The sun woke her up the next morning, the memory of her dream still fresh. She was picnicking in her orchard, eating pomegranate seeds at dusk, while Hades, who sat beside her, watching, brought each seed to life with a light of its own as her lips touched it, just to amuse her.
A group of nymphs burst into the room, giggling and shoving each other, and suddenly grew quiet when they found themselves in the presence of the goddess.
A prolonged monotonous droning of odes and praise ensued, a spectacle Persephone listened to with patience and appreciation, like a good immortal would, secretly relieved when it finally ended and it was proper for her to get out of bed.
The darn thing was massive, placed atop of a stepped marble platform to loom over the also enormous room, which would have been a better fit for a ballroom than a bedroom, and whose glistening white portico opened out to the sights above the clouds.
Far into the distance, the peak of Mount Olympus poked through them, a vision in rose and lavender, halfway between dream and reality.
Everything in the room was so white it made her eyes hurt. The walls, the ceilings, the floors, the benches surrounding the walls, everything was made of white marble, polished until its shine gained a wax-like quality. Her bedsheets were crafted from the finest white silk, so soft and light they competed with the clouds she could see through the portico. Large cups and carafes made of the finest silver gleamed on even brighter silver trays, and the air was infused with an intense scent of tuberoses.
A singular detail clarified who this sparse white room belonged to: the thick sheaf of barley from the day before, which was standing on its end in one of the marble apses, defying the laws of gravity and balance.
She squinted to adjust her sight, and jumped on the bed, filled with the energy of youth, all but forgetting the decorum of her goddess status.
“My heart is filled with gladness at your return, mistress,” her personal daimona, Angelos, advanced to the center of the room, bowed with a flourish at her feet and retrieved a rather long scroll, waiting for the response protocol demanded before going into its details.
“Praise the wisdom of Olympus,” Persephone swallowed a yawn, trying in vain to look dignified after the jumping on the bed routine.
Strange how coming back to her childhood home always returned her demeanor to a childlike state.
“Your mother hopes you had a restful sleep and reminds you to forsake the asphodel crown when you visit the temple of Asclepius. The sick take exception. Will there be any special orations you prefer during your visit?”
“Whatever you see fit, I don’t have a preference. Why am I visiting the temple of Asclepius?”
“A special devotion was offered in your honor by king Eumenes, seeking your help in the war against Perseus of Macedon.”
“My help? At the temple of Asclepius? Does he know who I am and what I do?”
“Yes, mistress. And yet, he seeks your favor.”
‘Stoics,’ she thought. ‘The world is becoming strange indeed.’
“What else is on today’s schedule?”
“Queen Laodice brings you an offering of grain and honey and seeks favor for her departed husband, Mithridates. She wants to host a banquet in his honor and asks for your dream visitation and advice.”
“Given her departed was poisoned at one, and as of yet is not sure it was not by her hand, I find the idea rather ironic.”
“So, do you deny her?”
“No. King Mithridates also insists his horse could talk and sends constant requests to till the Asphodel Meadows, because he says he’s allergic to them. What else?”
“Barley planting needs to start today, with your blessing.”
“You have it. Next?”
“The Telesterion requested the honor of yours and your mother’s presence to go over the ritual.”
The list unfolded for the next hour, as the light in the sky changed, trailing behind Helios’ golden chariot.
“Would that be all, mistress?” Angelos dared ask, after a long pause during which Persephone seemed to be lost in her faraway world.
“Yes, thank you. Tell my mother I’ll be ready in a minute.”
Angelos bowed again and retreated backwards, closing the door behind her without noise.
Three worlds, Persephone thought. Three worlds, each one different. Why would this one be better than the other two? In truth, she had very little knowledge of the oceanic realm, which surrounded her home, and lent it its waters to serve as agents of change and portals between worlds.
She already missed her home, the kingdom of the chtonic gods, a place filled with riches beyond measure, guarded by fearsome beasts and daimons, a place beyond fear, entreatments, and the ambitions of the mortals, where love always awaited her.
People dreaded her realm, the place from which all abundance pours forth. They respected its wonders, but feared them, like people always fear what they don’t understand.
Hades kept no secrets from her, not even Tartarus.
The Furies bowed before her in obedience and even the fearsome Cerberus laid his heads in her lap, whimpering softly like a puppy, to be acknowledged by his mistress.
In her fantastic grove, fast-growing poplars shivered in the twilight, with trembling leaves of glistening old gold. The grove extended all the way to the ocean’s shore, where the Isles of the Blessed shimmered in the distance, surrounded by mists. There, the righteous enjoyed their eternal existence outside of time, far away from the whims of ruling gods.
Rubies, garnets, obsidian and diamonds trimmed the edges of the Phlegethon, forged in the glowing river of fire and amplifying its sparkle with the multifaceted mirrors of their crystals.
The beautiful river Acheron flowed through dark gorges, disappearing underground in places, only to resurface, surprising, seemingly out of nowhere, bubbling up from the ground in pools and waterfalls and carrying soulful memories in its restless waters.
Far into the distance, the fiery pit of Tartarus’s volcano cauldron burned eternal, lighting up the night with bursts of molten metal, while slow flowing lava carved rivulets on its mountainous container, which looked like veins pulsating with the blood of Gaia.
In her orchards and vineyards, the branches were heavy with clusters of translucent grapes and overripe pomegranates, whose scent filled the air with honey sweetness, while the bees, her messengers to the world above, buzzed around diligently gathering pollen and nectar.
On the edge of the Asphodel Meadows, whose spires of honeysuckle fragrant flowers reached up to the sky like glowing torches, the river of forgetfulness and peace, the Lethe, bubbled softly, barely a whisper, between the rocks of the Hall of Sleep.
In this place where neither sounds nor sunlight were allowed, surrounded by clumps of red poppies, Hypnos enjoyed his perpetual slumber on ebony benches upholstered in black silk.
Beyond the Hall of Sleep lay the Land of Dreams, a place where reality ended and fantasy began, a realm populated by dream tribes, whose denizens bore no allegiance to the rules of reality, or even to truth, and who sprung into the world through the enormous Gates of Horn and Ivory that kept guard at its borders.
The gates were tall, forty, maybe fifty feet, intimidating in their monumental size, even for a goddess, and the legend said true dreams came through the horn gates and false dreams through the other.
Their humbling height was meant to serve as a reminder, even to the gods, that truth and falsehood were absolute, and served no master, but Persephone had experienced enough of the world’s mirages to know false and true changed hands all the time, with one shift in perspective, with one minor detail, until the whole world is fantasy and both gates equally bear truth.
So, she simply admired their exquisite craftsmanship, the work of the Titans, maybe, as one would the monumental cenotaphs of a lost civilization, a warning to its descendants not to make the same mistakes.
Or maybe those impressions were just figments of the ivory gate playing with her mind.
She’d asked Hades what weight should she bear on the omens that came through those gates from the world of dreams, and he shrugged off the answer.
Just as the humans, the gods waded through the uncharted waters of reality gathering knowledge through their own experiences, knowledge which was individual and often impossible to share with another. Whether your life is the fleeting flash of a mortal fate or spanning eons, like that of the gods, you experience it inside a tiny cocoon of what you can feel, sense, and know, and that ends up being your ultimate truth.
She closed her eyes to remember the soothing whispers of the river Lethe, and its familiar image brought with it a deep longing for the warmth and fragrance of her world of twilight, and for a second she thought she felt Hades’ hand on her shoulder and turned around, expecting to see him there.
“Are you not ready yet? I’ve been waiting for you. Your handmaiden said you would join me shortly,” Demeter entered the room, in the company of the winds.
Persephone smiled at her childhood companions, the mischievous anemoi, who used to chase her through the meadows to tousle her hair.
The room suddenly became animated by air movement, which parted the clouds to reveal the world below, barely out of its winter slumber.
“We should get started,” Demeter pointed to their destination on Earth, like one would on a map. “It’s a long way to Cappadocia, and we have to stop in Epidaurus on the way back.”
“For you, Goddess of the Fruits of the Earth, your secret rites I will fund; in your shrine at Eleusius shall burn the sacred flame in celebration of your mysteries.”
“Do you hear that? They already started the ceremony.”
