Dread Persephone

The cries of the captive Persephone ring through the earth.

DREAD PERSEPHONE

a Susurrant Horror story

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The fires of my throne have cooled over time.

Time is a strange thing, and ever shall it be; time has no form and yet is the strongest thing of all, even to a being like me. I will never truly understand it. Perhaps my father once understood it – as he had purported – but in the end, it broke even him. If he had been able to control time – to really seize his preferred destiny despite the strength of time itself - I would not be here now.

Upon my throne of cooling embers.

“My dear, will you at last come? Mother is hungry.”

That call again. That dread call. As my fires ebb, sometimes I sleep – something I had no cause to do, in previous eras – and yet that call strikes me even in my slumber.

“My dear?”

Often, she sleeps too. When the world is cold and quiet, she sleeps. Sometimes then my fires kindle once more, but it is only a little. Just a little.

Now the fingers of growth, the promises of spring, rise in the world above. And she wakes, and calls for me.

My captive.

“Oh, my dear, you simply must come. Mother is quite unwell with her hunger.”

I rise, unsteadily. There are certain obligations upon beings such as myself. There are rules. I am captor and host both, and that compact draws a tight string across my wrists. Her pleas have struck thrice, and I must attend.

I cannot fight destiny. No man can hope to do so.

Nor may a God.

The lights here were once scintillating blue: an echoing and endless gloaming. But now they are like stars in a far-off sky. My brother never saw fit to visit, but he would have, once upon a time, found my constellation bright and bold. If he still lived – if he were still revered – he would find it wanting.

The desmoterion is far, and my travel encircles the bowels of the dark earth, but I am still free to travel as a fleet shadow and I am soon there, her calls ever more insistent. There is something which sounds like timorousness in that voice.

But also a need.

“I am here, my dear.” My own voice is…not what it once was. It is now just a memory. My pale hands lightly, tremblingly, touch the cooling bars of flame, play with them as though they are a lyre. I had a musician once, whose music was so divine that the beasts and the stones of the earth danced to it. He is dust now, because time crushes all. This place now holds none but myself.

And my captive.

“Oh, good.”

I cannot look at her. I will not.

She speaks again, her own voice becoming something like music as well, but so laced with discordance that it bears no parallel to the once sweet plucking of Orpheus. “Would you release us, my love? Mother is so hungry. She is quite disconsolate. You only need look for yourself – see how she writhes, famished!”

I shake my head. I do not think that my voice, weak as it is, will have the strength to deny the request.

As I must.

“No, my love,” she repeats. “You must look.”

And…I must.

Persephone stands, a shining beauty. The flame does not obfuscate that truth, which always was and perhaps always will be: indeed, the sheening gold of her ringlets perhaps out-classes that of my meagre fire.

In her hands, she holds something. Something that, once upon a time, was someone.

My voice falters. “Sweet Persephone, you have food. For both yourself and your mother. You have no need of anything else.”

Listlessly and with near-derision, she plays with the desiccated flesh. Her emerald eyes do not waver from mine. Her fingers plunge deep into that body such that it jerks, spilling ancient blood. Once more I cannot help but think of old Orpheus whose melodies no longer ring in the ears of the birds, as she plays her fingers across the innards of this corpse.

The corpse which, once upon a time, was a shining demigod amongst men.

“You know that this food is old. We are tired of it. It is quite rotten to us. Wouldn’t you agree? Mother requires a banquet. A delightful symposia.”

A banquet.

The thought of Persephone glutting is one thing. But her mother…

Time is a funny thing. It breaks people and Gods both, and it reshapes all that is.

The world was different, once. Three worlds vibrant and incomparable, and all three now broken. The home of my brothers and sisters, eternal in the sky: now simply faded. My own demesne, increasingly cool: a prison of once-power.

And the world of the mortals…

I know what she wishes. She wishes for a banquet there.

“I cannot do that, dear Persephone. You know that. I simply cannot allow it.”

Why am I trembling?

She smiles, and it chills me even further. That uncanny and discordant music becomes as stone. “I do not think you can stop me for much longer. You may as well release me now. After all – who is to stop me? Even the memory of the blood of your brother has faded, these long years. And now you…oh my dear. You seem so quite tired. This game we play must be awfully exhausting for you.”

I am a God. Perhaps the very last of them. I had many names, but it is only one which has saved me from the fate of my brothers and sisters: the timeless name of Death: he who scratches, each day, until the blood pools. That has been enough to prevent the crushing of time – just enough of me remains in the minds of the mortal γη above. A spectre of that which I once was, but enough.

She…

She is not a God.

Persephone, she was called. Cora, to some. She crept from the ground and it was clear to all that she was something – not divine – but entirely ancient. Her singular purpose to rise in the spring, and sleep in the bosom of winter. Nothing else mattered.

I do not know what she is, save for something dread. Something which, in contravention of the nature of Gods, endures without need for reverence or even memory.

I do not think she was ever of this world, and that is something which I truly fear.

“Come now, my dear. Take a look at mother. She is so hungry. And look – see how she wants to rise! You must placate her, I think.”

I dare not to.

But I must.

Her mother…

Demeter, they called her. While Persephone holds the shape of something like a God, this creature summons no such illusion.

Each spring she uncoils herself, and writhes in lust for blood. Presently she sits before me as nothing more than a face, twisting with maggots, her cavernous mouth wide and ready to scream. Eyes the size of boulders roll backward in her head, and then forward, and then settle upon my shrinking form.

My voice shrinks, too. “I cannot allow it. The mortals…”

That is the only destiny I have left. Once, I was revered: I brought death, yes, but also prosperity.

And then the ages passed, and my brothers and sisters faded. The earth continued to swirl within the heavens beyond, and we were forgotten: only the taste of my shadow remained.

The beast that is Demeter, colossal and rotten, emits a scream that transcends all.

It is not from here, either. That much is clear.

I do not know what these ancient things are. I only know that I have a duty. Should dread Persephone and her beast mother be allowed to clamber to the world above, it will drown in blood. They will feast upon every last bone and drink, for they will never be sated. They will settle only as the cold wind blows, and return when their hunger is once more risen.

I cannot allow it. Whatever father once intended for me, my purpose is now bound to this…thing.

She – it – is, in all truth, my captor.

I do not know what form the humans above now take. I no longer have the strength to see them, and certainly not to walk amongst them. It has been eons since Olympos faded, and the memories of it are so ancient that there is little more than a whisper of them. I expect they still walk the world, and perhaps now have become something unto gods themselves, if given a chance.

But whatever they are, they are nothing compared to this ancient and tenebrous thing.

Persephone’s emerald eyes do not move from me. She speaks now plaintively, and I know that it is truth.

“Your hold weakens, Hades. You remain only because, in their core, the mortals remember death. And yet that tether frays. You can feel it, can’t you? They laugh in the face of oblivion, and put it further and further out of reach. Their bodies are sturdy, and nigh-eternal, and they even begin to walk the stars. Isn’t that glorious?” Her rosy lips part, and a wide tongue slithers out, serpent-like. It tousles the dry air playfully. “And it is that great hubris which will thwart them – do you see? For they do not know that death remains their last protector, standing sentinel. Release us, or don’t. It does not matter. Once you are gone, we will rise. We can scent them, even now. Their surging, strong blood. Oh, my dear, they smell delicious. It is such a shame that you will, inevitably, not be able to attend the banquet.”

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Author’s note: The image used for this original story is “Pluto raubt Proserpina” by Cecco Bravo, circa. 1605, the original of which is held by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.