Young Writers Society

I stood in the face of danger. I, Persephone, who was the bringing forth of life in spring, I who stood among the powerful and the strong, I looked Death in the eye. I planted my feet and stared into the hungry, angry eyes of He Who Takes and Does Not Give and I did not falter. “Come and get me,” I said.

And then I was in Death’s arms. He swooped me up and held me in his arms as if the forces of a thousand oceans ripped us apart. Death kissed me and I did not grow weaker, but rather stronger and more vibrant. I heard nothing but our labored breathing and felt nothing but lips, our searching mouths. The smell of him was like thyme, parsley and decay. He whispered my name and I heard nothing but his voice, deep and smooth and fluid.

Through the heat and the fervor I became aware of the world again. Things that had once been inside me and inside Death were becoming real; the ground cracked, the very earth opened up and we began to fall, our clothes billowing. We did not stop our desperate search of each other. Darkness surrounded us and although Death thrived in darkness I craved the light, craved the warmth. We fell and fell and fell until I could not remember how it felt to be warm and alive. Still, I kissed Death.

We stopped falling. Ground rose to meet us. Empty blackness wrapped around me like a cold silk blanket, like a shackle. Death kissed me, but I did not kiss back.

I pushed him away from me and straightened my clothes. I ran my fingers through my hair. Although I could not see him, I faced the god of all things dark and cold and unforgiving and I did not pale. “Let me go, Hades.”

“Or what? Will you send your flowers to tickle me?” His voice was no longer that smooth bass I had fallen in love with, but a hard, angular tenor. His words fell flatly to the ground and did not echo in the blackness.

I, Persephone, I who commanded the flowers and told the plants to grow again in spring, I walked forward until I was pressed up against the cold, smooth body of Hades, god of the Underworld. “I am the goddess of spring,” I murmured. “Without me the world will live in eternal winter. Without me the people will die and there will be no one to populate your hell. I still love you, Hades, but not here, not when I am your captive.”

He brought his cold, thin, quivering fingers through my hair. I stiffened but only pulled away when his hands came around to my face and began to caress my lips and cheek. He grabbed me. “I will not force myself upon you, Persephone, unless you pull me to that low place. Until you can come to respect my hell and me you will remain in captured here. Forever.”

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I sat in silence. I felt nothing but the softness of my robe on my clammy skin. I was sweating despite the numbing cold. I heard constant whispering, dead men and women and children flitting about me and through me. I heard their words and I told myself that I was stone, that their problems were not mine. Please, they said, please let me out. Let me feel the sun. Let me be free. I hugged me knees to my chest and whispered the same words aloud. They fell to the floor and shattered, lying broken and useless on the cold black stone.

“Let me be free.”

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In the light, far above Persephone and Hades, a woman walked the earth. She was not old, but neither was she young, and she glowed as though brimming with constant motherhood. She was a mother, and Persephone’s mother. Those who worshipped her called her Demeter.

She moved like the goddess she was, swaying this way and that as though there was some unheard song floating through her. Demeter, goddess of the harvest and of fertility and of the reaping of one’s dues; Demeter, daughter of Cronos and Rhea, sister of the almighty Zeus; Demeter came upon the great chasm in the land and she paused in her dance, the harvest dance.

She looked upon the chasm and, in the way of the gods she knew that had transpired here. She knew of her daughter’s tryste with the devil. She knew of his lust, of her naivety and innocence. She knew of Persephone’s imprisonment. She knew that the goddess of spring was dead, and with her passing the spring vanished too.

Demeter, goddess of the sickle and the scythe fell to her knees in the tall, swaying grasses. Gone was the unheard song, gone was the dance that seemed to burst from her, gone was the glow of motherhood. Demeter crumpled upon the great plain and wept the tears of one who has lost everything. She wept for her daughter’s smile, for her promise, for her dignity and honor and goodness.

As she wept, the world changed. The flowers Persephone loved so much faded into shriveled black knobs, like the hands of a dying old man. The grasses withered and lay prone on the thirsty earth. The rivers ceased their passionate flow and ice as thick and unforgiving as the breath of Hades himself covered the land. Demeter wept by the chasm. The leaves abandoned joyful greenness and turned, as to the bottle, to sordid, bitter brown. They crumbled from their stems and fluttered to the snowy earth. The people, eking out their existence with trowels and pitchforks, cried out in hunger and in cold, for gone were their crops and the feed for their animals. Demeter wept by the chasm.

Within her, torrents fought. The icy earth reeled about in the darkened universe for days and days until, on aching legs, Demeter stood. She brushed snow from her robes. She straightened her hair. In the way of the gods she moved and changed and grew across the earth, searching for her daughter, her Persephone. Tears fell like rain and froze in perfect icy crystals before they shattered on the ground.

And so for nine days the grieving mother wandered across the frozen plains. Each day her search slowed until each step took all her energy and she wanted only to lay down and sleep. She came to the Maiden Well and there she stopped. She let herself come to rest on the ledge and she looked down into the frozen depths of the water, trying, trying in vain to see into the core of the underworld where Persephone was entombed. It was here that, hopeless and helpless, Demeter fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

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I, Persephone, I who commanded the plants to grow and brings warmth to the world, I paled. I felt his hands upon me, I felt his cold, thick breath upon my face. I heard him whisper my name again and again as if it would save him, as if it could warm him.

“Let me go,” I begged. Where was my strength, my power? How was this broken girl?

“Marry me,” Hades whispered.

He paused and I paused and, through the dim lighting I gazed into his eyes. My heart, that treacherous romantic, fluttered back to the days on the meadows, our limbs entwined, our lips locked. I remembered the way he spoke of me as if I were a beautiful flower, as if I was his peony in bloom. I remembered the way he touched my cheek, as if just the slightest pressure might send me crumbling to pieces, lost forever. He loved me truly and deeply, and who was I to deny him his love?

“Say it again, Hades,” I murmured.

“Marry me, Persephone. Be my queen.”

“Yes,” I said.

I, Persephone, who was once strong and powerful, released myself to him. We kissed until we gasped for breath, kissed until exhaustion coursed between us like lightning. Our hearts bled together and our minds sought communion. Our whispers, our gasps filled the underworld with heat and passion and love. The lost, wracked souls gathered around our fire and warmed themselves. Tears ran down my cheeks and Hades’ and the unseen cheeks of the dead ones.

We were married in the morning, and the hungry souls swirled around our passionate kiss.

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Demeter slept by the Maiden Well, her head pillowed on her arm and her body curled against cold forces she had brought upon the world. She slept and slept and would have slept until eternity’s great old bells tolled the end of all had not the Old Man Celeus and his daughter Thene come upon her.

The old man touched her cheek, the soft, smooth cheek of a goddess and recoiled, for she, like the world, was cold and hard like stone. He thought her dead and began to cover her with snow.

“Father, stop,” murmured Thene. She brushed the snow from the face of the goddess and breathed gently upon her, breathed warm human breath, the breath of an innocent child.

Demeter stirred and woke, and the pain returned, the sorrow, the emptiness. She turned to the old man and the maiden and she asked, “Who dares disturb the sleep of a woman whose child has been taken from her? Who dares disturb the sleep of Demeter?”

And the maiden Thene and her father Celeus realized that the sleeping woman was Demeter, goddess of the harvest, goddess of plenty, and they bowed low before her, their foreheads to the ground. Thene touched Demeter’s sandaled foot, a foot turning black from the frost’s cold embrace. “Come home with us, goddess, come and share the fruits of our labor, come sit in the warmth of our fire and warm yourself. Come heal the wounds you nurse.”

Demeter, her heart frozen and unmoving, allowed the girl and the old man to lead her by the hand to their home. She allowed herself to be bathed gently with a sponge, the way an invalid is bathed, or an infant. She allowed Old Man Celeus’ wife to feed her a thin broth, wiping her dripping mouth and coaxing her along at every bite. She allowed young Thene to lead her to the bed of her infant brother, the lad Triptolemus.

And Demeter’s frozen heart began to thaw. She looked into the babe’s glistening eyes and saw in them the eyes of her precious daughter, her Persephone. She heard his tinkling laugh and remembered Persephone, her innocence, her grace. She took the infant into her arms and cocked him gently. She crooned to him the secret, sacred songs of the immortals and the babe slept, hands curled like little pink roses.

The maiden Thene watched, and she, too, cried. “Beautiful Demeter, how can I ease your pain?” she whispered, afraid to shatter the communion of the goddess and the child.

“My daughter is dead, Thene,” Demeter said. “This pain is eternal.”

And when night shrouded the household in uneasy darkness, Demeter slid from the bed the old man had given her and approached the crib where Triptolemus dreamed simple infant dreams. She took him in her arms and carried him out into the wintry night, where stars whirled and danced between the skittish clouds. She held him on her shoulder and sang the Old Songs while the moon, beautiful Artemis, watched and shed unseen tears.

“My sweet child,” Demeter whispered. “I shall make you mine. I shall take you away.” And she lifted her dress and allowed the infant to suckle from her breast, for the milk of a goddess turns any child immortal. While he drank she sang to him of the lost days, of the simple days of summer. She sang to him of Persephone, who was dead, Persephone, who was gone.

And from the door of Old Man Celeus’ cottage burst the form of a woman, of his wife and the mother of the babe. She snatched the lad from Demeter’s loving arms and stared with hatred at the broken goddess. “Leave my home!” she screamed. She curled the boy into herself, protecting him. Her words woke Celeus and Thene and they rushed to the door.

The boy’s mother, mortal Metaneira, simple Metaneira hurled angry words at Demeter until the goddess, shattered and weakened, collapsed into the snow. “I am alone, I am alone, I am alone,” she said. The cold reached in and sucked the marrow from her bones. With her last remaining strength she crawled to the feet of simple Metaneira and caressed the cheek of the baby boy. “Be strong, my son,” she told him. “Remember that you are the child of Demeter.”

And she lay still in the cold, dark night.

Celeus came forward and wrapped his arms around Metaneira’s waist. He kissed her ear and murmured is love for her. He took her hand and led her into the cottage, and Thene followed. She took her brother from Metaniera’s arms and set him in his crib, and she set about making porridge for breakfast. The family ate together and thought of the dying goddess who lay frozen in the snow.

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I, Persephone sat upon an icy throne in the center of the underworld. Upon my head rested a heavy silver crown, the crown of the Queen of the Dead. In my hand I held the Seeing Crystal so that I might see the world around me. I wore a gown that Hades has chosen for me, a gown so long it fell past my feet and down my throne and into the frozen lake that surrounded it.

My thoughts were bleak. Through the Seeing Crystal I observed my mother, Demeter, curled like an infant before the doorstep of some poor man’s cottage. Her lips, her fingers were black with frostbite. Her gold-brown hair was splayed about her head, a halo covered in snow. Under her eye was a frozen tear. I wished to comfort her, to tell her that I was alive. I wanted to comb that lovely hair and war her frozen face. I wept for her and for myself, and the great distance between us.

Angered, I set the Seeing Crystal beside me. I looked out over the underworld and I saw the endless, frenzied dance of the dead, their fright, their loneliness, their frustration and sadness. I wept for them as well.

From across the world I heard Hades’ approach. I rejoiced and pulled away both at once for I loved the god but I hated him as well. I let him kiss me but I did not kiss him back.

He pulled away from me and pushed something cold and round into my hands. A half of a pomegranate. He smiled at me. “Taste of this, my love, my Persephone, and you shall understand the depth of my love for you.”

I looked into his eyes and saw the passion there, the need for me. I saw into his soul, which burned brightly even amidst the frozen world he ruled. I reached into the pomegranate, withdrew a small seed and set it in my palm. It was warm and wet and red like blood. And when I put the little seed on my tongue I understood that it was the blood of the underworld, that I sucked the juices of hell itself.

I found myself ravenous. I ate seed after seed, drinking the bright, sweet liquid that coursed through the veins of the dead. I ate and I ate until the pomegranate shell was empty and then I looked into the eyes of my husband, the god of hell. “Love me,” I whispered. I was overcome with lust as only moments before I had been filled with hunger. I attacked him as I never had before, digging my fingers into his flesh as our lips met and our bodies meshed. He dug scratched at my back and bit at my shoulders and when we rolled apart, our hearts racing, I truly understood what his love for me was.

He was a monster. He lusted after me constantly, lusted after me the way I lusted after him when I was corrupted by poison. I wanted me not for who I was but for my body, for my hair and my eyes and my lips.

I slapped him in the face. My eyes filled with tears as I realized my stupidity, my childish belief that he loved me wholly. He grabbed my wrist and brought me close to him. “You will never again hit me, Persephone,” he growled.

“Will you truly stoop so low as to entomb me in your underworld?” I asked. “Will you cage the bird until it dies and no longer gives you her songs?”

“Pretty metaphor, but alas, it is too late for you, my dove.”

“Why?” My voice cracked.

He retrieved the pomegranate shell from the base of my throne. “You have eaten of the food grown in hell. You are doomed to stay here forever.”

Could it be true? I screamed in fury and ran from him, ran and ran until the endless corridors stretched until infinity and the dead men’s whispers followed me about like a child’s duck on a string. I collapsed to the ground, my long gown billowing about me like my own kingdom, a place where no husband, no god could imprison me. Tears flowed freely from my cold cheeks and I wiped my eyes, ashamed. What had happened to strong, brave Persephone?

I curled into a little ball, lost and afraid, and wished fervently to die.

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Demeter, curled and broken in the snow, came into wakefulness as water drips slowly into a basin. Her body dead to her, blackened and covered with snow. Her damaged soul writhed inside of her, seeking escape, seething in anger and grief and despair.

She thought, desperately, I will not die. She thought of the maiden Thene and the babe Triptolemus and she wished to give them the spring, the summer. She wished for them the ripened corn waving lazily in the breeze, and the cool waters’ refreshing dance against their smooth, young skin. She wished for them the happiness and simplicity of mortality. I will not die.

She rose up, her frostbitten body stiff and unforgiving. She pooled the strength of a goddess and walked, each step an agony, each breath a struggle. She raised her face the the dark gray sky and she murmured a prayer to her brother, a prayer to Zeus. “Brother, O God of Gods, Thunder-bringer, take me to you. Open for me the passageway to the summit of Olympus. Bring me to thee.”

And Zeus, sitting upon his crystal throne, the throne that reflected into the citadel of the gods the brightness of a scarlet sunset, welcomed his sister into his presence. He sat saw her frozen body and her shattered soul and he walked beside her through the halls of Olympus. “Sister, Demeter, what brings you to me now? I sense your agony.”

Demeter grabbed his arm and looked into his eyes. “Brother Zeus, you know why I have come. You know that my daughter, my love, Persephone, is dead, drawn into the underworld with our brother Hades. You have felt the pain of losing her. Please, brother, please bring her home to me. Make her live again.”

“Persephone chose to die, sister. She followed Hades willingly into hell. They married there and she rules alongside him as Queen of the Dead.”

“No!” Demeter screamed. She pounded her fist on Zeus’s shoulder and he took her into him, caressed her snow-wet hair. Demeter, the mother, the harvest, the plenty, grabbed Zeus and twisted and changed and moved in the way of the gods until she stood at the Fountain at Eleusis, where water runs so deeply that it is pulled from the Lake in the Underworld itself. She took her brother by the collar and held him over the well, holding him so that he could do nothing but fall into hell. “Bring her back to me!” she screamed. And she let go.

Zeus fell and as he did he hurled lightning-bolt after lightning-bolt up after him, up at Demeter, but he saw only her weeping face as he hurtled towards the icy waters of his brother’s domain, of Hades’ underworld. He landed on his back, sprawled at the god’s feet. “Brother,” he said warmly.

Hades laughed, laughed like a thousand deaths, laughed like a madman as he hangs by the noose. “Brother,” he said, and his voice was ice. “What brings you to hell on this fine day?”

Zeus brought himself to his feet and looked Hades in the eyes. “You will release Persephone to me, brother, or I will take away your kingdom and banish you into the stormy, endless pit of Tartarus where the Titans dwelled for eternity. Release her.”

“Never. She has eaten the seeds of hell’s fruit and now she must dwell here for eternity.”

“A deal, then, brother. How many seeds hath she consumed?”

“Perhaps . . . one hundred and twenty-four.” Hades said.

“Then we shall say this. For one hundred and twenty-four days of the year, Persephone will stay here with you and for the rest she shall live where she chooses. Is this fair?”

Hades considered. “It is fair, brother,” he said, and with that he was gone.

Zeus nodded to himself and allowed the roof of the underworld to open for him. He moved and changed until he sat once more upon the crystal throne of Olympus, with lightning-bolts playing tag between his fingers.

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I, Persephone, who wept alone in the farthest corner of hell, awoke to find myself rising upwards and upwards. I scrambled and fought until I realized that-lo- I was emerging in the world of my birth, the world of earth. Snow and ice covered all, but I rejoiced to be away from Hades, away from the whispers of the dead and the passionate kisses of the living.

And there, running towards me was my mother Demeter, her face alight with joy and her arms outspread. We embraced tightly until we lost our balance and tumbled into the snow, our gowns swishing together and our hair tangling. We held hands there, just being together, and our joy danced around us and between us, until the snow melted and flowers peeked bleary heads up from the grasses.

“I love you, daughter,” Demeter murmured.

“I love you, too, mother,” I replied. We sat in silence.

And so it was that winter came to the world. For one hundred and twenty-four days of the year, when Persephone said good-bye to the flowers and the trees and descended into the underworld, snow encased the land. Demeter spent the winter at the home of Old Man Celeus and his wife Metaneira, playing with Thene and teaching Triptolemus the ways of the land. And when Persephone returned she brought with her the beauty of springtime, the birdsong and the breezes and the warmth. All were happy and all were healthy, and perhaps the pain was for the benefit of th