The Truth

PART FOUR

KORE

Half-blind from the tears falling down her cheeks, Kore ran from Mother’s office. She sprinted down the porch steps and across the fields, all the way into the woods. The barrier pushed against her but she didn’t mind, only forced her way through and stood on the other side, gasping.

As soon as she made it across, the fall air cooled the flushed skin of her arms and face. Strange trees surrounded her, ghostly white birch with its silver-dollar leaves fluttering in the breeze, and tall, dark pines making strange shapes in the night.

Kore hadn’t meant to run so far, she didn’t think, though she had to admit a small part of her rejoiced at the idea of taking something so forbidden. She wouldn’t be gone long. An hour, maybe two to collect herself, and she’d push herself back across the barrier to the tune of Mother’s apologies.

At least, that was the plan before she heard the voices.

Kore couldn’t make out the words, hushed against the still of the night, but the tone sounded suspicious enough. The edges of an artificial glow cast unnatural shadows between the trees, and before Kore could talk herself out of it, she drifted closer.

She should have turned around. Lay there and waited for them to leave. Anything, really, except walk towards the hushed conversion, curious to see these humans Mother had told her so little about.

Two men stood over a hole in the ground, freshly dug if the pile of tilled earth beside it gave any indication. They’d dug both wide and deep, large enough for Kore to lay down inside and far enough down she couldn’t see the bottom.

“Hello,” a voice said. One of the men, noticing her. “Are you lost?”

The lantern threw long shadows over him, dark lines under his bronze curls and deep eyes, his wide cheeks and thick neck. He wore a business suit, a jacket and shirt and matching pants, which seemed strange. Perhaps humans dug pits in the forest wearing clothes nicer than hers, but Kore didn’t think so.

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The man standing beside him seemed much more in tune with the occasion. Burly and round, he’d opted for a simple shirt and canvas pants, both of which had been stained irreparably. A big, metal brace surrounded his right leg from ankle to thigh. It shone silver in the flickering light.

The first man smiled in a way Kore thought might have been meant to comfort her. “Did you come from the farm?”

“Whose farm?” The second man asked. “Demeter’s?”

The hair rose on the back of Kore’s neck. How did they know Mother’s name?

The first man nodded.

“Father,” the second one rebuked, “you said this place was abandoned.”

He waved his companion off. “It may as well be. They don’t come this way. Their entrance is on the other side.”

Kore took a step back. These people couldn’t be human; they knew too much.

“It’s all right,” the first man cooed, noticing her fear. “We’re not here to hurt you. We have some business, then we’ll be on our way.”

Kore wondered what business required digging a pit in the middle of the night.

The second man leaned on his shovel, flexing the leg in the brace. “What’s your name, girl?”

She might not know much, but telling them her name did not seem like a good idea.

“I’m Hephaestus,” he continued when she said nothing.

That, at least, Kore recognized. Hephaestus made many of the tools they used on the farm, enchanted to help the work go faster. She didn’t have time to be comforted by his familiarity, however, because he’d called the first man father. Which meant Kore had stumbled off the farm and come face-to-face with Zeus.

Mother was going to kill her.

Zeus seemed to catch the second she recognized him, because he grinned, the expression nothing like the carefully soothing one he’d had before. “Do you know what we’re doing here, nymph?”

Kore shook her head.

“Would you like to?”

“Father, no.” Hephaestus said. “What are you doing? You know the rules.”

“I hardly think one nymph will upset the balance of the universe.”

“Look at her, she’s terrified. Let her go home and we can finish our task here.”

“We’re done.” Zeus tossed a small metal disk into the pit. An eerie blue glow drifted up after it, the color far too unnatural to be anything good. “I have a favor to return to Hades, and I think this one will serve that purpose nicely.”

“Whatever happened between you, two let it go,” Hephaestus insisted. “At the very least, keep your revenge to yourself. She doesn’t deserve to be caught in the middle.”

Zeus only grinned again. Kore made the first good decision since stepping into Mother’s office that night—she turned and ran. She would aim for the barrier, throw herself across it and promise Mother never to even think about leaving again.

She made it two steps before a thunderclap sounded behind her. Kore fell, tumbling through the ground and into the dark.