Persephone slid down until she was sitting with her back against the door, one knee bent. She looked at the slender lines the moonlight cast on the floor, reaching in through the bars. At least she had moonlight now.

No! She could not sit here and bear this, whilst Demeter hatched her schemes and threatened the very order of their pantheon. She could not wait for Hades to rescue her this time. Persephone simply had to rescue herself.

Easier said than done.

She stood up and pressed her hands against the door. It was oak, ancient and worn. She closed her eyes and listened.

It had been a seedling in the days of Kronos and Rhea, its years beyond measure. It scarcely remembered the touch of the sun, its bones scattered into pieces and trapped here for all eternity. Its spirit rested in Elysium, providing shade to mortal heroes and a home to an unkindness of ravens.

Persephone gasped and drew back, her fingertips trembling. She never would have gained such depth of feeling from an unliving thing before—glimpses and sporadic images, perhaps, but not this. And never would she have known of its presence in the underworld.

It was another sign of how the underworld had changed her, and that might have disturbed her once, but now she only looked around herself with new eyes. Demeter might have burned all the vegetation within spitting distance, but the door, ceiling, and furniture were all made of wood, though the walls were brick. The floor was stone, edged in lime mortar to prevent even a sliver of earth from being accessible. That left Persephone with few options.

She jumped onto the bed and stretched her hands up to the edge of the rafters. Oak as well, though not as ancient as that of the door. She’d transplanted its spirit into her grove, from elsewhere near the palace. She’d tended and watered it and read beneath its branches.

She clambered down from the bed and went once more to the door, placing her hands upon it. “Hello?” she called out again, her ear pressed to its surface.

Demeter had never bothered posting a guard on her before. Why should she? With no seeds and no dirt, she must have thought Persephone defenseless.

Persephone stepped back from the door. “Please,” she said. “I know it may be... strange,” she continued, struggling to word her request. “This was your body. These planks were your branches, your trunk. Remember what you were. Help me.”

For a while, nothing happened. She stared expectantly at the door, and it remained just that.

She was asking too much. A kind of spirit possession—trees did have spirits, no matter how coy Hades had been upon the subject—but Persephone had no idea whether her request was even feasible. She trailed her fingertips over the surface of the door, hoping to feel something, anything.