TWENTY-TWO

One of the Furies trailed behind him, joined by one or two others, not attending him so much as spying over him, a slim, winged form, drifting near and circling the poet wonderingly.

“Don’t stay out there in the entryway, Orpheus, son of the immortal muse,” intoned a woman’s voice from an unseen interior. “Come in here – and quickly.”

Nonetheless Orpheus hesitated, tiptoeing forward, across the chilly, polished slabs of the stone floor.

“In here, dear poet,” insisted the pleasing voice, which seemed to come from all directions at once.

An inner door fell open with a sound like a sigh, and two figures on thrones sat half shrouded in the lamplight.

Orpheus recognized Persephone from the many poems celebrating her.

She was robed in a green fabric so dark it was nearly black, and her head was encircled with a leafless wreath of ebony stems. She was pale, her lips without color, but her smile and her warm and curious eyes were very much those of a tenderhearted woman as she said, “We welcome you, Prince Orpheus.”

A presence sat beside her on a separate throne, a broad-shouldered figure, taller than any human the poet had ever encountered. Only his hands were exposed, large and colorless, adorned with rings of gleaming jet and transparent diamond. This being could only be the lord of the underworld. He was mantled and hooded, his features hidden, and he looked away, pointedly refusing to offer his youthful, mortal visitor so much as a glance.

Orpheus fell to his knees. Even in this citadel, the faraway rumble of Sisyphus’s stone could be heard, and the bickering of the distant, hungry vultures.

Being so close to the most profound god touched Orpheus deeply. While uneasy to the point of breathlessness, the poet was filled with reverence. Often known by the more ancient name Hades, Pluto was brother to Neptune and Jupiter, and like them he had lived since the beginning of mortal time.

The uselessness of the poet’s pilgrimage here began to dawn all the more deeply upon the bereft traveler.

“How is it, Queen Persephone,” he asked in quaking tones, “that you know who I am?”

“My lord and I both extend our greetings to you, Orpheus,” replied the queen, with every show of kindness – even as the divinity beside her made neither sound nor gesture. “And we can easily guess the reason you have paid a visit to our realm.” She answered his query only then by adding, “Do you think that at least one of the timeless Furies could not recognize the grandson of Jupiter?”

Orpheus had all but lost the gift of speech, his last hope vanishing. It was with effort that he recalled his habitual good manners. He climbed to his feet as he found the power to say, “All the creatures of daylight, Queen Persephone, honor you.” He hastened to add, “And we honor your lord, too.”

This last remark was little more than a weak courtesy – and a vain attempt to flatter. In truth, men and women never did raise a temple to Hades, or hold even the briefest festival in his name. Of all the gods he was the one thought to be the least concerned with human beings and their pleasures, not evil in character so much as abysmally indifferent. Within his peaked hood his features were veiled, and this figure turned resolutely away from his visitor.

“I don’t forget what it was like to be a mortal woman,” Persephone was saying, her voice gentle and low, but carrying into the recesses of this palace, and softly echoing. “I remember the sun on my shoulders, and how it warmed my hair.” She laughed at this memory, as though surprised at it, and touched the naked wreath around her head.

The queen straightened on her throne, like a woman stirring herself to more serious and present matters. She leveled her gaze at the young poet. “But we anticipate your reason for journeying so far into our world, and we must warn you, good Orpheus – what you want is impossible.”