LYRE IN THE SKY

by KELLY JARVIS

Orpheus…”

My voice, barely a whisper, is drowned out by the howling wind billowing up from the dark realms beneath. I choke on the sweet funeral scent of lilies lining the river Styx and summon thelastounceofmystrength.

“Orpheus…” light, dooming himself to a lifetime of sorrow. People have talked of how his songs turned sour when he lost me that second time, of how his angry audience, wanting him to sing of joy, tore him to pieces, of how the gods crafted a constellation out of the strings of his turtle-shelllyre. grasslikemobilecharms.

He stops, his silhouette framed by the golden glow that guides us back to the spring world above. I see the muscles of his shoulders tighten. I hear him struggle to still his breath. I feel the pause and space between us flood with hisfears,eachoneaspalpableasafallingstone.

Iknowthatheislistening.

Everyone thinks they know the story of Orpheus, the famous shepherd who wed a wood nymph only to lose her to the fatal bite of a black viper. Scholars have marveled at my husband’s arrogance for following me down to the underworld, for using his poetic prowess to negotiate the terms of my release from death. Writershavecriticizedhislackoftrustin Hades, the giver of wealth and the lord of the dark, who warned him that if he looked back to confirm my ascent to the upper realm, he would lose me forever. Poets have said his own stupidity caused him to glance back over his shoulder as we journeyed upward toward the light, dooming himselftoalifetimeofsorrow.

But although Orpheus and I have been reincarnated over generations and across lands, doomed to repeat our tragic roles in every life and destined to be studied like ancient mythologies, no one truly knows my Orpheus, my husband, my love, the man who sacrificed everything to sing the song that I needed to hear.

Time is different among the dead. I have sojourned below the soil for only a few hours,andyetIhavebeenhereforcenturies. Apollo’sfierychariotdoesnotpenetrate our perpetual dusk. No ticking clocks mark the hours of our deafening silence. Our past, our present, and our future flow through us like waves on an eternal ocean, and our veiled memories dangle limp in the air like the laundryofthelivinghungouttodryinthesun.

We lie in the dappled light beneath an oak tree. His fingers stroke the loose strands of hairfrommyfaceashelistenstothesoundsthat onlyhecanhear.

When he finally sings, my forest will writhe in ecstasy. The rocks beneath our bodies will throb and quiver, the new green leaves above us will bend themselves backwards, and the little stream that slips so quietly toward the sea will rush and tumble to the thundering tune ofhislyre.

But it is here, in the sacred stillness before he speaks, where he gathers the words that the world most needs and stitches them into feathered strains of song, that we fall hopelessly inlove.

The winds of the underworld shift, and suddenly, the bitter-sweet memory of the first time I saw him covers me like a winding sheet. The crew of the Argos, weary of the ocean’s endless rocking, have set up camp in our wooded vale, building a fire to roast meat for their dinner and offering its pungent smoke to the forest deities in return for a night’s safety. My sisters and I hide behind the ancient oaks watching the flames dance in the fiery wake of thesettingsun.

“Stay away from them,” my oldest sister warns, nodding her head toward the sailors. “They are nothing but trouble, in spite of the promisestheymayofferyou.”

As the moon rises in the night sky so do the spirits of the men, aided by the barrels of sweet wine their ship has carried back from Colchis.Theirraucouslaughterechoesoffthe

Colchis. Their raucous laughter echoes off the bark of the trees, and it is only when their captain requests a song that they sheath their swords and settle themselves to listen as the one they call Orpheus pulls out his lyre. He cradles the instrument in his lap, teasing the stringswhicharchandtrembleathistouch.His face grows still, the hum of insects and the pop ofembersfillingthequietvacanciesthatfollow eachofthelyre’sthroatycries.

Orpheus holds his breath and harkens to thesoundsthatnooneelsecanhear.Itisonlya moment before his voice sings out in a tune so beautiful that the stars begin to dance in the firmament above, but in that moment, I see him as he truly is, a miraculous seed, moving in the muddy darkness, ready to unfurl the petals of his poems like the first flowers that thrust themselves toward the flirtatious kisses of spring.

When his voice shatters the crackling

Birds, determined to build their nests before egg-layingseason,warblegentlyastheywork.

Orpheus lays me down on a carpet of blueforget-me-notsandslowlyloosensthestays of my gown. His fingers twist the hair at the nape of my neck as his lips glide over mine. When he lifts his body to gaze into my eyes, I cry out, wanting him to melt over me like the butteryyellowsunlightthatcoatsthebarkofmy trees.

He listens to my panting breath. He listens to my beating heart. He listens to the patter of spring rain as it sinks delightfully into the warm, waiting earth. Then he opens his mouthtosealoureternalvowwithhissong.

Memory after memory, life after life, drowns me in nostalgic contemplation. I am a nymph in love with a hero; I am a florist enchanted by a boy who plays guitar on the sidewalk outside my shop; I am a gardener engaged to a man with a voice of velvet persuasion;Iamdying,surroundedbylilies,my persuasion; I am dying, surrounded by lilies, my lips growing blue against the grief of my beloved’skiss.

In my next memory, Orpheus stands before the King and Queen of the Underworld. Their somber faces and narrowed eyes betray their repulsion for the seething life which coursesthroughhisveins.Theywonderhowhe convinced Charon to grant him entry into this world of rot and decay, how he soothed the angry growls of Cerberus who guards the dead fromthedesiresoftheliving.

I imagine how he must have stood frozen before these dreaded sentries, how he stilledhisbreathandlistened,asonlyhecan,to thedeepestyearningsoftheirhardenedhearts.I can conjure the songs that spilled from his lips, rhymes of gentle crossings, words of fireside comfort, stories of release from the endless shuttling of souls who must travel across the veil.

Those who think they know Orpheus believethathiswordshavethepowertosilence the sirens and tame wild beasts. But only I understand that his power comes from listening.Healonehearsthehushedsecretsand whispered wishes of the world, and then writes themintohismagicspellsofpoetry.

He stops now, his eyes unwavering beneath Hades’ piercing stare. It is a tableau that would make any mortal man shrink in terror, but he does not cower, for his only fear islosingme.

When he speaks, he does not sing of his own loss, of the poison that pools in his heart death.

Persephone’s half-living heart begins to beatinrecognition.

Hades trembles with remembering as he strokeshiswife’snakedthigh.

Moved by his song about their own passionate romance, the King and Queen will grant Orpheus his wish to bring me back to the world of the living, but like all magic, his wish willcomewiththecruelestofcosts.

I have sojourned beneath the soil for only a few hours, and yet I have been here for centuries.

I have feasted on pomegranates at Persephone’s table. I have seen her warm skin, asdewyasspringtulips,shudder,imperceptibly, at her husband’s icy touch. I have heard her tell of her yearly journey to her mother’s home where the freshest fruits now taste like ashes on hertongue.

“He promised me I would be able to return,” she once whispered, gazing at Hades’ dark portrait, his painted eyes, lusty and stern, watching her every move, “but when I go back now, nothing is the same, for I am the one who hasbeentransformed.”

Those of us who are shades know it is impossible to stay unchanged in the face of death. Persephone no longer belongs to her mother’s realm because her heart has been coated by an untimely frost that announces her alterationtoallwhochoosetoseeit.

I no longer belong to my forest, a lush, growing place that teems with new life even as it lies dormant in winter’s cold embrace. I no longerbelongtomylivinghusband,mylove,a longer belong to my living husband, my love, a man whose heart still searches for safe passagewaythroughthislabyrinthofmemory.I no longer belong to his hope of sweet return, hismortaldreamofhappilyeverafter.

Although I will be born again to live a thousand lives with him, in this life, I will bloomnomore.

The sweet funeral scent of lilies returns, bright white against the twilight, and my husband, framed by the golden glow that guides us back to the world above, struggles to stillhisbreath.

The stones that line the cavern we have climbed shift and fall around us, tumbling and rolling with every moan of anguish that blows upfromtherealmsbelow.

I know that he feels the hope of the sun warm upon his face, smells the heady fragrance of narcissus pushing up through the soil. I wash over me, reminding me that this searing pain of loss is as fleeting as our most cherished momentsofintensehappiness.

In one wave of those memories, I am sittingintheopenwindowofauniversityoffice, watching as my husband harnesses words in saddles of ink, making them march in measured lines across his wrinkled rolls of parchment. Another wave lifts me to a mountainside at midnight where his hands on the strings and his voice in the air send the flames of our campfire into flickering madness. A final wave finds me lying lifeless in a coffin while he wishes for one more day, one more chance, to say all the things evenhehasleftunsaid.

Every life that we live pulses with unimaginablejoy.

Every life that we live is cut short by unbearablegrief.

In between these lives, we walk the Elysian fields together, hand in hand, looking backfreelyonourpast,ourpresent,andour back freely on our past, our present, and our future. Sometimes he wraps me in the blankets of his memories, and I watch as the Maenads tear his body limb from limb. I sob as his severed head floats down the river, singing its beautiful, terrible songs. I take comfort as the muses gather his bones for burial, planting them beneath the surface of the earth so they willriseagainonedaylikethebruisedcrocuses that herald spring. I rejoice as the gods place his lyre in the night sky overhead, a hopeful reminder that true love is the antidote to the venomousstingofdeath.

Apollo’sfierychariotdoesnotpenetrate our perpetual dusk, but even the dead can see the stars twinkle in the purple haze above. My husband and I lie in the dappled light of the constellations. His fingers stroke the loose strands of hair from my face as he listens to the soundsthatonlyhecanhear.

When he finally speaks, the dead around us will writhe in ecstasy. The stones beneath the shades of our bodies will throb and quiver, the breezes above us will bend themselvesbackwards,andtheRiverLethethat slips so quietly toward forgetting will rush and tumble to the thundering tune of his lyre in the sky.

But it is here, in the sacred stillness before he speaks, where he gathers the words