She’s Ready for You

The old man sat in his chair, staring out the window. The olive trees were blooming, the delicate flowers having burst forth from their buds. He could smell the little white petals in the breeze off the Mediterranean. His small cabin was close to the water, but his neighbor had a sprawling grove that stretched between his home and the cerulean waves.

A knock, soft and gentle on his door. The man was quite startled by the unexpected noise. No one had visited him in decades. Ever since that fateful day he turned when he shouldn’t have.

He pulled himself up from his seat, groaning at the ache in his knees, the needles in his spine. He grabbed his staff, the stained wood worn and weathered from use. He hobbled to the door, another knock sounding, a bit firmer this time. His gnarled hand wrapped around the handle, turning it and pulling it inward.

She looked exactly as she had the last time he’d seen her. No, she was different. Younger, somehow. She had been the picture of regal beauty before, her pomegranate colored dress hanging from her thin, pale body. Her hair had been darker too, a deep brown like chocolate that cascaded down her back in perfect curls.

Here she stood before him different, her face a bit fuller, her cheekbones not quite as sharp. Her complexion was darker, the sun bringing out the natural olive tone. Her hair was a bit brighter, more of a honey brown than it had been. She wore a green dress with threads of gold interwoven in. But it was her eyes that had changed so much: they had been dark and slightly hooded then. Now they were wide, almost unnaturally large and bright, green with flecks of gold, just like her dress.

The man inclined his head deeply, no longer able to bend his back in a full bow.

“Lady Persephone,” he intoned.

The goddess stepped forward, entering his home as he moved aside and swept his arm in invitation. She held a basket of flowers, hyacinths, ranging from lavender to pale white to bright pink. She was barefoot, but despite the recent rainfall, not a speck of mud splattered them.

“How can I be of service, my lady,” the man said after she said nothing.

“Sit, please,” she said, gesturing to the man’s chair as if this were her domain, not his. Even still, he obeyed. She reclined upon his sofa. “I trust you remember the last time you saw me.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said.

“Please,” she said. “No titles. Not here. Here, on the surface, I am just Persephone.”

“My apologies,” the man hesitated, “Persephone.”

She pursed her lips, but even it didn’t lessen her ethereal beauty. Her flawless face and eternal youth could not be marred by something as trivial as a facial expression. He doubted anything could make her unattractive.

“I wanted to visit you after,” she said. “But my husband thought it unwise, and after some consideration, I agreed. You needed time to mourn, to grieve. I didn’t want to come and prolong that process. And once you had found a sense of normalcy, it had been so long…I didn’t want to disrupt your life and dredge up old feelings.”

Thinking about her now, Eurydice’s smiling face, still felt like talons were closing in around his heart, squeezing his lungs near bursting.

“Yet you return now,” the man, Orpheus, said.

“Yes,” she said. “First, to apologize.”

“Unnecessarily,” Orpheus said quickly. “I knew the terms. They were clearly given to me. I did not hold up my end.”

“Your feet were at the threshold, halfway across,” Persephone said. “You were excited. I begged Hades to send her back, to allow her to cross over as well. But everyone was watching. Every god and spirit and nymph in the world. Your song had not only split the walls of the underworld. It had torn at the hearts of every immortal above as well.”

Tears brimmed in his eyes, but he did not let them fall.

“Even so,” he said, “I failed.”

“Hades sympathized,” she continued. “But he could not appear weak with all of those eyes on him.” She glanced at her hand in her lap. “Secretly, I think he wishes he had allowed her to join you.”

“Why tell me this now?” he asked. “I mean no offense, Lady Persephone, but I am an old man now. It’s been nearly seventy years. I am 91 years old.”

“It is precisely because of your age that I came,” she said.

It took a moment for her words to settle within him. And mere seconds after their meaning sank in did his door swing open silently.

Death strode in gracefully. His robes, black as night, covered Thanatos, the god of death from head to toe. Not an inch of skin was exposed, only his pale face materializing from the shadows of his hood. He did not look surprised by Persephone’s presence here. In fact, he seemed as though he had been expecting it.

He bowed to her, so deeply, he was nearly folded in half. “My Queen,” he said, his voice deep and beautiful. A baritone, Orpheus noted, so low and comforting it instantly relaxed him.

“A moment longer, please,” she said.

“I do not decide these things myself,” he said. “The chord has been snipped.”

Orpheus knew it too. He felt it. The feeling of no longer being bound in his sagging, wrinkled skin. He felt light, airy.

Persephone turned back to Orpheus, a mournful look in her eyes.

“I came to deliver you a message now, at the end of your life,” she said. “She’s ready for you. She’s waited, patiently, just inside the gates, still within sight of the Styx, hearing distance of Cerberus. She’s waited so long,” she said, “and she’s ready for you.”

The tears that had gathered did finally fall, vanishing into mist as they fell from his skin.

“And I wanted to give you a gift.” She looked him up and down and he felt her power hit him. Renewal and rebirth and youth. He looked at himself. And while he was still dead, he appeared just as he had the day he had lost her, the love of his life, Eurydice.

“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t deserve her. I failed her. She is dead because of my weakness.”

“She loves you,” Persephone insisted. “Do not let your own shame keep you from her a moment longer. Her heart yearns for you, an ache that will not go away until she once again sees your face.”

“How do you know all this?” Orpheus asked as Thanatos drew closer, draping his long arm around the man, now appearing to be little more than a boy.

“Because I speak to her, every time I cross the river to rejoin the land of the living,” she said. She quickly stood. “I do wish you two the happiest of afterlives. And who knows? Perhaps Hades will have you brought to the palace to sing for us. Though, perhaps nothing as mournful as your last visit to the Underworld.”

Death’s hand extended and Orpheus took it, instantly appearing at the banks of the Styx. And across the black water, a girl stood, a gray dress blowing behind her in a phantom wind. And a smile bloomed across Orpheus’ face.

“Eurydice,” he breathed.

Orpheus, her lips moved in reply.