Posted on September 25, 2005 by Jenna
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Flagging this as something I’m totally going to let myself change later. I’m not at home and have a real time deadline. I’ll remove the flag if I’ve edited to taste. For example, I’m currently uncertain of the closing line, and might not actually edit. ^_^
Update, 5 years later: I’ve never been totally happy with this series, but I won’t be fixing it until the archives are working at least up to Island of the Centipede.
The Underworld is full of things.
There are the little roly-poly round things. They’re like pillbugs. If you poke them, they’ll curl up tight. Then they’ll curl you up with them.
“Help!” you might cry. “I’m stuck!”
But nobody will hear you except the bug-eating giants, and so that’s hardly a win for you.
If Persephone destroys the Underworld, then the roly-poly round things will be gone. Maybe they’ll blow up. Maybe they’ll scurry down. Maybe they’ll just vanish. But they’ll be gone.
No more stories of great heroes descending into the Underworld and getting rolled up by little bugs before they return.
Legends, maybe, but not stories, because those bugs will be lost.
There are shark-human hybrids in the Underworld. Everyone knows that. If there weren’t then who would swim up just when you thought you could relax and do horrible human things to you with their horrible human teeth?
Down in the Underworld they swim.
There are little fish that live near their teeth, little Crest-brand fish that live near the teeth of the shark-human hybrids and dart in between meals to gnaw the scraps from the horrors’ mouths. You can find them in the Underworld, and in Greece, and, really, everywhere where Crest’s ancient inhuman power isn’t bound by the sevenfold law of the FDA.
And if Persephone destroys the Underworld, then the fish will die.
And the shark-human hybrids will die.
And there will be a silence in the deep.
Perhaps they will go on in some form, of course. It’s hard to say. Where is a soul after a soul-eater’s eaten it? Where is a light after the candle is snuffed? Where will be the noble shark-human hybrids and their terrible blunt teeth?
But we can call it “dead.”
Also in the Underworld there are the streaks. They’re colored red, yellow, and green. They’re in the air, like a classical painter got really tired after painting the Underworld and went suddenly modernist in frustration. They jangle and twist when you look at them. The souls in the Elysian fields can’t see them. The souls in torment in Tartarus try to ignore them. One day Tantalus will eat one and find that it tastes just exactly like artificial pudding, which in turn tastes more or less like his son Pelops. That’s why he will always look so funny when he eats a delicious vanilla Jell-O pudding cup. It’s not the flavor. It’s the nostalgia!
And if Persephone destroys the Underworld, then the streaks will be gone, and any purpose they might have to their long and colorful deaths will pass. And perhaps there will be a few lingerers, one or two stragglers, a few bright streaks of red and chartreuse hanging on the surface of the void, but they will go away and the ones who stay will die.
There are the burrs in the Underworld. They live under things. That’s why you don’t want to poke too much at things under other things in the Underworld. There could be burrs. The Underworld is already under other things, so it makes sense that going too much further under would be spiky. But they’re not spiky because it makes sense. They’re spiky as a natural evolved defense mechanism. It protects them from predators!
There are echoes. They’re not actually Echo, who didn’t die precisely but who made the wrong promise and couldn’t be human any more.(1)
(1) For reference, if Zeus ever asks you to make a promise pursuant to one of his pursuits, consider carefully the consequences. They’re not always as nice as you might imagine, and sometimes they involve having pampered tourists at the Grand Canyon shouting at you all day.
The echoes in the Underworld are not actually Echo, but they are the echoes of distant footsteps, and you can hear them if you try.
If Persephone destroys the Underworld, then the burrs will be gone. The echoes will be gone. There will be nothing but the emptiness where once there stood the cathedrals of Hades and the legions of the dead.
No more will trails of blood call the unliving back.
No more the Elysian fields; no more Tartarus; no more Hades; no more Persephone.
She can do this. It’s in her history, if you read back far enough. That’s what a Persephone does. She ends everything. She takes it away.
So as she stands there, with Hades holding out the pomegranate, Persephone licks her lips nervously and then she bows her head.
“Whatever,” she says. “You can do what you want, I guess. I won’t kill all this stuff you made.”
This is a pretty common decision for someone in her position to make, even though everyone always criticizes them for it later.
And she finds firmness in it and a sense of strength, so she lifts her head.
“I’m letting you live.”
And Hades says, “But that’s not what I want.”
“Huh?”
“End it,” says Hades. “Reach down to the nature of this place and make it an undiscovered land.”
Persephone blinks.
“Let it be a mystery,” he says. His face is avid. “Let no one know what happens here. Let them hope or imagine that it is a place of joy. Let them dream with bloodlust of their enemies suffering here in torment. Ease this from the world. Make it not known. That is what I have brought you here to do. That is what I have chosen.”
And she looks at him. And he looks back.
And she says, “You can’t make that choice for me.”
“I can,” he says.
“You can’t!”
And they’re both right, of course. They think they’re disagreeing, but they’re not. They’re just in the grip of Semantics, that bleak god, cousin to Ananke, from whom alone of all the gods and men great Zeus is free.
Egarwaen on November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am said:
Sparrowhawk on November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am said: