Page 86 of Persephone's Curse
She turned back to the piano, gave the keys a few more noiseless taps. “This is how I got in,” she whispered.
“To the Underworld?”
“I played this song. A secret song. I don’t even really know how I knew it, it just came to me… And when I tried to play it again, the other night, I couldn’t remember it. And then I couldn’t playanything.”
“We’re going to figure this out, Evelyn,” I said, and she turnedher body toward me and looked into my eyes, her own eyes wide and frightened.
“Are you sure? Are yousure?”
And I wasn’t, of course, but I lied to her again.
I was getting so good at lying.
IX
If you were liked by a god, favored by a god, related to a god, the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Persephone, for example, the daughter of a daughter of a daughter
of a daughter
of a daughter
of a daughter
of someone with great, mythical power—
She might bestow a gift upon you.
She might bless you with the craft of weaving, making your fingers long and bendy and untiring, making your eyesight good enough to see all the little stitches in your work.
She might kiss your forehead and leave you with the power of foresight, women’s intuition, a prescience that is never quite explainable.
She might give you the power of opening up a doorway, of closing one again, of sending someone through…
We did all sleep with paper and pencils next to our beds, but Henry didn’t write any magical messages from beyond the grave, not thenight of the séance or the morning I sat with Evelyn at her piano or any other night that week.
The tear in the sky was still getting bigger and it sort of shimmered around the edges, catching the light in strange ways. I had started to think of it as a black hole, or maybe a reverse black hole, spitting things out of it instead of drawing things into it. But if it got bigger, would there be a reversal? Would it magnetize, turning on like a vacuum, sucking us all in, body by body, depositing us unceremoniously in the Underworld, pulling us in and spitting us out, from one universe to the next?
Evelyn was right; it was affecting all of us.
It was hard to sleep, hard to concentrate. We felt like we were walking through thick fog. I kept finding our mother staring out windows at nothing. She still couldn’t see it, but I knew she felt its presence just like we did. The only one who seemed blissfully unbothered was our father, and I knew it was because he didn’t have any Farthing blood—anygodblood—running through his veins.
Bernadette, too, was on edge. I kept peeking over her shoulder to find her on her phone, frantically searching for new information on Melinoë. Her obsession with the goddess of madness had been rekindled, and she had taken to spitting out random facts with a fevered intensity.
Did you know some people thought she could shape-shift?
Did you know the ancient Greeks used to perform rituals in order to protect themselves from her nightmares?
Some people confuse her with Hecate, who was the goddess of magic, ghosts, and necromancy. But they were different people. Maybe they were friends, though? I’m going to see if I can find anything about them being friends.
Clara had started slipping into my bed at night; we’d browse through her mythology book together or talk or not talk. I sometimes was able to fall asleep with her beside me, but she was always gone when I woke up.
“Are you worried that Evelyn can’t play the piano anymore?” I asked her one night.
“I’m worried about a lot of things,” Clara said simply. “I’d like to just, like… go shopping. You know?”
“God, I’d really love that,” I agreed.
She snuggled into my side, pressing her cold nose against my shoulder. She was wearing a flannel nightgown, somewhat old-fashioned, a gift from Aunt Bea last Christmas. We’d all gotten matching ones. Black Watch, that was the name of the tartan pattern. It had a bib collar with delicate lace. Bernadette had declared itvery punk. Evelyn had cooed over its softness. I had never worn mine.
