Metamorphica

by Zachary Mason

  “These people,” she said, in a voice radiant with detachment and inflected with contempt and just a little mirth that, after a moment, I recognized as a fair imitation of my own. “No manners. Very disagreeable.” I laughed and asked if she’d been hurt, by which I meant raped, but she only looked at me wide-eyed, her need almost palpable, so I stood, murmured what was no doubt good advice, and left.

  There were other stations in the night but when the sky was lightening I finally went home. I lived on a posh, tree-lined avenue where drunks and vagrants were relatively rare so I was surprised to see someone curled up on my doorstep, apparently asleep, sucking her thumb—it was the girl. I prodded her with my toe and said, “You. Wake up.” She opened her eyes and I said, “I’m no one’s gallant, and I’m not running an orphanage, or a brothel, so go home, or, as the case may be, away.” She blinked back tears, and then, in the haughty, weary drawl of an empress addressing a pauper she advised me to go practice raping my horses, or, better yet, my dogs.

  I said, “I have neither horses nor dogs, my dear, so it will have to be you,” and squinted at her with such carnal menace as I could muster. She looked up at me, wide-eyed, considering, and I was about to say something else when she launched herself at me, locking her arms around my waist, her fragile warmth pressing into me, and though I recoiled—I don’t like to be touched, and even my most munificent admirers buy themselves only a prolonged agony—she wouldn’t drop the embrace, despite my exasperated sighs and ostentatious throat-clearing, and finally I returned it.

  My house was large but I only used two rooms so she had her pick of empty ones. I had almost no furniture so I made her a bed from a pile of my furs and told her she’d sleep like a Scythian princess. I sent the maid out for food, which Echo ate with distressing avidity, and for wine, which I watered when she wasn’t looking, in which she matched me cup for cup. I asked her about herself, where she was from, who her parents were and what had happened with Thyestes, but she only smiled at me and wouldn’t say a word.

  It was good to have a pet. She’d be sprawled on pillows in the foyer when I came home from an assignation. I’d show her the haul from that night’s admirer and we’d rate it for taste and extravagance. I let her decide how nice I’d be the next time I saw them. And we talked, or rather I talked, though I wasn’t naturally loquacious, but she encouraged me, and somehow I told her everything I knew.

  I had my tailor cut my old clothes to fit her. I put jewels on her ear-lobes and on her wrists and on her clavicles. She wasn’t beautiful, but her face was broad and blank, all strong planes and shadows; she was an empty canvas for my brush, and I painted her face as I painted my own. We looked like twins, when I was done, or lovers, or both. We were lovely.

  When we went out all eyes were on us. Everyone wondered if I’d finally taken a lover, which was good for business as it gave the marks hope. She was a great social asset, chattering tirelessly when I was stupefied with boredom, and if her opinions were second-hand she’d overheard a great many and delivered them all with brio and conviction. We finished each other’s sentences, and ate from the same plate, and she draped herself around me. We made a point of snubbing Thyestes. I welcomed each night, and all the nights blurred together, and she was always close by. I thought those nights would never end, and somehow at the same time that we’d leave one day and live together, far away, in a quiet house by a river, and never come back to the city.

  * * *

  Some governor’s son paid court to her, which I tolerated, though I insisted that she stay intact, for I wanted neither a screaming infant nor a spotty aristocrat in the household. When he became importunate I told her to drop him but she said she didn’t know how. “There’s nothing to it,” I said. “Just look into his eyes and say … nothing. What’s wrong? he’ll ask. Are you angry? He’ll apologize for imaginary slights, for stinginess, for other lovers. Do you hate me? he’ll ask. Have I taught you to despise me? Why won’t you talk to me? His sad mouth will tremble, and if he’s not really a gentleman there may be harsh words and tears, and then it’s over.”

  * * *

  Nemesis was a frightful goddess whose name was rarely spoken and the good burghers of Sybaris would have been shocked to learn that there was a party in her temple, which was, I supposed, the point of being there. The place made me uncomfortable, all footsteps and shadows and never enough light. It was too dim to see faces but I recognized Rukshana, a minor royal, from her slouch. Rukshana liked a bit of rough, preferring beards and scars to smooth chins and clean lines; she had, to my certain knowledge, fucked her way through the entire praetorian. We were chummy. It was a long way from her to a throne (though never far to a bar-stool) but she still had the High Palace manner and their breathy, lisping drawl.

  “Slumming, dear?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” said Rukshana, “these are quite my people. Salt of the earth, and so on. Who’s your little friend?” Echo, lately of an alley, lifted up her hand to be kissed.

  I’d never been in that temple before and as they talked my eyes drifted up to a statue of Nemesis, larger than life, and her face wasn’t what I expected, full of wild pride and terror and desperation, and when I looked back Echo and Rukshana were gone. I searched for them throughout the temple but found only strangers.

  I’d thought she’d be waiting at home but when I got there the house was empty. I waited up for her, supposing she’d left the party to find her lover, but dawn came and she still wasn’t there and finally I fell asleep on her pillows.

  I woke in the evening but she still hadn’t come back so I went out looking, though I found nothing that night or the next night or the next, and I hardly slept, and I kept thinking I saw her and being disappointed, and finally at some nobleman’s fête I found Artabazos drunk on a divan and he said he hadn’t seen Echo but he had seen Rukshana, who had a new friend, a protégée, who was little more than a girl. “And it wasn’t Echo?” I said.

  “No, it wasn’t your guttersnipe. I haven’t found out her name, yet, but she was clearly of one of the great houses of Persia, not at all your kind.”

  I flirted my way into the palace and waited motionless in the shadows of the orangery near Rukshana’s rooms, watching the courtiers come and go, and when Echo finally walked by in her aristocrat’s disguise I hardly recognized her.

  “Echo!” I called, sick with relief, but she didn’t slow, and I ran after her and put my hand on her shoulder. “You might have told me you were going to be away. I know how it is, obviously, so go have your run, but then come home.” I smiled at her but she stared at me without expression. “Oh, I see,” I said, “your new connection with a third-rate demi-royal has put you above speaking. Don’t let me detain you—by all means return to your proper palace, or was it an alley?” Her face was motionless, her eyes cold. “Have I offended you? Neglected you? Is there anything I haven’t done for you? Look. Have your prince, or your princess, or all the royals in a row for all I care, but then come back, because it’s us against everyone, and we’ll take what they have and give them nothing in return and love only each other, so come home. Echo?” I said, but she was already walking away, and I realized I’d been wrong, that she’d always been beautiful.

  I looked for her a long time. They barred me from the palace but it didn’t matter because from what I heard she didn’t last there long. I went to parties high and low, sifted every dive, flop-house and brothel, every place where the discarded might wash up, but she was never there, and I rarely slept, and drank too much, and ate too much poppy. My new round must have been hard on me because old acquaintances looked startled when they saw me and I finally took the seer’s advice and stayed away from mirrors. I started waking up in places I didn’t know, and the recent past was riddled with dark stretches, and one day it was winter and I was looking for her by the freezing river outside the city walls and it had been a long time since I’d eaten, and though it was a bright, frigid day when I closed my eyes it was twilight when I opened them,
and there was another river before me, this one swift and black and smooth as glass. I peered into the flow and my heart lifted when I thought I saw her looking up at me.

  24

  SPHINX

  The sphinx was the daughter of Nemesis. Monster and oracle, she was her supplicants’ ruin. She lived in the desert near Thebes.

  Oedipus was the great-great-grandson of Cadmus, Thebes’ founder.

  In the last light the desert sand and the sphinx were all but indistinguishable as she said, “All that is, is written here.” At her feet lay worn planes of fractured granite, incised with minute writing that Oedipus stooped to trace with the fingers of one hand while the other held his spear leveled at her heart. Finally, he lowered his eyes and read:

  Oedipus crept over the desert through the evening dimness, fragments of ancient bone crumbling under his feet, but he didn’t see the sphinx until she was right before him. A sense of rising grace and mass like waves cresting and then she was settling on her haunches, intent on him, as he brought his spear to bear. “They say the sphinx is first among oracles,” he said, “and that where others see shadows she sees all. They say she’s always hungry, but always speaks the truth.”

  She said, “The world is a book I know by heart, and its verses the substance of my days and my dreaming.”

  “At Delphi they told me I’m doomed to turn patricide and worse, so I’m here to learn how to shape the future.”

  In the last light the desert sand and the sphinx were all but indistinguishable as she said, “All that is, is written here.” At her feet lay worn planes of fractured granite, incised with minute writing that Oedipus stooped to trace with the fingers of one hand while the other held his spear leveled at her heart. Finally, he lowered his eyes and read.

  He heard the sand creak as her weight shifted at which he looked up and threw his spear through her heart.

  He heard the sand creak as her weight shifted at which he slipped off to one side, scanning the gloom, spear raised to kill her, but the lunge he expected didn’t come. He stood there peering into the shadows and then felt her hot breath on his neck.

  He propped his spear on the sand, sighed, and waited to die. “I never threw my spear,” he said. “Therefore, your book is false. There’s that, at least.”

  “You never cast your spear,” she agreed as she twined her arms around his chest and pulled him into an iron embrace. “But the book is true. Therefore, we are not in the book.”

  “But if the book is the world, where then are we?”

  “Someplace else. In an undreamed dream, a tale unwritten.”

  “To what possible end?” he asked, voice finally cracking.

  She rubbed her smooth cheek against his, redolent of musk and blood. “Perhaps I knew you’d come to kill me, and have always been waiting. Perhaps I’ve loved you a long time, and never wanted you to know.”

  “So what now?”

  “The rest,” she said, “is like a blank page.”

  25

  ARGONAUTICA

  Jason was prince of Iolcos and the first cousin of Alcestis. He went to sea with his Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece of Colchis.

  The day was windless and sweltering but the Argo’s oars rose and dipped and rose again. Jason had called a contest to see who was strongest, and the crew’s arms and backs burned, but still they strained, telling themselves they were heroes of high lineage and too proud to fail, but as the hours passed they faltered one by one. They were heading toward a steep island when Peleus dropped his oar and Herakles pulled on alone, as relentless as the waves, until one of his oars snapped and he was left sweating and staring at its stump as the Argo coasted on.

  They’d known his reputation when the Argo sailed, how his rage melted men like snow in hot sun. They’d offered him the captaincy, but he’d declined in Jason’s favor; this would have been exquisite humility in another man but Herakles had a habit of looking out to sea while Jason was talking, waiting for him to finish, or nearly, so he could do what needed to be done.

  They threw themselves down on the sand. The island was abandoned; no path led up among the blue pines on the mountain. The day was ending, and their thoughts turned to a fire, and how such fires were like jewels when seen at night from the sea, when Jason said they’d build an altar to Nemesis, who was said to dwell in those parts. The men rose groaning to gather stones but Herakles, who’d been at a distance, saw what they were doing and heaved up a sea-boulder half as large as a house, the salt water pouring through his beard and hair as he carried it to the beach, set it down and said, “There’s your altar,” and went off up the mountain to cut a new oar.

  Peleus threw his stone into the surf and said, “We’re nothing next to him. Our enemies might as well make war on the sun. We’re little men to fill out the ship’s company.”

  As the evening settled the wind rose, sending shivers through the pines and raising the surf, and the Argo groaned on the beach, each receding wave pulling it back toward the water, and in silence the men did the rest. No orders were given as they sheeted the sail, and no one looked back as the wind bore them away, so no one saw the garnet spark of the fire high on the mountain’s slope. Herakles sat beside it, chin on hand, watching them go.

  26

  NEMEAN

  Herakles was the son of Zeus, bound to serve his half-brother Eurystheus, the king of Thebes. One of his labors was the destruction of the Nemean lion, an ancient monster whose hide was impervious to weapons. Herakles later killed his children in a fit of madness.

  Herakles was hiding in the trees when the first light touched the water. A gazelle emerged from tall grass and blue shadow, sniffed the air and bent to drink. Explosive motion, a flash of gold, grasses waving wildly and then a flock of birds gabbling into the air as he heard the crack of thick bone breaking.

  The lion came up the trail with the gazelle dangling from its mouth—it was huge, like something in a dream. If it was ancient, it showed no sign of it, its golden flanks scarless.

  Herakles stepped out of the trees and fired an arrow at its heart. He was already nocking his second arrow when the first ricocheted off the lion’s breast, and then it was like it was falling at him, and there was just time to pick up his club.

  As the lion leapt he swung at its skull but when the blow landed his hands seemed to shatter and the club went spinning off into the air. The lion’s momentum almost knocked him down, which would have been the end, but he kept his feet as it pushed him back through the dust. Drowning in its strength, its claws impaling his shoulders, he made an absolute effort but it was like trying to throw a mountain. He’d never been over-matched before, and it must have felt his dismay because it pressed him harder and over-committed its weight. “There’s my life back,” he thought gratefully, for no seasoned wrestler would have made that mistake; he yielded a step, opening space into which the lion stumbled, then stepped in, wrapped an arm around its neck and squeezed.

  Its claws scrabbled at him, trying to find purchase, opening furrows in his back, but he fixed his eyes on the sky and tightened his choke-hold, ignoring what was happening to the rest of his body. (There’s no pain, he told himself, and it’s rain running down my back.) As the lion’s wind ebbed its struggles weakened, and their clinch became an embrace, and finally he laid its dead weight down.

  He slumped to the ground, resting against the body, his mind wandering as his blood ran in rivulets around his legs. He was shivering, though the day was hot; his camp, a mile away through the woods, seemed unattainable. The hide, he thought, but his dagger snapped on the golden skin without leaving a mark. His vision greyed, cleared, greyed again as he hefted the lion’s fore-paw, extruded a hooked claw and opened an incision in its belly. The flies came as he degloved its rear legs. The flayed hide was thick and heavy, still warm with life’s heat; he wrapped himself up in it, ignoring the bloody integument, and fell asleep.

  He woke to see the lion’s raw musculature gleaming purple in the twilight, crows an
d jackdaws chattering in the trees. Freezing where the air touched him, he pulled the hide closer.

  When next he woke the carcass was black and desiccated. He worried that wolves would come, but of course the hide was impenetrable. The lion’s jaws framed a square of waving boughs where he thought someone was watching him, and he wondered if it was Hermes, come to tell him his time was over and his service done. He twisted in the hide to shut out the dusk.

  In the night he heard rasping breath like rolling surf. I was never supposed to die, said the lion. Herakles shook his head to clear it and went back to sleep.

  In the morning it spoke to him again. Nothing could touch me—no blade, no fang, not even time, it said. I would have lived forever. I would have seen the world through. By what right did you extinguish my life? He tried in vain to find the energy to argue as it said, You, whose only virtue is strength, whose soul is nothing but hunger and a fathomless, inarticulate rage. You, who were born to be the slave of the intelligent.

  He wept, for he knew it was true—it was why the Argonauts had abandoned him—and said, “Why are you still here? You’re dead, and there’s an end. Go to Hell and let me be.”

  It said, I was the last relict of old night, and now I’m gone. The world is poorer for your having been in it.

  The next morning he was strong enough to stand, though his back was reticulated with ridged scars, red and puffy with infection. The carcass had turned to blackened leather, yellow vertebrae erupting through the shrinking flesh. The lion’s skin clung to him like fitted armor, and its jaws were a sort of helmet. When he washed in the lake, the lion looked up at him from the water.

  * * *

  His eyes kept closing on the road back to Thebes but when he stumbled the lion was there to guide him. It told him stories of past ages when it stalked animals the size of siege-engines over vast plains and life had been joy and blood and strife unending. Snapping out of his doze, Herakles found himself standing before Eurystheus, who was haranguing him, red-faced, spittle flying, and he didn’t know what to say, but then the lion was whispering in his ear. It was articulate—clever, even—far more than he’d ever been, and as he wasn’t needed he drifted away.