A crowd of mortals has gathered. They make room for the chariot to touch down and then jostle around us, so curious and excited, they don't even lower their eyes. A whitebearded man picks up a lyre, and staring sightlessly in my direction, sings out, "Hail, hail Persephone! Persephone is home!"

   The crowd takes up the words like eager children repeating a lesson. "Persephone is home! Persephone is home!"

   The horses fold their wings and Hermes steps out of the chariot before turning and offering me his hand. The crowd parts and Hermes leads the way up six wide steps onto a porch with a double row of pillars. We pass from glaring sunshine into sudden coolness. The antechamber is empty, a dim rectangle in front of towering wooden doors. Our footsteps echo as Hermes strides up and bangs three times with his staff. The doors swing open and we enter.

   There, beneath the gilt-covered ceiling, on a massive throne, sits Zeus. He's majestic, with waves of golden hair falling to his shoulders, a neatly trimmed golden beard, and interest flickering in eyes as blue as a summer sky. His chiton hangs in perfect pleats of soft-spun gold. Next to the throne, a pile of thunderbolts sits within easy reach. And to his left—

   But this woman doesn't look like my mother! A faded, night-blue cloak covers her frame, and her shoulders are bowed, like a farmer's wife carrying a load of firewood. For a moment she stares as I approach, her eyes raking my hair, my face, my bare feet, my disheveled dress—and then she strides toward me and wraps me in her arms.

   I see it in her face; I feel it in her arms. She does love me.

   I sink into her embrace, and for one long, beautiful minute, I let her be my strength.

   Then: "My child," she says, stroking my back. "My poor, ravished child."

   Wait. Ravished?

   My body tenses in her arms. I have some explaining to do.

   "We're going home," says my mother. "You'll be safe from him there. I've strengthened the borders. He'll never get back in."

   "I wanted to go," I say, but she's holding me so close, my words smother into her chest.

   "Of course, dear," she says soothingly, stroking my head, not having heard a word.

   She just needs to understand! I shove myself back, trying to speak louder; my words are a shout in the sudden air.

   "I wanted to go!"

   "And now you have gone!" she insists. "You've gone from the underworld forever. You'll never have to see Hades again. That's what I'm trying to tell you."

   "But—"

   "You see?" she says to Zeus. "She's overwrought, exhausted. I'm taking her back to the vale immediately. She needs rest."

   She wraps an arm around my shoulders and takes a step toward the door—toward the vale and my narrow bed and the pink cliffs, reinforced even stronger now . . .

   But I'm not the victim she thinks she saved! I'm not the girl she used to shush with a lowering brow! I throw off her arm.

   "I want to be with Hades," I say. "I'm his wife, his queen."

   She hears the words, but she still doesn't listen. She speaks to me softly, as if calming a frantic, fevered child. "If you were his beloved queen, would you be barefoot, your feet scratched and filthy?" she asks. "Would you be wearing— this?" Her fingers lift a fold of my stained, ripped chiton. "No earrings, then, or bracelet, let alone a crown, to show the honor due your rank?" Her hand rests on my shoulder as she sadly shakes her head. "Hades has been playing with your mind. You've learned to parrot his words to ensure your safety. It's time to face facts. You have been not his queen but his captive. Come home now."

   Zeus shifts restlessly on his throne. He turns to a side table and fiddles with some fruit on a golden tray.

   King of the gods, ruler of earth and sky . . . So how could Hades have crossed the border if Zeus didn't agree? That means he knew I was going, and approved.

   "Zeus," I plead, stepping toward the throne. "Please, she'll listen to you!"

   He turns back to me, his eyes widening in surprise.

   Then my composure slips and the rest of my words pour out in an ungainly rush. "Tell her I can't go to the vale right away, there are things I need to do here, and after that I need to go back to Hades, even if he has been—"

   "That's what I've been saying!" says my mother. "You don't—"

   I stretch my arms toward Zeus, my voice too loud. "Listen to—"

   Suddenly my lips clamp closed. I try to pull them open, but they're stuck as tight as a locked trunk. Zeus is putting down his raised hand; a few sparks linger in the air.

   "That was getting out of control," he says, his hand drifting back to the platter, searching for something to nibble.

   I don't believe this! If I could only shout loud enough, someone would have to listen to me! But it's no use. I can't open my mouth. And if I can't explain, how will I get back to Hades, and home? How can I find Philomena if I'm trapped behind pink cliffs?

   "I left her alone too much," my mother says to Zeus.

   Apparently her mouth is working just fine.

   "I thought she was safe in the vale," she continues. "But no, she was as vulnerable as a soft, new bud. That day, when I stood in fields far away and heard her scream, my blood ran cold."

   Zeus doesn't say anything. He holds up the shriveled remnants of a bunch of grapes and finds a raisin to chew. My mother turns to me.

   "I flew home as fast as I could," she says. "I searched the vale from cliff to pond, meadow to orchard, but I was too late. You were gone."

   I can't talk. I might as well listen.

   "And so I wrapped myself in this dark cloak of mourning," she says. "For nine days and nights I searched the earth for you, never stopping to eat or drink or sleep. Worry filled me like water fills a jug, leaving no room for air."

   She takes my hand, wrapping it in both of hers. "Crops began to wither. I didn't see them. Mortals prayed in desperation for my aid. I didn't hear them. Sacrificial fires darkened the sky. I didn't smell them. I had no time. I had to find you."

   She sighs deeply. "I finally learned the truth from Helios. I had to block his sun chariot before he'd tell me he'd seen you in the underworld, with Hades."

   A shudder racks her body.

   "Dark, despicable Hades! So it was he who ripped you, screaming and struggling, from the vale! And now I knew you shivered on a couch by his side, fearing his every embrace, in a land you could not leave. A land I could not enter."

   I shake my head hard, opening my eyes as wide as I can, hoping she'll read the truth there. But her story surges on.

   "And Zeus approved of your abduction! He urged me to accept this— What was it you called it, Zeus? This 'match with the ruler of a mighty realm.'" Scorn drips from each syllable. "As if I would abandon you to an eternity with that brute merely because of his rank! And so I did the only thing that could bring you home. I withdrew from gods and mankind, vowing no crops would grow until I saw your face again. For an agonizing year, fields withered beneath my anger. Oxen pulled plows over barren, desiccated earth."

   Her voice hardens like molten iron setting into a blade. "And what did Zeus do? Nothing! No, worse than nothing. He sent me gifts and piles of gold, trying to tempt me away from my vow. Cold, inert, lifeless gold! As if metal meant more than the seeds I destroyed to save you!"

   She glares at the throne. "Because Zeus would not act, I blackened the sky with thunderclouds and the deluge fell, scouring the very face off the earth. Finally, finally, mortals' cries reached his ears, and he called you home to me."

She stops, breathing heavily. In the sudden silence, I hear a scurrying outside the door. Lyre strings plunk as something brushes against them; then they're stilled again. Someone was listening. A murmur rises in front of the temple, then fades away. All is stillness.

   My spirit catches in my chest. Her beloved barley, her precious wheat—she destroyed what I thought she loved most in the world, because, in truth, she loved something more. Me.

   All those crowded graves. Because she thought I was in danger.

   Because of words I could not speak.

   Those words are still trapped inside me, banging like fists on the door of my heart. How can I open my mouth?

   I pull my hand out of hers and start pacing. But she isn't finished yet.

   "To think Zeus tried to convince me you were fine! Fine? Look at your chiton!"

I pry at my lips with my fingers.

   "I know how it is among mortals," she says. "Their daughters are abducted all the time or forced into miserable marriages by fathers who care only for prestige. But not my daughter!"

   A strident edge sharpens each word. Zeus's hand drifts toward the thunderbolts, as if he thinks he might need one. Oh, how am I going to speak?

   "My daughter will never have to suffer again," she declares. "For I have the power to make Zeus listen! I have the power to make the entire earth listen!"

   And mortals, I wonder, who listens to them?

   I stop and close my eyes.

   For one precious moment, I believed everything she did was because of love. But now love and power are both shouting their names. I wanted it to be so pure. Nothing is ever pure.

   My mother's voice fills the room. "I have the power to speak for my daughter when she can't speak for herself!"

   Then a new note enters the fray.

   "That's just it," says Hermes from the shadows. "She can't speak. You've sealed her shut."

   "Ah, I forgot," says Zeus, waving his hand.

My lips unlock, my mouth opens.

But for a moment, I'm still silent. Because I don't want

to shout, or yell, or whine that she's got it all wrong. I don't want to hide the hard parts away, like I always did before, avoiding her thunderstorms. I'm going to do this right.

   I take a deep breath and step toward my mother.

   "Yes, your power helped bring me here," I say. My voice is soft and clear. "But I also chose to come back. Because there's something I need to say to you, something I should have said a long time ago. Can you listen to me? Do you have that power?"

   She glances from my soiled chiton to my determined face, as if trying to reconcile the two. With obvious effort, she nods.

   I turn to Zeus. "Please let me speak," I say. "Don't seal my words away."

   Looking intrigued, he nods as well.

   I look into my mother's eyes. "I chose to come back to Earth, but I also chose my life with Hades. You see, I love him."

   She opens her mouth, but I hold up my hand to stop her. She stares at my hand, shocked.

   "He found his way into the vale," I say, each word crisp. "He came to find me, and I snuck away to meet him, again and again and again. I had to keep seeing him. He makes me feel alive because he sees me. He believes in me."

   Even when he's as obsessed with power as my mother, I know he believes in me.

The color is draining from her face.

   "There was no abduction," I say. "Hades asked me if I wanted to come to the underworld with him. He made sure I knew it would be forever. And I went, willingly."

   Silence hangs in the air. Then: "You would have told me," she says, so quietly I strain to hear. "You would have told your friends."

   I shake my head. "I wasn't strong enough. I thought you'd lock me in my room and I'd never see Hades again. So I lied."

   The words are as painful as fire in my throat, in the air.

   "And later, I still didn't tell you. I should have written a note or sent word with Hermes. I left it to everyone else to tell you where I'd gone, and then wondered why they didn't act. Instead of doing it myself."

   "But your clothes!"

   "Don't look at my clothes," I say. "Look at my face."

   She stares and stares, and then her cheeks begin to shine. It takes me a moment to realize what I'm witnessing. For the first time in my life, I'm seeing my mother cry.

   And then her voice bursts out, an anguished keening. "All for nothing!" She closes her eyes, swaying back and forth. "Destroyed and all for nothing! Oh, my sweet wheat, my beloved barley—what have I done?"

   I wrap her in my arms, and my tears mingle with hers.

   Yes, I think, what have you done? What have I done?

She steps back and looks at me. It's as if the veils she always saw me through, veils woven of words like child and maiden, are gone; she's seeing me for the first time.

   "You love him," she says.

   "Yes," I say. "I want to be with him."

   "Then you shall."

   Sounding once again like a goddess in charge, she turns to the back of the room. "Hermes! Prepare the chariot. Persephone is returning to the underworld."

   Zeus has been listening, watching the scene unfold, but now he leans forward, gripping the arms of his throne. "Oh, no she isn't," he snaps. "Listen, Demeter, this has gone on long enough! First Hades bends the rules to marry her, and then you damn near destroy Earth to bring her back here—do you think the border is an open gate she can stroll through a hundred times a day?" His face is turning red. "No, as long as the girl didn't eat or drink in the underworld . . . Did any nectar cross your lips, Persephone?"

   Nectar? No, not a sip.

   "Any bread?" he continues. "Figs? Eggs? No? Then I'm sorry, Demeter, but she stays on Earth. Look at this!" He flourishes the desiccated bit of vine with its shriveled raisins. "There's nothing decent to eat around here, with all this border-crossing nonsense. You made me bring her back, and I bent all the rules to do it. This is where she stays!"

   My mother is drawing in her breath, preparing to blast back at him, when a most incongruous sound rises from the back of the room. Hermes is laughing.

   "What's so damn funny?" demands Zeus.

   Hermes strolls out of the pillars' shade and into golden light. A grin splashes across his face.

   "Very clever," he says. "Oh, Hades is a wily one! You can't help but admire him, can you?"

   "Admire that troublemaker?" says Zeus. "Why should I?"

   "There I was," says Hermes, "turning my back so the lovebirds could say a private farewell. I only heard a whispered word or two. 'If you love me.' I think that's what Hades said. And 'Let's share it.'" Hermes shakes his head in amusement. "He knew if I saw, my orders would force me to stop him. Because as Zeus has so rightly pointed out, food is the only thing with the power to bind Persephone eternally to the underworld, the only thing capable of overruling the king of the gods himself. I saw the evidence as we left, but I didn't realize what it meant. Until now."

   He puts his hands on his hips, his smile as broad as his stance. "Persephone," he says, "why don't you tell them what made those stains on your chiton?"

   I look down, running my fingers over fabric smeared with dirt, ripped by clutching branches, brown with dried blood. And all down the front: red red red—stains as shocking and bright as each bursting pomegranate seed.

   Suddenly, I see everything—the welcoming banquets, Hades' fingers running along my thigh in the throne room as he offered me bread, the impatient way he slashed the rind with his knife—now I see what it all meant.

   "I did eat in the underworld!" I proclaim, joyfully lifting the fabric to display the evidence. "I ate seeds from a pomegranate I grew! I shared it with Hades!"

   Hades, so careful to make sure it was what I wanted, too, even if he couldn't spell it out for me with Hermes in the room. I hear his whispered words again; I feel his breath warm in my ear. If you truly want to return to my side, and only then, eat.

   Knowing food would bring me home to him. Tactician. Ruler. Husband. Love.

   I close my eyes, seeing his face, feeling his arms, his broad hands. Hades.

"He didn't have to let you leave, after that," my mother says softly. "He loves you enough to let you go. And that's what I need to do, too."

   "Damn it all," says Zeus, stamping his immortal foot. "Back and forth, back and forth, like a bunch of love letters. All right then, Persephone returns to the underworld. But I'm telling you, this is absolutely the last time, and only because of the pomegranate. Don't think you'll get anywhere by changing your mind again, Demeter. She's going back for good, regardless of what you want."

   "But this is what I want," says my mother, looking at me, her voice surprisingly gentle. "Because it's what Persephone wants. And it seems she's capable of making her own choices."

   I smile, grasping her hand. But then I see her eyes staring at me, and I realize she's trying to soak up as much of me as she can, enough to last her . . . forever.

   "Off you go, then," says Zeus. "Immediately."

   I think of how rich the earth used to be and could be again. Groves crowded with fat, ripe olives. The way black soil smells when it's been turned. I think of my mother trying to save me and Melita risking the fangs of Cerberus for her daughter.

   And then I remember.

   "I can't go right away!"

   They both turn to me sharply, heads cocked sideways like birds.

   "Before I go, I need some time on Earth." I stride toward Zeus and grab the brittle grapevine from his platter. "This is what I've got to fix! I need to get my hands in the soil and help make it bloom again. And there's something else. In the underworld, I was friends with a mortal, and I made her a promise."

   "A promise to a mortal? Never a good idea," says Zeus.

   "Let her speak," says my mother.

   "I promised I'd find her daughter and make sure she's safe. If I go back now, I can't keep my word."

   "Promises must be kept," says my mother.

   "No," says Zeus, pointing his finger at me. "You need to leave this minute. You shouldn't even be here. Someone else can help the mortal child."

   "I promised to do this myself!"

   He shakes his head. Light glances off his hair like golden feathers. Eagle feathers. He's parting his lips to speak again when an idea flies into my head, fully formed.

   "Zeus—"

   "Don't argue," he says. "There are rules to be followed."

   But I keep going. "The rule says food is binding. But there are different ways to bind. A bird leaves its home when frost falls. It spends the winter in a distant land. But come spring, the bird returns to its first home."

   "So?" says Zeus.

   "Don't you see? The bird is bound to depart each year but not to stay away. It always comes back again to its first home. I can be bound to the underworld and still return to Earth each year."

   A smile warms my mother's face.

   "I have a home in the underworld, and a husband, and work I'm learning to do. But if I stay there forever, my mother will keep grieving. I don't think a grief-stricken goddess will create abundant harvests, do you?"

Zeus is looking thoughtful.

   "I'll fulfill my promise, and maybe . . ." I look at my mother. "Maybe I could work for a while by my mother's side. I did a lot of gardening in the underworld. Some people think I have a knack for it."

   As I speak, I lift my hand, and Zeus's mouth drops open. A gasp escapes from my mother's lips. I follow their eyes.

   From the shriveled bit of grapevine, tiny green leaves are springing. There, amidst the brown remnants, are two ripe grapes, a juicy, intoxicating purple.

   Hades was right. He saw it all along. I do have power.

   "Here's what I want," I say to Zeus. "To stay here part of each year and then spend the rest in the underworld, ruling by my husband's side. Every year I'll return to Earth. That should fulfill the requirements."

   "Hmm," says Zeus, still eyeing the grapes. "Very clever. I like it."

   "As do I," says my mother.

   "So be it," says Zeus, his voice booming. "Persephone's sojourn on Earth will begin now, to help the land heal. Hermes, perhaps you'd like to let Hades know."

   Hermes grins at me. "This should put me back on good terms with the old rascal," he says.

   "Stop talking!" I say. "Go! Tell him!"

   Fly like the wind to my husband and tell him he'll hold me again.

   "I'm going, I'm going," says Hermes. "I'll be back for you in a few months. Maybe next time we'll have a smoother ride!"

   He wheels around and out the door. In a moment there's a roar from the crowd as the black horses rise, pulling a chariot as light as air.