Great Goddesses Read online

  that bound them together

  on this mountain’s cold stone.

  Advice from Hestia to Girls

  You are not made of paper.

  If you were, you would have

  turned to ash a long time ago.

  You are more. Bone, and muscle,

  and beginnings and endings –

  evoke that when the world tries

  to convince you that you are small.

  You are not stone. Your heart is warm,

  but seek no homes in other people’s chests,

  seek no truths there while your own heart,

  each throb, reminds you of your true home.

  You are not made of paper.

  Paper is easy to use and crush,

  and you were not made for that.

  You were made flame first.

  And fire is born knowing

  its elemental nature.

  It knows the mystic force in shining alone.

  Goddess of Harvest

  You have known giving

  better than you have known

  grieving, but the world forgets.

  The best of Gaia’s granddaughters,

  your fingers both heal

  and make flowers burst to fruit.

  Amber wheat, bountiful,

  you have been mother

  not just to Persephone,

  but to every child who does not sleep

  hungry across this land. Yet, empty coldness

  gnaws at your own belly.

  For when the harvest season comes,

  and the farmers rejoice and pay

  a thousand tributes to you,

  you are weeping and alone.

  For you know well enough

  what is coming next.

  Garden Walks with Demeter

  Yesterday in my garden, I met Demeter

  bringing spring roses to bloom while I was wondering,

  ‘How powerful is my mother’s love?’

  And she planted a kiss on my forehead and answered,

  ‘When Persephone my child was stolen from me,

  I plunged the world into darkness.

  Not a single flower could bloom or grow.

  When she returned, I brought the whole earth

  back to life, everything bathed in sunshine.

  That is what a mother’s love can do.

  It can bring winter in all its fury,

  or summer in all its purity.’

  A Friendship: Demeter and Hestia

  When we were girls,

  we promised each other forevers

  believing we will never change.

  They are both little girls, caught inside a prison made by their own blood. They cling to each other in that darkness for years, raising each other on the promise of freedom neither of them know will ever happen.

  It is there that they learn the true value of leaning on each other. Where Hera, Poseidon and Hades talk of vengeance, Demeter and Hestia communicate in possibilities.

  ‘What will you do when you are free?’ Demeter often wants to know.

  ‘I will warm every corner of the earth,’ Hestia says, shuddering inside this cold prison. ‘And you?’

  ‘I will fill fields and fields with flowers so we can play in the sun.’

  The answers are always the same, but they never grow tired of asking each other the questions.

  They never grow tired of helping each other to hope.

  Years later, when they are finally freed, they spend all their time together learning newer secrets about their Goddess personalities. Fire becomes Hestia’s strength; her role slowly evolves to protect home after home. Harvest and growth become Demeter’s domain.

  Every victory by one is celebrated by the other. When Demeter first raised a whole field full of wheat to harvest, Hestia hugged her and pulled her into a very un-Goddess-like dance that they both collapsed from, laughing like they were little girls again.

  When Hestia mastered her first flames between her fingers and nearly burned down half the forest she was practising in, Demeter hugged her so hard, she could scarcely breathe.

  There was no victory too small for celebrations. No story too great to be kept secret between them.

  *

  ‘What you did to her was cruel, it was remorseless and you forget your place, brother,’ rages Hestia at Zeus, a dangerous glow illuminating her features, her fury impossible to contain.

  ‘If you do not like the way I rule my own domain, you are welcome to leave,’ snaps Zeus. He will not be made a fool in his own home, especially by his sisters who he considers lesser divinities.

  Hestia watches the downcast Demeter hold her middle where her child was growing and raise her head high. ‘We shall both leave then.’ Demeter steps forward, her rage making every one of Hera’s roses wither to nothingness. ‘I would rather my child be safe than be here.’

  Hestia takes her sister’s hand and glares at Zeus with her. ‘Olympus will fall under you.’

  They leave together, set up homes in the mortal world.

  True to their words, neither of them ever returns.

  *

  Kore is a beautiful child in every way. Demeter and Hestia raise her to grow flowers, and dance in the sunshine, and always have warmth – things they never had as little girls.

  Demeter asks Hestia one evening as the Goddess of the Hearth slowly stokes the fire in their dear little fireplace, ‘What if she leaves?’

  Hestia pauses, and puts the poker down. ‘Then we let her go.’

  ‘What if I can’t?’ asks Demeter, and Hestia sees the fear in her eyes.

  ‘Then I will help you learn.’ Hestia hugs her sister fiercely with the reassurance she knows is needed.

  *

  Kore does leave. Demeter falls apart. Falls into denial. Grief rots the flowers, the fruits, the world.

  Hestia comforts and cares.

  Hestia rebuilds and replenishes.

  Hestia holds and heals.

  Demeter’s grief causes her to wither and wilt and become a quarter of the Goddess she was.

  Hestia goes into the underworld, to reason with Kore who now calls herself Persephone.

  Kore visits them. She is no longer the soft, dark-haired child who left them, but the redheaded, majestic Queen of Hell who insists on being called Persephone.

  Demeter’s face is white with rage, but Hestia places a hand on her arm to stop her.

  Quiet, controlled, Demeter asks, ‘How could you abandon me this way?’

  Persephone eyes her mother wryly. ‘Would you have let me go any other way?’

  For a second there is silence, other than the wood that crackles in the fireplace.

  ‘No,’ says Demeter finally. ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  Persephone settles back. ‘Now you know.’

  They sit quietly for the rest of their time together, until it is time for Persephone to go.

  *

  ‘She’s a silly little girl.’

  ‘She’s a woman in love and is loved in return. That is a powerful thing.’

  ‘Love means nothing.’

  ‘Love, dear sister, is everything.’

  Demeter looks at her sister hard. ‘How would you know? You have never loved anyone in your life.’

  Hestia smiles serenely, ‘Not in that way, no. And I never will. But I do have someone I have loved enough to leave family and home for.’

  ‘Who?’ demands Demeter.

  ‘You.’

  *

  Every love does not have to be made of desire.

  Some loves are kept for the people

  who stand by you through everything.

  Some soulmates are sisters not lovers.

 
Some loves are for those who give you hope.

  And some for the strength, for wisdom, for dreams.

  Demeter to Hades

  (A Mother’s Fury)

  You smell of death.

  Everything about you

  is an endless goodbye.

  I will give this union no blessings.

  Not when even your presence

  will harm my fae daughter.

  She is a child of flora,

  of fauna, of fruit,

  too gentle for your hell.

  You overestimate yourself here,

  in the land of the harvest,

  daring to return to ask

  me for my most precious thing,

  what you stole. Beware, King of Death,

  for I am Queen of the Living,

  and this deified land’s roots

  will hold you forever in place

  if I say a word to will it.

  Give me my girl back,

  now, today, and I promise

  no harm will come to you.

  Persephone to Demeter

  Do you remember what happened

  the first time I touched a pomegranate shrub?

  Instead of bursting to a full red fruit,

  it wilted and mottled under my fingers

  until you snatched it and brought it back to life.

  We both knew in that moment,

  I nurtured something in my chest you

  couldn’t bring yourself to love.

  So you kept me hidden, deep in a forest

  where no one could find me,

  the darkness an ugliness festering

  under this, my pretty nymph skin.

  But, Mama, he found me. He saw me

  nourish this beast in the woods,

  fell in love with the part of me that

  no one else could, promised me a land where

  I could be a queen and not another version of you,

  a place where I could unleash my flaws and fury

  without having to disappoint you. They told you

  they could bring me back to you, to pacify your anger,

  so you could bring back the spring.

  They needed you to remind the birds to sing,

  but, Mama, you gave birth to a girl

  who knows her own mind. He didn’t snatch me

  and take me to hell. I went there because

  I wanted a queendom destined to be mine.

  Hades to Persephone

  I sensed you before I saw you.

  The sugar flavour of meadow wrapped

  nectar in the air, and my eyes searched

  for its source, your face the essence

  of what I had been waiting for

  all those cold and lonely years

  my family had made me the guardian

  of Elysian and hell, until you stepped

  into my world like a galaxy bursting

  in front of an astronomer’s telescope.

  Tell me, with all those speckles

  on your skin did anyone tell you that

  you are a constellation, waiting to be loved

  and explored? Did the bumbling River-Gods

  who tried to court you ever understand

  that you were destined for so much more?

  I saw you, Spring Goddess, restless in your loneliness,

  pulling at crimson flowers to watch them die,

  wondering if immortality was worth anything

  if you were powerless to have any control

  over your fate or your destiny. Come now,

  tell the truth. I saw you rattle at the invisible

  chains of smother, of boredom, of too

  much comfort.

  Let me give you the challenges

  you need: the mastery over

  your own fortunes

  and the legacy of a queen.

  Allow me the privilege to be the darkness

  behind your shining star, become the queen

  of my kingdom of dead and show those who did not

  understand you for the Goddess you really are.

  Persephone to Hades

  You are still the kindest thing

  that ever happened to me,

  even if that is not how our tale is told.

  Where everyone told me I was destined

  to be a forgotten Goddess who nurtured

  flowers and fostered golden meadows,

  you saw how the ichor in my blood

  yearned for its own throne.

  You showed me

  how our love can transform

  the darkest, coldest realm

  into the happiest of homes.

  Persephone to Theseus and Pirithous

  Be wary if you have come here

  with hearts full of lies,

  eels instead of tongues,

  desecration in your eyes.

  Heroes and villains all end

  in the shadows of the same Hades

  you have so arrogantly penetrated,

  hoping to steal a Goddess from her God.

  Styx will not stop you.

  Cerberus will not kill you.

  Hecate will turn a blind eye.

  Tartarus will simply smile at you.

  They all know what you forget,

  that not a soul mentions the name Persephone here.

  Not because she is forgotten or too small

  but because she is the terror that makes fear swell.

  Once daughter of the Goddess of Harvest,

  Once Goddess of the Spring,

  now the proud dread queen

  of all hell.

  Persephone and Hades, After

  Being in the business of death means that you never actually go out of business. For until a cure for mortality is invented, the underworld will always be full of souls and Hades will always be king.

  If he had known this when his brothers tricked him into being King of the Underworld while they took the sky and the sea, he would not have spent millennia brooding about it.

  His immortality and his kingdom both secure, and thousands of underlings to watch over the dead, the fields of Asphodel and Elysian, Tartarus and the banks of the river Styx, he has finally earned time to do what he always wanted to do.

  *

  Persephone still comes home to her mother; their relationship has improved over the centuries, but she misses her husband more each time she has to leave him.

  Even now, sitting across from her mother and aunt in their comfortable red armchairs, in the warm glow of the fire, she misses the blue flames of Styx, the walks through Elysian and Asphodel, Hecate’s palace, and even more than all of that, she misses her role as Queen of the Dead.

  Forever torn between her role of bringing life into the flora and fauna of the world and ruling over the kingdom of hellfire, she is secretly glad that the days of spring are reducing so that she can be with Hades.

  She says nothing of this to her mother, however.

  She knows how sad it makes her mother to still have to say goodbye to her daughter every year.

  Her mother’s uncompromising love is also why Persephone will never have children. She couldn’t bear to love someone like this.

  *

  The shelter is unlike any shelter ever seen before. For one, it is its own island. Canopies of trees, golden beaches, fields and grass, and a large shelter made of bricklike material with thousands of comfortable dog beds.

  Secondly, it is run by the strangest people anyone has ever seen, and they are rarely seen at all. So many television crews have found their way onto the land and only been greeted by its sole residents, very happy and playful dogs.
Once in a while they see a pale man in black. Or a striking maiden with long red hair. But as soon as they try to approach them, they are gone.

  When she returns, everything is much the same, for what could possibly change exponentially in the land of the dead? She stops at Hecate’s palace for a long conversation. She smiles at Charon who bows to her, and gives Thanatos a hug, the only one he ever allows to do so. These are the parts of her that are the joyful child-like goddess of spring.

  Then she walks into her own palace and greets her husband with the kind of gentle, soul-searching kiss that comes after so long apart. The kind which says ‘I missed you, I love you, I am so relieved to be home.’ They go together to their throne room, regal, beautiful, eternal.

  Persephone sits by Hades’s side, on a throne made of skulls intertwined with black roses. He looks over and takes her hand, interlaces it with his and kisses it, his usually cold eyes warm.

  He keeps his tenderness for her, she knows this; to others, he is the cold, unfeeling dread lord of the vast underworld – feared, incapable of love or emotion, executer of punishments that last eternities, never ever to be crossed.

  But she knows something about him that no one else knows. That when the day is over, and the deeds of all the dead settled, they will go to their island for a long walk, surrounded by the new dogs Hades has rescued while Persephone has been away and he will introduce them all by name to her. She will smile and pet them all on the head, because she understands his love for dogs so well. They are loyal in a way their Olympian family has never been to them, a way for them to know truly unconditional love widely and well.

  Even the dread King and Queen of the Underworld make gentle attempts at compassion in a world that is slowly forgetting how to burn the flames of kindness forever.

  The Messenger, the Trickster, Guide of the Dead

  Let there be eloquence.

  Let there be a God

  who toys with the metaphysical

  for capricious reasons and nothing more.

  Call him thief and messenger,

  trickster and guide,

  watch him wear all these names

  with equal pride.

  Let there be a paradox.

  Let there be a half-devil