Hades and Persephone

Chapter 17

Demeter travelled the land, all her thought bent on finding her daughter. She travelled amongst the mortals disguised as an old woman, but she still moved with the grace and agility of a goddess. She furiously pounded the ground with a cane that was tightly gripped in one of her shrivelled hands. 

She would stop at every crossroad, town, and market listening for rumours of her daughter. Hermes sometimes would accompany her for a ways before leaving to do his own business. He never spoke to her of how he had once pursued her daughter, but simply kept her company; travelling with a companion is always better than alone.

After traversing the mainland with no news of her daughter, Demeter decided to travel out to the islands. She crafted a small dinghy and stood in the prow as it propelled itself through the choppy waters of the Aegean Sea. 

Poseidon, seeing how determined and angry she was, made sure the water was as calm as possible so that she wouldn't visit her wrath upon him.

Demeter passed through the islands like the wind: Mykonos, Santorini, Paros, Naxos, Ios, and more. 

By the time she came upon Crete she was feeling extremely discouraged. Nonetheless, she landed on the island and visited the towns to seek out any information the mortals might have heard. She moved about in her disguise asking for news of the gods, specifically the young nature goddess Kore (as she was known to the mortals). Each mortal she asked shook their head and shrugged their shoulders. 

Demeter cursed the stupidity of mortals all the way back to her dinghy. 

She cast off and was planning on doing another round of the islands before heading back to the mainland when she heard something behind her. Turning, she discovered a large trireme that was quickly overcoming her small dinghy. 

Demeter could have easily outpaced the mortals, but decided to see if they had heard anything of Persephone in their travels across the sea.

A gangplank was dropped onto her dinghy, nearly sending the goddess into the ocean. She stood as tall as she could in her elderly disguise, gripping her cane hard. Four large men scrambled down the plank. One was dressed relatively cleanly and wore some bronze armour. The others looked ragged in their clothes and wore no armour. Demeter determined the man in the armour was the captain. He confirmed her suspicions as he took a few steps toward her.

"Old woman, you are trespassing in our waters!" His voice was deep and gravelly from shouting orders above the winds. 

She titled her head. "Your waters? I thought these were the waters of the god Poseidon." She felt a tremble in the dinghy at the sound of the ocean god's name.

The pirates laughed. "Poseidon? He is our patron! So long as we pay tribute to him we will not be  harmed by that god." He drew his sword from his scabbard and pointed it at her. "But you? You will come with us. This boat is now our property, as is all of your belongings."

"I don't think so."

"What do you mean, old woman? You dare defy us? We have you outnumbered, we're armed, and you're an old witch. Who are you that thinks you can fight us?"

Demeter smiled wickedly. "My name is Demeter."

Persephone sat in her garden at the back of the palace picking at the ambrosia-laced fruits the servants had brought her from Olympus. She wasn't feeling very hungry. The banquet was that night and she was starting to feel nervous. What is someone was able to see past Hecate's glamour? What if she said something that gave her away? What if her mother was there? 

She bit at her thumbnail. She wasn't sure what she would do if her mother showed up at the banquet. Hades had tried to calm her by saying her mother had rejected his invite immediately, as usual, but she wasn't so sure.