Chapter One

Persephone, Secret of a Teenage Goddess

Jennifer Cook

Have you ever felt as if the long winter and the dark days would never end? That little crystals of ice would remain in your blood, chilling your heart forever? Have you felt as if the grey days and driving rains were sent from the heavens to beat you down, to smother all joy?

But just when you fear you will collapse under the weight of all your winter clothes it happens. Your skin feels it first. A subtle prickling as your powers open to drink in the first rays of sunshine they have felt in many dark days. You stop what you are doing and, like a sunflower, you turn your face to the source of the rays and are surprised to see the grey clouds swept away to reveal the pale blue beyond. Eagerly you start to shed your garments, peeling away the layers to better bask in the warmth.

Then you smell the air and you can almost taste the promise of new life swirling on the wind. Perhaps there is the heady scent of jasmine or the sweet perfume of jonquils. The coming of spring, the warming of the Earth, the lengthening of the days and our hopes as we turn our face to the sun. The great thaw.

That is what I do. I am a goddess. Well, to be strictly correct I am Persephone, the daughter of the Earth Goddess, Demeter. For thousands of years I have stood beside my mother as a personification of spring in all its glory. We are Ancient Greek Gods, part of a glorious pantheon ruled by my father, Zeus. Once we were powerful, with mortals gladly slitting the throats of those most prized beasts to win our favours.

But that time has passed, mankind has moved on to other divine beings, and we have disappeared into the mists of myth, only to be glimpsed by scholars and students, or perhaps children whose parents have a fondness for fairy tales.

Sometimes we find ourselves summoned by those who call themselves witches as they attempt to capture the old ways. Their intentions are often innocent enough but the words to move the Old Ones have long been lost and their clumsy patchworking of our rituals lacks the power to hold our gaze for long.

Which is just as well. Our time on this Earth has passed. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t got a story to tell. My own story. Not my mother’s, not what has been written about me by poets and scholars, but what happened to me, in my own words.

But to hear my story you must first know the tale that has been told about me for more than two thousand years. Here is what has been sung by traveling bards and captured by scholars. I was known as Kore (pronounced kor-ay, not like the remains of an apple), which in the tongue of the Ancient Greeks meant `girl’, and that is what I am, the personification of all things innocent and pure. My mother, Demeter, adored me and I led an idyllic life frolicking in her protected garden with nymphs and sprites as my playmates.

But unbeknown to me, my beauty had attracted the gaze of my uncle, Lord Hades, the God of the Underworld. Not that incest was a barrier to the gods – why even Zeus himself was married to his own sister, Hera. Hades went to Zeus to ask for my hand in marriage but my father, in his wisdom, could not give him consent for fear of angering my mother. But he could also not refuse his own brother.

So he just turned away and said nothing.

In the language of the gods this was all the permission that Hades needed to do as he wished. He conjured a magnificent flower to appear in my mother’s garden. It was the narcissus, a glorious bloom that enchanted me from the moment I saw it, so that I plucked it to wear in my hair, changing my world forever.

The instant the plant loosened from the soil, the ground beneath my feet split open and Hades ascended from his realm and abducted me, taking me to the Underworld.

When my mother discovered that I was gone she wandered the Earth, vainly searching for me in every town, village, field and forest. And when at last she discovered my fate, she refused to let any crops ripen until I was returned to her side. Mankind would suffer an eternal winter and die a slow and terrible death unless her only daughter was returned. My mother’s pain would end the world.

So Zeus agreed to let me go to my mother as long as I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything during my time in the Underworld. Simple enough – except that I had. The seductive flesh of six delicious pomegranate seeds had sealed my fate. My mother was appalled, but Zeus agreed to let me return to her side for six months of the year if I spent the remainder entombed in the earth with Hades. 

That is why, when I ascend to the beautiful Earth each year the flowers burst from their buds and the sun streams from the sky. It is simply a mother celebrating the return of her much loved and only daughter. And while I am on Earth I lovingly tend the plants and flowers and young animals, encouraging them to grow fast and strong.

Then, when it comes time for me to descend, the very Earth loses its warmth and the plants let their foliage die back in order to survive the coming frosts, harbingers of my mother’s grief.

So there you have it, that is my myth, the tale that has bound me tighter than a corset for century upon century.

But like all tales it is not quite the full story. Like a kaleidoscope the lens of my story has been twisted this way and that to capture facets of the truth like pretty splinters of coloured glass. What if my tale is much more than a poetic illustration of a mother’s love for her child and tragic loss of innocence? Is it possible that my story runs deeper than a simple nature myth used to explain the cycles of corn planting?

Or perhaps mine is, indeed, nothing more than a scary story to warn young girls about the perils of falling for alluring bait.

But surely my story must have been a little more complicated than a silly little girl-goddess being abducted by a big bad god? What if, like mortals, I chose my own beginning – thus sealing my own end? 

What if I loved him? Is it so difficult to imagine that a daughter of the light would crave the dark?

Impossible. Because gods tell the truth. Don’t they?

That is a matter I will leave up to you mortals to decide. I will step back and let my tale unfold – make of it what you will, but know this: The heart, whether it be human or diving, never forgets love.