if I
were prey. Unsmiling. All jaw, cheekbone, shoulder.
I'm frozen.
He walks toward me, fine-spun cloth outlining his thighs, stroking golden brown skin, and a breeze is playing with my hair, brushing my arm—
He walks toward me, easy, as if he owned me.
The air around me is heating. Energy crowns him like a halo, emanates from his arm, his hand—
Walks toward me.
Don't stop! Nothing is safe. I don't want it to be. So what if I'm changing my life forever? Forever is this one instant, when he's almost here.
He sees what's in my eyes. He reaches me and grabs me, pulls me close. His mouth on my mouth. His scent mingling with the flowers' intoxicating perfume. The strength of his arms.
There is no way I could pull myself back from this eternity. But he does. Pulls back, looks me in the eyes, and says in a husky voice, "Tell me you're coming with me. Say you'll be my queen. Say it."
It's easy. I'm drunk, drugged on narcissus and skin. No doubt. This isn't my home. His arm will be my home. His skin will touch me and that is all I need.
I nod.
"Say it out loud," he says. "Say you choose to come with me."
"Yes," I say. "I choose to come."
Hades lifts me into the chariot as if I weighed no more than a lamb being carried to market. He leaps up beside me; the horses snort and paw the earth, tossing their heads. Then he snaps the reins and the horses start running like water breeching a dam, sudden, unstoppable. There's a jolt, and their mighty legs are galloping through air.
We soar above plum trees and olive groves, above the lake, where a rowboat, unmoored, floats empty in the middle. The air rushing past me becomes a wind, blowing my hair and the folds of my chiton behind me like wings.
Suddenly, a phalanx of pink stone rises in front of us, blocking out the world—the cliffs, trying to hold me in. But with one forceful stroke, the horses carry us right over my prison walls.
For the first time, I see the world outside the vale: paths leading down to coves murmuring with waves, rich jumbles of fields, white-walled villages, tiny specks of sheep on green hillsides, and lakes glinting blue and green like precious gems.
Everything shrinks smaller and smaller, until the trees are green dots, and then even the dots disappear and there's nothing below us but bold strokes of paint: green, brown, gold.
Hades snaps the reins, urging the horses as fast as they'll go. The wind becomes an exhilarating gale, rocking the chariot side to side, and my knuckles turn white on the golden rail, holding on, just holding on. Hades' cloak snaps and cracks behind us with the sounds of raging fire.
Then down, without slowing. Green rushes toward us, gives way to rocky, barren land, and then everything is white and we're plunging into clouds that seem to rise from the earth itself. No, not clouds, steam, billowing up with a sulfurous smell, and we're plummeting right into that shifting, swirling mass as if the ground is pulling open. We plunge through a cleft in the rock, and all I can do is hold on tighter as the chariot rocks and hot steam roils about us. That's all there is: steam, wind, the chariot careening from side to side; and a scream rips out—is it mine?—and even that sound disappears, sucked into the swirling, thick air, and I hold on and I hold on. There is nothing but holding on.
PART TWO
Below
Who were you? It's gone. You can't remember.
The room you grew up in, the tree outside your window,
the shadows of its branches waving on the wall.
Gone.
Shutters
T here's darkness all around me, an ocean of it. And I'm adrift in a raft of a bed.
"Hades?" I whisper.
Nothing. No answer.
"Hades? Where are you?"
I reach blindly across the bed, but no matter which way I grope, I find no reassuring arm, no broad shoulder to shake.
I don't believe it! He's left me alone to the
were prey. Unsmiling. All jaw, cheekbone, shoulder.
I'm frozen.
He walks toward me, fine-spun cloth outlining his thighs, stroking golden brown skin, and a breeze is playing with my hair, brushing my arm—
He walks toward me, easy, as if he owned me.
The air around me is heating. Energy crowns him like a halo, emanates from his arm, his hand—
Walks toward me.
Don't stop! Nothing is safe. I don't want it to be. So what if I'm changing my life forever? Forever is this one instant, when he's almost here.
He sees what's in my eyes. He reaches me and grabs me, pulls me close. His mouth on my mouth. His scent mingling with the flowers' intoxicating perfume. The strength of his arms.
There is no way I could pull myself back from this eternity. But he does. Pulls back, looks me in the eyes, and says in a husky voice, "Tell me you're coming with me. Say you'll be my queen. Say it."
It's easy. I'm drunk, drugged on narcissus and skin. No doubt. This isn't my home. His arm will be my home. His skin will touch me and that is all I need.
I nod.
"Say it out loud," he says. "Say you choose to come with me."
"Yes," I say. "I choose to come."
Hades lifts me into the chariot as if I weighed no more than a lamb being carried to market. He leaps up beside me; the horses snort and paw the earth, tossing their heads. Then he snaps the reins and the horses start running like water breeching a dam, sudden, unstoppable. There's a jolt, and their mighty legs are galloping through air.
We soar above plum trees and olive groves, above the lake, where a rowboat, unmoored, floats empty in the middle. The air rushing past me becomes a wind, blowing my hair and the folds of my chiton behind me like wings.
Suddenly, a phalanx of pink stone rises in front of us, blocking out the world—the cliffs, trying to hold me in. But with one forceful stroke, the horses carry us right over my prison walls.
For the first time, I see the world outside the vale: paths leading down to coves murmuring with waves, rich jumbles of fields, white-walled villages, tiny specks of sheep on green hillsides, and lakes glinting blue and green like precious gems.
Everything shrinks smaller and smaller, until the trees are green dots, and then even the dots disappear and there's nothing below us but bold strokes of paint: green, brown, gold.
Hades snaps the reins, urging the horses as fast as they'll go. The wind becomes an exhilarating gale, rocking the chariot side to side, and my knuckles turn white on the golden rail, holding on, just holding on. Hades' cloak snaps and cracks behind us with the sounds of raging fire.
Then down, without slowing. Green rushes toward us, gives way to rocky, barren land, and then everything is white and we're plunging into clouds that seem to rise from the earth itself. No, not clouds, steam, billowing up with a sulfurous smell, and we're plummeting right into that shifting, swirling mass as if the ground is pulling open. We plunge through a cleft in the rock, and all I can do is hold on tighter as the chariot rocks and hot steam roils about us. That's all there is: steam, wind, the chariot careening from side to side; and a scream rips out—is it mine?—and even that sound disappears, sucked into the swirling, thick air, and I hold on and I hold on. There is nothing but holding on.
PART TWO
Below
Who were you? It's gone. You can't remember.
The room you grew up in, the tree outside your window,
the shadows of its branches waving on the wall.
Gone.
Shutters
T here's darkness all around me, an ocean of it. And I'm adrift in a raft of a bed.
"Hades?" I whisper.
Nothing. No answer.
"Hades? Where are you?"
I reach blindly across the bed, but no matter which way I grope, I find no reassuring arm, no broad shoulder to shake.
I don't believe it! He's left me alone to the
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