(No illustrated version of this story would be complete without a “Rape of Persephone” scene, but I couldn’t possibly do justice to it, so here’s the scene as depicted on the wall of a tomb in Vergina, possibly belonging to one of Alexander the Great’s family. Image source

When she awoke, her captor and his golden chariot were nowhere to be seen. She was lying on a soft, silken couch in a dark room, lit only by a handful of small oil lamps, scattered across jewel-studded furniture. She sat up slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light. Laid out on a table beside the couch were a cup of nectar and a bowl of ambrosia, the food of the gods, and next to them, piled atop a neatly folded silk stole, a bejewelled gold diadem. She picked it up and studied it for a moment, letting the dim light play across the surface of the gems. It seemed strange that her abductor should leave her with such lovely things. She perched cross-legged on the edge of the couch for a while, sipping at the nectar and wondering what she should do. When the nectar and ambrosia was gone, and the room was thoroughly inspected, she finally dragged up every dreg of courage and pushed open the door to slip outside. Pulling her new scarf around her shoulders she padded along corridors, peering through doorways into half-lit rooms and empty courtyards. The palace, for it could not be anything else, was huge, but every meandering corridor, every room, was cold and dark. All this furniture, all these pretty things, but no one around to use it! She tiptoed a little further and found a window opening out onto a garden, a garden even stranger than the palace itself. The air outside was heavy with mist which coiled around the tendrils of vines and gaunt, leafless trees.

She was searching for an entrance into this peculiar garden when she heard a dry sound echo through the corridor, a sound like someone stirring autumn leaves. She followed the sound to a wide, columned hall where a figure sat hunched over a stone table. So here he was then, her abductor. He didn’t seem quite so terrible now, this thin, pale figure. He was very tall with long, unruly black hair and dark clothes to match. The darkness of his drapes only emphasised his pallor, even the silver of his rings seemed darker than his skin. She had never seen a man who looked like that, let alone a god! She smiled slightly and crept forward along the colonnade. As she moved she watched the shadows change across his face. He was not unattractive, more… strange.