash for the Upper World had deprived him of Lethe. Yet Hades had forgiven Persephone that great wrong. It was astonishing that he had been subjected to so many heartbreaks and still retained such great capacity for love and Persephone’s great blessing that she had discovered it.
Hekate continued, “That ride to the Underworld was a long and silent one. We entered from a cave near Eleusis so the shades on Styx’s bank wouldn’t raise a furor at our coming and warn Charon. Before we crossed the River Lethe, Hades bade me stay with the horses and told me if he was conquered then I was to return his steeds to Helios’s care as fast as I could. He didn’t want Charon to claim them for his own and misuse them. I don’t know what occurred after Hades left me, only that I heard him summoning Cerberus.
Hekate drew in a deep breath and as she sighed it out, some of the tension eased from her body. “Hades returned after what felt like an eon, though he informed me less than half the day had passed. His clothes were torn, and his torso, arms, and face were streaked with blood. He said nothing to me of his struggle, only mounted the chariot and we returned to the palace from which he and Minthe had departed so joyously only a month before. He told me he intended to make Charon the ferryman so he could keep watch over him and make sure he harmed no one with his malformed desires. Then, for the first time, Hades partook of the food of the dead.”
Hekate put one hand on Hades’s shin and grasped Persephone’s hand with the other. “Do you see now, how this land is as much a part of him as his Godhood? If we sever him from his stewardship of it, he’s still bound to this realm. He’ll likely take on Cerberus again in order to resume ruling it once his strength has returned. And the pain Charon could inflict in the time of Hades’s absence would be enormous.”
“What can we do then?” Persephone cried. “He can’t die, but to condemn him to an eternity of agony would be a worse fate. I must do something, Hekate.”
“Yes, my Kore, you must and you’re the only one who can.” Hekate removed her hand from Hades’s shin, used it to enclose Persephone’s hand in both of her own. “It breaks my heart to ask this of you for I know now how deeply you feel for him, but there’s no other choice. To save him you must leave him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The shades that congregate on Styx’s bank and bleed their agony into Hades are those belonging to the mortals slaughtered by a famine your mother manufactured in the Upper World. She vows she won’t cease it until you’re returned to her.”
Persephone began to shake her head slowly, then faster. “That cannot be.”
“I assure you it is.”
“Why?” Persephone’s voice broke. She snatched her hand from Hekate’s, rose from the bed, paced away from it, spun back to face Hekate. “My mother found my company barely tolerable when we lived together in Henna. After I was abducted, she went straightway to Olympus to have her Godhood restored. If she desired me so much, why then didn’t she seek me before going there? Why didn’t she come here herself to free me rather than sending Orpheus? Rather than sending you? Rather than slaying thousands of mortals to gain my freedom?”
“Your mother wanted to come when we found out this was the place to which you were taken. I feared reprisal from Hades. It was on my counsel she didn’t venture here and it was on my counsel that she sent Orpheus as proxy to free you.”
Persephone flung out her arms. “And was it on your counsel that she hied to Olympus to gain back her Godhood before doing anything to obtain my freedom?”
“How did you come to believe that?”
“Orpheus told me she performed some peculiar rite on him to make him impervious to the laws of the Underworld. She couldn’t have accomplished all that if she were still mortal.”
“Indeed, she’s a Goddess once again, but it wasn’t a boon she sought. She went to Olympus intending only to secure your freedom. She went on her knees before Zeus to beg for your release. He wouldn’t grant that request but did restore her Godhood, though she didn’t ask that of him.”
“She may not have appealed to him for it, but it seems she has no compunction making full use of it now—full and abominable use.”
Hekate rose, walked to Persephone, and grasped her upper arms. “She’s still your mother, Kore, and worthy of your pity at least. Perhaps, given time, you can forgive her and learn to love her again.”
Shaking her head wildly, Persephone pulled free of Hekate’s grip. There weren’t adequate worse to express the abhorrence and anger that surged through her each time she thought of what her mother had done. Finally, she spat, “She never was and never will be worthy of my love.”
“If you speak of the harshness with which she treated you when we lived together in Henna—”
“Of course, I speak of the harshness which with she treated me in those days.” Tears welled in Persephone’s eyes, and she flung them away with her fingers.
Hekate’s lips turned down, indeed her entire face seemed to slump. “Your mother did a great deal wrong then, but not all of it was her fault.”
“What do you mean?” Persephone asked, the solemn expression on Hekate’s face calming her ire somewhat.
“Come.” Hekate returned to her seat on the bed and gestured Persephone to her side.
After a slight hesitation, Persephone perched next to the old Goddess.
Hekate stroked one hand over Persephone’s hair. “I loved you from the moment of your birth. So much that I wanted you for my own.” She dropped her hand to her lap and looked down at it. “I took steps to turn your mother’s heart from you, to make her long instead for all she lost on Olympus. I hoped she would return there and leave you with me to raise. When I realized what I—”
“Why didn’t she?” Persephone cried. “Rather than bringing us all to this, why didn’t she give me to one who truly loves me?”
“Kore.” Hekate once again took Persephone by her upper arms, gently shook her. “Did you not understand what I said to you? It was my doing that your mother was so unkind to you.. She loved you so much, was so tender with you as a babe. It was the actions I encouraged you to that turned her bitter and unkind. I didn’t realize what I was doing and when I did, I left in hopes she would draw close to you again, but it was me who turned her heart from you.”
Persephone nodded to show she comprehended Hekate’s words but said, “Is it so easy then to turn a heart, Hekate? It seems to me to make such a change within another would be a hard thing indeed were the other’s heart not ripe for it. My love for Hades came at great cost to both he and I. I don’t regret it, but had I not been left so lonely in my existence in the Upper World perhaps Hades would have found me an impossible conquest. No, the fault of what lies between me and my mother is hers alone. She loathed her mortal existence, and I was the thing that chained her to it.”
Hekate retained her grip on Persephone, her voice emphatic. “She loves you. You didn’t see her in the days after Hades took you. She searched for nine days and nine nights and returned to your hut in Henna half mad and near to death. Had she known at the time that you dwelt in the Underworld she would have allowed herself to perish if only to ensure she could look upon you once more and tell you how deeply she loves you.”
“So deeply that my lover lays in agony because of her actions, so deeply that in my name, she caused the deaths of countless hapless, blameless mortals. Am I to rejoice in that?”
“Be easy in your judgment. Or at least try. Demeter lived in darkness a good part of her existence and, though much of it was her own creation, things twist and go awry when forced to grow without light.”
Persephone turned her head to look at Hades, taking in the planes of his face, the architecture of his body, the injuries that marred it all. “In his existence Hades has known little of light. Yet he is not twisted, or dark, or bitter, or unkind.” She returned her gaze to Hekate. “It’s only under his care that I learned I am not clumsy, or foolish, or weak, or unworthy, or any of the things my mother made me believe I was.” Persephone paused, her breath hitching in her chest, and turned so her tears fell on Hades. “He calls me his light, and she means to take me away from him. She would douse the world in darkness to have her way.”
Persephone put a hand on Hades’s chest, wiping her tears from where they caught in the stiff, silky hairs there. “There’s no other way to save him?”
“None. If you refuse to go to her, this famine will continue unabated and the shades on Styx’s bank will only multiply.”
Persephone looked at Hekate. “Hermes purpose here is to bear me to the Upper World?”
“It is.”
“Will my mother allow me to return here?”
Hekate gave a slow, sad shake of her head.
Persephone looked back down at Hades. “Will you stay? Explain all to him when he wakes?”
“I will.”
Persephone let her gaze travel over Hades once more. It would take but a moment to press her lips to his, press her body to his, to imprint the feel, the taste of him on her flesh one final time, but such a touch might shatter her resolve and she couldn’t risk that. Instead, she embraced Hekate and fled the room, calling for Hermes as she went.