‘Are you ready?’ he asks.
‘As ready as I suppose I will ever be,’ I say, taking his arm.
It should be grandiose, this return to the surface. Instead it’s a single thought for the flowers beneath our feet to pull us through and push us up to Mount Olympus.
My feet crunch on dead grass that turns green beneath me, flowers blooming where I stand. The colour doesn’t stop there; it trickles out, moss growing on rocks and grass crawling down the mountain. The world aches. And it itches with familiarity that takes me a second to recognize: the Underworld. Or, more specifically, the feeling I first had there, of a realm begging for life to fill it.
‘Spring has arrived,’ Hades comments as the land blooms into colour, and there’s something in his tone I can’t quite place.
‘A shame humans can’t eat grass,’ I say. It never used to be this easy – I had to at least think about it. But now it’s like brushing near souls, the energy leaching from me.
We’re on the slopes of Mount Olympus, now bright with blossoming flowers and fluttering grace, the blue sky luminous above us and clouds hovering below. I can’t see much beyond but, just stepping back into this world, something lights within me – a desperate urge to find out what lies beneath those clouds.
‘Are you all right?’ Hades asks.
‘Yes. I’ve just never seen anything like this. The mountains of Sicily aren’t as jagged.’
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I’m so used to thinking of you as being from this world I forget you never even saw it.’
I’m tempted to throw this stupid basket down and wander away, to ignore my father’s summons and hike these mountains and the world beyond. But the mortals would starve – andHades might be able to rule hell without me, but he’d be running it miserably.
So instead I loop my arm through his.
Smoke wreathes us, that dark aura of his returning to curl round me too, like a protective barrier.
‘Oh well, this will work.’ I laugh, clenching and unfurling my hand, mesmerized by the way the darkness clings to it.
‘Don’t underestimate the power a good appearance can have. It might not solve anything but it certainly adds emphasis.’
‘Yes, I recall,’ I say and we begin our ascent.
It takes only a few minutes of walking, my thighs burning with the steep incline, before we reach the golden gates of Olympus. They arch and twist in a gold so bright the sun itself would appear dim beside them. The horai guarding the entrance mutter among themselves as we approach. Then, without saying a single word to us, the three women hoist the gates open.
Through them, Olympus stretches up to the mountaintop – everything is grey rock and white marble and bronze foundations. Roads thread between the buildings like molten gold has been poured down the mountain. I think of the art and nature of the Underworld and wonder how the Olympians managed to make something simultaneously so bright and so dull.
Hades offers me his hand and we sweep through the city, black smoke among all this white. Gods pause to watch us pass, their whispers following us. It’s so much smaller than the Underworld. Hell is a sprawling land and I’ve only explored a tiny fraction of it. I haven’t seen where the monsters roam or the pit of Tartarus or even the full expanse of the rivers. Olympus is clustered together; the walk from the city gates tothe palace of Zeus takes no more than a handful of minutes. It is a land of marble – palaces, fountains, amphitheatres, bath houses, drinking halls. It is heady with the smell of ambrosia. The occasional olive tree is all the nature that creeps into this realm.
We climb higher until the ground falls away and we are walking on the stars. The palace of Zeus looms ahead, ever larger for the approach and Hades coughs, ‘Compensating.’
I choke on a laugh before grimacing. ‘He’s my father, Hades. But also, if the stories are correct, yes.’
The doors open and it’s startling to see inside. It looks the way the palace of Hades did when I first arrived, before it was covered in soft furnishings and plastered in art with flowers in every crevice. Back when it was cold, cruel and impossibly claustrophobic for something so huge.
We walk past the singing Muses and the minor gods lounging around and laughing with one another. They barely glance at us. There is nothing of the stress that lingers in my halls, no frantic concern for what’s happening below them.
We run into Hermes and he tells us that my parents are waiting in the megaron.
Outside the huge doors stand two of my father’s guards who fought alongside him in the war. They are hecatoncheires, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads.
They open the doors. The huge room might be identical to the one in the Underworld, but it’s full of memories ours does not contain. My eyes track to the porticoes where, at my amphidromia, gods lingered and watched. The hall is mostly empty now, but past the hearth in the centre I see my mother and my heart clenches. I want to run to her and pullher into my arms and I want to shake her, to demand to know why she’s doing this, what she’s possibly hoping to achieve.
And, of course, high above sits my father on his stone monstrosity of a throne.
I look back to my mother, trying to read the situation. If she looked smug or victorious, I imagine I’d be packing my bags, but she looks nervous, upset even, and that’s baffling. If she hasn’t got her way then why am I here?
‘My king,’ Hades says, and we bow about as shallowly as we can get away with.
My mother glances at Hades uncertainly, her anger mixed with curiosity, perhaps even a dash of relief. It must have been hard to reconcile what she thought she knew of him with what I told her.
