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Two days after their return from Hadestown, spring has stippled the meadowlands with dewy new sprouts. Eurydice follows the trail of craning blossoms to Orpheus, his back propped against an old pine and his lyre at his side as he scribbles something against his knee.
Before, he would never have noticed her approach. She would sit silently in the grass a few paces ahead of him, waiting for his concentration to break—or, more accurately, for the light to dim enough that he was forced to put the pen down—until he’d finally look up and startle at the sight of her. He’d always been apologetic when he realized how long she’d been waiting, but Eurydice had found his passion for his work charming, up until the point where his song became more important to him than feeding the two of them.
But those days are past, now. Orpheus hears her footsteps and finds her eyes immediately, brightening at the sight of her. “Eurydice!”
The sound of her name in his mouth makes her smile. “Hey, poet,” she greets, taking a seat at his side, opposite his lyre. “Working on a song?”
He ducks his head bashfully but nods, curling his notebook closer to himself to shield it from her view. “It’s not finished, though.”
“Where have I heard that one before?” she says with a hum, thoughts flashing to countless images of Orpheus sitting next to her on a bar table, a smile tucked into his cheek as he tries desperately to win her favor. He breathes a laugh. “Come on, lover.” She nudges him with her elbow. “Show me.”
“Not yet,” he all but whines. She prods him again, harder, and he yelps. “We’re already married this time! You don’t need a proof of concept!”
She huffs. “How does us being married mean I have to wait longer to hear your songs?”
“You’ll still be the first to hear it,” he says, “but only when it’s good enough to share.”
Eurydice raises an eyebrow. “The fact that all the flowers are blooming here makes me think it’s plenty good already,” she says, poking a finger at a newly-bloomed violet.
“Well, the flowers have lower standards than you,” he retorts with such sincerity that she snorts.
“I’ll be sure to let Lady Persephone know you think her flowers have low standards,” she says.
He sputters a bit in response. “That—well, I’m not wrong,” he says. “I barely have to do anything to get the flowers to bloom; they just… do that on their own.”
“Oh, so is that why you expected me to agree to marry you before I knew your name?” she teases. “You thought I’d be just like a flower?”
He makes an aborted noise. “Don’t remind me,” he groans, burying his face in his hands.
She snickers. In her best ‘mocking Orpheus voice,’ she exclaims, “‘Lover, come home with me! I’ll be your husband!” He makes a squeak of protest and reaches to put his hand over her mouth, but she squirms away, continuing, “I’ll say I’ll take in the clothes when they’re dry and then forget them outside until half of them have blown away in the wind!”
“I got them back!”
“Your socks hit Mister Hermes in the head,” she deadpans.
“He raised me! He’s dealt with worse!” She chokes on a laugh at his indignant expression. “It’s true,” Orpheus grumbles.
Eurydice pats him on the shoulder. “I don’t doubt that,” she tells him. After a moment, she decides he can stand a touch more teasing. “You’re a mess, lover boy.”
He makes a show of rolling his eyes before slinging an arm around her shoulders and leaning into her. “Yeah, but you’re stuck with me,” he says into the crook of her neck. “No take-backs.”
Eurydice’s breath hitches, heart stuttering—she’s not quite sure whether it’s the words themselves or the proximity that gets her, but regardless, it makes her falter just long enough for a triumphant smile to tear across her husband’s face. He opens his mouth to say something else but she finally regains enough bodily control to grab him by the shoulder and press her lips against his. Unsurprisingly, this shuts him up quickly.
“I should’ve started with that,” she mutters against his mouth. Orpheus stares at her, brown eyes blown wide.
“You should continue with that,” he breathes out. Eurydice grins and obliges.
Eurydice was half-convinced she would wake up back in Hadestown the morning after their walk.
It wouldn’t be the first time. Dreams of it finally working out had haunted her since—it must have been their third time? Fourth? They all blur together at this point. Lady Mnemosyne told her last cycle that mortal minds weren’t meant to hold as many memories as she was allowing Eurydice to keep, so she supposes she’ll take what she can get.
Eurydice can’t remember the loops in great detail, but she knows all of the broad strokes are identical.
It goes like this: Orpheus and Eurydice fall in love, only for the harshest storm they’ve ever seen to bring Eurydice to her knees, convincing her to sign her life over to Hades. Then, Orpheus walks to Hadestown to save her, incites a worker’s rebellion, and is granted the chance to take Eurydice home if and only if he does not turn around on the walk back.
Here is the key moment: in every previous iteration, Orpheus fails. He looks back. And so, Eurydice dies; then the world shivers, and rewinds.
However, in the world of her dreams—and somehow, the one she lives in now—he doesn’t.
And Eurydice is thrilled. Overjoyed, even. And yet—
“You okay?” Orpheus murmurs, and she jolts, finally processing that she’s sitting up in bed, staring blankly at the wall. Her fists are balled in the sheets, shoulders hunched like she’s bracing for an impact. Orpheus is sitting beside her, hand hovering by her back with his head bowed close to her cheek. He looks like he wants to press his forehead against hers, but isn’t sure if it’s the kind of night where touch will set her on edge.
She draws in a sharp breath and lets it sit in her lungs until they burn just enough to remind her she’s still alive. Orpheus waits, silently, until she finally says, “I’m okay.” She leans back so that his hand is pressed against her, quietly granting him permission.
He runs his hand soothingly up and down her back. “Do you want anything?” he asks. “Water? I could run down to the bar if—”
She catches him before he starts rambling, placing a hand on his chest. “I don’t need any of that,” she says, before seeing him bite his lip, clearly about to ask if she’s certain. He’ll never admit it, but he’s asking for her vulnerability to ease himself as much as he is to help her; he wants to know she’ll ask for help, even after he failed to answer her before. Knowing this, she indulges him. “I don’t need anything—but if you’re awake enough for it, I’ll take a song.”
He nods, hurrying over to fetch his lyre. She can tell he’s still a little sluggish by his standards as he does a test strum but her lover’s worst note is better than most people’s best attempt. “Any requests?” he asks as he returns to her side.
She thinks about asking him to sing his new song again, but decides against putting him on the spot more than she has. “Surprise me,” she says instead.
He hums in thought before playing a chord. “I was fiddling with this verse for a while after I met you before the weather turned and I got—” he hesitates a beat too long, “—distracted by the other song.” He shakes his head and readjusts his lyre. “Anyway, it goes like this—”
Softly, he sings, “Who could write, who could write this kind of love? From such a height, all those light-years above? And all these light-years down below? I don’t need any star to show me what my heart already knows.” She lets the notes wash over her, filling the room. Streams of silver starlight spill through the window, almost like a spotlight over him. A cricket somewhere harmonizes to his tune. He doesn’t seem to notice the shift, continuing, “Eurydice, you pull on me like gravity. I want to be where you are.”
It always catches her by surprise when his melody rises unbidden in her own throat. She hums a few notes before she finds herself following him through a fading chorus. “They say that everything is written, everything written in those stars. The very lives we’re living, the very love in our hearts.” When the last note rings out, she lets out a shaky breath, tipping her head back and languishing in the moment.
“I was hoping it would make a good duet,” Orpheus admits, breaking the silence. “I think—I’m gonna add a verse for you, maybe flip the order of that part so—”
She laughs. “Orpheus,” she interrupts, taking care to keep her voice mirthful. He pauses, listens. She holds out a hand to him. “C’mere.” He sets his instrument down and curls into her side. “Show me the lyrics in the morning, okay? I’m gonna try to go back to sleep.”
He nods and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Sweet dreams.”
The bar isn’t open yet, but Mister Hermes shows up as he pleases, regardless. Eurydice doesn’t think he’s here for a drink, anyway.
“Mister Hermes,” she says, cornering the god in the bar the next morning. Orpheus is somewhere in the backroom, looking for a cup Eurydice is fairly sure he’s forgotten upstairs in their room. He’ll remember it eventually, but it’ll take him a while to sort through the back, given that it hasn’t been organized since before Orpheus fell into his deep songwriting stupor to bring the world back into tune.
“Morning,” he greets, leaning against the bartop like he’d expected this. He probably did. “How’s life back on top treatin’ you?”
She hesitates. “Do you know how…?”
“Not a clue,” he says.
She bites her lip. If he doesn’t know, then who does? Does anyone know? In terms of the gods, Mister Hermes tends to follow their story the closest. The only exception she can think of is the Fates themselves, but Eurydice doesn’t see them answering her questions anytime soon, even if they are responsible for letting it happen.
She sighs. “What do you think?” she asks.
“I think,” he replies slowly, “that you should let the Fates worry about fate, and go enjoy getting to live new days with your lover back there.” He nods at the employees only door knowingly.
“I’ve been trying,” she says. “I just—I can’t help feeling like something has to be wrong, though.”
He hums in acknowledgment. “The meanest dog you’ll ever meet,” he says simply, letting her fill in the rest of it herself.
She sighs. “Yeah, I got it,” she says, turning to start wiping down the bartop like she’d told Orpheus she would. Mister Hermes stops her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Eurydice,” he says, haltingly, “don’t overthink it. You’re both alive now—remember that.”
Taking his advice is easier said than done when there's a part of her that still shivers in anticipation of the next death knoll, of the crowing laughter of the Fates coming back to snatch her away, of the chasmic darkness swallowing her name. She can’t dismiss her anxieties as irrational or paranoid, either because try as she might, Eurydice doesn’t know how Orpheus made it.
Not every loop was the same beat for beat; she can list dozens of small variations, even with her blurry memory. Sometimes the flower he folded her had an extra petal. Sometimes the smile he wore when he approached her was a little cockier. Sometimes he kissed her forehead when they reunited in Hadestown. Sometimes he laughed after realizing he’d failed. Tiny details, never anything as significant as him choosing not to look back.
It would make sense if he remembered the previous cycles, perhaps, but she knows that’s not the case either. The only reason she remembers what she does is because Lady Mnemosyne met her after her death last time with an offer from the Fates—
“Why?” Eurydice bites out. “Why now, if we’ve been through as many loops as you say we have?”
Lady Mnemosyne examines her nails as she drawls out, “Why do the Fates do anything?” she asks in return. “The point is, they’re giving you a chance to do something different. Something new.”
“The point is,” Eurydice parrots back to her, “I don’t trust a deal if I don’t know what the other party is offering.”
Lady Mnemosyne raises an eyebrow. “Learned something, did you?” She laughs at Eurydice’s face. “Look, I can promise you this much—us gods, we get tired of doing the same thing over and over again, too. Maybe the Fates just feel like a change of pace, or maybe something else got to them. Whatever it is, you gain nothing by turning this down, and lose nothing more than you’re already going to, regardless.”
She is silent for a moment. “And they won’t interfere with whatever I try?”
“The only term,” Lady Mnemosyne says, her voice slow and deliberate, “is that my grandson may only know once you’ve already passed Hades’s test.”
—and Eurydice supposes all ends of the deal had been upheld, except she hadn’t managed to pull off her plan at all. And yet, here she is on the other side, still breathing.
It doesn’t make sense.
Even with the question gnawing holes in her composure, life goes on. Orpheus works on his songs, Eurydice works on keeping it together, and they live.
One day, Orpheus finds her first, winding his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. “Hi,” he says, glancing over at the dishes she was about to start. “You know, it’s technically meant to be our day off.”
It would be a rich comment from the man known for focusing to the point of forgetting to eat, but she can tell he’s been working on it. He catches himself more often, now, makes more of an effort to seek her out instead of writing songs into the night.
She, on the other hand, hasn’t stopped since making it back. Habit, really—it’s all she’s ever known.
“These are also our dishes,” she points out. Living in the boarding room above the bar, it tends to be easier to do all the chores in bulk. She’s fairly sure most of Orpheus’s home goods used to belong to the bar, anyway, given that his cutlery looks nearly identical, just a few years older.
He hums. “Still,” he says. “I can do the dishes if you want to do something else.”
“I already did the laundry,” she replies.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a hobby,” he says, moving to stand beside her instead so that he can gesture to the lyre strapped to his back. “I could always teach you to play, you know.”
She snorts. “You just want an excuse to practice that song with me again,” she accuses.
“Well, that would be a nice bonus, but I just—you just came back to life, you know? I don’t want you to spend all your time cleaning. It’s not like you’re the only person who’ll fix up the bar, anyway.”
She sighs. “Orpheus, I don’t have a hobby. I’ve never had a hobby.” Downtime is a luxury she’s never been able to indulge in before, too busy working or searching for her next stop in her perpetual escape from a world that never seemed to let her rest. Even if she hadn’t spent gods know how long in a time loop of the same summer and winter, she would still be at a loss for how to spend her days off.
“It’s never too late to pick up something,” he tells her, and the look on his face is so sweetly pleading that she groans, knowing she’s going to relent.
“Not music,” she says because she knows that even if he won’t care much about her skill level, she would kick herself trying to match him.
Orpheus nods. “Not music.” After a moment, he scratches the back of his neck and says, “I mean, I don’t really know much of anything else, but I’m sure we can find you something.”
“Don’t force it,” she warns, already thinking of all the ways Orpheus might over-commit to this quest. “If you show up with a flock of birds or something, I’m giving them your spot on the bed.”
He snorts. “I’ll get them to lay me another one.” She slants him a dry look, even if privately, she finds the joke funny, too. “Okay, okay, no birds,” he chuckles. “Now, would you be willing to do a few run-throughs of the song with me? I really want to hear how you approach the harmonies.”
Eurydice squints at the dishes in front of her, then sighs. She rolls her eyes and grabs Orpheus by the hand. “I’m capping it at five times,” she tells him on the way out. “I can only sing the same song for so long before I go mad.”
It wouldn’t be wrong to say Eurydice had started to lose her mind when she was trying to come up with a way to get them their happy ending.
Nine months wasn’t much time at all when one was trying to abide by the basic plot beats of a story while also trying to dismantle its ending.
“It’s not going to work,” Eurydice grumbles, pacing the length of the bar, swaying slightly from the heady dose of alcohol she had earlier in the evening. It’s probably a mistake to have drunk as much as she has, but she knows summer is fading fast and she wants to savor it. “He’s too in love with me.”
Next to her, Lady Persephone snorts into her glass. “Not the worst problem to have, sister,” she says.
“I know,” Eurydice says. “I just want—I just want to be able to enjoy that love for once.” She shakes her head before realizing that was a terrible idea given her inebriation. “What if—what if we get him to trip on a doormat instead of turning? Then I could get to the threshold before he gets up and looks around.”
“The bar doesn’t have a doormat,” Mister Hermes points out.
She huffs. “I don’t know, we can get one.”
Lady Persephone whistles. “I forget how much of a lightweight mortals can be,” she comments.
“I’m better than Orpheus,” she says.
“So is a houseplant,” Mister Hermes deadpans. “You’d never know he grew up in a bar by his tolerance.”
A thought occurs to Eurydice. “Do you think getting him drunk would help him trip over the doormat?”
Mister Hermes chuckles, then calls over his shoulder, “Orpheus! Get your girl a glass of water, would you?” Eurydice grumbles in protest before Orpheus appears at her side, cheeks flushed as he hands her shiny glass.
“Here you go,” he says, a small smile quirking at the corner of his mouth.
As she takes it, she squints at him. “Your hand’s not shaking,” she notes. Last time, she remembered him being drunker than her; they’d spent the evening laughing and talking, and she’d been struck sober by the realization that despite being drunk, he’d never even reached out to touch her.
He blinks at her before shaking his head. “I haven’t had much tonight,” he laughs. “Messes with my singing, you know?”
“More like evens out the playing field,” she mutters under her breath. “I don’t think your voice could sound bad if you tried, drunk or not.”
He gapes at her before letting out a shy laugh, cheeks reddening further. “I—um, thank you.” The surprise on his face is a quiet reminder that they haven’t yet reached the point in their relationship where he expects her to be more forward, but Eurydice can’t be bothered to care about pacing. She just wants her husband already.
In the end, the most productive part of Eurydice’s night had been making Orpheus blush. In fact, the doormat plan would wind up being the best plan she came up with before winter came on.
She wonders, now, if maybe she’d done something without realizing; maybe she’d stumbled into the answer she’d been searching for all along. Maybe it was serendipity.
Or maybe, the cynic in her whispers, she’d been right about that offer seeming loaded.
“They’re giving you the chance to do something different. Something new.” The wording had never been the clearest. What if—
Eurydice screws her eyes shut. The meanest dog, she repeats to herself.
“Orpheus, no,” she groans, pinching the bridge of her nose even as Orpheus bats his eyes at her from across the counter. She can tell he’s doing it on purpose this time because when he’s genuinely oblivious to the face he’s making, he doesn’t stick his bottom lip out quite as much. “I’ve barely learned the new order.”
“You know the lyrics!” he exclaims. “It’s just one song, nothing less, nothing more. And no one’ll know if you mess up because they’ve never heard it before.”
She says, “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to just do one of your other songs?”
Orpheus wrinkles his nose. “Those old songs, they’ve heard them all. They’ll love it if we sing something new.” He reaches over the counter and swipes his thumb over her cheek. “Lover, I promise they’ll love you,” he vows, and it finally registers to her that he’s been lilting his words—not quite singing, but certainly enough that if there were other people around, he’d have a small chorus.
She pats him on the head. “Nice try,” she says, and he huffs a little, even though she knows he enjoys that she’s able to push back against his charm the way she does. “You’re biased.”
He slants her a look that feels almost like a mockery of her own stubborn glare. “I’m right.” She rolls her eyes. “Besides, if you get nervous, I’ll just take over for you,” he says flippantly.
“Then why don’t you do the whole song by yourself?”
“Because it’s better with you,” and even though ‘impossibly earnest’ is her husband’s default, the sincerity in his voice still catches her off guard. She’s met people before who wear their heart on their sleeves, but none quite like Orpheus—it’s easy to assume that this quality comes from a place of naivety, but she knows it’s a deliberate choice on his part. He leaves himself vulnerable to the world because he believes it makes him a better conduit for its stories, its feelings. His gift is his song, true, but it’s also his willingness to bare his heart to the world, to bring others into the beautiful world he sees inside his head.
It’s the reason his charm works so well on everyone around him; there’s an innate honesty in him that makes him so disarming. Even she, who has been berated, beaten, and burned by men before her beloved, finds herself looking at him sometimes and wondering how anyone could ever doubt his well-intentioned wistfulness.
That’s not to say she doesn’t still have bad days, ones where a hand on her arm is enough to make her skin crawl and her gut wrench—but it’s easier, with him, to feel the warmth in the world, the kindness. Fear still clings to her like a lost child, sometimes, but so does forgiveness for a world yearning to be set right. She wants to live in this world. He makes her want to try.
Eurydice makes a show of sighing. “I’ll do it,” she says.
Instantly, he brightens. “You want to?”
What she wants is to keep seeing that grin of his.
“Not tonight,” she says. “Give me a few days with the new version first.”
He nods, still beaming. “I don’t mind waiting,” he says, and she knows he means it.
The next evening, someone’s dog is loose outside, and Eurydice can’t sleep.
It’s long past nightfall; the moon is past its zenith and the land breeze is whipping across the landscape toward the far shore at the edge of the meadowlands. The cricket she heard last week is still lurking somewhere nearby, its chirping seeping through the slats in the door.
Noise doesn’t tend to keep Eurydice up—the town she was born in bordered an oak forest that was in the process of being torn down to make space for some factory or business. There was always a metallic grind of machinery outside her window, the wailing of women protesting the destruction of their home. She learned to sleep through it.
What does wake her easily, however, is movement. And perhaps fittingly, she has married a man who never stops moving.
She hadn’t noticed it at first because he doesn’t have a single, consistent fidget. He fiddles with anything and everything he can get his hands on—the strap of his lyre, the hem of his sleeve, the stray curl that swoops over his ear. Sometimes it’s as obvious as him idly strumming his instrument for the sake of moving his hands, and sometimes it’s as subtle as him tapping his fingers against his thigh under the table.
It’s obvious when they’re in bed together, though. She can feel every shift he makes, every twitch of his fingers, every itch, every scratch. Fortunately, he tends to fall asleep quicker than she does, but on occasion, she’ll wake up in the middle of the night to him draping himself over her like the world’s boniest blanket.
There’s something comforting about the proximity, though, the fact that he’s always only a hairbreadth away from soothing her when she wakes up wild-eyed and worried. The glint of moonlight against his eyes sparks against her shivering anxiety, illuminating the dark corners of her mind, and suddenly she can breathe again.
Right now, though, he's the reason she’s awake; he can’t sleep because of the dog barking, and she can’t sleep because of the movement.
“Can you please stop shaking your foot?” she groans.
She feels the juddering of the mattress pause. “Sorry,” he whispers.
Not a minute later, he flips from laying on his back to his side. Then, he fluffs the pillow. Then, he rolls back onto his back. The dog keeps barking.
Orpheus scratches his knee. Then his neck. The dog is howling. He readjusts his pillow.
Eurydice’s skin is prickling—the stagnant air, the insulation—it’s burning her alive. Too warm, she thinks. Too much.
Eurydice shoves the blanket in his direction. He tugs it around himself. A second later, he flips onto his side again, casting the blanket to the side. His leg is pressed up against her side.
Orpheus reaches for the blanket again—
She’s about to get up altogether when she notices the quiver in his lifted hand. Her gaze stoops to his face. His jaw is tight.
The dog is howling.
“Orpheus?” she asks gently, her own discomfort forgotten.
He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing. “Sorry,” he says again. She shakes her head, leaning over to press her forehead to his the way she knows he likes. He’s admitted before that as a child, in the fleeting time between him coming to the meadowlands and his mother leaving, he’d been terrified of the loud noises from the bar, and rather than pull him away from the scene, his mother would tug him closer to her so he could bury his face in her side. He outgrew the nervousness around the bar, but still finds comfort in having something warm pressed against his forehead.
“It’s the dog, isn’t it?” she whispers. Cerberus was never a problem for her—Hades made sure he didn’t go after the dead souls on their way out since that would defeat the purpose of the test—but Orpheus had faced the hound by himself on the way in.
He’s never confided in her about his first walk down to Hadestown, but she’s seen the gashes on his arms and legs. Milder injuries than someone without the ability to sing the dog to submission would have, but pain doesn’t use other people as a reference point.
Orpheus nods. “Sometimes,” he says, hesitating, “I dream about the road. All the walking, it blurs together in my memories. But the dogs snarling and barking and howling—that’s what gets me. It’s not even Cerberus, or some terrifying monster. It's just… dogs.”
He whispers the last part, “They don’t sound like monsters. They just sound like they’re hurting.”
Eurydice takes his hand, rubbing her thumb against his palm. His skin is hot to the touch. Not feverish, but she can tell his heart is jittering. “You never have to go back there,” she says. “We’re safe here.”
“But they’re not.” He takes a trembling breath. “I feel so guilty sometimes that there’s just—there’s so much hurt out there, and I’m… here.”
A pang goes through her. “I get that,” she says. “I think a lot about how lucky I am to be here—how lucky it is that—” she pauses, “—that it all worked out.”
“Do you ever think about what would’ve happened if we hadn’t made it home?” His voice is small. It terrifies her.
Eurydice shivers, the memories coursing through her like a fire in a forest, consuming. “Too often,” she replies carefully. “I don’t—” she catches herself. This isn’t the time to voice her disbelief in his ability to pass the test. The point is that he did. The point is that she should be moving on.
“Me too,” he says.
She squeezes his hand in lieu of a response. He squeezes hers back.
There’s a brief clamor outside, before the dog abruptly stops barking. Orpheus curls deeper into her, tucking his face into her neck. She feels him take a shivering breath.
“Get some rest,” she murmurs into his hair. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
The room is silent when he falls asleep.
Eurydice’s thoughts are not.
To some, home is a roof over one’s head, shelter from the wind. To others, it is a gentle hand, security in a lasting love.
To Eurydice, who was raised by a forest in the throes of destruction, in a band of women more concerned with survival than with love, it is a child’s long-abandoned wish. It is everything she was never allowed to keep.
The shelter she was raised in had an ever-revolving cast of women, many of whom were runaways from home, and many of whom were displaced from local towns by the same demolitions company wreaking havoc on Eurydice’s town.
She’d been ten when a woman with gray hair and tired eyes told her to start running.
“The trees keep the floods at bay,” she tells Eurydice. “Their concrete giants, those’ll stand. They don’t care. Places like this, though? You’ll be lucky if you have walls left by next year.”
Eurydice tugs on her braid nervously. “But where do I go?”
She gives Eurydice a long look. “Anywhere but here,” she says simply.
It’s her words that had echoed in her mind when she’d stared at Hades’s silver dollar and Orpheus’s delicate flower. It’s her fault Eurydice became the woman she did.
At least, she would like to believe so.
Maybe it was her words that made Eurydice run the first time. Maybe it was her words that made her run the second. But the hound dog howling in her head now—she knows that voice. It’s her own.
It’s her own feet that drove her from town to town. Her own mouth that got her slapped across the face when she talked back to the wrong man. Her own hands that paid the ticket price to Hadestown.
Her own fear that’s gnawing at her.
“Listen to me, girl,” the old woman continues, “you’ll meet monsters with faces you think you can trust. You’ll think it safe to put down roots, build a home. But it’s one place to the next for people like us. That’s the only way you make it.” She jabs a finger into her chest. “You put yourself first, always.”
In retrospect, the woman sounded a lot like the Fates, when they sang her onto the train. Crooning, clear-voiced, but never kind. Almost caring, in a practical way. Just a touch too cold to feel human.
What if I’m wrong about him? Or—what if it’s not really him? What if that’s why he didn’t turn? Maybe it’s a monster wearing his face.
She swallows. Looks down at the boy in her arms.
No, she thinks. No, she’d know. She knows him. She knows her husband.
But what if he’s wrong about me?
His voice echoes in her ears, soft and earnest. Compliments and kindnesses, honey-worded confessions. A simple, “You’re the best,” accompanied by a beaming smile.
Eurydice shifts.
For the longest time, she found comfort in discomfort, in the certainty granted by the cynicism. They can’t hurt her if they’re never close enough to touch her, she would think. Cold is only defined by the absence of heat. If she never allowed herself to sit by the hearth, she never would have known warmth, but now she does, and—
She is Eurydice, and she is not defined by her choice to run all those years ago, but rather, by her choice to stay. Loop after loop. Day after day. She is defined by her name. Her desires. Her fears. And all of it together is nauseating, discordant—but it’s her.
It’s her.
The ghosts in her head whisper, “Do you trust each other? Do you trust yourselves?”
To do so goes against everything she’s hardened herself into. It is staring down the lumberman’s axe blade, and choosing to cling to the tree. It is pleading that the rivers will be merciful for just one more year, over and over again. It is foolish. It is brave.
It is human.
Maybe, she thinks, tightening her embrace around the poor boy who parted stones for her, the boy who wormed his way into her heart and set flowers blooming through the cracks, maybe that’s what it means to carve out a home. Maybe that’s what it means to stay.
The darkest hour of the darkest night comes and goes, and—
Dawn with arms of roses scatters petals of light across a white strip of sheets. Beneath them, Eurydice wakes to Orpheus shifting in her arms.
He lifts his head blearily to look her in the eyes. “Morning,” he whispers, gravel-voiced but still so soft. His breath is stale and his lips are dry but she’s gripped with the urge to kiss him anyway.
She can, so she does. When she pulls away a moment later, he licks his lips, laughing, "Well, good morning to me, too.” Then, because he needs something to do with his hands, he lifts a hand and tucks a loose curl behind her ear. It tickles. She lets him do it.
Eurydice clears her throat. She means to be gentle, delicate. That is, unfortunately, a quality better found in her better half, so what comes out is a pinched, “Can we talk?”
“Of course,” he says, furrowing his brows and sitting up too quickly. Worry is written across his form, now, cast yellow by the window’s edge. She can practically see his heart quivering in front of her. Nevertheless, his voice is steady when he asks, “What do you need?”
She swallows. Reaches out. His hand folds into her own easily. With a shaky breath, she traces the lines in his hand. She knows them. She knows him.
“Eurydice?” He’s fidgeting with her hand, rubbing his thumb against the side of hers. His knee is jittering.
She hates vulnerability. Hates conversations that carry weight. It’s easy when it’s a back and forth, when he knows enough to tell what he can poke and prod her about, when to be loud and when to be quiet. This is the opposite.
Eurydice sets her jaw.
This is a big deal. This is a stupid question.
This is her mind running rampant on her. This is her telling that godsforsaken dog to shut up and take a walk—
“Why didn’t you turn?” she blurts out, all at once.
Orpheus goes still. “What?”
“During the walk,” she says, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Why didn’t you turn?”
He gapes at her, mouth opening and closing a few times before croaking out, “D-Did you want me to turn?” He bites his lip. “I don’t—did you want to stay?”
“Of course not,” she says. “But—” she hesitates, remembering Lady Mnemosyne’s words to her.
“The only term is that my grandson may only know once you’ve already passed Hades’s test.”
Something has been clinging to her about that wording, a lingering thought.
Hades’s test is one that Eurydice’s thought long and hard about—when she’d gone to the underworld with the knowledge of what would occur, she’d tried, briefly, to appeal to Hades in the contract meeting. He had to be tired of the loop, too, she’d pressed him. Surely he’d be willing to help.
“The test isn’t the problem,” he tells her, and it’s a clash of steely gazes. She lifts her head to him. He crosses his arms. “The problem is that his thread is tied to the tragedy—the only way he cuts himself free is by overcoming what plagues him most: doubt.” He taps his finger on his desk. “That’s all the test is. A chance to prove yourself.”
Yourself.
“They’re giving you a chance to do something different. Something new.”
Stones settle in Eurydice’s stomach, ripples in the river lost in the curve of the banks. She can see where it leads, now, what they’ve been trying to do. The burdensome thread cannot be cut free without fraying the whole of the tapestry, but burdens can be shared.
It’s terrifying, but she knew that when she said 'I do.' Marriage, trust, to turn or to walk—in the end, it’s all just choices. Chances.
"Eurydice?" Orpheus says uncertainly.
Carefully, she leans over and cups her palms around his neck, pressing her forehead against his. They breathe.
“When you first approached me in the bar,” she says, lamenting that there isn’t a good place to start a story like this, “I already knew what was going to happen. Who you were, what you were going to say.”
He blinks at her. She pulls back, going on, “I knew how the story was going to end—or at least, how it was meant to end, if I didn’t do something.” She swallows. “I was never meant to make it back up here. We’ve lived this story a thousand times, and you—you’ve always looked back. Except this time, and I just—I don’t get it. I didn’t do anything—I tried to get Hades to change his deal when I got down there, but he refused, and then my mind started slipping and—” she cuts herself off, shaking her head. “Nothing should’ve changed. I should’ve failed. We should’ve failed. I don’t get why we didn’t.”
Orpheus exhales, slowly.
Eurydice bites her lip. “Orpheus?” she tries.
“I almost turned,” he says. “Right at the end, I almost turned. I was going to turn but then I heard… voices.”
She frowns. “The Fates?” she asks, even though it doesn’t feel right. They wouldn’t choose to help. That’s not in their nature.
He fidgets with the edge of their blanket. “I think it was the Muses, actually.” Something in Eurydice’s gut twists.
“The Muses? You mean—”
“Not her.” A dry laugh spills from his lips. “It might’ve been all of them except her for all I know—I never saw them—but I know Lady Melpomene was there at least. She said… something about the Fates splitting the threads enough that she could loosen mine from hers. Lady Clio said my mother wasn’t there to give me a hero’s epic, but that history was penned by children, so if I wanted, I could sing once for myself.”
Orpheus runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know if it was what they said that got to me, but I—I remember reaching the steps to the bar, and it was like I could hear you singing in the back of my mind over everything else. And I remember—I just remember feeling like there had to be more.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I feel like I might’ve just gotten lucky. It’s kind of been eating at me, that.”
She lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Me too,” she says.
Orpheus offers her a small smile. “Maybe we should talk to each other more about this stuff.”
“Probably,” she agrees, the weight of the conversation sloughing off her shoulders. Now that her nervousness has subsided, she’s keenly aware of the way her stomach is grumbling. “We should definitely eat first, though.”
He blinks, likely realizing he’s also hungry. “Smart,” he says.
“You walked us away from death, I keep us from going back by starvation,” she replies, pulling herself to her feet.
He pauses. “I don’t know if that’s how relationships are meant to work.”
“You proposed to me before asking my name—of course you wouldn’t.” She snorts as he throws a hand over his face in embarrassment.
He whines, “Eurydice—”
They spend the morning by each other’s sides. He volunteers to make breakfast. She volunteers to do the dishes. He starts them before she can pick up the sponge. She finishes them because he thinks of a song lyric he needs to write down halfway through.
When he returns, however, he’s not only holding his notebook, but also—
“Orpheus,” she says. He grins at her.
“Yes?”
“Why are you holding a bucket of dirt?”
He sets it down on the counter, which she would bother him about if he didn’t begin rambling, “I was thinking about hobbies you might enjoy, and I thought, ‘Well, she spends so much time cleaning dirt off of things—’”
“Because you do things like put buckets of dirt on the counter we prepare food on,” she can’t help interjecting.
He makes an apologetic noise and moves it to the floor, continuing, “—maybe it’d be good for you to do something that lets you make a bit of a mess for once, you know? And I was thinking about getting you art supplies, but then I thought of this.” He gestures to the bucket proudly. Eurydice stares at him.
“A bucket of dirt,” she repeats.
He blinks, clearly realizing he’s skipped a step. “Oh, right.” He reaches into the pocket of his apron and pulls out a handful of seeds. “I got them from Lady Persephone,” he says. “She said they’d grow best if we leave them outside during the warm months, but that they should be taken in for the winter and set near a window.” He points at the bucket, adding, “There’s more of these outside. I just couldn’t carry them all.”
“You want me to plant a garden,” she says.
He nods, then clasps his hands in front of him, waiting for a response.
She lets out a small laugh. He wants her to plant a garden.
He ducks his head and questions, “Is that a good laugh?”
“Do you think the bar could use some more shade out front?” she asks instead of answering. “I think an oak tree might be nice there.”
Orpheus says, “I think so, too. We could have flowers and trees all over the bar. I think it’d be beautiful.”
She imagines, for a moment, what the place could look like in a summer. Carnations and violets lining their welcoming walkways, saplings seeking the sky. She thinks of what it could be in a longer stretch of time, a decade, two, three.
Roots, deep and sprawling. Birds roosting in the trees. Laughter spilling through open windows, stars dancing to an old, old song. A place where runaways can rest, where wanderers can warm their hands and hearts. Where wounds can heal. Life and love, blooming through the cracks.
Eurydice cups her hands around Orpheus’s. “I can see it,” she breathes.
That evening, the bar is a whirl of shadows and light as a passerby steps into the scene. Warm chatter drifts through the air, occasionally punctuated by sugary peals of laughter.
“Well, look who finally decided to leave her cave,” Persephone speaks up, raising an eyebrow at her.
Mnemosyne offers her a nod of acknowledgment. “Persephone,” she greets. “It’s been a while.”
“Wouldn’t be, if you stopped by the city once in a while,” she says, slanting Mnemosyne a look. “We could use more of your presence around down there, you know.”
Mnemosyne hums. “I did hear you were changing things over there. The wall’s been pretty quiet recently.”
“For the better,” says Persephone.
She nods. “You always did like your change,” Mnemosyne says. “I suppose it makes sense you helped them.”
Persephone raises an eyebrow. She nods at the crowd behind her, where a cluster of souls is gathered around Orpheus and his lyre, Eurydice sipping a glass at his side. They’re smiling. “Those two?” Persephone says. “I can’t take credit for much with them. They worked that out on their own.”
“But I heard you were the one who talked to the Fates on their behalf.”
Persephone hums into her glass. “You seem to hear a lot for someone who, before today, hadn’t left her claustrophobic little cave in centuries,” she comments, waving over a waiter for a refill.
“I thought you were done drinking,” Mnemosyne says as Persephone pulls out a flask from her bosom and adds something else to her drink.
“This one’s celebratory,” she replies with a shrug. “And you didn’t answer the question.”
Mnemosyne drums her fingers on the table, listening to the wood click beneath her nails, barely audible over the clamor of folks living it up across the room. “I’m plenty in touch with the rest of the world. Got nine daughters, remember?”
“I didn’t think they hung around Hadestown,” Persephone says.
“They don’t,” Mnemosyne admits. “I hear them, though. Art draws on memory and memory evokes art. It’s cyclical.”
Persephone nods, not seeming too surprised by the answer. Mnemosyne supposes she’s seen enough of humanity to understand how artists blur the line between divine gifts and free choices.
“So, they talk to you from above?”
“Clio usually. That girl loves to talk about the world, even if her stories are always dated,” she says with a laugh. “Lately, though, it’s been Calliope.”
Persephone stiffens. “Oh?” She takes a swig of her drink. “I figured she’d wandered off into the sunset by now. Didn’t realize she talked to anyone but the mortals she deems worthy.” There’s a note of bitterness in her voice that makes Mnemosyne’s ears prick up.
She shoots the other goddess an amazed stare. “You really do care about him, don’t you?”
“He’s your grandkid,” Persephone points out, gaze shifting to the boy, cheeks flushed rosy and hands outstretched to his lover. She can see a patchwork of healing scabs across his arms, faint tan lines forming around his elbows where his sleeves roll up. He’s from Mnemosyne’s lineage, but he’s mortal in the ways that matter.
“She’s my daughter,” Mnemosyne says evenly. Persephone gives her a pointed look.
Mnemosyne picks up Persephone’s drink and raises an eyebrow. The other goddess waves her on as she takes a sip, swirling it in her mouth. Orange, with hints of starshine and childhood yearning. Persephone always did have the best taste, she thinks.
“Calliope talks about him, if you’re wondering. She hears him sing.”
Persephone scoffs, “Not in a way that matters.”
“No,” Mnemosyne agrees, “but she knows. I couldn’t tell you why she doesn’t stop by. Maybe he scares her.”
Persephone barks a dry laugh. “Yeah, right.” She shakes her head. “If she cared, she’d have been there for him. She’d have tried.”
Mnemosyne hums in thought. Calliope had been an airy child before she’d borne her son. She remembers her skipping across the first shores, singing to anyone who would listen. She never waited for her sisters to catch up to her, never paused for more than a moment.
It makes sense, she supposes. Epics—stories—they aren’t static in their existence. They bend and twist like vines on a tree. They change.
Then again, Calliope has long since grown into her domain. She’s found her niche in the heroes, the adventurers. If she wanted, she could sing about the people like her son, the poor boys who dream not of fame and fortune, but of lively chatter in an old bar and well-fed strays along a railroad track.
If she wanted, the world could look different. But Mnemosyne supposes that’s true of all of them in some capacity.
“In any case, he seems to be doing well enough on his own,” she says, glancing over at the boy. He’s drunk but he’s delighted, hands splayed out in front of him as he gushes about something or another, the little storyteller he is.
Persephone follows her gaze, a pensive look on her face. “I didn’t do it,” she says abruptly.
“Hm?”
“Talk to the Fates,” Persephone clarifies. “I don’t know who you heard it from, but they were wrong. It wasn’t me. Hermes and I tried helping Eurydice afterwards but I can’t take credit for the idea of splitting the weight. I only found out from Hades later that that’s what they did.”
Mnemosyne pauses. Thinks. Remembers.
Well, then.
“Relationships are a sharing of burdens and blessings,” she drawls. “Anyone could’ve pointed that out, I suppose.” Mnemosyne stands, shaking out her skirt. “I’m in the mood for a good song,” she says.
Persephone makes a noise of acknowledgment. “I hear the two of them have a new song to show off,” she says. “Orpheus said they’ve been workin’ real hard on it.”
Mnemosyne smiles. “I’m sure we’d all like to hear it,” she says.