Two reasons, really. Well…. two and a half.” He nodded gravely. “The first is the mortals and their Tradition, as I said, it is very strong, and once a role has been picked out for you, it becomes harder and harder to remember that this role wasn’t always what you were. You really have to work at it. Some of the Olympians aren’t comfortable working at it and would really rather just fall into the role.”
“Like Zeus?” she prompted.
“Ah, that is where the half part of the two and a half reasons comes in. Over there—” he waved his hand vaguely at the mist “—I have two fountains. Lethe and Mnemosyne.”
“Forgetfulness and Memory?”
He nodded. “I, for one, take great care to have a drink of Mnemosyne whenever I feel my memories of what I really am start to slip. Zeus, on the other hand…” He paused. “In fact, one of these days we’ll be going to one of Zeus’s feasts, and when we do, at some point Hebe will ask you if you want the ‘special cup.’ That’s ambrosia mixed with Lethe water. Drink that, and all you’ll remember about yourself is what The Tradition says you are.”
She shuddered. “No, thank you. Do the others know this?”
Hades nodded. “Or—well, they know it before they take the first drink. After, it hardly matters, does it? I’ll say this much for Zeus, he will generally explain it all to the newcomers before they are offered the option. I’m just not sure he’ll explain it to you, especially not if your mother—” He broke off what he was going to say.
“That’s a good point.” Persephone scuffed her bare toe into the pebbles. “I can’t always predict what Mother will think, and I honestly don’t know what view she’d take, whether it was better for me not to know, or better for me to know and fight what I don’t want this ‘Tradition’ to do to me.” She heard a splashing—it sounded deliberate—and looked up to see something out there on the water. “Oh, look, there’s Charon.”
A dark shape loomed out of the mist, resolving into the boat and the ferryman. “Well,” Charon said, sounding a tad less lugubrious, “that was interesting.” He toed the plank over the side, and it slid onto the gravel.
“Good interesting, or bad interesting?” Hades asked, handing Persephone into the boat, which was surprisingly stable.
“Good, I think. Minos is going to have his hands full for a little.” Charon chuckled. “I confess I am rather surprised that I carried over quite a few who are neither destined for Tartarus nor the Fields of Asphodel. The friendless and poor on earth may not be such paltry stuff after all. In fact,” he added thoughtfully, “a good many of them are, in their own way, heroes. Leaving them on the bank is doing them a grave—” he chuckled again at his own pun “—disservice, perhaps.”
Hades looked to Persephone. “We might be able to think of something,” she said, in answer to his unspoken query, as he handed her into the boat. “We were just talking about that, in fact.” Hades got into the boat beside her, which rocked not at all under his weight.
Charon poled them through the mist to the opposite shore. It wasn’t as far as Persephone had thought, and yet it was very difficult to tell just how much time actually had passed; Hades remained silent, and Charon wasn’t very chatty.
On the other side…if Persephone had thought that the banks of the river were crowded with souls, here there were shades in uncounted thousands.
As far as she could see in either direction, a thinner mist hung over endless fields of pale blossoms. The shades wandered among them. They seemed particularly joyless as they gathered the white flowers of the asphodel, marked with a blood-red stripe down the center of each petal. They did not seem sad, just…not happy.
Until the fields themselves hazed off into the mist, the asphodel blossoms waved, pallid lilies standing about knee-high to the shades. They seemed to have no other occupation than to pick and eat the blossoms, showing neither enjoyment nor distaste.
This apparently infinite stretch of ground, flowers and mist, she knew already, was the part of Hades’s realm called the Fields of Asphodel, where the souls of those who were neither good nor evil went. In a way, the penalty for being ordinary was to be condemned to continue to be ordinary. Every day was like every other day; the only change was in the comings and goings of new souls, and the Lords of the Underworld.
Charon pushed off once they had gotten out of the boat; there were always new souls to ferry across, it seemed.
The mist still persisted everywhere, making it impossible to judge distance properly, or to make out much that wasn’t near. She and Hades made their way on a road that passed between the two Fields, and the shades gathering and eating flowers paid no particular attention to them. But as they traveled, hand in hand, she saw that there actually was a boundary, a place where the Fields ended. The asphodel gave way to short, mosslike purple turf, and like two mirrors set into the turf, she saw two pools, one on the left of the road, and one on the right. The one on the right was thronged with more shades; only a few were kneeling to scoop water from the one on the left.
“Lethe is on the right,” Hades said, and sighed. “The ordinary choose to forget.”
She nodded, and the two of them stepped a little off the road, which now passed through a long span of the dark purple mosslike growth. It actually felt quite nice on her bare feet. The road itself was crowded with shades, waiting in line. Eventually Persephone made out three platforms ahead of them, each platform holding a kind of throne. The closer they got, the more details she was able to make out.
The three platforms stood in the courtyard of an enormous building, which, at the moment, was little more than a shape in the mist. There were three men there, one enthroned on each platform, and Persephone already knew who they were. They were the judges of the dead, who had been three great kings in life, well-known for their wisdom. Minos was the chief of them, and held the casting vote, if the other two disagreed.
Hades led her past them with a wave. Minos, in the center, shook a fist at him, but with a smile.
Hades chuckled. “Minos would rather have more to do than less,” he explained. “Despite what Charon said.”
The judges held their tribunals in the forecourt of what proved to be a great palace, which, as they approached and details resolved out of the mist, was not what Persephone had expected. She had thought it would be gloomy and black, forbidding, bulky. It was, in fact, all of white marble, and as graceful and airy as anything built on Mount Olympus. Waiting there impatiently in front of the great doors was a young man holding the reins of four black, ebon-eyed horses hitched to a black chariot. There was a bundle in the chariot that moved and made ominous and threatening noises.
“By Zeus’s goolies, it’s about time you got here!” the young man said, indignation written in every word and gesture. “I thought you said the wench was going to come willingly! I finally had to gag and bag her! If I can’t father children, Hades, it’ll be all your fault!” Then he stopped, and stared at Persephone. “Who,” he said slowly, “is that?”
Horror crossed Hades’s face. “This is Persephone. We decided to forgo the abduction and figure out some other way to keep her down here. Maybe arrange for my priests to have some dreams about her or something—”
Thanatos went pale. Which was quite a feat for someone already as white as the marble of the palace behind him. “Then who have I got?”
“That is a very good question,” Hades replied
