The Dark Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

moved without seeing, lay down and stared.
    I was bewitched. I could think of nothing but the goddess of the dead.
     
     
     
     
    Two: Visitation
     
    “To be honest, I don't remember much about last night.” Demeter smiled softly, shook her head. “But it wasn’t terrible—was it terrible? Zeus was favorable toward you, I think.”
    We stood together in the bower, late morning sunshine bright and shafted, lancing through the green leaves and grapevines. The air smelled heady, of warm earth and sweet fruits, but when I took one of the grapes in my mouth, it tasted bitter.
    “It wasn’t terrible.” I held my tongue in regard to Zeus. My mother knew how much I hated him. But there was one topic I must broach. “Hades,” I whispered, startling myself by speaking her name here, aloud. Our encounter, the words we shared only hours ago—they seemed like a secret, a secret all my own, and I was protective of them. “She’s a woman. You never told me that.”
    Demeter sighed, sat down on an accommodating swell of greenery. She spread her hands, studied my face. “It never mattered, Persephone. I wasn’t hiding it from you.”
     “I didn’t say you were.” I smoothed my tunic beneath me and sat opposite her, my eyes drawn down to the ground. “Is Zeus…cruel to her?” I didn’t want to know that he was, but, still,   I needed to ask.
    “Oh…” My mother exhaled once more, patted the space above my knee. “He taunts her. Calls her the ‘lord’ of the dead because she favors the company of women. She is not like him, or Poseidon. Hades is good.”
    My lips parted, surprised. “Are you familiar with her, then?”
    “Oh…” She hesitated. “No, no one is, not really. Except, I suppose, for the dead. But that’s too somber a subject for a golden morning, the morning after your debut. I am so proud of you, my Persephone.” She held out her arms to me, and I felt like a little girl again as I ducked my head against her shoulder. But I did not feel the old comfort blossom inside my heart when she held me in her arms. She was trembling a little.
    “Speaking…of Zeus…” she spoke haltingly into my hair, pausing for a long moment during which neither of us moved—or breathed. “Since he was unable to talk long with you last night, he hoped to remedy that…” She strung the stilted words together like red berries on a poison tree. I arched back from her in horror.
    There was such sadness in her eyes.
    “He is coming down later today so that he may bless you, acquaint himself with you.”
    “ Here ,” I whispered. “Zeus is coming here?”
    “Persephone, I couldn’t dissuade him. I tried—please believe me, I tried. Once he gets an idea in his head…” She looked so small, so defeated.
    I found my feet, cleared my throat, closed my eyes as my mother’s fears collided with my own. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be here when he comes—I can’t be. I’d do something wrong. I’d make him angry with me. With you.”
    My mother was nodding, her lovely face pale.
    “That may be best,” she whispered, petting the blue morning glory vine curling like a puppy in her lap. “I’ll…I’ll think of an excuse for you. It will be all right. It will.” She sounded unconvinced, and her eyes shone like moons. “I’m sorry, Persephone.”
    I stood for a moment, disarmed, as I gazed down at my mother, my mother who would lie to the king of all the gods for me, for me . My mother. After Charis , I had doubted her. But I knew, had always known, the depth of her love for me, deeper than the deepest roots, deeper than the Underworld itself. Words crowded my throat; I could say them, could say anything, but words would never be enough, truly.
    She rose, smooth and tall and serene. I could not help her, could not save her. I could not save myself.
    My heart splintered, and I needed to leave, needed to escape her kindness and her courage, her trembling hands, the fear buried behind the calm of her eyes. So,