The Dragonfly Pool

“I’m sorry . . . I can’t,” she muttered.

No one tried to persuade her. They had been through this so often. And then, to his own surprise, Karil began to speak.

“At home, in Bergania, I heard a lot about duty. The Countess Frederica kept nagging me about it; it was my duty to salute properly and smile at little girls who curtsied to me and make small talk to the wives of ambassadors. Maybe it was my duty—I don’t know; I thought it was pretty silly. But that doesn’t mean that duty doesn’t exist. My father knew about it. He knew about forcing himself on when he was tired and bored, or sitting on his horse in uncomfortable clothes, or listening to his ministers in meetings that went on and on. Giving everything he had to his people. Duty exists and it’s real. It means sharing any gift or talent that you have with people who need it. It means not being afraid or selfish or tight—but open. And in my view,” said Karil, “it’s Julia’s duty to be the heroine of this play.”

Then he fell back in his chair, aghast at what he had done. He had not been at Delderton for a week and here he was, lecturing and pontificating.

But now Julia had lifted her head and her voice carried very clearly, because that was one of the things she knew—how to make herself heard if she wanted to.

“All right,” said Julia. “I’ll do it.”

Everybody stopped dead and stared at her.

“You’ll do it?” repeated Tally. “Really? You’ll be the heroine? You’ll be Persephone?”

“I’ll be the heroine,” said Julia, “but I won’t be Persephone. Persephone’s not the heroine; she’s just a pretty girl who gets carried off. Anyone can be her . . . Verity can.”

In the classroom one could have heard a pin drop.

“The heroine,” said Julia, “the person who matters, is her mother. It’s Demeter, who roams the earth looking for her daughter and never gives up. Not ever. Because loving her daughter, and finding her, matters more than anything in the world.”

Tally, who alone knew Julia’s story, looked at her friend.

“And you’ll be her?” she asked quietly.

Julia nodded. “Yes, I’ll be her.”

After that everything fell into place, and a few days later casting was complete and they moved into the hall to begin rehearsals. Ronald Peabody was to be the king of the Underworld.

“He’s nasty enough,” Borro had agreed, but he also acted well.

And Verity got her wish and played Persephone. She took the part seriously, working out how to scream and struggle and wondering what to wear while doing it, and if her lines got fewer and fewer as Tally and Karil adjusted the script, she did not seem to notice it. Persephone was described in the old myth as having “delicate ankles,” and that was enough for Verity. And she could dance.

The rest of the casting went without a hitch. Borro was Hermes, the messenger chosen to bring Persephone back, and a tall senior whose voice had broken reliably played Zeus, King of the Gods.

And the scenes in Hades were easy. Being horrible or tortured or weird is always popular. Tod was Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock up a hill, Barney made an excellent Tantalus, never quite allowed to sip the water that reached to his mouth—and no one felt like refusing Kit when he asked if he could be the man whose liver was pecked out by an eagle, even though he belonged to a different myth.

As for Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the gates of Hades, there was a stampede of juniors all wanting to be one of his heads. Since the heads did not speak and would be covered in masks it was difficult to choose, so they drew lots—but the good thing about Hades is that it is always full, and those children who were not picked to be a head could still gibber and wail and wobble across the stage.

Karil and Tally were joint stage managers and were incessantly busy. “Bossy” was the word Verity used, and she had a point, but there was so much to remember.

O’Hanrahan directed, never raising his voice but holding the play completely under his hand. At the beginning Tally had been put in charge of the script; she was to gather up ideas and make notes, ready for the actual writing. So she had gone to the library, found a book called Greek Myths for Schools—and gone back, puzzled, to O’Hanrahan.

“It’s not like you told it to us,” she said. “It’s sort of flat. You must have made an awful lot up. All that about Persephone’s delicate ankles, and Demeter tearing off her headband in grief . . .”

O’Hanrahan shook his head. “No, I didn’t make it up. The words are all there in the original Greek, just as they were nearly three thousand years ago.”

And he went to his bookcase and began to read. The musical words, serious but beautiful, went straight into Tally’s soul. Understanding no word of the ancient language, she yet sensed the story’s depth and resonance.

The next day she took Greek Myths for Schools back to the library—and they began to write their play.