(As Told Via the
Pomegranate)
Other fruit have lived fateful lives. Take the fruit of the knowledge of good
and evil in the garden of Eden. Or the apple that sent Snow White into a
white-washed slumber. Or coconuts, they’re just plain inconvenient. My tale is
unfortunate as well, although you might enjoy hearing that it is altogether the
most truthful, as Persephone and Hades enjoy exaggeration and evasion.
Now, Persephone was but a child still flowering into a woman when she
learned of the legend of Hades and his dreadful fruit. Her nymphs whispered
that it is as red as an open wound and has hundreds of tiny eyes. (I would like
to remind you, reader, that I am actually quite beautiful and agreeable outside
of Rome.) Anyway, whoever consumed me would surely rule the god of hell. Hades
likes to pretend that he captured Persephone, because he is still too infatuated
to admit her failings. Persephone is too embarrassed to admit her childishness.
Thus, being the cunning, curious child that she was, she concocted a game
of love. Now, she did not understand how dangerous love can really be, its
thirst unquenchable and vulnerable to recklessness in the hands of power. But
she was a child. She promised Cupid her field of flowers for an arrow driven
into Hades’ hellish heart. Having no one to love in the underworld, he stole up
his fiery steps to his gate and begged to see the object of his love. Surely
the arrow drew him near!
Persephone appeared before him, basking in the sunlight on her balcony,
twirling a wind-blown curl around a finger. She smelled of tulips, sea salt and
lemons. Hades loved her even in the light, though it made him long to bathe
again in darkness. Cringing from the living smells around him, heart hammering,
he strode up to her. Persephone fled. Perhaps seeing his long, hallow face,
unblinking eyes, and rancid body shook her to her senses. (Trust me, after
spending eternity with this guy I’m well acquainted with his bad looks.)
Persephone found an escape through the opening of an iron gate, which she
slammed in his lovesick face.
He let out a howl of rage and despair. She had locked him out of hell.
For six months she paced his steaming chambers enduring the stench of his
throne. She drank from the ashen river, which slightly eased her hunger pains
from reaching for me, her greatest fear. For six months Hades clung to shadows
deep in forests, tore up vineyards, howled with the wolves, and filled the
skies with the sulfur of volcanoes.
Finally, Persephone could endure her hunger no longer. She timidly pulled
me from the thorny vine. Just one nibble! She decided, and with my blood the
gates of hell re-opened. Hades hobbled, huffing heat and hope and wild rage,
out of the desert to his stairway and sobbing beloved. Thus, Persephone now
rules as Queen, and the King of Hell is still intoxicated with his fallen
beauty, unbeknownst to his helpful pomegranate.
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