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The rocks lining the bottom of the stream had been settled for a long time, undisturbed until Persephone jostled them around, dragging them out of the water and onto the edge beside her things. The water turned murky for a few moments after she dug them up, the current swiftly replacing the murk with clear water again.
Her hands were cold, and her movements were minimal by the time she finished the hole in front of her, between her outstretched legs. It was just deep enough for her make-shift Hades to fit laying down.
She pulled the small squares of wood and the unformed clump of clay from her bag, setting them down with shaky hands before grabbing the chisel she had bought at the palace center yesterday.
Finding the chisel had been easy enough, buying it from the woman, however, was a nightmare; she inquired why such a pretty girl would need a tool for carving, told her stories of how proper women act, why a wife’s job is the most important and that as a wife, Persephone would never need to touch a tool again. She droned on and on, telling Persephone to find a good man to marry and settle down with soon, before she was too old and undesirable.
Eventually, having listened long enough to her lecture, Persephone yanked the chisel from her shriveled hand, placed her payment on the table, and stalked off with her chin up. Almost wishing she was on better terms with Hades so she could kindly ask him to make her afterlife as horrendous as possible.
Carving thekolossosturned out to be more difficult than obtaining the tool. She started with the clay, which unfortunately had hardened during her long day, making molding it with her hands impossible. To soften it she dropped it into the water, placing one of the heavy rocks she’d dug up on the other side of it so it wouldn’t sail away with the current.
“How can clay even harden in the heat,” she said, mumbling to herself as she grabbed one of the chunks of wood and tossed it from hand to hand, imaging the shape it would take form.
It was easy enough to shape with the chisel, she ended up with something that resembled a person; it had the shape of arms stuck at its sides, legs that didn’t part, and a head with no neck, but anthropomorphic nonetheless.
Persephone grabbed the bronze pins that she had stolen from her mother’s basket, and started to carve Hades’ name into the chest. After breaking all three needles, and screaming in fury until her chest loosened, she picked up the sharp rock she had cleaned her nails with to finish the last of his name. Her fingers were red and sore, and the palm of one hand had a long slice across it that had now stopped bleeding, after colouring parts of the doll a dull burnished gold.
The clay was still hard when she lifted it from the water to make an overly exaggerated set of genitals for her small replica of Hades. She threw it into the trees with as much force as her arm could muster, deciding her curse would do without their addition.
Grabbing the bronze nails she had snatched at another seller’s table, she got to work stabbing them through Hades’ torso, head and one of his legs, with another rock.
When she was finished and satisfied with the tiny Hades she had crafted, she laid him down in the hole and replaced the mud and rocks back over it, quietly cursing her husband as she did.
“I deposit thiskolossoswith the chthonic trim-ankled, and fair-faced Kore-Persephone, Queen of the Underworld,” she said, wincing as she used her own name, and the epithets the mortals had started to give her; now that she was Queen of the Underworld they would use much worse titles for her than ‘fair-faced’. “Assist me in cursing him, Hades, King of the Dead. Restrain him from living freely, from walking and speaking. Bind his arms and legs, and pierce his tongue so he can no longer speak, touch, or be able to venture near another mortal,” she finished, and placed the last rock atop her hole before opening her eyes again.
She looked around, expecting something.
But nothing had changed, and Hades had not arrived to punish her for cursing him, her husband and King.
She loosed the breath she’d been holding as she awaited his inevitable arrival. When it was clear he was not coming to smite her where she sat, she threw her head back and laughed at dark sky. “I did it!” She yelled at the stars and the clouds, the trees and the water rushing around her. “I actually did it,” she said in disbelief as she pulled herself out of the stream.
That’s when she saw the blackness blink out of the corner of her eye, in the direction she had accessed the stream from. She snapped her head toward it, her heart racing, sweat already beading at the back of her neck and along her palms.
It was gone, though. No darkness, no odd feeling of something being there remained.
Nothing was there, yet she couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that she was not alone, and was being watched. Again.
Please do not let it be Hades, she thought to herself, still watching the spot she was sure she had seen something.
It had been something, she was positive of it now. Seeing the same blackness – near enough to watch, but far enough to not be detected – in a completely different forest than the pool that she had seen it in before, was not a coincidence.
She was being watched.
Followed.
Fear filled her stomach, her mouth tensed with it, and her chest throbbed from holding her breath as she listened for the cadence of footsteps, the sound of another person breathing near her.
The blood rushing through her ears covered any sounds around her in the forest, and it was getting dark enough as the moon dipped below the trees that soon she would be unable to see in front of her.
So she left.
Arriving in her mother’s forest, praying she had come back alone, and running through the trees in case she had brought that thing, whatever it was, with her. She ignored the dull pain filling her head, and the sharp ache stabbing the back of her eyes, focused on escaping that blackness that followed her even in her mind.
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What is she thinking?Hades thought as he watched Persephone craft a small doll-version of, he assumed, himself, and bury it under the stream. She spoke too low and quiet for him to hear her, but it was obvious from where she was and what she had painstakingly carved in her hands that she was cursing someone.
Someone being himself. He felt the tug when she spoke his name, his title. Like she was holding his hand and pulling him forward, guiding him toward her.
