Eurydice

13

"For a whole month after your...separation​," Persephone said, grinning now. "Orpheus was only singing sad, depressing songs. And he made the fatal mistake of ignoring the Maenads, or Dionysus' followers. In their wild, drunken frenzy, they ripped him to pieces with their bare hands."

Orpheus winced. Why wasn't he telling me the story himself?

"They tossed his remains in the river," Persephone continued, oddly calm about the gory details, "and most of them have been recovered, but his head on Earth...It's still missing."

My stomach curled as I looked to Orpheus. He had a reassuring smile, but his eyes were pained, broken.

"That's why he cannot speak," the goddess said softly. "Without his head buried in the ground, his spirit cannot work as a whole. He will be silent until either mortals or my nymphs find it."

I couldn't imagine his anguish. The man with the voice of a god, who possessed an unparalleled love of singing and music, was forced to say nothing, to be as quiet as a ghost.

"I'm sorry." Persephone's words melted from the air as I turned to her, unsurprised to find that she had disappeared.

Orpheus was stone-like as our eyes met, my frozen heart threatening to break. My body lost feeling and I forced a smile, a chill sweeping into my lungs.

"I can sing for the both of us," I said, my voice sounding like a roar of thunder in the deathly silence of the meadow. His face didn't change; broken, tired, drained. He seemed like a fragile bird with a snapped wing, its natural ability taken away.

My smile flickered, but then he gave a blinding, warm grin. I blinked as he rushed to me, throwing his sinewy arms around my shoulders and pressed his cold cheek against my ear.

He gripped me fiercely, almost afraid to let go, and I numbly hugged him back with smoky limbs. He didn't smell like pine anymore, I realized, but of Asphodel and death. His hands dug themselves into my dissolving hair and chiton, and a thousands emotions bubbled in my chest. I felt his pain of losing his beautiful voice, but a pure sense of peace overwhelmed it. Even though we were souls, having moments before losing our forms and dissolving into bodies of smoke, we were both happy with splitting, bright grins.

His arms tightened as I opened my mouth and sang the lullaby he had written in what seemed like years ago.

"Night is my blanket,
My blanket, my comfort.
Its sky black velvet,
That my mother had covered
With winking jewels
For me.
Night is my peace,
Bringing sweet sleep
That I drink eagerly.
Let Father pull the blanket over
And let it warm your bones.
Let Mother on your forehead plant a kiss,
And know that you're home,
In a land of bliss."