For All Who Hunger by Emily M. D. Scott

Author:Emily M. D. Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2020-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

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The days tick toward Halloween, and the Lydians develop a friendly rapport with the cast. On cold nights they return just as we’re closing up from Dinner Church. We ladle leftover soup into bowls and heat it up for them, or find a few beers in the back of the fridge and crack them open. They’ve caught sight of our world, and I have the chance to catch sight of theirs when, as a thank-you for hosting the show, Melina sets aside a ticket for me. I clamber aboard Charon’s boat and sail, with twenty or so other lost souls, down the waters of the canal. An underworldly oarsman navigates our neighborhood river, which seems, from this new perspective on the water, an entirely alien place.

The Greeks imagined the underworld encompassed by five rivers. From the banks of the river Styx, Charon ferried souls from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead. Every soul who travels to the underworld should drink from the river Lethe—the river of forgetfulness and oblivion. When you drink, you forget your life in the world above. Floating on the Gowanus, we’re each presented with a tiny silver tumbler. Hoping that they’re not really filled with river water, we hold up our glasses and toast each other, drinking away our memories of the world above. Charon begins to row, and we sink deeper into the shadows of the canal. The abandoned cement factory looms before us, fugitive goat lurking within.

We pause along the way, and Persephone boards. Her face looks hollow; she’s being ferried straight to Hades, her abductor. He duped her into eating a single pomegranate seed, and now she’s bound to stay with him here half the year. The world above goes cold and frozen when she’s gone.1

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