Eurydice Awake: A Greek Myth Reimagined

The afterlife is a sea.

I drift across it, passing other shades. They are human-shaped like me and blur when I look at them. We wander the Underworld in droves, directionless and dazed.

Sometimes, I think I hear whispers. I grasp at the words but they are misty, like my memories and my fingertips. The sounds slip away, and I think it saddens me, but I’m not sure.

The only thing that exists in sharp, brilliant clarity is the endless stretch of asphodels, white lilies that bloom with no sun and flourish without rain.

I cannot smell, but for the fragrance of these flowers. It fills my lungs and sticks there like cobwebs. I cannot feel, but for the faint tickle of blooms against the outline of me. I taste their pollen that sighs up from them when I pass.

The flavor is cloying, like heartbreak.

The asphodels invade all my senses but one. Always, I hear those whispers, rhythmic as the hush of waves on sand. I yearn to hear it more clearly. It is nice to have that feeling. I think it means I loved the sea.

“Hello, again.”

The words startle me, and I flutter away from them. There is a man walking toward me, crushing the lilies under his sandaled feet. The light around him stings my vision. I see an impression of golden eyes, a smile, hair wildly dancing in the wind that I cannot feel.

“Come on then; you’re in for a treat.” The man beckons to me and he seems familiar. The asphodels shrink away from him, cower over and through my legs.

“I...” I start to say but there is nothing that comes out. I don’t move. The lilies want me to stay.

The man props his hands on his hips. “Right. You don’t recognize me.” He rubs his chin thoughtfully. “I keep forgetting about this pollen. Hades has such a creepy imagination.”

The longer I watch him, the more he seems to solidify. I can see the details of his face, the eyebrows, the nose. I see his pristine white robes and the restless wings twitching above his ankles.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he coaxes. “Just focus on me; it’ll come to you.”

I have a faint memory of walking alongside him. A pain in my leg that faded as we traveled. His gentle smile as he left me to wait for the ferry.

“Hermes?” I ask, and this time, the word has the weight of a whisper.

“That’s right, Eurydice.” His teeth flash through the fog of pollen. “You’re looking positively lovely, by the way. Very ‘otherworldly chic’.”

When I frown, I can feel the pull and crease of my forehead over my skull. “What is happening to me?”

Hermes reaches for my hand and I let him take it, if only to see that my fingers are there, gripped firmly in his, and when he pulls, I follow.

He looks back at me and there is that smile again from the riverbank of Styx. Sad and beautiful. “You’re waking up, sweetheart.”

Hermes carries me when the weight of my body knocks me down. The bones in my legs feel hollow and my kneecaps burn under my paper flesh. His arms at my back and under my thighs feel like needles pressing just shy of drawing blood.

“Don’t worry,” he tells me. “The pain will pass.”

It sounds so kind and sweet that I am sure it is a lie.

Hermes sets me on my feet at the landing of a stairway that doesn’t end. It stretches up and up into a darkness that feels like eternity. Standing in front of us, with his back turned, is a man.

“Who is that?” I ask.

But Hermes doesn’t answer me. Instead, he takes my hands in his and kisses my forehead. “Good luck, sweetheart.”

With a whisper of smoke, he leaves me with the phantom warmth of his touch and the silent figure before me.

“Hello?” I say.

The man doesn’t respond. I try to focus on him harder, but it is difficult with these new eyes—or were they always my eyes? I see a stray curl at the base of his neck, the vulnerable nakedness of his ears, and I think I know him.

He takes a step forward and, like a puppet being pulled by strings, my foot matches him. “Where are we going?” I ask.

No answer.

We climb the stairs for a long time in silence. I feel my legs grow heavier as they fill with muscle. My arms sway at my side as a natural response to the rhythm of my steps, as if I were solid, as if laws like gravity and momentum now apply to me.

The man carries a torch as we enter a tunnel, still climbing. I am fascinated by the play of shadows, how I cast my own when I lift my hand. As the man walks, I see him shift the instrument tucked under his arm. It is small, harp-like. His movement causes a muffled note to escape and goosebumps ripple down my spine.

“Do I know you?” I ask, and I can almost feel the thrum of the words in my throat.

His next step falters for just an instant, but he doesn’t look back.

“Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

So I let him pull me along as I adjust to the expansion of air in my lungs.

We walk for hours, or maybe days. My body comes alive one cell at a time. By the time I see a light ahead of us, I can feel my hair hanging down my back. Though my footsteps are silent, the impact of them vibrates up my calves.

I watch the man. His breath is heavy. In the torchlight, I see sweat sprouting from his nape and the gleaming droplets fascinate me. My tongue is heavy in my mouth with an almost memory.

We are close to the light now. There is a breeze that trickles over me and I can smell the salt of a true sea. It washes away the taste of the asphodels, and I stumble.

I feel it then, a thunderous boom that makes me clap my hands over my ears.

Electricity skitters through my groggy veins. I curl into myself, gasping. Another boom and all the chill from the Underworld evaporates. The thunder becomes a rhythm that spreads warmth to the tip of my nose, my fingers, my toes. It pounds against my skull, my ribcage. I realize suddenly what the sound is.

My heart is beating.

I look back up at the man before me. My pulse feeds me the syllables of his name.

“Orpheus,” I breathe, and it blooms from me like a living thing.

I remember my wedding then, the crush of my husband's kiss, the blinding, wondrous joy of claiming him, of being claimed. How we danced and laughed and drifted our hands over each other because this was the rest of our lives. This was all we would ever need.

The man staggers, shoulders bunched tight. The torch tumbles out of his hand and clatters down the stairs behind us.

“Eurydice?” he asks desperately. He cants his head to the side, listening, waiting.

Joy dazzles through my skin and muscles. I feel the the stretch of each pore as my face breaks into a smile. "Orpheus," I say again.

He turns.

My eyes snatch hungrily at each detail as time seems to slow. The line of his jaw, the lips that have traveled along my skin, the delicious curve of his neck. The gaze that never fails to find me.

We reach for each other. The sunlight behind him bounces off his arms, solid and strong, sun-browned. The whorls of his fingertips are perfect as they slide over my knuckles, my wrists. My heart beats with fire and my lungs are full of memories and everything I see and smell and taste is Orpheus.

Then something hooks my spine and flings me back into the dark.

My second death is quick, cold, and silent.

“Hello, again,” Hermes says.

He carries me past the River Styx and I see the ferryman in his boat full of the newly dead.

“No need for ceremony,” Hermes explains as the ferryman gazes after us. “You’ve already done all that.”

My heart is silent in my chest but I still cling to all the memories that I rediscovered. With each second, they fade. The sound of my father’s voice, the color of Orpheus’s eyes—it all grays like corpse skin.

Before it is gone, I snag on a memory of my mother kneading dough while she hums to me. I can almost see her face. The tune wobbles as if under water.

“What happened? I saw...” Even my confusion feels dull as I struggle to remember his name.

“Say what you will about my uncle, but Hades did more for your Orpheus than any of us would have.” Hermes gives me an apologetic smile. “It’s that Persephone. She’d ask him to eat the moon, and he’d be up there with a knife and fork.”

“Hermes,” I say, and already the notes in my voice are sanded. “Please, I don’t understand.”

By now, I can smell the lilies, but I don’t look at them. I keep my focus on Hermes.

“It’s simple, sweetheart. Orpheus was given a test to bring you back.” He releases me, and I ignore the absence of my feet touching the ground. “He failed.”

A small flare ignites in me, a tiny match in a rapidly settling night. The memories of everything I was, everything I hated and loved, unravel between my grasping fingers and gritted teeth.

“Why would he do that?” I rasp. It comes out distant as a voice in another room. “How could he bring me so close and then let me go?”

Hermes reaches for my face, and I think he collects a tear on his finger. It is a smear of ash.

My anger twists into panic. “Let me keep my memories,” I beg him. “You cannot give them to me and then take them away. This—” I falter, shaking my head. “This is....”

What? What am I trying to say?

I close my eyes. I feel a small tug, like a single hair plucked from my scalp.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I look out at the fields of asphodels, a fragrant, soft sea of white. The perfume sighs through my skin. I turn to the man next to me, squint at the blurred scramble of his face.

“For what?” I ask, and the words are less than a whisper.