Metamorphica

by Zachary Mason

  “Yes,” I say, though in fact I remember only a long sweep of white horn and black mass gliding through the shadows of the wood.

  “We went to Delphi, before we set out, and the oracle told you to go home—a happy old age was waiting, she said, but only if you went back to Athens and stayed. You laughed, calling her a timid old woman, and we rode away.

  “We climbed the mountain and on the heights there were rows of scars on the tree-trunks higher than a man could reach. We found the black bull in a clearing; he was big as a hill and had a man’s face, and he was terrified, when he saw us, and ran in a panic as we pursued him through the broken light. He wept when we brought him to bay, and then he charged us. It was like facing an avalanche and as he bore down on us I went numb and seemed to be watching myself from someplace far away but you went straight for him so I could only do the same. We had one chance, and cast our spears at the same moment; mine struck his thigh but yours pierced his heart and we leapt aside as he blundered past a few paces, then looked at us over his shoulder reproachfully and collapsed. You were shaking and your war-cry tore the air but ceased abruptly when you saw that I’d been cut.”

  “Be silent,” I say, but my voice is weak and he doesn’t listen.

  “The wound was a shallow seam of blood beading, but by evening my shoulder was red and swollen, and when you carried me through the gates of Athens my arm was inflamed to the wrist and I was delirious with fever and even when I was awake I thought I was dreaming. You held my hand for hours and put a wet cloth to my brow and swore I’d be fine, that you’d see to it. You promised the doctors gold if I recovered and exile if I died, and the black smoke of burnt offerings darkened the skies above the temples. You were with me through the night as I thrashed and mumbled, and around midnight I was finally still, at which your heart rose for you thought the tide had turned, and for the rest of the night you ignored the doctors when they asked you for a very quiet word. Only at dawn did you finally admit that you were alone, and had been for some time, that the hand you held was cooling.”

  I rise in disgust and I’d hear no more but I have nowhere else to go in this sea of dark. He says, “My funeral pyre was by the sea. You built an altar to my ghost and slaughtered hecatombs until the sand was sodden with blood and the people said you’d squander your wealth on my memory but then on the third day when black flies were thick on the pools of gore and even the poorest citizens had more meat than they could carry you walked away.

  “You wanted nothing more to do with Delphi but had heard of another oracle, one hidden among the unnavigable deltas of Lernea and said to be more sympathetic to men. For days you picked your way over the ephemeral sand-banks among the tide-channels where flies swarmed and gulls clamored until one night you heard singing. You followed it to a low cave of wet sand, and in it, half-buried, found a man’s head, eyes closed, voice lifted, his neck ending in a ragged, bloodless wound. When he finished you blinked back tears and he welcomed you by name.

  “‘How can Death be overcome?’ you said, and with eyes still closed he said, ‘Make love to a woman.’ ‘How can Death be overcome?’ you said as you lifted him from the sand, and he said, ‘Do deeds worthy of poets.’ ‘How can Death be overcome?’ you shouted a third time over the waves’ roar, his face inches from yours as he opened eyes of a startling depth and clarity and said, ‘There is a way.’

  “Following his advice, you left the Peloponnese and walked west over the mountains and past cities you’d never seen and in the lonely places when cruel-eyed men saw you from the woods they looked at each other and said, ‘This one is mad, or holy, and in any case beyond the cares of men, so let him be.’

  “You walked a long way and it was only when you were resigned to walking forever that you came to the end, a cliff of black rock where the river Acheron cascades into a leaden sea. You built an altar out of broken stones for Hermes of the Boundaries and hunted animals and spilled their blood on the lichen-stained granite.

  “Weeks went by, and then seasons, and every day was the same until the night you dreamed that a young man with golden hair stood beside the altar watching you sleep. ‘You want too much,’ he said. ‘But you’re brave enough, and determined, and have the least selfish of motives, so I’ll give you a gift—you can see your friend once more.’ ‘That’s not enough,’ you said. ‘Why should I help you?’ he asked coolly, and waited, and you could see he had all the time in the world, and then you screamed a scream that tore your throat and filled the night and you sustained it even as your breath faltered and your mind went dark. The youth’s eyebrow lifted fractionally, and he said, ‘Stay awake for seven days, and on the last night you’ll see Death returning to his dolorous kingdom. He’ll be weary, so seize him, if you can, and wrestle him down. Beat him and you can impose terms, though you’d be the first man ever to do it.’

  “You felt a giddy euphoria, though you knew your cause was desperate, for the great victory was finally at hand, and if you had to overcome a god to gain it, then so what, for you stood to gain everything, and had nothing to lose but the tag end of your mortal span. You sat on the cliff-edge, anticipating the struggle, grateful for the chance to prove yourself greater than every other man. By the third day the hours were a litany of agonies and it took all your hero’s will and soldier’s discipline to keep your eyes open, and by the fifth day you wanted to lie down on the black rock and close your eyes for just a moment, for just a moment couldn’t matter, but you reminded yourself that seven days of suffering are as nothing beside eternity, and you reminded yourself of me. On the sixth day the skies glowed like lightning and voices whispered evil counsel in your ear and you thought you saw me sitting beside you, my arm around your shoulders, saying nothing, and you smiled at me and said I shouldn’t worry, that you had it all in hand, that it wouldn’t be long now, and then I was shouting at you, pleading with you to open your eyes as the black king striding by stooped to look at you sleeping with your chin on your hand; he shook his head and went on, though I cried out to him for mercy, not for me but for you as your dreams turned to boiling skies and burning oceans and weariness like a deep well down which you were falling, and when you woke you were alone and knew you’d slept a long time.

  “You went back to Athens and never spoke of what had happened. They said you were a quieter man but a better king, and that something had gone out of you; you often passed the day sitting with your children in the sun, and later with your grandchildren, and the hero you’d been was indiscernible. Decades passed, and your strength waned, and then came the day when you saw the truth in your doctors’ closed, politic faces.

  “The next day you went to your great hall and summoned your family and your warriors and your courtiers and even your huntsmen and dogs. You told them it was time for a last great adventure, at which the drummers, who had been waiting, started playing, and in the din no one heard the men outside nailing the doors shut.

  “When the drums stopped you said, ‘Time burns away, as this palace burns away, and we will burn with it,’ and then they smelled the smoke. The men threw themselves at the doors, and hacked at them with their swords but all in vain. The burning air was unbreathable and the blackened floor buckling when someone choked, ‘Why?’ You said, ‘Doomed to die, I don’t give up, and I have but a single enemy. As no other course is open, I’ll bring war to shadow-lands, and shatter Death’s kingdom with an army of ghosts.’ The hall’s doors burst before a flood of black water that engulfed the men and their bronze swords and the dirty straw and the desperately paddling dogs and bore them away, and it was all you could do to keep hold of your sword as the churning water tumbled you through the dark until finally, gasping, you fought your way to the bank and dragged yourself up onto the shore of a river glittering blackly under a starry night.

  “You dragged your liege-men from the river before they forgot themselves entirely, and soon the men and dogs huddled together, staring into nothing as though searching for words at the tips of their tongues. Onl
y through kicks and blows could you rouse them to prise stones from the dry ground and build the listing approximation of a palace where you sat in state before your indifferent subjects and exhorted them to fight the final battle well, to do great deeds even here among the shadows, but their eyes were vacant and their sword-arms listless. Even you were reduced to the ceaseless recitation of your lineage and purpose, and you’d lost your first love’s name, and your mother’s face, and the names of all the dogs whose ghosts twitched restlessly at your feet, but not for one moment did you forget it was Death who was your enemy.

  “Finally you took your spear and the handful of men lucid enough to follow and set off through the fields of asphodel and snow. You met shades who spoke of white cities, of sculpted valleys, of infernal palaces of bronze and basalt, but as you went on there was nothing but the dark plain before you and one by one your men slipped away, or forgot what they were doing, and it was always getting colder, and then you were trudging through the snow alone with nothing but your spear and your will burning like a blue sun to guide you.

  “There wasn’t much left by the time you saw a fire in the distance and heard me calling your name. I tried to be kind, but you wouldn’t set aside your purpose, not for one moment, and so our youths are lost, and our lives, and now the last gift of the god.”

  I smile at him. “I have you at least, and that is much.”

  Pirithous’s face, drained of everything. “Not even that,” he says, and he and the fire vanish. Around me, the dark.

  45

  ASCLEPIOS

  Theseus’s wife Phaedra hanged herself over her affair with her step-son Hippolytus. Hippolytus was then put in the care of Asclepios, best among doctors and Apollo’s son. When Hippolytus died, Asclepios brought him back to life with his father’s help.

  We rowed out at dawn, the slave, the boy and I. The island was a shadow on the sea, then raucous wheeling gulls, sea caves and passages resonant with surf; we waded through high water under low arches to white sand beaches where the waves were a deep murmuring. Sea birds watched with ancient eyes as we sprawled on rank grasses in the sun.

  Then the slave was carrying the child up the wet sand, shouting. There was blood on the boy, whose white skin had been as gold to me. The urchin’s spines were still embedded in his flesh—he wailed when I touched them. He’d been swimming, had seen the sun behind an urchin like a spiked aurora, aqueous light radiating out around it in its hole, and he’d so wanted to touch the secret at its core. A surging wave had swept him in. Dreadful wounds, transpiercing him, and as his life coursed away he spoke of what he’d seen there, of the black plumes pouring out of him, the watchful dark things circling, their bodies patched with pale luminance.

  I got all the spines out in time for him to know it. I laid them end to end in the sand, aligning their broken fragments just so.

  And now the sun is going down, and though the island is behind us I know it’s getting dark there, and that there will be no one to tend to him but the birds and the wind and the ancient things waiting in the reef, and that the waves will beat on the stone walls of the tunnel leading to the circular beach where his grave lies under the open sky. One day I’ll go back and see if time has wound on there, or if with the loss of him the days stop.

  * * *

  He plays by a river of black water, setting stones in a pattern in the mud. The intensity of his absorption shows how alone he is.

  I wake engulfed in loss. Moonlight glows through low clouds, and the wind comes from the sea. My mind is clear. I know what I’ll do.

  It’s hard to work the boat alone, but it’s a terrible thing I have planned, and I won’t share the pollution.

  On the island the tide has already come and gone and scattered the low cairn I made. I dig through the wet, heavy sand and disinter his body. I clean him in the water. The last of his blood wells out and reddens a receding wave; I brush the scuttling crabs from his mouth and close his staring eyes.

  One of my aunts—the kindest of them, and the wisest—once gave me a vial of what she said was Gorgon blood. I open the vial by touch, find the puncture wounds with my fingertips, and pour into each a single, careful drop. The wounds close like startled anemones, leaving only puckered scars. I put a hand on his cold chest, an ear to his blue mouth—nothing.

  I call to him. Nothing but the waves. I call again, louder, and again, and still the clamor of the waves and wind, and I raise my voice over them, and over the tide, and over my own heart beating, and over all the roar of the world, again and again, and then I hear him, down by the water, singing quietly to himself. I walk down toward the break-line, and it’s very dark, and the tide must have gone out because I walk a long way down the sand. I know I should have found the sea by now but I go on, for miles, it seems, and the sand is very dry, and then there’s a river before me, cold, fast and black. The boy is on the bank, putting stones in a pattern in the mud.

  He looks up when I touch his shoulder. I say, “It’s time to go back.”

  “I’m not done yet,” he says.

  “You can finish later. There will be time.”

  Hand in hand we walk back up the beach but the way is long, even longer than I remember, and it’s getting steeper. Every step is an effort, and then an agony as the way rises and the sand yields under my steps, but the boy runs ahead and disappears. Soon I have to use my hands to climb up the crumbling dunes and then I’m about to fall (I know that to fall is to be lost forever) but then heat and light on me and my father is there, like the first red rays of dawn, laughing even in these shadows. He takes my hand and pulls me after him as he runs lightly over the sand which rises rapidly into a sheer wall and for a moment we’re flying, and then, at last, I’m on the cold beach again, clutching the boy, who inhales spasmodically, his eyes roaming behind closed lids.

  As I kiss his forehead a shadow falls. Death says, “You have robbed me, and you will pay.”

  46

  ALCESTIS

  After Asclepios offended Death, Death petitioned Zeus to kill him with his thunderbolts. Apollo retaliated by killing the Cyclopes who had forged them. Zeus then punished Apollo with seven years of servitude. Admetus, king of Pheres, bought Apollo in a slave-market, and was kind to him through the term of his bondage. Apollo then intervened with the Fates on Admetus’ behalf, getting them to promise to let Admetus escape death when his time came if another would take his place.

  Alcestis was Admetus’ wife.

  Someone is knocking on my door. I expect the maid but find it’s my husband, who hasn’t come to my room in years. At first I think he’s drunk, and then I think he’s ill, and then I think some god has possessed him because he bars the door, takes my face in his hands and says, “Death is right behind me, and to the shadow-lands I go.”

  As I look for words he says, “Death appeared like a black shadow on a burning world. It’s time, he said, as I wrenched myself awake. I knew my arguments were futile even as I marshaled them but then through the fumes of sleep and my despair I remembered I had a way out. Wait! I said. Not yet! Let me find another! and fled as Death hesitated.

  “I caromed through the freezing corridors, stumbling and panting, his measured footsteps close behind, and it seemed the palace was abandoned, that I would never find anyone at all, but then I saw my mother’s door. Bursting in I said, Death has come for me, unless another will take my place, and I remembered how she’d loved me when I was a child, but she was very old and for a moment looked afraid, and then her face closed and with querulous petulance she said she was just an old woman and these phantasms had nothing to do with her. He’s right behind me, I shouted, my voice raw, but she’d turned back to her loom and wouldn’t raise her face again no matter how I pleaded and the footsteps were louder as I ran off again into the palace which seemed to have become a place I’d never known until I found the barracks where the captain of my guard sat oiling his javelins, and my heart rose to see him for he was a man of exacting discipline and proven loyalty�
�I’d lifted him up from poverty, and entrusted my life to him as a matter of course. I said, My son, I need you, as I’ve never needed anyone, and as he stood and drew his sword I saw in his eyes that he would fight to the death for me, and sick with relief I explained what was happening and the footsteps echoed all around us and when I turned back to him I saw he was weeping. He wouldn’t meet my eyes as he sheathed his sword and said, I’m so sorry, sir—forgive me, but I was already running though my legs were weak and I couldn’t breathe the cold air and then I burst into the hall where I found old friends and men I’d made great and slaves I’d freed and soldiers sworn in blood to me and old mistresses I’d treated kindly after their beauty had gone; I went from each to each, begging them to help me, but no one would meet my eyes and no one even seemed to hear me and our breath was white and the sun was lost in shadow as Death came closer, his footsteps deafening, and I fled into the corridor and I braced myself to make a stand but my fingers were numb and when I drew my sword it slipped from my hand to bounce and clatter on the slick ice covering the floor, and then I fled a last time and came here.”

  For a moment his fear infects me, but then I realize he’s just old, and confused, and has had a bad dream. I hush him, stroke his face and hair and tell him not to worry. He doesn’t resist when I put him in my bed, where he hasn’t been in a long time. “You stay here and warm up. Everything’s going to be fine,” I say with hearty conviction.

  “But I must go,” he says, “unless another will take my place, and none will, for I’m friendless. Every oath of love was empty, and now that the void is before me every hand is snatched back, and so I fall.”

  “I’m sure someone will help you,” I say, and think of calling for my maid, a doctor, anyone.