Menthe

Did I deserve it?

The punishment? Perhaps. But the reputation? Absolutely not.

It’s too neat, too pat. Show me a storyteller who glides easily over an important part of the story, and I’ll show you a person who didn’t bother to investigate any further than their tiny mind can fathom.

So what was it really all about, if it wasn’t two catty women fighting over a man?

Inheritance. Power. And politics, but I repeat myself.

My mountain, where I was born, which I claimed by right of such birth, is near Pylos. In Greece. It is far off, tucked away, and hard to get to. Just the way I like it. Me and my sisters form three mountain ranges that hover around a lovely bay that’s one of the safest harbors that Uncle Poisedon made on the Mediterranean, but with us standing sentinel, so difficult to get from bay to mainland. And we were fine with that. If it causes us to get, how you say, a “frigid” reputation, then so be it.

It allows us to do some of our own landscaping.

Demeter, if you’ll recall, is goddess of the grain. Grain. That stuff you find on the plains, not on the steep sides of the mountain?

Well, once Hades chose Persephone, it all went south, literally.

Why those stupid humans decided to put a shrine to Hades on my mountain, and not on one of my sisters’ peaks, I will never know. I do have a lovely view of the bay, and some sweet breezes – and a great view of any ship-battles that they choose to engage in. Which means the bay got bathed in bloated bodies on a regular basis.

Which means my front porch became a side entrance for the Lord of the Dead.

It did make it easier for Hades to collect his due, and those were spirits that Charon himself was chary to collect, since they usually died without any money on their person. And I would rather not have men-spirits wandering around and spoiling the view, so I allowed it.

And then I met Hades himself, as he exited his shrine to do his duty.

My, my, he was handsome.

Well, what does one expect to happen? He was not married, neither was I. We had that thing you call, a “situationship,” for many centuries. I prefer “friends with benefits,” because it was casual. A meeting of peers.

I knew he was one of the great gods. Those who spent their formative years in Cronus’ belly, ever-regenerating to offset the constant of being eternally digested, that is a thing that can only be understood by the siblings who were there, experienced it. He spoke of it very briefly, and that consummation with a being like myself, of only the lightness brought by Apollo’s chariot and the winds and the sky that Zeus established, that was a thing he cherished.

I could not compete. I loved my solitude too much to leave it all and make my home in the underworld. I had a small cave on my mountain, with a bit of the winds that blow in from the underworld. It made me uneasy. It was enough to guide him, enough to gather the attention of the men who built a shrine around it. I did not want more. Nor did I want his riches, for we could see that he would collect it all for himself, what Poseidon didn’t acquire by hurricane. Zeus’ domain would eventually spin to a stop, and Hades would own the greater portion, in the end.

But Demeter, friend of humans, only thinking ahead to the next planting cycle, had other plans.

She was also devoured by her sire, forced into growing up aside her sibs in his stomach. When Zeus chose Hera as his mate, but also sired a daughter on herself, she grew angry. She thought she should have the Queen of Heaven title, not “just” a country agricultural goddess of no consequence. She swore that she would no longer cooperate with her siblings and their political power plays, and took her daughter off to Mount Etna, in what would become Italy, to raise her without their influence.

Demeter taught her daughter well. Almost too well.

Hades had been with me, and we were gazing out on the sea from our height, when he spotted Persephone gathering the flowers she had created on the slopes of Etna. And from that moment on, I was invisible. It stung, a little. But if he was truly the one for me, we would have been married long already. I am young, and comely, and I could find other lovers to fill my time.

Persephone went willingly. I saw it happen. As has been said by others staring at the same story, there must have been some darkness in her that called to his. I already knew there was a more than a glimmer of light in his dark form, that was attracted to her greater light.

The problem was her jealous mother.

Demeter went mad.

She had her own plans for her daughter’s power, and now those plans were completely overthrown. She did not see a daughter grown up into her power, she saw a child that must have been misguided, therefore all who witnessed or assisted must pay.

Hades being chained to his domain was obvious revenge. What about Poseidon? He’d made the promises to his brother to assist in getting the girl, what about him? What about Demeter herself, holding back a strong goddess from her birthright?

Demeter couldn’t punish them, except with the bringing about the seasonal shift, and the sleep time of seeds. But she could punish me, for speaking up at Olympus’ council.

If we could see Etna from my mountain, then she could see me from hers. And the greening of my flanks, with plants I had created myself, without her input or Persephone’s – well, that was punishable, in her estimation.

She tried to destroy me, rip my body to shreds, destroy me like she herself is destroyed by each harvest.

Foolish, and short-sighted. If the regeneration magic works for her, then it works for me as well.

Persephone sighs and apologizes every time I arrive on her shore. I shrug, we have a cup of pomegranate tea in the Turkish style, and she sends me back home.

So what if I cannot have children? My plant grows best by rootlets, spreading like the weed I am, covering my mountain. My flowers are welcome food for the bees, which sweeten my tea.

And when men found my transformed body, and took it with them, it became a favored medicine and flavoring.

Demeter tried to get further revenge by making me part of the Eleusinian Mysteries. It satisfied her savage thirst to have me gathered, ripped apart, and served to her devotees, over and over. The fact that by including me, the Mysteries themselves thus revealed her own bitterness and anger in the story, and highlighted the fact that she took revenge on the only one she could touch. When Rome fell, and her Mysteries faded, Demeter thought she had finally won.

Except that now the children of men had a taste for my flavor. She may be the staff of life, but I’m the flavoring in the cookie.

And in ice cream, which she cannot touch.

My sisters and I like to savor some fresh-made ice cream in the evenings, here on our mountains. We gather around the ruins of the shrine to Hades and make it ourselves from the milk we gather from our flocks, and the eggs from our chickens. The steep slopes are crowded with my flower, food for the bees, so we get the extra honey in return. And we salute Demeter from across the Ionian Sea, raising cups and cones, and watch her grind her teeth in anger. And you wonder why Etna blows its top so often? Not that Hephaestus is at the forge, but that Demeter is raging again, the greatest loser in a war of her own making.

I am irritated that my story has been twisted out of all proportion by men’s tongues, and the jealousy of a goddess, but I do appreciate the sweet savoriness of my flavor. I have another lover now, one who matches well with me, from lands far across the ocean beyond the Mediterranean. I prefer to think of it as Poseidon’s apology, though you call it by a different name.

Would you like some mint chocolate ice cream? We just made a fresh batch.