One day, a woman returns. She’s beautiful in a way that strikes terror in those she passes. She sees the young woman with her swollen stomach and feels nothing but pity.
Exile her, she commands.Or I will return to Earth and send them into chaos.
We have an agreement, Hades replies. But the young woman can see he is weak for this goddess.
Fuck our agreement.With this, the goddess wins.
And so she is exiled.
The young woman wanders through the stars. She calls out and falls to her knees. Begs for mercy. Asteria joins her and holds the young woman, her child. She brings forth the young woman’s baby, painlessly. A small miracle. But she cannot intervene any more.
Finally, the beautiful, terrifying goddess appears before the young woman and the bastard baby.
She guides her by the hand back to Earth—but she never lets go. She shows her a home, beautiful and bright and peaceful.This could be yours.But, the goddess indicates to the nursing swaddle in her arms,the baby must die.
The young woman refuses.
Hades visits her. He wants the baby—she must give it over. Only then can she return home.
Again, she refuses. The baby is too young. It’ll die without its mother.
His jaw clicks with suppressed rage.What if we made a deal instead?
The baby and mother will return to Earth, but the baby can never know the truth of its powers, of its godliness.
The young woman agrees. They shake hands.
I follow her through the stars, through blackness, through the freezing cold and down a hospital hallway.
Through a police precinct.
She’s taken into a home, warm and crowded. The women gather around her and the baby. They are her coven, and here she’s safe. She tells them what happened.
The baby has to die.
It’s a blood bond. Birth is a blood ritual. The only way to unbind your soul from his power is to kill the baby.
The young woman agrees. She says she will kill the baby herself. On the eve of the next full moon.
Too long, warns a woman with deep wrinkles cut through her tanned skin.You will grow attached.
The baby learns to laugh. And clap. And smile. The baby grows curly hair. The baby learns to say a single word. And suddenly, the young woman can’t do it. Some destinies are bigger than our own strength. And she knows this baby is her destiny.
The young woman’s appearance shifts like sand in the wind, as if something more powerful than time is working at her features. The man let her keep her life, but he took something else.
The baby grows, the years pass in an instant. All of time runs together. Suddenly the baby is a girl and then a woman. Her palm presses back against mine.
That baby is me.
I lurch upward with a choking gasp.
“Orfeo?” I call out, forcing my voice out despite my fear.
Cold sweat drenches through my…
I’m not wearing my sweater or my jacket anymore; I’m in a black gown, just like the women who danced in the sky. I feel around my head—I’m wearing a black lace veil too.
I’m not in the catacombs, and I’m not decoupled. I’m literallyhere. Physically in the kitchen I always go to when I’m between realms.
