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There are times, more than a damned well few of them lately where Persephone feels like she’s caught in the groove of one of Hermes old records. It’s a familiar story, like something that she’s half remembered from a dream. Right now, as the new boy brings her a drink with a trembling hand, she can feel it starting again, old wounds coming to the surface and in the youthful lines of his face, she can see lines of wear and lines of blood superimposed on it like a shade that’s escaped from down below. This boy—and in some ways all of them are just boys to her—is young. Too young to be behind the bar that he can just barely reach over to fill her glass with whiskey, looks about the right age. Suddenly it’s all making sense to her and just for a second Persephone can see the future and the past spread around her. Time ain’t ever been one of her talents, but here it is nonetheless.
“How old are you, boy?” The question is asked in a soft voice and it isn’t the most kind tone that Persephone has ever used, but it ain’t the most unkind neither.
“Twelve, ma’am.” He’s pale and he looks as if he might fall over if she looks at him the wrong way and it seems to be one of those sorts of times and that makes her sigh. This is always easier when it ain’t one of those times—those times mean that they’re gonna get close even when she don’t really want to. But there’s something about the boy, there always is no matter what form he takes.
“Sounds about right,” she snorts into her whiskey, the sort of not ladylike sound that would make her mama shake her head. “Course you are.”
“Ma’am?” The word is a question, and Orpheus follows it with: “You alright?”
Persephone doesn’t answer as she just slams down her whiskey and gestures for him to leave the bottle. There’s a brush of cold in the wind tonight, and her old bones ache. Tomorrow the train will be coming. It’s only a few days early, not so much that anyone who weren’t paying attention would notice, but she knows. That’s what happens when this starts again; the train comes earlier and leaves later and her husband will be coming dragging along the boulder of his jealousy that will keep getting bigger. Twelve years ago it had started like a pebble, and Persephone hadn’t wanted to think of what it meant. It’s too short, this period between the cycle and gods above and below it feels like it keeps getting shorter.
Locking eyes with Hermes, he just inclines his head, and Persephone knows that her younger brother in his old man body knows it too. There’s an apology in the lines of his face that she never allows him to make—he can’t avoid bringing Orpheus into this anymore than she can stop it. Sometimes it’s easier for him to bring the poet along than others and she knows that trying to leave him behind does more harm than good.
That ain’t how this story goes after all—Orpheus will find him, her and the Songbird no matter what.
Grabbing the bottle and her basket, she leaves without a word and without paying her tab. Hermes will take care of it and the tip of course. He always does on that first night she sees him. Persphone’s got too much on her mind to remember and besides, she’s got packing to do.
No one is surprised when the train whistle cuts through the fields before dawn. Autumn comes and there ain’t anything anyone can do to change it. And Persephone doesn’t want too. Not yet. They’ve still got a little time and Persephone wants to live it up with her husband while she can. They ain’t got that much time left now.
Hades steps off the train to a relatively empty station and isn’t surprised to see his wife standing there with her bags in hand. There’s less of them than their will be but more than there was last fall. Patterns within patterns, even if Persephone ain’t anywhere near as bad as she will be when things come down to it. Greeting her husband with a deep kiss, she fights down the words that she knows will come sooner rather than later. It ain’t a fight that she wants to get into before they gotta and from the surprised look on her husband’s face she knows that he’s expecting it too.
Taking her luggage in one hand, and her waist in the other, Hades just escorts her onto the train and into the car, tucking himself next to her on the velvet bench and holding her as close as he dares too. The touch is tentative as if she might fly away even though she hadn’t gone anywhere she didn’t need to go since the world began. Giving a soft sigh to break the silence, Persephone just speaks as gently as she can. “The poet’s here. He’s twelve now.”
Watching the expression play over her husband’s coal black eyes, it’s easy for Persephone to see the emotions warring within it. Her mama and daddy and the rest of the family always say that her husband is a cold fish, but the expressions in her husband’s face as easily as she could unroll a scroll back before the world had changed. There’s anger there, to be sure, marching Persephone’s own that this period of peace between them had been cut so damned short. Grief too, that they’re going to lose the fragile peace that they always fight so hard for but that always seems to be the first thing to fall between them when the story comes ‘round again. But the quickest and most painful flash for her is relief there in Hades’ eyes. Course he’s relieved, and in a way Persephone is too. The fighting that’s been happening (the beyond the pale fighting because the two of them always are gonna have normal fighting. It’s who they are. But this level of fighting is something else.) has been slowing eating them, and each fight becomes sharper and harsher as Hades wars between his jealousy and their history.
It’s in both of their natures to be jealous, they are gods after all and ain’t no one in this family can get away with not having some bit of that within who they are. But this flavor of Hades’ jealousy had always been different: it was wrapping a grip around his throat and suffocating him, making him reach out for help without saying it and in the end it suffocates her too.
What he does with that jealousy is both written and not--sometimes it’s the small and harsh ways that he treated her, sometimes it’s thinking that if he changes the Underworld in order to make it more like Up Top it’ll be better and she will want to stay. That’s the bitter crux of it for her: it ain’t that she don’t wanna stay, just like it ain’t that she don’t love him. Persephone loves Hades with all of the pieces of herself, but she also knows that if it ain’t for her going up and doing what she needs to do, then there won’t be anymore humans. And if humans don’t believe in her anymore, there ain’t gonna be a Persephone. At least not as he knows her. Instead, there’d just be another shade in Hadestown, only this time she’d be wearing a black velvet dress dotted with diamonds and Persephone’s face but the rest of her would be long gone.
The worst times are when he thinks that he’s going to make her jealous by trying to seduce Eurydice in front of her. Each thought of that is another dull razor dragged across fraying nerves and it don’t matter that it ain’t gonna be something that he actually ever goes through with: it always hurts. The first time Hades had attempted to seduce Eurydice (that was the seventh cycle, and Orpehus was from Karnataka and his lyre was a Saraswati Veena, and Eurydice was from Tamil Nadu) Persephone had smited her. She’d smited her and thought that was the end of all of it. It should have been the end of all of it, destroying the girl’s soul, but in the end all it did was stop the two of them from having peace between when the cycles began, and they’d both been punished by the way that the next cycle had taken even longer to play out. The world hadn’t suffered as badly then, if only because it was Persephone’s fault so her and Hades had been separated for even longer than usual. It had been several unusually warm winters for Earth, but then Orpehus had been born again.
“I should try killing him again,” Hades’ voice is a rumbling thundercloud, but there’s a tiredness in it that Persephone knows is only mostly bluster. “If the cycles between keep getting shorter, it ain’t fair that we can’t act.”
“Last time didn’t work out so well for us, lover,” Persephone reminds him gently, her hand cupping his face and he leans into it with a sigh. That had been the third cycle, and the two of them had reminded the ones that had come prior. They always remembered until they forgot but all it had taken was for Persephone to meet the poet in the market stall in Edfu in Egypt to know it was happening again. When she’d gotten on the barge (there weren’t trains then) she’d told Hades and he’d roared and gone to find the boy and smote him into the earth. Persephone doesn’t know what happened to him during the winters that she’d needed to rule the Underworld alone, but it had been bad enough that Hades wouldn’t talk about it. Not even Hecate would, and she loved to gossip. When Persephone had demanded the truth of the Fates, the sisters had told her something that still resonated with her thousands of years later: there are things beyond their control and this was one of them. The circle would go on until it was broken. They didn’t know what that meant, but it always gave her a chill to think about.
Thinking about it now, Persephone shudders and she tries to tell herself that it ain’t nothing but the lurch of the train starting that caused it but she’s lying to herself again. She don’t bother to try and lie to her husband who wraps his big, cold arms around her and hugs her deep to his chest.
As her fingers trace over the cut of his suit, she just murmurs softly. “Suppose I’ll need to tell the songbird it’s happening again.”
“Suppose so,” he says into her ear before Hades presses his lips to her neck. “Suppose so,” he kisses into her skin like a protection spell. Hades ain’t ever told the girl that it was happening. Eurydice is always smart, maybe the smartest one of all of them and when Persephone stormed into the speakeasy before the Spring last year angry that she was being kept late, Eurydice had just looked to her with knowing eyes and had poured Persephone the larger glass of moonshine behind the bar. She too, remembered and the goddess always expected that as hard as it was for she and Hades, it was always harder on the girl. The gods had patterns within patterns that they’d needed to fall into in order to make the story start anew, but it was always Eurydice who hurt the worst. After all, she was the one who was always coming ever closer to freedom and the last time she’d almost been in the sun before Orpheus had turned around. It had been the furthest since the first time but in the end it always came down to the fact that the boy doubted her and their love. Persephone knows how that feels, but she ain’t got the thirteen cycles of that turn that Eurydice does.
Sometimes Persephone wonders if Eurydice stopping loving Orpehus would break the cycle in another way along with his heart, but for all of the ways that the poet hurts her, the songbird doesn’t stop just like Persephone herself doesn’t stop loving Hades. Somethings are just too damned etched into their souls, and that’s one of them. The grooves of those loves run to their core, and it’s all that Persephone can do to hope that doubt don’t run to the core of Orpheus though she’s starting to worry that it might.
“It’s a bit odd that it’s here in the same place, though.” Hades says softly, and Persephone can’t help but to agree. Normally some warning sign for what’s happening comes in the form of wanderlust, first Hermes and then her own. It’s part of the reason that none of them had noticed that the cycle was starting again. “Don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad one.”
“He looks the same to. Same blue eyes, same chin.”
Hades laughs softly and it’s a rumble against her breast. “So he still looks like a rat then?”
“Quiet you.” The words come with a playful swat against his chest. “He’s a cute rat.” When the silence stretches between them, Persephone doesn’t know if it’s the old jealousy or his actual jealousy that heavies the silence between them but it ain’t something that she is gonna be able to piece out. There’s too much work involved with it. So, instead Persephone just reaches up and presses her hands to both sides of his cheeks.
“I want you to listen to me, Hades. I know you’re gonna forget—we’re all gonna forget. But I love you. I love you with all of me. I have loved since before the world began, since before I met you. Loving you is all I ever needed to know how to do. I ain’t gonna ever love anyone more than you, Hades. Not even the sun, not even the spring. I love you. That don’t ever change.”
“Persephone…” He sighs her name softly, and Persephone just cherishes it for a moment, because she’s all too aware of how soon, he won’t be saying it. That too is a part of the patterns between them and part of her thinks that he always forgets that’s what her name is until Orpehus mentions it when he sings the song to Hades. “Maybe we can try talking to her again. Maybe there’s a way for the songbird to remember.”
“It didn’t work when they were Anasazi, Hades.” Persephone says the words softly, remembering the first time that they were in the Americas. Oh, it wasn’t part of them yet, nor was it a part of Mexico, but Persephone remembers that time vividly. They’d told both women (because they were both women that time, and another time since, and they’d been men several times over too, once in Ancient Rome for one, and once Luba for another.) “It just made it so that Orpheus tried to stay with Eurydice instead of leaving.” And the Underworld had been in turmoil. The four of them weren’t the only ones who depended on the story happening. Living mortals can’t just stay in the Underworld--it ain’t something that the dead can handle. “And the songbird hurts enough without carrying that burden to go along with the rest of it. She needs the chance to forget.”
Hades just kisses Persephone gently, tangling his fingers in the mass of her hair as if he can use it to anchor them both in this moment rather than the past or what’s going to come. Neither of them want it, but neither of them can do anything to stop it. As much as people keep telling their story, it ain’t theirs or their mistakes that this depends on. Bitterness over needing to unlearn the things that they’d now learned so many times before and kept needing to relearn through Orpheus’ decision will kill them if they let it, and Persephone’s determined not to allow that to happen. And of course, because Persephone’s going to always be the one who believes in their love and that she can use it to draw him back from the abyss, she just speaks against his lips. “How long, lover?”
“Since the world began. Til it ends.” The words come immediately, and he tugs her more firmly into his lap, for all the things that have changed between them, one thing that ain’t ever changed and as far as she’s concerned won’t ever change is how she feels when he holds her like this. The whole world and all the mortals in it could go and hang and she would still feel safe here in his arms even if they went and disappeared like all of the other gods had. Kissing him soundly, Persephone just lets her fingers move through the white of his hair. Kissing him like this is a promise, and they both know it. It’s why when things are good between them, she always kisses him like this before she leaves--because of course she’s coming back. She believes it to be so, so it is.
And maybe other things are good and true if she believes enough in them, which is why she just says softly. “Maybe it ain’t a bad thing that the time between is so short now. Maybe him lookin’ like he did last time means he’s less likely to forget. This is the farthest that he’d gotten since the first time. Maybe next time he won’t turn around.”
“Maybe.” Hades don’t sound quite like he believes it, but there’s still the smallest diamond of hope there in his voice, as if maybe if Persephone believes it enough for the both of them that it’ll work. “Maybe we won’t forget when it comes time for Spring again.”
“At least not all of it. I had… some flashes of it last time. When he was there in Hadestown.” She doesn’t need to say that she knows that Hades didn’t--Persephone don’t need too. Hades is iron and scales and set in his ways, of course he ain’t gonna remember until there’s cords playing and the las start over once again.
“I know you did.” His voice is soft, wistful almost as he just runs his fingers up and down the line of her spine before he sings against hollow of her throat. “La la la.”
“La la la,” she sings back to him softly. “Maybe it’ll all turn out this time.”
Hades is silent for a long moment before he just says, “suppose it can’t hurt anything to hope. They were so close last time.”
“One of these times he will. Ain’t no point in putting all of us through that if we don’t.”
Hades makes a sound low in his throat before he traces his fingers along the green of the fabric of her dress, finding the zipper and giving it a slow tug. “I missed you Persephone.”
“I know you big old rock. I missed ya too. I always miss ya. Ain’t no one in the whole damned world for you but me. I made my choices long ago. I ain’t gonna be changing them now no matter what your jealousy says.” And then she kisses him hard, her hands on the lapels of his suit as he pulls her down on top of her, just like she pulled him into the dirt in her mama’s garden all them years ago.
Just like then he sings to her as he makes love to her, the las turning into breathless groans and cries of her name into that melody. And Persephone always answers in kind, her nails down his back and her lips on his throat.
In the end, this time they don’t forget and Persephone keeps trying to hold onto hope. The hope tightens and loosens as Eurydice don’t forget either, and the night before she goes to be reborn, she looks Persephone and Hades dead in the eyes as she pours them both a glass of whiskey. “It’s going to turn out this time.” The surety in the songbird’s voice breaks her heart, and hope sees it back together. Spring still comes, fall still happens and the world ain’t perfect (it can’t be not yet) but it’s better than it has been in any of the cycles before.
The seasons are a little late or a little early but the humans aren’t starving like they did in so many times past, like five cycles ago in Nasca. That had been the first time that Persephone had really seen the destruction that their fighting had wrought. Empty bellies and full curses had been the norm then, and no one had dared speak their names, afraid of drawing the gods ire and making the whole damned thing worse.
Unlike the past two cycles, since the Industrial revolution, Hades doesn’t go mad with the factories. He doesn’t take what he’d learned from the mortals about how they treat their workers. He wasn’t as obsessed with material things. Oh, he still traced his fingers over her spine when they’d gotten back to Hadestown, leaving the green of her dress ink and crusted with the most precious of stones, but this time they had stories to tell. Each shifting diamond wrote the tale that they’d been living for so long, because if it couldn’t be kept on her skin, at least it could have been close to her heart.
Persephone too left him the reminders. Each morning she harnessed what she could of the things that would grow down in the underworld, and on his desk there was always a fresh gleaming pomegranate that they shared, along with a single fresh carnation to be tucked into the lapel of his suit.
Every night, they retold that story, singing it softly into the hair of the other. Sometimes it’s his turn, sometimes it’s Persephone’s but they sing it again and again like a bedtime story that they ain’t ever got to pass along to the kids that they so desperately wanted. Each time the story takes up the place in their bed that used to be empty and filled with all the things they don’t say—there ain’t no place for jealousy or recriminations or her drinking too much and his working too much.
They don’t forget, not even when she becomes close to Orpheus and she whispers about love meaning that you trust that the person is always with you, whether you can see them or not. Bedtime stories come for Orpheus too in the tales that she sings in Hermes’ old bar, flowers and flasks on display for him. Each fall when her husband comes to get her, Hades meets the boy and ‘you’re early’ ‘I missed ya’ becomes ‘you’re early’ ‘I missed ya but I knew you’d come home to me. That you’re always there.’
For the first time, Persphone can see that he’s starting to believe it and the hope in her heart has wings that beat to a tune they don’t forget but that Orpheus still picks at on his lyre. She don’t ever forget it, and she don’t let the poet forget that it’s a song of love for more TVs just Hades and Persephone.
And finally, it’s still spring when the songbird comes in wanting a match. It’s a change in the story, and Persephone can see it vividly and bright as the girl asks for Hermès blessing on her knees, as she pulls the flower from her own pocket. It’s crumpled, and it’s old, but it’s there, and for the first time Persephone is there when they meet. But more than that, there’s a familiar presence that remain unseen, but she knows her husband is present for this meeting too. The Poet stares at the Songbird, and the Songbird stares at him. History passes between them, as those who keep going through the cycle remember. They remember and it don’t go away, not even when the Poet drops the crate of cups and rushes over to her.
Something snaps, a rubber band or a string or whatever, and Persephone can feel it, like someone’s bumped the record player and gotten it out of that old groove. After a moment, Hades materializes from the darkness to rest at her side, and he takes her hand, brushing his lips against the back of it as he breathes in the scent of her, and sings in her ear because he can. “La la la.”
When the songbird dies because of a snake bite, and Orpheus goes to get her, there’s no need for him to sing his song to them, but he does it anyway. The gods dance, the poet and the songbird leave, and Persephone follows as she always does because it’s Spring and she needs to see it through. This time however, her husband walks with her. This time when the world holds it breath, the songbird steps into the sunlight.
It ain’t perfect, but nothing is. But the cycle is broken. For now anyway, Persephone knows it can always start again. But when she kisses her husband and feels life quickening in her womb for the first time she hopes. She hopes and hopes and hopes and sings a song of love.
And the world sings it with them.