Asphodel

It was warm and sultry on the day that the viper sank its teeth into my Eurydice’s ankle. We had been out in the meadows, among the field and the trees, and the sun shone bright. But we made a fatal error. Perhaps it was foolish, or maybe neither of us were to blame, for it is so easy to forget what darkness exists in the world when you have lived for so long in the sunlight. But there it lurked, right among the flowers and tall grass.

I found her lying in the serpent’s nest, a pit cleverly hidden by the grasses and shade of the trees. Having mastered song and the lyre, I was aware of the power that the music wielded. Had I wished to, I knew that with the right notes and the proper passion I could enchant kings and queens, even the immortals that lived among us. But I knew no song that could cajole a corpse into living once again.

I spent much of my time in the meadows afterwards, where for a brief time we were allowed our happiness. I don’t know what I expected from the memories, but all that I felt was a numbness that, somehow, was able to grip me by my very core without overshadowing the sorrow that threatened to consume me. Still, my hands swept along the lyre, and I plucked at the strings so that they sang for my lost bride. Even when I left the meadows, I could not stop with that song. I clung onto it as if were sanity itself.

People would still stop to listen to my music. But there was no more simple awe or light glint in their eyes. They wept now, and eventually, everywhere I went, I was told the same thing. Go to Hades himself, they told me. Surely there must be a way to convince him to give up a single soul.

To Hades, I would be nothing more than any other mortal, just another soul that would one day cross the River Styx and inhabit his realm. But music, that was something of a different fabric than mortals and gods, and perhaps that could guide me to Hades and change the god’s mind. So I convinced myself.

So with my lyre, I went to the entrance of a cavern where it was said that the world of the living trailed off into the underworld, and I descended down into the Earth. The caverns started to change, the deeper I went. A chill was growing increasingly present, and the rocks faded into a washed out gray. I brushed a hand against the cavern wall, and the stone had become cold and clammy, a thin layer of moisture covering them. But when I exhaled, there was no condensation forming in the air. This was no place where one needed to breathe. I knew that I was beyond the land of the living.

I eventually reached the River Styx, and there was Cheron, the ferryman of the dead souls. He charged just a small fee to cross the river, but I had not thought to bring any coin. Beyond him, even, there was Cerberus, the great three-headed dog, guarding the entrance into the afterlife. But they both fell under the spell of the lyre, and I passed deeper into the underworld until I reached the king and queen of the dead.

I saw her there, finally, just a shadow lurking behind Hades himself, and his own bride Persephone. Persephone, who was dragged into the depths of this dusky place straight out of a sunlit meadow, just as my own Eurydice had been taken from me. The underworld and the dead had made her eyes colder than I would imagine. Truthfully, I had never laid eyes on the queen of the dead before, but these were not the eyes that just any god or goddess would possess. They were eyes that had been harrowed with the sight of countless souls crossing on into oblivion, a realm where they would wonder among naught by gray. Even now, just before my eyes, Eurydice was but a gray smudge against the stony backdrop she stood against.

I thought of this, of her, when I finally took my trembling fingers to the lyre once again. I could feel Hades’ eyes boring into me, and I made an effort to look away, ignoring the shame that I felt at the fear of his gaze. Every once and again, I would let my eyes drift to the queen. She wasn’t always confined to this place, she was allowed to walk free on the Earth for a part of the year, every year. And no matter how gloomy this place was, she must have remembered it. Beneath the ice that she wore over herself in face of the dead, there was compassion, I knew.

My eyes did not move from her as I ended the song, save for the occasional darting to Eurydice. I had to be sure that she was still there. A gray shadow was something that could disappear so quickly.

The whole journey by now feels foggy and dream-like. I do not remember much of what immediately came afterwards. Just that there was Persephone’s impossible empathy, and I dared myself to think that Hades himself looked somehow moved. Vaguely, I remember that he said I could take Eurydice with me back to the world of the living, but there was a condition. That I must not look back, no matter what. That I must trust that my bride was following me, until both of us emerged in the world of the living. But ah, the walk back to the world above, that is something I remember quite vividly.

The shadow that was my wife stepped forward, into step behind me, and that was the last that I was to be able to see of her until we reached our destination. Quietly, my breath catching in my throat, I turned back the way I had come and began to walk.

It was easy enough at first. I saw no reason why she would suddenly stop following me, and my relief at the unfolded events of my journey still rushed through me. Death’s eyes still felt as if they were burning against my skin, watching my eyes step, every movement of my neck and every twitch of my eye for the slightest sign that I had somehow caught a glimpse at Eurydice. But I followed his rules. The burning did not ease, but still, she was there.

By the time I had reached the halfway point, doubt was setting in. It seemed something that would be foolish to not anticipate, I realized as I thought about it there. Perhaps she had been snatched by something lurking in the shadows, or faded into those shadows herself. The shadows of dead souls were strange things, and perhaps the shadows of death itself would not be so quick to give up its souls. Perhaps the god of death had decided to play a cruel trick on me, to assert his power. But as I continued on, resisting every urge to look back, I realized that there was something more than doubt. There was unquestionable fear lurking inside me, and not just a fear that Eurydice was not following me.

I strained my ears, trying desperately to discern footfalls. But amidst the sounds of the river and the restless dead, the whispers and the cold clanking of stone against stone that was everywhere, it was impossible to tell. But a new sound was coming into earshot now, a strange scuttling noise. I felt a chill creep down my spine, and how I longed to steal a quick glance behind me. For a moment, I wasn’t even thinking of Eurydice. My mind had reverted back to times of childhood, when something was always creeping behind one in the dark. And alone and in the darkness of another world, I did all that I could and carried on. My neck ached, a physical desire to turn around and steal a glance burning there. Soon, I consoled myself. Soon. You’ll see your wife again, and not as a pale shadow in death. In the full spectrum of color, full of life and light once again.

But the strange scurrying would not go away, as I had hoped it would. The air around me grew thicker, and there was a hissing noise now, creeping through the heaviness. It made its way to my ear, sounding as if it were whispering something, but in some serpentine tongue that I could not understand. The scurrying sound drew closer, the whispers more frantic and wild. The unknown language tore at me, as I debated between wanting to know what it could mean and wanting to get as far away from it as possible. But it followed me, no matter how much I quickened my pace, and I soon felt myself breaking into a run.
Sweat ran down my skin, and my hands swiped at it in a futile attempt to rub it away. But the air was so heavy still, and my limbs were growing weary.

“Eurydice…” I whispered. There was not a sound from my wife in return. Let her be behind me, I thought to myself, or perhaps to the gods. Please. Let me get out of this place and step into the sunlight with her once again. But still, there was only that crawling noise, the hissing. My mind was descending into full-blown panic, and I could see the light of the world of the living approaching. My aching limbs pushed themselves harder, and I climbed the final peak of the caverns into the light of the upper world.

Without thinking, I turned my head.

Eurydice had not yet surfaced. Although to this day, I cannot say if my wife ever followed me at all. The thing that had accompanied me was gray of skin, with milky white eyes containing no pupil or iris. It had claws, as a mole would, which thrashed behind me, nearly closing in on my skin, and when the mouth opened, there were the fangs of a serpent. The creature was damp, it's dark hair clinging to it, and smudges of earth and rock bits stuck onto the skin in clumps. I gasped and pulled back, my eyes widening in horror, but at the same time I had the vague notion that this could be my wife, and one of my hands extended to the creature by reflex. But the light touched upon it, and it screamed. Whether it was the sun or some force pulling it down, I don’t know. But she, it, disappeared, as if an invisible hand had reached out and dragged it down by its ankles, and I found myself once again alone and alive.

Perhaps Hades had played a cruel trick on me. It was the music, not I, that had been able to hold any enchantment over the dead, and I myself had avoided to look at Death’s burning gaze as I played my song. Or perhaps something in the depths of the underworld had changed her. Fear gripped me that day, but something has by now changed in me. I know that it will end, and soon. There are women whom I have angered in my scorn, in the way that I have ignored them and played the music that sang of my lost Eurydice, of the animalistic claws that reached out for me, the spectral thing that may or may not have been her. And these women have their own weapons, their own ways to tear me apart.

After years of being alone and reflecting on my brief experience in the world of the dead and my journey back, I can say that I no longer fear the god Hades. I could look him in the eyes now as I play the lyre, although with a solemn humbleness which would surely make me look even smaller than a usual mortal soul under his powerful gaze. It didn’t matter now. Maybe there was that creature waiting for me, still, with its claws and indiscernible messages hissed into my ears. Maybe, it I was fortunate enough, the soul of my wife, nothing like the creature, lingered somewhere down there, unchanged by the underworld. I will find out, soon enough. Until then I continue on with the lyre.