Demeter paced the golden floor of her greenhouse pavilion. The glass walls once held warm light and growing things. Now frost crept up the columns. She gripped her twin torches tight. Their flames burned steady, but no green answered them. She wanted only one thing back. She wanted her daughter out of the dark. Her pig nosed at her heel, vines drooping from his shoulders. The fruit on his back had begun to shrivel. Even he could not bloom while she mourned. Demeter knelt and pressed her forehead to his. "Find the door," she whispered. "Find where he took her." The pig snorted and trotted past the dying hedges. Demeter followed, torches raised. The grass blackened under her steps. Trees cracked and bent away as she passed. She did not slow. Every field she crossed turned to ash behind her. They walked for hours through ruined country. At last the pig stopped at the edge of a wide black water. Steam rose from its surface. Red embers floated like dying stars. The river of the dead. Her grief had burned a path all the way to its shore. Beyond the water stood a gate of bronze and obsidian. Its arch glowed dull red. The doors were shut. No road led to them. No bridge crossed the black river. Demeter lifted her torches high. The light reached the gate but found no handle, no seam, no way through. She sank to her knees in the cold mud. The hidden path was not hidden anymore. It was simply closed to her. Her pig pressed against her side. Demeter stared across the burning water and made a new vow. If she could not open the gate, she would find someone who could.

Demeter still knelt in the cold mud at the river's edge. Steam curled off the black water. Red embers drifted past her knees. Her pig pressed close, his vines brown, his fruit going soft. Across the water the bronze and obsidian gate glowed dull red. No handle. No seam. Only the word shut, written in fire. She lifted her twin torches. Their gold light reached across the river and touched the stone. The doors did not move. An old force held them, older than her grief, older than her name. She felt it push back against her flame like a hand against her chest. So she did the only thing left. She closed her eyes and called her daughter's face into the dark behind them. Bare feet on warm grass. A crown of pink roses. A black dress trailing in spring wind. Demeter spoke softly to the picture. "I am here. I am at the door. I cannot reach you yet." The picture smiled. The picture did not answer. Her daughter's eyes stayed on the other side of the gate, kind and far away. Demeter pressed both torches into the mud and bent over them. A small sob shook her shoulders. The pig nosed her hand. Then she stood. She wiped her face with the back of her wrist. The gate would not open for a mother's tears, and it would not open for her fire. She needed a key that lived in another god's hand. She turned her back on the red glow and faced the long road up. "Up," she told the pig. "To the mountain. To his brother's throne." The pig grunted and trotted ahead. Behind them the river hissed. The grass blackened under her steps again, but now her steps had a direction. The gate stayed shut. Demeter walked toward Olympus.