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When Persephone is born, Olympus does not rejoice. No, not when she is born; Olympus is not safe for a child not yet grown, not even an immortal child. Demeter loves her beautiful daughter, her tiny fingers the color of the acorns left on her altar, her eyes the color of every leaf and flower. She keeps her close always, lies in the spring grass and lets the infant goddess dig her fingers into the good fresh earth.
“My precious child,” she says, in between the baby’s babbling, rapidly becoming more coherent, and her own singing. “My beautiful child of spring. Do you know what spring means, Persephone?”
“Flowas,” Persephone coos. She is a week old. In another week, she will be walking by herself.
“Flowers, yes. And flowers are so pretty, aren’t they?” Demeter wraps her daughter in her arms, squeezes her tight and sprinkles kisses on her head. Persephone giggles, unaware that her mother’s grip would have crushed any normal baby, and made most immortal ones uncomfortable. But it is spring, and spring is resilient and strong.
“Flowas pitty,” Persephone says, once her mother loosens the hug enough for her to run her fingers through a patch of daisies. She plucks one, not dexterous enough yet to avoid crushing the tiny petals in her soft round hands.
Demeter peels the mangled petals away. “Sweet, flowers are delicate things. You must be gentle with them. If you are not careful, they will get hurt, see?”
“Protect,” Persephone says, eyes sad as her mother holds her close.
“I will protect you now, sweet flower, and when you grow you will protect yourself.” Demeter’s smile grows bitter. “But that is a long way away. For now, we are safe just the two of us here.”
-*-
When Persephone is born, Olympus hears of it. Zeus rejoices, laughing and drinking even more than usual, glorying in another addition to his collection of powerful children. Hera sits silent by his side, lips tight with anger, white as her arms. Poseidon, in his own kingdom, hears of it and does not care, though Demeter had been his lover. Hades, deep beneath the both of them, feels the iron of his crown grow colder and heavier.
Demeter and Hades are life and death, and know each other well for the ways that life and death leak into one another. Hades knows who the child’s father is, and he worries. Demeter harvests the fruit of all seeds, and Hades knows that this fruit can sometimes be poisonous.
In short, for poetry gives him headaches and there is much to be done in the world of the dead: Hades wonders what harm will come out of this.
The harm does not come to him.
-*-
When Persephone is introduced to Olympus, Demeter sits ramrod straight in her seat, eyes flickering everywhere. She has learned not to trust, and that is a harsh thing to learn.
Persephone is cautious, but only as befits a debutante at a human court. Spring is made of trust and hope, and Persephone has never met anyone who wished her harm.
-*-
Persephone is beautiful. She knows this, because she is a goddess and all goddesses are beautiful, and her mother has whispered it in her ear for so long. My beautiful flower.
So when the gods begin to court her- not Apollo or Hermes, yet, but the minor gods, of bee-keeping or a dance- she does not blush when they praise her hair the color of the wet spring earth or her lips the color of the reddest rose petals. Besides, she knows that the spring earth has a thousand shades, and her hair holds only a few. As for roses- roses are not her favorite flower. They belong to Aphrodite, and they have thorns.
It takes more than sweet words to woo Persephone, more than gifts of jewelry or feats of bravery- or perhaps it takes less than all these. She is told that she is kind and good, loving and beloved, and her eyes flicker to the face of the speaker. Me? They seem to ask.
She is not starved for affection, no. But when gods grow they do not necessarily mature. Persephone has lived for barely more than a year. Her heart is still new and easy to make impressions on, and if it is bent or broken it will grow crooked, or not at all.
-*-
“I do not feel these things,” Persephone says when the god of the north-west wind slides the hand on her shoulder lower down.
“You like kissing, don’t you? Don’t be afraid. This is the next step.” He strokes her breast through the silk of her dress. She stabs him with her knife, a gift from Artemis, and stalks away.
-*-
She learns caution and how to better use her knife, but she does not learn how not to hope.
-*-
“You’ll like it once we start.”
“Don’t you believe me when I say I love you?”
“How can you be the lady of spring and yet be so frigid?”
“It feels good, I promise.”
“Women want it less than men.”
“The daughter of the goddess of fertility, and not feel these things?”
-*-
“I don’t feel these things,” Persephone says, and the demigod nods sympathetically.
“I understand,” he says, and she tells him more.
“I think I can help you.”
She smiles. “You can?”
“Of course. You are a woman. It takes time for a woman to feel need, but I can show you how.”
They are in a copse of laurels. At the demigod’s instruction, Persephone leans back against a slender trunk and watches as he kneels before her and moves to lift her skirt. Foreboding rises in her stomach.
“I don’t think I want this,” she says softly.
“You will,” he promises.
Persephone’s eyes narrow, and they flash dark.
-*-
She brings a cutting of the new plant to Artemis. “Wherever you save a maiden from a man she does not want, this will grow,” she says.
Artemis takes the armful of delicate fern. “Thank you. To what do I owe this gift?”
“It’s my thanks for the knife you gave me,” Persephone says.
Artemis looks her straight in the eye. “Have you had much use of it?”
Persephone looks away. “It is good for cutting flowers.”
-*-
Maidenhair fern grows in Artemis’s forests and in fields and in hidden alleyways and in houses, and no one can ever get rid of it completely.
-*-
Persephone learns that mortals call a woman’s virginity ‘flower’. She laughs until she can’t laugh any more, and her mother holds her close in her arms. There is no longer safety there, but there is some comfort.
“My sweet child. You are still the delicate flower at heart, even if you have grown thorns to protect yourself,” Demeter murmurs in her ear, and Persephone shakes her head.
-*-
Persephone spends her time with Artemis, when Artemis isn’t hunting. She spends her time with Athena, and learns to weave and to plan. She spends her time with Hecate, and learns about choices and illusions. She spends her time with Iris, and puts the colors of the rainbow into flowers, bright and vivid.
She does not spend her time with Hestia. She has already learned that lesson too well.
-*-
Athena tells her of a poetess who sings of her love for women. Persephone considers this. Women are kinder than men, and gentler. They know what it is to be frightened and not strong enough.
She allows a minor goddess to court her, to kiss her. When the goddess slips her own dress off her shoulders, Persephone shakes her head and turns away. “I can’t.”
“Will you ever be able to?” the goddess asks, not bitterly but gently, maybe curiously.
“I don’t know,” Persephone says.
-*-
Flowers do not grow thorns to protect them. They learn how to grow walls, and live in gardens. Come spring, Persephone knows she must walk in the wildflowers, but will only leave her gardens if she has a protector. Her mother approves, and approves even more of her choice of guardians. Artemis and Athena accompany her, leaving their armor behind. After all, the fields are Persephone’s, hidden away and safe. They are powerful goddesses and need not fear.
-*-
“I don’t think I will ever be able to have sex,” Persephone says. “Is something wrong with me?”
“No,” Athena says calmly, inspecting an orange before plucking it and digging her nails into the peel. “Lust is not necessary for you to function.”
“I don’t feel it,” Artemis says, and adds another flower the wreath she’s weaving. “Some of my hunters don’t, either.” She places the wreath on Persephone’s head, where it falls apart and tangles lilies into her hair.
“You need more weaving lessons,” Athena says teasingly, and both she and Persephone laugh at Artemis’s groan of frustration.
“Do you feel it, Athena?” Persephone asks.
Athena hesitates. “I don’t. Nor do I feel romantic love, which Artemis has told me she feels only rarely.” Artemis nods, affirming.
“I don’t think I can feel love anymore,” Persephone says sadly.
Artemis hugs her. “Even if you don’t fall in love, there are other kinds of love. For your mother, or your friends.”
“Or yourself,” Athena says, sitting down next to them.
“Which you excel at,” Artemis laughs, and expertly catches the bit of orange peel Athena throws at her.
Persephone smiles to herself, and stores the thought behind garden walls, to cultivate.
-*-
There is a crack in the earth. It is not caused by one of Poseidon’s earth shakes, or a monster climbing out from Tartarus. It is merely a crack, and it grows.
“It worries me,” Athena says, after they return to the same spot for a third time. The crack has lengthened from the length of Persephone’s arm to the length of her body, and is half as wide.
“There’s no harm in it,” Artemis says. “And the flowers are nice.” She means the white blooms that climb up the sides of the crack.
“They look as if they don’t belong in the light,” Athena says.
Persephone says nothing, merely kneels down and brushes down the long stalk of the flower. She knows where it comes from, can feel a power like the one her mother never truly showed her leaking from the earth. Someone is down there, and they are trying to tell her something. She decides that they are trying to comfort her.
“They’re alive, and Persephone likes them. Don’t you?” Artemis asks.
“I do,” Persephone says, and plucks a handful. “They like the sun, don’t worry. They’ve just been cultivated to grow in the dark.”
Athena’s mouth presses into a line. “Don’t touch them.”
“If they are from Hades…” Artemis says, and Athena shakes her head quickly.
“My mother works with him, and he never takes what isn’t his.” Persephone speaks quietly as she weaves the flowers into a wreath. “He isn’t cruel and he is fair. He sent her these when I was born,” she adds.
“Were they…?” Artemis asks, and Athena jabs her in the side with an elbow.
“My father is Zeus,” Persephone says, and her eyes become clouded. “I think Hades knows what it is to have pain forced upon him by Zeus.”
“You bring your mother joy,” Athena says at the same time that Artemis says, “It’s not the same at all.”
“No, it isn’t.” Persephone places her wreath on her head.
“Do you think he heard us talking and decided to send you flowers to make you happy?” Artemis asks. “It must be lonely down there.”
“He should come up here, then,” Persephone says, and gives the crevice a last glance before running back into the patches of blooming clover and violets.
-*-
The next time they go look at the crevice in the ground, it is choked with the white flowers. Artemis dips an arm in to check if it has sealed and reports that it’s grown again.
Persephone puts her hands on her hips. “Eavesdropping is very rude,” she tells the flowers, and they droop under her gaze.
“Tell that to Hermes,” Athena says and drags them both away from the crevice.
-*-
During summer Persephone stays in her gardens. The white flowers from her wreath don’t die, and when she plants them they grow high and drink in the sun. Come autumn, when her mother is busy with the crops and returns to her home weary, Persephone leaves flowers for her, as has been their custom for years. The flowers don’t wilt after a day, instead rooting themselves in the bed frame and the wardrobe. She leaves a stalk of the white flowers at the dining table one day, and the next finds her mother in her gardens, looking at the patch of white flowers.
“Where did you get these asphodels, sweet?”
Persephone thinks of the crevice and says evenly, “They were a gift.”
Demeter nods. “Be careful.”
-*-
Spring comes again. Persephone can feel it in her bones, her skin, in her fingernails. All of her resonates with the growing things, and she ventures outside alone. She wanders through her fields, quiet, her heart beating too hard and her gaze darting every which way.
The scent of asphodels that suddenly greets her nose is calming. She finds the crevice again.
“Have these been here all summer and autumn, or are they here especially for me?” she asks.
-*-
Artemis is training new recruits, and Athena is embroiled in war and cannot get away from her arguments with Ares. They both promise to make time soon, and Persephone assures them that she understands.
She goes to the crevice again, which is still full of asphodels.
“Does that mean they’ve been here all this time?” She shakes her head. “This is a terrible way to have a conversation. I don’t suppose you’d like me to come down there?”
-*-
“I thought not,” Persephone says. The crevice overflows with asphodels, as if someone pushed them out and kept adding more and more.
-*-
When Artemis and Athena are with her, Persephone doesn’t talk with the asphodels.
When they aren’t, she talks. She tells them about other flowers, lilies of the valley and crocuses and primroses, and wishes she knew how to speak what she meant without resorting to the language of flowers. She wishes she was talking to a person.
-*-
Long before Persephone was born, a different woman opened a box out of curiosity and brought sorrow into the world. She kept the hope.
Persephone was full of hope, always. She was also curious, but unlike Pandora, she was cautious and clever and powerful. So she thought, and she waited.
A more experienced goddess would not have acted as Persephone did, but then, let us remember a few things about Persephone: she is trusting and loving, and she carries with her always a knife.
-*-
On a day in early autumn when she knows that her mother will be too busy to visit for a while, Persephone packs a basket and goes down to the crevice. She sits with her legs dipping into the asphodels as if they were a lake.
“This is my choice, not yours,” she says. “I’d like to meet you, and you can’t stop me. Of course, you could probably have Cerebrus chase me off or make me drown in the Lethe, but I know flowers, and I think these mean that you want to get acquainted.” Persephone waits for a few moments. Then she turns around and starts climbing down the crevice. The asphodels part for her, but flowers always lean towards her, so they tickle her face and feet.
It’s a long way down, but Persephone is stronger than most people expect the goddess of spring growth to be, which is just stupid. At the bottom, a god waits, wearing an iron crown and an expression that’s part expectant, part amused, and part worried.
Persephone jumps to the bottom, landing in a squat that Artemis taught her. She stands up and brushes off her hands. “You could have just closed the crevice, you know.”
“I know,” Hades says.
-*-
The Underworld is fascinating. Persephone wanders around on her own when Hades is busy, although he makes plenty of time for her and makes sure that everyone- and everything- in his kingdom knows that she’s not to be harmed. Still, he informs her, not every citizen of Hades will listen.
“I can take care of myself,” Persephone says.
“I know you can, but that’s not the point.” Hades makes a face like he needs to write the point down, preferably using some kind of chart.
“I turned a man into a fern once,” Persephone says.
Hades’ expression darkens. “I know. I remember that demigod. You shouldn’t have to protect yourself, is what I’m saying.”
“You think I should rely on someone else’s protection?” Persephone asks suspiciously.
“No!” Hades leans his face in his hands. “I’m just making sure you don’t get attacked by hellhounds!”
“All right,” Persephone says, and pats his shoulder. Hades looks shocked at the contact. “I understand. Thank you.”
“It’s not something that needs thanks,” Hades says.
-*-
She goes home the next day, and no one the wiser. That is, until she sees Athena again and the wisdom goddess takes one look at her.
“You’ve been to the Underworld,” she says.
“Yes,” Persephone says.
“How did you escape?”
Persephone shakes her head. “He didn’t try to hold me there. He just showed me around. We talked.”
Athena, in a rare show of frustration, groans. “You went to the Lord of the Dead and he gave you a tour and conversation?”
“I even brought my own food,” Persephone says, and Athena narrows her eyes at her suspiciously.
“How long have you been planning this?” she asks.
Persephone shrugs. Athena throws up her hands.
-*-
“You’re absolutely sure he didn’t do anything?” Artemis asks.
“Yes, I’m sure. If you’re so worried about me, why don’t you come yourself?” Persephone asks.
Athena and Artemis exchange a look.
-*-
“I see I’ll need to arrange some kind of messenger system,” Hades says when Persephone arrives with two goddesses in tow.
-*-
Once autumn passes and Demeter is no longer busy, Persephone worries that she will no longer be able to visit Hades as she pleases. Her visits have lengthened since they began, and she often spends a week in the Underworld. Sometimes she wonders what she does there for so long- not because she can’t remember, but surely no two people can spend so much time doing what is basically nothing at all.
But her mother merely assumes that she’ll be in the fields all day. The only time they ever truly see each other nowadays is the summer.
-*-
“Can I ask you something?” Hades says, and Persephone’s heart clenches painfully for no good reason.
“Of course,” she says.
“You never wander the fields alone. Almost never,” Hades amends. “But here you walk freely.”
“It feels safe here,” Persephone says. She means, it feels like there are walls protecting me. It feels like there is someone I can trust.
Hades nods like he understands.
-*-
Persephone grows flowers everywhere. It’s spring, she can’t help it. They even grow in her hair, sometimes. She explains the meanings of each flower to Hades, beyond their sacredness to the gods.
“Do you just know what they mean, or are their meanings based on stories?” he asks.
“Both, I suppose.” Persephone runs a hand through her hair and lily of the valley falls out. “This is my favorite.”
“Isn’t it sacred to you?” Hades asks, leaning over her open palm to look closer at the white bell-like flowers.
“Yes, well.” Persephone shrugs and scatters the lilies on Hades’ head, where they pool inside his crown. “Lily of the valley means return of happiness.”
Hades says nothing, but his expression betrays his worry.
“What?”
“Are you- are you happy here, Persephone?” he asks.
“Yes,” Persephone says. She thinks about it for a while, and Hades waits patiently. “Yes, I am.”
“Like with your friends, or in your gardens?”
“No. A different kind of happiness,” Persephone says, and for the life of her she doesn’t know why Hades turns away. “What’s wrong?”
“What if you get tired of it?” Hades asks. “What if you decide you don’t need walls anymore? What if you miss the sunlight and the flowers?”
Persephone puts a hand on each of Hades’ arms and turns him around to face her. “I’ll probably always need walls. I won’t heal or grow out of it because I’m not sick or broken. And I’m not going to give up sunlight and flowers, ever, but I’m not going to get tired of you.”
“We’ll work something out,” Hades says, softly.
“We will.”
-*-
“You think you love him?” Artemis asks.
“I love him,” Persephone corrects her. “But I need to think this through. We both do.”
“Good,” Athena says approvingly. “If you need my help, I’ll give it.”
“Mine too,” Artemis says.
-*-
Persephone plans the conversation with her mother a hundred times over. In the end, she says nothing, and her mother cries. Demeter cries and Persephone holds her mother in her arms, too tight, and thinks that neither of them will ever really let go.
-*-
There are arrangements to be made, ancient laws and treaties to be carefully inspected, consulted, searched for loopholes. The goddess of spring and the god of death, the goddess of new growth underneath the earth.
Perhaps it makes sense. It probably doesn’t have to.
-*-
“Zeus will never agree,” Demeter says bitterly.
Persephone nods. “Athena thinks there might be a way around that. Zeus is king above ground, but underneath it…” She catches the nervous look her mother casts around, and a lump rises in her throat. “Mother, I will be safe.”
“You can protect yourself, sweet,” Demeter says.
“I can,” Persephone says, and thinks that no one should have to.
-*-
It is the very end of spring- some would say it is already summer, but Persephone knows that it isn’t- when the asphodels are replaced with amaranths. It’s a safer message than any that could be sent in words.
The next day, Artemis and Athena go down with her to the fields, and keep their distance as she approaches the crevice. To anyone watching, it would look like a normal day. It’s important that they all pretend that nothing is happening. No one would ever accept the goddess of spring going voluntarily into the Underworld, and it’s too late to think if she’s been seen before. It doesn’t matter.
The world thinks women are meant for capturing, and that is what they have planned- a kidnapping attempt.
Persephone can feel her heart in her throat. She can do it. She can do it. She finds the narcissus- it isn’t hard to find, huge and strong-scented. Narcissus symbolize egotism, after the man who became the first one. Persephone kneels down and reaches out to touch the narcissus.
She can’t do it.
It’s a sudden lightness to her head, a surge of courage coursing through her. She can’t do this. She can’t pretend to be the victim. But she can do something else.
-*-
The stories tell of Persephone swooning from the scent of the narcissus, of Hades bursting from the ground in his chariot and kidnapping her. They tell of the pomegranate seeds Persephone was tricked into eating and of Demeter’s grief at the loss of her beloved child.
The stories are stories.
-*-
Persephone lands in the squat that Artemis taught her long ago, a little unsteady for the flower held carefully in her hand. Hades is there, in his carriage and the robes he saves for the worst of the dead who come to him for punishment.
“We had a plan,” he says, but he can’t hide the smile that stretches across his face. He doesn’t even try.
“The plan was terrible,” Persephone says, brushing the dirt from her hands.
Hades jumps from the chariot to take her hands and press his lips to both of them, dirt-covered and all.
-*-
“Pomegranates symbolize plenty,” Persephone says, rolling the fruit in her hands.
“I just remembered that you like them,” Hades says.
Persephone smiles at him like the first day of sunshine after the winter- the winter they will experience only this year for the first time, when Persephone is not there to lend her mother the strength of spring. They will never truly let go of each other, but Hades is a different realm.
The seeds fall out bright red and just a little transparent, scattering across the floor and Persephone’s dress. She plucks four from the rubbery membrane and pops them in her mouth. She doesn’t feel different, but when the gods converge on Hades’ gates angrily, she is glad of their presence in her stomach.
-*-
In the stories told of Persephone in later years, she has no children. She is the warning to women, to be careful lest they be tempted and trapped. She is the lightness and the life in the Underworld. She is (to a few) the Queen of Hades, to be feared and revered.
-*-
Every winter, Persephone stays with Hades. Every spring, she leaves the Underworld. Officially, her summers and autumns are also spent aboveground, but Artemis and Athena are good friends, and Demeter understands.
-*-
There are some parts of the stories that are true. For example, Persephone wears a crown of asphodels when she rules Hades, the stalks mirroring the spikes of her husband’s crown. Interwoven with the asphodel bloom lily of the valley, daisies, ivy, Persephone’s sacred flowers- return of happiness, I share your sentiments, and friendship, fidelity, marriage.