in despair, she did not even notice that in her wake, the growing things were beginning to fade and droop.
She paused only long enough in her kitchen to gather up what she would need; the roast lamb from the supper Kore would not now eat, poppy-seed bread, red wine and honey. She caught up three torches and sped to the nearest crossroads, a meeting of two paths that her flocks and their shepherdesses used. With a flat rock for a table, the three torches driven into the ground around it and lit, Demeter laid out the meal, and waited, slow tears tracing hot paths down her cheeks.
As darkness fell, she heard the slow footfalls of three creatures approaching; two four-legged, one going on two feet.
Through the trees, a golden glow neared; as Demeter waited, holding her breath, the light took on the shape of a flame, the flame of a torch held high by a figure still obscured by distance and the intervening foliage and tree trunks.
Soon, though, that dark-robed figure paced slowly and deliberately through the trees; on either side of her was a huge dog. As she drew near, the stranger slowly removed the veil covering her head, revealing that she was a gravely beautiful woman of indeterminate age, taller than Demeter. It was Hecate. Demeter’s mouth was dry, and she could not manage to speak for a moment.
“What means this, sister?” Hecate asked. “Why do you invoke me as if you were a mere mortal?”
“I did not know how else to call you quickly, elder sister,” Demeter whispered, and her voice broke on a sob. “Oh, Hecate, it is my daughter, my Kore! She has been taken from me, and I do not know where nor how!”
Hecate blinked with surprise. “This is a grave thing that you tell me,” she replied. “And a puzzling one, for I know you fenced your child about with great protections. Tell me what you know.”
While Demeter related the little that she knew, Hecate listened carefully. “I think,” she said at last, “that we should go to Mount Olympus. If there is any being who would have seen your daughter stolen, it is Helios, and as the sun has set, he will be with the other gods, feasting.”
She held out her hand to Demeter. “Come. If Zeus has been up to some mischief, or countenanced it, he will not dare to deny the both of us combined.”
Demeter took Hecate’s hand, and Hecate passed the torch in front of her from left to right. The world blurred for a moment, and when it settled, they stood in the forecourt of Zeus’s palace.
But Zeus and the other gods were already occupied—with one very angry, and seemingly very powerful, mortal.
“What have you done with my wife?” Leo shouted again, holding down his sense of shock and surprise that no one had struck him dead with a thunderbolt yet. On either side of him, the Vallahalian horses pawed the marble, striking sparks with their hooves, tossing their heads and snorting.
“Ah…” The fellow on the throne looked down at the tip of Leo’s sword, which was unaccountably glowing. “We haven’t done anything?” He glanced around at others of his sort who were gathering in the twilight, while torches and lamps lit themselves. “At least I haven’t. Have any of you lot been stealing mortals this afternoon?”
A chorus of baffled no’s answered his question. Leo wasn’t backing down. “We were minding our own business, when someone came up out of the ground in a chariot drawn by four black horses,” he thundered, taking full advantage of the fact that his wrath seemed to have taken them all aback. “He said something about ‘I’ve been looking all over for you,’ grabbed my wife and dragged her underground. If that wasn’t a god, I’m a eunuch, and you are the only gods hereabouts, so what have you done with my wife?”
“Impeccable reasoning, Father,” said a rather stern-looking young woman in a helmet and metal breastplate in addition to the usual draperies. In her case, the draperies covered a disappointing amount, from her collarbone down to the ground.
His conscience chided him for that thought; he put it aside. Besides, she was carrying a spear and looked as though she knew how to use it. “Four black horses? Then it can’t have been Helios or Apollo,” the young woman continued. “It’s unlikely to have been Hephaestus. That leaves only one possible candidate.”
“Two, if you count Thanatos. Hades lets him drive, sometimes,” the man on the throne corrected with a sigh. He turned his attention back to Leo and was about to say something, when there was a soundless explosion of black smoke, and two more women appeared at the edge of the courtyard. One, dressed in a dark blue drape, was visibly distraught. The other, dressed in black and carrying a torch, with a huge dog on either side of her, looked sterner than the young woman in the helmet.
“Hold, Zeus!” the black-clad one intoned. “Hear now the pleas of Demeter, whose daughter has been foully riven from her this day!”
“What, another one?” exclaimed a young man, who was dressed in sandals with wings on them and not much else, exclaimed. “There hasn’t been this much excitement around here since Zeus turned into a swan!”
The man on the throne colored, and the oldest-looking of the women glared metaphorical thunderbolts at both of them.
“Or was it a bull?” mused the irrepressible young man, glancing slyly at the chief of the gods.
“Hermes!” the young woman in the helmet hissed at him. The oldest woman glowered.
The woman in dark blue—Demeter—wept. Leo shifted his weight uncomfortably, but—damn it, I was here first. He firmed his chin and stood his ground.
But at this point all the gods started talking at once. The males were adamant that whatever had happened to Demeter’s daughter, they had nothing to do with it. The females had started to group themselves around Demeter and the other one. Clearly, this was turning into a potentially ugly situation.
It was broken up when two literally radiant young men appeared in another explosion of smoke, this one white instead of black. “Hail Zeus!” said the handsomer of the two. “Ha—“
He did a double take.
“What in the name of heaven and earth is going on?” he demanded.
The gods all started talking again. Finally the young woman in the helmet silenced them all by pounding the butt of her spear on the marble, which rang like a gong. Leo blinked. That was certainly an interesting trick. And effective.
“Hail Apollo,” the young woman said, with no hint of mockery. “This mortal came before us on god-horses, making a claim that one of the gods falsely stole his wife away. He had not done making his testimony when Hecate appeared with Demeter, saying that Persephone was also stolen. That is the long and the short of it. However, now that you are here, you—or rather, Helios—are in a position to answer both those accusations, for Helios sees all things.”
“Most things, wise Athena,” said the other young man with a slight bow. “In the matter of Persephone…” He hesitated.
“Speak, Helios!” the woman in black commanded him sternly.
Helios sighed. “Much as I hate to break a mother’s heart, I did see Hades take Persephone. But it looked to me as if she went willingly.”
Demeter let out a wail that woke tears in Leo’s eyes, and at least half the gods’ as well. “No, great Zeus, this cannot be! Hades? Lord of Darkness and Gloom and Death? He is no fit mate for my golden
