Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) by Molly Ringle Page A

the musical, vowel-rich words of that language, “ Congratulations. You can now talk to anyone who’s down there .”
    “ Just what I always wanted ,” she responded, in the same tongue. The sounds felt strange in her mouth, but she knew the translation was right. She closed her eyes again and furrowed her eyebrows. “So what is it I’m supposed to remember from the Underworld?” she asked, switching back to English.
    His low voice guided her. “Not very long ago, before being born into this life, after dying as Grete, you and I met there, in the fields. We mostly stayed with our families—the souls of our children, spouses, siblings, and so on—but there was one day we took a walk together, just the two of us.”
    The image blossomed in her mind: Karl grayed and elderly, like herself, but still dear to her eyes. “We walked to the trees,” she said, keeping her eyes shut. “That forest, where the pomegranates grow.”
    “Yes.” He sounded almost breathless. “What did we say?”
    She exhaled, massaging her temples, letting the memory unfold. “I said…something about the trees being neglected.”
    “And I answered, The orchard needs you …” he prompted, in a whisper.
    “… Persephone ,” she finished. With a gasp, she opened her eyes and stared at him.
    He held her gaze, his dark eyes sparkling. “Right.”

Chapter Nine
    A DRIAN’S HEART DRUMMED MADLY. S OPHIE’S heels skidded against the trunk as she shoved herself upward until she stood, hands braced against two large branches. She stared down at him, wearing the same expression of astonishment he must have worn when Rhea guided him to the same truth. He still remembered the feeling—like Earth and heaven had been broken into jigsaw puzzle pieces and rearranged into a completely new picture.
    “But that doesn’t make sense,” she protested. “We couldn’t have been Persephone and Hades. The myths weren’t real.” Even as she said it, her gaze wandered away from him, as if her own thoughts were contradicting her, which he knew they must be.
    “True, the myths largely aren’t real,” he said. “None of us could throw lightning bolts, or walk on rainbows, or turn into animals. But the things we did do—well, I think you’ll be impressed.”
    “Hades stole Persephone. It wasn’t a happy marriage. Why would you want to be him, or have me be her?”
    “Being them isn’t an option. We were them, period. We can’t change it. As for the kidnapping, the unhappy marriage—those are part of the myth, which, again, wasn’t quite accurate.”
    “Persephone liked being kidnapped?”
    He almost smiled, but managed not to, reckoning it could look creepy. “I shouldn’t explain today. I’d be giving away too much.”
    “But—what does it matter now? Even if it really happened, it was thousands of years ago. No one’s going to worship us and I don’t want anyone to.”
    “I don’t want anyone to, either. But it matters now because, for the first time in centuries—in millennia—we can both remember while we’re alive. We could only remember between lives before, in the Underworld. All those other lives when we knew each other, we couldn’t remember what we were; we were just ordinary people. But this time, we can be like Hades and Persephone again.”
    Sophie breathed in shallow gusts, looking up and around at the tree branches. “What does that mean, be like them? I can’t remember anything about being her. Only talking about it, after being Grete. I can’t remember…”
    “No, of course you can’t,” he assured. “It’s buried down deep in that bag, beneath all the other oranges. You’ve got to do some digging before you get to it.”
    “But when I try to remember, it’s all confused. I can’t concentrate. Real life keeps getting in the way—and by the way, I have a lot of real life to concentrate on right now.”
    “I know. That’s why I said to look to your dreams. Dreams are much more reliable for this