I felt a hand settle on my shoulder. It was Sera, smiling warmly. ‘Do not fret. The task will be done before you know it,’ she told me. Probably she thought I was some sort of penitent,performing this task as an offering to the goddess Demeter. Her attempt at comfort did nothing to reassure me.
I sat down and began to sort the grains. Light shone through high windows that ran along the ceiling. There were only a few hours of daylight left, and I cursed the time that I had wasted at Sera’s house. At first I tried to sweep the little grains into piles of related colours, but I soon realized that this was an imperfect strategy. It did not distinguish the grains properly, and Aphrodite was sure to notice the difference.
Priestesses arrived unobtrusively to light lamps once the sky went dark. I did not raise my head to greet them, unwilling to be pulled away from my task. I toiled until my knees grew numb and my eyes could scarcely distinguish one grain from another. I sorted for hours, but even after all that work each heap was only about the size of my palm. It was mind-numbing, a madwoman’s task, like counting the grains of sand on the shore.
Of course, this was exactly why Aphrodite had assigned it to me.
More time passed, and my mind began to wander to dark and ugly places. What had I been thinking, accepting Aphrodite’s challenge on that windswept cliff? Had I really thought I would be able to pull one over on the goddess of love herself? Folly. It didn’t matter that Sera had kept me from this task with various indulgences, that I had wasted too much time in her little farmstead. I could not properly sort this amount of grain even if I had a full month. I was going to die. I would never see Eros again, and my child would never be born.
Yet I could not bring myself to give up. Feverishly I plucked one grain after another from the pile. The rhythm itself was a kind of comfort. Rye, farrow, wheat, rice, rye once again. My hands moved until they ached, and my eyes burned from strain, and still I continued.
The next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming through the high windows. I jolted upright, then brushed a hand along my face. Grains of several types fell to the ground. I must have fallen face-first onto one of the piles of grain in my exhaustion. I looked for the tower of grain and saw that it was gone. In its place sat five smaller piles of uniform colour, perfectly sorted.
‘Did you rest well?’ Sera was at the door, smiling.
I gestured at the piles. ‘How …?’
‘The ants you met on the road,’ explained my hostess. She gestured at a line of living ink marks making their way across the stone floor.
Sera continued. ‘My daughter asked me to assist you in this task, but at first I wasn’t sure how. I couldn’t do it directly – Aphrodite would never forgive me. But I could ask others to help you, and these creatures are so humble that she would never notice them.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll have you know that the ants volunteered to help, by the way. They remembered your kindness on the road.’
I looked at the piles of sorted grain, so difficult a task for a human being but nothing at all to a thousand ants working together. Then I looked back at Sera and knew that she was not what she appeared to be.
Her face wavered, like a reflection on the surface of a pond. She continued. ‘I took you in because my daughter asked me for a favour, but I hadn’t expected you to be such a polite girl, chopping firewood for me and indulging all my silly requests. It’s been so long since I had someone to talk to. And you remind me so much of my daughter when she was young.’
As I watched, Sera’s form began to change, shedding the illusion that surrounded her. I had seen something like this before in the mountains with Atalanta, hunting high above the tree line, when we had surprised a yearling stag who froze atthe sound of our footsteps. His coat blended in so well with the rugged landscape I could hardly see him at first. It was only when I noticed his eyes that the rest emerged as if by magic – antlers, a nose, long graceful limbs.
The goddess revealed herself in much the same way. Her simple beauty sharpened, her tawny hair taking on the golden warmth of a field of wheat in summer. I felt the chill that heralded the arrival of a god.
‘Who are you?’ I whispered. ‘I thought your name was Sera. I thought you were an ordinary farmwife.’
The goddess smiled. ‘Not Sera. Ceres. But that is only one of my names,’ she replied. ‘In your tongue, I am known as Demeter.’
37
Psyche
By now I had fought monsters, witnessed tragedy, and spoken with several different gods. Yet I still could not seem to adjust to the intimate strangeness of sitting with the goddess of the harvest and watching the sun go down over her wheat fields.
The sheep called to one another in their pen while the chickens muttered in their coop. The sky was a marvel of colours, turning the fields burnished gold. But I was blind to the beauty before me. All I could think of was the dark journey that lay ahead, the most onerous of my tasks. There would be no talking reeds or friendly ants to help me in the Underworld.
‘How did you come by this farmhouse?’ I asked, desperate to break the silence. ‘I’ve never known a goddess to live in such a place.’
Demeter did not answer right away. There was a heaviness about her that distinguished her from the other immortals I’d met, perhaps because she had known loss in a way that few gods had.
‘After my daughter went missing, I searched the earth for her,’ Demeter explained. ‘I took up a position as wet nurse to a mortal family who lived here and stayed even after I learned that Hades had taken my daughter. The family is gone now,but I remain. I come here every spring to welcome my Kore as she ascends from the Underworld, and every autumn as she goes back down.’
‘The Underworld,’ I whispered, shivering. I felt the chill of that place creeping across my skin. I saw once again my own corpse lying on the road lined with cypresses. I looked at the sky and wondered if this was the last sunset I would ever witness.
‘Do not fear. You travel as the guest of my daughter, who is queen there,’ Demeter chided. ‘Your husband asked her personally for the favour, you know,’ she added, glancing at me.
Hope bloomed in me like an impossible flower. ‘Eros? Eros sent word to Persephone on my behalf?’
Demeter smiled. ‘He did, though I can’t fathom how he managed a journey into the Underworld. He must be very fond of you.’
My heart contracted. So the dream had been true after all. Eros had not abandoned me but was being kept away from me. I thought about the agony on Eros’s face when I had seen him last by lamplight, bent and broken by the curse before being pulled away into nothingness, and I felt a surge of guilt. I had broken my word by bringing the lamp into the bedroom. We had both hurt each other, Eros and I.
I wondered if I would ever have the chance to see him again and speak my apologies. The road to the Underworld was filled with dangers, and even with Eros’s help I might never return.
