pomegranate 1

Persephone played in the golden fields. It was late summer. Flowers bloomed at her feet, and all around, a sea of heavy-laden wheatstalks swayed and whispered in the breeze. She hummed a song that she was making up on the spot, which had no words and not much tune but was nonetheless heartbreakingly enchanting. Always a lighthearted girl -- quick to laugh and given to spontaneous cartwheels -- she was even happier than usual that day. The sky was exactly her favorite shade of azure and a fair wind carried with it the scent of ripening figs. The moist earth was warm and springy under her bare feet. Harvest-time had come around again. It was her favorite season of the year.

She bent for a moment and picked some buttercups, twining them into a circlet for her hair. Across the sea of wheat she spied her mother moving with stately grace among the far fields and orchards of the gods. Persephone gave her a wave. In all her fifteen years, the daughter of Demeter had lived on sunshine and sweet rain, marking her years by the round of crop seasons and the measured drift of the stars. She had never known, even for an instant, the darkness that must eventually touch every life -- even the charmed life of a girl-goddess. But as she stood, shoulder-tall to the swaying wheat ready for harvest, that was about to change.

Hades was watching. Hades, deep in his cold kingdom in the earth, fixed bloodshot eyes on her young form and was racked with bitter anger. Her radiant youth and light steps, her honey hair fired by the sunlight that never touched his world, stirred him to emotions he could barely put a name on. Her song choked him with grief, like a memory of lost joy -- but when it echoed off the cold walls of his dark palace, the echoes sounded like mockery. Ha, Hades! King of the dead, king of nothing, lord of empty places!

He grew furious. Why should this youngling have the youth and joy that he -- one of the mightiest of the gods! -- was denied? He spat on the ground, which was cold black rock. In fact his entire palace was hewn from black rock -- the walls, the parapets, his mighty throne, even his bed -- all rock which had once been seething magma, until his chill hand quenched its fire. Hades himself, one might say, was made of cold black rock as well -- or might as well have been. He sat day and night on his obsidian throne, lost in melancholy thought. From time to time, as now, he would look out at the happy doings of the sunlit world above. Meanwhile all around him, the shades of dead heros and long-forgotten lovers flitted like silent shadows to and fro across the mute dark lands he ruled.

Watching the girl, his anger turned to envy. He was a god and she a barefoot child -- but he would have sold his godhood in an instant to live a brief life of simple joys in the warmth of the sun; to enjoy for even a single month the carefree bright world she took for granted. He watched as she leapt across a brook from rock to rock with her skirts raised up, surefooted as an ibex. Her legs were golden like the laden wheatstalks, curved like the lyre of Apollo. He stared. And now a different feeling stirred within him.

It must be said, it had been a long time since any girl had turned the head of Hades. His brothers were famous for dabbling -- sodden Poseiden had his harem of sea-nymphs, and Zeus, the old goat, would chase anything in a skirt whether she were willing or no. The two randy deities had littered the known world with a mob of half-breed offspring: one-eyed monsters, scheming heros and other mixed-race abominations beyond counting. It had gotten so you couldn't throw a pebble on the most farflung godforsaken island in the Aegean without striking some loudmouth braggart shepherd boy who claimed kinship to the gods.

Frankly, his brothers' conduct made Hades sick. He himself had little passion. For eons in his chilly kingdom he had sought no nubile beauty to warm his bones, no consort to rule beside him. He did his work well with all efficiency, kept order in the land of the dead, and retired each night to his hard stone bed alone.

So what changed in his hard heart that day, no one can say. Was it lust or loneliness, anger or avarice that drove him to do what he did? Maybe it was her song that moved him. Music has power: it can cast a listener down into the realm of sorrow and longing, where even a god may lose his reason and succumb to madness. Perhaps he didn't even mean to keep her, at first; maybe he merely thought to snatch a bright bit of earth's joy for an afternoon, then return her to her mother. Was that so wrong -- to want an hour's companionship with a girl of shining hair, smooth cheeks and goldflecked irises? Perhaps he hoped her transitory presence would bring sunlight and warmth enough to raise a few thin stalks of wheat in his lifeless kingdom, or make a couple weedy flowers bloom where she stepped. Maybe all he wanted was a little bit of what she had, a crumb of happiness off her overflowing table. If this was what he wished for, I would not say it was too much to ask.

However, it's likely that Hades himself could not have found words to explain his actions. He did not think. He simply leapt into his chariot and laid his whip across his chargers' flanks. Shouting Faster! Onward! with foam flying from his lips, he tore up through a crack in the earth with one thing on his mind.

You know what happened next. The damsel, all in innocence, turned at the sound of thunderous hoofbeats. No sooner did she gasp in fear at the chariot bearing down on her, than she was grabbed about the waist by mad-eyed Hades, her half-uncle. He hoisted her up and then flung her down in the seat beside him. With a slash of his whip he struck a cleft in the earth itself, and shouting to his stallions, he drove wild and headlong back down to the underworld with his captive.

At the last moment, just before the earth sealed closed behind them, Persephone recovered her wits and screamed for help. Demeter was half a mile away when she heard the cries. Dropping her armful of flowers, the harvest goddess rushed to save her daughter. She was too late. When she arrived, all was still and silent. Demeter charged wildly through the fields, shouting the girl's name and crying out to her fellow gods for assistance. But it was no use: Persephone was gone, as utterly gone as if the earth itself had opened and swallowed her up. Which, of course, it had.

A nightmarish time followed, during which days and nights bled and melted together, and weeks, and months, all passed without Demeter's notice. The grief-crazed mother ran and shouted and searched high and low across the world, crying out the name of her precious one. The temperature plunged, and crops browned and shriveled while she paid no attention. Grapes rotted and dropped from the vine, and people went hungry, and their desperate prayers fell on deaf ears, for Demeter no longer spared a thought for her work or the humans she was meant to serve. Finally the last of her hope and strength ebbed away. She dropped to her knees on the frozen ground, bone-tired beyond words. Leaning her face in her hands, she sobbed.

Then, something in the dirt caught her eye. It was a circlet of buttercups, torn and smashed into the mud, but still blooming bright and fresh as if just picked and undaunted by the cold. She reached out her hand in wonder and touched a petal. Among the flowers was a strand of honey-color hair.

Demeter raised her tear-stained face to Mount Olympus, new hope dawning in her breast. Great Zeus, she whispered. Hear me now. I will have my daughter back, or I will bring this world to ruin. No more will men sacrifice the best of their cattle in your name; no more will you hear them praise you. Your temples will stand empty and their stones will be pried out one by one to line the burial-mounds of men and women. All will be gone to wailing and weeping, to hunger and death. I, without the aid of thunderbolts and storms, will do this. So I promise, unless you help me find my girl.

Zeus, who saw all from atop Mount Olympus, trembled at her words, and a chill ran up his spine. He called to Hermes, the fleet-footed messenger of the gods. Carry a message to my brother in the underworld, he said slowly. Tell him, this thing must stop. The daughter of Demeter must be returned. Tell him he must prepare himself, and bid her farewell.