8. Underworld: Gifts from the gods

Part 2: Chapter 8

This is Part 2: Chapter 8 of the serialised YA Fantasy Fiction novel ‘Underworld’, a reimagining (not a retelling) of the myth of Persefóni. Use the button below to access the Table of Contents and navigate back a chapter, or begin at the beginning. For SHORT STORY content click here instead.

CHAPTER 8: Gifts from the Gods

The next morning, I wake to find Armónia sitting up in bed next to me. She’s swathed in furs - the fire has gone out and my chambers are freezing - and she’s hugging her knees to her chest. I smile at her, and she looks back at me with an expression of mingled disgust and misery. I realise at once what she assumes has happened and I’m horrified that she can even think that of me. I rush to explain, my words tumbling over one another in my haste.

“It’s all right,” she says at last, laying a hand on my arm. “I believe you. I know you would never do that to me.”

“Or anyone,” I say vehemently. “You know I’m not like them! But… I didn’t realise… You didn’t even recognise me. Do you remember anything?”

“Nothing,” she says, and what shocks me more than her answer is the way she gives it - not angrily, or even sadly, but in a flat, expressionless voice which makes it clear that she has resigned herself to this exploitation and abuse.

“But you can’t let them do that to you!” I burst out.

She looks at me, one silver eyebrow raised, and I remember something Antigóni said to me long ago in the darkness of her mud-brick home: There is a difference between letting someone do something to you and not being able to stop them.

“Let me ask you something, Kóri,” says Armónia acidly. “Did you choose what you wore to Poseidónas’ feast last night? Did you choose who you went with? Did you even choose to go?”

“That isn’t the same,” I say. “That’s just clothes and jewels and kohl. This -”

“This is no different.”

“It’s completely different! They would never -”

“What? Force you to do something you didn’t want to?”

“Well, maybe. … But not something - not something like -”

“Like? Like?” She mimics my stuttering words. “Like what, Kóri? Like making you have sex with someone you hate? Like making you hurt someone else? Like making you hurt yourself for their enjoyment?”

I screw my eyes tight shut and shake my head, as if that can make her stop talking. I don’t want to hear this - what they have done to her, what they could do to me.

“Do you think you think you have any more power in this place than I do?” she snaps, exasperated with me. “You have learnt nothing in the time you’ve been here. At Midwinter, you are still the same wide-eyed, naive child that you were when you arrived at Midsummer. And you won’t change, will you? Because you still believe, somehow, that you will be all right.”

“So what do you want me to do?” I shoot back, her anger making me defensive, her words cutting too close to the bone, because I realise in that instant that is exactly what I believe; that, one day, all this will all be over and I will be allowed to go home, back to my old life, to Arkadía, to Ánitos. “Do you want me to become like them?”

“No!”

“Then what?”

“Oh - I don’t know!” she says, flinging herself back on the bed and covering her face with her hands. “I just don’t want any of this, for either of us. I was like you once too. … I believed I could be happy.”

Her voice cracks a little. I don’t know whether she’s crying - I don’t think so - but she stays there a long time with her hands covering her face. I lie down next to her, one arm across her stomach, both of us adrift in our shared despair.

---

In the afternoon, I go to Ífaistos’ workshop. It’s bitterly cold outside, and I wrap myself in furs before I leave. By the forge, however, it’s hotter than a summer day at noon, so I leave them all at the door. I work on my latest project, a broadsword, until my chiton is soaked with sweat and all I can see is glowing metal and all I can hear is the ringing of my hammer. Today I am bevelling the blade and, when I’m done, it’s near perfect. Ífaistos and I retire to the cooler back room for a while, leaning against the workbenches there and drinking cups of wine mixed with water.

My thoughts fall back to the goddesses and their contest for dominion over the city of Athína, and I feel anger stirring inside me. I know it isn’t fair, but I direct it at Ífaistos. Perhaps because he is there. Perhaps because he’s the only god that doesn’t intimidate me.

“Do you know the others play games with mortal lives?” I ask him. “Do you play games like that? Do you think of killing mortals as sport?”

He sets down his cup. “No, I do not,” he answers slowly. “I have great respect for some mortals. There are talented craftsmen among them, and noble people.”

“Then why do you stand by and let it happen?”

His tone doesn’t rise to meet mine. Like Ánitos facing angry raiders, he stays calm, his voice steady.

“Kóri, look at me,” he says gently. “I am a disfigured cripple.” I start to protest, but he holds up his hand. “I don’t know what you see,” he says, “but that is what they see. That is what I am - all I am - to them. Do you think I have any sway over what the rest of the gods do? They hardly count me among them. I find many of their ways repulsive, but there is nothing I can do. I cannot go from here and leave all this behind.” He waves his hand at the workshop, the forge wreathed in enchantments, at the beautiful and wonderful things he has made. “I’m sorry to say it, but there is nothing you can do either.”

“But we can’t just let them continue to set mortals against mortals, and to treat other immortals as they do!” Armónia, I think. Me.

“And yet we cannot do otherwise,” he replies, his voice still low and even. “You have to accept that, although I know it is a hard thing to do. Those who try to defy them will be punished - I know that better than anyone.”

I look at him questioningly, at his twisted foot and hunched back, but he doesn’t elaborate.

“Why do you grow old?” I ask. I hope it isn't rude, but I’ve always been curious about it.

“Pain ages people,” he says. “Even gods.”

“Does it hurt much, then?” I ask, touching his shoulder, looking down at his leg.

“All the time,” he says. “Nothing makes me forget, except -”

His hand reaches up to my face and touches my cheek, and I see something in his eyes that I don’t understand. I wait for him to finish speaking, but then he seems to change his mind. Instead, he lets his hand drop to his side, and limps across the room.

“I have something for you,” he says over his shoulder.

He bends down stiffly and retrieves a package wrapped in cloth from a shelf. He carries it back to me and lays it down on top of the workbench. Gently, almost reverently, he unwraps the layers of rough cloth. Inside is a double-edged dagger, its bronze hilt embossed with curling vines of ivy. There are intricate engravings of ivy leaves on the blade too.

He holds it out to me, one hand cradling the hilt, the blade resting on the fingers of his other hand, as if he’s presenting a sword to a king.

“Do you like it?” he asks, but I’m sure he can tell from the expression on my face that I do. I smile broadly at him.

“I love it,” I say. “May I hold it?”

“By all means,” he says, “only be careful - it is very sharp.”

I glance at him to see if he’s making a joke, but he’s serious. I take the dagger and rest it on my finger. It’s perfectly balanced.

"I know you fancy yourself a warrior," he says.

"I am a warrior," I tell him, but he only smiles indulgently.

I smile back and flick my wrist so that the heel of my hand hits the hilt and propels the dagger into the air. It rises, turning over and over, the polished blade catching the light of the pale winter sun slanting in through the windows. Then, as it starts to fall, I reach out at just the right moment and catch it by the hilt. It’s a cheap trick, something Ánitos and I practised for fun - no use in a real fight - but when I glance at Ífaistos I see in his eyes that he’s both surprised and impressed. Perhaps he even begins to believe that I know how to use this pretty knife he has given me, but I doubt it.

He gives me a sheath too - tooled leather with the same pattern of ivy leaves on it. When I leave the forge, I go to the seamstresses’ workrooms in the lower part of the citadel and beg some strips of leather from them.

“You’ll tire your hands with that,” they tell me. They offer me linen instead, but I’m adamant. They offer to do the work for me, but I insist I will do it myself. So, eventually, they give me a thick needle and a special tool to make the holes.

I continue to visit Ífaistos in the mornings and, in the afternoons when most of the palace is asleep, I work on my project. When I’m not working on it, I hide it under my pallet, along with the dagger Ífaistos gave me. I don’t know why I do that. It takes me three attempts to get the sizing right, but eventually I have a belt which I can secure around my waist. Suspended from it is another, smaller belt that I fix around my thigh, and from that I hang my new dagger in its beautiful sheath. I know it will be of little practical use to me here, but the moment I put it on and let the skirts of my chiton fall over it, I feel somehow safer.

I go to the forge to show Ífaistos what I’ve made, and when I return to my chambers, there is a garment on the bed in the antechamber. I’ve never seen such a thing. There is so much thin, black material that it takes me some time to understand how a person would even wear it. It’s nothing like the chitons I ordinarily wear. It has no fastenings over the shoulders - nothing at all. Instead, there is a bodice that is secured with laces that criss-cross up the back like the fancy leather sandals Ártemis wears. Below that are layers of this thin material, overlapping like cobwebs and reaching the floor. The back is longer than the front, and must trail along the ground behind whoever is wearing it.

Pinned to the gown is a note I can read, in the letters Érsi taught me. For next Midwinter. It’s signed with a trident. I don’t know whether it’s a joke. I don’t try the garment on, but stuff it into my cupboard along with the others.

To be continued …