Demeter

They don’t know?

It’s impossible. How could anyone not know? 

A monster with eight legs, spewing smoke like a volcano on the verge of eruption, a beast so black that light cannot touch it, swifter than the north wind. How could anyone not know?

I wandered all over the land. I trod on soil of every color and searched thoroughly from deserts of nothing but sand to distant ice mountains. I would do anything to find my child. 

Yet no one knows the monster that stole my child? Never heard of it, never seen it. What does this mean? Is someone suggesting there exists a monster born solely to kidnap Demeter’s offspring, that such a thing is possible? Who would commit such an act? Who would dare?

I headed to Poseidon’s city. Poseidon swore before me on the Styx. He had searched the ends of the ocean, every trench and cave, but found no black beast with eight horse legs and two heads, nor my child embracing a bundle of daffodils in a crimson dress. 

Ah, I see. A beast that exists neither in the sea nor on land. Where then should Demeter go?

“Demeter.”

Hera looked stiff, just like always. With arms white like the Milky Way, peacocks prominently displayed at her feet, she looked down at me from her towering throne. 

Her blue-black hair was regally twisted up, and her eyes, seemingly inlaid with lapis lazuli, revealed a hint of obsessive cleanliness.

We sisters are not particularly close. Especially since I was seeded by her husband.

“Hera.”

Hera did not respond. She would expect me to follow with proper etiquette. To bend my knee and observe all protocols due to the queen of gods. She sees her husband in my face. 

That’s why she acts so coldly. Normally, I would gladly offer such courtesies. Managing Zeus is a burdensome task even for a goddess. 

How laughable that the guardian of sacred home and marriage has a husband who destroys both home and marriage.

But now I have no capacity to care about anyone or anything. I am a mother bear who has lost her cub. 

Even dozens of archers raining arrows could not stop me. Even if they pierced my side with blue-edged spears, I would not rest.

“Did you come all the way to Olympus just to call my name?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. That would be a shameful mark on your name.”

“What do you mean, Demeter?”

“My child. Where is my child?”

“Your child? I don’t understand why you seek your child from me. Do I look so idle a goddess to you?”

“Of course you must be busy, noble Hera. Busy hunting down and tearing apart like a fox in hunting season all the women your Zeus has touched with his fingertips.”

“Watch your tongue. Do you know to whom you speak, sister?”

“Then please tell me! Who would dare steal Demeter’s child, what monster that no one has seen despite searching the ends of the ocean and earth suddenly appeared in the Enna Valley and took my daffodil-like child! Oh, great Hera, I beg you to tell me before I set fire to all the land and slaughter crops and livestock!”

Hera stared at me with surprised eyes. Ox-eyed Hera. It’s amazing how wide her eyes can grow.

“Your child was kidnapped?”

After all, we are sisters, and she too has children born of her womb. She is not a woman who cannot imagine what madness visits a mother who has lost her young.

“I see… Without such a reason, you wouldn’t display such graceless rudeness. I’ll make allowances this once. Poor Demeter.”

“Does that mean you don’t know?”

Hera sighed, pressing together her fingertips, white almost to transparency.

“If I knew, I would have helped you already. I was aware that crops have been withering and cattle have been collapsing, coughing blood from some unknown plague. But that’s all. I didn’t realize it was because of your child.”

“How can you not know?”

I don’t easily accept this. I’m not sure if I need to vent my anger or if I simply don’t trust Hera.

“Hera doesn’t know? Even Poseidon crawled up from the bottom of the sea at the sound of my wailing, yet you had no time to hear? How can you make such a complacent excuse? You who sit at the highest point of Olympus? You with over a hundred eyes on your peacock’s tail feathers, you who sit watching all the young maidens from above the clouds, you claim you didn’t know?”

“Yes, I didn’t know! Because your child is not a young maiden!”

Hera shouted abruptly.

“Are you satisfied now, sister? With all the couples and homes I must protect and bless, more numerous than grains in a storehouse, you’re angry I wasn’t hovering over your offspring? Do you think I am your bastard’s nursemaid? Everyone knows where that seed came from, and you dare blame me for the troublemaker you failed to guard?”

“Yes! It’s your fault! If you had just blessed my child, this would never have happened!”

“You’ve completely lost your mind, Demeter.”

“If you had been there, would the Moirai have poured such a curse on my child? No! The august queen of gods, the fearsome Hera giving her blessing, who would dare! Why have I lived in constant anxiety without a single day of peace, why have I endlessly fought with my child, argued, coaxed, begged, and confined them for protection! Are you saying you bear no responsibility for that?”

“Ha! At this rate, you’ll accuse me of instigating the Moirai. Even the most foolish human wouldn’t make such a stupid claim.”

She was right. If I could, I would have made that very accusation. That Hera incited the Moirai to curse my child, and now had realized that curse by taking my child away. 

But controlling the Moirai was beyond any of our powers. I knew this. And Hera knew that I knew.

Hera rose from her seat and came down to me. With each step she took, her red robes trailed long across the steps.

“Your child didn’t need my blessing. You know that. Have you seen me blessing that noisy sun and moon? Or the owl that burst from my husband’s head? Children of divine parents need not seek grace from other gods.”

Hera always looked girlish right after getting angry. Large eyes and sensitive lips. Even after all that time and all those experiences, still. 

I stared at her instead of answering. Perhaps because she was always right. She was like a mirror made of silver. My image was starkly reflected in it. 

A mother driven mad by shame and indignation. The goddess of grain who killed barley and wheat and withered all fruit-bearing plants. With disheveled hair stuck with straw and dust. Unsightly.

Hera opened her arms to me.

“I will help you, Demeter.”

It was a sister’s embrace. The embrace of a mother who had children. I hugged her tightly and wept.

Once it was confirmed there would be no more fiery scolding, venomous bickering, or tedious arguments, Hebe and Iris cautiously entered through the silk-curtained door. They carried nectar to calm me and towels to wipe my tear-stained cheeks.

Hera seated me on a long chair and said:

“But you must be completely honest about everything. I don’t even know what the Moirai said to your child. I only thought there must be a considerable reason for raising a son as a daughter. But hearing you speak, it seems that prophecy and this abduction are connected.”

I remained silent. I received the golden cup Hebe offered but did not open my mouth.

Finally, after Hera dismissed the two goddesses with a click of her tongue, the story surfaced.

“They called it a prophecy. But to my ears, it was a curse.”

Despite moistening my throat with nectar, words did not come easily. I hesitated for a long time. For a moment, I was at a loss about where to begin and how to tell the story. 

Since giving birth to my child, I had never let the Moirai’s curse leave my mind. I was so bound by that short sentence that I couldn’t distinguish whether it was a curse upon my child or upon me.

“When just born… Oh, Hera, that child was so beautiful. No baby in the world could have been as beautiful and perfect as mine. Those pink feet and sweet cheeks… How red the lips were and how long the eyelashes, looking almost like nightingale feathers surrounding sapphires. And the hair! 

Aphrodite and Apollo may boast of their blonde hair, but oh, they can’t compare to my child. It was such a bright and vivid gold that I could find the cradle on the darkest night without a single ember, with hair so thick. It was like being born wearing a wreath of buttercups. I remember the scent of daffodils from the crown of the head. Anyone would pray at a temple to bear such a son.”

Trying to speak about my child, I become uncontrollable. No matter how many times I tell of how lovely and beautiful a jewel that child was, how precious and sweet a flower, it never feels enough. 

Hera is not known for her patience. But just this once, she sat quietly beside me, waiting for the main point.

“I gave birth to my child alone in my temple. You weren’t there, Hestia wasn’t there, none of our sisters were by my side. And what need to speak of our brothers? Poseidon didn’t even know I had become a mother until my child took their first steps. I preferred it that way. Yes, I was in no position to demand your blessing. I didn’t want a family. I just wanted a child. My child, born of me. That was all.”

Hera made no reply. Instead, she simply took her share of the cup and poured herself a drink.

“Anyway, no one was scheduled to visit on the day my child was born. That’s the important part. But… someone was standing beside us, like a snake burrowing through moss, like darkness creeping between bricks. Three of them, in fact.”

“The Moirai.”

“Yes.”

“But they only prophesy human deaths. They rarely speak about the fate of gods.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

It’s still vivid. That moment when I held my child in my arms, trembling with overwhelming love, the three shadows that fell upon me.

“I should have killed them.”

I feel nauseated. Just recalling the memory made blood rush to my head, and my hands trembled with the desire to strangle someone. I took a long time to catch my breath.

“Before they opened their plague-ridden mouths, I should have twisted and broken all three necks. I had no idea. I didn’t know what was happening.”

“Of course, Demeter.”

“I was shocked, Hera. I just watched. I just watched them open their mouths and point their index fingers at my child. Oh, I just watched. By the time I came to my senses… No, no. I did my best. At least I prevented it from getting worse.”

“So, what did the Moirai say?”

Hera asked, her voice ringing like a well-forged knife. I answered, feeling like I was swallowing that blade.

“‘Growing into a young man like spring, he shall leap into dark death.'”

That wasn’t the end, I’m sure. When I rose from the blood-soaked bed, Atropos’s lips were still open. But I prevented her from finishing her words. 

I cursed and hurled insults, demanding they vanish from my temple and never come near me or my child again. My thighs were still soaked with hot blood, and my br*asts were exposed and swollen with milk. 

With each step I took, pools of blood formed on the marble floor. The sound of my child crying. Oh, the sound of my child crying.

“So that’s why you raised him as a daughter. You treated ‘growing into a youth’ as a condition.”

“I don’t care if you think I’m foolish. How could I let my child walk toward death of their own accord? Yes, I believed there was still hope. Because Atropos didn’t finish her prophecy. Because I didn’t listen and drove them away.”

Hera closed her mouth. Her face showed she didn’t know how to respond.

I don’t care what she thinks of me. Truly, I don’t care if she thinks I’m foolish. I was Demeter. My child was not human either. My son. 

They say the human life determined by the Moirai can never be altered, but my child, and I, are not human. What wouldn’t I do to protect my child? What madness wouldn’t I embrace?

If not a young man like spring, then it would be fine. 

If my child were not a man, if the whole world knew them not as a youth but as a maiden, wouldn’t even death messengers wander confused through the underworld? 

If I raised that child not as a man but as a maiden, if I raised them as a flower without feet, wouldn’t that prevent them from leaping into death of their own accord?

So I raised my son as a daughter. Persephone, my love, my joy. Never allowed to lift anything heavier than daffodils, beautifully adorned to hide the body in a way that would impress even the Charites. 

I raised them like an olive sapling confined to a pot, like a dragon raised in a spring.

“Demeter, if your child’s disappearance is related to the prophecy…”

How rare it is to see Hera trailing off. If it were Zeus, he might hand over his bundle of thunderbolts to me just to witness this sight.

“My child is not dead.”

“Demeter.”

“You know too, Hera. When a child dies, the mother knows. My child is not dead.”

Hera and I stare at each other. And in each other’s eyes, we read the words we dare not speak.

Not yet.