Dazzling Brightness by Roberta Gellis

Author:Roberta Gellis [Gellis, Roberta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy/Myth
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1994-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

There was only the sound of moving air as the spot where Hermes had been sitting was filled, then Persephone cried, “Hades, please!”

He rose slowly, then went and helped Koios to his feet. “Farewell,” he said to Persephone.

“You are about to jump into a cave full of chrusos thanatos because you are too stubborn to turn back,” Koios said, raising his crutch and blocking Hades’s way to the door. “Perhaps there is no need to turn back. Stand still and see if you can avoid going deliberately to a lingering death. What can you lose by listening?”

“I do not wish to leave you,” Persephone cried.

Hades turned to face her and Koios made his way to the door, went out, and closed it behind him.

“There is no need for you leave me,” Hades said. “I do not see what there is to talk about. If you are still here tomorrow, after Hermes is gone, all will be well.”

“No, it will not,” she snapped. “We will all soon be dead.”

Hades uttered a bitter bark of laughter. “We are all dead already, are we not?”

“I am not a fool!” Persephone exclaimed. “I know that no one who has really died is here. My father Iasion is not here, nor Adonis, nor Narcissus, nor many others that have truly died in the body. How long did you think I could work with the women in the temple and the men in the fields and not come to understand what you meant when you told me your folk were dead in the outer world but alive in the underworld?”

He walked a few steps away, half turning, as if to put himself at a safe distance. “You are cleverer than I thought you would be that first day. You believed the tale of the six pomegranate seeds, so I thought you would believe I had cast a spell that made the wraiths seem solid.”

“For a while I did. When I first saw Koios, I did not believe anyone could live with such injuries. But Koios is not dead. No dead mind could be like his. Our people are the outcasts, the exiles, the scapegoats—dead only in the sense that they were driven out or escaped into Plutos. That is why they cannot return to the outerworld, and why they must eat and drink and have clothes to keep them warm. Did you think I would not notice that the children are not scarred or burned or broken, and that women bear children in a perfectly ordinary way—a strange thing for the dead to do.”

“So you know. But above in Olympus, they do not. For all of Hermes’s brave words, they will not attack Plutos.”

“Hades,” Persephone said softly, stretching a hand toward him. “Do you not see? They will not attack Plutos. They will attack you! And they will snatch me. You are not the only one who can abduct a woman.”

Hades laughed again, but he had turned back to face her. “They will not take you by force if they do not want their pretty city swallowed up into the earth.

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