A tale of young love and swift death; of music and grief; of trials and failures. This is an old song, and sad. Let us sing it again, together.
Orpheus and Eurydice
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They say that Orpheus was the child of a goddess of lyric- Calliope, the Muse. She was a patron of storytellers, a lover of songs and a keeper of tales, whose voice inspired mortals to write, and to sing, and to tell fanciful lies. There were seven goddesses like her- she and her six sisters had dominion over every craft of the artist. And it came to pass that Calliope loved King Oeagrus of Thrace, and to them was born a half-god son, whom she named Orpheus.
Orpheus was born for great things, in a small and freckled frame. He was sickly, as poets tend to be, but shone with an inner life and strength. His voice was the most beautiful in the lands of men- or at the very least, in Greece. He was a harper by skill- and the wit of Orpheus, combined with the sound of his voice and the ethereal playing of his harp, caused the hamadryads, the tree-women, to come and dance with him in the glades; it caused the beasts of burden to lie down with hunters at the first chords of lullaby; it caused stones to move aside for him when he asked sweetly. Nothing in the world, it seemed, was immune to the song of Orpheus. All of creation bent to him, as though he were a great king, a magus or a god.
All, that is, except for one creature. Only one person in all the world was immune to the song of Orpheus, upon hearing it-- Eurydice, a stonemason's daughter with calloused hands and a voice like red wine and sand. Nobody knows why-- her mind was as the strongest stone against his voice, however, and to Orpheus, this was curious and infuriating. When the time came for him to be wed- a young prince with many prospects could expect such a thing- he was determined to have Eurydice for a wife.
He composed endless songs to woo his love- and though his father the king was determined that he would have a rich, lovely young person for a spouse, and gathered every young man and woman of grace and nobility in his kingdom at the gates to hear him play, Orpheus did not play for them. He watched the crowd of dancing people crumble before the ballads he played, falling in love with each other and waltzing away, but Eurydice did not move. She stood stony and silent before him, and only watched with a faint smile. Finally, all were gone, and he played only for her. He sang of the roughness of hands worn by tools; of her rich smooth voice and her freckled skin; and of that mind, impenetrable as a fortress. "I am powerless," he sang to her "against you I am undone; for all I know is song, and you are so much more than poetry."
And with those words, Eurydice fell in love with Orpheus-- not for his music, or for his godly power, but for the simple truth he had spoken in surrender. And for a time they lived well and peacefully- but the men of Thrace grew discontent. Eurydice had grown to the status of a princess overnight, and though she was the daughter of a stonemason, her beauty was not lost to them. Orpheus, too, fell upon misfortune. For he was the son of a goddess; and for a wedding-gift, the god Hermes brought a gift from the young prince's mother. It was a harp, made from strange pliable gold that made music fit for the ears of gods. More than ever before, his music was beautiful and powerful. But it still never moved the mind of his bride. And for all that Orpheus was virtuous and talented, he became obsessed with his music. He began to write epic poems and tales of great deeds, and they swallowed every ounce of time that the young man had.
These things- the ignorance of Orpheus and the wilful discontent of the men of Thrace- ended only in tragedy. For one day, as Eurydice was in the bath-house, they entered with great stealth and made to coerce her-- they would take her away from Orpheus, the princeling, that she should be happy with a strong and attentive lover. Eurydice rejected them wholesale, and though she was strong, she could not have taken every one of them in a fight once angered. They pursued her, and she fled across the fields towards the sea; but one youth gave prayer to a distant god that watched over his family; and that sorcerer's prayer caused Eurydice to step on a coiled viper, which bit her heel as all vipers are cursed to do; and she died.
Orpheus could practically hear the cutting of the Fates' thread, high in his terrace. He rushed to her body, and the men of Thrace fled lest he know it was them who were to blame for his wife's demise. He wept bitterly for her, and in the weeks that followed he would barely eat, sleep, or drink- and he never played his harp, but shut himself inside his room. He prayed to his mother for assistance, but received no help- she was a goddess of song, and not of death, and could do nothing. So when Eurydice was to be buried, Orpheus brought his harp to her gravesite; and he played a song of mourning, beseeching the soul of Eurydice to return to him. And the stones of the Earth parted for him in pity, that his song might travel onward beyond the grave.
Orpheus heard the voice of Eurydice crying out for him, and dove into the Earth; and he landed on the near side of the great river called the Styx, which separates the living and the dead. He played a song for the water, and it parted for him. He passed with no payment, and the ferryman watched him go with envy and hatred in his one yellow eye.
Then Orpheus came to the gates of the Underworld, where stood the vast black hound Kerberos. It would not let mortals pass through the gates until their time had come;and it had three heads, one for each part of the day- dusk, dawn, and midnight- that it would never need to leave its post, and one head would waken when the other two slept. But he played a lullaby from his childhood, and the hounds' heads drooped all at once. Their eyes sank closed, and Orpheus passed beyond the gates and into the realm of Hades.
The spirits of the dead accosted him, begging to be returned to the world above. They clawed at his clothes, made to suck the breath from him and steal his life for themselves. But he only played his harp, and they slunk away ashamed of what they had done. When Orpheus finally came to the palace of the King of the Dead, he was met with three wild-eyed women with whips and sabers, and massive white-feathered wings stained dark with blood. The Kindly Ones, the Furies, they were called- goddesses of vengeance for crimes against the family. They snarled and demanded he stay no longer in their master's hall. He sang them a song of lusty men, of wives taken in an act of stupidity, of unpunished deeds; and they wept for him, and granted him passage inside.
So there he stood, like a candle before the unyielding darkness of the King of the Dead, Hades himself. One breath and he would be snuffed out. But Hades did no such thing. Instead, he said to Orpheus, "The living pity you, the stones pity you, and even my citizens and my handmaidens pity you, prince of Thrace. But I do not. I know what you are here for, and my answer is 'no.' Take your harp and leave. You will receive no more warning. If you could not care for your wife in life, you will not claim her in death."
But Orpheus stood shaking and cold, frost on his breath, and struck a chord he remembered well. "A gift then, my king," he said, "it would be improper for a visiting prince to arrive empty-handed." It was the song of his love for Eurydice; it was a song of calloused hands, and of deep, rich, wine-red voice; of dark hair and freckled skin and a mind like stone. "This is the song I played for she who would not bow to my music. I am powerless," he sang, "without her, I am undone. For this is the only song that matters; and she is so much more than poetry."
And the queen of the dead, Persephone, stirred on her throne. "My love," she said, voice shocked,"that is the song you gave to me, on the day we were wed. This is a sign of the Fates, who govern even you and I. I will remind you that you, too, have been given second chances- by myself, by almighty Zeus your brother, by my mother the goddess of grain. Let the boy try."
Hades rose to a towering mountain of anger, but he found no fault in the words of his queen. He took a lamp from his shelf and released the soul of Eurydice. "If you can lead her out from here, the way that you came, then you may take her back to the land of the living. But you must play and sing, while she is silent, and never call back to her; and no matter what you hear, never may you turn to be sure that she follows. Be faithful to her in death as she was to you in life, little prince. Only then may you have my pardon."
Orpheus, overjoyed, did as he was told. He played his song of love for Eurydice, and passed again the Furies. And though they wailed and gnashed their teeth, he did not look back. He passed the dead, who hissed and slunk and snatched at him; but he did not stop playing. He passed Kerberos, whose heads snarled and snapped behind him, and though he feared she had been eaten by the massive hound, he did not call back to her. He went again across the river, and the ferryman took him by order of Hades, but eyed him with spite all the while. And finally, finally, Orpheus emerged blinking from Eurydice's grave. He whooped for joy; but his ankle caught on the loose dirt, and he heard a stone topple. He thought Eurydice had fallen, and turned to help her up- but her body still lie in the shadow of the Underworld, and she was drawn back to the jaws of death. Orpheus screamed and beat at the stones; but his voice was raw from singing, and they would not yield again to him.
Orpheus did not sing again for a long time. Though his father grew aged and grey, he never ascended to claim the crown of Thrace. And never again did he take a wife, though the noble men and women begged and threw themselves at his feet- he snubbed them all. And finally, finally, he only sat at the stones by the sea and wept for his lost love. His forsaken lovers threw stones and spears at him; they shot arrows and hurled knives. But the weapons took pity on Orpheus, and in the end they fell on him, and tore him apart with their bare hands, casting his bloodied limbs into the waves without burial, so that he could never return to Hades.
But the sea that bordered Thrace had its other shore on the edge of the night sky, and the starry home of Calliope the muse. She picked her son's body bit by bit from the waves, and screamed out to Zeus for aid. Finally, he took pity, and mended the boy's body. Calliope gave him a burial, and he descended to the shores of the Styx, where the riverman waited for him.
"Twice you have passed without payment," he rasped, "twice and never again, son of Oeagrus. Your payment is great, this time. Give me your harp, give me your voice; and you will see your wife again. But not before." He did not expect Orpheus to comply. The dead, he thought, were petty things, tied so to their material goods that some never crossed the river at all, but wallowed on the banks or cast themselves in to swim, and were lost forever. But Orpheus had lost all that he had. He kneeled before the riverman and raised his harp. "I am powerless," he sang at last, "without her I was undone. I have no more use for song, when she is so much more than poetry."
The harp and Orpheus' song both vanished below the riverman's cloak, and Orpheus came at last to the far shore of the River Styx. Kerberos welcomed him, and the dead greeted him with sheepish waves; and for his great feats, the Erinyes escorted him to Hades, who judged that he would reside for ever in Elysium, the garden of heroes. But Orpheus wandered high and low in the city there, and never saw Eurydice; he tried to call out, but was voiceless; and when at last he sat upon a stone in the fields of Ash, and wept, he heard soft footsteps behind him; and a rough calloused hand was lain upon his shoulder.
THE END