The Dragonfly Pool

Musicians came in from the wings and Persephone led her girls into a dance. One of the maidens, a very small junior, stumbled and for a moment it looked as if she would fall, but Verity scooped her up and dusted her off with scarcely a break in the rhythm, and the people in the audience smiled, thinking the mishap had been meant.

The music died away. Persephone was left alone to gather flowers with which to bind her hair. She picked crocuses and lilies and asphodels—and then bent down to the narcissus with its multiple heads and roots deep in the ground: the flower that had been grown as a lure for the innocent girl.

The sky darkened. There was a rumble of thunder, faint at first, then growing stronger . . . a bolt of lightning and a grim moaning as of sufferers in the bowels of the earth . . . and with a final crash, the Lord of the Underworld burst from the rocks. This was no pantomime villain but a powerful ruler—there had been enough children at hand to coach Ronald Peabody in the true bearing of a king—and seizing the pale and trembling girl, he drew her slowly, relentlessly, down into the terrifying dark. In the moment that the light was lost to her forever, she emitted a single, piercing cry—and then all was silence.

The curtain dipped only for a moment. It rose on Demeter, the Goddess of Plenty, arriving with her entourage of nymphs and dryads.

It was necessary for Demeter to be beautiful, so Julia had become beautiful. She moved across the stage, tall and bountiful, and radiant with power and grace.

But she was looking for her daughter.

“Persephone?” she called. “Where are you? Are you hiding? Is it a game?”

The audience watched spellbound, almost unable to bear it, as Julia, still searching, became uncertain, then bewildered . . . then afraid . . . then desperate. Till she understood that the unthinkable had happened and her child was lost—and a look of such anguish spread over her face as stopped the heart.

The curtain went down to an ovation. Yet some of the parents were almost nervous that someone so young could transmit such terrible grief. The woman in the silver fox fur took out her handkerchief and sniffed.

Backstage, the scene shifters moved silently, preparing Hades.

Everybody liked Hades. The anguished figures, half obscured by mist, going about their terrible tasks; the wailing of the dead. Cerberus got a special clap, and so did Karil’s dry ice. In the background Persephone languished beside her husband, toying with her pomegranate.

But the next act belonged to the sorrowing Demeter. The radiant goddess had vanished; here was a grief-stricken woman looking for her child. Julia had become old—not because of her makeup but because oldness came from inside her. It was in every movement she made, every sigh she uttered. She wore a black cloak and they could see how its folds weighed on her, how it hurt her to walk. And the world she moved in was a dead world—the crops had withered, flocks lay stricken in the fields. The grieving goddess had turned aside from her duties, and famine stalked the land.

The people she met could tell her nothing of her daughter’s whereabouts.

Disguised now as an old nurse, she begged for a child to look after—and they could see how she tried to love it—tried and tried, bathing it and tending it—but failed because it was not the child she longed for; it was not her daughter.

Then came the voice of the Sun God, telling her that Persephone was lost forever, deep in the bowels of the earth—and with a cry that echoed that of her daughter as she was carried off, the broken goddess fell to the ground.

There was a short interval and the parents blinked and came down to earth. They had long since stopped watching only their own children; they were watching a play.

In the last act the gods on Olympus took pity on the goddess and the dying world and sent Hermes to the Underworld to bring Persephone back. And now the audience, watching Julia, saw a reversal. Demeter, reunited with her daughter, grew young before their eyes; she became tall and radiant and utterly beautiful.

“My God,” whispered a man in the audience. “I swear she makes the light come out of herself.”

In the final tableau, Persephone knelt at her mother’s feet, and as Demeter raised her hand the stage grew light, petals streamed down from above, and the entire cast entered, bearing fruit and flowers and garlands of leaves. The glorious hymn to Demeter was sung, the curtain fell—and the woman in the silver fox fur broke into noisy sobs.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” said Julia, “but it’s what I really want to do. Act, I mean. I know you think I can’t do it but—”