Chapter Text
It begins with blood.
Giving birth to a god is no easy feat even for a divinity, and the Queen’s mortal blood rails against it. Her struggle echoes down the empty corridors of the House, reverberating around the vaulted ceilings and polished colonnades. It passes the small ashen-faced figure that crouches behind a pillar, hands over his ears.
Achilles does not pretend to understand the events that are transpiring in the House. He was completing his rounds of the building as the Queen’s labour began, and he missed the collective rousing of the inhabitants. Persephone was ensconced within her chamber by the time he returned; he has been back at his post for a long time, and she has not emerged. Even when he was alive, Achilles was hardly an expert on childbirth, but he knows that a long labour is a dangerous one.
Another wail of pain rips through the House. The crouching figure hunches over, draws itself even tighter.
No, Achilles cannot guess at what is happening behind those closed doors, but there is a child here – chthonic or no – and he is scared.
“Thanatos, lad,” Achilles calls, as gently as he can manage.
The child gives no sign of having heard him. Achilles takes a step closer: slowly, as he’d approach a wounded animal. His shadow – barely perceptible in the hall’s dim illumination – falls across the tiles, and Thanatos looks up, startled.
“Easy,” Achilles says quickly, chiding himself as soon as the word leaves his lips. Foolish! As if the lad is a spooked horse! “What say you and I take a walk around the Queen’s garden? Would you like that?”
Thanatos has lowered his hands, but his eyes are drawn to those double doors at the end of the hall, and he flinches at every fresh sound of agony. “Mother Nyx said to stay close,” he whispers.
Nyx had swept by Achilles’ post earlier, responding to his offer of help with an uncharacteristically curt, “Remain at your post, Shade.” Distracted concern in every flowing line of her.
Sighing, Achilles kneels down. From within his tunic he retrieves a scrap of paper. In a few deft movements, he folds it into a little boat. He places it on the floor, carefully within Thanatos’ reach, and begins another.
Thanatos reaches out, hesitant, his expression a question.
“Go ahead.”
He picks up the boat with the utmost delicacy. “What’s it for?”
Of course any child of Night would ask about an object’s purpose first and foremost. Achilles finishes his second boat and stands. “I’ll show you. Come on.” He holds out a hand.
Thanatos just looks at him helplessly.
“We won’t go far. Just to the end of this hallway. We’ll both be able to keep an eye on things.” Perhaps his time in the afterlife has rounded off his sharp edges; Achilles never used to be comfortable talking to children. Perhaps it’s just that Thanatos responds to his logic more readily than a mortal might. Whatever the reason, his small cold hand slips into Achilles’ bigger one.
The Styx swirls far below the balcony as they approach. Achilles instinctively grips Thanatos’ hand a little tighter before realising the futility of it. The fall holds no danger for either of them.
“Now then,” he begins, handing over the second boat. “I’ll need your help with this, lad.”
Thanatos is instantly at attention.
“What I need you to do is flit a little way upstream – just a little, mind – and drop both of those into the water when I say. Can you do that?”
Thanatos nods and rises over the balcony. He’s not yet learned the knack of controlling his sudden disappearances, but floating comes easy. When he reaches the middle of the river, he turns in midair, holding the paper boats out in front of him.
“Ready?” Achilles smiles. “Remember which one is yours. On my mark, release them both and come back here. We’ll watch them race and see whose wins.” He raises a hand – Thanatos’ eyes follow it – and then brings it down.
The boats hit the water with barely a ripple. The Styx is sluggish here, with only the occasional eddy to show for its faster-flowing depths. Thanatos is back at Achilles’ side before he knows it. Together, they watch the boats’ bumpy passage. They bob along side by side for a while, but then one pulls ahead, gaining speed.
Achilles nudges Thanatos. “You’re winning, lad.”
Mouth open, Thanatos leans forward, his fingers tight on the stone balustrade and every inch of him intent on the boat. It’s such a human motion that Achilles feels a tug in his chest that he’s not felt for a long, long time.
Two spots of white amidst the scarlet as the boats flash past. Thanatos beams up at him and foregoes any triumph in favour of: “Can we do it again?”
Achilles nods. “Fetch the boats, then.”
(Dimly, he notes that the labour cries from the opposite chamber have given way to Lord Hades’ voice, taut and snapping. Achilles has never known his employer sound anything less than commanding. Now, however, there is a strained undercurrent to his muffled words. Almost a plea.)
On the third run, Thanatos’ boat succumbs to the river and its own sodden structure. Its prow collapses and it abruptly vanishes into the waters. Achilles chuckles, but it’s a little forced; he’d hoped to distract Thanatos for a while longer yet. His own boat limps past the balcony, and Thanatos scoops it out. When he returns to the balcony, his expression is back to its habitual gravitas.
“Thank you,” he says, inclining his head.
Achilles opens his mouth to reply, and in that instant the doors at the end of the hall burst open. They turn as one.
“Then I shall make them listen!”
Lord Hades stands in the doorway, grim and terrible. He strides out, breathing heavily.
From behind him, a threadbare voice Achilles hardly recognises as the Queen. “Hades. Hades, please…”
He turns, but does not address her. His rage burns too hot for that. “Who are they to refuse us? Without the functioning of this House, their prophecies come to naught. Ungrateful wretches! They are your children, Nyx. If you have not instilled in them a modicum of respect then I call that a failure of parenting–”
Hades, you forget yourself.
Achilles quails. Nyx is not so much a figure as the absence of one: so black it’s almost blinding. She draws his gaze – he can’t look away. Her golden eyes flash, sharp as spear points in the darkness.
Do not presume upon me. My daughters have spoken.
“THEY SPEAK NOTHING BUT LIES!”
There is desperation in every spat syllable. Hades squares his shoulders and Nyx grows impossibly darker, the two of them emanating power. Achilles steps in front of Thanatos, wanting – fruitlessly – to spare him this.
You–
“Stop.”
Persephone herself, pale and trembling, leaning heavily on the doorframe and clutching a scarlet-wrapped bundle to her breast. Her lips are thin. “Hades. Nyx. Come and see our son.”
Hades exhales; Nyx’s form coalesces. Persephone has already turned away, and somehow it’s more damning than any angry admonition. She sinks onto a chair, spent. The birth and its aftermath have taken a toll unlike anything Achilles has seen on a god.
Nyx is the first to move. She flows to Persephone’s side, one hand resting on her shoulder: lending her what strength she can. Hades is slower – Achilles has worked here long enough that he knows how unaccustomed his lord is to shame – but he approaches nonetheless. Stoops to say something to his wife, voice low.
In response, Persephone smiles up at him, dispelling the tension. “Of course,” she says, loosening her grip enough that her husband can take the baby from her arms.
Hades straightens. Achilles can’t see his expression, but he is cradling his son’s head with such delicacy.
Silence slips past them all. It’s too quiet, thinks Achilles, for a house with a newborn babe. And how passionately Hades had raged against the Fates. Dread trickles through him, settles in his stomach. What unyielding prophecy could have undone them like this?
“Is there–” Hades begins, not taking his eyes from his son. He cuts off, clears his throat. Begins afresh. “Is there truly nothing that can be done?”
There is sorrow in Nyx’s face. “My daughters have spoken,” she repeats, but this time she sounds as helpless as the rest.
And Hades… crumples. He kneels at Persephone’s feet, clutching the tiny life they have made between them and are unable to protect. Achilles suddenly remembers himself – he shouldn’t be witness to this. It’s too raw, too bloodied. Beside him, Thanatos is still holding the paper boat, dripping a small red pool onto the floor.
“Come, lad,” Achilles says, very soft. “We should give them some space.”
Thanatos allows himself to be led into the deserted lounge without complaint. Achilles wonders how much he understands of what has just transpired. More than one might imagine, he’d wager.
“Will he die?”
Startled, Achilles glances down. “What?”
Thanatos repeats the question more distinctly.
How to answer that – and to Death himself! But Achilles has always been honest. “I don’t know,” he replies. “Your mother spoke of a prophecy, but I know no more than you.”
They wait quietly enough, but Achilles’ thoughts are in turmoil. If the child is fated to die having barely lived, then it is indeed a cruel, cruel blow. Gods die rarely, and they reserve for it an unspoken fear. Achilles cannot envy them. The one truth of mortal lives is their impermanence. Far worse to remain convinced of one’s own divine immortality until the very end.
“He should not die,” Thanatos whispers. “Did you see? He is too bright.”
Truthfully, Achilles couldn’t see much beyond the swaddling and Hades’ bulk. He wonders what Thanatos means. Whether he noticed something Achilles did not. Or could not.
“We can hope, lad,” is all he says. What more is there?
Death has taught Achilles patience, and Thanatos was born to it. It does not feel as though they’ve waited long before Nyx enters, her expression as unreadable as ever. Behind her trails a yawning Hypnos: Thanatos’ twin, summoned from whatever shadowy corner he’d been napping in.
“Thanatos, remain here with your brother. Master Achilles, your presence is desired.”
Thanatos chews his bottom lip but does not protest as Hypnos drifts closer, sleepy hands already reaching for him. He watches.
Achilles follows Nyx through to the royal bedchamber, where Persephone leans back against the sofa, her son in her arms. Some of the pink has come back to her cheeks, although her face is drawn and exhausted. The room has been tidied – there’s no bloody sheets to be seen now – but a coppery tang lingers in the still air.
“Welcome,” Persephone says, not quite managing a smile. “Meet our son.” She glances up at Hades, who stands beside her as though carved from grey marble. “Meet Zagreus.”
The baby shifts weakly. Wispy hairs cling to his skull – dark, like his father’s mane. His body is tightly wrapped but his feet kick free, glowing like hot coals. When Zagreus blinks, Achilles catches a flash of colours: red as blood, green as grass. Both his parents, united.
The baby’s eyes don’t stay open long. Of all the birthing sounds, they have yet to hear him cry. He has his mother’s colouring, but there is no flush in his cheeks, no warmth in his skin. His feet can do little more than sputter brief tongues of yellow flame. The embers of a dying fire.
They really are going to lose him, aren’t they.
Achilles takes a deep breath. He was familiar with the Fates, long ago. He knows their machinations, their deliberate vagueness. Surely there is some misunderstanding – some clever loophole to be found?
“Forgive me, my Queen,” he begins. “But I do not know the nature of the prophecy concerning your son. Is there no room for… interpretation? The specific phrasing might–”
“Has it not occurred to you that we have already tried everything in our power?” Hades cuts in witheringly. “Or are you of the opinion that a mere shade can shed further illumination on the matter?”
Achilles bows his head. “My apologies, my lord.”
“It’s all right, Achilles,” says Persephone. “It’s only natural to ask.” She absently strokes Zagreus’ pale cheek with her thumb. “But the Fates were very specific.”
“My daughters spoke not of loss,” Nyx clarifies, “nor of separation. Only death. It surrounds this child. He will die. Would that it were not so.”
In the end, Persephone carries the baby through the House, towards the Pool of Styx. The onlookers line the empty main hall. There are no faceless shades to be seen at present. Zagreus’ fire grows paler, almost invisible. There is the faint sourness of smoke in the air.
Afterwards, Achilles remembers the weight of their collective grief. Hades’ hands placing a bright laurel on his son’s head: an adornment that had been awaiting the birth of healthy progeny. Persephone’s tears, dark as blood against the scarlet birth wrapping. Nyx’s silent vigil. The arrival of Charon, silent and solemn, here to bear witness. Thanatos and Hypnos beside him, hand in hand, gripping each other.
Hypnos’ outburst: “Can’t you do something?” His brother’s hand tight in his. “Make him not die?”
For a moment, Achilles thinks Hades will give rein to his rage despite Hypnos’ youth. But Nyx speaks first. “I have done all I am able, child,” she replies with finality, and the shadow that is Hades shudders as if dealt a mortal blow.
Thanatos is shaking his head as if trying to dislodge his doubts, lips pressed together.
Persephone steps forward blindly. The Styx surges hungrily up to meet her, lapping around her feet. She kneels, and the river claims its bounty.
It begins with a garden.
Zagreus hides here sometimes among the bushes, surrounded by thick stems and dappled light and the earthy musk of the soil. Despite his grandmother’s tutelage, he’s never quite unlocked the gift of green fingers, but the garden holds for him an endless fascination. His small hands have pushed fat bulbs into the ground, only to have them thrust up shoots the next day, strong and vibrant. He’s watched avidly as flowers have bloomed petal by petal before his eyes, a burst of magenta or vermillion or violet. They wither just as quickly to a young god, but Zagreus carefully collects the seed-heads, sprinkles their magic onto another patch of virgin earth, and holds his breath as the cycle begins afresh.
Today, the sun is warm. Crouched under his canopy of leaves, Zagreus fiddles idly with a bit of stick, trying to press diamond patterns into the cool, damp clods of earth beside him.
A murmur in the distance; the leaves stir in a stiff breeze. Despite the sunlight, Zagreus shivers.
“Little sprout, are you in the garden?” It’s his grandmother’s voice. Her footsteps cross the grass. “Come out. I would speak with you.”
She is louder now, and closer, but she has yet to discover his hiding place. Zagreus clamps his hands over his mouth and stifles a giggle.
“Zagreus?”
Peering through the fleshy stems, he can see the pale blue of her dress as she passes right by him. He holds his breath, shaking with the effort of not laughing. His grandmother is tall, and she has a serious face, and she knows everything. It’s not often Zagreus can one-up her like this.
“Zagreus!”
Her voice is shrill now, and Zagreus hesitates, uncertain. This isn’t part of his plan. He reaches one hand out to the nearest branch to steady himself, tensing his calves to jump out and surprise her–
The sudden rush of cold fells him like a tree. All the air is pushed from his lungs at once and he curls himself inwards, eyes narrowed to slits against the rime forming on his eyelashes. Frost damage blackens the greenery in an instant, the leaves shrivelling and stems wilting under the onslaught. The verdure above his head fractures and falls away, revealing his prone, foetal form.
“Zagreus.” The ground crunches as his grandmother steps forwards. “Little sprout, why would you hide from me?” She unfurls him like a flower in springtime; he is upright now, shivering and huffing, his breath coming in puffs of white.
“I w– I wanted–” The chattering of his teeth stopper the words. He wraps his arms around himself, clutching for any semblance of warmth. The skin on his knuckles is flayed red and burns as he tightens his grip. “To s–surprise–”
“You wanted to surprise me, is that right?” His grandmother sighs, placing a chill hand on his shoulder. “Oh young one, this is all that comes of surprises.” She gestures, and through tear-blurred eyes Zagreus takes in the blighted ruin of the garden. Winter has stripped the trees of their leaves; the bushes are bare skeletons, the wind whistling through their bones. The anemones he planted along the house wall – flares of red and orange – have browned as if burnt up, their petals crisped and rimmed with ash-white. In the orchard, a single pear clings to its barren branch. The rest of the crop is scattered below, unripe and frozen solid.
“The garden…” Zagreus whispers. It is his first taste of the wanton destruction of which his family are capable. He swallows, sobs threatening. “Will it grow back?”
“Soon.” His grandmother straightens; already the sun has returned. “And all the quicker if you promise not to play such tricks on me again.”
Zagreus shifts. The patch of earth beneath his smouldering feet has thawed and softened into mud, but the rest of the garden still glitters with hoarfrost. Perhaps if he were to pace the length and breadth of this place, he could give Helios a hand to galvanise the regrowth…
“You know I don’t take kindly to being snubbed, Zagreus,” his grandmother says, and a single eddy whips through the garden, making him shiver once more.
“Sorry, Grandmother.”
The wind dies away. “Good,” Demeter continues, holding out her hand. Zagreus takes it; her grip is firmer than usual. “Now then, shall we see to your meal? Little saplings such as yourself require good care if they are to grow strong and vigorous. One treacherous season could see them wither.”
“Yes Grandmother,” Zagreus responds automatically, not sure he follows. Hand in hand, they cross the wasted plain of the garden and enter the little stone cottage in which they live.
The garden grows back swiftly. Soon it’s as rambling and lush as ever. His grandmother does not speak of the incident, but Zagreus carries always in his memory that terrible, all-encompassing chill. He never hides from her again.
Their life together is pleasant and peaceful. Grandmother Demeter has many duties and she is often obliged to leave him alone in order to perform them. She does so with a fond farewell and a stern warning not to stray beyond the limits of the sunlight. While she is gone, Zagreus’ time is his own: he potters about the cottage garden, splashes in the river, climbs the trees in the orchard. Butterflies and bees hang lazily in the sweetened air near the flowerbeds, and there is the occasional snatch of birdsong that barely pierces the miasma of tranquillity.
Once he is old enough, Zagreus begins to count the number of times he sleeps before his grandmother returns. He sleeps when tired and he eats when hungry. These cycles of routine are his days, named after Demeter refers to them. She talks of nights too, sometimes, and he comes to understand that these are something mortals both fear and revere.
“For the night is cold, young Zagreus, and many dangers lurk unseen in the dark.”
They are sitting in the cottage, she on a sturdy rocking-chair and he perched on a small three-legged stool close by. When they are together, she does not like him to be too far from her: young as he is, he has noticed this, and corrects himself accordingly when the less obedient part of his nature might have him wander.
Today, this is a difficult task. Sunlight shafts through the small window, and beyond it is the bright blue sky. In contrast, the cottage is dim and uninviting, and Zagreus has thus far been thinking longingly of the fruit he wants to harvest.
Something in his grandmother’s words, however, piques his interest.
“Why are they unseen?” he asks, shoving both hands under his thighs and gazing up at her expectantly.
Demeter blinks at him, slowly. “Of course,” she says, for no reason Zagreus can discern. Then: “Little sprout, close your eyes tight.”
He does so, whipping his hands back out and balling them in his eye sockets for good measure.
“Very good.” Demeter’s voice is rich with humour. “Now then, tell me what you see.”
Zagreus hesitates. “Uh. I don’t see anything?” He rubs his eyes a few times, just in case.
“In the mortal realm, this is what night is like. Cousin Helios draws the sun over the horizon and dips below it, and all is enveloped in darkness.”
“It sounds horrible.”
“The mortals fear it, certainly. As well they should.”
Removing his hands, Zagreus blinks a few times at the spots drifting across his vision. “I thought we were in the mortal realm, Grandmother.”
Demeter glances to the window. “We are… adjacent. But we are not truly part of it, here. This is a liminal space – a boundary.”
“Like when I walk with one foot in the river,” says Zagreus experimentally; he is gratified when his grandmother nods in agreement. Emboldened, he continues: “So what’s on the other side of the boundary?”
“I don’t follow, little one.”
“If the mortal realm is one side, and our garden is in the middle, then what’s on the–”
“Regardless, you should not be dabbling with the River Styx.” She slices bladelike through his question, pins his words to his tongue. “It is an ancient waterway, older even than I. It could carry you away in an instant if it so chose.”
Zagreus’ mouth is already open to protest that he’s never seen the river move at more than a sluggish trickle, but his grandmother’s eyes flash.
“Do I make myself clear?”
He nods mutely. Demeter sighs and rises from her chair. The sunlight tumbles over the folds of her dress, impossibly interwoven with frost. For a moment the whole room twinkles like shattered ice. Shards of light play over the walls, dancing in the empty jars on the shelves and flickering over the unmade bed in the corner.
“Come now,” his grandmother encourages. “Show me that bountiful apple harvest you spoke of earlier.”
When they are together, they tend the garden. Demeter teaches her young charge with a gentleness that often surprises him, and a diligence that does not. She is at her most tender when Zagreus stumbles over the difference between conehead and Laconian thyme, or cannot recall the medicinal properties of dittany.
“Grandmother,” he begins one day, rubbing a leaf of wild sage between finger and thumb, and Demeter chuckles indulgently at his reticence.
“Speak your mind, little sprout. Any grandson of mine who can cultivate an orchard such as this deserves to have his questions heard.”
They’re settled beneath the spreading branches of the oldest sycamore fig in the garden. Its gnarled trunk has twisted itself into a simulacrum of a seat, upon which Demeter looks every part the munificent goddess she is. Her cloak pools around her; if Zagreus squints, it’s a carpet of tiny white flowers, endless in their multitude. Then she shifts and they glitter unnaturally from the shadows – snowdrifts, once more.
The savoury scent of sage rises around them. “What do you do, when you leave here?”
Demeter leans forward, regarding him coolly. “A pertinent question, Zagreus, and not entirely unexpected. It is after all only natural that you should be curious about what lies beyond this divine glade.” For a moment, a faraway expression passes over her face, before she banishes it as firmly as she would an errant cloud in the endlessly blue sky above them. “The mortal realm is a complicated thing – not one to explain in a single sitting, and certainly not to someone of your tender years.”
Zagreus screws up his face. “Please, Grandmother. You said I deserved an answer. You said.”
“Oh, very well.” A smile from Demeter is often hard-won, but all the warmer for it. “The mortals… well, they tend the land and make things grow, just like you.”
“Just like me,” Zagreus repeats, transfixed. “What do they grow?”
“All sorts of things, my little one.” She gestures to the fruit trees around them. “Figs, apples, and pears. Green olives and almond trees. And fields of barley on every bit of flat land, as far as you can see, right up to the ocean.”
“And you help them, like you help me?”
“Yes, I… ensure a good harvest. Summer rainfall, a handful of dry days for the labourers, and an abundant yield to see them through the winter.” The way she speaks makes it sound like a memory.
Someone older might have picked up on the distance in his grandmother’s tone, but Zagreus is young and honest, and feels only reverence. “They must love and honour you above all other gods.”
There is a pause, and then Demeter murmurs, “They did,” in a voice like falling leaves.
Zagreus sits back, sweeping his arms around him in an arc, palms open against the tickling grass. “I’ve never grown barley,” he says. “Do you think I could?”
“If there’s one thing I have learned from you, little sprout, it is not to underestimate your tenacity.”
“…is that a yes?” Zagreus peers up at her, and she laughs.
“You have my word, I will bring you back a whole sheaf of barley, as soon–” She breaks off. “As soon as winter is over.”
This, Zagreus catches. “How long does winter last?” he asks, and it’s simply an excited child anticipating a present; he cannot understand the true weight of the question.
“It lasts for as long as I decide.” Demeter doesn’t quite snap, but it’s clear she will countenance no further questions from him today. She stands, and a few flakes of snow dislodge themselves from her cloak. Zagreus’ eyes follow their drift downwards, but they shrink to water before they reach the grass. His grandmother sighs, noting his attention. Reaching out, she tousles his unruly dark hair; he shivers, but it’s not unpleasant. That chill touch is familiar.
Zagreus gets up. “You’re going away again,” he tells the ground. It’s not a question.
“I have a great many things to see to, little one. You will understand someday.”
“When I have my own duties?”
“Perhaps.”
Their words hurry down well-trodden paths. Grandmother Demeter bends down to kiss his forehead – her lips like dry ice – and the next instant she is gone.
Zagreus flings himself with a huff of frustration into the seat his grandmother has just vacated. For a while, he blinks furiously, throat working as he swallows down tears. When he feels more composed, he breathes in deeply and lets it out in one long, shuddering exhale.
Yesterday’s cuttings need tending to. One or two of the flowerbeds need thinning out. There is fruit that needs picking, and long grass that needs shearing away after so long fallow. And Zagreus tries, really he does. But he snaps enough of the tiny, delicate cuttings to make him want to scream. The thickets of shrubbery in the flowerbeds – ever vivacious in this place – are stubborn enough that he has to hold back from ripping them all out at the root. And the sheer volume of ripening fruit, usually a challenge, feels overwhelming.
Instead, he runs. Feet pounding down the length of the orchard, swerving to avoid fallen fruits, he leaps up and snags one at random from a low-hanging branch – a practised twist. He keeps going. Out of the shady orchard he bursts, into the open meadow, as far from the cottage as the garden extends. Not until his lungs are burning does he stop, flopping down in the soft grass he’s meant to be clearing.
Spreading his arms, he pants. Here, there is no respite from the merciless sun, and yet it’s worth it for a whisper of a breeze from the wide, unbroken sky.
The fruit weighs heavy in his hand. Zagreus rolls onto his stomach, props himself up on his elbows, and examines it idly. It’s a pomegranate, fat and dense and beautifully ripe. Its skin is gently mottled and warm from the sun. He rolls it hard against the earth under a tump of grass, listening for the crack of the pith within.
Behind him, there’s a whoosh of air, and a thump.
Zagreus freezes, mouth open. Then–
“Blood and darkness.”
A stranger’s voice. Somehow it’s the unfamiliar curse that brings Zagreus back to himself. Gingerly, he pushes himself upwards.
Not three feet away from him is a boy of around his own age. He’s clad in loose black robes and a hood that has fallen back, crumpled around his shoulders. His hair is silvery-white and gleams like bone, falling almost to his waist. On his hands and knees in the grass, Zagreus thinks he’s looking for something until he notices that the boy’s face is creased with pain.
“Hey, are you all right?”
The pale face whips up towards him. It’s a blind movement: his eyes are still screwed shut. “Who’s there?”
“Just me,” Zagreus says stupidly. “I’m Zagreus. Are you all right?”
The boy squints sidelong at him, then makes a tsch noise of exasperation. “I – I can’t see. It hurts.”
“Is it the sunlight? I can get you into the shade.” Pomegranate forgotten, Zagreus scrambles towards him. “Hold on to me.”
The boy’s hand is cold, but Zagreus hooks it over his arm. Together, they rise to their feet. The boy keeps on rising until he’s a few inches off the ground, and Zagreus realises with a jolt: this is no mortal.
“Oh,” he says, despite himself. The boy doesn’t respond, just keeps his face downcast. Zagreus hurries them towards the trees, tugging along his new companion and trying not to pay too much attention to the unnatural lack of resistance. They reach the trees and the boy sinks down in a shady hollow, visibly relieved at the coolness of the earth. Zagreus crouches nearby, hardly daring to breathe. It’s rude to stare, he knows, but he can’t help it. Besides his grandmother, he’s never met another soul.
Demeter tells him tales of his Olympian family when she’s in an especially generous mood, but they always seem to end in jealousy, betrayal, or conflict. The kind of stories that dissuade their young listener from wanting to meet the protagonists.
This boy looks like no Olympian she’s ever described.
He’s blinking now, slowly adjusting his eyes. At last, he looks up; his gaze is golden, piercing.
“Is that better?” Zagreus whispers, not knowing why.
The boy nods. Licks his thin lips. “You have my thanks,” he says slowly. “And I am called Thanatos.”
Zagreus’ mouth shapes the unfamiliar name. “You’re not a mortal,” he observes.
“Neither are you.” Thanatos dips his chin, and Zagreus remembers his telltale feet.
“Oh,” he says again, wriggling his toes self-consciously. “No. I’m not. Um, how did you get in here? Not that I mind, but – well, nobody ever comes here apart from my grandmother and me.”
“Where is here, anyway?” Thanatos peers around at the trees. “I thought the mortal realm was frozen over.”
“It’s winter there,” Zagreus explains. “But we’re not in the mortal realm.”
“How so?”
“We’re – my grandmother says we’re adjacent. This garden, the cottage where we live… there’s something magic about it. Something divine.”
Thanatos shakes his head. A thoughtful movement: he’s not disagreeing, but considering. “It feels familiar.”
“Can’t be. Only my grandmother and I ever come here.”
“Hm.” Thanatos pulls up his hood and rises to his feet. “I should be getting back. I don’t know if Mother Nyx can see me here.”
Panic seizes Zagreus’ nerves, cold and sharp. “Wait, wait,” he blurts, knowing how desperate he sounds. “You never answered my question. How did you get in here?”
Thanatos appraises him. Then a subtle grin spreads over his face. “Like this,” he says, and vanishes.
Zagreus takes a half-step forward before he knows it, reaching instinctively. It’s no use; his fingers swipe through empty air and his heart plummets. He gapes stupidly at the trunk upon which Thanatos had been leaning, as though it holds the secret to his departure.
There’s a prickling along the back of his neck, and Zagreus whirls. Thanatos is standing right behind him, hands clasped over his mouth to keep from sniggering.
“You–!” Zagreus stares from Thanatos to the space where he’d been, and back again. His obvious bewilderment has Thanatos hissing laughter between his fingers. Somehow, it’s contagious: Zagreus smiles wide. “Do it again?”
Thanatos obliges, popping out of existence and emerging right above him. In a burst of mischief, he snatches the glossy green laurel from Zagreus’ head and disappears once more. Zagreus shouts in delight and gives chase when Thanatos pops up, laurel in hand. They race through the orchard, Thanatos whipping away every time Zagreus gets close enough to graze his fingertips against the hem of his robe.
“Okay, this isn’t fair,” Zagreus pants, throwing himself down on the grass. Thanatos sits beside him out of nowhere, resting his elbows on his crossed legs. “You’re not even out of breath.”
“It’s tiring,” Thanatos replies. “I’m still learning.” There is a slight flush on his cheeks, where his ash-grey skin has brightened. “This place is the farthest I’ve ever managed to shift in one go.”
“Really? You’ve never been to the mortal realm?”
Thanatos’ eyes narrow. “I suppose you must go there all the time.”
Zagreus shakes his head. “No, I…” He casts around for an explanation that doesn’t sound as paltry as my grandmother says I’m not old enough. “I’ve spent my whole life in this garden.”
There are a few moments of silence. Thanatos offers back the laurel and Zagreus takes it, settles it back in his hair.
“I should return home.” Thanatos sounds apologetic.
“Of course.” Standing, Zagreus brushes grass seeds off his tunic. Grandmother Demeter has taught him the basics of courtesy, and he suddenly sees the appeal. Masking his disappointment, he says stiffly: “I apologise for having kept you. But I, um…” He struggles to find the words and swiftly gives up on the formality. “What I mean is – would you come back here sometime, if you can? You’d be very welcome. I could show you around the rest of the garden.”
“I’d like that.”
It’s a simple reply but it blossoms something warm and hopeful in Zagreus’ chest. “Good,” he replies, beaming. “That’s good.”
“All right then.” Thanatos straightens, adjusts his robes. “Goodbye, Zagreus.”
He’s gone before Zagreus can even open his mouth to return the farewell, but he doesn’t mind. After so many years of solitude, to meet someone new – someone his own age – is a thrill beyond words.
The pomegranate is where he left it in the meadow, sun-warmed and waiting. Zagreus takes it back to the cottage and sits on the stone step to peel it. Tiny jewelled arils emerge, staining his fingers and lips scarlet.
By the time his grandmother returns, he’s come to a decision. She asks him how he spent his time and he shrugs, sheepish, and tells her he fell asleep in the meadow. Her lips purse in disapproval until he coyly offers her a brimming bowl of pomegranate, peeled and husked and glinting juicily. I picked these for you, though, he says, carefully earnest, and she softens.
It’s the first secret he’s ever kept from her. Part of him wonders why, even as the bowl is set on the table for the two of them to share. It’s not as though he’s left the garden, and Thanatos can come and go as he pleases. What harm could their friendship do?
Unable to articulate what holds him back, Zagreus presses a pomegranate seed against the roof of his mouth with his tongue. The burst of sweetness is accompanied by a memory: Zagreus, younger, listening with rapt attention to Demeter’s tale of how Zeus and his brothers overthrew their Titan father and established their home on Mount Olympus, cloud-shrouded and splendid. The two of them were eating pomegranate then, too, and Zagreus had leaned forward expectantly and asked, Grandmother, when can we go to Olympus and meet Uncle Zeus?
He doesn’t remember what expression her face wore, nor the movement of her hands. But he remembers the creep of frost over the half-peeled fruit on the table. Not so long as I maintain my power, she’d said, and her words were glacial.
Granted, Thanatos is very different to what Zagreus has heard of his uncle, but he’s never met any of his relatives except Grandmother Demeter.
He keeps his mouth shut.