The Failed Retrieval from the Dead

Eurydice, new bride of the Thracian singer Orpheus, stepped on a viper as she fled a pursuer through the grass, and died of the bite. Orpheus went down after her — through the gate at Taenarum, across the grey marshes — armed with nothing but the lyre. And he sang: to the ferryman, who carried him; to Cerberus, whose three heads sank to sleep; to the wheel of Ixion, which stopped; to the vulture at the liver of Tityos, which lifted its head; and at last to the throned dead themselves, Hades and Persephone. The dead wept — the first tears ever shed in that country, some say. Persephone called Eurydice, who came still limping from the wound, and the lords of the dead set one condition: that Orpheus walk ahead, and not turn to look at her until both stood again in the light of the sun. Up they went, he straining his ears for her footfall behind him — footfall of a shade makes no sound — and at the very rim of the world, where the first grey light touched him but not yet her, love and terror won. He turned. She was there; and she was gone, falling away like smoke, with only 'farewell' reaching him. He rushed back down, but the ferryman would not cross a living man twice. Orpheus wandered singing until the Maenads tore him apart; his head floated down the Hebrus, still singing, and his shade went below at last, where he and Eurydice walk together, and he may look at her as much as he pleases.

When Izanami died birthing the fire god, her husband Izanagi followed her down to Yomi, the land of gloom. She met him at the hall's shadowed door. 'You are too late,' she said. 'I have eaten at the hearth of Yomi. But I will ask its lords for leave to return — only do not look upon me while you wait.' The wait grew long. Izanagi broke a tooth from the comb in his hair, lit it as a torch, and entered — and saw her: rotting, maggot-ridden, the eight thunder gods seated in her flesh. He fled. Izanami, shamed and furious, sent the hags of Yomi after him, then the thunders, then came herself. At the pass of Yomotsu Hirasaka he hauled a boulder across the way, and husband and wife stood divorced with the stone between them. 'Beloved,' she called through it, 'if you do this, I will strangle a thousand of your people every day.' And he answered: 'Beloved, then I will build a thousand and five hundred birthing-huts a day.' So death entered the world, and so birth outpaces it; and Izanagi washed the pollution of Yomi from his body in the river, and of his washed eyes were born the sun and the moon.

A young chief's wife died, and he could not let her go: he lay on her grave until her spirit rose and set out on the ghosts' road west, and he followed. The road was dark and the dead moved on it like wind; where they crossed rushing water on a swaying pole, he nearly fell, for the living are heavy. In the land of the dead the spirits danced all night and slept all day, and his wife danced among them, young and whole. The old chief of that country pitied him — no living one had come so far — and made the bargain: 'Take her home. Walk ahead; she will follow. But do not touch her, do not turn to see her, until you have slept the fifth night in your own country.' Four nights he kept the law, hearing her steps grow firmer behind him, hearing her breath return, hearing her become alive. On the fifth night, camped almost within sight of the village fires, she spoke his name in her own living voice — and he turned and took her in his arms. In the morning he woke holding rotted bones. The old chief of the dead said: 'Because you could not wait one night, no one shall ever come back again.' And that is why, of all who have died since, not one has returned.

Pare, a woman of the highest rank, offered her love to the visiting champion Hutu, who refused her — he had a wife and children — and in her shame she died by her own hand. Her people held Hutu's life forfeit, but he asked for time and went down to the world below, guided by the goddess of the dark. In the underworld he found the spirits listless and Pare unwilling to be seen. So Hutu taught the dead games: he made darts fly and, when that failed to draw her, bent a tall tree to the ground with ropes as a swing — and at that wonder, all the dead gathered, and Pare came out at last and asked to swing with him. She clasped his shoulders; the tree was released; and it sprang so high that its top touched the roof of the underworld, and Hutu caught the roots of the plants of the upper world and hauled them both out through the hole. Her spirit flew to where her body lay in state and re-entered it, and Pare lived. She was given to Hutu — the accounts reconcile his marriage variously — and her people counted the debt of blood repaid with life.