“She will follow you, if you remain true to your purpose,” Persephone said, icy and beautiful, with asphodel in her hair, and embroidered on her dress. She sat beside her husband, Hades, and looked down on Orpheus, her face utterly unreadable, “But if you cast a single gaze upon her before she leaves the Underworld, she will be lost to you until time ends.”
“Thank you,” Orpheus said, desperately grateful. His fingertips ached, blistered and bleeding as he played his plea to the gods who had no reason to give him what he requested of them. The return of his beloved wife, who had fled for her life, and lost it trying to escape. “Your Majesties, thank you. I will write a thousand songs in your honor.”
“You had best go,” Hades said, the first words he had spoken since Orpheus arrived. “The journey is long, and fraught with danger. It will not be easy.”
Orpheus took the dismissal for what it was, bowed again, and made his way out of the grand, dark, pillar-lined hall. Here and there, flowers sprouted up through cracks in the stone, the mark of the queen who was only here half the year, and must be dearly missed when she was gone.
Maybe his plea, and the mercy he received in return, made more sense than he thought. Surely there were none who understood the longing for a beloved spouse better than the king and queen of the underworld.
Hades’ warning struck him, and Orpheus fought with himself, with the urge to look back and make sure Eurydice was there, following behind him. The gods were fond of their tricks and traps, but they rarely lied outright.
Well, he hoped they didn’t, anyway.
On and on he went, out of the grand, black-stone palace, into the sprawling, twilight orchards beyond. It was beautiful and peaceful. Sprawling gardens filled the warm air with the scent of citrus flowers and herbs. Fireflies winked their green-gold lights everywhere, and danced in clouds around the hazy ghosts who walked and laughed together. Off in the distance, he heard music and longed to join.
But no. He was here with a goal, and everything here would tempt him, or frighten him, or try to distract him from his purpose.
And he had to have faith in Euridice. She was behind him. Persephone said she would be, and he could only trust, because to look back for her would be to lose her.
When they came to the River Lethe, Orpheus began to fear. After all, the River of Forgetfulness was no small challenge, and he wasn’t fool enough to think that it would not test him, although he would, at least, not have to ford it. There was a bridge, although it was not what Orpheus might call ideal. A rickety thing of woven branches and rough wood, it cracked under his feet, but it held.
It wasn’t until he made it across, that Orpheus heard a faint sound. The sound of a foot on the bridge, barely there, as if from far away, but only a step behind him.
That sound, that faint sound, gave him hope. Euridice was there. She was with him. The gods had not lied, or broken their bargain.
It also gave him an idea.
Music had gotten him this far. Perhaps it would take them just a few steps further.
His fingers ere too damaged to keep playing, but there was nothing wrong with his voice, and so, hopefully, he started on a song he wrote long ago, when he first fell in love with his wife, and heard her lovely voice.
It was a song for two, and he would be lying if he didn’t admit how frightened he was, how his heart caught, when he came to the end of his verse, and hers began.
For a heartbeat, a single heartbeat, he thought she would not, could not reply, but then her sweet, warm alto filled the air, a little tense, a little afraid, but as true as ever.
Orpheus would have wept at the sound.
The song wasn’t a long one, but he started another as soon as it ended, and another, and another. Together, they sang their way through Tartarus. Through the tortured, evil dead who howled around them and tried to drag him off the narrow path that sometimes faded to almost nothing under his feet. The gods had not told him what had happened if he left the path, but then, they didn’t have to. He knew the legends of those who left the path.
The path turn back to a road until the sky light with flame and they came to another river, this one deep, and angry, and blazing with fire.
The River Phlegethon. The river if fire, that bordered Tartarus, and imprisoned the lost souls within.
Orpheus was glad that Euridice had started them on battle songs of coming home almost an hour before, or his courage, shaken form hours of walking through the tortured dead, might have failed him. The bridge here was stone, but as fragile, as frail, and as frightening. Pebbles rolled off the sides when Orpheus stepped onto the thin stone, and his voice broke as he stumbled to his knees. In harmony with him, Euridice gasped, but she didn’t stop singing. Didn’t stop promising she was there.
Together, they made it across, into the slums of the undistinguished dead.
Here, they were followed, although not closely. The dead could not touch them. Not marked as they were by Cause under the authority of the queen herself, but they gathered near, listening to the songs, and whispering amongst themselves. Orpheus raised his voice louder, afraid to lose Euridice in the crowd. She answered him, strong and clear, and only a step behind him, always.
After what seems like hours more, Orpheus found his voice beginning to give out, but he sang on determinedly, unwilling to give up when victory was so close to hand.
At last, finally, they came to the last river in their journey.
So wide he could not see the other side, the Styx spread out like an ocean, and on the shore, the sandy shore, was a single boat.
“I wondered if you would make it back this way,” Chiron greeted Orpheus with a cackling laugh that was mostly hidden by his thick beard and hood. He had ferried Orpheus across only a day before, paid with one of the three gold coins Orpheus brought with him. “The ferry is not free, Bard.”
“I know,” Orpheus said hoarsely, his first spoken words since he left the palace. He dug in his purse and pulled out the coins he kept, carefully packed with the thinnest hope, and how proffered with more of the same. “A coin for each of us, to see us back to the land of the living.”
“Nice to see one of you heroes has the sense to pack for the trip,” Chiron said, begrudgingly impressed. He took the coins and nodded to the boat. “You’re not out, yet.”
“I know,” Orpheus agreed. It was a warning, he knew. They weren’t out, and until they were, he did not dare look back. Could not make sure that Eurydice made it into the boat as well. “Thank you, Ferryman.”
On through the unmarked grey waters they sailed, with barely the lap of waves against the side of the narrow boat to show their passing.
With nothing to do but wait, Orpheus cast his mind over the many sailing songs he knew, chose Eurydice’s favorite, another duet, and started to sing.
Chiron’s laughter punctuated Eurydice’s voice when she joined. In, on time and on key as ever.
Hours passed, as they passed songs back and forth, flirting and joking as they sang silly songs, and bawdy ones, and ones of coming home after a long time at sea.
Through it all, the Ferryman behind him never stopped chuckling. It might have been frightening, but Orpheus thought that maybe it was a compliment too. That his laughter was in celebration of cleverness that rarely crossed his path.
When they came to the far shore, the boat nudged into the sand, and Orpheus caught himself, right before he looked back to thank Chiron for his service.
“You paid me, boy,” the Ferryman said from somewhere behind him. “don’t spoil it with thanks. Go on.”
The air was fresher, here. They were close, and now the songs shifted to those of love newly discovered. Not all were duets, but any song would be sung in harmony, and so they tangled their voices together and kept walking.
It wasn’t until Orpheus felt sunlight on his face that he realized, he was out. Out of the Underworld and back where he started this daring, foolish, hopeful journey.
He went to turn, but Euridice’s voice raised sharply, and she cut her loving song off for one of warning, a song for children, to teach them not to trust all they saw.
The game was not done. Not until she took her final step into the weak, late winter sunshine.
So he kept walking. Kept singing. Kept hoping.
Until at last, the song faded, and a voice he mourned for, as hoarse as his own, spoke from just behind him.
“We’ll have to write a duet about this.”
And all Orpheus could do was laugh as he turned around, at last, to see his wife standing there, just a single step out of the Underworld, and smiling with tears of joy in her eyes.
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