WHO Persephone & Hades WHEN Sunday, 1st May WHERE Their home WHAT Spring has sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the birdies is WARNINGS mentions of their beginnings?
Frost-locked all the winter, Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits, What shall make their sap ascend That they may put forth shoots? Tips of tender green, Leaf, or blade, or sheath; Telling of the hidden life That breaks forth underneath, Life nursed in its grave by Death.
Before Persephone had arrived, the garden of Hades’ New York home had been a barren nothing, a patch of grass only marked by the trees that had been put in long before the home was his.
Over the course of their winter together Persephone had barely paid it any attention, rarely even finding a reason to go out the back at all when she could be inside with her husband, king and queen of their own small above ground kingdom.
But when the first suggestions of winter receding began, Persephone’s attention was drawn outwards and to the earth behind that readied itself for spring. Within Persephone, too, the chill of winter was melting off and the desire to bury her hands in the fertile soil was stronger and stronger.
Persephone should have been feeling the call of her mother, should have been abandoning the home of her husband and seeking Demeter instead. But Demeter was somewhere in places unknown to the pantheon, and so the call never came. Whatever force it was that compelled Persephone each year - the very thing that had made her move away so that she wouldn’t be torn between them - was absent.
So with Hades she stayed, happily so, prone day by day to a little more silliness with him, a little more softness. It was not the Persephone that he was used to, but it was the Persephone that he had once seen in a field and taken for himself. A gentler girl-child, a spring flower: that had been the first Persephone that Hades had ever known, before he broke her down so that she could build herself back up.
He had formed her into the woman she was. That was simply a factual assessment, devoid of all moral or emotional judgements. She had been a wide-eyed child stolen and ravished by the king of the dead, and those violations had built her into a queen of iron.
Persephone had centuries ago stopped mourning for her lost youth and innocence, because it was just the way of the world. Besides, Persephone liked who she was and the role she owned. Hades had given her that by taking other things away. Their love was hard-won, their marriage sacred, fought for with their own blood on each other’s hands. Persephone would have it no other way.
And because of Persephone’s presence, Hades’ back garden was flourishing. If any neighbours had been able to see over the tall fences they would have found themselves surprised by how quickly it had grown, how lush it had become.
Today she was repotting the pink statice, pressing it into the dirt between the peonies and the yellow tulips. Peonies didn’t usually like to grow so close to tulips, their needs so different, but they were flourishing anyway. Flowers wanted so much to please their mistress and they stretched out towards her however they could.
There was very little lawn left now: instead Persephone had put in a small paved area at the end of the path where an outdoor table and chairs had been set up, while everything else became fields of flowers, an assault of colours and bright scents. During the freezing winter she’d stayed so much indoors, but now she’d started taking every daylight meal in the garden, the lilac and magnolia shading her, and the borders edged with love-lies-bleeding and crocus and hellebore.
There was a pot of iced tea waiting for Persephone on it now, waiting for her to stop delighting in the soft fertile earth beneath her nails.
When an eastern bluebird came to land on an unsteady peony stem Persephone straightened up, running the back of her wrist against her forehead to get the hair out of her face. Watching the bird, Persephone pursed her lips and mimicked a bird whistle as she lifted her hand in front of her.
The bluebird hopped off the branch and onto the waiting finger of the goddess, bouncing and turning as it watched the garden for dangers. In winter, animals didn’t come near Persephone. Most animals could sense that she carried death on her and they kept their distance, and in winter Persephone found animals of little interest.
But with the warm weather came the return of the birds and the small mammals and even her mother’s most sacred of sacred serpents. Like the flowers, animals simply wanted to be near the goddess of spring. (Dionysus had once told Persephone that she was his second favourite Disney princess. She'd never found out who it was ranking above her.)
Persephone gave another whistle to the bird on her finger and it whistled back with its own song. The two of them were both dressed the same, Persephone’s orange and blue summer dress a match for his beautiful plumage.