9. Underworld: Strands of red
Part 2: Chapter 9
This is Part 2: Chapter 9 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 9: Strands of Red
One afternoon in the bitter cold weeks before spring arrives, I’m summoned to Días’ hall. I wrap myself in furs and pad through the empty stone corridors, pushing open one of the carved wooden doors to step inside. The hall looks enormous without all the revellers and tables groaning under the weight of food and wine, like it did the first time I saw it. Días is seated on his throne, but Íra isn’t by his side, and there are no satyrs or dryads in attendance. No one is there but me. Even Dímitra isn’t at this audience. Was she not invited? Is it possible that Días, my father, wanted to speak to me alone?
“Ah, Kóri,” he says, as I respectfully incline my head. “There is something we must discuss. If you are to join the Pantheon, as your mother has requested, then we need to give you a role. As you have no particular power, I wanted to ask - what is it you can do?”
I have rarely felt so small and useless. What is it I can do?
“I can hunt, and I can fight,” I say, knowing I’m selling myself short with this inadequate description, but unable to think of any other way to describe centuries of hard-won skills.
“Can you now?” he says, and his eyes twinkle with amusement. I feel anger and frustration bubble up inside me.
“If you don’t believe me,” I say tersely, “put a sword in my hand and I’ll show you.”
“There will be no need for that,” he says placatingly. “Besides, we already have a goddess of the hunt and a god of war. What else can you do?”
“I can help women deliver their babies.”
He smiles and nods to himself. “That is good,” he says. “A goddess of childbirth … no, fertility … and new life. It is perfect, in fact. A springtime goddess to mirror your mother watching over the harvest. And yet, I do not know …”
His sentence trails off and I wait, wondering what it is he doesn’t know.
“I will have to think long and hard on this,” he tells me at length. “Dímitra insists that she will build a cult around the both of you - mother and daughter - and I do not say that is a bad idea. More than half the mortals are women, many of them mothers, all of them daughters. But there are some things …”
He lapses into silence again, staring at me.
“But you are harmless,” he says eventually, with a condescending smile. Then he sighs and rests his head on his hand. “There is too much gossip in the palace, that is the problem. False prophecies and fanciful stories … Yes, I will think on it. You can go.”
He waves his hand, dismissing me, and I gladly leave his empty hall, seething with the implications of being called harmless. I’m not harmless. I’m a weapon, a warrior, a lion.
No, I think, I’m not. I was. Now I am a mouse.
So is this to be my fate? To be a goddess of Ólimbos - a goddess of fertility? How can I be, when I have never birthed a child; when my true name means she who brings death? And if this is what I’m to become, then what of the vision Poseidónas showed me? What of the whisper the nymph of the waterfall told me of in Arkadía, and the rumours Ermís heard?
I want answers, and so I do something I’ve never done before: I seek out Apóllonas , the god of foresight.
It takes me hours of wandering through the palace, climbing staircases I’ve never noticed before and opening doors into rooms I never knew the existence of, but eventually I find him. He’s in a walled courtyard by a pool encased in white stone, sitting on the lip of it, plucking at his lyre. He glances up at me as I enter through an archway, but before he can greet me, I call out to him.
“Do you tell the Pythía what to say?" I demand.
He gives me a curious look, then lays down his instrument.
“No, I give her the power of foresight. But the Pythía is only mortal. The giving of such a gift always drives her mad.”
He says it as if it’s of little consequence - an irritating detail that irks him.
“Then why do it?” I ask.
“Do you know how many people flock to my temple at Delfí? The cult of Apóllonas Loxías will never die, because the humans’ desire for knowledge they shouldn’t have will never fade. But then again, this is not unique to mortals. We all want to know where our paths will lead, don't we?” His eyes meet mine. “Do you want to see what lies in your future, daughter of earth and thunder?”
“I want the truth,” I warn him. “Not riddles and nonsense.”
“I cannot control what is revealed to me,” he replies. “You shall see what I do.”
He places his hands either side of my head, his fingers resting lightly on my temples. I don't close my eyes, but suddenly I'm not looking at his face. I’m looking at a ball of red yarn in my hands. From it branch many threads, but I can't see where they lead. In front of me is a bank of fog so opaque that I can make out nothing inside it. The threads from my yarn trail away into it, each one pulled taut.
Apóllonas' hands fall from my face and the vision fades.
“Interesting,” he says.
“What does it mean?”
“Your future is veiled.”
“Veiled?”
“Inscrutable.”
“But the Pythía - she made prophecies about me.”
“Did she now? Well, the art of prophecy is ... fluid. Different people glimpse different things when they peer into the future, and what they see is always open to interpretation.”
“So you don’t know what any of it means either?”
“Foresight is not the same as knowing, Kóri. It is divining shapes in the shifting shadows of the future.”
“It’s all bullshit,” I snap.
Apóllonas shrugs, not in the least riled by my angry dismissal of one of his great gifts.
“So say all those who wish to believe they are masters of their own fate,” he answers.
That night, I dream of my vision again, but this time there are shadowy forms moving in the swirling mist. Three women emerge from it. I can’t see their faces clearly. In one instant, they look as young as I do, lithe and smooth-skinned. In the next, they are hunched over, hands gnarled and knuckles swollen, their spines curved by age.
One gives me a skein of yarn, the same one I held in my vision, with strands of red trailing away into the mist. The second kisses my forehead, and the third makes as if to hand me a small knife. When I reach for it, however, she snatches it back.
“Three things must come first.” I hear their voices, although I can’t see their lips moving. “Three things you must take.”
“What things?” I ask, my own voice deadened by the mist.
“The trust of a mortal, the faith of an immoral and the dignity of a god.”
To be continued …
Oooh, she has a quest!