The same is true in the Underworld.
I was learning to use the powers that dwell there and make my own enchantments. If I return, I may be able to bring different comforts to the souls there.
But if I am in the Underworld, the life-giving powers I have on Olympus will be gone. I am torn in the most brutal of ways. For my children need me in both life and death.
And if I refuse to go to the Underworld, I will never have those powers again. I need Hades to promise me or else I fear the prayers will bring me madness.
You ate the seeds. He owns you.
Anger prickles at the thought. How he dared to wish to own me. Yet, in the back of my mind I hiss the truth: I own him just as well.
My mother believes she has her own claim on me. I am her daughter. I will always be her daughter, whether I dwell on Olympus or the Underworld or in the mortal realm. We will always be bound by that tie between us, and I do not want to sever it. I do not want to lose her forever. And if this law is to be abided by, I will never see her again… The very thought breaks my heart. I cannot live without her, and I know she feels the same.
My mother or Hades? Either choice brings war.
The powers of life or death?
Placing my hands on the table, palms up, I take a steadying breath. How do I choose? If I hold the power of life in my right hand and the power of the Underworld in my left?—
Which do I give up?
I cannot put either of them down. I cannot even imagine it. Yet Hecate says I must.
I turn my left hand over, imagining a life where I never go back to the Underworld and almost immediately flip my hand back.
Leave Hades forever? No. No! I cannot. Not when I am his queen, and he is my king. Not when he lets me sit at his side and thinks of me as his equal ruler. Not when he gave me everything I needed to understand my own power. Not when I love him as I do, wholly and true. He is my heart’s other half.
I flip over the other hand, imagining that I am leaving behind Olympus. Never seeing my mother again. Never bringing life to a garden bed or a field in the mortal realm. Never comforting the mortals who have prayed to me for life and hope and beauty and who believe in me. They call out to me when they are in distress.
I turn that hand back over, too. How could I leave them all? How could I let them pray to someone who was no longer even listening? That would be abandoning a duty that I have as the goddess of rebirth and renewal. Goddess of life and yet now, of death.
I open my eyes to find that they’re burning with tears. Ruling at Hades's side had not felt like giving up all hope of my powers, but choosing to stay on Olympus forever feels like giving up an essential part of me. The decision is impossible.
I rise from my chair, the wooden legs protesting as I do, and go out to a nearby balcony where I can feel the wind on my face. I breathe the crisp air for a few minutes and allow it to cool my heated cheeks.
Then footsteps approach, startling my aching heart, and I turn to see Aphrodite coming onto the balcony. My sister. In her long pink silk gown and crown of red roses. She’s ever a vision of beauty. I did not expect to see her. Not when so many avoid me. I wait for her to speak.
Silently, she lowers herself into the lounge next to where I stand and gestures for me to take the opposite one. I oblige. As she does, the prayers from the mortal realm rise again, as if something had been holding them down. Persephone, a voice cries, desperate, and then another.
Why me? I think, in spite of myself. Why do you ask me for help? Why not one of the other gods? The better gods?
And then my mother’s voice from my childhood comes back to me: there are no better gods or goddesses, my daughter—there are only differences in our gifts.
I do not realize that I have closed my eyes against the prayers until I have to open them again. When I do, I draw in a breath and meet Aphrodite’s piercing blue gaze.
“Persephone,” she says softly. “You have changed, sister.”
More prayers rise. I wait for them to quiet. One voice is louder than the rest and very clear. Persephone, please, please, end the pain! End our pain. Persephone, do this for my family. For my children. We cannot bear it anymore. End our pain.
My eyes prick with tears. I know one truth; I cannot save them all but perhaps I shall meet them in the Underworld and offer them peace then. When it fades away, I take a deep breath. “Those in the mortal realm beg for me to end their pain.”
“Will you?” Aphrodite questions. Her tone is slightly off, and I wonder if the prayers she hears have changed. If some of her disciples plead with her to save them. Although she is the goddess of beauty and love, she is also a warrior, and all the world knows it. She has a vicious side of her, and without it, beauty would not be fought for or fought over.
“I—” More prayers come, these ones quieter than whispers. They are…fighting. Arguing among themselves, I think. I hear my mother’s name. I hear Hades’s. It is Demeter, one insists. It is Hades, another shoots back. It is both of them! This third voice is more sure of itself. They have both turned on us! They are killing us for sport! Our lives are only a game to them! Watch—they will keep killing us until there are none left to remember what they have done. War breaks out among us. They play and we end up fighting and blaming each other!
The voices overwhelm me on the balcony. My limbs refuse to stay still. “I must go inside,” I confess to my sister, and I grow lightheaded.
Aphrodite rises with me, offering me a questioning look, and we go inside and down the hall to a smaller chamber with a clear pool of warm bathing water in the center. The windows are cut in slits, so the light falls over the water in a pattern. On shaky legs, I take a seat at the pool’s edge, and so does Aphrodite, although more gracefully. I envy her beauty. She knows it so. This is one of the ways to reach the mortal realm. I get glimpses of it through the water. A roof on fire. A harvest rotted in the field. Someone screams. The vision is one that turns my stomach. I never wanted this.
