Flowers and Shadows

Goddesses

 Let me tell you about nature goddesses.

There are many of us, like nymphs and naiads, but also Artemis, who cloaks herself in forest shrubbery and runs naked with similarly free women, Demeter, who brushes her finger along cornstalks to help them grow golden as her hair, and of course Gaia, slumbering deep within her own crusted surface.

We are beautiful. We are smooth and bright as sunshine. We have hungry forms and dancing fingers, hair thick as a horse's tail. When gods and mortals look at us, they see flowers.

I could tell you our nightmares, though I'm sure you can guess at them. We are goddesses but foremost women; oak trees but foremost blossoms, pure and easy to crush. I know a thousand nymphs who fled from gods and a thousand more who did not. I know the stories of Artemis's heartbreaks, the disposition of Demeter that was once sunny and sweet and kind and was molded into something sharp as the blade of a scythe. I know how their tragedies became tragedies as told by the mortals, who speak regretfully for the fate of goddesses like us, but never change their pattern of behavior toward their own women. I know they speak about me as a tragedy-- young and yellow and weakened by shade. They did not know how well some plants can bloom in shadows. They do not know that a story can start in fear and anger but end with smiles and power.

They will greet me when their corpses wither, as all mortal corpses do. They will march past my obsidian throne, perhaps kiss my robes. And they will know that nature goddesses can destroy nature just as easily as create it.

A hand reaches, pale and smooth. It places the crown on my head, blood-red as pomegranate seeds.

Let me tell you about nature goddesses.

...

I was shivering as we boarded the boat, small and dead-grey, bobbing in waters that seemed black as ink. Faces moved beneath the surface, stretched and pale and nothing like any mortals I had ever seen. My dress felt thin and too bright in the gloom, short on my legs. Beside me he stood like a pillar, his face hooded by a black helmet, his robes like a shadow falling to the bottom of the boat. The ferryman was similarly cloaked. I could not see his face, only a pair of pale eyes that glanced at me briefly, with little interest.

We glided from the banks down the river. Huge croppings of rock clung to the edges of the massive cave, the ceiling so large that it was like a night sky, devoid of stars. The ferryman's lantern was the only source of light, greenish, casting a strange reflection across the water. I did not glance up again at the god beside me. I did not want to see the face of someone taking me to such a terrible place.

Ghosts lunged from the waters, moaned and dragged at my legs. I shuddered at their slimy hands, kicked them away from me, but they were like vapor, moving with the air, ceaselessly clinging. The god reached down and brushed aside their searching fingers, easily. I stared as they sank again, searching for any shred of humanity in their eyes. I found none. They were nothing but scraps now, left over from something that might have been a mortal. They would not be leaving the river.

A low rumble like thunder greeted us as the lonely boat found its way to the banks on the opposite side of the river. Here, more dead flooded the shore, but as opposed to the chaos from before, these ghosts seemed more placid. They stood silent, in rows, heads bent and hands folded. One or two looked at us curiously as we debarked, but their faces were empty. They were shells, too.

The rumble sounded again, and I glanced up to see a gigantic dog, with three drooling, lolling heads, three pairs of cold yellow eyes, three sets of teeth that growled and growled and watched as the god led me on. He pushed our way through the throngs of the dead and slipped through the gates without a word.