“Because what you call inevitable is impossible. If you come to me in the Underworld, as you are now, the resulting union will destroy this mortal world, corrupt its nature according to your own damaged self. Water would burn, earth would press down from on-high, and the skies would form mountains—”
“Yes, and fire would pour like the tears of those who are lost!” She took another slow step on the dais. “Ah, but would it be such a bad thing, really? Old, worn-out, tired rules crumbling, a new order coming to light, a new fresh pattern. We will still rule this new mortal pattern together, my love! Only it will be of my own making! Come, you know you want to have this pleasure with me, for it will be infinitely more delightful—”
“It will not bring back Melinoë.”
For the first time he saw her falter. The name still had the effect upon her, even after all that had come to pass.
“How cruel you are, Husband! Do not speak thus of our child who will be made again! Melinoë will be the first new issue of our union, only this time she will be perfect and immortal, and she will be a queen of all places, Above and Below. Death will not be her flaw. And indeed death will be no longer, I’ve decided, for the mortal world can exist quite well without it, fixed in its own moment Between, as it is now. . . .”
“Have you no pity for these mortals, then? No mercy or allowance for the exercise of free choices in the course of their own fates?” he said, looking at her with liquid eyes of truth.
“None whatsoever,” she replied, taking yet another step toward him, so that only a few paces remained.
“Oh, Persephone. . . .” So sorrowful his voice had become, losing its veneer of control. “What has become of you? Your heart, so full of compassion for the world that you die for it, twice every season! Do you remember, gentle beloved, how it comes to you, the gentle choice of sacrifice, the decision, and the act of letting go, the perfect dissolution of divine will that recreates the universe?”
“I remember enough to know I will never make that idiot choice again!” she cried then, and her bright voice struck the stones and rebounded in his heart like a dagger of agony.
He said nothing, averting his face slightly, a mere-quarter turn, so that he could gaze elsewhere and not at her, but his own flesh betrayed him, responding with a shudder. His hair-snakes hissed again, undulating in barely leashed desire. Already, beads of divine venom gathered like pearls at the fang tips, quivering. . . .
“My beautiful, beautiful love,” said Persephone soothingly in a mesmerizing voice, and then she was up one more stair, and standing directly before him, eye-level, with only one stair remaining.
He observed her indirectly, from the corner of one eye, like a hawk fixing its wild stare, and saw the pulse in her throat and the shadowed deep cleft between her breasts, their softness pressing at the bodice of her chiton. There was a blood-black cabochon jewel nestled there, filled with miniscule golden embers of captured light, mocking him.
Oh, how he wanted to be that jewel, to rest upon her thus, between the rotund flesh, inside—
No!
Hades turned his face directly at her once more and he said, “I have her ashes, you know. Hecate has given me the jar. And it is hidden out of your reach.”
But Persephone turned her head slowly sideways and back again, looking at him still, straining toward him. And then she took the last stair between them.
“Foolish love . . . Melinoë’s ashes are not there—they have never been within that jar of blue clay.” Her lips curved into a mocking smile. “Hecate was given a jar of ordinary mortal earth, to deceive her. Instead, I took Melinoë’s beloved ashes to Ulpheo, hiding it in my mother’s shrine while she was under the influence of the water of Lethe. Only—only—” And a strange petulant expression came to replace the smile, which then became, in a manner of the insane, a look of horror.
“Only what?” he asked.
“Nothing!” the dark Goddess screamed suddenly, and the Hall of bones was filled with a new degree of darkness. . . . It came pouring out of her, and she was suddenly pitch-black with grief, with fury, and to this complex mixture was added a strange sensual dimension of desire.
“Ah, My Lord . . . sweet, lusty . . . Hades . . .” she modulated her voice again so that now she was whispering, leaning her beautiful ebony-black form over him. And as she did thus, her ruddy-gold hair transformed and deepened into earthy brown and then a midnight hue as it cascaded forward to sweep along his skin, while she hovered inches away. “Why not let go and let me in? Receive me . . . sweet and deep . . . down Below. We both know how it will end—”
“Do we?” Hades said in a hard voice and then suddenly took her by the hair and pulled her to him and brought her face down to his with one muscular hand. His sharp claws dug into her scalp, and beads of immortal blood welled on her head under her glorious mane of midnight-ruddy hair.
At the feel of his claws she moaned and her eyelids fluttered, but it was with dark pleasure. He held her thus in a vice of iron, lips almost touching, breathing her. She floated over him in lassitude, turned to flowing honey, shuddering with exultation.
And then he placed his lips upon her brow in a strange chaste kiss. “My sweet Black Wife,” he said, and let her go, harshly.
She staggered back, stunned by the sensual perversity of such a death-cold touch.
“Now, begone,” he said, his visage blank and timeless, for he was Lord Death indeed. “Begone, my sweet love. You may not come near me, not ever again. I do not allow it.”
And suddenly a dark vortex of wind came sweeping into the Hall, dispelling her added layers of darkness, and turning everything into the same homogeneous pallor as had ruled here for ages untold.
When the maelstrom receded, Persephone was cast out elsewhere.
Lord Death, Lord Hades, beautiful, terrible dark God of the Underworld, was once again alone.
And he wept.
Old Man Winter lifted his arms covered in white sleeves and he threw his head back, calling to him the winds, the winter skies, the cold, and the cinereal storm clouds. As the elements raged around him, wind screeching in fury, and the world blurred with whiteness of whirling snow, he rose above the earth, hovering, lifting more than fifty feet, more than a hundred, and then sailing over the walls of Letheburg.
A strange panorama of chaos met him from below. At his back, the Trovadii armies and Hoarfrost’s dead men—Hoarfrost, it was his old nickname, he remembered. Ian Chidair, he was Duke Ian Chidair, Duke Hoarfrost, he was—no, not “he,” I was that mortal, back then I was a dead man—
And at his front, lying before him, was the city of Letheburg. He soared, passing thirty feet over the battlements and seeing puny figures of the dead crawling over the outer walls, and then along the inner walls the toy soldiers—garrison soldiers on patrol with their muskets and pikes and halberds, their helms fastened tight against the wind, visors lowered, while they held on to the parapets for dear life . . . and some looked up and stared and saw him.
Directly ahead was the invisible barrier, the sorcerous ward of safety upon the city.
Old Man Winter perceived it with his immortal sense as a shimmering curtain of silver light, the thickness of a single cobweb, reaching down below into the earth and high up above, both directions into infinity.
A perfect barrier.
He came to it, and he touched it with the tip of his great gloved finger, and it rang. Had he been a mortal or a mere god, he would not have been able to pass.
But he was winter. He was elemental, and the curtain parted before him as cobwebs part before a breeze.
And Winter entered the city. He sailed through the barrier and over the inner battlements, and was now above the rooftops, floating like a low-hanging cloud. He saw the snow-capped roofs of wood and plaster and shingles, the cathedral spires, the twisting streets far below like loosened ribbons, turning into themselves and crisscrossing. He saw the tiny carriages and pedestrians, and the formations of soldiers making their way past
the city blocks and landmarks, its still-smoking ruins closest the walls, and its more distant interior that fared better against the catapults, with the great Lethe Square and the Winter Palace in the center, like a jeweled dollhouse toy.
Old Man Winter clapped his hands and the wind redoubled, and it was now gale-force. In a few breaths the snow was being swept clean off the roofs, while citizens ran for shelter like ants below. He snapped his fingers, and the cloud cover overhead thickened, and came down, so that the sky was an achromatic morass of cotton—slate and dun and ashes and smoke.
It was mid afternoon, but it felt like dusk had come down early, so dreary it had become.
And Winter was excessively pleased with the results of his handiwork, and so he alighted upon a tall roof and sat down upon a chimney which immediately stopped smoking and froze. He stroked his long white beard, chuckling deeply, making icicles crack along the eaves, and then folded his great white arms and exhaled a satiated breath of arctic cold.
Soon, the city of Letheburg was going to freeze, all living things would die, and their wills will become not their own, ripe for the picking. . . .
Ah, it was good to wield such immortal power!
“Old Man!”
A bright insolent voice sounded from across the rooftop nearby. A young man in sparkling white and shimmering blue, with hair like a raven’s wing, sat on top of another chimney, dangling his elegant booted feet, arms folded in the same confident manner as Winter. “Allow me to introduce myself, I am Jack.” The rakish hat was lifted then carelessly tossed back to cover his shimmering locks, and he inclined his head very lightly in greeting, and continued to stare with intense dark eyes. A mocking smile played across his lips.
Old Man Winter raised one thick white brow and boomed back across the rooftop. “What’s this? A young popinjay? What makes you think you can speak to me, boy?”
“Old Man!”
From the opposite direction in back of him, from an even higher rooftop, another voice sounded, this one female, brash, and even more insolent.
Winter turned his head and there was a young girl, balanced upon the very ridge, walking like a dancer. She was also glittering white, a butterfly of crystalline delicacy. Her dress and cape floated behind her in snow flurries. Her perfectly beautiful face was framed by iridescent flowing tresses, and her haunting eyes of soft smoke-grey watched him intently and mischievously.
“And who are you, pretty poppet?” said Old Man Winter.
But the girl laughed in a silvery chime. She then jumped clear across the ridge and then floated weightlessly like a snowflake, landing directly before him on his own roof. She stood, boots planted firmly, and folded her arms in direct parody of the Old Man.
“Don’t you remember me?” she said. “The last time you and I have spoken we were both mortal and merely dead.”
“What? Ah, yes . . . I do remember you!” Old Man Winter exclaimed. “Why, you were the little princess—the Emperor’s daughter, sent to talk me down—sent by that old fool who thinks he is King of this city!”
“Apparently there is more than one. So, do you think you can take Letheburg?” she asked in a voice both soft as snow and hard as ice, turning her head to the side slowly, so that her hair streamed lavender and mother-of-pearl over her one shoulder.
“Hah!” Old Man Winter said, his voice deepening, and the wind and the overcast echoing his tone. “And what can you do to stop me, little maiden of spun sugar and candied snow? Parlay me to death?”
“Considering that I’ve already placed a safety ward around Letheburg when merely a dead little princess, there is likely a thing or two I can do now that I am immortal.”
“Indeed, there is plenty to be done here, Old Man,” added Jack, and he was suddenly at the Snow Maiden’s side. Jack took a step forward and leaned to stare the Old Man directly in the cold pale eyes. He did not blink, and neither did Winter . . . until suddenly Jack reached out like lighting and he pulled Winter by the nose, turning it a deep veiny blue with frost at his brief touch.
“Argh!” Old Man Winter exclaimed, and then reacted by swinging his great beefy hand forward to strike the young man . . . who was suddenly not there, but several feet away, on the end of the roof, laughing. In moments the Snow Maiden’s crystalline peals of laughter joined his.
“You missed, Old Man!” said Jack, shaking his head. He then bent down and picked up a handful of snow from the rooftop and started rolling it into a ball with both his gloved hands. A blink, and the hefty snowball sailed, despite the gale force wind, cutting through it like butter, and it smashed against the side of Winter’s head, splattering in the fur lining of his hat.
Winter roared. His gloved hands made fists, and he slammed them down on the chimney, and the storm exploded around them.
But the Snow Maiden soared up ten feet above the roof, and then she lifted her arms and spun. . . . Quicker and quicker she spun, with a force stronger than the storm wind, until a flurry formed around her, then a vortex, and all the airborne snow seemed to be sucked into it. The spinning tornado that was the Snow Maiden, raced up into the heavens and she moved like a comet, taking all the snowflakes unto her, and then releasing them to fall down and lie on the ground and the rooftops, adhering as if by magic to the surfaces. No matter how much the wind blew, the snow was no longer to be disturbed. It lay, pristine and sparkling everywhere, and there was crystal-clear visibility in the air for miles.
“What in blazes? You think you can best me? I am Winter Itself!” Old Man Winter frowned a deep hoary frown, and he narrowed his eyes. As he did thus, the cold in the air heightened as the temperature plummeted. Whorls of hard frost appeared on glass windows, followed by hairline fractures in some spots because of the intensity of the freeze. Instants more of this and windows would implode all across the city, glass shattering, residences filling with deadly cold. . . .
“Oh, no, you don’t . . .” Jack Frost said. “This one is all mine!”
Jack Frost took off his fine gloves and he snapped his powerful elegant fingers. In an instant the cold spell lessened, and started to dissipate, absorbed into the white figure of Jack. The more cold disappeared, the bluer Jack’s skin became, until he sparkled like a hard, deep-blue diamond.
At this, the entire city of Letheburg seemed to breathe with ease. All hardened, brittle, vulnerable, cold-stiffened things softened, to the point that the icicles hanging from the gutters and the eaves started to melt, and the wind lost all its chill and was decidedly lukewarm.
Winter wind still raged through the city but it was simply air, without snow or cold, and the deep grey overcast alone seemed to reflect the force of Old Man Winter’s anger.
The Snow Maiden and Jack Frost jumped from roof to roof, laughing. And in seconds they were clear across the city, soaring, spinning, walking along narrow poles and lines strung across rooftops, like aerial trapeze artists, and then racing each other to the tallest ridge of the gilded roof of the Winter Palace, with its fancy baroque cornices and dipping sides.
Here, the Snow Maiden paused, for there was a niche spot where the tedious winter wind did not reach, and she sat down upon the edge of the roof, with her tiny booted legs swinging. Jack Frost paused beside her. He hopped up to the nearest ridge and did a fancy stomp and twirl and then stood along the razor-edge of the apex and pretended to be losing his balance, swinging his hands at his sides.
“Come, silly man,” she said softly. “Sit beside me.”
“Yes, Your Imperial Highness.”
“No, please stop. That is all behind us. My father the Emperor, my family, yours—”
And immediately he was right there, having forgotten his foolery, seated alongside her, swinging his own feet off the roof.
“Jack,” she said. “Vlau . . .”
He turned his face to her at that name, starting slightly. And then he was inches away, looking into her soul with his dark immortal eyes.
“Claere. . . .”
Her strong beating heart co
ntracted in her breast at his proximity, but it was the pain of a pure unconditional love for which there were no mortal words, and not even immortal ones—such a pang of joy that it hurt.
“Claere,” he said again, having grown almost timid, in a way she had never seen him before, not ever. And then she felt the gentle touch of his hand against hers, skin sliding against skin, and its strange immortal warmth seared her. . . .
Vlau, who was now Jack, leaned in and he pressed his lips against hers, shaking slightly with impossible wonder.
She felt the touch, surprisingly warm, and then his lips were devouring her, and she could feel it, every hungry point along her living flesh awakened, as he consumed her. His hands were at the back of her head and he pressed himself closer, closer yet, and held her, strong fingers tangling in her long iridescent hair, pushing her backward, sideways, and burying himself in her throat, as a desperate madness came upon him—
The next instant they had fallen off the roof.
They were airborne, and Claere’s light cry of surprise and his involuntary exclamation were muffled by his mouth upon hers, and her lips upon his, as they took each other’s voices away . . . and then they soared upward, willing themselves simply to fly, and up they went, high into the clouds, still holding each other in a twisting tumble of limbs and bodies, having long given up their breaths to each other.
The sky was below and the city of Letheburg spun above, then things righted eventually, and they slipped past the thick vaporous clouds and started sinking, floating down like snowflakes through the lukewarm winds, and remembering Old Man Winter, started again laughing.
They landed feet first on the Palace rooftop. Then, still holding hands, they scrambled back into the small nook that was safe from the impotent wind. Claere rested her head against Vlau’s chest.