Receiver of Many

Chapter 1

"Kore!" Demeter squinted in the noon sun and called out again, "Kore?"

"Over here, Mother!" Kore stood amidst the sheaves of barley to wave Demeter over, then crouched again and poked her finger into the soil. Dark green leaves shot out in every direction, and she circled her wrist upward, raising a stalk out of the earth. She stood slowly. The plant crept toward her hand. Kore splayed her fingers wide and a purple blossom sprang from the thorny stalk.

"Oh, Kore, if you grow a thistle in the barley field, someone might prick their finger."

"Wait," Kore said, smiling. "Just watch."

A fiery copper butterfly fluttered on the warm breeze and alighted on the blossom. Demeter smiled.

"You see? I saw her wandering in the barley and made her a home. You don't mind, do you?"

"My sweet, clever girl, of course I don't." Demeter hugged Kore. The butterfly folded its wings, fed and content.

"My thistle won't interfere with the harvest, will it?" Kore knit her brows.

"Not in the slightest."

The butterfly spread its wings, sunlight catching them as they fanned. "I don't think she will be alone for long. Surely a good mate will come looking for her."

"Yes."

"What's wrong, mother?"

Demeter looked north, toward distant Thessaly and Mount Olympus.

Kore leaned on Demeter's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't think before I spoke. The meeting is tomorrow, yes?"

"It is..."

"Why must you go?"

"Because," Demeter smiled and stroked her daughter's shoulder. "Although I don't dwell on Olympus with the rest of them, I am still a member of the Dodekatheon. I have my responsibilities here, but each full moon, I also have a responsibility to them and to the domain I govern. Just as you have a responsibility to the fields and all that blooms within them. And my going there... keeps us safe."

Kore swallowed. Demeter, she knew, had made Eleusis forbidden ground for the rest of the gods, specifically the male gods. She had known little of the Olympians since her childhood in the Fields of Nysa. Artemis and Athena visited infrequently, and she had seen Hermes on the rarest of occasions when he delivered news to her mother. She'd heard about Apollo and Hephaestus, and all the rest of her cousins, only from nymphs and in stories told by the mortals.

"There remains much for me to do before tomorrow. I need to go to Thassos and Crete. And I regret leaving you with Minthe again..."

Kore sighed.

"Daughter, you know you're safest here. Eleusis is under my protection, and with it— most importantly— you. Don't ever forget what Daphne was forced to do to protect herself from Apollo."

Kore's lips tightened into a line and she looked away. Maybe if she met these gods herself they would see that there was nothing at all tempting about her. Maybe she could convince her mother there was nothing to fear. Kore would wait until tomorrow. "All right," she said. "Perhaps I can accompany you to Crete next time, Mother? Or to... wherever you happen to go?"

Demeter grinned and stretched her hand out, opening up a pathway that would carry her over land and sea to the ripe fields across all of Hellas. "We'll see."

"I'll see you around sunset," Kore called out as Demeter disappeared into the sheaves of barley. She turned back to the thistle, watching the butterfly rest on the thorny stalk before it flew off toward the pasture. Kore danced after it down the pathway.