Harvest Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

wine in the jar when we picnicked.”
    â€œAnd you don’t mind? I mean…I’m old…” But the eyes he looked at her with were not old. They were as young as any shepherd lad with his first girl. That look only made her love him the more. “Old enough to be your father, surely. And my kingdom isn’t the loveliest place in the cosmos, either. Well, with you in it, it would be, but…” He stammered to a halt.
    â€œWe’re immortal,” she reminded him. “It doesn’t matter how old you are, you’ll still look like you do now in a hundred years, and then the difference between us will be insignificant. And anyway, it’s not as if you were like Zeus, chasing after…well….”
    â€œWhat do you—oh,” he replied, and a flush crept up his dark cheek. She giggled.
    â€œMaybe I’m not old,” she said, “but I am fairly sure that I love you, whatever you call yourself. And I think you are certainly old enough to be sure you love me. ”
    â€œOh, yes,” he said fervently, and if it hadn’t been that this was a cave, the floor was cold and not very pleasant, and neither of them wanted Demeter to somehow find them before they got into his realm safely, they might just have torn the chitons off each other and consummated things then and there.
    But Hades was not Zeus, and after breaking off the fevered kiss in which tongues and hands and bodies played a very great part, he stroked the hair off her damp brow, smiled and turned toward the back of the cave. With Hades holding her hand, a door appeared in the rock wall, as clear and solid a door as any in her mother’s villa. It swung open as they approached, then swung shut behind them.
    â€œAre we there yet?” she teased.
    He laughed. “Almost. But Demeter can’t follow us now.”
    There was a long, rough-hewn passage with bright light at the end of it, which brought them out on the banks of a mist-shrouded river.
    It was a sad, gray river, with a sluggish current, and had more of a beach of varying shades of gray pebbles than a “bank.” Mist not only covered its surface, it extended in every direction; you couldn’t see more than a few feet into it. Tiny wavelets lapped at Persephone’s bare feet. The water was quite cold, with a chill that was somehow more than mere temperature could account for.
    â€œThe Styx!” Persephone exclaimed, but Hades made a face.
    â€œEveryone makes that mistake. It’s the Acheron. The river of woe. The Styx, the river of hate, is the one that makes you invulnerable. When you see it, you won’t ever mistake the one for the other. Look out—”
    The warning came aptly, as a flood of wispy things, like mortals, but mortals made of fog, thronged them.
    Spirits! Persephone had never actually seen a spirit, and she shrank back against Hades instinctively. There must have been thousands of them. They couldn’t actually do anything to either her or Hades, but their touch was cold, and Persephone clutched Hades’s comfortingly solid bicep. “What are they?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper—but still loud enough to sound like a shout over the faint susurrus of the voices of the spirits, too faint for her to make out anything of what they were saying. They tried, fruitlessly, to pluck at her hem, at her sleeves, to get her attention. “Why are they here?”
    â€œThey’re the poor, the friendless. They’re stuck on this side of the Acheron. Charon charges a fee to take them over, everyone knows that. You’re supposed to put a coin in the mouth of the dead person when you bury him so the dead can pay the ferryman’s fee. It’s not much, but if they don’t have it…” Hades’s voice trailed off as she gave him a stricken look. She glanced at the poor wispy things, and their forlorn look practically broke her heart.
    â€œI have my