Chapter 7, section 7: Firewater 51

Persephone picked up the bottle and twisted off the cap. It smelled sickly sweet. She put the bottle to her lips, and the liquid burned. It was her tongue and throat that bore the brunt of the burning; a searing of all extraneous matter between her lips and her stomach. It was harsh, but felt good! Her senses were coming to life! Not since she was a very young girl could she remember feeling something with such sharp awareness.

All through childhood she had been a good girl, doing her mother’s wishes without a moment’s hesitation. She was Kore, the perfect maiden, the most wonderful of all girls. Perfect, but her memories were hazy, like someone had covered her with gauze. Then one afternoon the perfect girl shattered. The king of the underworld, Lord Hades, split the earth open right under her feet and grabbed her by the ankle. He dragged her to his colorless kingdom and raped her repeatedly, stopping only when his strength ran out. Her tears must have had some effect on him, because afterwards he was courtly with her, and gentle; as gentle as he knew how.

When the deal was struck between Hades and Demeter, they left her out of the decision. She was traded like a hunk of meat with no desires and no will of its own. She was transferred like property from under the thumb of her green mother to under the fist of her black husband. A thousand years later, she had made a thousand trips to be exchanged from husband’s hand to mother’s, and a thousand from mother’s hand to husband’s. A thousand trips from the perfect maiden to the perfect wife and back.Then one day she refused to go along with her husband’s folly and fade with him into obscurity. She also refused her mother, and the rest of the Olympians, and the teeming hordes of mortals. She found solace in refusal, and renunciation.

She lived in caves and huts and refused all friendship, until Hephaestos limped into her cave. They became friends; two misfit hermits with gaping wounds that refused to go away. In his company she began to look beyond her small life and see how the mortal world had changed, and how the family had changed, and her curiosity was peaked. Even so, she remained on the edge of things, not drinking too deep, not eating too much, not laughing too hard, not screaming too loud, not feeling to deep.

Not feeling much at all.

Then not feeling at all.

Now the water of life burned her mouth, seared her throat and down into her stomach. That she could feel. She even felt her heart beating harder, louder, leaping to keep up.

Yes, this she could feel!

When she finished the bottle, she set it down on the counter and said, “Obrigada.” The bartender and his patrons all stared loose-jawed. One of the men crossed himself compulsively, and the others mouthed soundless prayers. They were looking partly at her, and partly behind her.

On her shoulder, Thanatos croaked for her attention. Something was happening behind her.

She turned around slowly, and there they were. About a dozen dead—those who refused to leave the place of their departed lives—were on their knees, heads prostrate in the dirt at her feet. They bowed down before her, their queen.