Persephone Girls

Summer was over and so were we. Persephone girls, Hades bound. What a relief.

The Mother Corps barracks were aflutter with girlish delight, a renewed energy unburdened by a purpose. No more work and little to pack, Mother provided everything for us while we played our role on Demeter. The littlest girls laughed the loudest.

Everyone believes the first summer is the worst. The one where Mother first picks you. Plucks you from your home. It’s strange and it’s new, but the newness is usually exciting. Before you know any better, before it all becomes routine. You’ve probably never been anywhere before; you definitely haven’t been off-world before. Maybe you haven’t even seen a sun.

You don’t know what a summer is. You don’t yet know why it’s important. But you feel important, and that’s what matters. It’s responsibility. A sacred duty. Even we that know better now still call it a grave duty—with a lithe smile and a knowing glance to a nearby sister.

It’s the second summer that gets to you, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth… Come to think of it, I’ve never met another Persephone girl older than me. I so rarely think of my life beyond one summer at a time, and then its winter relief. That’s why it’s always the next that’s the worst. You know better now what’s to come and have a chance to dread the heat and the toil.

Kore did not share in the common sentiment with the rest of us girls, evidently. Every time I had glanced over to her, she lay back in her bunk, fingers laced behind her head. I could understand wanting to relax after a long summer, but what did Kore know about long summers?

It had been her first, even though she was a little older than the usual first-year girl. A late bloomer. Despite the proximity of our bunks, I didn’t remember much more about her than that. When the other first-years were heat-sick and homesick, whimpering in their beds while the older girls worked to comfort them, Kore hadn’t been among my brood to play mother hen over.

I straightened up from turning down my bunk, just to be stopped by a couple of girls running past, one chasing the other with a frigid hand recently dipped in ice-cold water. Mother wasn’t so restrictive with it in the days before we returned to Hades.

“Aren’t you happy to be going home?” I sat on the foot of Kore’s bunk. She’d looked at me on my approach, but I still couldn’t guess from that what she might be thinking. She didn’t sit up even then, just watched.

“I think I’m staying.” She said it so casually, but what I heard sounded less like a solid, definite plan and more like a thought she’d only just found a voice for.

“No,” I shook my head, and even though I smiled at her, I didn’t want it to be taken like I was laughing at the idea. Maybe she had gotten confused in all the chaos of the last days of summer. Maybe she had a bully telling her she’d been singled out to be left. “You’re coming back with the rest of us. Who told you you weren’t?”

Kore shook her head back at me. “Nobody. I just… want to.”

I frowned, but not too hard. It wasn’t her fault. “Why?”

She gave an uncertain little shrug.

I didn’t press it. I didn’t know how. What made a girl want to stay on Demeter? With Mother all the days of the year? They weren’t unkind to us; they met our needs, but only so long as we met theirs. Bring life to Demeter and then we’d be brought home. That was the deal.

“They won’t let you.” They wouldn’t. Even if Kore had some misguided fantasy about working through the winter and earning some extra favor with Mother, there were reasons why we didn’t stay. Beyond just the fact that it wasn’t home.

Kore shrugged again. “Maybe they just won’t find me.”

I shook my head more sternly; this wasn’t ignorance, but it was stupid. Mother kept records. They had to. How else would they know which of us to bring every summer? Or when a girl was ready to start? They’d know she was missing and they’d know where to find her.

“Why would you want to stay?” Of course I’d wondered what happened to Demeter in the winters. It couldn’t have a proper winter like in the textbooks, but then again, neither did Hades. If the work stopped, which Mother always made it sound like without us, nothing got done, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but still… “You can’t stay.”

Mother Corps had tried it, I think. With the first few rounds of Persephone girls. I think that was why I didn’t know any that were older than me.

“Mother does.”

“Mother’s people are built different.” They weren’t native to Hades, that was for sure. If any of them had been, then they would have been like us, and then there would be no need for Persephone girls.

Kore snorted. Fine. Maybe we were the ones who were built different, but we still weren’t built for life on Demeter. This was still far more serious.

“I think you’ll die.” It was my turn to say things before I’d had a chance to think them through. I’d never had to before. But what else were any of us supposed to think? If it was just a scare tactic from Mother, then fine. It had worked on me.

“So?”

“So?!” I echoed indignantly.

Kore glanced around the barracks before she spoke low and finally with an air of seriousness. “One of you can just bring me back.”

I looked at her for an extra beat, feeling like I could cry. So it might still have been innocent ignorance, but dangerously so. At least she’d had the sense not to say that in front of Mother.

“You know we can’t,” I answered gently, even still. There had been plenty of girls who struggled with what counted as our bringing life back to Demeter. The boundaries weren’t so clearly defined on Hades, but that was why we had Mother’s guidance, after all. “Why would you want that?”

Kore gave another squirrelly shrug. “Why do I have to keep bringing their stuff back?”

“Because.” I didn’t know. There had always been girls with questions, especially precocious first-years, but I had never been among them. Mother Corps' answers had always been enough. “Mother said so.”