1
Shepherds and Wolves
Through the ages, children have proven almost as useful as dogs for herding sheep. So it became the custom of shepherds to marry young and keep their wives pregnant.
Our story begins with a certain shepherd of Corinth who sired eleven sons in thirteen years and whose wife was again big with child. Both parents were awaiting the birth with great hope for they had been informed by dreams that this one would be a girl—something they had wanted for a long time. They decided to name her Scylla.
But the shepherd was never to see his daughter. Awakened by the howling of wolves upon a moonstruck night, he was patrolling a pasture with his dogs when a bush grew too tall. It became a bear rearing up on its hind legs and swept the shepherd into its fatal hug.
Bears don’t eat people unless they’re famished and this one was only moderately hungry. But the wolves, when they came, ate one leg before turning their attention to the sheep. And what the wolves left, the vultures finished, so that only a few gnawed bones and some bloody rags were left for the widow to burn on the funeral pyre.
She had no sooner scattered her husband’s ashes than she gave birth to a daughter, and allowed herself two days to get her strength back before going out with the sheep. For the wolves were emboldened now, and were raiding the herds nightly … and a widow with twelve children to feed can’t take time off.
In the days when humankind was new and raw and wild with delight at finally being created, the gods were sometimes aghast at what they had made. For this youngest race was noisier and more demanding by far than all the other breeds combined. So the gods grew short-tempered. The more impatient ones were quick to punish. They flailed about blindly at times, and with more force than they intended. When such rage destroyed someone innocent this was called accident … and still is. Accidents also had a stubborn way of following certain families once they struck.
And our shepherd family which had just lost husband and father was to suffer another loss.
The most ancient earth-goddess, Gaia, feeling herself neglected, decided to throw a mild tantrum. She shrugged her shoulders and shook a few hills in Corinth. Boulders rolled, tore up trees, hit other rocks that began to roll—and three villages were buried under landslides.
Our shepherd family dwelt beyond the farthest village, and the widow had been grazing her sheep on a grassy slope. Hearing a strange rumbling, she thrust her baby into a shallow pit—just in time. The rumbling became thunderous and a rockslide swept her away … her and her sheep and her dogs.
By some fluke, however, the pit mouth was unblocked, and a she-wolf, prowling in search of her cubs, which had also disappeared in the rockslide, heard a thin wailing that seemed to come out of the ground under her paws. Digging swiftly, she uncovered a human baby. The wolf was very hungry, but her udders were painfully swollen with milk, and another hunger stirred in her bereft heart. With a hoarse whine, she folded her legs, and the starving frightened baby suddenly found herself wrapped in warm fur and guzzling a wilder milk.
The she-wolf tenderly closed her jaws about the naked babe and brought her to a den dug into the slope of another hill. There the infant dwelt, suckled by the wolf, who regarded this creature as a curious unfurred cub, slow to learn, but sweet natured. And the mother wolf loved the child with a fierce protective love, and kept loving her even after the he-wolf came back to the cave.
In due time the she-wolf littered again and the baby girl found herself with three wolf-cub brothers—who, in a few weeks, could do more than she could. Two years after that, a tiny tangle-haired fleet-footed girl was flitting through the wooded slopes like a shadow—and was safer in that wild place than any child in Corinth, for she was coursing the hills with five full-grown wolves.
2
The Stone Crone
The kingdom of Corinth was a land riddled by sorcery. Its headland was dominated by a tall rock, looking out to sea. It had been sculpted by the wind into the shape of a cloaked hag, and the wind, whistling through its eyeholes, made it moan and howl. The figure became known as the Stone Crone, and was believed to be a sibyl of most ancient days whose prophecies had been so dire that she petrified herself.
People shunned the place where she stood, for they thought that whoever heard the Stone Crone speak with the wind’s voice would die of fright. It was also believed that upon certain nights she awoke from her stone sleep and chased after young men, whom she crushed in her embrace.
Of all the folk in Corinth, Scylla alone did not fear the howling rock. She delighted in bringing her pack to the headland on a stormy night. The wolves would sit on their haunches, circling the cowled boulder, looking the way Scylla liked them best—the wind ruffling their feathery fur, their muzzles grinning, their eyes slits of green fire. Her wolf brothers were beautiful to her, and she nestled among them, listening to the wind singing through the rock, making the Stone Crone howl in a way that wolves understand.
A half gale blew upon this night, driving the clouds swiftly across the sky, so that the moon glittered briefly—like a blade. And Scylla, burning with excitement, feeling herself go drunk on sea-wind and moon-flash and weird song, howled back at the rock:
Mother, demon mother,
speak to me …
Tell me, please,
what is to be …
She heard the Stone Crone answer:
Wolf-girl, wolf-girl,
you shall stalk
the Son of the Hawk,
And abide the law
of tooth and claw …
First a wedding,
then the beheading …
Scylla sprang up. Although not quite full-grown, she was very tall, her body suave with power. Her doeskin tunic, taken from her first kill, fell to the midpoint of her long thighs. She had never worn shoes, and her feet were hard as hooves.
“Thank you, Crone!” she cried. “I don’t know what you mean, but it sounds wonderful.”
She raced off, followed by the wolves. For the wind had shifted, had become a land-wind, bearing the smell of deer, and Scylla and her brothers were suddenly famished for meat.
3
An Egyptian Prince
Who, indeed, was this “Son of the Hawk” whose name had been uttered by the Stone Crone?
He was Nisus, an Egyptian prince, younger brother of the pharaoh, loathed by the entire court, by the priesthood, and by the military commanders—in other words, by the most potent and dangerous people in the land. Hatred of this nature is usually based on some kind of fear, and the fear of Nisus was planted before he was born. It all began when the high priest and his corps of wizards went into the desert to visit a great demon statue called the Sphinx—which was a woman’s head on a lioness’s crouched body, measuring a quarter of a mile from tip of nose to tip of tail.
According to legend, the Sphinx had deciphered the vital riddle of the future, and upon occasion would turn to flesh and speak to those who came to her, instructing the Egyptians on how to survive in a world growing more dangerous each day. She had not spoken now for many years, but the priests and wizards visited her at sowing time and harvest and Nile-flood, and upon the birth of every royal child. They were visiting her now as the queen went into labor.
She had not spoken in the lifetime of anyone there, and no one really expected to hear anything on this occasion. So the assemblage of bejeweled old men were amazed when the stone cracked and fell away from the blazing body of the lioness. She arose, stretched, rippled her muscles. The empty eye sockets of the woman’s head upon the lioness’s body filled with cold amber light. She spoke:
“Hearken, oh priests and wizards, listen well. Children of the royal line have mortal parents, who are the pharaoh and his queen, but their ancestry stretches back to the first beast-gods of Egypt—to Ra, the Great Hawk, and to the Horned Moon whose milk is rain, known to you as Hathor, the Sacred Cow …”
The old men lay prostrate before the Sphinx. Their faces were pressed to the ground because t
he sight of her, come alive, was too terrible. And they shuddered at the sound of her voice, but sought to answer according to rote:
“Have mercy, Ra, Ra, Hawk of the Sky …”
“Bless us, Hathor, Sacred Cow …”
“Cease your monkey-chatter!” roared the Sphinx. “Be silent and heed my words!”
The crouched old men shuddered and were silent.
“A prince is about to come among you now,” said the Sphinx. “He will be born tonight when the shadow of a hawk crosses the horned moon. He is a younger brother and will not rule. But he inherits more than the throne. He shall be gifted with special vision. He shall have the demigod’s crystal eye that slides along the shifting cusps of Time’s great spiral and remembers the future. He will tell you truths you are too foolish to heed, but heed them you must, or perish.”
“Not perish …” quavered the old men. “Not that, please. Ra, Ra, have mercy now. Spare us, Hathor, Sacred Cow.”
“Silence!” roared the Sphinx. A paw lashed out and struck a wizard, pinning him to the ground exactly as a cat pins a mouse. She drew him toward her and lifted him to her mouth. She ate him raw, wriggling, but his head went in first so his screams were muffled by the sounds of crunching.
Priests and wizards swooned in terror. When they regained consciousness, the Sphinx was stone again. She lay still, half-covered by drifting sand, as they had always seen her. And they would have thought that it had all been a dreadful dream except that one of them was missing, and the stone mouth was bloody.
Nevertheless, on their way back to the treasure-city of Rameses where their queen lay in labor, they did assure one another that it had been a dream—that they had been felled by sunstroke, as was not uncommon in the desert, and that as they lay in a swoon, their companion had wandered away, dazed, and was wandering still.
One of the wizards questioned the high priest: “Could we have all dreamed the same dream at the same time?”
“Obviously,” said the high priest. “We must have. For any other notion is intolerable.”
So they all publicly agreed, and secretly knew better. And the words of the Sphinx rankled in them, filling them with fresh fear every time they remembered. And when little Nisus, their new prince, began to speak fluent Egyptian before he was a week old, their terror turned to hatred.
Feeling as they did, they would surely have killed the babe, except that they really believed he was descended from the Hawk and the Cow, from Isis and Osiris, and Set, the Destroyer … and that whoever dared harm such an infant would, himself, be snatched up by a beast-god and torn to pieces.
Nisus grew into a beautiful boy, lithe, gentle mannered, with a clear fearless gaze. His hair was as black as a night-hawk’s plumage—except for a single lock that turned golden when he was about to utter a prophecy. He would be chatting of this or that, or be listening quietly, perhaps, when all at once a strand of hair would begin to glow like an ember in the middle of his head. And he would say something that horrified his elders. He would speak a simple devastating truth with no trace of impudence or of jeering—but wearing an expression almost of wonder, as if listening to what another person was saying. And indeed, it was as if something else were speaking through him.
One scribe employed by the priesthood wrote down all the child said. “I’ll need a complete record of this heresy,” the high priest had said. “We may find it useful one day.”
One short sentence spoken by the prince was written upon a separate scroll by the scribe, and marked for special notice. It was an utterance that had aroused special hatred.
Standing on a balcony of the palace with his father, watching a victory procession, the boy felt a heat striping his head, and knew that the prophetic strand was turning to hot gold. He heard himself saying to his father:
Our triumphs are disasters …
Slaves shall be our masters.
The pharaoh was not pleased to hear this, but let the displeasure slide from his mind. He was a dying man and knew that he was dying, and had resolved to let absolutely nothing trouble him.
But the high priest heard, and the scribe, and the words of Nisus were written down on a special scroll, to be saved until the hour of vengeance.
The pharaoh died soon afterward. His eldest son was too young to take the throne, so the pharaoh’s brother, a silent brooding man, was named regent, or temporary king, to serve until the crown prince was old enough to rule.
This heir to the throne, whose name was Ahmet, took Nisus aside and said, “Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to you when I become pharaoh?”
“If you were to become pharaoh, dear Brother, I should expect dreadful things to happen to me. But since you shall never occupy the golden chair, my future is wide open.”
“What do you mean I shall never be pharaoh? Are you plotting against me, you little cur? Are you forming a cabal? Fomenting sedition? I’ll have your tongue torn out by the roots, your hands cut off, your eyes gouged out …”
“Poor Ahmet,” murmured Nisus. “I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone your brotherly intentions. You’re in no position to command the Royal Torturers to do anything. And my prophetic insight tells me you shall never be.”
Ahmet raised his ivory and ebony staff and tried to smash his brother’s skull. Nisus dodged easily. “You’d be better advised to save your own life instead of trying to take mine,” said Nisus. “What you should do, Prince, is bribe a shipmaster to smuggle you aboard and bear you overseas to another place.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” cried Ahmet. “You’d like me to run off and leave you a clear road to the throne.”
“You poor simpleton,” said Nisus. “Neither of us is destined to rule. Do you think that sullen brute, our uncle, having held the scepter, will ever let it go? Haven’t you seen the way he looks at you, hatred smoldering in his eyes? Why, he hardly bothers to conceal it. Why should he? He’s used the Royal Treasury to buy half the priesthood and as much of the nobility as he needs. He’s ready to make his move. Inside a week, he will instruct a shocked populace to observe a month of mourning because their crown prince has accidentally died. To demonstrate his grief he may even build a little pyramid just for you. After that, it’ll be my turn because I’ll be heir, but he won’t find me. Brother, Brother, listen to me. You’d better dig into your treasure chest and bribe that captain.”
“You’re raving,” snarled Ahmet. “I’m going to tell my uncle, the regent, what you’ve been saying.”
“I’d stay away from him if I were you,” said Nisus softly, but his brother was stomping away.
Nisus never saw him again. The next day, a terrible rumor flashed from mouth to ear: Ahmet was dead! Sure enough, the Grand Council was convened, and the regent solemnly announced that his beloved nephew, the pharaoh-to-be, had been bitten by a rabid monkey and had expired within the hour in a foaming fit. After decreeing a month of heavy mourning and ordering a magnificent state funeral, the regent made two other announcements: He would spend his personal fortune to build a tomb for his nephew, and he was taking immediate steps to provide for the safety of his younger nephew, Nisus, who, of course, was now heir to the throne.
But when the king’s men went to search for Nisus, they found that he had vanished. The regent ordered them to ransack every corner of the kingdom, and they searched all Egypt from the Forbidden Mountain to the Red Sea but found no trace of the strange young prince.
4
Cobra and Cat
On the third night out, while sleeping on the deck, Nisus was visited by a pair of winged creatures with elongated women’s bodies. Their hands and feet were talons; one had the face of a cobra, the other of a cat. They crouched on either side of him, their claws clicking on the wooden deck. He coughed and gasped in the stench of their breath, which smelled like a slaughterhouse floor. The cobra-woman spoke. Strangely, her voice was beautiful, like the wind seething among the reeds that grow on the Nile shore.
“You know us, Nisus. You ha
ve met us in your childhood, for you were prone to nightmare.”
“And still am, I guess.”
“No,” she said. “This is not a dream. We are real, painfully real, as you shall learn.”
“You are Buto,” he said, “Cobra of the Lower Nile. And you, oh silent one, are Bast.”
Cat-face yawned, flexing her talons.
“And you, oh failed Prince, belong to a branch of the family we detest,” said Buto. “And since you are a mortal, we can safely torment you. But we shall refrain on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“You are a favorite disciple of Thoth. He has taught you the secret of the mandrake.”
The mandrake was a plant with a forked root. When pulled from the ground, it uttered a thin cry like a newborn babe. The Delta folk believed that each plant harbored the soul of an infant born dead, and that mandrake, made into a broth and eaten by a pregnant woman, would make her bear triplets and quadruplets. So mandrake was eagerly sought by slave traders who would contract with new husbands for all the extra babes their brides could produce.
But the plant was very rare and exceedingly difficult to find without the aid of magic. And the god Thoth, he of the ibis-head, one of the few kindly gods in the Egyptian pantheon, had taught Nisus that magic. But possession of this knowledge was supposed to be a secret, and Nisus was appalled to learn that these fiends had found out.
Now, in the royal court of Egypt criminals were routinely tortured—a criminal being defined as anyone who had happened to offend the pharaoh or one of his favorites. This practice was not confined to Egypt, but it was recognized that this most ancient kingdom could boast of the world’s most talented torturers, who had perfected abominations still unknown in less developed lands.… So Nisus, who had grown up at court, was perfectly aware of the variety of agonies that could be inflicted upon the human body. Nevertheless, he did not fear what any mortal could do to him. He knew that if the pain became unbearable he could blank himself out, cast himself into a deep coma, and slip through the portals of death where he would be safe from any man’s malice.
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two Page 31
