Page 5 of His in the Dark

PERSEPHONE

I n the darkness of the night, only the stars keep me company while I sit in the large garden nearest the courts under the stars. I can’t sleep, and I need answers. My mind circles them again and again, trying to uncover something I must have missed. Dead flowers sit limply in the grass before me. I lay my hands on them and try to bring them back to life, to make them bloom again. To do what I have done since only a babe.

And yet, nothing happens. My presence means nothing anymore. No amount of concentration brings me a spark of power. Nothing has changed in the hours I’ve sat here while the stars burn overhead. Watching and wanting just as I do.

My eyes are heavy, and so is my heart. My hair has fallen out of its braid, but I cannot bring myself to fix it. Strands blow across my face, and I flip them away listlessly.

I came out here with the idea that there would be a miracle. Some of my power would return. Alone in the dark, I would find the source of my power again. I would be able to make a flower return from the dead. I would not let it sink into Olympus to become another seed. It would be mine.

But, as the last hours have proven, I cannot. There is no power that remains. I feel like I may cry, but even crying doesn’t seem to have much point to it now. What would tears do? My tears hold no power of their own. I cannot weep over the flowers and expect them to bloom again.

I am a fallen Goddess, that is how the stars will remember me.

I rest my chin on my knees and stare at the wilted blooms in the moonlight. There is still beauty in them, I cannot deny, but it exists without me. My mind wanders to what will become of the gardens when I’m gone, but I know my mother, The Goddess of Abundance and Crops will provide for mortals. My tricks that bring smiles to young girls and beauty to plain pastures may be missed, but gardens will flourish if only my mother is asked.

Even those dead flowers have more power than I do. They can become something else, someday. They can form into seeds and grow again without my help. Olympus can carry on in its power and grandeur without me, as it did long before I was born and as it will long after I die as a nymph.

“My daughter.”

My mother’s voice startles me, and I sit upright, a hand on my chest. She stands in the garden with her white silk robe falling gently around her feet and a wrap around her shoulders. She smiles down at me, her auburn hair a halo with slight wrinkles surrounding her eyes, like she is happy to see me out here in the garden in the middle of the night. I smile back at her but can only manage a small one.

“Come sit with me.” My mother offers me her hand, and I take it and rise from the ground. Her touch is airlike yet powerful. Instantly warmth and comfort surrounds me. The Goddess Demeter is known to comfort, to provide, and to give to those who have little to offer. She is gracious and generous to mortals and in this moment, to me. She guides me to a bench by a round pool of cool clear water. There is nothing reflected in the water now, only the night sky.

We sit side by side on the bench. “I will plait your hair,” my mother says, her voice warm. “As I once did.”

Her fingers slide through my hair, undoing the tangles gently, and now I feel closer to tears than I did before. My mother plaits my hair like no one else does. She is balanced like no one else is. She is essential to the way of life with Gods and mortals. All is balanced with life and death, old souls and new, those who believe and those who question, the good and the bad. All of it is needed, and when there is balance, there is peace amongst the gods and with the hands of fate.

Perhaps what is needed is for my powers to dim. Maybe I should surrender and trust in the universe. Tears prick and I remind myself: Breathe in. Breathe out.

Demeter, my mother, is a giving God. She gives easily to the mortals. As Goddess of the Harvest, she brings a wealth of fortune and provides for many without asking for anything in return. She nurtured me as her most precious gift along with my sister, Chrysothemis, who is also a goddess of the harvest. I have never lived a day without love. And as my mother says, it is the most powerful of all.

My mother begins to braid my hair and makes a soft sound of laughter. “I remember when you were only so tall.” She motions with her hand, and then returns her fingers to my hair. “You loved the flowers in your hair. You’d grow them only to scoop them up and beg your sister to share them with you; pleading with her to add them to her hair.”

“I remember.” My throat is tight with how vividly I remember my power. It came easily to me then, and I thought it would never leave. I thought life would always flow effortlessly from my fingers like my mother’s power. I thought it was my birthright.

There was no worry. Why should there have been? Nothing in my life had ever pointed to any kind of loss. Now the days are filled with naught but worry.

“I remember the way you laughed,” my mother says, and sighs, the sound happy. She braids my hair with a gentle touch, exactly the way she used to when I was a child. I close my eyes and imagine I am still a child, still with all my powers, still with eternity ahead of me. Inside, deep within my belly, I swear my power swells with the memory. It is only a moment, but it is felt and my chest warms with hope until the feeling is lost. My mother finishes braiding my hair and wraps it, her fingers working deftly. She makes no mention of the dead flowers, although they lay plainly ahead of us.

“Mother.” She pats at my hair, then rests her hand on my shoulder. I do not turn to face her, but I open my eyes. I search the pool with its reflection of the sky for a man-shaped shadow, but there is nothing there now.

“Yes, daughter?” she questions as if she does not know, but surely my mother is well aware of my demeanor.

My mother waits patiently, the same way she waits for her crops to mature. She does not rush them along. That is not their way, she tells me. For life knows ebbs and flows. But that is not all of the truth. Some Gods know only fruitfulness, in part due to my mother’s graciousness.

“What if I wish to be reborn?” I dare to ask in a whisper.

My mother stills. I listen to the sounds of the garden around us. It is peaceful at night, like all of the parts of Olympus that rest. There are no celebrations to pour sounds and music into the garden. It is just us and the plants and the sky above in the late night.

“Why would you ever wish such a thing?” my mother asks eventually, her words quickly spoken as if rushed. “You are immortal. You are a goddess.”

“Maybe I am not.” My voice is tight and the words choked. It feels sinful to speak the words out loud, but there is no choice now. I cannot hold this burden by myself, and I cannot leave it to Beatrice to face it alone. I need my mother to know so that she can be prepared for what is to come. “Maybe I am fated to become a forest nymph.”

My mother rubs my shoulder and lets out a breath, steadying herself. “Persephone, you will not become a nymph and live in the forest. You will stay here. With me.” Her voice is strong and warm, and I want to believe her so badly. I want her to be right. “You should not worry. Worrying is for the weak,” she warns, a terse note coming into her voice. “Fate tells us the fears are not for us and to let them be, as I have taught you. As within, so without. So mote it be.”

“Then I am weak, Mother.” Tears sting my eyes, and I brush them away. My mother pulls me to her side and puts her arm around my shoulders. “I am weak, because I cannot let this fear pass me by.”

My mother’s hazel eyes shine with unshed tears as her grip on my shoulders becomes desperate. “And why not?” she asks. “Why not simply let the worry go, it is not for you. You are for the heavens and there is nothing for you to fear. I promise you that my child. If only you believe me, you will never leave my side. I promise you.”

“Because it is already here… the lore.” I lean against her and tell my mother about my faltering powers and how I cannot bring the flowers back to life and I cannot make things grow the way I should be able to. I tell her about how something is missing in me. Something has gone wrong, and I do not belong on Olympus. The Fates have told me so. I tell her I do not know how to stay.

She listens without judgment although her eyes are wide with the newly found burden, rubbing her hand up and down my arm and looking out at the small lights in the garden. They look like stars, or fireflies. Even in the dark, the garden appears perfect, like the rest of Olympus. Even in the dark, I feel I do not belong here. When I turn to look at my mother in the moonlight, there is sadness in her eyes, but still, she does not judge me.

I take another breath, all of the words spilled out of me at her feet. “If mortals in Elysium, and all that is heaven, can choose rebirth, why can we not so I may have another chance?”

My mother frowns, a crease appearing in her forehead. She turns, unwraps my hair, and wraps it again, the motion an old habit that will hopefully soothe us both. “I cannot comprehend why mortals choose rebirth. What boredom there must be to leave all that is luxury.”

“Perhaps it’s about a second chance,” I suggest. “About being able to do it all over, but with more of what you’re after.”

If I were reborn, I would never take my powers for granted. I would practice constantly to keep them at my fingertips. I would learn what they meant earlier, before I started to lose them. I would do everything I could to stay in Olympus.

My mother is silent for a little while. She rises from the bench and walks over to where a patch of flowers grows, picks several, and brings them back to weave them into my hair. This was my favorite part as a child. It made me feel like I was being crowned as a goddess, though I already knew I was one. It made me feel like a queen from one of the old stories.

“I’ve never heard you speak this way.” My mother finishes patting the flowers into place and turns my head this way and that, looking over her work. She releases my face and waves her hand, replenishing the garden with mature sunflowers. It is nothing to her. The stems thicken and grow beneath her fingertips. That is how great her power is, and I could not bring one flower back from the dead. She takes both my hands in hers. “You do not need second chances, my love. For what has happened was meant to happen, and what will be already is.”

I stare at my mother, wishing she could understand the fear in me, but knowing that she won’t. She is too convinced that our fates are set in stone, and there is nothing we can do to change them. She believes what she wants to believe. And the universe has never dared to challenge her like it challenges me now.

“Thank you for braiding my hair, mother,” I tell her, and smile, instead of pleading with her to understand.

My mother smiles back at me and smooths my hair with her hand. “Sleep well, and know you are always loved.” She kisses my forehead, and I can feel her love. The bond between us as mother and daughter is still strong, and in it, I feel a spark of power. “Will you come inside with me?”

“A few minutes,” I tell my mother. I want to breathe here in the moonlight and try to build as much of a memory as possible. If I am to become a nymph, I want to remember this garden at night, and sitting on the bench with my mother, and how it felt to have her fingers in my hair.

She rises from the bench next to me and kisses my forehead one more time.

“Everything will be alright, my daughter. You are meant to be my counter. You have power. Know it is so.” Her hand skims my hair, and then I can feel that she is walking away, moving the air as she goes. Her footsteps are soft in the garden but I know when she is gone and I am alone again.

How can I leave Olympus? How can I live somewhere else? How can I accept what is going to happen if none of it was my choice?

I will find a way, somehow. If my mother has reminded me of anything, it’s that. I will find a way, because whether goddess or mortal, that is what is left to us if the fates are decided. We must find our own place in it.

Even if we’re afraid.

And I am afraid.

I keep my eyes closed until I’ve convinced myself more of acceptance, or at least a path to it.

When I open my eyes, there is something new in the moonlight.

I can see it there, and at first I think it may be a trick of the light, my mind convincing me that something is there when it is not. But when I blink, it stays, so I stand from the carved quartz bench and walk toward it, my heart in my throat.

There is something there after all. A small, budded flower peeking above the earth at the end of the row of sunflowers. I bend down and brush my fingers over the dewy petals.

It is real.

A light sparks within me and that small bit of the divine burns in my belly.

My powers are not yet gone. There is still hope. Part of me craves more of it, part of me wishes it would pass and grant me mercy from this torture.