Destroyer of Light

by Rachel Alexander

The voices of Asphodel quieted and for a moment it was just the two of them. She floated, her body pulled toward Aidoneus, his eyes drawing her closer. She took his hand. “Welcome home, my queen.”

The peace this realm brings me pales in comparison to the calm and happiness she brings me, and I will never love anything in this cosmos more than I love her.”

This is where we started, Persephone. And one day Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos will weave a tapestry that tells our story.

“I am not like them!” Aidoneus bellowed, pointing toward distant Olympus. A vein stood prominent on his forehead and his face grew red. Demeter cowered, shielding herself from him with upraised hands. “I waited aeons for Persephone! There is nothing in this cosmos that could turn me from her! I love your daughter. I always have and always will love her, and her alone.” He drew in a breath, trying to calm himself. “You know that. I am sorry Zeus treated you so poorly. Truly I am. But I am not him, I am not them, nor will I ever be. Deme…” He spoke gently, his voice low. “Deme, deep down you know that.”

“If you are in Attica, I’ll be in Thrace. If you are in Peloponnesus, I’ll be in Macedonia. If you are in Hellas, I will be in Illyria. If you cover the earth, I will raise flowers and shoots from beneath the soil.”

“One, who is twice woven, cannot remain your own.” “Two, the ether bound, who shines the torch in darkness.” “Three, the blessed harbinger, who reaps the reaper’s heart.”

“An island for a goddess queen’s bride gift? You merit nothing less than a continent.”

“If you detest the way things are above, then help me change those things. Look at what I did in six short months. Mere words to a handful of people. I thought they didn’t believe me, but they know the truth now: death is not the end.”

“I will. I’ll be your husband, your king and your consort. In this and in all things.”

“Do not be afraid of hope, Persephone. Hope is a hard-forged blade, keen and shining. Used recklessly, it will maim and scar; but wielded with finesse, it will give you the power to carve a destiny of unsurpassed glory.”

They each cradled six seeds with their fingertips, held aloft and offered to one another. Their priestess spoke. “As these seeds bound you to this world, let them also bind you to each other as husband and wife.”

“I swear upon the Styx to love and to cherish you. To honor and protect you as your consort, your king, and your beloved. With this oath I bind myself to you eternally, and by drinking the water of the Styx, I become your lord and your husband.”

“The rains are over and gone. My beloved is mine, and I am his.”

Somehow she’d known then— she’d known all along. They carried the seeds of the world below to the world above, then carried the fruits of the living world to the land of the dead. They were the single narcissus opening in the grove and the flowers bursting forth in the Plutonion. It was their doing— always, together.

Stars wheeled and danced below them, winding in a slow gyre. The wonderment of it all stunned them silent, and in that moment they knew. They were witnessing All. Life, Love, all things that bound existence. They were darkness and light. Rebirth and death. Male and female, in perfect conjunction with the power to make and unmake the cosmos itself.

Hades and Persephone. Names, an unending chain of what that duality of creation represented to all mortals coursed through them. Chaos and Void. Gaia and Ouranos. Anu and Ki. Shiva and Shakti. Ku and Hina. He and She. They were a thousand other names, to a thousand other peoples, with the power and responsibility of all creation at their fingertips. Their own private wishes seemed small and petty compared to this great expanse of Everything. Totality. Conjunction.

This place was within the Underworld, and yet a world apart from it. It was rebirth: an everlasting realm of life encompassed by death: a new, third portion of Chthonia. Through the hieros gamos, Hades and Persephone hadn’t created a child. They’d created Paradise.

“This is meant to be the mortals’ place of rest and reward, Aidon. What should we call it?” “Elysion,” he replied without hesitation. Her eyes widened in surprise and he kissed her on the forehead. “After Eleusis. Where I fell in love with you.”