Page 4 of The Ash Bride

“You didn’t feel like waiting for us?” Elektra said, her voice still tinged with annoyance about her earlier troubles with the stream.

Melia’s dark head bobbed out of the water long enough to say, “no,” before dunking back in. Persephone had been imagining the water embracing her all day, the whole hike here felt like the longest hour of her life – and she once helped her mother host a dinner party for the matrons of the nearby farms. She gently laid what she’d carried against the tree, next to Melia baskets and turned to join her.

One of Elektra’s baskets was flying at her head, she had just enough time to lift her hands to catch it – or try to catch it. It hit the ground with a hard crack, the weaving along the bottom edge came undone and the red terracotta bottom of a barrel popped out.

“Nice catch, Persephone,” Elektra said, already wading in the water with Melia, glaring at the back of her sister’s head. Persephone stuck her tongue at her friend just as Melia slammed a hand down on her sister’s head, and pushed her under the water. She held her there for a few seconds, smiling wickedly at Persephone, who was snort-laughing under the tree.

Shoving the barrel back into the basket and shutting the bottom of it best she could, Persephone unpinned her shoulders and let thechitonfall, catching it before it touched the dirt. She shoved it roughly into her own basket, not wanting to dirty it since she hadn’t remembered to bring an extra one. And then she joined her friends in the water.

It was colder than she’d imagined, crisper than she remembered it being last year. Yet neither friend agreed with her observation, stating the pool was in fact warmer than previous years.

They swam around the small pool, doing handstands and somersaults where it was deepest, splashing each other and floating on their backs where it was shallow. Persephone and Elektra took turns seeing who could hold their breath longest, and Melia packed a waxed wooden pipe with something she’d brought in her bags.

Persephone was the first to get out, stretching her arms above her head and twisting her body side-to-side as she walked onto the sun-soaked rock hanging over the edge of the crystalline pool. The surface of the rock was hot enough to burn the bottoms of her feet, but she relished in it, still cold from the water.

Slowly, Persephone crouched down onto the rock, laying her legs out in front of her, the backs of them burning on the hot rock. Eventually she was able to lay down, the sun warming her again. Propping herself up on her elbows, she watched her friends dunk each other deep into the water before finding long, slimy-looking branches from the edge of the forest to swing at each other’s heads.

She smiled at the sisters trying to kill each other in the clear blue water, opening her mouth to call winner for the next round.

Out of the corner of her eye, something dark appeared deep in the forest. She snapped her head towards it, but it was gone. No darkness, no person or animal or thing was in the trees where before…

Nothing was there. She shook the tension from her shoulders, pressing them down and away from her ears. Stretching her neck side-to-side, rolling her head in circles and staring at the sky, Persephone felt someone watching her.

Someone was there, she could feel it. She didn’t look again, knowing she would see an empty, dense forest. Nobody had ever found this secluded place except for them.

It must have been a deer, or some other animal venturing to the streams to escape the heat of the day. It definitely was not a person.

It couldn’t be.

§

When they were young and the days were scorching, Persephone had seldom to entertain herself, other than her friends, who had equally as little to do. They’d swim in the ocean, not far from her mother’s house, and lounge on the scalding sandy beach, digging their toes deep under the sand where it was cool.

They had had these special days, deemed Hottest-Day-of-the-Year though there was never just one, where they would run to the ocean and swim the entire day away, wishing they could swim naked like the men on the main beach. They always swam in the water surrounding the thin land bridge that jutted far into the ocean, so far that the people on the beach wouldn’t be able to tell if they’d kept theirchitoneson or not.

Persephone told her mother they liked going to the land bridge because the water was colder the further you got from the mainland, and that they wanted to see fish while they swam. Elektra actually wanted to catch a fish and Melia always complained that the water close to the populated shore was too warm, so the lie was believable. Demeter never questioned Persephone anyways, even at only two centuries into her immortal life.

The day they decided to take their Hottest Day activities elsewhere was the day Persephone died.

Or thought she died.

After they’d eaten the apples and figs Melia had packed, and scarfed down too much honey-soaked bread Demeter had made that morning, they drank the wine Elektra had stealthily stolen from the house. Demeter kept a vineyard’s worth of wine underneath the house “to keep it chilled,” or at least that’s what she claimed whenever Persephone complained and mumbled about having to grab the barrels.

They forgot to dilute the wine. And after several sips, all three were loopy and giggling and waddling around, barely able to stand. Being young, and reckless, they all thought the best thing to do when they could no longer control their own feet, was to swim.

The girls had joined hands and walked into the water, pulling each other this way and that as they stumbled into the ocean – fully clothed despite their plans to swim nude for the first time – until they were deep enough to swim. At which point, they released each other’s hands and dove deep, deep down into the icy cold ocean. The shock of the cold sent Melia back to the shore almost as soon as her head was under the water, but the other two only swam deeper.

The water was murky with the sand they’d trudged up stumbling out this far so Persephone and Elektra swam farther from the shore and into the open ocean. Hoping to catch a fish or two, Elektra ventured away from Persephone, leaving her alone, suspended in the frigid water.

It got colder the deeper she swam, but Persephone welcomed it as the sun had been blazing relentlessly hot for weeks now and she was sick of constantly being covered in a thin veil of sweat. Last week, when there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky for days, Persephone’s cheeks and shoulders burned bright red, later the skin flaked and peeled away in such a way that her stomach roiled every time she glanced at her reflection in the mirror.

By the time Persephone realized her lungs were burning it was so dark she couldn’t tell which way she had to swim to break through the water again. She wasn’t sure whether Elektra had returned to the shallow depths of the coast, or if it was simply too dark for Persephone to see her. To see anything really – she couldn’t even glimpse the sun above her, nor below.

With her mind muddled with wine, Persephone froze in the water, letting the currents knock her back and forth, up and down while she tried to work through the sluggishness of her thoughts and remember what she knew about water. But the need for air was overwhelming and the burning in her chest clouded her already foggy mind. She didn’t know what to do, still unable to tell which way was up.

Was she supposed to lie on her back and float like a boat or bunch herself together to sink like a rock? The latter would be easier, she’d just push off the bottom once she hit it, but what if the bottom was further down than her body could handle? What if she ran out of air and couldn’t make it back up? She opened her mouth to scream for her mother, to pray to Demeter, to Poseidon, to come save her from the icy clutches of Oceanus; water sloshed into her mouth and choked down her throat.

Clawing at her throat, Persephone didn’t notice when warm arms wrapped around her waist, fingers digging into her soft body, until they were pulling her down, down, down, deeper into the water. She thrashed against the strong grip, slamming her fists against the arm holding her tightly against their body.

---