The Garden

Hades didn’t come back that night. Not that night really existed in the perpetual gloom, but four hours had passed and Kore hadn’t seen him. He deserved the right to be alone, especially after the fight she’d had no business witnessing, but a lot of people seemed quite upset with the two of them, and Kore didn’t want him to stumble into something else she’d caused.

At least, that’s what she told herself when she couldn’t take waiting for him any longer.

She let herself out of the exterior door where she’d found him last time, but he did not sit on the pavers. A glance around told her he wasn’t anywhere nearby, so she picked her way along the path around the hill.

Kore felt the plants before she saw them. The sensation of living things made her head swim and her fingers prickle, a sixth sense that had been blind opening for the first time since she’d woken on the rocks. She followed the pull up the hill and found so much green she could have cried.

Kore hurried to the nearest plant, tracing its waxy leaves between her fingers. She groped with her power, feeling for the parts she couldn’t see with her eyes. The roots reached far below her feet, deep and strong. She breathed them in, letting the sweet, thick air fill her head.

Something that had been missing in her chest clicked back into place.

Kore drifted, dreamlike, further into the wild garden, if she could call it that. The foliage grew thicker as she went, shrubs and trees singing to her in the stillness. They thrived, healthy despite the barren landscape.

She stopped, stunned, when she saw the tree.

Fully leafed out despite the lack of sunshine, the twisted branches hung heavy with fruit. Pomegranates, she realized, and in season. The fruits would be ripe, ready to eat. Kore drifted towards them, reaching up to pick one.

Why hadn’t Hades told her about this? Surely, after seeing what she could do, he’d want her help here? Make sure the garden stayed healthy, continued to cling in its miraculous way to the rocky hillside?

Frantic barking stopped Kore before she could crack the fruit open. The skitter of rocks pulled her attention to the bottom of the hill, where Cerberus raced into view. He lifted his front paws, bouncing, all three heads yapping and whining. Kore had never seen him so panicked.

An image came to her, Hades lying in a ditch somewhere. Mother’s stalks wrapped around him, squeezing, driving the air from his lungs. Crushing, breaking, until nothing remained but dust.

I wish that sort of thing would have killed me, but alas, one of the many downsides of being immortal.

Bramble sprouted at her feet, thick and gnarled and full of inch-long thorns. She raced down the hill towards Cerberus, skidding on the rocks as she went. Her own steps almost drowned out another set running towards her.

Hades appeared out of the foliage. His eyes found Kore, the panic in his expression matching the one rioting in her head.

She didn’t have time to feel relieved that he seemed unhurt, because he closed the distance between them faster than she could blink. Chest heaving, he ripped the fruit out of her hands and sent it spinning into the garden.

He turned back to her with wild eyes. His hands found her face, his thumbs sliding along her cheeks as if trying to assure himself she really stood before him. “Did you eat any of it? Please, Kore, tell me I made it in time.”

Her own breath came in frenzied bursts. “I—no, Cerberus came, and I didn’t—Hades, what is going on?”

He held her there for several excruciating seconds, maybe assuring himself she was serious, or to calm his own panicked expression. Slowly, one muscle at a time, he relaxed. His hands fell away, but if he noticed them standing too close, nearly chest to chest, he said nothing.

“What are you doing here?” he asked instead.

Kore’s head spun. She couldn’t make sense of the last several seconds, and realizing that Hades smelled of good, damp earth did not help.

His gaze moved to her head, where she could only assume she’d sprouted a forest. “Of course,” he murmured to himself. “I should have known you’d want to come here. You can probably feel it from the house.”

Kore could only nod. “It was certainly a relief after the nothing I’ve been feeling for so long.”

His eyes found hers again, too close, and he must have realized how near he stood. A flush rose to his cheeks as he stepped back, clearing his throat. “Are you okay?”

If her heart rate could come down to something not threatening to burst out of her chest, she would be. “What was that about?”

“Your mother didn’t tell you this story?”

“She left out the important ones, apparently.”

Kore thought he would smile at the joke, but he only turned pensive. He looked over his shoulder, at the wild tangle of the garden and, buried somewhere inside, the tree. “The fruit of the Underworld is an old kind of power. Anyone who eats it gets stuck down here.”

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Kore waited for more, but none came. “You’re serious?”

He turned back to her, his expression pained. “Unless you never want to see your home again, you should stay away from here.”

“I didn’t mean…”

“I know. Luckily Cerberus is more intelligent than he looks.”

Kore watched the dog, sniffing among the rocks at the bottom of the hill. He found something interesting and lifted a leg.

“Good thing.”

Hades cleared his throat again, and Kore hoped he hadn’t hurt himself running after her. “I was looking for you anyway. There’s something you need to see.”

#

Shocked was an understatement. Disgusted, maybe. So angry Kore could feel the heat in her forehead and down her neck and in her toes.

It shouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen.

She stood in the middle of a copse of trees. Or, what used to be a copse of trees. They were little more than husks now, their bark soft and their leaves gone. Along the forest floor, piles of dead mulch had grown, waist-high in some places. No green ferns. No springy underbrush, no new growth of young shoots or low bulbs of mushroom caps.

It was the sixth such place they’d been to. First the mountains, the berries that should have been in season withered and brittle. Then the city, where the parks had sickened. Farm country, the rows and rows and rows that should have been heavy with produce barren and empty.

Any hope Kore held that Mother wouldn’t stoop to this wilted with a bitter taste in her mouth.

Hades stood beside her, waiting for her to say something. Kore couldn’t open her mouth, sure curses and shouts would come out if she did. She could only stare, and stare some more, and wonder how it had come to this.

Minutes had passed when he finally brushed her arm. Kore didn’t turn, knowing if she looked at him, if she saw the pity there, she would lose what little control she had.

“What have I done?” she whispered.

“You haven’t done anything,” he said softly beside her. “You’re not responsible for your mother.”

If only that were true. “Is it everywhere?”

“I think so. Humanity doesn’t have long now, in any case.”

Kore couldn’t answer. She stumbled to the nearest hollowed-out husk, reaching for the bark. It crumbled under her fingertips. “I have to stop her. Before she kills everyone.”

“How do you plan on doing that, exactly? Your last confrontation ended with you unconscious for six hours and the world looking like this.”

He assumed she would fight. Kore had thought about it, she couldn’t deny that, but she’d already tried such an approach, hadn’t she? She’d stood her ground, defied Mother, and look where that had gotten her.

“I’ll go back to her.” The words burned on the way out. “I’ll tell her she wins, and accept whatever happens next.”

Hades whirled on her. “If you give in now, she’ll own you for the rest of your life.”

“At least I won’t be responsible for the next apocalypse.”

“You’re not.”

Kore said nothing.

Hades’s fingers slipped under her chin, barely grazing her skin. He lifted her head until she met his gaze. “Don’t let her win.”

Kore closed her eyes. “She already has. You said it yourself, I don’t belong here.”

“What do you care what I believe?”

Kore turned her head, and Hades dropped his hand. She missed the warmth of his touch as soon as it left, but she wouldn’t yearn for it now, not when she never deserved it in the first place. “I’ve known you for two days, and in that time, I’ve heard you called a liar, a thief, a kidnapper, and worse. I’m ruining your reputation.”

He scoffed. “Because my reputation has been so great until now. Don’t worry about me, not if it means you would give yourself over to a cage.”

His reactions to Mother and Minthe told her he cared more than he let on. She wouldn’t let him shatter his last good standing against her. “I’ve made my decision.”

He spit curses at the sky, at the trees, at the ground. His hands lifted to rest on the top of his head. “You’re making the wrong choice.”

“Maybe. I’ve made it anyway.”

The set of his jaw told her he thought about saying something else, but he seemed to think better of it, walking away from her instead. He stopped at a dead tree, craning his head until he could see the last blackened branches.

She followed his gaze, catching movement among the sticks. A squirrel, leaping branch to branch. It paused on one, its tail wiggling, and chittered something across the canopy. An answer came back, and though Kore didn’t speak squirrel, she could guess at the conversation easily enough.

No food over here, either. What are we going to feed the kids?

She had to fix this. Any cost she paid would be worth it.

Kore snuck a glance at Hades, who still stood eerily motionless. Thinking, maybe, or cursing the events that had brought them together. Getting rid of her would be a relief for him, so she wouldn’t make him wait any longer.

“We’ve been here long enough. We should go.”

He didn’t respond.

Kore took a hesitant step in his direction. “I need to meet with my mother. Maybe I can talk her into—”

Hades held up a hand to stop her. Light played across his expression, something that might have been hope, if Kore wanted to believe such things.

She didn’t. Hope might crush her at this point.

“Hades?”

“You shouldn’t talk to her yet.”

Kore let out an exasperated sound. “We’ve been over this. She’ll destroy everything.”

Slowly, he turned to face her. “Zeus won’t let her.”

“I do not think we want to drag Zeus into this, too.”

“We’ve been thinking about this wrong. We don’t have to outlast your mother. Only him.”

Kore didn’t know how to respond. Hades may have turned out differently than the stories, but she very much doubted Zeus would. Even Hades had called his actions misdeeds.

Hades must not have noticed her silence, because he kept going, words tumbling out of him too quickly. “Zeus is strong enough to make your mother change her mind, and he’s in a position to do it without causing a war. He loves the humans, and he won’t let them fall to your mother’s tantrum.”

Old instinct railed at the word tantrum, and how that made Mother sound like a bratty child. But, Kore had to admit to a tiny, angry part of herself, the description fit.

He must have seen the skepticism in her expression, because he held out his hands in an imploring gesture. “Three days, that’s all I’m asking for. Give it three days, and if nothing happens, you can go back to her the way you wanted to.”

“I never said I wanted to.” Kore shook her head. “It’s too risky. The planet is in dire enough shape already.”

“Nothing is going to die in three days.” He paused, tilting his head as he thought about it. “Well. Almost nothing. Not enough that the whole ecosystem will collapse. Please, Kore. Consider it.”

Kore bit her lip. “Three days.”

“After that, we do what you want. But please, at least give yourself a fighting chance.”

She didn’t have to think long to know her answer. When she nodded, the relief that washed over Hades turned something in her stomach she didn’t know how to name.