Dance of the Dead
The dead don’t speak. But I hear them all the same.
I haven’t always. When I lived beneath the sun all I heard was the music of the living – loud, clamorous, warm. Only since arriving here have I become familiar with silence. At first, I screamed to myself, just so I could hear something. When my throat dried up, I had to learn to bear the vast chasm of absence. Only now have I learned to listen. I have started to hear something else in the silence. Screams lodged in unmoving throats. Wailing eyes, gaping mouths. All empty, all agony. No voices for the dead; they suffer unknown.
I have grown used to the shadows that shift and shrink around me like living things. My eyes see through the darkness now, so that I am not stumbling around like when I was first brought here. The mists are thick enough to hide in, to escape prying eyes. I have even stopped looking for the rise and fall of the sun, the dawns that I used to greet with the nymphs, the red sunsets we used to dance under. Here there is no day or night, only an endless nothing. But it is the cold that gets to me most of all. Chill seeps into my bones and settles there like snow, never melting.
With no sense of time, existing here does not feel like living. Loneliness creeps up quickly in the Underworld. Minthe, who once hated me for marrying the man she loved – it mattered little to her then that it was against my will – and perhaps still does, often sits beside me, but we do not talk much. I am glad of her presence all the same; the dead, after all, are not ones for much conversation. Their shades wander aimlessly, wretched eyes searching for faces they no longer remember. I do not envy mortals, but I do pity them. It is a poor fate to end up down here. Even if they are saved in the dungeon of Tartarus, the Asphodel Meadows offer little but dim grey light and shadows to chase.
The only true light comes from torches the Lampades carry when they cross the Styx. When I first saw them, I ran to them, for they are companions of Hekate, but they ignored my pleas. They don’t even look me in the eye. It is as if they see straight through me, as if I am a shade myself. They speak in whispers, like the wind through trees, and no matter how hard I try I cannot understand them. Still, I follow them sometimes, watching their torches bobbing in the mist. If I focus on the torchlight, I can let myself believe they are Hekate’s torches, the ones that hung in her cave when I visited her in the night to watch her work.
I spend most of my time walking among the grey fields. Shades consumed by griefs unforgotten wander here. Most flee from me, seeking solitude in their mourning, but some reach out to me, and I take their hands and try to find words of comfort. Such words are hard to find when I too am filled with my own grief. Still, the fields are the closest thing I can find to home, though they are as barren and colourless as winter. No flowers grow down here. I have tried to make even simple daisies bloom, but I have no power down here. This is his kingdom, not mine.
*
For the most part, he leaves me alone. When he does find me, he tells me to be happy. Grateful even, to have a husband such as him. I hate the sound of my name on his tongue. It becomes dirty, tainted, a thing of death and darkness when I crave light. I would rather hear it on my mother’s lips, though she often used it to scold me.
Even now, he tells me to suppress my anger, my sorrow. As my husband, he has the right, so say the laws of gods and men.
As my abductor, he has nothing but my hate.
He has not been violent, at least, not since the day of my abduction. Although he may not be the cruellest of captors, he is a captor all the same. Bruises fade, but even divinity cannot suppress memory. Immortality cannot make me forget the violence of it, the terror of being dragged down into the dark. I cannot forget how Zeus, my own father, sat by and allowed it all. These memories, the ones I would rather forget, are as clear in my mind as the waters of the Cocytus.
I saw myself in those waters once. I looked skeletal, my cheeks thin, my skin dull, my hair limp around my shoulders. Dead, I thought. I avoid that river now.
*
At times the darkness presses in, so close it stops my breath. It fills me with thoughts I cannot escape, thoughts of death and despair. They are suffocating, these thoughts. Sometimes I think they will drown me.
Sometimes, I wish they would.
*
I try to forget such thoughts with happier memories, but those are like the mists that drift across the Styx. When I try to grasp them, they slip between my fingers. They are dense, they clog my mind, and yet I see so little. I remember most when I am dreaming, but these memories are corrupted. Dark shadows that should not be there lurk at the edges, and I am afraid, in memories I should not be afraid of. Fragments of my life are littered in these memories, in colours, smells, faces frozen in certain expressions.
I ache most for my mother, and her smile.
It was a smile of pure, desperate love. I used to shrink when bathed in that smile, confused as to what had I done to deserve this unwavering, unsought adoration. My unworthy body recoiled from it, slipping, embarrassed, from her embraces. I crave that smile now, here in the dark. But to think of her is agony too, so I force myself to think of other things instead. Twilight melting on dancing nymphs. The scent of honeysuckle. Girls I laughed with, argued with, hated and loved. Girls I lost.
I recite their names, sometimes, like a prayer. I remember their names, but not their faces. Only shapes, touches, laughter. Herkyna running after her goose. The swing of Rhodeia’s braids as she danced. Molpe throwing flowers at Aglaope. I remember too, Herkyna’s scream, when the ground opened up beneath me. Someone’s hand, I think it was Akaste, grasping my arm. The scrabble of feet as they ran.
What has become of them, those girls I loved? Did they look for me? Do they think of me? Or have they forgotten, as immortals are wont to do? I can feel them fading sometimes, and I am afraid; what will I have to hold on to, when my memories of them have gone?
*
She cannot be more than fifteen. I am used to shades approaching, though they do not speak. Shivering, she stops before me, I hold out my hands for her, but only her mouth quivers.
“Goddess.”
It is a raspy sound, scratching at the silence. To my ears, craving any sound beyond my own shallow breaths, it is as strange and beautiful as any lament.
“My child.” Her eyes are dark pools that fix on me with painful attentiveness. “Is he here?”
I see, as gods see all. “No. He lives.”
“Oh.” She closes her eyes. When they open, they are glistening. “I was so frightened, goddess, it hurt so much. They said I was weak, that I would not survive, and they were right. Now he will grow up without me.”
Words are hard to find, but I have had a long time to search. “You gave your life, so that your son might live. That is no weakness.”
She gives a violent shake of her head. “Goddess, forgive me, but I longed only for the pain to end. I did not think of him at all.”
“A soldier dying on the battlefield rarely thinks of the king he protects. Pain consumes, eats all other thoughts. You were brave. Your son lives because you brought him into the world. That is enough. It is over now.”
She lowers her eyes, shamed still. Silently, I take her hand and lead her to the meadows. She trails behind me, a shade walking her own funeral procession. Silver mist wraps around the dark trees, shrouding the wanderers. I listen. A faint hum seems to simmer in the air.
*
I hear the dead now. The sound beneath the silence, the voices that have gone unheard for thousands of years. I listen. Their songs are not sweet. Most died in pain. Few lived long lives. They tell their tales, the ugly and the sad. They are the voices of the dead, but the stories are of the living, and that is what I cling to. I listen. I take their hands, ice-hard to touch. I lead them to the meadows.
A woman comes to the Underworld. With wide, reverent eyes, she kneels before me. I reach out to raise her up – she says my name.
When no one has spoken your name in so long, the shock of it quivers down your spine. For a moment, it no longer feels like my own. Am I worthy of that name, when I have lain so long in the shadows?
Then I remember my mother’s smile, raw, filled with love. She gave me this name. It is mine. So I claim my name, and the darkness too; I wear them as a crown and cloak. I lead the woman to the meadows, her hand clinging fast to mine. For the first time, I feel a ripple of warmth across my skin, as if some spring air has slipped through the cracks of the earth like a promise.
The dead sing, the dead dance. And Persephone is known.