Seasons

Isa Prospero

One day, things are different. Everyone notices when it starts but no one quite knows how to describe it. Later, when affairs are more or less settled, words will be created to fit the new reality. Then people will say: it is cold, it is winter. At first, however, they only have one name for what is happening: death.

Philo knows something is coming when he feels the earth tremble. He falls to the ground, surrounded by bleating sheep, as thunder rises from below. He knows it can only mean one thing—a god is near. Then the sound subsides, the world stops shaking, and he finds himself chasing his animals.

That’s how he finds them, just over a hilltop. Not one god, but two. Her: pure and beautiful and glowing, surrounded by her nymphs. Him: hard and grave and muted. The nymphs scatter like the sheep but Philo is frozen by the sight, the violent dance taking place in front of him.

One day, the bards will tell conflicting tales, but the truth was right there to see. He’ll whisper it to his wife that night, what he saw—the two figures entwined in a fight, slashing the air with words and light. Her, refusing and cajoling. Him, ignoring.

He has seen her before, the goddess with her nymphs, drifting with their delicate feet and splashing one another with water.

“You would leave me right away for any of them,” Agathe would tease whenever he spoke of it. “I would not,” he always protested, entirely honest.

The first time he saw her, he knew she would be his wife. So it does not surprise him when the somber god ignores all reason and protest and pulls the goddess with him into

a whirlwind, for his kind is much less mindful of consequences than mortals. He has seen something which will make his kingdom of shadows seem bright and he must have it. It wasn’t like that for Philo. He courted. He waited. He asked. How strange that humans should be the ones to learn patience, they who have so little time.

“There will be consequences,” Agathe says quietly, holding his hand in their bed. “There always are when they play their games. Speak to no one of what you saw! Don’t meddle with their affairs. Promise me.”

She’s always been brilliant, outside and in. He’s always done what she asked.

The next wave they feel together, sometime before dawn—not a rumbling but a piercing scream, full of fury and terror, rushing across the land. They wake in a sweat. Yet the sun chariot still crosses the skies, so they rise and go to work, unaware that things have changed. Forever. Irreversibly.

It starts small, a brisker wind than usual. Colors seep out of the leaves and flowers throughout the day. Then it gets worse: fruits falling rotten to the earth, a wetness that drives them to their hearth. It’s her, they hear later. The mother.

They know how precious a child is, having lost two before they were fully formed inside Agathe. It doesn’t matter, Philo used to tell her, we have each other. For him it was always enough, because what else could a man want? His lot has been luckier than most. For years now, all he’s cared about is making her happy. But there’s little he can do to allay her worries as sun and moon go through their wanderings and the changes remain.

Soon, the sheep have nothing to graze. The markets are emptied. People whisper. And the mother’s anger grows as she walks the earth, knocking on doors, asking after her missing child.

The final blow comes without warning. Later, people will know to expect this as well—along with the biting winds, the thinning animals and the sterile earth. Later, they will know disease, coughs that won’t go away and ailments that will turn their bodies frail. Later they will know to stock food, to grow enough to last through the cold. Not this time, the first time. One day, Agathe doesn’t rise beside him. He leans over and finds her eyes shut and her head burning up.

He does all that he can. Feeds her from his own plate, begs help from neighbors, sacrifices their last surviving animals for any gods who might be listening. To no avail.

“My love,” he calls her, clutching her hand every free moment of every day. “This will pass. Stay with me.”

By the time Agathe’s bones are sticking out beneath her skin, the goddess stops at their home. A simple thing, a hut not fit for a deity, but he’s too tired to care and so is she. Harrowed and wide-eyed, she looks more crone than goddess when she asks after her daughter.

Agathe’s words ring around his head. Do not speak, she told him. Do not meddle with them.

He wavers. Imagines himself trading the information for Agathe’s life, selling one god to another for a prize. He would even do it for food, for the trees to bloom again and for his sheep to have something to graze. But the goddess’ eyes sparkle with a rage that her visage can’t hide, piercing through him, and he realizes Agathe is right. There can be no trade with those who do not even see you.

That doesn’t stop him falling on his knees, touching his head to the ground, and begging for life to return to them.

The goddess doesn’t hear, or doesn’t care, and disappears into the night.

“You did right,” Agathe will tell him the next time she’s conscious, her face wan and her eyes bloodshot. “Did she find her daughter?”

“That’s what they say,” he tells her, so choked up he can barely tell the story.

This is what he heard: the abducted bride was tethered to her husband’s domain, and there she must stay for some time before returning to her mother above. And, thus, in the realm of the dead, will be the cause of others dying.

Agathe tries to smile. “It will pass.” A statement of fact, his words back to him.

“Yes,” he confirms. “She’ll be back soon. Stay with me.”

And so it happens. One day, a flower blooms. A burst of color among faded leaves, a red bud promising hope. No one sees it, that first one, though they are all waiting for it. But soon they feel the change—in the air, in the trees. The earth breathes again and restores life. Later, they will say: it is warm, it is spring. But Philo will always remember it as the day Hades took his wife.

Fiction Seasons About The Author

Isa Prospero lives in São Paulo, where she translates, copyedits, and hoards books. Her fiction has appeared in Brazilian publications like Trasgo, Mafagafo, and Superinteressante, as well in Strange Horizons and The Fantasist magazines and international anthologies. To see some of her work, visit her website: isaprospero.com.

Poem Love, Eurydice

Words by Alethea Kontis

About the poem

Many years ago, I called myself a “fairy godmother in training.” I randomly took girls under my wing—mostly daughters of friends—who for whatever reason felt out-of-place in a chaotic world. I was…maybe less of a mentor and more a magical beacon of weirdness, but I was always shelter in the storm. I was an unworn prom dress that happened to live in my costume closet. I was a bouquet of flowers on opening night of the musical when parents had to attend a funeral. I was a bucket of markers and post-it notes at my desk when Mom had to work the cubicle farm on the weekends.

I’ve always wondered how I might have fared in Orpheus’s shoes. Would I have been strong enough to walk out of the Underworld without turning around? In many ways, I HAVE walked out of one Hell or another in my life. My beacon of weirdness made the difficult paths these young women walked a little less treacherous. By the time it occurred to me that I could be their guiding light, I realized I already was. And that, dear reader, is how I became an official Fairy Godmother.