The Autumn Queen

Zane Joly

             Two gods stood alone in a field. One was fiercely hugging the other, while the other stayed silent, knowing better than to protest. They had both existed for millennia, the hugger more ancient than the one being hugged, but appearing as a woman in her thirties, with hair a bright brown-blond, like fields of wheat. Her dress was an emerald green not unlike grassy meadows, and her skin was a bright yellow. Demeter, goddess of seasons, plant life, and harvest.

            Her daughter patted her on the back. She had long blond hair that was an even brighter shade than her mother’s and filled with flowers. Her skin was a warm golden brown, and she wore a dress of brilliant colors in a floral print that she didn’t really like, but that she wore for her mother. Persephone, often called the goddess of spring and beauty.

            “I can’t believe that my baby is going away again!” wailed Demeter, “The six months pass so quickly. The summer ones that is. The winter months seem to last eons.” Where her tears met the ground, small areas of frost formed over the grass. Persephone could see the leaves on the nearby trees wilting and turning brown.

            “I know Mom, but I’ll be back just as soon. Try to distract yourself for as long as you can. We don’t want a cold snap.”

            Demeter sniffed and nodded, releasing her daughter. Her posture was getting a bit worse and her skin was losing its yellow glow, fading towards shades one might see on an ordinary mortal. Persephone knew that by the time winter was at its peak, she would appear as a deathly gray old woman who was almost as skinny as a skeleton, with hair as white as snow and a face mostly made of wrinkles. Her mother was a bit… emotionally dramatic, and this was reflected not only by her physical form, but by the temperature and plant life of the entire planet. She was a very powerful god and a very emotional god, which could be a dangerous combination.

            “I love you, Mama. I’ll be back in spring.” Persephone turned towards a specific spot in the field, which didn’t appear any different than the others.

            “Wait!” her mother cried, “You can’t leave without my blessing. To keep you company for all those months you’ll be trapped down there with that awful man, Hades.”

            Demeter ran her hand through Persephone’s flower filled hair, and the blooms hummed with magic.

“Again, he’s not that bad, but thank you, Mama.”

            Demeter nodded. Saying goodbye, even if only for half a year, was always hard for her.

            Persephone turned back to the spot. She lifted up one arm and the earth trembled. Then it split apart, revealing a seemingly infinite darkness below. With a running start, the younger goddess leapt into the maw of shadow. She fell into the starless night, the fissure in the earth closing behind her, instantly seeming like it had never been there. Demeter sighed and turned away. She set off to go and try to find something to distract her until Spring.

            Meanwhile her daughter laughed as she plummeted towards the land of the dead, her brilliant hair billowing behind her. Indigo flame manifested around her and she appeared like a purple shooting star. The Underworld was a very flexible level of reality, especially to a goddess, and even more so to a goddess of death. She chose to land on the dead side of the River Styx.

            Persephone made a slight crater in the obsidian earth as she landed. She stood up, brushed herself off, and looked into the water of the Styx. The river’s “water” was more like a liquid reflective metal.

            Persephone loved her mother very much, but there was a difference between loving someone and having the same taste as them. Persephone abhorred the pastel colors of her dress and the flowers in her hair. The skin and hair color were both okay, but still not quite to her preference. She liked her eyes though. Both of Persephone’s eyes were completely black, except for her pupils and irises which were pure white. Demeter didn’t like it, and had tried to change it, but to no avail.

            First things first, she removed the flowers from her hair. They hummed with the magic of Demeter, and Persephone did use them, just not to keep her company in the winter months. That was what Hades was for. Persephone had a more creative use for the flowers.

            The autumn goddess walked along, the landscape bending before her so she could get where she needed to be in the right order. She liked to take a tour of the underworld before meeting her husband at the palace.

            First she visited Elysium, a land of beautiful green meadows and forests, where the souls of those who were good in life went. They were like columns of shifting rainbow fire wearing pure white robes. They bowed to her when she passed.

            Persephone tossed the flowers she held into the air. Where they landed, new life poured into Elysium. Flower fields and forests materialized and a warm breeze rushed through the air. Demeter’s life magic was sent flowing into a realm of death. Without it, Elysium would still be nice, but quite a bit more drab, not a lush paradise.

            Soon, the queen of the underworld came to a wall of shifting gray smoke. The souls could not move through the walls between the realms, but a goddess could with ease. When she stepped through, she came to the colorless wheat fields of Asphodel.

            The souls appeared as gray shifting smoke in roughly humanoid form, each inside a robe of black. A few of them turned, but that was all the acknowledgement they offered Persephone. They had no memory and little personality. The shades of Asphodel were in a perpetual state of bored calm. Or possibly calm boredom. It was hard to say.

            But once a year, Persephone visited a gift upon them as well. The goddess reached out and grabbed the gray stalks of wheat near her. She willed it to absorb all of her color. Her golden brown skin faded to a deathly pale and her colorful dress became plain and gray. Still not her favorite color, but it didn’t hurt to look at it now. The color flowed through the wheat and into the rest of Asphodel. If you looked closely, the realm became just a little bit brighter. The shades gave a smile, then fell back into their melancholy peace.

            Persephone continued walking and came across a ledge that overlooked a deep darkness. The shades instinctively knew not to go near this ledge. The underworld was far below the earth, but Tartarus was far lower still. Persephone did not feel like falling again, so she merely willed herself to be on the floor of Tartarus, and she was.

            Red stone was set against a swirling gray sky. Several mountains floated in midair, chained down to the floor of the underworld’s darkest section. Inside the mountains Tartarus’s nastiest inmates were kept.

            But the mortals imprisoned here had a far less intimidating, yet far more painful, array of punishments. Running through this cursed place was Phlegethon, the river of fire. It was one of the only two reasons that Persephone ever visited Tartarus. She knelt by the river’s edge and made a cup with her hands, bringing some of the glowing red magma up to her lips and drinking.

            She felt the liquid fire settle in the pit of her stomach and burn through her. For a moment, her veins all glowed bright orange, then faded. Her blond hair burned like fire and settled into a darker shade of blood red. Exactly how she liked it.

            The goddess stood up and quickly went to find three very specific mortals. Soon she came to a small grove amidst all the darkness and gloom and fire. But it was far crueler than the volcanoes and infinite black pits, despite its appearance. In the center of the grove was a tree laden with delicious-seeming fruit, hanging over a pool of beautiful, clean water. The surface of the water was only disturbed by the figure thrashing in it.

            Unlike the souls in the other realms, those sent to Tartarus did not appear in any way magical. The gods could not come up with a crueler form than the one that mortals were born with. The man wore tattered white robes that had once been pristine. He had once been a king. Many souls here had, as a matter of fact. Something about a crown made men believe they could mock the gods. There were many women in Tartarus as well, but they were considerably outnumbered by the males. This wasn’t due to any kind of inherent quality of their souls, but one of the main qualifications to get into Tartarus was rampant and unchecked arrogance and ego, and most mortal societies tended to foster that more in the male population.

            The man in the pool leapt up to grab a grape that was hanging low. His finger barely grazed it, then he fell down into the water, which immediately became boiling hot. Despite the heat, he used his hands to lift up some of the boiling water. It almost made it to his lips before it ran through his fingers and the pool drained away, leaving the man in a bowl of sand. The tree lowered its branch again, bringing his attention back to the grapes.

            Tantalus’s eternal punishment was the first one that Persephone had ever personally designed. Originally it was just that the water and fruit would move out of his reach, but she later adapted it to make the water boiling hot at times, and to make the branches of the tree smack him at random intervals, as well as a wide array of other features.

            “Tantalus,” she said, bringing the famished man’s attention to her.

            “Oh,” he said, “You. Is it autumn already?”
            “Indeed it is. Do you remember the time you murdered your own son, then fed him to my mother? The only reason she didn’t sense the steak was human flesh was because you took advantage of her. It was the first winter and she was too depressed to realize what was happening.”

            Tantalus chuckled a little. “Of course I remember. It's one of my fondest memories. I figured that I’d get my brat of a son to stop complaining all the time, and then when the gods realized what kind of meat the steak was, we would all have a laugh. You've inherited your mother’s sense of humor, you know. Or lack thereof.”

            Persephone rolled her eyes and stretched out her hand. A manacle wrapped around Tantalus’s throat, with a chain leading from it to her hand. She began walking him along, the enchanted manacle around his throat preventing him from making any noise, including speaking.

            She went to find her next mortal. Sisyphus, the only mortal to have even slightly cheated death. Persephone almost had respect for him. Almost. His punishment was also specifically designed by her. It didn’t have all of the small miserable details that Tantalus’s did, but it had a poetic simplicity. He rolled a boulder up a hill for all eternity, only to watch it roll back down every time. A completely futile and useless effort, much like trying to evade death had been. A fitting punishment. Her friend and favorite employee, Thanatos, also known as death incarnate, had been traumatized for years after his run-in with Sisyphus.

            Persephone let herself glide an inch above the ground as she floated up the hill. Tantalus, of course, had to trudge along by foot, silently complaining the whole time.

            When she reached the top of the hill, she calmly stared down at the approaching boulder. She laid a single finger on it. With the strength of a goddess, she held the massive rock in place. With one hand, she slowly rolled the boulder up to the crest of the hill. She willed it to stay in place.

            “Oh, thank you, stranger. What is your na-” Said Sisyphus before he looked up at Persephone. “Oh. Is it autumn already?”
            Though he couldn’t make a sound, the goddess saw Tantalus mouth the words “That’s what I said.”

            “Sisyphus,” said Persephone, “You cheated death first by chaining Thanatos up in his own chains and locking him away. Then when your soul was collected, you tricked me into letting you return to life. You mocked the natural cycle of life and death and you mocked the gods as well. And all moral concerns aside, for such a smart man, you are really, really dumb. I don’t know why you mortals keep on having a hard time with this. There are two rules. The second one is to not get on the gods’ bad side, and I get why that can be tricky. My family is mostly a bunch of rude idiots. But the first and most important rule is that you really, really, don’t want to get on the bad side of a death god. All Athena, Zeus, or Artemis are going to do is kill you. Dionysus might drive you insane, and Hera might torture you for a while, eitherpsychologically, physically, or both.  But none of them get to decide where your soul spends all of eternity and how it spends that eternity. I, on the other hand, do. Seriously, man. You should have stayed dead. You might have been able to get Asphodel. But someone had to be a smart guy…”

            Persephone continued her rant as part of Tantalus’s chain split off and an identical manacle with an attached chain wrapped around Sisyphus’s throat. She led the two of them off as she went to meet the third and final king who had dared to cross her in some way. She purposefully left him for last, because being in his presence made her skin crawl.

            Pirithous, formerly King of Larissa. Persephone or her mother had just been a means to an end for the other two, but this one had purposefully sought her out, even if only as a prop in his larger, idiotic plan.

            As much as Persephone would have loved to have designed his punishment, it was her husband, Hades, who had that honor. It wasn’t nearly as subtle or poetic as hers, but he had made it up on the spot.

            A massive feast table lay in the middle of the dark plains, with a single chair in the middle, and a single writhing figure in the chair. Pirithous sat in the well crafted chair with two snakes wrapped around him, sinking their fangs into his flesh every few seconds. The bite marks healed a few seconds after, but the burning venom remained.

            Tantalus eyed the feast table and lunged for it. “Yeah, I’m afraid not,” said the autumn goddess, waving one hand. Tantalus’s chain suddenly pulled taut and he was dragged backwards.

            Persephone walked up to the table and leaned against it, picking up a pomegranate, her favorite food, breaking it open and biting into the soft seeds inside. When she swallowed she said, “The two of you can take a break now, you seem like you’re doing a great job.”

            The two snakes uncoiled from around Pirithous and slithered away. They would return to their job soon. After taking a shaky breath, the third king looked up at her and gave an aggravating smile. “Hello, darling.”

            She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “After so many years of being punished for your crimes in life, you have still managed to retain your creepy smarminess.”

            “Oh, I don’t like it when you look at me like that. You’re much prettier when you smile.”

            “The only time I feel any joy in your presence is when I hear you screaming in agony, you miserable failure as a human being. Do I even need to list your crimes to you?”

            “The only crime I ever committed was getting caught by your annoying husband, Hades.”

            Persephone actually laughed out loud when he said that. “Well, for starters, there was that one time you kidnapped Helen, who was a gods damned thirteen year old girl and planned to hold her in captivity until she was old enough for your friend to marry.”
            “Yeah, but when your husband captured that same friend, Theseus, he let him go but made me stay. How is that fair?”

            “Quite a few gods liked Theseus and wanted him to stay alive. For some reason, none of them liked you. Maybe it's the repellent personality. And I did say, first of all. Second of all, you tried to kidnap me!”

            “Isn’t that how you met your current husband, when he did the same?”

            “No! Well, sort of. But I was single at the time, and we had flirted a few times before, and he was kind of adorable and sweet even while he was taking me to the underworld. And if I hadn’t wanted to go, then he and his dark chariot would both be glowing piles of ash right now. You, on the other hand, wanted to kidnap me as some kind of rebound for your dead wife.”

            “The gods took my wife from me! So I swore I would take a daughter of Zeus as my new bride.”

            “Trust me, when my family kills someone, they aren’t very subtle about it. Your wife died from childbirth, and managed to get into Elysium. Not that you ever looked for her, even when in the underworld. If you had just lodged a complaint about your dead wife like Orpheus had, then I wouldn’t be so mad. But you just wanted to use me as a prop to get back at the gods for some reason I still can’t quite understand. I don’t really think this was about Hippodamia. I think this was just about you wanting this,” she said, gesturing to herself.

            “Eh,” Pirithous said, “I like your summer look better.”

            “DO NOT MOCK ME!” Persephone proclaimed as black lightning crackled in the air and jets of red, white and purple fire burst through the ground around her. She thrust forward one hand and another manacle and chain wrapped around Pirithous’s throat.

            He continued to talk, but silently, rendered mute. Persephone took a deep breath to calm down. She always regretted it whenever she talked to him. He was just so aggravating. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet found a way to obliterate souls completely. Eventually all souls just faded into the underworld, entering a relatively peaceful and thoughtless existence fueling the deepest level of reality. Persephone wasn’t quite sure she was comfortable with the idea of the rest of the underworld having a little bit of Pirithous’s essence in it, but at least he would be gone.

            The only reason she ever interacted with him was for the sweet satisfaction of what was coming next. The finale to her yearly tour of the underworld. Persephone reached out the hand that wasn’t holding the chains and a warhorn made from the bone of an ancient beast manifested. It was roughly half the size of her, but the goddess wielded it with ease.

            She put her lips to it and blew. The sound that came from the horn echoed off the very walls of Tartarus. It grated on the nerves and in humans it evoked a primal terror. Because some part of them knew that it meant an apex predator was coming.

            On the ground in front of Persephone, glowing lines started to form of blue, yellow, and red, slowly making a rune about twenty feet across. The rune glowed bright white and the ground underneath it exploded as a monster emerged.

            Cerberus, hound of the underworld. His father was Typhon, one of the most powerful beings to have ever lived, capable of besting even Zeus in a fight. His mother was Echidnae the Viper, Mother of Monsters. To call Cerberus a large three-headed dog was not quite accurate. His fur was a pure darkness that reflected no light. The three massive heads, each about six feet long, had horns protruding from them. His six eyes had slitted reptile pupils, like his mother and father. The leftmost head had eyes of flaming red, the middle head had eyes that radiated an eerie blue, and the rightmost one had eyes of glowing yellow, like twin lanterns.

            The massive creature howled, making a very similar sound to the horn that summoned him. As the jaws opened, Persephone and the three souls accompanying her could see the forked serpentine tongues and six long fangs dripping with venom, surrounded by teeth much more like that of a wolf. Cerberus lashed his long scaled tail, causing small explosions of white fire wherever it struck the ground.

            The three heads bowed before their queen. “Aww, Mommy missed you so much,” said Persephone, dropping the horn she used to summon her hound. It disappeared until she needed it again. She scratched the neck of each head, manifesting long claws on the tips of her fingers that could shred reinforced steel in an instant. Persephone couldn’t cut through the hide of Cerberus if she tried. Which, incidentally, had made getting Cerberus neutered quite difficult.

            The three souls still in the goddess’ chains watched with apprehensive horror. They knew what was coming.

            “I think you remember the rules, my good little puppy.” Cerberus nodded with all three heads and wagged his long fiery tail excitedly. “I brought you three special chew toys for your three special heads. You can play with them for as long as you want, but remember to share amongst yourself and to return them to their places in Tartarus when you are done.”

            The three kings started pleading and begging with Persephone, but she could not hear their words. She lifted up the chains and began to swing them around like a sling. The three souls noiselessly screamed as they went around and around. Then she released them and the three souls went flying off into the distance. Cerberus howled with joy and ran after them, his three heads playfully jostling each other.

            She was finally done with her tour of the underworld and her errands. Persephone opened a doorway of purple fire and stepped through. On the other side was her garden, sequestered at the back of the Dread Palace. All manner of plants grew here, many deadly to humans. There were some flowers, but they were all indigo, purple, black, white, or blood red. There was not a pop of bright color anywhere. Persephone had enough bright color during the summer months.

            Well, that wasn’t entirely true. In front of her was one very prominent flash of color. Hades, King of The Underworld, Persephone’s beloved. Though his skin was a pure onyx that fit the color palette of much of the underworld, one of his eyes was pure red like a ruby and the other pure blue like a sapphire, both brightly glowing with excitement. He had softly glowing, metallic golden hair that almost touched the ground and permanently swayed in an unseen spectral wind. He was wearing gray robes and a glass crown that shifted between various dark colors. Hades held a heart-shaped box in one hand, and nervously fidgeted with his hair with the other. He was grinning that slightly lopsided grin of his, exposing his pearly white teeth. Persephone thought he looked adorable.

            “Persephone, dearest, how is it that every time I see you, you are even more terrifyingly beautiful and more beautifully terrifying?”

            “Ooh, I like that one,” she replied, walking towards him.

            His grin widened. “I thought you would. I did have six months to think of it, after all.”

            “Well, it was very nice, dearest.”

            There was a pause. “So I guess I don’t get a return compliment?”

            “You kidnapped me. You owe me for all of eternity. One-sided compliment exchanges are just paying off a small part of that debt.”

            “I can live with that,” he said. She kissed him and wrapped her arms around him and he embraced her with one arm, the other one still holding the heart-shaped box.

            When she released him, she stepped back and looked down at the box. “You told me last time that you were sick of flowers and that if you wanted them you could grow them in your own garden. So, instead, I got you chocolate. Because everyone loves chocolate.”

            “There are so few times I fall into the same category as everyone else, but chocolate is one of them.” Persephone took the box from him and quickly devoured the treats inside.

            “Should I do the thing?” He asked, flexing his fingers. Each of his fingernails resembled gemstones.

            “Please do,” said Persephone, licking the remains of the chocolate off her fingers.

            Hades carefully placed his fingers around the edges of her face and closed his eyes. She could feel his power flowing forth, just a little bit. She had never been good at that kind of subtle miracle. Her forte was more restoring the dead to life, reducing fertile fields to ash, vice versa, or raining dark fire from the sky. She was a goddess of the balance between life and death, and while Hades was also a death god, one of his domains was wealth and, essentially, all things that came from the ground and were shiny. So aesthetic changes were a little more in his wheelhouse.

            Her dress shifted from a gray floral print to a much more elegant, if slightly harder to walk in, black gown. Her hair tied itself up in a neat and regal bun, and blood red mascara and lipstick, as well as some dark eyeliner, magically formed. Persephone found managing hair and makeup to be exhausting and tedious. She had no idea how mortals managed it.

            Hades released his gentle grip and stepped back to admire his handiwork. “You know that I find you stunning no matter what condition you are in, but my extra little touches don’t hurt. Now, for the piece de resistance.”

            He reached out his hands. In one lay a crown, and in the other, a ring.

            Persephone took the ring first. It was made from obsidian obtained by the banks of Phlegethon, and it had a stone of shifting red in it, far more valuable than any ordinary ruby. It was the blood of Ouranos, the original primordial god of the sky. When he had been wounded by his son Kronos, drops of his blood had flown across the world. Where they landed, magical life had formed. But two very small droplets had landed all the way down in Tartarus, and Hades had years later collected them and frozen them into gems.

            Persephone put the ring on the ring finger of her left hand. She took her wedding ring off whenever she went to the surface, as just the sight of it upset Demeter and delayed the coming of spring. Hades had been very understanding and agreed to keep it for her while she was away.

            Then she took up the crown. It was made of the same black stone, and had six slightly jagged spikes surrounding it. Between each of them was a pomegranate seed, frozen inside of ruby. She had once eaten six pomegranate seeds, and supposedly they were what bound her to the underworld for half the year, but she and Hades both knew that she could break that binding with ease. But she had made sure no one else knew, especially her mother.

            She carefully set the crown atop her head. Only when she felt it's comforting weight did she truly feel like herself.

Persephone.

            She is often called the goddess of spring and beauty, but this is a lie. It is Demeter who brings back life in the spring, all Persephone does is bring Demeter out of her depression. Persephone is the balance between life and death. A beautiful maiden, yes, but also the true ruler of the underworld and among the most dangerous of the olympians.

            She is Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, the Dread Lady, the bringer of autumn, and true goddess of death.