Music and Prophecy

Kore had been to parties on the farm. Birthdays, Midsummer, and the winter solstice were all excuses to weave flower crowns and paint banners, stew mulled wine over the stove and listen as Mother recounted tales of long ago and creatures of good and evil.

What Kore walked into that evening resembled none of that.

The music reached her, pounding in her chest, far before she saw the building. Lights strobed into the darkening sky, bright enough to flash greens and purples across the clouds even though the sun had not sunk fully below the horizon. Something sweet and heady on the air made her wobble, but since Theo and Violetta didn’t react to it, she said nothing and continued following them.

They walked all the way to the edge of the compound, to one of the last warehouse buildings on the property. Though Violetta had complained the party wouldn’t be in full swing until the moon came up, the place already swarmed with people. Kore saw outfits showing more skin than not, and a whole lot of glasses filled with suspiciously luminous liquids, and dancing of the kind she thought must physically hurt the people doing it.

If Kore had second thoughts—which she didn’t, and she would say as much if anyone asked—she pushed them aside. Violetta practically dove into the building, and Theo didn’t seem to hesitate either, so Kore followed with the most confident expression she could muster.

The warehouse spun in wild swirls of purple and green. The music pounded so loudly she couldn’t hear Theo and Violetta talking, not two feet away from her.

Kore leaned closer. “What?”

But Theo shook her head and pushed her further into the room. “We agreed to meet outside in two hours.”

When Kore looked back, Violetta had disappeared into the crowd. Kore stretched on her toes, but she couldn’t spot Violetta amongst the writhing bodies. Her stomach turned, and Kore wondered, briefly, what would happen if they all needed to get outside at once.

“Don’t worry about her,” Theo yelled in her ear. “Let her have her fun. It’s not like we get so much of it at home.”

No, this sort of thing would be unheard of on the farm.

She followed Theo deeper into the party, copying the way Theo gently pushed people out of the way, or spun to move around them. Kore was bumped more than she would have liked, and once she brushed up against a dancing woman and came away with an arm slick with sweat. She used her jacket to wipe away the residue.

A memory came to her, bony fingers sliding along her skin. Soulless eyes yearning for something she could not give, swarming closer and closer until Kore had nowhere to go.

Thankfully, Theo startled her out of it by pulling her into an emptier corner of the building, where several coolers and aluminum drums had been stashed. Kore tried and mostly failed to take deep breaths.

“What do you want?” Theo yelled over the din. “They have wine and beer and some hard sodas. I can look for something non-alcoholic, but I can’t promise anything.”

Kore shook her off and stepped past Theo to rummage in the cooler herself. She came up with a can printed with waves and the words Black Cherry.

“Be careful with those,” Theo said as she picked another can for herself. “They’re good, but they’ll hit you faster than you think they will.”

Kore nodded. She’d only have one, then. At least after that, she could say she’d done it.

The can fizzed as she popped the tab. When she took a tentative sip, the bubbles slid pleasantly down her throat. No wonder Theo hadn’t wanted to tell her about any of this.

Two people meandered to their corner, and Kore recognized the men from the plant. They’d changed out of their business attire, trading the slacks for jeans and the hard hats for neon jewelry around their necks and wrists. The one who’d taken the truck keys smiled when he saw them.

His lips moved, but Kore couldn’t hear him over the music. She leaned closer, tilting her ear in his direction.

“Glad to see you made it after all!”

She smiled and nodded.

“The good stuff is happening out back. We’re headed that way if you’d like to join.”

Kore didn’t know what good stuff might be. A glance at Theo said she might not want to.

The men read her hesitation. “No worries if not. Hermes and Apollo are out there now, if that changes your mind.”

Kore slipped a hand into her jacket, feeling the ridges of the coin. Did she want to see Hades enough to brave whatever revelry had brought both Hermes and Apollo to the same place?

She didn’t even have to think about the answer.

The men led the way out a side door of the warehouse. The pounding music eased, and Kore worked her jaw to loosen the ringing from her ears. They walked around the back of the building, where a little patio had been constructed, complete with couches and an awning to keep the sun off. A long fireplace had been lit in the center of the patio, the blue flames reflecting in the clear class rocks.

This place was crowded, too, though most of the attention seemed to surround two men sitting side by side on one of the couches. Kore recognized Hermes right away, though he’d ditched the hat he’d been wearing the last time she’d seen him, his golden curls shining in the light of the fire.

Lounging beside him had to be Apollo. He looked like he’d been poured from a tall glass, all long limbs and face like still water. A guitar rested on his lap, which Kore didn’t know why he’d brought out, since she could feel the warehouse music in her body even out here. His long hair hung in intricate, patterned braids before twisting into a knot on the back of his head, and the smile he leveled at Kore made her heart beat faster even though she hadn’t given it permission to speed up. Color splashed up one arm, paintings of flowers and birds and trees all wrapped in a geometric pattern that seemed to move with the muscles rippling under his bronze skin.

Hermes saw her first. He squinted, then grinned, nudging Apollo with a shoulder. “It’s the girl I was telling you about. Demeter’s kid.”

Apollo looked up from his guitar with dark, soft eyes. He smiled too, though his expression registered as much more genuine compared to his laughing companion. “Kore, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.” He motioned to the couch across from him. “Guys, can we make some room?”

Grumbling sounded from the immortals asked to move over for her, but they shuffled and rearranged themselves so two spots appeared on the couch. Heat crept into Kore’s face, but she pushed it down. She had a goal, and she wouldn’t let embarrassment keep her from it now.

She and Theo sat.

Apollo plucked an idle melody across the strings. “Glad to hear you made it home. Hermes says it was quite the show.”

Kore wondered how much Hermes had stuck to facts when he’d told that story. “I’m happy to be home.”

“And yet, this isn’t exactly the kind of establishment I thought I’d find a child of Demeter.”

Heat rose into her cheeks again, though embarrassment had nothing to do with it this time. “Turns out we’re two different people, no matter what my mother would have the world believe.”

Apollo laughed. “You must have been more than a handful for Hades.”

“You know him?”

“Through stories. Most of us aren’t allowed to go where you’ve been.”

“Speak for yourself,” Hermes scoffed. “Some of us can get around a treaty.”

“That involves reading more fine print than I’d like,” Apollo answered over his shoulder. “I’ll stick to the sun and sky.”

Kore sipped from the can still in her hands. She glanced at Theo, who kept looking at Hermes in all the subtle ways she could manage. A pang lanced through her chest when she realized why.

Kore slipped her hand through Theo’s and squeezed.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Hermes, oblivious or incredibly good at looking it, leaned back into the couch. He kicked his sneakered feet up to rest on the edge of the fireplace and laced his hands behind his head. “It’s not like you’re missing much, anyway. Place is a dump.”

“I’ve heard as much,” Apollo agreed, his fingers dancing over the strings, “though mostly from you.”

“It’s not so bad,” Kore heard herself saying. “It’s barren and windswept, sure, but the black glass buildings are unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

One of Apollo’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve been to the palace? I’ve heard it’s been closed off for years.”

Kore realized she’d talked herself into a corner. She couldn’t very well say she’d been in the royal suite and not have that taken every way she didn’t intend. Even Theo had a hard time believing nothing had happened between her and Hades, and that was without explaining the way he’d woken up beside him.

So Kore forced a smile she hoped looked convincing. “Only from the outside. We went through downtown to reach the surface.”

“Ahh. Too bad. I would have loved to know how Hades lived.”

Kore could have said that he had a house, chic and shiny and comfortable. She could have told stories about the dog who liked to lick her face and be scratched behind all six ears at once, even though she did not have enough hands to appease him. She almost did, but Apollo, who laughed at Hermes’s terrible description of the Underworld, who plucked his guitar and had never even seen the place he denounced so easily, did not deserve such information.

A discordant sound snapped Kore back to attention. The guitar had slipped from Apollo’s hands, Hermes barely managing to catch it before it hit the ground. His body stiffened, his gaze fixed somewhere behind her, but when she turned over her shoulder, she saw nothing.

“Is he okay?” Theo asked.

Hermes set the guitar on the ground beside him. “It’s a vision. He’ll be out of it in a minute.”

The group around them quieted, too. Kore was familiar enough with visions, as Hecate also had the gift of foresight. Hopefully, whatever Apollo saw turned out to be much more benign.

An excruciating minute passed before a pained sound escaped Apollo. He slumped, his long limbs falling listlessly and his head careening towards the side of the couch. Hermes caught him, setting him back on the cushions.

“That’s it,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft. He reached for a red plastic cup and held it out. “Here. Drink.”

Apollo’s eyelids fluttered. He rolled forward, and Kore thought he was going to dive headfirst into the fireplace. But he only folded his body and put his head between his knees with a groan.

Hermes winced and settled a hand on Apollo’s back. “It’s a bad one, huh?”

If Apollo heard him, he didn’t show it. He instead straightened with a grimace, and when he opened his eyes, they found Kore. The stare lasted long enough to make her uncomfortable.

Without warning, Apollo stood so abruptly the couch scraped backwards and the guitar twanged in protest. He said nothing, only walked away, back towards the warehouse.

The silence he left behind hung heavy enough to choke them. Kore shared a glance with Theo, who seemed to second the apprehension raging in her head about coming here.

Hermes was the first one brave enough to speak. He ran a hand over his curls, his expression pained. “You’d better go and talk to him. I haven’t seen him react like that since his ex got too close to the sun.”

For longer than she’d like to admit, Kore didn’t know who he spoke to. When Theo nudged her, disbelief stilled her tongue.

“Whatever he saw, you had something to do with it,” Hermes said when she didn’t move. “If I’d already almost caused the destruction of every living thing on earth, I’d go find out what it was.”

Pressure rose behind Kore’s eyes. She pushed it down.

“Usually, I would advise not to follow a god that upset,” Theo added. “But Hermes is unfortunately correct. I can come with you, if you want.”

The last thing Kore wanted was to go looking for trouble, especially when she’d found so much more than she’d wanted already. Worse, though, was the idea of putting Theo in the middle of whatever she’d done now. She shook her head and stood before Theo could follow.

What had Hades called her? Powerful? She would get through this. Surely one angry Apollo couldn’t be worse than a beach full of the dead?

She found him around the side of the patio, away from the partygoers who had spilled into the cool night air. He crouched against the wooden slats making up one wall of the awning, his hands on his knees and his head bowed between them.

Kore didn’t want to risk scaring him, so she scraped her shoe over the blacktop.

Apollo’s head snapped up and he squinted against the gathering darkness. Whatever he saw, it made him stand, even if he did lean most of his weight against the slats.

“I came to see if you were all right,” Kore called. “I’m not familiar with foresight, but that didn’t look fun.”

“Some visions are easier than others.” He shook his head. “Whatever you’re going to do, don’t.”

Kore stopped walking. “I’m sorry?”

“I don’t know what happened between you and Hades, but it can’t continue. It’s best to leave him to his kingdom and you to yours.”

“I don’t have a kingdom.”

“Regardless. I can beg if you’d like me to, though I’d like to keep my dignity intact.”

“Why does everyone think something happened?” Kore fought the exasperation in her voice. “Or that something will?”

Apollo’s head tilted. “Maybe they can see something you can’t.”

“I doubt it.”

“Want to bet?”

Kore might not know much, but she wasn’t stupid enough to place a wager against a god of prophecy. No matter how much she knew he was wrong.

Apollo studied her for a long moment. His eyes narrowed, as if deciding something, and he held a hand out to her.

“If you’re asking me to dance, the answer is no.”

“Do you want to know what I saw?”

“You can show me?”

“It’s not a nice feeling. But if you’re so curious, you have a right to know—it was about you.”

Kore shouldn’t. Mother had told her trusting gods would land her nowhere good. She should listen, for once in her long life.

If only Mother hadn’t been so wrong about other members of the Pantheon, Kore might have heeded her advice.

She reached for Apollo’s hand.

Ringing erupted in her head, a screech that forced her eyes shut. Her ears told her she was moving, spinning, flipping upside-down, but the rest of her said she’d remained firmly on the ground. The fries she’d enjoyed for lunch threatened to reappear.

It took a long time for Kore to feel secure enough to open her eyes. When she did, she wanted to shut them again.

The world around her had wilted. Trees turned to husks and sticks, grasses shriveled and cracking underfoot. Large swaths of the hills around her lay barren, little more than rock and dirt.

Confusion swept Kore in a wave. This wasn’t the future, but the past. She’d been here, stood on these hills and faced Mother and fixed it. They’d had the meeting and she’d gone back home and the world had turned to normal.

The scene shifted, a whirl of color that threatened the fries again. Screams reached Kore before she righted herself, grieved wails lifting the hair on her arms. Kore blinked and found herself on a city street. She knew this place—she’d been there on the day she visited Zeus’s office. People clustered in shuffling mobs in the road, or huddled in makeshift shelters strung along the buildings. Gaunt faces stared at her, sunken cheeks and thin necks moving too slowly. A woman, the one screaming, knelt in the middle of the street. She held a child in her arms. The boy’s head hung limp over her thigh.

Another shift, this one a little easier to bear. When Kore steadied herself, she stared directly at another copy of her own body. This one sat before the fireplace in the royal suite, the shadows along her cheeks flickering with the fire. An iron circlet nestled in her curls, twisted black flowers forming a ring around her head.

She turned over her shoulder and when Kore looked, a strikingly familiar outline entered the suite. Hades smiled when he saw her, lowering himself to sit beside her. Kore watched, the ability to form words leaving her as her own figure raised herself on her knees to greet Hades, pressing a long kiss to his lips. When they parted, Hades reached for her hair and plucked a white flower, lifting it to his nose and inhaling the scent.

Kore stumbled. The figures couldn’t hear her, there was no way for them to know she watched—but her own avatar turned, and when her eyes found Kore they glowed a deep, bloody red.

The ringing returned. Kore heaved out of the vision with the same panicked freefall as slipping from a tree branch. She felt herself hit the ground, then hands on her shoulders guiding her upright, helping her rest against the wooden slats herself.

“Deep breaths,” Apollo’s voice came from somewhere far off, through a tunnel. Kore followed his instructions, trying to pull air into a body that wanted nothing to do with it. “You’ll feel better in a moment.”

“What was that?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

Kore shook her head. The lot came back to her slowly, the asphalt under her legs and the music in the distance and Apollo, crouched in front of her, the lines of his face concerned. For once, the notion was warranted; Kore wanted to throw up.

She’d kissed Hades. More than that, she’d looked happy doing so. Kore liked him, she couldn’t lie about that to herself. But he had Minthe, and those red eyes…what could have happened to her? And to the others, the woman crying for her child as the world burned, dead, lost—was that the price?

“I’m no stranger to loving someone you shouldn’t,” Apollo said softly. His arms rested on his knees, his hands hanging limply in the air. “As someone who’s lost those loves too often, sometimes with consequences I didn’t intend, let me be the one to tell you—it’s best not to start.”

Kore shook her head slowly. “I keep telling you. I’m not with Hades. I never was.”

“Good. Keep it like that, and maybe the Fates will be kind enough to let this one slide.”

“Are you always right?”

“What?”

“The visions…do they always come true?”

Apollo pursed his lips. “I wish I could comfort you by saying no. But one way or another, they’ll come to pass.”

Kore clenched her fists. “I won’t let it. Not again.”

“I admire your conviction, but if I understand correctly, you’re not the one who gets to make that call.”

“I’ve stopped it before.”

“I hate to inform you that if your mother destroyed the ecosystem once, she can very well do it again.”

Kore’s throat closed, but she pushed the feeling away. She would not cry, not in front of Apollo. “I won’t let her,” she whispered.

“That’s a fight for you and her.” Apollo held his hands up. “However, I am interested as to how you think you’re going to do it, given that unless Zeus has been handing down new mandates and none of us noticed, she’s the one who deals with all of this, not you.” He motioned a hand at the surrounding area.

Kore could make things grow. She did it as easy as breathing, sometimes by accident. Mother relied on her and her abilities to keep the farm alive and expanding as the human population did. But no matter how she tried, Kore could not make things die. That power belonged to Mother alone.

Kore dropped her head into her hands.

Apollo sighed. “I wish I had better news for you.”

Kore laughed at that, even if the sound came out wobbly. “What, girls don’t like it when you tell them the end of the world is their fault?”

Apollo smiled sadly. “Can’t say that gets them going, no.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

He offered a hand, this time to help her stand. “We should get back, before your friends hunt me down for keeping you too long.”

“Is it normal for you to keep girls too long?”

A sheepish expression then, and Apollo cleared his throat. “If they want me to.”

Kore could see why. She’d be lying if she said a part of her didn’t want to stay, too, but had other responsibilities. She needed to know why she’d seen the earth barren and scarred for a second time, when Mother had looked her in the eye and said she’d never do such a thing again.