Doljabi
Olympus, which I hadn't seen in quite some time, had grown even more magnificent than before.
The walls ringing the mountain summit stood taller still, and the pillars of the newly raised palaces thrust upward as if they meant to pierce the clouds. Gold-leafed roofs scattered sunlight in every direction, and beneath them gods and nymphs moved back and forth with cups in hand, pouring out laughter. The place had become grander, livelier. To eyes risen from the land of the dead, it was almost blinding.
The moment I stepped into the banquet hall, a booming voice came flying at me.
"Brother!"
The King of the Heavens strode over with long steps. Demeter was at his side. Zeus clapped me on the shoulder and asked without preamble,
"You've brought that again this time, haven't you?"
Demeter said nothing, but her eyes were already asking. She made no effort to hide her anticipation.
"Of course. I packed it."
When I lifted my hand, the shadow at my feet rippled and a large table rose from it. Attendants took hold of the thing and carried it to the center of the hall.
In the world I had once lived in, this had been a custom performed on a child's first birthday. They called it Doljabi.
The problem was that the growth of gods was nothing like that of humans. Some children were running about mere days after birth; others walked out already fully grown. If you waited until the first birthday, it wouldn't be a grab so much as a shopping trip. So we had no choice but to do it on the day of birth itself.
I set the objects on the table one by one.
First, a reed pen and papyrus. They stood for knowledge and learning. I would have preferred a pencil and notebook, but of course nothing of the sort existed in this age, so I substituted the things people used for writing.
Next, a spool of thread. It meant a long life. For deathless gods it was more or less meaningless, but with these things the appearance of the set always mattered more than the substance.
A handful of gold coins. Wealth. That one needed no explanation. God or human, I had never met a being who disliked money.
A harp. Popularity and talent. If you told them a child who seized it would grow up beloved by all, everyone was pleased.
Last, a staff. Medicine. In the world I came from, a staff twined with a serpent had been the emblem of those who healed the sick.
Once the table was fully laid, the banquet hall began to stir. It was time for the guest of honor to appear.
Demeter stepped forward carrying an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. Zeus raised his cup high and roared,
"This is my daughter Kore! From this day Olympus has one more family member, so drink your fill and celebrate your fill!"
The gods raised their cups in answer, and the hall shook with their cheers.
Kore.
Kore.
Cup still in hand, I turned the name over on my tongue. I felt as if I had heard it somewhere. In a book, perhaps. Or brushed past it at some feast.
I could rattle off the names of famous gods without effort, yet nowhere in my head was there a Kore. And still the name sat strangely familiar on the tip of my tongue. What was this sense of déjà vu?
Before an answer could form, my eyes met the baby's.
The infant in Demeter's arms was looking at me. Not a glancing look—staring. There were hundreds of gods in the hall, yet those pitch-black eyes were fixed on me alone.
It must have been my imagination. Babies were always fascinated by dark clothes and the like.
Then the time came for the child to choose.
Demeter set the baby down before the table. Gods crowded around it and began laying bets among themselves. The harp. No, the gold. The sound of wagers flying back and forth filled the air.
Kore looked slowly over the objects on the table. Reed pen. Spool of thread. Gold coins. Harp. Staff. Her small eyes passed over each in turn.
Then she lifted her head and looked at me.
The baby crawled past every object, toddling all the way to the edge of the table. She stretched her body as far as it would go and seized the hem of my robe—standing right beside the table—in her tiny fist.
The banquet hall fell silent.
Hundreds of gazes moved between the baby's hand and the cloth of my robe. Not a soul dared draw breath. The silence was broken by the King of the Heavens' explosive laughter.
"Hahahahaha!"
Zeus clutched his belly and roared until the hall itself rang.
"Did you see that! My daughter, not even a day old, has caught the King of the Underworld! Fearless doesn't begin to cover it!"
At his laughter the frozen gods began to laugh as well, one after another. I stood there awkwardly, looking down at the small fist that refused to let go of my hem. For a baby's grip, the strength was considerable.
"There, there, Kore. That isn't one of the things you're meant to grab."
Demeter laughed as she pried the child free. She had to open the fingers one by one; the baby would not release the cloth easily.
Set before the table again, Kore glanced back at me for a moment, then this time obediently reached up onto the surface. She picked up a single gold coin.
"Ohhh!"
A shout went up from the gods, and Zeus burst into laughter once more. Then he turned to me and called out,
"Wealth! You're in for it, Brother! Looks like this one will grow up to plunder the vaults of the King of Wealth! You'll have to keep a tight watch from now on!"
Because every treasure of gold and silver that slept in the earth belonged to the King of the Underworld, the gods also called me the King of Wealth. In an instant I had become a man whose storehouses would be cleaned out by a newborn, and laughter bloomed across the feast.
That day's banquet stayed long in my memory.
I had laid out the Doljabi table more than once or twice. The things the babies had seized over the years had been many and varied. But a child who set every object aside and took hold of me—Kore was the first.
Newborns usually burst into tears at the mere sight of me. Black robes and a pallid face; it was only natural. And yet here was a baby who had gripped the hem of those very robes in her small fist and refused to let go. How could the impression not have been deep?
Perhaps that was why, from around that time, I began leaving the Underworld far more often.
Excuses were plentiful. Birth feasts came one after another, and I was the only one who prepared the table. The land of the dead was not a kingdom that would topple if I stepped away for a few days. I settled the backlog of ledgers before I left, and I had even developed the knack of letting my night-bound household sort out anything urgent and bring it to me.
And every time I ascended to Olympus, I met that child without fail.
Around the time she first found her tongue, Kore was a little thing toddling about. At one feast Demeter took the child's hand, brought her over, and made her give her greetings.
"Kore. This is the King of the Underworld. You must greet him properly, the way you were taught."
The child stared up at me for a long while, then opened her mouth with words of her own choosing rather than the ones she had learned.
"Mister!"
The surrounding gods stiffened, and the color drained from Demeter's face. Mister, to the King of the Underworld. The goddess hurriedly tried to scoop the child up; I raised a hand to stop her.
"Leave it. I am a mister."
Strictly speaking it wasn't even wrong. By kinship I was her great-uncle, but a great-uncle was still a mister. More than anything, it was a hundred times easier on the ear than "O great King of the Underworld."
From that day on, Kore called me Mister. In all the world, she was the only one who addressed me that way.
Demeter tried to correct the title every time they met, but the child was stubborn beyond measure. In the end the goddess gave up, choosing to look the other way with a sigh.
Years passed.
They said the growth of gods was uneven, and Kore grew with unusual, almost human slowness. Thanks to that, each time I met her at a feast I could see the child a little taller than before.
When she looked about six or seven, Kore developed the habit of spotting me across a banquet hall and shouldering her way through the gods to run over. Something was always in her hands—a flower she claimed to have grown, or a smooth stone she said she had picked up in the fields.
"Mister! I brought this for you!"
Every time the King of Death accepted a flower from a little girl's hand, the gods wore the faces of people who had seen something they shouldn't, but the child herself paid them no mind at all.
I couldn't quite bring myself to throw the flowers away, so I carried them down into the Underworld. Strangely enough, those flowers scarcely withered even in a palace that knew not a single ray of light. As a result, a corner of my black study gradually filled with blooms of every color, season after season.
When she looked about twelve, she volunteered to help set up the Doljabi table. She arranged the objects in an order of her own invention and asked without pause what this one meant and why that one was there. Questions like why Mister always wore black, and what the Underworld looked like, came as extras.
The question of whether flowers bloomed in the Underworld left me a little short of answers. When I said they did not, the child's face became the most serious in the world, and she declared that she would go plant some herself someday. I laughed it off.
Answering her was not a nuisance. To be honest, it was a pleasure. The King of the Underworld, who had lived eons in silence, became, for the span of a feast, a chatterbox beleaguered by a little girl's barrage of questions.
And still more years passed.
Now Kore's outward appearance looked about fifteen. The baby fat of her childhood was gone; she stood taller than Demeter's shoulder, and over the tomboyish air of a girl who once raced through the fields a properly goddess-like bearing had begun to settle.
Still, one thing never changed.
"Mister!"
That call—spotting me from the far side of the banquet hall and waving—remained exactly as it had always been.