Ghost Queen in the House of Love

19. Hedone

It's endearing to think of Melinoë, the stoic daughter of Hades and Persephone, as an infant. Learning how to walk, hobbling along the Styx with someone holding her tiny hand. It was even more so to think of the King and Queen of the Underworld, adorned in ghostly regalia, guiding a child around the Underworld. In all the gloom and boredom after death, a family can bloom. Love can thrive.

Melinoë says, "In the Underworld. Father and Mother rule as equals."

That doesn't make much sense to me, though I'd like to believe it. If anyone wants to desperately be a romantic, to believe in the poems and songs and tapestries, it's me. And yet I know that often the truth isn't always as pretty as what's etched on an amphora. A poet will say the man and woman are in a consensual chase, where she is teasing him, enticing him. But the truth often isn't so.

How can you be equals with the man who kidnapped you?

"I see," I say.

A shrewd light flits across her eyes. She can tell I'm unconvinced. "What do you know about Hades and Persephone?" She stands and goes over to examine a shelf of scrolls.

Following, I say to her, "He kidnapped her in a meadow and took her to the Underworld. And then he tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds, so she must stay with him in autumn and winter." Persephone must be with her mother now, and that is some consolation. How terrible it'd be, I thought once, to be separated from my parents. And then some years, I yearned to break away. To forge my own name, where I'm more than a postscript of their love story.

She tells me, "According to the laws of the gods, my mother wasn't kidnapped. Zeus gave Hades permission to capture and marry her."

Again, that sleight of hand. "What did she want?" I can't imagine Persephone wanted to be captured.

"The stories didn't say," Melinoë says. "Many times, they don't."

With a huff, I shake my head. "I'm not asking about the stories. You must've talked about it." I worry I ask too much, but it's unlike me not to ask many questions. In being authentic, I can be convincing.

"I suppose she wanted an escape. I'm unsure if she received it." She shrugs. "My mother and I weren't especially personable."

An escape? An escape from her own mother, Demeter?

"Were you closer to your father?"

Clasping her hands behind her back, Melinoë says, "Not especially."

With a hint of teasing, I ask, "Do you look more like him or your mother?" I could never ask my parents much about the Underworld, and not many speak of what the king and queen look like, as if just a mental image might strike terror in any heart.

She faces me. "My mother. But that wasn't my point, about not being personable." It can be intense to hold her gaze for a long while, with how little she blinks, but I take the challenge.

"Ah. What is your point?"

Melinoë replies, "We don't weep over one another. There's no use in weeping. It's a waste of energy."

I don't like weeping, but I wouldn't say it's useless. Mother said crying could be a relief, though she never cried in my presence. It's unfathomable to me to imagine Melinoë not missing her own mother; I missed mine every second I breathe.

All the same, whenever my face grows hot and wet with tears and a headache pulses behind my eyes, my sobs remind me of how much I like to avoid weeping at all costs. I never feel respite, catharsis. I become small and too aware of myself.

Humiliation, despair, those all come from tears; like the ouroboros, what causes tears only feeds them more, so when I try to stop them, the negative emotions only intensify because I remember how stupid I'm being. Father, Eros, isn't hot recklessness. Passion can be cold and calculating.