I lurch to the side, to the table where the fruit glistens in its basket. I was ready for this. There’s risk, sure, but there was risk when I first leapt to Hell. This time I launch myself towards its bearings.
Fruit grown in the Underworld. Fruit I could never eat without being trapped there.
Father must realize what is happening because he shouts, ‘No! Stop her!’
My hand closes on the first fruit it finds. A pomegranate. I don’t think before tearing into it with my teeth as hands grab at me.
Juice drips down my chin, blood red, dyeing everything it touches.
I spit out the rind and the fruit is ripped from my hand but I manage to choke down some seeds.
Six of them.
I feel every single one as my arms are yanked behind my back.
I glance at my father but it’s my mother I stare down, frenzied. Chains are slapped on to my wrists, and I wonder if I’ll ever stop seeing myself through her eyes. Will I ever look into a mirror and see myself first and her second? For now I see myself, crown tilted on my head, covered in bloody juice, chained like a wild animal. And I think if she cannot love me now, like this, then I do not want her love at all.
I turn back to my father and wonder if he knows he owes his life to me, that he lives solely because I chose not to end him. And I wonder if he knows I could change my mind at any moment. He might wear the crown of the gods but it is I who hold power for the chaos I have embraced.
‘Six seeds.’ I grin, bright red juice staining my teeth. ‘Six months. Exactly as I offered.’
‘UNCHAIN MY WIFE NOW ORyou’ll have all of Hell to contend with,’ Hades snarls, his eyes entirely black, the smoke coiling from him sharpening to points.
Mother turns from me and she’s shaking. ‘Zeus, please, this is not the answer. She can visit. It will work.’
I turn to my father who glares at me with a level of hatred I imagine he does not even have for the Titans.
‘Athena!’ he yells and the goddess comes running in. She must have been waiting on the sidelines, witnessing everything, waiting for his call. I remember her at my wedding, the way she commended my choice to eat at the same time as the men and my decision not to cut my hair. I remember her on Mother’s island too. She always tried to teach me things Mother said didn’t matter. ‘Girls should be allowed to be smart too,’ she’d say. Most women taught me how to avoid men, but Athena taught me how to fight back. She has always been one of my favourites but she’s wisdom and war in one position: advisor to the king. And it’s a position she’ll do anything to keep.
It doesn’t matter if she wants to help me. She won’t. Not if siding with Zeus will mean gaining his favour.
Is this how he does it? He gives power to select women and then says, ‘Yes, of course, look at all these opportunities for you.’ Are we all too busy competing for the few spots to actually help one another?
Athena doesn’t even look at me now, just bows to my father.
‘Yes, my king?’
‘Food of the Underworld. What does it do?’
I tense. I know what it does but she must know more. What if there’s some loophole here?
The guards holding me relax their grip slightly when it becomes apparent I’m not trying to break free.
‘Ties you to the Underworld,’ Athena says. ‘Mortal souls could not physically leave.’
‘And ours?’
‘We’d feel a pull impossible to resist. Someone could be moved by force, I suppose, but it’s ancient magic, part of the weave that all our powers are tied to. If you pulled that thread the very substance that keeps us all whole would begin to unravel. None of us would stay gods for long – our powers, our immortality would slip away. I’m not even sure we’d survive as fragile mortal husks. I think that sort of power ripped from us might destroy us.’
Father fires his lightning bolt right at me and I’m too startled to even scream. It whistles past my ear, singeing my hair and slamming into the wall where I hear marble crumble and fall.
‘Fine.’ He bares his teeth. ‘Release her.’
I expect some grand final statement – a threat to stay in line,not to push him further. But he just stalks from the room, defeated and unwilling to admit it.
Athena ducks her head, offering me the slightest of smiles before she leaves too.
If there is a way to reverse it, to undo what I have done, she’s kept it to herself. She’s helped me.
