Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast

by Jane Yolen

  He coughed, a thread of blood sliding from the side of his mouth into his white-streaked beard. “Whatever it is, the creature has dealt me my death blow.”

  The tuft of fur dropped from his feeble fingers.

  “Papa!” she whispered. He didn’t answer, but she could tell by the rattle of his breath that he was not asleep.

  She added more wood to the fire till the room was uncomfortably warm. Then she made him a tisane of heal-all, feeding it to him as if he were a baby, using a leather bottle and a cloth teat. After that he dozed until midnight.

  When he woke, he whispered hoarsely, “I’m dying, Atalanta.” His watery eyes were the color of an autumn sky.

  “No, Papa, no,” Atalanta cried. But looking down at him, she knew he was telling the truth.

  “You must be a brave girl,” he said.

  When had he become so small? she wondered. All her life he’d seemed tree high, a big man, striding ahead of her in the woods, following tracks and spoor as surely as if they were signs engraved in stone. He could throw his javelin with deadly accuracy across the widest glade. The arrows leaped from his bow like hawks taking flight. As his only child, she’d always been his constant companion, learning all the lore of the forest at his side.

  But since her mother’s death three years earlier, he’d seemed to shrink a little every day. And now, coughing out specks of blood, he was scarcely her own size.

  He struggled to sit up in the bed and she helped him. “But I must tell you now how you came to us,” he said. “I’ll not die until you know it all.” He coughed again, groaned, and the wound seeped like a bog.

  Atalanta shook her head “Do not speak, Papa, it wearies you.”

  “You must know.”

  “I know you found me in the woods, Papa, when I was four years old.”

  “Found you by a great she-bear who was long dead,” he said between coughs.

  She brushed his thin fair hair back from his forehead. The skin was burning hot, his blue eyes cloudy.

  “I know, Papa.”

  “And you covered with bites, some…” He bent over with the coughing and she held him till he was done.

  “Some long healed and some quite new,” she whispered. It was a story they had often told together. “I know, Papa.”

  “You were like a wild thing yourself,” her father resumed. “Abandoned on Mount Parthenon by uncaring parents and by some miracle of the gods suckled by that she-bear for who knows how long. How slowly I had to approach you, how softly I had to speak to keep you from fleeing.”

  “It was only by luring me on with food that you were able to make me follow you,” Atalanta continued for him as he stopped to suck in a few last breaths.

  “And I brought you home to Mama who wanted a child and had none.” His voice faltered twice, on “Mama” and on “none.” He caught himself, then said, “A miracle of the gods she called it. How else would a wild beast give life to a helpless baby? I told her that most likely one of the she-bear’s cubs had been stillborn so that she accepted a human child in its place.” It was the most he had spoken since getting his wound. The speaking had exhausted him and he fell forward.

  Atalanta caught him and rocked him as if he were a child. She knew the story, even though her own memory of the events was dim. When her father had found her, she couldn’t even speak, only growl and snap like an animal. She had run about on all fours. Had eaten raw meat. Perhaps—she thought—perhaps it was because she had no words to form her memory of those early days that all she could recall was the sharp smell of the old she-bear, the warmth of the fur when she pressed her face into it, the rough-and-tumble company of the cubs who suckled at her side.

  She patted her father’s hand. “It doesn’t matter now, Papa.”

  Her father sat up, eyes now shining brightly with the fever. “But it does matter. There is one thing you don’t know, my daughter. And you are my daughter, for all that you were born elsewhere.”

  She would humor him and then maybe he would sleep again.

  “What don’t I know, Papa.”

  He reached a trembling hand beneath the pallet and pulled out a leather pouch. “Open it. I can’t…”

  She took the pouch, pulled it open, drew out a signet ring.

  “This ring was strung on a leather thong around your neck.”

  She held the ring up to the flickering light of the hearth fire. On the stone was an engraving of a great boar.

  Her father whispered weakly, “I kept that from you all these years. I was afraid, you see, that you would seek out your real father and leave me.”

  “You are my real father, Papa,” Atlanta whispered, setting the ring aside. But she spoke to a dead man.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BURYING THE PAST

  WHEN ATALANTA WOKE IN the morning, she was by her father’s side. For a moment she wondered why he seemed so cold, and then she remembered and wept again.

  This time she wept not for him—he looked so peaceful now and free of pain—but for herself. She shook with the spasms and cried out loud. There was no one left to tell her to be brave.

  At last, exhausted by all the weeping, she rubbed the tears from her eyes. Then hefting the spear and taking the knife as well, she went outside.

  The tracks of the night before were undisturbed and there seemed no new ones, which was a relief. She crouched down to examine them carefully this time.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered, for the tracks were very puzzling. They looked something like a mountain cat’s, only twice the size. The toes were more widely spread, which meant they supported a heavier body. Also the weight seemed concentrated on the front paws, which was not how a cat walked.

  She followed the tracks around the house to the window where she had knifed the beast. There was a dark stain on the sill and down the side of the wall. The bloodstains led directly to the clearing where the creature had taken the knife from its paw. And here was the greatest mystery of all, which she had only guessed at the night before. The paw prints simply disappeared.

  This time she looked around carefully. The closest tree was surely too far away for the animal to have jumped to. So were the rocks. Yet that was surely what had happened—rock or tree. The soft earth of the clearing showed nothing more.

  Atalanta tried to puzzle it out the way her father had taught her. If the beast leaped, with a wounded paw, did he do it to hide his trail? If so, she knew, he was very intelligent.

  Big.

  Fierce.

  Intelligent.

  She shook her head. It was the worst of all combinations.

  By the time the sun was high, and she had not heard or seen anything more of the beast, Atalanta decided to go to the stream for a basin of water, but she carried her spear, knife in her belt, just in case.

  It seemed unnaturally quiet by the water, as if the whole clearing knew of her father’s death and every bird, every little animal, was still in his honor.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to the woods about her. Then she brought back a basin full of water to wash her father’s body in preparation for burying him.

  Her grief had passed for the present. She would not let it return until she had done her duty.

  Resting the flint shovel and the spear on her shoulder, she walked out behind the humble dwelling to where a mound of rocks marked where her mother was buried. Choosing a spot to the left of the simple marker, she anchored the spear, haft end down in the grass, where it would be close at hand should she need it. Then she stabbed the blade of the shovel into the ground and ripped up a tussock of grass and earth.

  Soon a heap of earth was piled up at her side and sweat flowed down her face as freely as tears.

  Her arms ached with the strain, but she had to keep digging. Having helped bury her mother, she knew that it was important to dig the grave quickly and pile rocks atop. Here in the heart of the forest, death was a lure to creatures both great and small who wished to eat without the bother of having to kil
l.

  At last she stood, red-faced and panting, by the side of the open pit. Now came a harder task. She walked back into the cottage, all the while fighting down the small voice of hope.

  Perhaps he’s just sleeping, said that deceptive voice. When you go inside he’ll be there as usual, his strong arms open to greet you. But he lay just as she had left him after she’d washed away the dark blood.

  Shrunken as he was, he was still too heavy for her to carry. Instead she hooked her hands under his arms and dragged him wrapped in his blanket across the earthen floor and out onto the grass where her spear stood sentinel. There, with one last effort, she rolled her father into the open grave.

  Looking down at his still form tangled in the blanket, she wanted to speak to him, wanted to tell him she was trying to be brave. Instead she bit her lip.

  No, she thought, words will lead to tears and there is no time for more-tears.

  She drew herself up wearily and began shoveling the loose earth over her father’s body. Slowly it disappeared from view.

  Where is he now? Atalanta wondered. A sad shade drifting like smoke through the lightless passageways of the Underworld? Or has he found a route to the Elysian Fields where the blessed souls pass their days in eternal sunshine? She hoped he was there, in Elysia, just on the edge of a little woods because she could not imagine him living forever without a forest to walk in.

  She suddenly remembered Papa offering a prayer to the gods to guide and protect Mama on her journey. Atalanta rubbed her sweaty brow. What were their names again? Papa and Mama hadn’t invoked the gods very often, here in their woods.

  Then she remembered. There was Demeter, goddess of the earth. And Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Papa always called Atalanta his little Artemis. And Pan, the goat-footed god of beasts and herders. That exhausted her memory.

  “Demeter…Artemis…Pan.” How strange the words sounded coming from her lips. “Take care of my papa. Let there be trees and quiet streams where he is now.”

  She couldn’t think of anything else to say. How could the gods hear her anyway? If they lived at all, it was in some far-off place. She doubted any of them ever visited Arcadia.

  Her eyes rested on the freshly dug earth and, for a moment, she had a brief memory of her father striding ahead of her through the trees, full of strength and confidence.

  “He is in the Elysian Fields,” she told herself. “With Mama.”

  She would believe that always.

  As she began to gather the memorial stones, she had a sudden thought: They’ll have each other. And I…I am now utterly alone. It will be years before I am with them again. She couldn’t think of any way to cure that. Not tears, certainly. If she killed the beast, would that still the pain in her heart?

  But surely, she thought, the beast is long gone from here.

  Just then there was a loud sound behind her, in the bushes by the side of the cottage, as if something were ripping its way toward her.

  She sprang up in a fighting position, grabbing up the spear and holding it pointed at the greenery. The creature was between her and the cottage. She would have to fight it with the spear and knife. And the shovel, too, if necessary.

  Suddenly the bushes parted, and a great brown bear twice her size reared up before her.

  Atalanta took a startled step back, and the beast dashed the spear from her hands with a mighty sweep of its paw. The impact knocked her to the ground and winded her. Before she could make another move, the bear pinned her down, its round hairy face blocking out the sky, the wide maw parting to expose long wicked teeth. Its breath was awful, like an opened grave, and the vast jaws descended upon her.

  Atalanta shut her eyes against the horror. Papa, she thought, I will be with you sooner than I expected.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  URSO

  THE VERY LAST THING she ever expected to happen happened. Her skull was not crushed by a killing blow; her throat was not ripped open by those savage teeth.

  Instead she felt the bear’s tongue rasp wetly across her cheek.

  Slowly she opened her eyes. The bear’s head still loomed over her, its mouth wide open. But there was no flash of hunger or rage in his bright eyes. Instead they looked…friendly. His muzzle came down and his black nose nuzzled against her ear. Then he released her and rolled over on the grass, waving his paws playfully.

  Atalanta sat up and at once the bear rolled back to her, pressing his snout against her ribs.

  Hesitantly, she reached out and rubbed her fingers in the warm fur of his neck. Something about this set up a tingling at the back of her mind. It was all so familiar: the strong, musky animal smell; the roughness of the fur beneath her hand; the sound of the bear’s grunting as it turned from one side to the other.

  She reached way back into her memory, and suddenly as if in a dream, she saw herself—small and dirty, growling and snapping like an animal—rolling across the grass with a bear cub. They bared teeth and cuffed one another, but none of it was meant to hurt. It was all in play.

  Then she remembered something else—that bear cub had a large ragged piece missing from his left ear, from an encounter with an angry wildcat.

  She pulled the great head down toward her and examined his left ear. There was a ragged piece missing.

  This had to be her old playmate grown large. He must have recognized her smell, just as she knew him from the tear in his ear.

  A sudden awful thought occurred to her. What if he were the very beast that had killed her father?

  The bear nuzzled her once more and she laughed at her own fears. The death creature had orange hair. The tuft was still in the cabin, near her father’s pallet.

  Scratching the bear behind his mutilated ear, she whispered, “So, old boy, we have certainly changed from our cub days, you and I.”

  The bear tossed his head and barked in response.

  Atalanta pushed him onto his back and rubbed his big soft belly, thinking that it was good to be alive after all. It was good not to be abandoned. She had lost mother and father. But she had gained a…brother.

  “I wonder what brought you here now?” Atalanta asked, still stroking the bear’s fur. She was careful to keep her voice low and soothing. “Because if you had been here for a while, my father would surely have hunted you down.” A bear would have meant meat for the winter, a fur mantle for them both, and teeth and bone for jewelry to trade at the market.

  The bear rolled over and raked a row of furrows in the earth with one big paw.

  Atalanta smiled at him. “I expect you are just lonely. No mother. No father. No sisters or brothers. No mate. So you let your nose find your old littermate.”

  The bear sat up. He looked a little foolish, his tongue lolling out.

  “There’s something out there that killed my papa,” she said, standing. “Something big. Something awful. With orange fur and claws that can deliver a death wound. I’m sure it’s still around here and I have to find it. For my papa’s sake. Will you come, too?”

  Almost as if he understood her, the bear gave a grunt and stood up, padding after her to the cottage door. He sniffed loudly but would not cross the threshold.

  Going inside without him, Atalanta turned. “I’ll just get my things,” she said, leaving the door open so he could see what she was doing.

  Pausing in the middle of the room, Atalanta took a deep breath. Memories filled every corner: the smell of her mother’s freshly baked bread, the sharp scent of a clutch of fish hung up to smoke in the hearth. Here was the doll her mother had fashioned for her with a walnut for a face and dried rushes for hair. Here was the little skull of the first rabbit she had shot with her bow. Her father had set it proudly over the hearth as a trophy and there it had remained. Here was her mother’s loom, the peplos half woven and left there to gather dust.

  Best to be away from here and forget, she decided suddenly. From now on home is wherever I choose to be.

  She took a pouch and filled it with dried fruit, olives, and app
les. Then she filled a water skin from the big earthenware jar in the corner. Folding an extra wool cloak over her arm, she slung her bow and arrows over her back. Finally she stuck a gutting knife in her belt and picked up her javelin, the knotty ash handle well worn from her days of practice with her father.

  As an afterthought, she stuffed the tuft of orange hair down the front of her garment. It was scratchy and stank.

  She was just about to leave the cottage when her eye caught something glinting on the floor beside the bloodstained pallet.

  The signet ring!

  Crouching down, she picked it up between two fingers, examining it as if it were the spoor of an animal.

  Can this guide me back to my other father? she wondered. To the one who lost me?

  She hung the ring around her neck on a leather cord and, for a moment, pressed it against her chest. But only for a moment. She had other business to tend to. It was not her past she was hunting, but the creature who had slain her father.

  The bear suddenly poked his muzzle through the open doorway, sniffing warily.

  “There’s nothing for you here, boy,” Atalanta told him. “Nothing for me anymore either.” She pushed past him, then walked outside, closing the door behind.

  With the bear ambling by her side, Atalanta set off for the woods.

  “The orange beast,” she told the bear, “vanished from the clearing. Perhaps it has gone back to where we first came upon it—the spring.” It was a guess only. She had nothing else. “Maybe it’s got a lair nearby.”

  The bear growled as if offering help.

  Well, he might be useful, Atalanta thought. He has a good nose. She had the tuft of hair to let him smell.

  Besides, without the bear at her side, would she have the courage to face whatever was out there? Most likely she’d be curled up in the cottage, nursing her misery like a wound.

  “Bear…” she began, then stopped. “If we’re going to be partners, I need to call you something.”

  The bear waited patiently for her to continue.

  Atalanta thought for a while. She’d never needed much in the way of names before. “Papa” and “Mama” were all she’d ever used.