She didn’t have to think about it very long. A solid afternoon at that loom, while Demeter kept popping in “just to see how you are doing,” while that wretched little faun-baby made the most appalling sounds on his flute, was more than enough to convince her that if she didn’t get out of that house soon, she would probably be a candidate for the Maenads.
And she didn’t want to lose him. Not ever.
“It’s a wonderful idea,” she said warmly. “Let’s go.”
Obviously, Persephone had never been to Hades’s Realm before. The passage in proved to be surprisingly uncomplicated, since she was with the Ruler. The most complicated part was when Hades decided it was time to Reveal His True Self.
Hades found a cave, and led her inside, that was when he held up his hand and made a ghost-light. The little ball of light drifted just over his palm, and reflected off his face. She could tell he was working his way up to the Revelation. “Um,” he said awkwardly. “I—uh—I’m not really a shepherd…”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I know you aren’t, silly. You’re Hades. And the friend who was supposed to abduct me is Thanatos.”
His jaw dropped. He stared at her for a moment.
Now in this position, Zeus would have spluttered, and Poseidon just stared dumbly. But Hades was made of better stuff. After a moment, he began to chuckle.
“How long have you known?” he asked.
“Since about a month after we first met,” she replied, holding tight to his hand. “I knew you weren’t mortal. And I knew there were only a limited number of gods you could be. Eros is in love with Psyche, Zeus wouldn’t dare come near me for fear of Mother, Poseidon smells of fish no matter how much he washes, Apollo is too arrogant to disguise himself, Hermes could never control his need to pull pranks, Ares is…” She rolled her eyes, and he nodded. “And besides, he’s besotted with Aphrodite. Hephaestus is besotted with Aphrodite too. Who did that leave? You or Dionysus. And you always left part of the wine in the jar when we picnicked.”
“And you don’t mind? I mean…I’m old…” But the eyes he looked at her with were not old. They were as young as any shepherd lad with his first girl. That look only made her love him the more. “Old enough to be your father, surely. And my kingdom isn’t the loveliest place in the cosmos, either. Well, with you in it, it would be, but…” He stammered to a halt.
“We’re immortal,” she reminded him. “It doesn’t matter how old you are, you’ll still look like you do now in a hundred years, and then the difference between us will be insignificant. And anyway, it’s not as if you were like Zeus, chasing after…well….”
“What do you—oh,” he replied, and a flush crept up his dark cheek. She giggled.
“Maybe I’m not old,” she said, “but I am fairly sure that I love you, whatever you call yourself. And I think you are certainly old enough to be sure you love me.”
“Oh, yes,” he said fervently, and if it hadn’t been that this was a cave, the floor was cold and not very pleasant, and neither of them wanted Demeter to somehow find them before they got into his realm safely, they might just have torn the chitons off each other and consummated things then and there.
But Hades was not Zeus, and after breaking off the fevered kiss in which tongues and hands and bodies played a very great part, he stroked the hair off her damp brow, smiled and turned toward the back of the cave. With Hades holding her hand, a door appeared in the rock wall, as clear and solid a door as any in her mother’s villa. It swung open as they approached, then swung shut behind them.
“Are we there yet?” she teased.
He laughed. “Almost. But Demeter can’t follow us now.”
There was a long, rough-hewn passage with bright light at the end of it, which brought them out on the banks of a mist-shrouded river.
It was a sad, gray river, with a sluggish current, and had more of a beach of varying shades of gray pebbles than a “bank.” Mist not only covered its surface, it extended in every direction; you couldn’t see more than a few feet into it. Tiny wavelets lapped at Persephone’s bare feet. The water was quite cold, with a chill that was somehow more than mere temperature could account for.
“The Styx!” Persephone exclaimed, but Hades made a face.
“Everyone makes that mistake. It’s the Acheron. The river of woe. The Styx, the river of hate, is the one that makes you invulnerable. When you see it, you won’t ever mistake the one for the other. Look out—”
The warning came aptly, as a flood of wispy things, like mortals, but mortals made of fog, thronged them.
Spirits! Persephone had never actually seen a spirit, and she shrank back against Hades instinctively. There must have been thousands of them. They couldn’t actually do anything to either her or Hades, but their touch was cold, and Persephone clutched Hades’s comfortingly solid bicep. “What are they?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper—but still loud enough to sound like a shout over the faint susurrus of the voices of the spirits, too faint for her to make out anything of what they were saying. They tried, fruitlessly, to pluck at her hem, at her sleeves, to get her attention. “Why are they here?”
“They’re the poor, the friendless. They’re stuck on this side of the Acheron. Charon charges a fee to take them over, everyone knows that. You’re supposed to put a coin in the mouth of the dead person when you bury him so the dead can pay the ferryman’s fee. It’s not much, but if they don’t have it…” Hades’s voice trailed off as she gave him a stricken look. She glanced at the poor wispy things, and their forlorn look practically broke her heart.
“I have my standards, you know.” The sepulchral voice coming out of the mist made her jump and yelp, and the poor ghosts shrank back from the river’s edge. Hades turned toward the river in irritation.
“I’ve asked you not to do that, damn it!” Hades snapped. “Don’t just sneak up on people, do something to announce yourself when you know they can’t see you!”
A boat’s prow appeared, poking through the mist, and soon both the boat and its occupant were visible. The ferryman plunged his pole into the river and drove the boat up on the bank with a crunch of pebbles against wood. He had swathed his head in a fold of his robe, and bowed without uncovering it.
“As you say,” the ferryman intoned, pushing his boat closer to the bank, so that it lay parallel to the beach. With his foot he pushed a plank over the side to the dry beach. “Do you need my services, oh, Lord?”
“No, we’ll just walk across,” Hades replied with irritation. “Of course we need your services!”
“Wait a moment.” Persephone was pulling off her rings, her necklace, her bracelets, even the diadem in her hair. Gold all of it, and pearls, which Demeter thought proper for a maiden. She’d put them on this morning on a whim, thinking it would be nice to be married in them. She offered all of them now to Charon. “How many will these pay for? To go across?”
The hooded head swung in her direction. Slowly Charon removed the covering, revealing his real face. He was exceptionally ugly, with grayish skin, a crooked nose and very sad eyes. “I—uh—” The dread ferryman appeared unaccountably
