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The years went by: spring and summer, seed and sickle. Persephone rode the train. Hades welcomed her home. A girl built machines in the factory. She went to a dormitory after her shifts, to the speakeasy, to the company store. She didn't starve. A boy wandered in the wild. The Fates dogged his steps until a god's women tore him apart. You know how this story ends. I've told it before.
Oh, you mean what happened next? You're sure, sister? Don't ask questions if you don't want the answer.
Well, it didn't last. You know Hades. Never saw a machine he didn't covet. And never had any patience at all. Those months when his lady was up above, every year? Every year he added new hydraulics. Every year he thought, maybe this time she'll stay. Every year he came earlier to meet her. The spring shortened and the fall hurried to winter. Soon Persephone was throwing crockery. Just like the old days.
Every year the god of wine stopped by the railroad station and dropped off a new shipment to cure what ails you, just in time for Persephone to buy it with all that income from the mines.
And what do you think would happen? Of course the seasons fell apart. Of course the people above got hungry, and took risks, and came to my station hoping for tickets south.
And there was the poet again, washing dishes at my bar. I was glad to see him. We miss friends, in my business. And the girl seeking refuge from the storm. They didn't remember. I was the only one who knew. That's my job: Mr. Hermes, the messenger. I keep the memories. I watch the mortals make the same mistakes every time. So do the gods.
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You know what they’re going to do. Orpheus sees Eurydice and in five minutes he’s announcing he’ll marry her. Eurydice tries not to be charmed, but she can’t help it. It’s summer and the world is blooming and everyone falls into someone’s bed, and there they are. It’s always going to be like that.
When winter comes and he’s lost in a song, and we’re out of food up in the station, Eurydice’s going to leave. She's got to follow her stomach down. That’s how she is. Now Orpheus never remembers where dinner comes from. He’ll wake up with a second draft and she’ll be gone again. Riding that train down to the bottom. Signing her name on the dotted line. Now she hasn’t got a name at all, and Orpheus is singing his way down to find her. You know the story.
And he finds her! That boy has a gift. When Orpheus faces Hades he doesn’t fear. He raises his voice. All the dead men on the factory floor hear him. The girl hears him. Hades and Persephone hear him, singing their love into tune again. Wonderful. He’s done it.
He’s got to be paid. Hades knows that. Robber baron, king of the mines, has to pay his debts to stay on the bottom of the world. But if Hades lets Orpheus go, and take that girl with him, the whole assembly line’s going to follow them north. You can’t build a wall without labor.
So there’s only one answer, and the Fates are whispering it into Hades’s mind again. Send the boy first. Let the girl follow. Orpheus can’t hear her. Orpheus can’t see her. He’s got to walk that path alone. If he turns around, she’s toast. He’s got to trust — and he can’t do it, not when he knows she left him before.
Every damned time, he turns around.
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In the time after, the girl raged. Never loved you, never trusted you, said the Fates. He loved me, she tried, but she knew the rest was true. All his promises were lies. The birds wouldn’t give them eiderdown. She had a mattress in the dormitory. It had a blanket from the company store, thin and rough and warm enough for the heat of the underside.
All his promises were lies. If she could be angry, it would be like caring. It's a little bit like living. Why couldn't he wait three more steps? How could he chase her all the way down, face down the king of the mine, and leave her stranded at the last moment? Why did he forget her in the first place? She called his name so many times. She needed help, food, a partner gathering it next to her.
Hades made promises too: Food and shelter and employment. A full stomach and a warm bed. He kept them. She had what she needed. The dormitory was simple: a row of beds. You had a locker for the things you bought at the store, a table and chair where you sat and ate. No windows; there was nothing to see anyway. Lights went on and off at random; on a good night you could sleep in the dark. Well, there’s no night in Hadestown. If you’re off-shift, that’s like night, anyway.
There was no life, either. No love, no joy. Keep your head low, sang the workers on the line. They didn’t speak. They didn’t see each other. They didn’t call each other’s names. They had none to call. They hid from Hades, begged favors from Persephone, made it through the hours one shift at a time.
Orpheus’s promises were lies, but at least he made them. She counted out the words he said as she fit washers on bolts. She repeated them under her breath. Lover, when I sing my song, all the rivers gonna sing along. Not helpful. There’s no comfort there. But If I raise my voice I can change my fate. He couldn’t. Nothing changes anyhow. And yet—
She couldn't always get his words right. She tried but she got confused, she got the thoughts tangled, she forgot what came next. She reassembled them as best she could. She repeated them so many times that at last they became different. She didn’t notice, but she was singing her own song now.
She’s a songbird, remember?
---
Even she didn’t remember, after a while. The girl was on the floor every shift. When she wasn’t there, she haunted the speakeasy. Train shipments run out, so the wine was thinned with Lethe: hell of a hit. You couldn’t hear the Fates singing harmony, after too long with that. You couldn’t hear Persephone and Hades where they were screaming at each other. Anyway, the girl was so light now she just floated upwards. No one lifted their head to see her go.
And the next morning she was up above, winter wind howling with the voices of the Fates, like she never left at all. Couldn’t remember a thing, that’s Lethe for you. Eurydice stumbled from town to town, looking for food, looking for beds, until she was right here at the railroad station with the poet staring at her, and the whole story started again from the top.
There was a verse in her mind as she walked in the sun with Orpheus. She didn’t know where it came from, but she added another verse and a chorus. It’s about sunlight, and the way summer returns when it wasn’t expected. It’s about how it’s worth hoping for summer, even when winter leaves you hungry and lost.
I stopped to listen one day. She’s got a voice, that girl. She’s got courage. To love like that, after so many failures, that’s brave. Persephone heard her too. We shared a bottle on the grass, Persephone and I. We felt alive.
But it all went down again. Same sad tale, just as before. Except that this time, after Orpheus failed, after Eurydice was trapped down below, she kept on singing.
And those dead men and women on the factory floor, they started learning the words. As they dug pits and cast metal, in the glare of the underworld, they sang about summer.
Hades didn’t stop them. They were working, after all. As long as he kept his laborers and he kept his profit, he didn’t need to interfere. Maybe he should have, because Persephone was listening. They fought sooner than ever, the robber baron and his lady. She was thinking of summer, and he knew he was losing her, and the world was out of tune again, worse than before. The people above were so hungry.
---
Orpheus is the poet. Eurydice’s the muse. His words mattered. Hers? Even the Fates didn’t care about what she said, only what she did. He never listened to her anyway. That’s the problem. He was busy explaining the gods. Saw Persephone more clearly than he ever saw Eurydice.
But on a day when the last of the summer ripened the corn, as the train pulled into the station to carry the lady home, Orpheus heard Eurydice singing. He was delighted. Everything she did delighted him. He asked her to teach him the words. They sang together, poet and songbird, so that even the trees did stop to listen.
And then Persephone got on the train, drunk and laughing like there was no point caring at all, packing a load of mood enhancers and leaving her green gown up in my station for next year. The food ran low and the storm rose up. Eurydice sold her soul again. Somehow she always got it back to sell.
But in the depths of the mines, the girl sang. She was on wall duty, piling bricks on bricks, twisting wire into barbed spirals. She sang. She built. And where the girl built, the bricks were just out of place. The mortar had gaps. From above, the sunlight pushed in.
And the other souls on shift? They saw her do it. They sang too. They placed their own bricks with care. Maybe a brick or two was hollow. Maybe a wire was missing its barbs.
Hades didn’t notice. Persephone did. She said not a word.
---
The Wall opened easy for Orpheus this time. The miners raised their heads at once for him. He stood before the king of the mines to beg Eurydice’s freedom. He sang until Hades understood his own love and his own longing. He sang while Persephone’s heart opened up. He sang until Hades agreed to let them go: separately, one by one, and don’t look back or else you’ll lose her for good.
The girl said, I will be with you. The girl said, you have to trust me. The girl said, sing my song. Just keep singing and keep looking forward. I promise you. It’s worth hoping for summer. It’s worth hoping for spring. I am with you.
And as Orpheus walked the cruel road upwards, he sang Eurydice’s song. He sang it so loud that he drowned out the Fates. He sang it so loud that he drowned out his own mind. He sang it and he looked forward and he made it to the railroad station. And there was Eurydice at last, singing beside him in the light of the sun.
Beneath the earth a roar rose up: if she can do it, so can we. The miners pushed at the wall until it cracked open at the weak spots, until the sunlight shone in from all the way above. Hades screamed in rage and brought the machinery to life: mechanical diggers and three-headed attack dogs, to keep the labor trapped.
No, said Persephone. Not this time. Hades, I’m leaving. I’m not taking the train. I’m not asking your permission. If we're going to start over, we need to end this first.
The Lady of the Underground walked to the open place in the wall, and the mob parted for her. She stepped onto the road out of hell. Where she walked, the road cleared. The sunlight brightened. All the old lost souls and debt slaves followed behind her, moving upwards in a great mass. Hades stood alone in an empty kingdom, staring at all the gold he couldn’t spend.
But that wasn't the end either. The upper world needs the underworld: money to pay for food in winter, equipment to preserve it before the spring. The underworld needs the world above: fresh fruit and new wine and joy to make life worth living. People come and go both ways on the road to hell. People buy tickets for the train. And every fall, and every spring, Persephone walks the road on her own two feet. She keeps it open. She meets her husband in the world below, and then leaves him at the proper time. Some years Eurydice walks with her, down to the mines for a few months' pay and back up again to my station where Orpheus waits. If you listen right now, sister, you can hear them singing on their way.