PART I — THE SUMMONING

‘…And the earth below smiled back in all its radiance. So too the churning mass of the salted sea.

She [Persephone] was filled with a sense of wonder, and she reached out with both hands to take hold of the pretty plaything.

And the earth, full of roads leading every which way, opened up under her.’

—Homeric Hymn to Demeter (650-550 B.C.E)

chapter one

The fire ate away colour and root. It rolled its tongue across fields that were, for a lifetime, green and purple and brindled white, then in a moment's hesitation, black as coal.

A verdant garden it was, yawned along the slender waist of the creek. The nymphs with their rose-oiled feet and balmy maple palms had blessed these colonial soils fertile with harvest. Now barren acres lay flat in the expanse, survived only by my mother's unyielding scarecrow, backlit against the terracotta sun.

I stare down at my fingers, stark against the blackened ash. And fear stifles my pulse.

Power that was not mine to wield. Power that I had taken and carried away in my pocket.

I brush a wavering hand against a shrivelled, brown stalk on the ground. It had been a young nymph, yawning prettily in the morning light, with quivering petals shaking sleep. A body now, maimed and dying in the soil. Her crusted eyelids spasm—a set of unseeing eyes cut into my soul.

"No...no-" my voice chokes, "-forgive me." I sink my knees into the dirt and hold her in my cradle. Beneath my kneecaps the earth is bone dry. Its pelt of thick snow that had once encompassed it wholly, had given away to the flames almost instantly, inhaled away its life. I flinch as the small nymph writhes violently against my touch. Even in her dying breath I feel her unforgiving wrath permeating through her brittle thin skin.

What have I done?

Then I would see it, feel it. Wisps of soul that rise from the husk. Melancholic and silvery wan pyre smoke, snaking between my fingers and reaching towards the earth.

The strike in my chest returns fourth fold. I tighten my grasp, but it is like catching water between my fingers. "Wait!" I cannot hold back the cry. Then all around me at once, slippery iridescent souls awake from dark shapeless bodies, and they begin to crawl towards their end.

"Wait!" I scream.

But the dead do not wait.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My cries become ricochets. I hear their bitter, betrayed voices reply in unfettered fury as they pass: apologies mean n-n-nothing now stupid nymph.

And one by one my sisters would die—voices moaning their phantom pain. The guilt would kill me first. A stupid nymph, I acquiesce, yet it could not end like this—not like this. I grow desperate in my impuissance, frustrated at my hands that wielded no power.

But I had one stupid move left...

I kneel, almost falling askew in urgency. My fingers run through dirt and ash, tracing through latent memory, archaic, forgotten designs. And my tongue follows in primordial lyrics, that trip and stumble over unfamiliar syllables. I channel my divinity, what modest shreds of it, let it run through blackened earth, and rivulet into clumsy runes.

So I summon a god.

A novel, unpractised skill. For a minute, the air sits in perfect stillness. I watch as the souls continue their path. Their colours bleed into the Earth in a kaleidoscopic spectacle against the stygian terrain. There was a macabre beauty in their death. Yet my eyes burn.

"I'm so sorry," I whisper.

A prayer would line my lips. A cry would end it.

A plethron before me, the ground splits abruptly. It makes a guttural sound, like a guillotine met its mark or the world in its unmaking. And then the ground beneath me begin to tilt, and the earth turned on its side.

A large, monstrous human head surfaces from its depths, ascending until it shadows over the prairies. It begins as a dark spherical mass—a shadow of ebony hair. But then it swivels, in a liquid motion, and I am faced with gargantuan eyes that swallow light. Half-lidded and nectar-glazed with interrupted dreams. My feet slide, quickly, awakening dust and soot that blanket my skin. "Bloody hell!" I scream. I curl my fingers around rocks and dirt and whatnot, seeking leverage. But there is none, and I could only stare, in silent horror as I slide closer and closer to the face of death and the underworld that lies beneath it.

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The Gigante folds his eyelids, thrice, lazily, and I see the greedy tongues of flame in its boundless depths. It is not warm, but burns ice cold. A cold that sinks its teeth into flesh and would take an eternity to thaw. They track me in my path, with disinterest, apathetic tedium. Then his mouth warps into a smile that chills me to bone.

"Yes," he speaks.

And then I was airborne, soaring. Long wretched fingers had grasped the back of my dress and flicked me away like a pesky bug. Gravity would plunge me into a cushion of ashes, coughing.

The ground crumbles as the Gigante thrusts its muscular arms against the earth. Then it leaps, a magnificent demonstration, and lands on its feet. It towers over the land, head scraping sky. It could stomp away the settlement into ruins in a small misstep.

What have I unleashed? I think miserably.

"Siren, you dare summon me?" It is not a voice, but a resonance of the rumbling earth. Gods and kings and nymphs alike tremble in his company.

I blanch. I feel his visceral gaze on me, and his body over mine like the shadow of an eclipse. Still, I rise on trembling knees, and inhale a courageous breath. Like a cub learning its first roar.

"Aïdēs, the Unseen one. Plouton, Giver of Wealth. Hades, King of the Underworld," I call out, lifting my chin. "I ask for your reprieve."

The Gigante bends heavily, scrutinizing the terrain with his fiery eyes. "What is this land?" he asks.

He did not know. As the prayers here do not travel to the ears of the god of the dead, only unheard mercies. The settlement is so very young, where the Hellenic gods are few and my mother is ubiquitous and absent at once.

"This is Virginia. British colony in the west." I answer.

He mulls over the response briefly, then I watch as he shrivels, to the height of a mortal with the brawn of a god. Unlike most of the pantheon, the chthonic god favours titanium plated leathers—warrior than nobility. I study his face warily, unnaturally beautiful as an Olympian, and take a step back.

"Prometheus's fire. You steal from his captivity?"

"I borrowed it," I say meekly. My eyes linger over my fallen sisters. They had been cold, in these unacclimated winters.

Now they were dead in my name.

He gives me his full attention then, and I feel as small as a mouse. "Thief and murderer." He says, like a death sentence. But his smile is wider than the Aliakmon. "You dare summon me?"

I stand a little straighter. "My sisters, they-" I swallow, "please return their souls." Tears begin to gather around my eyes. Useless, tireless things they were, betraying only mortal emotions gods had no care for. I clutch my chest, fearing my heart would wrestle out of its confines.

Then he laughs, and it would break.

He throws his head back and amusement springs from his throat. His laughter plays dark and sweet like a hymn. But it gathers like a rock in my stomach instead.

"Why," he manages to wring out between peals of mockery. "You must know of my decree. And why would I make such an exception? Unless," his serpentine eyes glitter, "the siren has something worthy to offer?"

When silence answers in my stead, he takes a step closer. "Nymph," he begins, his amusement now run desiccate. "What can you offer me, that will be worth a thousand souls, however slight?" His legs consume the distance between us, until he is close enough to hold my chin between his fingers. I feel his thumb like a brand, languidly rubbing away the soot from my skin. And I'm frozen, like a doe in danger. Could not move, could not breathe.

Stupid, stupid nymph.

"A body for a thousand souls?" he muses. The scarlet flames dance in those obsidian orbs. "A thousand years of servitude?" His voice turns brutish. "A head on a pike? Eyes as fine jewellery?" He pauses. "...a soul?"

I rip my face from his captive and vault back. My hands rise defensively over my chest. "What will you do to my soul?" I whisper. I hear the blood rush through my head.

He slants his head. "Perhaps I'll keep it as a pet. Perhaps Cerberus will play fetch with it." He grins, like the thought of me in one of the jaws of his hellish three-headed dog induced a great joy.

All equally gruesome conclusions. I was no stranger to pain—the product of being tethered to flesh, however immortal. In mortal lifespans, I have bled and I have ached. But I knew it was not what he wanted. Truly, there was only one thing that the god of the dead would desire.

"I'll renounce a part of my soul." I say quietly. I prayed it would be sufficient.

"Not completely dull after all," He chuckles. "However foolish."

"Let it be a quarter of your soul then." A quarter sounds like a lot of soul. But what else had I to offer? No treasure, no power—an abandoned babe of an implacable goddess. He did not know—for my sisters, I would've given it all.

"It's yours." I answer, before regret would take it away.

The flames in his eyes grow with a sudden force, until it overcomes me. I feel his power spear through me. Feel the hunger in his hunt. I had imagined it would be excruciating, to have a part of myself severed by force, alike detaching a limb. I had wondered if I would ever feel whole again, only three quarters of myself left. And I had closed my eyes, quivering in the silence. But surprisingly, it was tender, like a wind come sweeping through and unravelling me. I feel my soul escape me, and go gently into his possession.

My energy would desert me in equal, stolen like a long day of work under the sun. My body threatened to fold.

When I open my eyes again, I could not look away. In his palm, my soul sat obediently, a pulsing vivid ruby glow. I thought it looked like my heart. He would coo at it, and woo it like a courting. I wondered if I would ever see it again.

"Return the souls," I say breathlessly.

"As you wish." He looks up with a face of one that had conquered kingdoms. Then his fingers would snap, and from the crack in the earth, thousands of colourful streams burst into the air, wriggling with bliss.

I gasp as he suddenly materializes, breadth of a hair away, his face bent to my ear.

"Everything you touch, you destroy."

With another resounding crack, he retires, leaving only echoing prophecies. The dirt swallows up the chasm, and a serenity passes through the barren prairies. For a quiet moment, my only solace is watching the souls seek their bodies, burrowing themselves into their home. Home alas...

Then the screaming started. And it would not stop.