Receiver of Many Ch. 04

4.

Demeter and Kore emerged from the blades of barley into a rolling grassy meadow surrounded by groves of trees, each grove sacred to a deity. Nysa was the eternal field of the gods, and Kore's home as a child. She had played with her friends here. Kore remembered Ares swinging a wooden sword against the grasses under the watchful eye of Hera. Little Apollo once brought her a fistful of larkspur and recited awkward love poetry, to her mother's great consternation. Athena and Artemis ran with her in the field and played games of knucklebones by the creek. When Kore flowered into womanhood, her mother abruptly took her from their company and she hardly ever saw them again.

"Kore!"

She heard her cousin Artemis call to her from the edge of the valley. She jogged toward them with her long, sandal-strapped legs. Artemis wore a quiver of arrows on her back, its leather strap holding her short white hunting chiton against her body. The virgin huntress's honey colored hair was short and simple, coiffed into a messy chignon at the base of her neck. She waved a hand to them as she ran.

Kore waved back, then turned to Demeter. "How long do I have to stay here?"

"Until I know for certain that you're safe. I will tend the harvest alone this time." She held Kore close and kissed her on the cheek. "They will look after you, my child. Do not leave the meadow. Do not talk to anyone or anything while I'm gone."

Kore watched her mother vanish into a rush of barley, bound for Eleusis. Nysa was the perfect place to keep her while she attended her responsibilities to the mortals. The virgin goddesses were usually here during harvest time. The humans seldom waged war during harvest, which freed Athena, and seldom hunted, which relieved Artemis of some of her responsibilities. They tended to avoid Olympus during the harvest as their divine siblings were usually bored and making mischief. Both Artemis and Athena were younger than her, but looked older, having already fully taken on their divine roles. Although she felt a faint twinge of envy, Kore was thankful to see them. Artemis, athletic and sun flecked, bounded over to Kore and gave her a hug. "Finally we get to see you again!"

"Artemis!" she embraced her back. "I wish it were under better circumstances. I feel like I'm imposing."

"Nonsense." Fair-haired Athena stood up from the grasses next to them, and quickly rolled up a short scroll before stashing it in the folds of her peplos. She adjusted the plate armor that held her flowing gown in place and joined their conversation. "We will make them better," she said. "And don't worry. Arte and I scour the plain regularly this time of year in case any troublemaking satyrs come along. Brutish creatures... You're perfectly safe here."

Kore smiled thinly to hide her feelings from Artemis and Athena. That meant the man from her dream wasn't here and would most likely never find her. She absently picked the last remains of the asphodel out of her hair. Her mother had cowed her about the flowers throughout the journey to Nysa until she had relented and plucked most of them out. "What were you doing before I arrived? Can I join you?"

"Well," Artemis said, "as soon as we heard you were coming, we started making a garland for you, because we hadn't seen you in so long. But... you know me; I'm no good with flowers."

"We hope you like it," Athena added, shyly holding it out for Kore's examination. The garland was a tidy braid of laurel and olive sprigs laced with wild celery, whose tiny white blossoms provided the only break in the greenery.

"Oh, thank you!" Kore said, accepting the gift from her cousin's calloused hands. She sat down in the soft grass and let Artemis wind her hair into a coronet.

"Your dress is still so short," Artemis said. "Do you keep it that way for the hunt?"

"No, I don't hunt like you, Arte," she said, smiling and lowering her head to hide her embarrassment.

Athena spoke. "Well, have you ever thought about letting it down?"

Kore looked at her bare knees and blushed. "Mother doesn't approve."

Athena stepped in front of Kore and pointedly looked to the right, then the left. She smiled and leaned down. "I don't see her here to disapprove. Come on! You can change it back when she gets here. We won't tell."

Kore fidgeted for a moment. "I'm— I can't do that to her. I've already put her through enough for one day."

Athena gave her a pained smile. "I understand. Sorry; I didn't mean to upset you."

"There! And beautiful, I might add." Artemis finished winding and weaving Kore's hair and placed the garland on top.

Persephone...

She froze, hearing her name on the wind.

"Who's there?" She looked at her cousins, her eyes wide. "Did... did you hear that?"

Athena and Artemis stilled and exchanged a quick glance. Artemis swallowed. "H-hear what?"

"Nothing... it must have been my imagination," she said, walking into the field.

Athena and Artemis joined her, keeping back aways as Kore explored her girlhood home. She had spent her childhood in the shadow of the sacred groves of the Olympians. As a young girl, Kore had laid a circle of river stones in the meadow and filled it with all her favorite flowers, hoping someday to have a sacred grove of her own.

"Do you remember the secret garden I planted?"

Athena smiled. "Of course I do! But it wasn't as big a secret as you thought it was. Father loved it! Said it was his favorite 'sacred grove'. I think your mother knew about it too."

"Oh," Kore blushed. "I'd wondered what happened to it. Want to visit it with me?"

"We'll finish gathering the leftover twigs from the garland. And I think I may take another pass around the meadow," Artemis said, "Can we join you later?"

"Of course!" Kore said cheerfully as she walked off into the grasses.

My queen... the wind whispered.

Her heart thrummed in her ears. She recognized that voice and turned in its direction, a narrow grove of cypress. Kore looked back at Artemis and Athena, still bent over in the grass picking up remnants of her floral crown. They must not have heard it. She walked slowly, one foot cautiously following the other toward the cypresses, her heart beating out of her chest.

Athena looked up to see her walk away. Demeter had enlisted their protection long ago in case anyone came for Kore. She shuddered, remembering dark Aidoneus stalking through the throne room toward her father yesterday, demanding his rights to Kore as Demeter cried out against it. Athena looked back to Artemis, who was biting her lip, her eyes welling up with tears. The huntress looked away to watch Kore walk toward the cypress trees, and moved to stand up and follow after her.

"Don't," Athena whispered, clasping her sister's trembling hand. "Father told us not to interfere. It will be alright, Artemis."

* * *

Demeter planted one foot after another in the sun-warmed soil. The Eleusinian priestess had plucked a single sheaf of barley and held it aloft, signaling the start of the harvest early this morning when Demeter had returned, sight unseen to oversee them. The priestess's acolytes had wandered through the fields all afternoon pouring offerings of kykeon and honey on the freshly threshed earth, singing praises to Demeter and Kore, carrying their effigies before them. The wheat waved across the fields, a sea of ripe sheaves that shone in the sun like swells on the ocean. Walled Eleusis stood on the other side of the hills, a beacon of rough-hewn white stones and whipping saffron banners. Wisps of white clouds moved across the azure sky, traveling on the breeze that wafted across the Eleusinian fields. Under an oak tree by the creek, a few elder women wrapped in dark linen himations, their backed bowed with age, hobbled after naked laughing children. They nattered after them to stay in the shallows and not splash too much water at the littlest ones. A toothless man with wisps of a white beard clinging to his face shared a cup of kykeon and laughed with his equally ancient wife.

The villagers dressed in bright reds and golds, the women with the hems of their peploi gathered up into their girdles, their hair wound back with strips of linen into tight chignons. They would stoop to gather large bundles of wheat, carrying them over to the ox drawn cart, giving the beasts a few sheaves here and there to keep them content. Most of the men dressed in nothing but loincloths, their skin glistening as they labored under the bright sun, sickles flashing. The rhythmic thresh of iron blades drummed a steady beat under their gossip and laughter.

Demeter was invisible in their midst, and could barely hear them. Hades was coming for her only child and she was preparing herself to meet him directly, to protect Kore from the Lord of the Underworld at all costs. She wiped a tear from her eye. Her daughter was safe for now in Nysa, but it was only a matter of time before he learned where she had fled.

She came upon the thistle her daughter had planted yesterday, its bright purple crown host to two of the little orange butterflies. They flitted around each other, one giving chase to the other before they settled, joined together on the flower. The small display of the earth's fertility and Kore's innocent wisdom should have given her joy, but she gritted her teeth, only able to see ghostly stalks of asphodel in her mind. The tall thistle withered, its flower drooping and blackening as she walked away.

Hades had profaned Kore's sacred house with his ugly bog flowers. He'd sown them around her daughter's sleeping body. Demeter angered, and the ripe silvery sheaves around her shriveled and turned brown. She walked away from the withered millet, barely aware of the dismayed voices of the villagers behind her.

There must be a way she could save her daughter from the Land of the Dead. She thought of the beautiful and virginal naiad queen Daphne, lustfully pursued by Apollo. To save herself from rape and destruction she had cried out to Gaia, the earth, who had answered her desperate prayers. Gaia had turned Daphne into a laurel tree, and she was saved and made sacred for all time.

For a moment she stopped breathing and stood where she was. The barley around her turned from living gold to dead gray. How could she even contemplate such a thing?

All she loved about Kore was wrapped up in her free spirit. Demeter thought about her light, her life, her every footprint filled with larkspur and roses, and the new ones— lilac, she remembered— flourishing wherever she went. She was pure and fresh and honest. Even in her defiance...

Demeter's eyes filled with tears. How could she let all these things about her daughter be wrested away to the land of the dead? For everything about her to turn cold and lifeless under the earth when she was made into Persephone? If she did nothing, Kore would be sacrificed on the marriage bed of the Lord of Souls.

Ice filled her heart. If she did this to their daughter, Zeus would never forgive her. She would be banished from Olympus, her high seat among the Dodekatheon removed, and she would be cursed to walk the earth as a minor goddess. But at least Kore would be safe. At least Demeter would know that her beloved daughter was saved forever from that fate. When Hades came to claim her, all he would find would be a new tree— a beautiful, flowering tree to honor her. Kore would be the loveliest tree in existence. Demeter wept. The waves of barley next to her rotted on the stalk and the grains filled with poisonous red dust.

Demeter would bring her back to Eleusis and Kore would be these people's sacred tree for all time. She sobbed, remembering her sweet girl toddling through the fields of Nysa as a young child. She knew that she would never see Kore running through the field, never hold her, never see her weave another garland or give life to another new flower, and her daughter would never forgive her for it. But if she did nothing, her warm and vibrant Kore would be trapped for eternity in the gray nothingness of the Other Side, prey to the will of cold and unfeeling Aidoneus.

* * *

The crisp smell of cypress met her as she stepped into the shade. Kore's eyes adjusted to the dappled light of the grove, and she saw soft wild celery covering the shaded soil with bursts of white asphodel growing in the patches of sunlight. Defiantly, she picked the flowers and wove them into the garland crown her cousins had given her.

The grove was silent except for her breath. In the meadow she had either heard his voice calling to her, or she was going mad. She picked a tiny asphodel bloom and twirled it in her hand. Her body warmed, feeling his presence. "Listen to me... I know you're here! And I know you came to me in my dreams last night."

Cypress boughs rustled thinly as a breeze swept through their upper branches. She looked up, searching for him. "Why did you bring me here? And why did you plant the asphodel in my shrine last night?"

The wind in the grove closed in around her, words forming in its wake. "Your crown..."

Kore touched the flowered wreath in her hair. "You don't like it?"

"On the contrary," the wind whispered to her, "Your bridal crown is beautiful..."

"Bridal crown," she echoed breathlessly, her voice faltering as she remembered his words from last night. She reached without thinking to the wreathed branches. Her heart jumped into her throat when she realized what she was wearing: laurel and olive were for weddings. Kore looked around her, wishing she could see him.

"When I take you as my queen, Persephone, your crown shall be every jewel in the earth. Every ounce of its wealth will be your adornment..."

She spun in a circle, wishing she could find a source for his voice. It made her dizzy, this phantom wind, and these thoughts of leaving here with him, of being a queen, showered in wealth and jewels. And strange too, how he kept saying the name her father gave her.

"Why do you keep calling me Persephone?"

"It is who you truly are," Aidoneus said on the wind. "It's who you were born to be."

He wanted to give her anything. Anything and everything. His heart and mind raced at merely seeing her, knowing that she was real, just as beautiful as she was in the moonlight and not some illusion of dreams conjured by the golden arrow to torment him. When she was with him last night, she was a woman. A sensuous woman with delicate curves and warm skin. But she looked like a girl in the daylight, her clothes too young, too loose fitting, disguising her hips, her breasts... Aidoneus shuddered. He wanted to see her as she was. Who she truly was...

A breeze whipped past and she felt warm hands on her shoulders and arms. She flinched involuntarily, then settled into their grasp. "And what do I call you?"

His mind raced, thinking of all the horrifying things Demeter must have said about him. And not just her mother. Hades was a curse word to the mortals— only the gravest of sworn oaths invoked his name. But he had to tell Persephone something. He willed himself to coalesce enough to touch her and with a sigh of the wind, brush past her lips. "Please call me Aidon."

"Aidon..." she repeated, her voice smoky from his light touch.

"Yes..." He felt himself quicken when she said his name for the first time. Relief washed over him as she relaxed, unafraid. He brushed past her breasts, feeling the nipples pull taut under the thin chiton.

Kore felt his breath, warm against the shell of her ear, and felt arms encircling her as though the breeze itself were embossed with his form. The fresh and woody smell of cypress filled her, and she let out a soft sigh.

Aidon could feel her, not just in the dream world, but real and present. He was the very air around her, engulfing her. She was no figment of his dreams. He could feel the pulse of every vein, every twitch of flesh, and every small bead of perspiration as her heart beat faster from his incorporeal touch. His senses were suddenly filled with the heady scent of flowers. He concentrated, solidifying, wanting to touch her skin with his own hands.

Kore closed her eyes. He surrounded and embraced every part of her, lifting her gently. She could feel her heels start to rise from the ground, and the loose fabric of her sleeve slipped down one arm.

"I will come for you tonight, sweet one." Aidon tugged down the fabric and blew a kiss on her neck, whispering into her ear. "I'll come for you at sunset and we'll journey to my kingdom together with you as my bride. I promise. But forgive me; I couldn't wait that long to see you again."

Kore felt the edge of her chiton roll over her nipple. Her areola pulled taut, exposed to the air and to him. "Aidon..."

She moaned his name. Aidon felt pleasure roll through him and blew on her exposed nipple, watching her shudder and arch closer to him with a gasp. Kore felt a warm rush of air wrap its way behind her knee and around her hip. She felt a solid arm, a hand and fingers pressing into her skin.

She gasped as he encircled her, her feet finally lifting off the ground, her body supported by invisible arms before being set down on the soft wild grass. The skirt of her chiton blew back, exposing her thighs.

"You're almost too beautiful..." he whispered, his voice sounding as though he were smiling, though she couldn't see him.

"This isn't fair," Kore pleaded. "I want to touch you, too... I want to hold you..."

This woman he'd patiently waited aeons to have... she desired him; she wanted him. Aidon's heart swelled at the idea. She wanted to do all the things with him that he needed to have from her. To hold him. To touch him. To lay down as husband and wife and— dare he even think it— to make love with him. "Soon, sweet one..." His hands trailed over her exposed breast and her stomach, dancing along her flesh. "...very soon."

Her body reached for his touch and he wanted to give her more. Anything. Everything. He was overwhelmed. Aidon would give anything in this moment to materialize in front of her, to be as they were in their dream. He knew too that he wouldn't be able to stop himself from having her completely, and doubted she would stop him either. Moving across her body, he caught the scent of wildflowers again and delved for its source.

A hot exhale of air teased the curls between her thighs. Kore arched and parted them, feeling a hand brush over her mound. Unlike last night, she didn't stop him. He was mesmerized by the sight of her most intimate places, her deeper mysteries unknown to him. He wanted to bring forth everything he'd felt rise through her last night to completion. Her flesh jumped as he stroked her, learning her. Her creamy thighs were open to him, her scent pouring out on the wind. A fine down of dark brown curls covered her nether lips. He traced their seam; watching as her hips moved from side to side and her breathing became shallow.

Every shiver of her flesh, every arch of her body made Aidon's heart beat faster, urging him onward in his discovery. The tips of his fingers were met with slick warmth, and a punctuated gasp from Kore that made him inhale sharply, feeling the unfulfilled pains of his own arousal. Shaking with anxious longing, his fingers glided down to her entrance and lingered there for a moment before traveling upward slowly through the folds.

When he neared the apex, she let out a sharp cry and sprang back from his touch. Aidon instantly rose up along the length of her body, alarmed, smoothing his hand over her shoulder. "Did I hurt you?"

She shook her head. "No. It... Can you please do that again?" she said meekly.

He smiled in relief and trailed his fingers downward through the valley between her breasts, over the tautness of her stomach, and gingerly steadied her mound with the palm of his hand. His finger met soft heat and sunk between her labia, tracing a path upward through the center until he felt her writhe anew. He stopped, memorizing the spot, feeling the tiny nub of flesh pulse under his finger. He waited for her to still and relax against him. When she rolled her hips forward and pressed the tight bud against his waiting finger, he started moving it in a slow circle.