Two
The Harvest QueenThe peaks of the mountains and the depths of the sea echoed her divine voice. Her goddess mother heard her and her heart was pierced with sudden grief. She tore the headdress from her graingold hair and threw her veil down. Like a bird she darted over land and sea, searching. No one was willing to tell her truly, neither gods nor mortals, nor would any bird of omen come to her with tidings…
Homeric Hymn to DemeterHeavy-headed barley sways on the chorus of a gentle wind. The fertile fields of the Rarian Plain are a sea of muted greens and golds and they rustle and whisper like children in a temple. In the midst of a fine field of barley a goddess walks slowly. Her fair hair is lifted by the wind, like serpents, its fiery color ignited by the sun. Where the goddess passes the bearded barley nods and springs joyously into full ripeness. Behind her lies a path of robust golden grain. Demeter’s glory fills the world in her season of giving.
She passes from field to vineyard and ascends a rocky slope. Great Demeter, Bringer of the Harvest, ever-abundant Corn Mother, blesses the vines with her smile. In her divine sight green grapes swell and darken until their juices burst their skins. Their weight causes the ancient vines to bow down lush green leaves in adoration of the Harvest Queen. Bees follow her, gorging themselves upon the sweet excess of fruit, their happy song a promise of easy winter and much pleasure.
Demeter pauses to bestow her smile upon blazing Helios, whose day journey is nearly done. She sweeps her gaze across the ripening abundance they have conspired to create, field and vine, orchard and garden. The shadow of the western hill creeps lazily across the back of the crowded green vineyard that rambles across rocky ground. As golden-haired Demeter watches, the moving edge of dark and light stops its advance. Is it possible that blazing Helios has paused in the sky? She looks sharply into his radiant face. Has he halted his shining chariot? The wind dies, the leaves cease their sussurance, but then the shadows resume their growth, spreading water like over field and vine. The wind breathes again and Demeter walks on.
Her daughter’s voice whips cleanly through the three times and the four kingdoms, then is gone. The Corn Mother is instantly alert. She turns her divine head, seeking the source of the cry, hoping for another word from Kore! Sweet Kore has called her name just once, as if in fear!
“Kore! Kore!” Great Demeter’s call rings out through the shining world, and all who dwell there hear, but none reply. Demeter runs down the sloping vineyard, heedless of the delicate green leaves that reach out for her blessed touch and are torn from their stems by her passing. The golden sandals of the Abundant One crush hopeful barley stalks and drive their heads to the ground.
Sooner than soon the goddess reaches a certain high plain overlooking the sea near Nyssos. There her mother’s eyes see paths in the wild grasses where feet have bent the stalks. A wide one leads from the sea cliffs and back again, and a narrow, meandering path wanders away from the other. She finds heaps of cut flowers, some woven into garlands, where the trails meet at the foot of a rocky outcropping, also strewn with flowers.
“Kore!”
Nothing replies except maybe a sorrowful breeze.
Demeter squints into the red sun, now dipping his face into the sea, beyond day, beyond calling. She bends and scoops up a mass of damply fragrant blossoms: roses, saffron, violets, iris, hyacinth. She fills her arms with flowers and crushes them to her breast. Demeter sees the black flower withering on a great stone and bends to it, touching, tasting, smelling. “...Someone has taken Kore. Someone has dared to abduct the daughter of the Grain Mother, my fair and fragile Kore.”
Outrage and rage writhe in the breast of Demeter, each contending to be the greater fire in her heart.
Kore!”
Her one word swells across the night world, saturating the very air with a mother’s longing and her warning. Those that have eyes close them. Those that have young touch them, cover them with wing or robe. Those that are alone weep, unknowing.
In time a gibbous moon edges over the eastern hills. Its cold light drains all warmth from the flowers of the field. Even the blossoms in the goddess’ arms sink into grays and deep blues. The goddess herself, Demeter, the Grain Mother, looks like an ivory statue with silver hair and empty lapis eyes, but for her hair, which streams out behind her like the mane of a mare. A shy evening breeze tugs at her robes, but the goddess stands still as a caryatid.
Demeter’s inner world is vast. She goes within to observe the Great Pattern that bestows form, for she knows it is shifting to accommodate this deed. She palpates and strokes the probability lines that hum and glow in colors of all wavelengths of light. She sees her path, and it is dark, indeed.
Ancient and wise beyond reckoning, Demeter Erynine, the Dark, the Angry One, abandons the harvest.
She returns her sight to the world of living things and flings away from her the flowers she has crushed to her holy breast. With strength born of divinity and fear and rage, Demeter uproots two slim pine trees and with a thought she stands in the caldera of Aetna. She dips their uttermost branches into flaming stone and the fragrant trees burst into steady torch flames.
For nine days Demeter searches the world of mortals, two torches in her hands, calling for Kore, weeping bitter tears that blacken soil and sink deeply into rock where they fall. In every grotto, on every hill, in forest and plain, she searches. She crosses five rivers, each thrice, but never drinks of them. Neither does she gaze upon her own wild face nor bathe her divine body, twisted with desperate sorrow.
For nine days dark Erynine wanders, neither resting nor eating ambrosia nor drinking sweet nectar. Surrendering utterly to her mother rage, her goddess outrage, and to her growing fear, she storms through lands wild and tamed, where fruit and grain ripen not, neither do the seeds and cones, but all bake under the lowering Sun. The goddess neither sees nor seeks her own kind.
At the dawning of the tenth day, long past weeping, she stops at a certain cave and sets her blackened torches down at its mouth. Within she hears the deep baying of hounds.
Demeter waits. Her eyes are clear and dark. A tiny flame of rage still blooms in her heart. Divine wrath kindles in the kind heart of the Barley Mother.
The empty space within the cave glows dimly as it fills with the fey light of the torches of the Ancient One. Revered Grandmother, Mistress of crossroads, dark Hecate emerges silently. Her timeless eyes betray alarm when she sees Demeter Erynine, dark, angry, with a burning in her heart. Hecate draws a slow breath and lifts her chin.
“Lady Demeter, Bringer of Seasons! Why do you wander these barren places, when the harvest awaits your blessing?”
Demeter's lips are tightly pursed, her eyes narrow. She stands tall before the daughter of Perses, the unknowable Hecate.
Hecate’s face softens and she touches Demeter's arm reassuringly. “Poor dear. By my ways I know and am telling you truly, everything is going to be fine.”Demeter just glares at her.
Hecate tries again. “Oh, my daughter, I only heard her voice ringing deep inside my caves. I did not see who, of mortal men or immortal gods, seized Persephone. I'm telling you the truth.”
Nothing.
“Demeter, this is your season! For Heaven's sake, for everything’s sake, you have to pull yourself together! Later, after the harvest is in, go to Olympus to receive your sacrifices, I'm sure you'll find she's just...off somewhere, being young, or….”
Demeter turns on her heel and strides away in implacable silence.
“Wait, Demeter, what about the harvest?”
The Grandmother of Time hastens to follow Rhea's daughter, but Demeter cuts her cold. She knows she knows. The dark Mother is starting to get the feeling everyone knows, but her. She bounds away, weeping new tears of lamentation and rage, seeking now the One who would never lie to her, never deceive her, and who sees everything that happens in the light of day with his one great eye: her partner in the growing season, Helios.
At noon she stands on the Calling Rock at Killirhoe. She raises trembling hands to the cloudless sky.
"Mighty Helios, Lord of the Day world, hail! Respect me and come to me, if ever in all our long seasons I have pleased your heart and spirit. Persephone, my daughter whom I have born, my fair Flower Maiden! I heard her cries…"
At the zenith of the southern sky, Helios draws rein on his fiery horses. Dark Demeter stands before him, dark Hecate behind her. Once again the Sun hesitates in the sky.
Helios is not glad to have been put in this position by Zeus, king and miscreant. But his golden heart breaks for his friend and partner and for dear little Kore, as well as for the people of the Earth, who suffer already under his overlong reign. All wait for Demeter to call in the harvest. He caresses her with his warmth and dries her tears with his radiance.
Demeter relaxes a bit in his embrace. "Bright friend, she cried out to me, as if she were being taken against her will!But I cannot find her, though I search and call. But you who see all that transpires in the light of day, surely you… Oh, tell me who of gods or mortal men has forced her, taken her away, all unwilling....”
The Sun red shifts with sorrow. “Dear, dear Lady Demeter, my heart weeps with you! You will know all by me, for I have great love for you and my heart aches with your grief for the slim-ankled Kore. None are to blame but Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, who has granted to noble Hades the hand of the Kore, that she be his wife and Queen. Hades has taken her away in his chariot, down into his dark realm.”
To Helios' horror, Demeter crumples into a sobbing heap.
“Please, dear goddess, oh, do not weep so, do not surrender to anger! Hades is, after all, not an unsuitable son-in-law for you! His honor is unsurpassed; he dwells with those over whom the lot made him king! He is beautiful and just....” Demeter wails and pounds the rock with her fist. It groans, shudders, and fractures deeply.
Helios calls to his horses, and at his chiding they quickly whirl the swift chariot along, like long-winged birds. Hecate gathers the bereft immortal mother in her cool embrace and timeless moments lie heavy on Weeping Rock.
After Hecate departs to her own dark and silver moon chariot, soon to rise into the darkening sky, Demeter rises unsteadily and stumbles down the mountainside. Grimly she contemplates the treachery of her brothers; indeed, of all Olympus, for Demeter well knows how swiftly flies news of misfortune or intrigue in the heavenly city. Grimly she flings off her divine raiment and covers herself with the woolen, somber robes of a mortal woman. She shrouds her shining face with a fine dark veil and casts glamour upon her countenance.
A dignified matron of middling age travels through the suffering lands, whose crops languish and ripen not, for the corn is blighted and the touch of the Corn Mother withheld.
The great roads to Boetia, Athens, and the Peloponnese meet before the gates of the city of Eleusis. There stands a deep well fed by the by the spring called Parthenion, Virgin. Demeter sits on the dressed stone of the well, not speaking, numbed by such long and bitter emotion. She is gazing into the water, its lightless depth hidden by the sparkling surface of living water. Kore is down there, deeper than any eye can see, even Demeter’s. She wraps her mortal veil around her.
As dusk begins to steal color from the world, four young women bound like young deer down the rutted path that leads through the gates of the city of Eleusis. They bring their shining bronze vessels to the spring and begin to fill them. Shards of their laughter tinkle in the gloaming.
Demeter's knotted heart stirs, for they are like goddesses in their youthful bloom.
Kallidike sees her first. Tugging her sister’s skirt, she bows slightly. "Greetings, Grandmother."
Demeter hesitates. "Greetings, my child."
Klesidike is filling her vessel, but lovely Demo and Kallithoe, the eldest, approach. They do not recognize her, for Demeter has truly cast upon herself the shroud of mortality. Despite the grimness of the season, the maidens' compassion reaches out to her.
Kallidike speaks. “Grandmother, we do not know you, but surely you should now come into the city, as night approaches. There, in the golden-lit houses, women as old as you and younger will treat you kindly.”
"Truly, Eleusis is the women's city," dimples Demo.
"Who are you, Old Woman, of those born long ago? From where? Why have you left the city? Why do you not draw near a warm hearth?"
Demeter's grief is penetrated by the sweet-faced girls' simple kindness. She nearly smiles.
"My name is Doso. I have come here upon the heaving back of the sea, from honeyed Crete, and all against my will, imprisoned in a mongrel slave ship bound for Athens. When we put in at Thorikos, they brought us ashore while women came to make us dinner. I ran away into the darkness, and ran and ran, fearing they would catch me and sell me overseas. Wandering, I came here, though I know not at all what this land is or who lives here.”
“Oh! We are before the gates of Eleusis, where our noble father, Celeus, is king and justly rules with other men of honor, and our deep-belted mother, Metaneira, is queen.”
Demo draws closer. "Grandmother, these are strange times, and hard. We are forced, though it is painful, to bear the gifts of the gods, for good or ill, for they are powerful.”
Demeter turns her veiled face to her. "May the gods grant you strong and handsome husbands, and children to light you days... Indeed, we do stand between day and night. Perhaps you could help me find a good home, where I might serve to keep the house, or hold an infant child in my arms and instruct the young women in their tasks…"
Kallithoe, the eldest, speaks: “Of all the of the wives who manage the houses of Eleusis, no one of them, so soon as she had seen you, would dishonor you and turn you away, but they will welcome you; for indeed you are godlike. But if you will, stay here, we will go to our house and tell Metaneira, our mother, of all these things and see whether she bids you come, and not search for another home. She has a much prayed-for son, late born to her. We rejoice in him. If you would nurse him, and he would grow, any woman would envy you, our mother would give you so great a reward.”
Doso nods, feeling the hand of the Fates upon her. The princesses fill their shining jugs and carry them upon their hips into the failing light.
Demeter muses silently: "So, my brothers conspire to steal my daughter. Their heads grow unbecomingly large wearing the crowns of Olympus and Erebus. They forget who I am. They think I just give and give, always young, reasonable, always there to settle disputes amongst the mighty. Dependable Demeter. We shall see. They cannot win this one, but we can all lose if we do not act wisely."
Soon the sisters return, again bounding like does down the rutted track, kirtling up the skirts of their long chitons.
“Yes, please come to the house of Celeus and Metaneira, where you are well come. All is good and Metaneira awaits you.”
Veiled and somber, Demeter-as-Doso, rises. The dark robe trails around the slender feet of the goddess. She walks silently among the four flowering maidens of Eleusis. Seeing their smooth faces and slim hips, hearing their voices, so innocent, Demeter’s heart is seared with remembrance of the divine maiden from whom she is sundered.
As night falls in Eleusis, the august Demeter, Harvest Bringer, goes into hiding.
