Florida FAST Practice Test 14

Passage 1: The Grief of Demeter

¹In the age when the gods still walked among the fields, Demeter, giver of grain, had one daughter, Persephone, whom she loved above the harvest itself. While the girl gathered flowers in the meadows of Enna, the goddess's heart was at ease; the barley stood tall and the vines hung heavy, for the earth took its temper from her.

²But Hades, lord of the dead, had looked up from his kingdom and desired the girl for his queen. One morning, as Persephone reached for a narcissus brighter than any she had seen, the ground split open at her feet. Out of the darkness came the black horses of the underworld, and the king of shadows seized her and carried her down. She cried out once to her mother, and the earth closed over the cry.

³Demeter heard it, though she was far away, and the sound went into her like a blade. She tore the garland from her hair. She lit two torches from the fires of Mount Etna and for nine days wandered the earth without food or rest, asking every creature she met, "Have you seen my child?" The rivers did not know. The trees would not answer. Only the Sun, who sees all things, told her the truth at last: Hades had taken the girl, and Zeus, the girl's own father, had allowed it.

⁴Then the goddess's grief became a terrible thing. She turned away from Olympus and from the company of the gods. She took the form of an old woman and sat by a well among mortals, and while she sat in mourning, nothing grew. Seed lay dead in the furrow. Oxen dragged their plows through dust. Barren year followed barren year, and the race of mortals would have perished from hunger, and the gods would have lost the offerings that mortals gave them, had Zeus not at last relented.

⁵He sent Hermes, the swift messenger, down into the halls of the dead to bring Persephone back to the light. Hades did not refuse the command of Zeus. But before he released his queen, he pressed a pomegranate into her hand, and she, not knowing the law of that place, ate of its seeds. Whoever tastes the food of the dead belongs, in part, to the dead forever.

⁶So when mother and daughter met again, and Demeter ran to her as a mountain stream runs down to the valley, their joy was mixed with sorrow. For it was decreed that Persephone must return to the underworld for a portion of every year, and for that portion live as queen beside Hades.

⁷And so it has been ever since. When Persephone climbs into the light, her mother rejoices, and the earth breaks into blossom and grain. When the girl goes down again, Demeter mourns, and the leaves fall, and the fields lie bare beneath the frost, waiting.

⁸This is why the seasons turn. This is why the farmer, burying seed in the cold ground, trusts that it will rise.

Passage 2: September, Terminal B

¹She checks one bag and carries one,

²the way she always packed for camp,

³and I stand at the rope line with the others

⁴who are not allowed to go any farther.

⁵No one has taken her. I know that.

⁶She chose the school, the city, the whole bright

⁷unreachable distance. She filled out the forms

⁸at my kitchen table while I made the soup.

⁹Still, when she turns at the scanner and waves,

¹⁰I feel the floor give a little, the way

¹¹the ground must have given once in some meadow

¹²when a girl reached for a flower and was gone.

¹³I drive home past the orchards

¹⁴the county sprays against the frost in October.

¹⁵The kitchen is cooler than I left it.

¹⁶I do not turn the burner on. I sit.

¹⁷Let the basil on the windowsill go brown.

¹⁸Let the tomatoes split on the vine.

¹⁹Somewhere a goddess wandered nine days with torches;

²⁰I have a phone, and she will call on Sundays,

²¹and I am not a goddess, and I know

²²the difference between a loss and a leaving.

²³But I also know what she ate down there—

²⁴not seeds, exactly. A city's taste for itself.

²⁵The friends she'll make whose names I'll learn by Christmas.

²⁶A language of buildings I don't speak.

²⁷She will come home in May, and part of her

²⁸will stay below, or above, or wherever she is

²⁹when she is not mine. And that is the bargain.

³⁰That is the bargain every mother makes

³¹the first time she lets go of a small hand

³²at the edge of a road. I make it again.

³³In the morning I will plant the bulbs she left—

³⁴tulips, a whole bag of them, gone soft in the garage—

³⁵and press them down into the cold ground

³⁶the way you trust a thing you cannot see.