3. Underworld: One mortal life

Part 2: Chapter 3

This is Part 2: Chapter 3 of the serialised 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 3: One mortal life

The next morning, a nymph attends me in my chambers. I’m already up. I have, in fact, already performed the exercises Ánitos and I used to do together for strength, balance and agility. This is why, when she enters, I’m standing on the balcony, the cold mountain air cooling my sweat-sheened skin. The view from here is quite wonderful. The citadel is below the palace, but my room faces off to the side. I can see a wide meadow of green grass that stretches to where trees begin. These grow thick, like a small forest, all the way to the wall of the citadel. As the land slopes downhill, they appear tall enough to obscure the wall and they merge with the trees behind it, so, from here, I can pretend that I am not a captive - that I could walk into those woods and just keep walking.

The nymph helps me into a new white chiton and brushes and plaits my hair.

“Can you tell me the way to Ífaistos’ forge?” I ask her, and she gives me directions. They are complicated, however, and I become lost in the maze of the palace, ending up in the stable yard where Ártemis and her nymphs are preparing to go on their hunt.

“Good morning, Kóri,” she says, with a smile that does not reach her eyes. “Will you be joining us today after all?”

I look at Ártemis, dressed in the colours of a forest at midday, a hunting knife hanging from her waist. I look at the horses with their gleaming coats and silky manes, and at the nymphs seated on them. They have bows and quivers of arrows slung across their backs. They are all watching me.

I can visit Ífaistos later.

“Do you have a spare horse for me?” I ask. “And a bow and arrows? I have none of my own.”

“Of course,” she says, unkindly. “You have nothing.” She smiles again, and there is something malicious in it. “Another horse,” she calls, “and weapons.”

A satyr brings me a beautiful white mare and offers to help me up onto her back. Remembering Ánitos’ advice, I let him, although I could easily vault to the horse’s back unaided. Another satyr hands me a quiver full of arrows and I see the heads are bronze, not stone. I feel my stomach contract with excitement - I am longing to shoot with these. I sling the bow I am given over my shoulder as the nymphs have done, and Ártemis blows her hunting horn.

We ride out of the stable yard and through the arch, the sounds of the horses’ hooves echoing loudly underneath it. Then, we are in the first courtyard I entered yesterday, riding out through the gates of the palace and cantering down through the citadel. People press themselves back against walls as the nymphs ride recklessly by, Ártemis at the head of the group, still sounding her horn. Down the main street we ride until we burst out of the citadel and onto the slopes of Mount Ólimbos.

Ártemis leads us down to the flats at the base of the mountain at an alarming speed, but I am a good rider and my horse is sure-footed on the uneven ground; I keep pace with the others. At the bottom, we dismount and leave the horses, they and us panting after the break-neck ride. I see now that one of the nymphs has a small dog with her. How she carried it on our wild ride down the mountainside I cannot guess, but she releases it now and it runs into the grass in front of us. Ártemis and her nymphs all drop to one knee, nocking arrows to their bows, and I follow suit. I understand that the dog will flush out whatever game we are shooting for and, sure enough, seconds later, a flock of fat quails flurries into the air.

I watch the nymphs out of the corners of my eyes. They are excellent archers, but I think I am better. I have still not forgotten that Ánitos advised me not to show them what I could do, but I think in the hail of arrows, no one will notice. Besides, I cannot bring myself to fluff my shots. I’m too vain an archer for that. Even with these bronze-tipped arrows, which I have never used before, I never miss.

After a while, Ártemis calls a halt and the nymph calls her dog back. Then, we gather the birds and stray arrows. The nymphs bring out bread and olives, skins of wine and tiny amphorae. I do not drink from the small bottles, but the others do, and I watch as they become wilder, louder. They make lewd jokes and two of them begin to wrestle on the ground. The others laugh and shout encouragement. Ártemis laughs too, but she sits a little way off, on a rock looking down at them, as if all this is purely for her entertainment. Which, I suspect, it probably is. I stay a little way off, too, moving among the horses, stroking their silky manes. I feel intensely uncomfortable; I’ve never seen nymphs act this way. The ones I encountered in Arkadía were dignified, mystical, almost ethereal. They were wise, aloof and wholly tied to the waters they guarded and guided. These nymphs, raucous and bawdy, are an unknown entity to me and I don’t want to get involved with them. I want to remain invisible.

But I am not invisible. Ártemis is watching me, too. At some point, she descends from her rock and suddenly she is beside me. She puts a hand on mine where it is buried in the mane of a chestnut mare.

“I do not think our hunting is done,” she murmurs, and tilts her chin up towards the lower slopes of the mountain.

There is a mortal boy there, not much more than a child. Perhaps he has been sent to gather berries, but if he had a basket he has discarded it. Instead, in his hand, he holds a long stick. He swishes it through the air, play-fighting invisible enemies. I look around for some other target - a rabbit, a quail fluttering through the air - but I see nothing else in the direction she is indicating. I turn to stare at her in horror.

“You think it too far?” she asks lightly, but I get the impression that she is only pretending to misinterpret my expression. She knows how much this shocks me, and she is enjoying it. “It is a long shot, but the mortals do not call me the goddess of the hunt for nothing.”

I continue to stare at her, speechless.

“I noticed you’re quite a good shot yourself, though,” she continues. “So let us have a competition.” She smiles at me. “If you win, I will let you keep that bow and all the arrows in your quiver. They are enchanted, you know. What will you give me if I win?”

She is standing too close to me, and I can feel her breath on my cheek. I still do not speak.

“Very well, then. I will decide,” she says. “If I win, you will owe me a favour.”

I know this is a very bad deal, but I have no intention of letting her win. Besides, she is already taking her bow from her shoulder and lazily selecting an arrow, so I have no time to answer. I move like lightning to nock an arrow to my own bow, and Ártemis laughs. Perhaps she thinks I’m being competitive - that I really want to win this sick game of hers. She releases her arrow, and I quickly do the same. My arrow collides with hers in midair and knocks it off its trajectory. They sail to earth and bury themselves in the undergrowth. The mortal boy doesn’t even look up from his game, completely unaware of how narrowly he has avoided death.

“Idiot!” Ártemis screeches at me. “Can’t you shoot?”

“I can shoot,” I answer back, finding my voice at last, finding I am angry. “I can shoot birds from the air, rabbits and hare, deer - for food. But I cannot shoot people for sport.”

Her beautiful face is contorted with rage, and she raises her hand as if about to slap me, but she seems to reconsider. Instead, she grabs a fistful of my chiton and pulls my face towards hers. Through gritted teeth, she hisses, “You have made a very bad start on Ólimbos, little Kóri.”

She lets go of my chiton, pushing me so hard that I stumble backwards.

“Get out of my sight,” she says, then spits on the ground at my feet and walks back to her nymphs. They are all staring at me. They can’t have heard anything at that distance, but they must know their mistress well enough to realise I have angered her. I see one of them hand her a little amphora, and she unstoppers it, throwing her head back to drink its contents in one gulp.

I find the white mare, vault to her back and turn her head towards the citadel. We have not gone far when I see a movement off to my left. I turn and see the mortal boy fling his arms up, the stick he was carrying flying through the air as he falls to the ground. I swing my mare’s head around and gallop towards him, jumping to the ground even while I’m still reining the horse in. The boy is lying face-down, an arrow protruding from his back. I roll him onto his side, but I am too late. There is no life left in his face.

I think again of Antigóni’s accusations. What’s one mortal life to you? she had asked me. What’s ten? A hundred? We are like flies to you - it is easy to reach out and crush us, isn’t it? I think, too, of Ánitos telling me, There is something hard in you … a shard of ice in your heart. Perhaps there is. Perhaps I never cared enough for the mortal lives I took. That was why I was such a good warrior. But whatever kernel I carry inside my heart is nothing compared to what is in Ártemis’. Whenever I have killed, I have always had my reasons, even if they were misguided. There was no reason at all for this boy to die.

I turn back to his body. His dark blue eyes are glassy, his face scraped and bloody where he fell on the rough ground. I touch his cheek and wonder whether I should bury him, but if I do, then his people will never know what happened to him when they come looking for him. Instead, I break off the arrow so that I can lay him on his back. Then, I gently brush the hair back from his face and wipe the dirt and blood from his nose and forehead with the hem of my chiton. I cross his arms over his chest and close his eyes.

When I stand and look back down the slope to the flats, Ártemis is still standing there, her bow in her hand. I can’t be sure at this distance, but I think she is smiling.

---

I urge my horse to gallop back to the citadel, even though it is hard on her. I want to put as much distance between myself and Ártemis, between myself and what just happened, as I can. In my mare’s hoofbeats, I hear the echo of Ánitos’ maxim: We kill to eat, we kill to live, and we kill that others might live in freedom. I do not cry, but my stomach is knotted so hard that it physically hurts, knotted with unfamiliar emotions that I’m not used to feeling. I am angry and upset, and disgusted at the senseless death of someone who had done no wrong, who would still be alive now if he had chosen to play on some other hillside.

It strikes me what a game of chance mortals play every day; how one small choice like that, the position of a tiny baby in the womb, where they are standing when the earthquake hits, can mean the difference between life and death. It seems, suddenly, so brutal. Mortals live every day with the threat of dying hanging over them - there are so many ways it can happen. Someone like Ártemis, someone with authority and power, should be protecting them, not picking them off for her own amusement. But that isn’t what the gods of Ólimbos are like. I think of all the wars they have started because of petty jealousy or hubris, or perhaps plain boredom. In this game of chance mortals are playing, the gods are the ones rolling the dice, and I wonder what gave them - us - the right.

The gates of both the citadel and palace are open, and I ride through, looking neither left nor right, back to the stable yard where I met Ártemis that morning. There are satyrs milling around and I slide off the mare and hand the reins to one of them. I lay my hand on her neck for a moment, and rest my head against hers. Across the courtyard, I notice a nymph with silver hair watching me. For a moment, our eyes meet, and she makes as if to move towards me, but I am done with nymphs and goddesses for now. Without a word to anyone, I fling my bow and arrows to the ground and reenter the maze of the palace complex.

I ask for directions twice before I find my way to Ífaistos’ workshop. It’s a low building set apart from the palace - grey stone, not white marble - and I’m instantly drawn to its relative simplicity. The double doors stand open and heat radiates from inside. I stand on the threshold, the hot breath of the forge all around me, and I watch Ífaistos at the anvil as he draws back his hammer and brings it down with a sound that makes me flinch, again, again, on top of a glowing piece of metal. At every stroke, the metal cools - from red to orange, then yellow, then grey - and then he takes it in a pair of tongs and puts it back into the fire. Still, I don’t move. I know nothing of metalwork, but I am sure this is a process that cannot be interrupted.

When the metal is fiery red again, he takes it out and continues with the hammer strokes. This time, he leaves it to cool to grey on the anvil and raises his head to look at me.

“Welcome,” he says, and he looks delighted to see me. He gestures to the anvil and beckons me inside. I go forward eagerly to get a closer look and I see a piece of metal, rectangular but tapering to a point at one end, smooth, but not sharp at the edges: a half-formed sword.

“What do you do next?” I ask.

“Next, I isolate the tang,” he replies.

“Can you show me?”

His smile widens, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening, as he picks up the metal in his tongs again and puts just the end portion back into the fire. I feel his eyes on me, but I’m staring into the flames, watching the metal begin to glow. It’s like magic and I want to reach out and touch it, although I know it would melt even my immortal flesh.

He takes it out again and places it in a device which he tightens around a place about a handspan from the flat end. Then, he beats that with the hammer too. I welcome the ringing sound of metal on metal - I want only noise and heat and flame to drown out the memories of the morning.

When Ífaistos is done, he lays the half-made blade aside.

“Come,” he says. “Enough for now. Come with me.”

I follow him into the next room, where it is slightly cooler. There are rows of shelves in here, axes hanging on nails and spears leaning against the walls. My eyes dart everywhere, but he takes my arm and leads me over to a small table covered with jewellery. I want to see weapons - swords and knives - but I find even I am drawn to the beauty of the adornments he is showing me too. They are not like the gold bands and necklaces Érsi wore, although they were beautiful in their own way. These are something else - exquisitely worked, and pulsating with enchantments, inlaid with tiny stones of every colour, their many-faceted faces reflecting and refracting the light.

What catches my eye most of all is a bracelet, gold, in the shape of a snake eating its own tail. Its eyes are clear gems and the pattern of its skin is engraved in intricate detail. My hand goes out to it before I can stop myself. I want to feel the texture of its golden scales under my fingertips.

“Do you like it?” Ífaistos asks.

“Oh, yes,” I say, snatching my hand back. It looks almost alive.

He picks the bracelet up and turns it so that the light shines through the tiny stones in the snake’s eye sockets. Inside, I see rainbows arch and explode into white light.

“They’re diamonds,” he tells me, indicating the gems. “They come from the far-off lands in the east. They’re the hardest substance in existence.”

I reach out and run a forefinger over the snake's multi-faceted eyes, as if I can determine by touch alone the truth of his words.

“If it is the hardest substance, how do you cut it?” I ask, for cut it he must have to make two such perfectly identical jewels.

Ífaistos looks pleased, as Ánitos used to when I asked a pertinent question. “I broke and blunted many of my tools at first, until I realised that only a diamond can cut another diamond.”

He holds the bracelet out to me. “For you,” he says. “Take it.”

I shake my head. “I couldn’t -” I begin, but he gently takes my hand and pushes the bracelet onto it. It is large and he slides it all the way up to my upper arm before it fits.

Our eyes meet. His are kindly and sincere. Looking into them, I am reminded again of Ánitos. Emboldened by that thought, I ask him, “Can I come here again?”

He looks genuinely pleased. “I should be glad of your company, but my workshop is dim and close. Wouldn’t you rather be out in the fresh air, walking or riding?”

The mention of riding brings my thoughts back to Ártemis and the dead boy’s staring blue eyes.

“No, I would like to come here,” I say quickly. Then I take a deep breath. “And I would like to learn your craft too. Please.”

Ífaistos smiles. “If you want to have more pretty things to wear, I can make them for you. Just say the word.”

“No, I want to learn to do it myself. And I don’t want to make pretty things. I want to make those.” I gesture to the shelves of weapons on the opposite wall. “Like the one you are making now in your workshop. I want you to teach me how to do that.”

He gives me an indulgent look, as though humouring a child, but it doesn’t matter, because I can see that he has already relented.

“Come then, little warrior,” he says. “I will show you how we make bevels. That is how we make the sword sharp, so that you can slay your enemies.”

I don’t even care that he is teasing me, patronising me. I only care that, here, there is no one else but me and him, and he is safe. I wonder what he would say if he knew how many enemies I had really slain and, thinking of the boy lying dead and cold on the mountainside, I wonder if it was ever my place to wield weapons against mortals at all.

To be continued …