Page 2 of The Signature Dish of the Underworld

“Of course,” Rae nodded and headed back behind the counter to collect the wine kylix’s and the golden liquid that Rae bought privately from one of Dionysus’ acolytes.

“You know we’re supposed to be locking up in an hour,” Geras grumbled. “Not serving those Keres more wine and waiting around here.”

“I’ll wait for them and then lock up, Geras.” Rae rolled her eyes when her back was turned, while she grabbed the cold ambrosia slices. “You can go home to your wife.”

“Too right,” Geras grumbled, opening the éos, a cash register of sorts, which was filled with slips of parchment – tokens they were called – and pilfered through the ones collected for the day. As the owner, he got his pick of tokens first.

The coins that the dead travelled into the Underworld with only paid the ferryman, Charon, to carry them across the river from the mortal realm. Once they were here, Souls had to settle on what tokens they would like to trade. That way, rich mortals did not necessarily make rich souls. It was a clean slate, of sorts. Something their Queen Persephone had introduced after her time in the moral realm.

On each token was a favour, or an offering, that the recipient gifted in reasonable exchange for the food, drink, and service of the bistro. Some daemons offered to guide the recipient to their dream jobs, others could make it rain on your patch of land (or that of an enemies). Some tokens offered love potions, success, windfalls, luck.

Just because it was the Underworld didn’t mean creatures didn’t still crave all the things they always had before.

Rae watched Geras with displeasure. His long, gnarled fingers and nails that looked like talons flicked through each token. When it got to a token Geras liked the look of, he would laugh wheezily to himself and pocket it. Rae had collected over two dozen tokens today, stocked the kitchen, and ran most – if not all – of the tables.

Geras, meanwhile, had spent the entire time interrupting her tables with tales of his own life, and occasionally clearing a stack of plates. Rae couldn’t figure out if he was lonely and his wife had stopped listening to him back home, or if he was just unaware that the customers did not want to talk to him.

But this was Geras’ bistro. He got to decide who he talked to and which tokens he wanted to take. Rae was left with the rest. That was the deal they had made way back when she'd started here, desperate for a chance to be taken seriously as a cook. Desperate to make her dream come true.

Geras grinned at her. “I’ll leave you with these. I’m sure there will be something useful in here for a cursed one like you.”

Rae’s smile was tight. “Thank you, Geras.”

The fact was, she couldn't afford to piss him off. He was one of the only daemon-run eateries in Asphodel that would have her. She had to have tokens to survive. Sure, no one would starve to ‘death’ in a place where death was the constant, but survival of the spirit was a different beast. Survival of the spirit meant you actually had to enjoy the existence you lived.

So Rae sat on the stool while the Keres cackled and gossiped, occasionally throwing her scorned looks when they thought she wasn't looking, and painted a new scene onto one of the cracked kylix cups that needed a bit of love and attention. Rae was painting it sea-foam green – the colour of the ocean Aphrodite walked out of. Looking up every so often to check on the table and make sure they didn’t need anything from her, Rae continued her task dutifully and in painstaking detail. Finally the ladies got up to leave without so much as a goodbye, throwing their tokens on the table as if they were used serviettes.

The door squeaked shut behind the last of them and the bistro – who Rae had come to consider a good friend over the last four centuries – gave a visible sigh.

“I know,” Rae smiled, stroking the wooden countertop. “Another day done. Tomorrow we begin festival preparations though, so you should get some rest. It’s going to be a busy next couple of weeks.”

The door opened in agreement.

“Yes,” Rae agreed. “I’ll go home and get some rest, too.”

CHAPTER TWO: Vraveío Astéri

(The Greek Prize Star)

Every century in the Asphodel Meadows, there was the Vraveío Astéri festival, otherwise known to the locals as the Hades cook-off.

Asphodel Meadows was like any other city earthside, with suburbs and shops, roads and roadkill. Rae was always amused when she saw a screech-owl lying in the road. They lay there for a moment, then sat up dazed, before they went to hunt down whichever idiot had run them over.

Rae’s suburb was a leafy district, home to more ash-tree nymph Meliae than anything else, but she loved it for its quiet understatedness. Her home was a cavern under one of the roots of the largest ash trees in the area. She merely had to take one right turn at the end of her cobblestone street, carry on straight for three hundred metres or so underneath the awning of ash tree leaves, cross the road, and then she was at the bistro.

Unlocking the tree stump door, Rae got to work setting up the kitchens for the day. This would be the year she would win the cook-off.

The rules were simple: the festival was held in the first year of every new century and ran for twelve days. During that time the contestants had to produce a festival dish – the ultimate showcase of the best produce and chef talent Asphodel Meadows had to offer to their queen, Persephone. Hades then presented the winning dish to his bride and queen. Hence why they all called it Hades cook-off instead of its fancy festival title.

Each century the festival had a theme and the dish had to include a key ingredient. This year’s theme was The Kalliste Clash, and the key ingredient was apples.

The Kalliste Clash was still all anyone could talk about down here in the Underworld, even though it had been nine years since the clash had occurred. Hera, the Goddess of Marriage, Athena the Goddess of Wisdom, and Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love and Beauty, had all been attending a wedding, when Eris – the Goddess of Discord – had thrown a beautiful golden apple inscribed with the words “for the most beautiful” onto the wedding buffet. According to the Greek gossip mill, the goddesses had squabbled over it so incessantly, Zeus had let a young mortal prince decide who was the most beautiful.

Now there were a whole host of starving Greek and Trojan soldiers walking along the Styx river and through the doors of the bistro.

All of this because Paris had chosen Aphrodite, who had promised him the love of the world’s most beautiful woman. It was a pity then that the woman in question, Helen of Sparta, was already married to King Menelaus. And so, when Paris had stolen her away on the ships, war had ensued.

The majority of the Underworld was happy about a good bloody war – it meant new customers. Business was good, the Underworld economy thriving. The only ones who didn’t particularly appreciate it were those of Rae’s kind – the Arae that were hounded by the newly-dead who had sworn false oaths in the mortal realm. The new arrivals – simply known as the Souls to locals – thought they would find absolution with an Arae, unknowing it was the deities job to take vengeance on them, however they saw fit.

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