I’ve been thinking about it for years, ever since I first heard the stories of a boy who ended a Titan uprising without even picking up a blade. Ever since Mother told me horror stories of rivers of woe and lamentation, of a pit so deep it was all that could contain the vanquished Titans. All I could think was that I wanted to see it for myself.
I’ve never stopped thinking about it, a world where even gods fear to tread. Some part of it has always played on my mind, like it’s daring me to come, daring me to take the risk. Mother said my safety was dependent on their dread. So, if I need to give the gods something to fear, then very well.
I’ll give them Hell itself.
‘There is no place on Earth you could go where I would not be able to find you.’
Mother owns the land; Father the sky. I do not trust my chances in the ocean with a court full of grasping gods, Poseidon the worst of them all.
But there is someone who I can go to, somewhere none of them will be able to find me.
A thousand tales of death and darkness and not a single story of a stolen woman.
I’m risking everything for fables. But staying feels the bigger risk.
I thank the Fates as I cross the meadow that its nymphs are elsewhere. In the middle there is a bare patch of land. I reach down, dig my fingers into the dry dirt and focus. I let all my fear and desperation pour out of me and into the flowers Icreate. White, curving stalks spring from the ground, their roots running deep into the earth, deeper than anything I have made before, something that links our domains.
‘I name you asphodel,’ I say, addressing the blooms. ‘You shall be lain at graves, you shall honour the dead and their memories. I name you in honour of the god Hades, king of the Underworld and all that lies beneath this Earth.’
I find the biggest, most beautiful flower I can. It’s stunning; the ivory petals on it are perfectly imperfect, not symmetrical but balanced. This flower is like chaos in nature. It’s one of my best creations.
I tear it from the earth and shred it between my fingers. ‘And, Hades,’ I call, ‘we really need to talk.’
Then I wait, hoping, feeling nothing but the gentle breeze rustling my skin.
I let the ruined flower fall and, as it hits the ground, the earth erupts around it.
I smile, and leap into the darkness.
THERE’S SOMETHING YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND.
I’m good. I’m really good. It’s pretty much my defining characteristic.
What a good girl. What a pretty girl. Isn’t she beautiful? Such an angelic child.
I have other characteristics, of course. I’m very accomplished. I can weave almost as well as Athena (I’d say better but Arachne doesn’t spin webs for nothing). My voice could bring armies to heel – when I sing, of course, not when I talk. Good girls should be seen and not heard, after all. My needlework is as detailed and fine as any other and you should see me spin a pot.
Do you see it yet? What I’m trying to say?
When Mother entertained her friends, I sat quietly and prettily and ate delicately. I declined second portions even while my stomach growled, and the adults beamed and complimented my mother and said how perfect I was and how could they ever have expected anything less from Kore?
I rubbed honey into my hair to make it shine, even when it attracted insects, and I mixed sand with olive oil to take the hard skin off my body, even when it bled. I bled a lot: on the loom, on a needle, in the garden, between my legs as my mother smiled and said I was becoming a woman and then she cried and added another layer of protection to this island and swore the nymphs to secrecy.Just in case, she said.Just in case.
I was pretty, always pretty. It’s what they told me again and again until the very word came to mean pain. And still I went on, tearing and pulling and hurting until I was prettier still.
When Mother told me to curl my hair I wrapped it so tightly round coiled fabric that the strands ripped. When her friends told me to sit up straight, I jolted. When they said I was a ‘growing girl’ in that tone, I thrust my plate away. When they said I would be prettier if I smiled, I beamed.
I was good. I was obedient. I wasfuckingperfect.
So when I finally snapped, I snapped hard.
When I finally said no, I screamed it from the mountaintops.
Or from the Underworld, as the case may be.
IAM FALLING FOR MILLENNIA ANDI am falling for seconds.
When I crash down, I know – with a knowing beyond logic – that I’m somewhereelse. I can feel it in my very skin. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating from the shock of losing the nature that has always surrounded me. The flowers ripped away. And then something else settles on me, winding me enough to draw air into my lungs. Something heavier. I feel soil that is not my own, a new connection threading.
