“IT HONOURS ME TO KNOW YOU DESIRE TO MAKE MY ACQUAINTANCE, MY QUEEN,” A GLOOMY VOICE EMERGED FROM BEYOND THE RIPPLING WATERS.

The hair on my skin stood up on hearing it, it was dreadful, the tone of those words was akin to nails screeching on walls of iron.

He was a bag of bones, skeletal and miserable, with eyes like pits of fire in a hollow skull.

“This is Charon,” Hades said quietly, his jaw tightening with something that looked like concern as he noted the way my body tensed. The thin, skeletal figure tipped his tall, conical hat to me before sweeping low in a polite gesture, the dark black robes on his figure kissing the dirty floor of his dinghy boat.

“My King,” the man rasped, “my Queen.” He rapped a dusty oar on his boat, while the other hand steadied himself on the stern. It was a withered, old thing - and made me shiver when I thought of how old the being might be.

“Hello, Charon,” I said, trying to keep myself from shaking while slowly inching a bit behind Hades. “I… uh-”

“No wonder she’s appalled. How long has it been since you had a bath?” the mighty god held me close to him, his steady hand keeping me from falling, holding me secure.

“Filth suits me, Polydegmon,” Charon cackled, a smile slipping through his stern face, like marble being polished after centuries of glom. Then he looked at me, and the fire in his eyes burned deeper, like deep pits flickering in the darkness. “Fear not, my lady. I will not hurt you,” he said gallantly, with a cracked grin on his face.

“Charon is my ferryman,” Hades turned to me. “He carries the souls of the dead across the River Styx river in his boat. But he will not take you across without payment.”

“Payment?” I echoed.

“Any soul that enters this realm must have a coin with them to pay for passage. When a person is buried, they usually place a coin under their tongue so that it carries into their next life as sustenance for their soul and a fare for me,” the boatman rasped. “If they cannot pay the fee or are unburied, they wander the shores for a thousand years.”

It was then that I noticed the shrill, agonizing cries of the cloudy, gloomy souls waiting on the river bank, weeping and howling in misery and beating their fists on the ground. Their cries struck something in my heart, filling it with eternal sorrow. I reached to comfort them, to console them - when Hades pulled me back, securing me in his arms.

“Do not touch them, Persephone. You never know which of these could be the soul of a murderer or thief.”

My fist clenched, and so did my heart and throat, welling up with sadness.

“How?” I croaked. “How do you know where they go after crossing the river?”

“Charon brings them to my hall, where my judges sort each soul into the afterlife. The good go to Elysium, the bad go to Tartarus. And the rest - well, the ordinary ones, they go to the Fields of Asphodel.”

“If they do all that,” I questioned, “then what is your job?”

He looked at me with storm grey eyes, raising a dark eyebrow as he framed an answer.

“I rule this kingdom,” Hades answered coolly, “it is I who guards the deep monsters buried in Tartarus. It is I who gives people an afterlife, and controls where they go and what consequences they face. In the special cases where it is difficult to decide where to send someone, I get called in. It is I who decides to make exceptions if a soul begs to meet their deceased family. The entire system, the working of the Underworld was something I devised. The riches of the earth belong to me, keeping them from being stolen by unruly owners. Without me, the entire beings of the Underworld would perish - making it impossible to function, and crowding Olympus with the weight of billions of spirits. I carry the weight of endless lives on my shoulders. My word is what keeps this realm in check. You would do well to remember that, wife.”

The last word curled off his tongue, and I could only stare at him in uncloaked awe, trying hard to keep myself from biting my lip, to hold him, to feel him - this mighty, mighty being with such power in his check.

“But you rule this kingdom, why is Thanatos called the God of Death?”

“I am not Death,” he answered. “I rule the dead, but I do not cause death. The Fates decide when someone dies, they write it in their records from the moment a birth occurs, spinning the loom of fate. When their time is up, Thanatos collects their soul and brings them here. Charon sends them across the river to my hall. The judges sort them into their afterlife, and then it is my responsibility to keep an eye on them. It is not just the souls I look after, it is each and every being of the Underworld - be it the haunted shades, the attendants, my judges, Hecate, or the other deities residing in my kingdom.”

“Other gods live here?” I wondered out loud, surprised.

Hades smiled at me, a wintery smile that made something warm bloom in my chest.

“Yes, Persephone. Other gods do live here. The Olympians often tend to forget that we aren’t uncivilised mongrels, so I have to… refresh their memories every now and then,” he said with a grin. I couldn’t help the stupid smile on my face as I joined him to walk further on along the bank of the river as the waters lapped on the shores.

“There are a total of five rivers in the Underworld,” Hades continued, “but the Styx is the most important. Making a vow on the Styx constitutes a binding oath. You cannot break it under any consequences.”

“Which is why we drank it at our wedding?”

“Yes,” he said. “The Titans Tethys and Oceanus had three thousand daughters, and Styx was one of them. When the Titanomachy occured, she was the first to come to the aid of my brother, Zeus. So he honoured her by declaring that each and every vow be sworn by her. The river circles my realm seven times. Look,” he gently took my hand, leading me along the sparkling charcoal waters to a dimly lit cove walled with weathered rocks. My eyesight failed me in the shrouded darkness, and it took me some seconds to finally watch a lithe, lean figure shining lightly in the gloom, perhaps sitting on a rock.

“Is that her?” I whispered, awestruck.

“Yes,” Hades whispered back, his face delighted as he saw the awe in my eyes. We watched a woman sitting on the rock for a few minutes, barely visible. She appeared to be looking mournfully at the water as it lapped at her feet, before dipping a toe in it and watching the ripples disappear.

“Why is she so sad?”

“She had miraculous powers, once. Zeus granted them to her. Her waters could make you invulnerable. In that time, there was a Nereid called Thetis, who had a son with a man called Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons. They named the boy Achilles. Thetis wanted her son to be mighty, to be invincible, so she held him by the heel and dipped him in the waters of the river. Yet his heel remained vulnerable, a fact she overlooked. Then came the Trojan War, and Paris drew an arrow and struck Achilles right on his heel. And since that day, Styx withdrew her powers and retreated to stay distant alone in her cave.”

“Oh. She must be lonely there, all by herself,” I murmured sadly. Hades looked at me with another smile.

“You are adorable.”

“I am not,” I glared at him, crossing my arms.

“She does come out sometimes,” he smirked. “She is a bit jealous of the other rivers, and doesn’t like if I pay much attention to them. But otherwise, it takes me decades to coax her out of the cave, perhaps bribe her with her favourite watercress seeds.”

Jealous. I was a bit jealous of Styx, and I didn’t like him paying much attention to her either.

Suddenly, a wailing screech cut off my distant train of thought, and my head whipped around faster than the speed of light to find Thanatos heavy in through the main gate, a screaming soul in his arms. It was a ghost of a woman with splatters of blood on her dress, tears streaming down her cheeks like salty rivers. There seemed to be a translucent, nearly transparent light about her edges, indicating that she was a soul sent to the Underworld after her time was up. She could not speak, shocked with surprise, but incoherent wails and painful screams erupted from her as Thanatos carried her to the boat.

Hades stiffened at once by my side, terse.

“Go to your chambers, Persephone. You do not need to see this.”

The soul - spirit of the woman screamed again, before whimpering in pain, eyes wide. I did not move, frozen - frozen at her helpless plight. Uneasy, tense, frightened, she screamed and screamed, the sound threatening to make my eardrums burst open. I was barely aware of the tears running down my cheeks as Hades rushed to them at once, placing his cool, forgiving palm on the woman’s forehead in an attempt to soothe her.

She did not quiet down, instead screamed harder at the sight of the terrifying, devastating God of the Dead, breaking down in sobs, hunched over in Thanatos’s arms and beating his chest with her fists.

“No,” she whimpered again and again. “No. No. No.”

Hades cupped her face quietly, looking into her eyes with impossible forgiveness, making her weep harder as her eyes went hazy, and more tears spilled out her eyes as he seemed to dissipate the pain. Together, the two gods managed to make the spirit sit in Charon’s waiting boat, and she screamed again at the sight of his burning embers for eyes before weeping and retching into the water.

“Persephone! I said, go!” Hades snapped at me, this time it was not a request, but an order given in a voice of pure steel.

And then I ran, tears still shining in my eyes, her voice still ringing in my ears.

I could not sleep that night.

∞