of Helios’s light left the world, Demeter paced before the mouth of the cave. She stopped and peered once more into its darkness, but there were no answers to be found in its dumb gaping. It couldn’t tell her whether Orpheus had betrayed her or merely failed in his task and was now a prisoner alongside Persephone in that land below. She clenched her jaw and her hands. If he walked in the world, Demeter would find him and make good her vow to curse him with misery, but not yet, not until Persephone’s freedom was a surety.
Demeter turned away from the cavern, looked toward Olympus. Anticipation fluttered in her belly and she fought back a smile. Drawing breath, she steadied herself and called forth her Godbody. Then, mouth set, eyes narrowed, she lifted a foot and placed it on the God Road. Only moments later she was tumbled from her path when it came to an abrupt end before Zeus’s walls.
Cursing, she picked herself up, dusted off the flounces of her skirt, straightened her bodice, and smoothed her hair. Then, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin, she walked across the courtyard to Zeus’s palace. In his megaron, every God and Goddess of Olympus who dwelt there, including a restored Hephaistos, feasted in raucous celebration.
Demeter entered the big room. Her gaze went to Zeus and Hera where they sat on their thrones. Zeus pretended at watching a group of nymphs and satyrs who danced to music provided by Pan on his pipes, but his eyes were glazed and the fingers of one hand drummed on his thigh. Next to him, Hera beamed down at a swaddled bundle in her arms. Rage burned hot and sudden, scorching away Demeter’s keen expectation.
Pushing her way through the roistering Immortals, Demeter called, “Zeus.”
Hera lifted her head. Gone were the suppurating sores, the ravening eyes, but Hera’s Godlight still had that same muddied look. Likely Hera’s madness was held at bay solely by the tiny bundle in her arms.
Hera found Demeter in the crowd and her smile widened. She extended one hand toward Demeter. “Welcome, Sister. I hoped you would come to celebrate with us the birth of our babe, our Ares. He’s as perfect a boy as any father could wish. Come look upon him.”
In response to Hera’s words, the crowd shuffled back, clearing a path to the dais, but their boisterousness continued nearly unabated.
Demeter wanted to cry out, ‘I could destroy you all. But a few more months of my famine would see every one of you brought as low as I was the last time I was in this place.’ Instead, she strode forward as though unaware of their riotous presence. “I heard nothing of his birth and I don’t come to wish him or you well. My business is with your husband.”
At her words, the flock of Immortals to either side of her quieted, stilled, their laughter and chatter replaced with rustlings and whispers.
Zeus shifted in his chair, the blue of his eyes deepening with interest. “What business have we, Demeter? Has my rain worked its miracle? Have you come to confess your wrongs and render to me the portion of your offerings that is rightfully mine?”
His eyes raked Demeter’s body as she mounted the dais and her hand twitched with the sudden urge to strike him. “Your rain has done nothing but strip Gaia’s flesh more even than my famine and I shall never again give to you any part of that which my supplicants sacrifice to me. I come to speak with you of Persephone. She is yet in Hades’s clutches. If you do not return her to me—”
Zeus cut across her words. “I thought all was settled, yet you come again to bother me with this, Demeter?”
“I’ll have my daughter freed. If you don’t submit to me your throne is—”
“And you won’t cease this,” Zeus made a circular motion in the air with one hand, “famine until she’s released from the Underworld?”
Demeter blinked, shifted. “I won’t.”
Hera leaned toward Zeus and murmured something in his ear.
Plucking at his beard, he looked at someone behind Demeter and called, “Hermes, go to Hades and tell him I command Persephone’s return to the Upper World. She must remain in this realm with her mother. If Hades refuses, remind him I have the power to force his obedience. Take my daughter to Demeter in her temple at Eleusis.” Zeus’s gaze shifted to Demeter’s face. “And collect from the temple that part of Demeter’s offerings due me. Should she defy you, she’ll suffer the consequences.”
Demeter’s eyes faltered from Zeus’s. Her insides as cold and empty as they were after Hera robbed her of her Godhood, she turned and watched Hermes flit from the palace on his winged sandals.
Zeus’s hand closed on Demeter’s shoulder and he pulled her back around to face him. “Stay with us a while, Loveliest. It will take some time for Hermes to travel to the Underworld and some time more for our daughter to reach Eleusis. It’s been a long while since I’ve enjoyed your company.”
Demeter jerked free of his hand. His bottom lip jutted, a storm of petulance gathering in his eyes. The urge to strike him was nearly unbearable, but she wouldn’t lose control of her emotions before him again.
“I take my leave of you.” Demeter stepped down off the dais, began to walk toward the door. Behind her, Hera said, “I trust this will satisfy Hekate.”
Zeus rumbled laughter, all ease and pleasantness again, as though Demeter’s denial of his request caused no more disturbance than a thrown stone in a pond. “Where has the old woman taken herself off to? Ah. well, it’s over now and she has no more reason to carp on about the danger this famine presented to our power. Surely if it threatened us so mightily, we would have noticed some change. Yet had Hekate not informed us of it we wouldn’t have known anything untoward was occurring.”
Heat flamed in Demeter’s face. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of tucking her head to her chest and scurrying through the crowded room, though that’s what she longed to do. Instead, she drew herself up, lifted her chin, and met every eye with a cold, distant gaze, even looking away as though she didn’t know him when Hephaistos beckoned to her.
When she reached the concealing shadows in the corridor outside Zeus’s megaron Demeter turned and looked back. Hera and Zeus’s heads were bowed, her dark hair mingling with the golden hues of his as they looked down into their babe’s face. A small fist waved up at them from within the swaddling cloth. Choking back a cry, Demeter turned and fled. Never again would she trod Olympus’s soil.