O nly six days now and I head home again. Just thinking about Hades makes my heart beat so fast I get dizzy.

   So much has happened. Those first light-filled leaves gave way almost overnight to heavy branches and dense shade. Everywhere you look there's green. All that mud coated the ground with new life, even richer than before.

   Sometimes I go to orchards or fields with my mother, but more often I go by myself. Just because we realized we love each other doesn't mean it's easy for us to be together all the time. I like to stretch my wings and explore. And my mother— Well, think about it! She's always needed her solitude, roaming her blossoming sanctuary and being one with the green and the growing.

   Tomorrow we're going to be worshiped together for the first time at the new temple on top of the hill. Our temple.

   "Don't forget," she said. "Wear something grand."

   I reach out to some blossoms for strength. This is going to be interesting.

A huge crowd stares reverently at the stone altar in front of the columns. I've never seen so many people in one place.

   My mother leans over and whispers in my ear. "Now we go into the statues," she says.

   Two towering figures stand side by side, brilliantly painted, laden with gold—but underneath, hard, cold, unmoving stone. I stare at the draped folds of my statue's chiton, thinking back to the time I saw a sculptor carving my face from marble. I realize I don't want to enter the statue. I've worked so hard to be more than a figurehead.

   "You go ahead," I say. "I'll watch from out here."

   "But it's always done this way," she whispers, impatient.

   "You've always done it this way."

   She opens her mouth to snap at me, but then the priestess intones her name, and the crowd takes it up like a chant, and I see my mother's face change. She drinks up the praise as if it's nourishing her. The priestess pours a libation, and my mother nods appreciatively. The mortals, at least, are doing things to her liking.

   Staring at me pointedly, my mother steps into her statue. Something shifts subtly in the stone. Her eyes gaze out from its eyes.

   The priestess sings of grain and light, dark and death, as if my mother's golden wheat becomes a blazing torch and I help people carry that light with them into the underworld.

   And now the priestess pours a second libation, this time intoning my name. Chanting after her, everyone turns toward my statue, the empty statue, and bows.

   Everyone, that is, except for one old, white-bearded man. His eyes stare sightlessly ahead; a lyre is strung over his shoulder. He sniffs the air, smiling as if inhaling perfume from the freshest spring flowers. Then he turns directly toward me and bows.

   The bard. The one who crouched outside the door of Zeus's temple as my mother told her story. The one whose lyre I heard as he rushed from the temple to write his song— too soon, before I set the story straight.

   I see the priestess moving her lips at the altar, but I don't hear her. Instead, I'm hearing his song. Hideous Hades ripped her away . . .

   I know it by heart. Everyone does now. Mothers croon it to their babies. Men sing it as they sip wine together late at night. Shepherds whistle it as they wander with their flocks.

   Kidnapped, that's what it says. Forced against my will.

   Something in me longs to appear before these people and

tell the real story. Just once! But deep down I know: that song is stronger than the truth.

   The priestess reaches into a basket and brings up a pomegranate. Splitting it open, she starts to sing of a beloved girl-child, trapped in a brute's arms and bound by blood-red seeds.

   But the seeds aren't really what bind me. No, they're just sweet excuses. I'm returning to the underworld because I need to be with Hades. Once I said his arm would be my true home. And it is. It always will be. The land of death, receiver of so many: I went there so I could live.

The crowd starts to drift away and my mother comes out of her statue. She looks at me with a mixture of exasperation and pride.

   "No statue?" she says.

   "No statue."

   She asks if I'm coming with her to the fields, but I smile and say I need some time by myself. I watch her walking away, so graceful, her palms turning up to soak in the sun. There will be plenty of time to join her next year.

   Right now, I only want to think of the underworld and the one who waits for me there. Five more days! How will I live until then?