Dead Beautiful by Melanie Dugan Page B

had hopes that perhaps Artemis — that would have been a splendid match, two of the twelve Olympians. But this may suit. I suspect Artemis and Hades are too much alike, each too serious for the other. Persephone is a silly girl. She’s just the thing. It takes a stupid girl to manage a smart man. He can never guess what she’s thinking — because she isn’t thinking. It creates an air of mystery. And there is overall stability to consider; Hades needs a consort so he won’t keep gallivanting around with nymphs and Nereids, stirring up trouble, introducing foreign blood.” I glance at her, is she implying something? But no, she’s smiling like the cat that just swallowed the last of the cream. “Persephone, though frivolous, is one of us. She knows the rules. There won’t be any newcomers vying for power. This may work out better than I had anticipated. Of course, first we have to determine whether it’s true, and then we have to bring Demeter onside.”
    “Well, I can certainly handle Demeter —”
    “Don’t you think you’ve done quite enough in that area already?” she says with a cold smile.
    “Ahh….”
    “Hermes,” she calls out.
    Immediately our son appears beside her. “Yes, oh, Hera?”
    “Mummy, dearest,” she admonishes, tapping him on the nose affectionately. “First thing, sweet pea, we need you to go drop in on uncle Hades —”
    “I keep telling you, Hades is not his uncle —”
    “Let’s just pretend he is,” Hera says firmly to me. “That way we can work the family solidarity angle.” She turns back to Hermes. “We need you to ask uncle Hades if he knows where Persephone is.”
    Hermes groans. “Do I have to? He’s such a drag.”
    “Just do this little thing for me, would you, darling?” She tousles his hair. “Maybe there’ll be a treat for you if you do a good job. I know you want an upgrade on your winged sandals.”
    “You mean I can get the ones with the eagle wings?” Hermes says excitedly. “Really, mum? Cool.” And in the next instant he has disappeared.
    “There’s that dealt with.” Hera sits down beside me. “Now the next thing we have to do is get Demeter up here for a talk. Droughts, famines, floods — this has to stop. Have you seen our poll numbers today? Where is she?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Then how do you know all this about Hecate, Helios and Hades?”
    “You know how it works. It’s along the lines of how radio frequency will function in eighteen, nineteen centuries. I can kind of triangulate on her location, but she keeps moving around.”
    “Well,” Hera says. “We’ll just have to wait for her to settle down. Then we’ll sort this out.”
     

Persephone
                 
    I step through the open doors onto the terrace, which is constructed of some stone that glows faintly beneath my feet. The terrace is wide and flat, with two sets of broad stairs descending on the left and right-hand sides.
    I take the left-hand staircase, which winds by 90° turns in a half-circle so that I find myself standing at the base of the terrace facing down the allée, flanked by tall, conical cedars looming up into the darkness, that leads away from the palace into what is and is not shadow.
    Compared to the upper world, the world of Hades is dim and shadowy but it isn’t pitch black the way a windowless room is, or a closet. Here, it is always evening, that liminal time balanced between the sun’s supremacy and the moon’s ascendancy. Here, I sense rather than see shadows moving at the edge of my awareness, so that even awake I feel as though I am entering the realm of sleep and dreams.
    The skittering shapes do not frighten me; I sense no malice or ill-intent in them, only nervousness. I continue down the allée.
    It ends in a “T” at a walkway that leads right and left, and again, I take the left-hand path that leads me through rich gardens filled with cypress, willow and poplar. Flowers, too, glimmer in distant beds and I am