🌾 Valuables
L&W6: Demeter & Haides come face-to-face for the first time in nearly a millennium
Previously on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:
“Have you had reply to your marriage proposal, my lord?”
Haides blinked, then glowered. “I have not.”
“Well, then…” Hekate’s finger traced the edge of an incense burner. “Perhaps the Sky King is not the one you should be asking.”
“What?” Haides snarled. “No. I’ve already asked Demeter. Too many times.”
“Then perhaps you should ask her once more. In order to speed the resolution you seek, it is the girl’s mother with whom you must speak.”
“Oh, Nemesis. Anything but that.”
A sly smile toyed about Spellweavr’s lips. “Ask for Blossom’s hand once more, in a way Earth Mother can no longer ignore.”
His growl shot out as he clawed the hair back from his face. “I hate your riddles.”
Hekate’s face shifted so quickly that all three of her countenances seemed to be grinning at him at once. “I know.”
And with a cyclone of purple smoke, she was gone.
From: Skeleton Key
—Start at the beginning
—Mature Content Warnings for this series
Also. Nobody calls Persephone by her true name. They call her KORE, “the Maiden,” and it’s pronounced like “ko-ray” or “kora” not like “core of the planet.” KLYMENOS is one of Haides’ gazillion epitaphs. It means “illustrious” (or depending on who’s grumbling it, “notorious.”)
DEMETER, EARTH MOTHER, MISTRESS OF BOUNTY
✨🌾✨
There was no more auspicious time than the dark moon for this sort of work. Evaluating, severing, releasing, cleansing. As such, she’d dressed in the shadow-veil appropriate for this time of the cycle. The afternoon’s project: sifting through that which needed to be allowed to die in order to make room for new healthy growth. She would perform the Rites of Eradication when Selene reached her black-veiled zenith tonight.
But first, Demeter needed to appraise all the plants in her care. A strain of barley had grown sluggish in reproduction, prone to expiring with the slightest hint of drought. It was too needy, too finicky. But this new line she had been nurturing…all the seeds she had planted last season had flourished, completed their cycle, and were propagating nicely. New seedlings had sprouted and—
Her head shot up.
Her brow furrowed.
Something was amiss. Die-off. Widespread, rapid extermination of once-robust life. She could feel them, could hear their cries of anguish and the sudden silence left in the wake of their demise. What in Khaos and creation? She raced across the plain, tracking the sensations and fetid stenches to their source: the heart of her own Protected Grove.
She halted. All the hair on her arms raised. As her blazing gaze speared at the sky, a gust of ire ruffled up her garments. Not even Zeus could penetrate her warding spells without setting off the alarm charms she had erected should he try. But the warnings remained undisturbed. Only a few placid clouds caressed the cheery blue firmament. Who could get past my defenses, and who would dare assault my domain?
For this was an assault. Crinkled, browned, blighted destruction had struck her sanctuary like a divine fist. And at its center—her sacred pool, now putrified, reeking of death and—
“Demeter.”
“Oh!” She jumped back at the sudden emergence of the black-clad figure from the water. Incorporeal, he stood like a blotch of unnatural shade in the sunlight with his Helmet of Invisibility tucked under an elbow. His horned headdress rivaled the tallest trees.
Her sharp exhalation resonated with relief and annoyance. The bite of profanity lashed at the edge of her tone as she said, “Haides.”
He bowed.
She glowered. “How are you possibly here?”
“I’m not. But right now the veil is transparent enough for us to communicate briefly through any…fissures. Your spring runs deep.”
She glared at the pool, then glared at him. Her hands flung out to indicate the wreckage around her. “And what exactly are you trying to communicate?”
“I invite you, restore them if it pleases you. It was not their time. I simply needed to get your attention.”
“Well, you have it. What do you want?”
“Merely a conversation.”
“About?”
Behind his ash-hued beard, the King of the Dead’s mouth slid into a smirk. “Your lovely daughter.”
Demeter fought the widening of her eyes and a sharp inhalation. This fiend’s realm was the very place she had spent centuries trying to keep Kore from tumbling into.
Where souls have no need of sleeping
All shall rue her mother’s—
Demeter’s eyes slammed shut.
The Lord of Eternal Night was the last god who could save the Bringer of Blossomtime from destruction and doom, so Earth Mother crossed her arms, mashing down the bountiful swell of her breast as tightly as her lips. “I should have known. The most precious bud in my grove is ripe to bloom, so of course you’re itching for a good pluck, like every other eligible creature with an erect rod and two drops of immortality in his veins. At least the others had the decency to request audience with me, instead of assaulting my private abode while I’m out performing delicate, important work.”
“As I said,” the dread king replied with a bow, “there is no cause for the damage to be permanent. Forgive my methods. My time and means are limited. Even this brief interaction consumes vast stores of my vitality to maintain.” His mimicry of a gentile smile glinted like the silver skulls adorning his belt. “Completely worth it, I assure you. Consider this my formal request for your audience. You must not have received all the others.”
Demeter sniffed down her nose. She trusted the Notorious One’s gentility less than she trusted his aggressive means of gaining her attention. The Underworld’s cool, eerie hues agreed with him. No surprise there. The slick prick was actually better looking than the last time she’d seen him 976 years ago. (976 years of blissful reprieve.)
Turning her profile on him, she stretched out her hands and restored all the destruction he had wrought. “Well, Hermes is the little trickster. You might want to ask him what happened to your messages.”
I told him to dump them, unopened, off the highest tower of Olympos.
“I sent some of them with Iris,” the intruder said.
“Such a flighty thing.”
Sighing, the King of the Dead touched ghostly fingers to his equally spectral breastplate. “You mistake my intentions. I’m not here to pluck your sweet blossom. I simply wish to speak with her.”
“For what purpose?”
“Why...for the purpose of speaking with her.” His grin this time was broad and made no pretense of hiding his impudence. Before Demeter could tongue-flog him, he rolled his eyes and acquiesced. “For the purpose of ensuring that she would make a good wife, of course. I desire one, and the Underworld needs a queen.”
“Hah! And you think my daughter is suitable for either of those roles?”
“Oh, yes.” He practically salivated the words. “Why else would I be here?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. I’m sure you have some ulterior motive.”
Irritation flickered across his pale face, but he tamed it. “I do. I’ve just told you what it is. As the dark moon crests over the next few hours, my ability to commune with your side will reach its greatest potency. Will you arrange for me to meet your daughter tonight or not?”
“Never.”
The aura around him drew inward and stilled. His gaze ignited like blown coals before he spat, “Never is a long time for the likes of us.”
“I will never let my child so much as gaze upon your corrupt face, much less speak with you. She is the tenderhearted, graceful essence of Blossomtime and you are...” Demeter’s lips smashed together before she spat out the sounds like rotten fruit. “Haides.” This time she meant it as a curse.
He crossed his arms in a mirror of her stance. “Yes. I am. And don’t you think Kore should be given the chance to form her own opinions about me? She hasn’t been a child in quite some time. A fact you—”
“She is my child, and don’t you dare invoke her by name!” Demeter’s finger pointed at him with the threat of a weapon, and her shadow-veil billowed with warning. “If you’re not here to collect souls, then be gone.”
“I have underlings for that duty.”
“Be gone this instant!”
The Lord of the Underworld scoffed. “Zeusy was right. You really are unhinged and irrational when it comes to KORE.” This time he pumped the power of genuine invocation into her name.
“Agh! Fiend. Keep her name off your lips, and keep the name of that false-tongued betrayer out of this grove. It pollutes my home more than your presence already has.”
“Oh, do you mean the name of…ZEUS?” Haides buffed a nonexistent burr in the flawless armor that covered his forearm. “I really don’t think ZEUS would approve of you forbidding me to utter the name of ZEUS, Highest and Best. For ZEUS’ sake, De-De.”
“You’re such a child. What is this? Are you two plotting together again? I thought you weren’t speaking this century.”
“In fact, I did write to ZEUS.”
“Stop that!”
“But you are correct. He ignored me as steadfastly as you have.”
“Well, maybe he isn’t as cruel, greedy, and venal as I thought.”
“Oh, no. He is. Foolish me, I always imagined you would be the one susceptible to reason, but apparently that was nothing more than fantastical whimsy painted by our glory days in armor together.”
She snarled, incensed at being reminded of how close they had once been. Haides had always been the easiest brother to confide in. Easier, even, than calculating, ruthless Hera. How supportive he had once been. He had always been straightforward, charming, as playful as he was intense. No longer. Now all that charm and intensity was twisted, along with whatever he called “play.” She really didn’t want details, after everything he had done for centuries down there.
Purifying tainted souls. Jailing monsters. Overseeing the divine duties of the other monsters who worked for him.
Just imagining his responsibilities was like a nasty set of claws scraping along her spine.
Of course, being bound to that ghoulish pit could never twist Haides more than Shiny King Zeusy had with his gilded tongue and infinite “perfectly excusable” reasons for everything he did. If Haides was wooing Zeus again…
“There is no reasoning when it comes to either of you,” she snapped. “If that wanton seed-scatterer had had his way, our daughter would have been handed off aeons ago to seal some fleeting alliance, only to be prodded into wielding her assets in whichever direction his wind blows next. You should be thankful he ignored your proposal. No doubt he would rescind any agreement he made with you the moment his whim switched. Plus, you’d be in his debt.”
“Precisely why I’ve sought out alliance with you all these years, not him. And if you haven’t noticed the conspicuous lack of my seed-scattering, then perhaps you should open your eyes and take measure of the one who stands before you. I assure you, Demeter, I would cherish your daughter like—”
“Like you cherished Her Unnameable Majesty?”
The way his eyes bulged, Demeter thought he might have choked on his own tongue.
If only. She snickered.
He frowned. “Do not doubt the depth of my cherishing. But I would have found myself strung up with my scythed balls riding the River of Fire if your precious Kampe had had her—”
“Don’t call her that!”
“Better if I call her the Twisted One?”
“If she became twisted, it’s because you all made her so.”
He snorted. “Honeybee, don’t delude yourself. That scorpion-tailed bitch was well twisted the day I marched through the Underworld’s seven gates.”
“And what does that say about you, that you couldn’t resist lapping it up, even when we all warned you not to get ensnared in her bed? You knew what that meant, and still, you prodded her with your forked spear and then skulked away in the night, O Unseen One.” Throwing her hands in the air, Demeter said, “Oh, Haides! If you cherished her so mightily, how could you have betrayed her so horribly?”
The Lord of the Underworld drew sharply upright. His expression became as indiscernible as if he’d put on his helmet. His voice went as icy as his River Kokytos. “She betrayed me first. She disrespected me, as well as her king. In fact, she disrespected the entirety of masculine preeminence—”
“Preeminence?”
All the buzzing and chirping in the grove silenced.
He didn’t heed the warning in her tone. In fact, his incorporeal visage edged closer. “No matter the protests from those stuck in the ways of the past, we are now the ruling force, as we had become by the time my footsteps first darkened those 999,999 stairs into her lair. She just didn’t want to accept it.”
“Oh, and that proves your preeminence.”
“Fine.” He blinked slowly and turned his eyes skyward, amending, “Value. If you must know, the only worth She found in masculinity was whatever she had use for under her heel and under her thumb and under her insatiable, tyrannical twat.” Demeter flinched; he leered harder. “And oh, did she love to remind me of that. By the tip of her pointy tail.”
“Again! You were warned.”
“Well, unlike others I know, I tend to let someone’s actions dictate my opinion of them, rather than relying on the tittle-tattle of lofty Olympians who have never met them. In the case of Her, she proved the rumors correct with plenty to spare.”
Demeter clicked her tongue. “Awww, poor little godling. So your valuables were insulted, therefore you flung the supposed love of your life at the Preeminent One’s feet and let him blast her into oblivion. And now you want me to give up my only child for your next sacrifice?”
“Kore would never disrespect me—would never deprecate me the way She did.”
“Hah! Well, I can see you know nothing about the girl you say you want to marry. Talk about deluding yourself. Honeybee.”
“That’s your nickname. Sweet-lips.”
“Yes, it is. And you forfeited your right to use it a millennium ago. Poppet-face.”
“What do you want of me, Demeter! I was young, rash, broken-hearted, and pissed off.”
“And how are you any different now?”
“My dear, it’s been so long that you couldn’t begin to imagine.”
A wave of revulsion shuddered through her. “I wouldn’t wish to imagine.”
“Then don’t. Grant me an audience with your daughter and sit right there to hear everything I have to say to her.”
“All your nectar-laden lies, you mean?” Before he could apply any more of it to this conversation, she flung her hand up between them. “Just—just choose someone else. Kore is unsuitable for you.”
“You are so wrong. There is no one better suited in the Cosmos.”
“Based on what delusions!”
“Well, I can’t marry any of the myriad souls in my realm. Do you know? Ghosts go insane if you try to keep them plumped with blood for eternity. Nymphs and daimons are inappropriate, so I’m stuck with a very short list of goddesses. Your daughter tops that list and far outshines any other candidate.”
“Well, it’s too bad about your short list. Truly it is, for the Underworld should always have a queen. But that doesn’t make Kore the one. Introducing her to your noxious realm can only end in disaster—especially for my child.”
“You mean…” Another of those carnivorous grins. “The child who once resurrected a dead orb weaver?”
“A what?”
He rolled his eyes. “A fucking spider.”
Demeter recoiled in horror. “How do you know about that? How! Have you been spying on us? Stalking her like some lewd predator in the brush?”
He sniffed down his nose. “I am King of the Dead. As if I wouldn’t be aware when someone snatches a shade from my hands—even the tiniest one. That girl introduced herself to me the moment she took what should have rightfully dwelled in my domain. The only reason she didn’t suffer my wrath was because she was too young to understand. As it was, you taught her well. Exceptionally well. Dammit, I—” He pushed a sigh out through his nose. His arms fell open as he fixed Demeter with a look that beseeched her to scale back the animosity in their conversation. “Watching the souls of the dying in your daughter’s hands…she is gentle and tenderhearted. Her touch is a work of power and beauty, and I can think of no other goddess who would make a more brilliant queen at my side.”
“You can think of no other goddess who hasn’t run screaming at the prospect.”
He jerked his head away with a snarl.
“Go home to your dank lair and stroke your preeminent, bifurcated spear for eternity. I will never give her to you. Klymenos.”
His dark eyes flicked back to hers. His aura took on the glowing tinge of embers. Apparently that moniker still pricked him as much as ever. In stark silhouette, the horns and all the prickly thorns of his headdress sharpened. The diamond-knuckled armor on his hands closed into fists with a razor-edged flash. It matched his smirk as putrescence and rot seeped out around him once more, killing the plants along the shoreline all over again.
Demeter cried out in anguish. “You fiendish brute!”
He winked as he wrapped his elegant mouth around a seductive, “Yep.”
Her own garments flared like molten bronze as she glared up at him, undaunted. “My domain overlaps with yours, therefore I cannot prevent you from appearing through these cracks in the veil, but do not let me spy so much as a hair of your ratty, maggoty beard ever again.” She stepped up to the edge of the pool, jutting a finger at the phantasmic figure. “So help me, if you take advantage of this overlap to appear before my daughter, I will find a way down to the Underworld and you will beg me to give you respite in your own infernal pits before I’m through with you. You think your valuables were insulted before? I will bring down our father's sickle upon you and I won't stop with your pretty jewels. I will take your fucking head. Do you understand me?”
His lips drew back in a sardonic smile oozing with hatred. “Perfectly.” His bow was a masterpiece of menace as he snarled, “Great Queen.” He lifted the Helmet of Darkness to his head. The oily surface of the pond shuddered. When it stilled, he had vanished, taking with him all hint of death and putrefaction, leaving only ominous silence in his wake.
When she realized that all that destruction had been illusory—nothing but one of his notorious manipulative tactics, she let out an irate screech.
Then she glared at the pool. She could feel it. Could feel him. There. Deep, deep, deep underground. It was so minuscule, but for a god of his meticulous vigilance, it was enough. That tiny trickle, those droplets, that distinctive splash they made as they hit his festering waters.
With one stomp of her mighty foot, she sent a shockwave down into the bedrock beneath the spring that fed her pool. The earth jerked. An entire plate shifted, blocking that traitorous stream and forcing it to divert. It would have to find another way through the rock now.
So would he.
Well, Klymenos, you'd like to reminisce about those days we all shared in armor?
The Queen of the Earth would be only too happy to remind him what she’d named her golden blade, and what Khrysaor was ceremoniously used for.
The annual slaughter of pigs.
And war.
With an infuriated snarl, Demeter fled the pool. In her rage and despair, she accidentally trampled several rows of seedlings and knocked down two ancient trees.
Up Next: The rosy-colored veils get ripped off Kore’s eyes as the Temple of War doles out A GOOD EDUCATION
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