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Orpheus knew the world was ending when he woke up without her by his side. When he rolled over and she wasn’t there, that was the start.
He knew the world was ending when his feet hit the hardwood floor. It was cold in the absence of the fire that Eurydice always built first thing in the morning.
He knew the world was ending when he found Hermes sitting solemnly in the kitchen. The look of sympathy proved that Orpheus’s nightmare wasn’t just a nightmare.
He knew the world was ending when he ran into the woods, uncaring of Hermes’s voice following him and the mist that swirled out of his breath.
A man was never supposed to be able to outrun a god. Perhaps it was because Orpheus was no longer a man. No, he couldn’t be. He was nothing without her.
Describing her as just his better half would be an injustice–They were two parallel streams trickling into the same lake. After just one meeting, they could never be separated again. When he turned around, he dumped their water over a fire, and he never had the right to feel whole again.
Tears were useless. They were no solution to his problem. The solution was falling to his knees at the first riverbank he saw and filling his lungs with water. Then he could see her, and nothing would be okay because she was still dead, but they at least would be together.
But when the poet tried to throw his head in, something grasped him by the hair and ripped him away from the bank.
For a wonderful, fleeting moment, Orpheus thought it was her, but before he even looked he knew that she would never touch him in such a way. Still, the owl perched behind his head and glaring at Orpheus like he did something heinous broke him again in a way he didn’t know he still could be broken.
He tried again. And again. And the damned owl came back every time, ripping chunks of Orpheus’s hair out and throwing him harshly away from the river.
Well, there were other ways to die.
He tried to break his neck. The branches shook him off before he got high enough for a bruise.
He tried to poison himself. The squirrels ate the berries off the bushes when they saw Orpheus approach.
He tried to stab himself. All the rocks jumped away before he could sharpen anything on them.
Orpheus once believed his voice to be a blessing. Now, he knew he was wrong. It was nothing but a curse. Word of his music got around–the forest would never let him die. When he screamed in agonizing, broken cries that left him completely voiceless, the animals gathered around like they were watching some kind of show.
He considered going back to their home. Maybe that was how he carried on her memory, by keeping their house safe. But Orpheus knew that keeping her memory alive saved nothing. No matter how hard he prayed and lied to himself, she was not alive, and keeping her house warm seemed like the biggest disrespect he could give her.
So, he wandered. He tried every morning and every night to kill himself, and kept walking when it never worked.
He found himself upon the railroad tracks. He followed them, but horribly and unsurprisingly, there was no way back into the Underworld. When he turned around and walked the road back, he didn’t look behind him. He’d prove now that he could.
Perhaps that made it worse. He was capable of not turning around, but just not for Eurydice. Maybe he just loved her too much. Maybe he never loved her enough.
Orpheus kept walking. What else could he do?
Time passed. A week. A month. A year. Sometimes he stumbled upon people. Occasionally, they were people he knew from the railroad station. Regardless, Orpheus provided them no response. One man tried for hours, resorting to yelling and pushing to try to break Orpheus’s stoicism. He only gave up when a racoon tried to bite him after a particularly violent shove.
When spring came again, a melody hit his ears. Dark, but familiar. Comforting. He sat and listened, smiling for the first time since her. He could feel voices following him. Friends. If he strained hard enough, he almost thought he could hear the sweet sound of her voice.
At first, Orpheus walked until he collapsed. He didn’t stop for food or rest, and only slept when he could no longer move his legs. However, as time passed, Orpheus found himself stopping more frequently. He regularly collected small bouquets of flowers during the summer and left them perched against trees. Sometimes he stumbled upon old ones he left behind long ago. It always felt like some kind of gift.
Time passed. He stopped hating the animals. They only wanted him to live. One squirrel followed him everywhere until Orpheus begrudgingly reached out his hand and allowed it to crawl up his arm. The squirrel stayed near constantly on Orpheus’s shoulder for months, accepting the food the poet hand-fed him. When it died, Orpheus buried it under a small tree and marked the site with one of his old bouquets.
Time passed. Each spring, their story was told. No matter where he was, the sound of their melodies found him, and he sat on the sun warmed grass to listen.
The thing is, Orpheus knows that if he were to do it over again, nothing would change. He realized that after a few years. He could love her impossibly more, and he would always turn around. To love Eurydice means to turn for her. If he had found the strength to not make sure she was there, then he never would have truly loved her at all. He always thought that losing her was the worst thing that ever could have happened. Then, he realized that never loving her at all would have been worse.
That’s what eventually convinced him to go back.
The railroad station welcomed him with open arms. Hermes held him in a hug for several minutes. It was Orpheus’s first hug since Eurydice. It was nice.
No one asked how he was–They knew the answer. But they sat and talked with him like nothing had changed. Orpheus mostly listened. He found that he liked it more than talking.
Hermes had cut his hair the day he got back. Orpheus sat in silence, while Hermes told him everything that had happened since he left. The god never tried to find Orpheus. He said it broke his heart to not search for the boy, but it was obvious he didn’t want to be found. Hermes also told Orpheus that his house was still his. It hadn’t been given to anyone, and people periodically stopped by to make sure too much dust never gathered.
When he went back to his house, he cried for the first time in years. It still smelled like her.
Orpheus slept in their bed that night, and woke up expecting her next to him. That also hadn’t happened in years. But for the first time, he welcomed the false hope. Imagining that Eurydice was there was nicer than accepting she would never be.
Orpheus hadn’t really planned on staying at the railroad station. He didn’t know what he planned on doing, but he never intended on staying. Somehow though, he found himself going day after day. Listening to voices other than his own was beautiful in a way, and despite himself, he started to enjoy the small life he was swept into.
He could clearly remember the first day that he didn’t think of Eurydice. It was strange: He woke up with the hole in his chest that never left, but he forgot to think about why. He forgot that nothing was okay, and at the station, he laughed. The surprised look that some of the patrons shot his way sent floods of remembrance and grief through him, but also an interesting sense of hope. He hadn’t realized that it was possible to laugh without her. He wanted to do it more.
Since he vowed never to sing again, his time at the station felt rather empty. Everyone there had their own passions, goals, unyielding dreams, and Orpheus didn’t.
So he started hunting.
Every morning, Orpheus would go out and try to gather animals. At first, it was slow moving, but he began to pick up the skill and bring more and more back to the station. He understood why Eurydice once liked this so much. There was a rhythm to it.
He wished he could show her. Some day, he would tell her all about it.
-O-0-0-O-
Orpheus had spent about a year at the station when he met them. Three young women with hunger in their eyes. Not like Eurydice’s. More like a fate’s: Eagerly watching and preying on their next victim. Orpheus was unsettled by these women who watched him hunt from afar, but they did not speak to him for several days. Until, one day they did.
“You’re a handsome young man.”
“I’ve heard of you. Calliope’s son.”
“He’s as beautiful as they say he is.”
Orpheus kept walking. He didn’t answer them, or even look them in the eye.
They continued to follow him, getting angry after a while. They wondered how anyone could reject women like them, especially an unmarried man like himself.
Eventually, they took his fidelity into their own hands.
Orpheus didn’t come home that day, or the day after, or ever again. No one at the station, including Hermes, was ever able to find him.
The three women had taken turns plunging a knife into Orpheus’s heart. He stopped breathing long before they tore his body up. He never got to hear the music that emanated off his remains. He never felt the cold plunge of the river they threw him into. He never saw the beautiful shrine a neighboring town built when they found him.
What he did see was Hades. He stood in front of the boy, watching him in silence while Orpheus shook off his disorientation. Then, he wordlessly offered Orpheus a coin. A ticket.
Orpheus took it without hesitation. In silence, Hades led him to the Underworld. He made no cruel remarks, no smug smirks, and offered no deceitful words. They simply walked.
And Orpheus smiled.
I’m coming.