Persephone's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

Persephone walked with Hermes away from her mother's gate. The snow thinned. The ground hardened. They stopped at a place where three roads met, marked by a low stone arch with red light banked inside it like coals. A small shrine to lost travelers. Hermes planted his winged staff in the frozen dirt and leaned on it. "I can take you anywhere," he said. "But you have to name it. My sandals do not guess." The snakes on his staff caught the red light and seemed to breathe. Persephone stared at the three roads. She had no name to give him. Every god she could think of feared her mother's grief or fed on it. She pulled the enchanted pomegranate from her cloak. It glowed faintly in her palm, full of the sorrows she had poured into it. A gift for someone. She did not know who. "Think of it like a sick room," Hermes said. His voice was quiet. "Your mother is the patient. She will not take medicine from her own hand. Who does she let sit at her bedside? Who has she ever let close enough to argue with?" Persephone closed her eyes. She thought of the gardens where Hades had first found her. She thought of the witch at the crossroads shrine in the underworld, who had given her the crown of runes without being asked. A keeper of roads. A keeper of women who walked alone. Someone her mother had once trusted enough to fear. "The crossroads," Persephone said. "Take me back. To the witch." Hermes pulled his staff from the ground. The red light in the arch flared once and went still. "Good," he said. "That one will at least open the door."