Spirit of the Place

by Gregory Feeley

“Actually, I can,” Hamilton answered. He spoke slowly, but without faltering. “I grew up on an island that was once largely covered by an ancient forest, called Anderida. And the great land that separates it from your homeland, named for Europa, is said to have been once covered by a single forest.”

  Again there was a silence. Hamilton realized that the creature was not interested in conversing with him; might not, indeed, be fully aware of his presence until he spoke.

  He thought of the forests of the ancient world. Surely she was not claiming that all their trees had been nymphai dendritai? This was not possible. There was also something in her remark about living like Kronos that he had failed to recognize, an allusion offered and missed.

  Something else was nagging at him. “Lady, how did you know I have two friends?” he asked.

  “Drys,” she answered simply, as though from a distance.

  “The oak? What do you mean?”

  “Though dead, the oak surrounding me can convey aisthetikos.” He realized that she meant the hull, made of good oak. “My back is washed with seawater and touched by bronze. Know you of ash trees and bronze? The water touches also the dead oak planks, and I can sense, though dimly. Why is this ship clad like a warrior?”

  “Clad? The hull has been sheathed with—” Hamilton realized that the word for copper, chalkos, was the one Homer used to mean bronze. “Yes, the hull is chalkeokranos. It is to protect against vermin in the seas.” The thin coating would certainly not suffice to protect the ship against any other kind of attack.

  Ha. The creature made no sound, but Hamilton could sense its amusement. “I can feel them,” it remarked.

  “Vermin?”

  “My sisters. Meliai are older than Nereidai, for we are the daughters of Ouranos rather than Zeus. More substance, as well: as hardwood is to spume. Insubstantial as spray, yet I can feel them out there.”

  Hamilton listened to the dry whisper with horrified fascination. This creature, inexpressibly old and never truly human, was no longer in any condition that could be described as sane.

  “I see, Lady,” he said at last. The air seemed heavier, and he was certain that he detected the faint scent of bark. An hour ago he would have wondered whether Eurynomethyia could now send shoots and buds out from her planed surfaces; now he recognized that she was touching his sense of smell just as she could put her voice in his head.

  “Of the Nereids, I know only what I have read in poems,” Hamilton said, to say something. “They are little known by men, who tell mainly of their heroic sons.”

  “‘Poems’?” the nymph asked. Hamilton had used the word epos, but the creature’s tone made clear she did not know it.

  “Historia?” he asked, a bit desperately. How old must the word epos be?

  “Do you mean mythos?” Was that disdain in her voice? Hamilton was no longer certain that her emotions constituted anything he could recognize.

  “Perhaps I do, Lady.”

  “I will tell you a mythos, should you want one. No singing. This is the mythos of Procoptes, whose hospitality was to fit each guest to his bed.”

  “Procoptes? This sounds like the tale of Procrustes.”

  “Will you listen?”

  Hamilton begged the creature’s pardon. After a pause, the dry voice resumed.

  “Procoptes lived on the Attic coast, and gave shelter to travelers who sought it, on his own bed. It was his Fate to offer suitable shelter, which meant a fitting bed. The tale goes that he stretched or lopped the limbs of his guests to fit the bed.”

  “I have heard that told,” Hamilton said.

  “When Theseus came to Procoptes’ house, he was offered the bed and lay upon it, which fit him perfectly. Procoptes, the tale goes, was wrathful and sought to use his tools upon Theseus, but his Fate gave him no power over a man whose size needed no adjustment, so Theseus rose from the bed and slew Procoptes, who in attempting to harm a guest had forfeited his protections. Theseus arrived in Athens expecting to be hailed a hero, yet forever after he was regarded with mistrust, for a man who was exactly the size of his vanquished enemy has a semblance to his victim that no one can wholly put from mind. And so Theseus left Athens for lands where his first exploit was not yet known.”

  “This is not the version I know,” Hamilton murmured, but the Meliad continued:

  “So the foolish townpeople tell, who call him Stretcher—” Hamilton realized with a start that the woman had said Prokroustes—“and pretended that his skills were of the metalworker, who can hammer out lengths and cut away excess. Substituting city skills, they know nothing of Damastes’ true nature.”

  “And what was that?” Hamilton inquired after a moment.

  “Fool! What creature can be trimmed down without harm to itself, or can grow longer once past its youth?”

  Hamilton stared in the darkness.

  “Damastes the Gardener was a subduer of plants, as his name implies, and shaped the young nymphai dendritai to harmonious proportions. The short Theseus, enraged that his form could not be improved like those of the nymphs, fell upon and killed him. Ever mistrusted thereafter, he left the mainland and hired himself out as a mercenary, eventually traveling to Knossos, where his dwarfish stature allowed him to enter the cracks of the Labyrinth.”

  Hamilton did not know what to make of this. “Speak on, Lady,” he finally said, remembering not to use the formulaic Sing.

  “Ai, what more is there to say? With the aid of the lovely Ampelosa, Theseus made his way into the heart of the Labyrinth, where he slew the great bull and its keepers. He escaped by following the vine that Ampelosa had extended, and the kingdom, lacking its great bull, produced only sickly calves the following year, and in time its children grew up as stunted as Theseus himself. But Ampelosa, alas! he abandoned on the isle of Naxos, where the soil is poor, and the unhappy girl withered.”

  “That is a good mythos,” said Hamilton, not knowing what else to say. “In the version I have heard, the woman was named differently. And the Labyrinth contained a monster, part man and part bull, that consumed youths.”

  “Bulls do not eat flesh.”

  Hamilton had never considered that. “The tale I know . . . feels true,” he said. But not the story of Procrustes, which seemed more complex and disturbing in the Meliad’s version than in the one from Apollodorus, in which Theseus simply metes out to various brigands the fate they had intended for him. “The bull in the Labyrinth, in the tale that I have heard told, was the product of an unnatural union between a beautiful bull and Minos’s queen, who had been afflicted with a shameful passion as a kind of—” he did not say nympholeptos, but chose the more literal term, from Plato—“divine madness. The Mino-taur, then, became a hidden emblem of sexual shame.”

  “Shame in a bull?” She was ridiculing him. Hamilton began to protest that it was not the bull who felt shame, then stopped. Whatever path his discourse with the creature would take, she was not going to reason with him.

  “Your tale sounds older than mine,” he began tactfully. It sounded, in fact, like an account of plants versus animals, with humans distinctly included on the less attractive side. Was this the original version, a story of vegetable aggrievance later remade by the offending party into something less incriminating? Or were both versions—or rather all three, including the intermediate tale of Procoptes—offshoots of an original stalk even older, now lost forever?

  “Tales are not stone. They grow. A mythos inclines toward light, shifting its base for better grounding . . . its form is a record of its circumstance.”

  In his astonishment and confusion, Hamilton found himself thinking that Leake should be present to hear this. “Did Theseus return a hero?” he asked.

  “What do I care? Some say that Dionysos, ever a friend to vines and trees, found Ampelosa on Naxos and married her; but that is merely a tale to console. True it is, however, that Dionysos, nymph-raised, was taken once by pirates, whose craft resounded with music and sprouted leaves when the young god announced h
imself to his terrified captors. That truth I know, as do you.”

  “Yes, Lady,” replied Hamilton, wondering what she meant. Her thoughts, however, seemed to have followed the image of a dryad-beamed ship under sail, for after several seconds she abruptly spoke:

  “Whither are you taking me?”

  The question startled him. “Lady, we are traveling west, to the isle where I was born. My . . . master, who owns this ship, is bringing these chests to his castle.”

  “I am to become then one of the Hesperidai, nymphs of the West? Never again to taste the winds of home? O cruelest Fate!” And distress rose up like a soundless wail.

  Hamilton had not thought about what dislocation would mean for a genius loci, the spirit of a place—the Greek word for which, he now remembered, was daimon.

  Thinking to comfort, he began: “This ship will return to these waters—”

  “And will your master restore me to my ground? Or will he prise me from this ship and take me for himself, like the broken statues in your chests?”

  Hamilton started. He didn’t know how Eurynomethyia had learned the contents of the wooden crates, about which he had taken care to remain silent.

  “If my master knew of you, O Meliad, he would wish to install you in a grove of singular honor, where wise men—”

  “And you shall tell him.” The statement was flat.

  “Lady, I . . . I do not know how to reply. Would you wish to remain down here? His Lordship is my—” Hamilton could think of no way to say employer. “He owns this ship. So—” So he owns you. That was unsayable, although Elgin would certainly . . .

  “Leave me.” Her tone was not angry, or even dismissive. It was impersonal as stone, beyond concern over any possible reply.

  Hamilton felt her presence withdraw, and a moist air current banished the scent of vegetation. Somewhere in the darkness a board creaked, lifeless.

  He felt his way back to the ladder, which brushed his face like a dangling vine. He ascended stiffly, surprised at his weariness. The platform deck was rolling more than usual, bullied by a restive sea. Hamilton sat on his bunk and pulled off his boots, happy enough that Gavallo was not to be found. The only illumination was a glow cast from the main cabin, which disappeared as he pushed the door shut.

  Lying down, he tried to order his thoughts, as though for an entry in his journal. Kronos (he had recalled while climbing the ladder) had lain in ambush between earth and starry sky, then emasculated his father Ouranos with a sickle when he came to his mother. The wretched Creature possesses no Pow’r to injure, he mentally indited; ergo, this could not be her Purpose in likening herself to the ancient Illusion.

  Hamilton remembered an older student once tell him that although Hesiod did not come out and say so, it was clear that Kronos had hidden within his mother’s private parts. It was impossible to imagine the desiccated Eurynomethyia, centuries beyond nubility, meaning anything by this; but it did remind Hamilton of other matters. He listened, but heard no sounds of merriment above. It was not like his friends to make mirth of such grave matters, and he must ascribe to the wine and the trials of recent weeks the fact that her Ladyship had been mentioned at all.

  The Creature gives no Evidence of possessing the Pow’r attributed by Legend to her Kind: viz. the Ability to appear as a beautiful Maiden. Hamilton paused, then amended “Creature” to “Person.” Was this Gift lost with the Passage of Centuries; never aught but a Fiction; or else a Pow’r of Illusion, such as Ghosts reputedly possess in being able to manifest themselves only to the Eyes of their intended Audience?

  He imagined Eurynomethyia as she might have appeared millennia ago, a slim robed figure, black-haired and olive-skinned, with the straight nose and Asiatic cheekbones that he had seen on the Parthenon statuary and, sometimes, in the crowded Athens streets . . .

  The dream had incident and response, but he didn’t remember them even as they were happening. The possibility of consummation was its theme and preoccupation, and produced an urgency that washed away the clammy particulars. He was on land, and there was

  company present, outdoor settings with warm winds and shifting light—obstructions, like clinging vines, to a moment alone with the woman with floating hair and pale thighs, shockingly vivid as he moved at last into embrace. Arms encircled him, and sensation shifted to the tactile, electric and alive. The touch of flesh banished all else, spreading across his skin like warm water. Hamilton was scarce able to draw breath before it reached his loins and tightened, gripping and drawing him forth as on a line. The last reflection of self-consciousness wavered and dissolved in the sudden trembling, mounting pressure and a burst of sweetness—

  He came awake like a diver breaking the surface, gasping even in the final throes. Consciousness, like surf striking rock, crashed and regathered, unable to take form. Even when Hamilton realized what had happened he lay stupefied, swamped in the backwash of sensation until its spreading coolness congealed into disgust.

  He sat up, wincing as the stain touched more skin. He peeled off his clothes and threw them across the cabin, then found the water jug and a cloth and set to cleaning himself. His flesh still tingled, unrepentant in debauch, at the cloth’s touch.

  He stood in the darkness, brushed something from his hair, and coldly considered the nature of his being. Certainly he would never be able to look Lady Elgin in the face again. The details of the dream were already fading, but he recalled lips, glimpsed breasts, the startling warmth of envelopment. The fact of having been asleep was scant mitigation for such monstrous indecency.

  Dawn was hours away, and Hamilton lay back in his bunk, listening to the ship creak and thump as the wind drove it through choppy waters. Something in the hull below was alive—subsisting, though reduced to inanimate form, in a kind of half-life; brooding, in unimaginable solitude, upon an existence that had lasted millennia. The creature spoke an archaic Greek that Hamilton, lying upon his bed of squalor in the merciless light of self-recognition, must acknowledge lay beyond his comprehension: and so possessed the power to make itself understood to any reasonable creature who came into sustained contact with it. Hamilton had feared that Eurynomethyia would become enraged upon learning that the hold was filled with marbles torn from the Parthenon, but the creature seemed not to know anything so recent as the Athens of Phidias and Pericles, nor to care. Its reason and powers decayed beyond reckoning, it remembered and keened, like the stone figure of Niobe that still could weep.

  When gray light began bleeding through the eastern clouds, Hamilton rose and dressed. The galley was brewing coffee by this hour, and he went above for a cup, eyeing the gathering clouds dispiritedly as he stood at the rail.

  “It’s certainly a storm,” said Squire, who was standing some feet away. “We are not likely to outrun it, heavy as we are.”

  “Nor shall we be tossed, with such ballast,” Hamilton returned, but with a sinking heart. A storm at sea meant hours or days spent below, which would be colder and damper for the rains pelting above, and poor light available for reading. It was the worst regimen possible for low spirits, with which Hamilton had but infrequent experience, so managed poorly.

  The smell of bacon had joined the galley smoke that drifted across the deck, and Hamilton guessed that Leake would arrive soon. A good breakfast will help any man’s spirits, he told himself, and good company hold it fast. When Leake emerged Hamilton hailed him, raising his cup in ironic salute as the topographer joined them at the rail.

  “We must enjoy our time on deck while we may,” he observed as they regarded the black clouds spreading across the east.

  “You find this such a pleasure?”

  “Are you still unwell?” Leake asked, glancing at his friend with concern. “I assure you, the fresh air is better for you than what we shall be breathing if a storm sends us below.”

  Hamilton winced at the thought of below. “What do you know of Kronos?” he asked suddenly.

  “Chronos? The Greek word for time, isn’t it? Or do you
mean the early god, the Titan who devoured his children?”

  “I had forgotten about ‘chronos’ meaning ‘time,’” Hamilton confessed. “Do you suppose that the two are etymologically related?”

  “Quite possibly. I could imagine a connection with all-devouring Time. Do any of his Lordship’s marbles depict Kronos?”

  “Oh, no: I do not believe that any of the Titans are shown on the Parthenon. They are very old gods, perhaps older than anything else we call Greek.”

  They were walking beside the railing, and had paused at the foremast, beyond which they would be trespassing upon the realm of the sailors. Hamilton noticed that a wooden cleat set in the mast at eye level had sprouted a thin green shoot, which was tipped by a tiny cluster of buds. He stared.

  “Really!” Leake was saying. “I had thoughtlessly imagined that the entire family had been invented more or less of a piece, like the characters in a novel.” He shook his head in wonder at his foolishness. “Did the Greeks have any particular ideas about time?”

  “Time?” Hamilton turned back to his friend with an effort. “The philosophers held different beliefs, as philosophers will,” he said after a moment. “Zeno believed that time was an illusion; and Plato, while acknowledging its passage, held that time was a lesser reality than the unchanging world of Ideas. Only Heraclitus believed that the flow of time was a crucial element of reality.”

  Leake grunted. “They came upon that truth only slowly, eh? What did they believe in the days of Kronos’s original worshipers?”

  “I have no idea,” Hamilton admitted. “Historians know very little about the Greeks before Homer.” Behind myths, older myths, he thought. Behind which, she avers, a history older still.

  They were sitting at breakfast when rain rattled suddenly overhead, loud as hurled gravel. The three passengers grimaced at one another, reaching for their cups or hunching their shoulders in unconscious anticipation of a cold day. Hamilton drank another coffee and retired to his cabin, whose candle grew no dimmer as the morning darkened without. He threw the blanket round his shoulders and sat, looking at his notes with distaste.