For six mornings I went to Kora’s tree, placed an ear to the trunk, and listened to Thea’s cries resounding through the bark. But no one appeared on the porch to ask me up the ladder, and when I knocked at the door on the seventh morning, Aeacus answered and closed the door in my face.
The next day I met him in the forest. You have seen the twin panniers on the backs of donkeys? They are baskets for carrying produce home from the market or kindling from the woods. He had rigged such panniers for his children and placed both Thea and Icarus on his back. In spite of the vines which strangled the branches above her head, Thea was poised and smiling, but Icarus was crying almost for the first time.
I sprang out of the trees like the goat-god Pan when he frightens travelers. “Where are you taking my babies?” I demanded in what I meant to be an ear-splitting bellow. But I was small at the time—I lived on roots and berries between the rare occasions when my father remembered to hunt. No doubt my roar emerged as a squeak. Aeacus looked at me vaguely and went on his way as if I were no more significant than a toadstool. I lowered my head and butted him with my horns, expecting to catch the babies if they threatened to spill. He staggered but kept his balance and did not spill them. Turning, he seized my horns and flung me into the bushes. The fall left me stunned.
In seconds, or minutes, I am not sure which, I opened my eyes to hairy haunches and cloven hooves. A Paniscus, looking about twelve but possibly as old as a hundred, was dousing my face with milk from a split coconut. I did not remember to thank him, but sprang to my feet and searched frantically for signs of Aeacus and the children.
“Did you see him?” I cried. “The man from the Cities?”
“Nothing but squirrels.” He sulked, hurt no doubt because I had not thanked him for reviving me and sacrificing the milk from his coconut.
I ran toward Kora’s tree to see if she knew that Aeacus had taken the children. Perhaps, I thought, she will keep me in their place, and then I felt terribly ashamed at having so selfish a wish at such a time.
A score of Beasts had surrounded the tree: Dryads in great dishevelment, among them Zoe, Moschus and two other Centaurs; Panisci and Bears of Artemis; and even some Thriae, who flock to misfortune as readily as to honey. The tree was a pillar of fire. Branches crackled and fell in a swarm of sparks like glowing bees; the watchers shielded their heads with upraised arms and drew back from the yellow, lashing coils. The high porch had shriveled like a dead insect and begun to peel from the trunk. Yet the verdurous branches still struggled valiantly to hold their greenness against the encroaching fire, for the tree was young by the reckoning of the forest and three times her lightning-blackened branches had sprouted leaves.
“We must save her,” I cried, running toward the ladder.
Zoe stopped me. “It was she who set the fire. We must leave her with dignity.”
“But he’s getting away with her babies!”
“Let him go. He was never a Beast.”
“But the babies are half Beast.”
“Perhaps they will come back when they learn to know themselves.”
Icarus hugged me when I had finished the story. “Eunostos, we did come back! You got your babies again.”
“Yes,” I said, “and this time I mean to keep you.” I looked at Thea and awaited the inevitable reprimand. She was certain to take her father’s side, and already I was angry with her, remembering how she had laughed as that hateful man had carried her out of the forest.
At last, she said, “You can’t blame him for leaving when he did. He was only thinking of us.”
Icarus turned on her angrily. “But he left our mother.”
“She always knew he would have to leave her,” said Thea. But her eyes had filled with tears, and not, I guessed, for her father.
“Thea,” I said. “I didn’t—”
Pandia seized my hand. “There is someone watching us.”
“A bear?” I smiled.
“Do bears wear helmets?”
Chapter VI
THE LOVE OF A QUEEN IS DEATH
The death which comes at the end of a long life, in a warm bed surrounded by loving children, is a lying down and not a darkness; it is not to be feared. But a slow and agonizing death in the fullness of youth is dreadful to men and dreaded even by gods. It was such a death which confronted the forest, though its rightful span was a thousand tearing winters and a thousand springs of healing violets and resurrecting roses.
No one knew at the time; no one knew that the death throes began when Pandia saw the helmet. How could a warrior have entered the forest, I asked, without being seen by the guards? No conch shell had blown to alert the Beasts. Perhaps, suggested Thea, Pandia had glimpsed a spying Paniscus and mistaken his horns for the boar’s tusk of a helmet. Still, the mere possibility of Achaean infiltration left us with little appetite for the rest of our picnic. Returning to the Field of Gem Stones to recover our basket, we walked back to the house in thoughtful silence.
The following morning it was almost possible to forget the revelations and alarms of the preceding day. Breakfasting on bread, cheese, and carob pods, Thea did not refer to my unexpected embrace or to my story about her parents.
She fed me some choice pods from her own plate and then withdrew to the shop to watch the Telchines cut some intaglios, while I remained in the garden, wondering what I should plant in place of my carrots. Perhaps a row of pumpkins, as big and friendly as the domestic pigs of the Centaurs. The day was benign; a blue monkey perched on the wall, waiting for Thea to feed him carrots. He would have a long wait.
Icarus emerged from the stairs. His hair was tousled from sleep and very long, rather like a nest in which baby mice have played. He had not yet donned a loincloth.
“Eunostos,” he said. “I want to talk to you.” Fifteen years sat lightly on his face, but the weight of a lifetime burdened his voice.
“You miss Perdix, don’t you?” I said, trying to ease his very evident burden. The day before the picnic, he had suddenly announced that he had given Perdix his freedom—left him beside a carob tree in the forest. “To find a mate,” was his sole explanation.
“No,” he said. “Perdix was a child’s pet. I am now a man.” He used the word in the sense of a full-grown adult and not as a member of the human, as opposed to the bestial, race. We sat down on a stone bench in the shade of the parasol; splinters of sunlight jabbed through crevices in the reeds and pricked our shoulders. “Aren’t I?”
“A man is strong,” I said, “and strength makes him kind instead of tyrannical. A man is courageous, not because he lacks fear but because he conquers fear. Yes, Icarus, you are certainly a man, and one I am proud to call my brother.”
“But that’s not enough,” he said impatiently. “Even if I were those things, which I doubt, I am still not manly in other ways. With women.” His voice fell to a whisper, as if he ascribed to women the power and the mystery attributed to them in the days of stone implements, before it was known that the husband as well as the wife helped to produce a child. “I am—inexperienced.”
I studied him carefully and saw that his body had hardened since he came to the forest; he was tanned and firm, with a down of hair on his cheeks, and I understood why Zoe had looked at him with desire as well as affection. Manliness mingled with innocence and cried to be awakened to knowledge of its own power.
“And you think I can help you?”
“I know you can. You and Zoe used to be more than friends, didn’t you?”
I nodded, with perhaps a hint of a smirk.
“And other women too,” he continued. “You must have had hundreds. You’re just what they like. A regular bull of a man!”
Almost of itself, my chest expanded to its full dimensions, my tail twitched, my flanks felt the urge to strut. “It’s true that one kind likes me. Free-living women.”
“One kind admits she likes you. Secretly, all of them do. Look at Thea.”
The subject intrigued me. “Thea, you say?”
“Can’t take her eyes off you. But frankly, the other, non-sisterly kind interests me more. I don’t feel up to a long, exhausting courtship. I’m not as young as I was. That’s why I want you to take me wenching.”
“Wenching,” I repeated, possibilities flickering through my brain like a covey of quail. “Suppose we call on Zoe and ask her to fetch you a young friend from the next tree.”
“I don’t like them young,” he said with finality. “Experience, that’s what I want. You see—” He paused in acute embarrassment. “I am not very practiced. The palace at Vathypetro limited my education. What does one talk about at such a time?”
“Compliments,” I said. “One after another like pearls on a necklace. Give them something to wear—a bauble or an intimate garment such as a breast band—and then elaborate on how it becomes them. With my shop and workers, that’s no problem. Jewels, sandals, whatever they like I’ve got.”
“But you can’t talk all the time,” he said darkly. “Thea tried talking to Ajax when we were captives, but Ajax got tired of listening. He pushed her against the wall, and she had to use her pin. He wasn’t a conversationalist, and neither am I.”
“You’d be surprised how naturally the rest comes after the right gift and compliment. With the right woman, that is.”
“The right woman. That’s what I want you to help me find. And another thing. When I just think about wenching, I feel—well, a kind of fire creeping over my body. Arms. Chest. Stomach. Like a lizard with hot feet, if you know what I mean.”
“The problem,” I said, “is to find another lizard. We’ll visit Zoe tomorrow. We’ll ask her—”
“Eunostos! Icarus!” Thea called from the stairs.
“Later,” I whispered in the conspiratorial tone of men discussing their favorite subject under grave risk of detection. “Here comes the watchdog.”
“Eunostos, look at the intaglio I’ve cut!” she said, coruscating into the garden. She blazed in a lemon tunic which vied with the sun and gave her the look of a lithe young huntress; she had caught her hair in a knot behind her head and left her ears in piquant, pointed nakedness. I half expected a bow in her hand and a quiver at her back. Proudly she flaunted a large agate incised with the figure of a lion-haunched, eagle-headed griffin, the awesome but docile beast which the early Cretans had kept as pets in their palaces. “Where is Icarus? I wanted to show him too.”
Icarus had left the garden. “I have no idea,” I said, as convincingly as a bad liar can manage, though I had an idea of Icarus blithely making for a certain tree and a certain lady. The sly calf! He had wanted a woman of years and experience and no young friend from the next tree. I hoped that Zoe had told him the way.
“He shouldn’t walk in the forest alone. If Pandia did see a warrior—”
“You can’t keep him under foot all day. He isn’t domestic, you know.”
“No, I suppose not. He has seemed restless lately. Probably he needs a good walk in the forest to stir his blood. Call me when he returns, will you, Eunostos? I have to get back to the shop.”
“Thea,” I called after her. “Your ears—”
“Yes?” She smiled.
“Are very charming.”
Icarus, as he later explained, had gone to visit Zoe. Not knowing the way, he looked for Pandia to guide him. When he failed to attract her with calls and whistles, he hit on the plan of picking some blackberries which he ate or spilled as he walked. Pandia was not long in appearing to share the berries. No, she could not tell him the exact location of Zoe’s tree—there were dozens of Dryads, after all—but she knew that it was close to some large beehives where she often gathered honey. She would lead him to the hives and perhaps they would meet someone who could give them further directions. She took his hand in case there were bears on the prowl.
“Your hand is sticky,” he remarked.
“Oh,” she said, “I missed some,” licked her fingers to the last adhering seed, and reclaimed his hand. “You know,” she resumed, “you ought to wear a loincloth.”
“You think so?” said Icarus, flushing. In his hurry to leave the house, he had quite forgotten to dress.
“To hide your lack of a tail. It makes the back of you look lonesome.” She moved to weightier subjects. “Are you going to have beer with Zoe?”
“Possibly,” said Icarus. The thought occurred to him that the warm stimulus of beer might loosen his tongue and inspire him to dazzling compliments. Having come without a gift, he felt at a disadvantage.
“I wonder if she will have some cakes in the house.”
“No,” he said with authority. “She never keeps honey cakes. There is no need for you to go in with me. Or even wait.” Secretly, he hoped to linger with Zoe for several days, exploring the hidden tunnels and leafy porches and learning the harder steps in the Dance of the Python. He felt an unaccustomed and wholly exhilarating freedom. The voluptuous foretaste of manhood wetted his appetite like a roasted almond. He pictured Thea and Eunostos coming to Zoe’s tree, and himself ensconced in a bark parapet and calling down to them: “Don’t wait up for me. I’m spending the night.”
They slithered through a thicket of bamboo, the slender, jointed canes as tall as their heads, the light green leaves rustling about their bodies like papyrus. Those consummate farmers, the Centaurs, said Pandia, in their ancient wanderings, had imported the seeds from the Land of the Yellow Men.
Emerging from the thicket, they met a young man who seemed to be waiting for them. “You must be looking for my sister,” he said. Icarus noticed the sickly softness of his flesh; he was not fat but he seemed without muscle, and his skin looked as if it would yield to the touch like the soft meat of a blowfish’s belly. Otherwise, he was not unattractive: a golden down covered his arms and cheeks as if they had been dusted with pollen; his eyes were round and extraordinarily gold; and his tall wings were as black and pointed as the fin of a shark.
“Icarus, don’t listen to him,” hissed Pandia in a very audible whisper. “He is one of the Thriae. He may be planning to rob us.”
“And what would I steal, your belt of rabbit’s fur?” He smiled scornfully. “I am not stealing today, I am giving. Would you like to know what?”
Icarus did not intend to ask him. He resented the fellow’s remark about Pandia’s belt.
“What?” asked Pandia.
“Sisters,” he said. “Or rather, one sister. Isn’t that what you are looking for, Icarus? A man can recognize the look in another man’s eyes. It says: I am tired of hunting and tired of gardening, of a man’s work and the company of other men. I want soft lips and the teasing fragrance of myrrh, I want soft hands and the silken brush of hair.”
“I am going to call on Zoe, the Dryad,” said Icarus. (How, he wondered, had the young man learned his name?) “Do you know where she lives?”
“I know where everyone lives.” He captured Icarus’ arm and guided him through avenues of lofty carob trees, whose branches were freighted with pods like those which Thea had eaten for breakfast, while Pandia trailed behind them, peeling her eye in case the fellow should prove a thief after all and wish to steal her belt (or, horror of horrors, her pelt). Icarus, of course, had nothing to lose.
They stepped into a meadow riotous with flowers and murmurous with bees; flowers jabbing from the ground on pillar-straight stalks or undulating in green torrents of foliage; and bees which wavered above them like a black and golden nimbus and then exploded upward like sparks from a lightning-blasted tree and disclosed the cinnabar walls of black-hearted poppies, the lemon of green-backed gagea, the purpler-than-murex of hyacinths beloved by the gods. From just such a garden, thought Icarus, all the flowers of the earth, even the tame crocuses grown at Vathypetro, had come in the time before men, transported by bees and migratory birds and swift nomadic winds.
In the very midst of the flowers, a vine-covered pole like the mast of a ship uplifted a light-seeming house with hexagonal walls of reeds, a thatched roof of dried water lily fronds,
and opaque windows of waxed parchment. The first storm, you felt, would scatter the walls and collapse the roof. A summer house, hardly more enduring than flowers and hardly less beautiful: built to please and not to endure.
“Here,” said the guide, “is the house.”
“But Zoe lives in a tree.”
“This is my sister’s house.”
Lifting aside a curtain of rushes, a young girl appeared in the door and looked down at Icarus with a confidence which seemed to say: “You will soon come up to me.”
“Icarus,” she chided. “You took your time in coming to call.”
“How do you know my name? I don’t know yours.”
“The whole forest has heard about the handsome boy who has come to live with Eunostos, the Bull. And also about his sister, the very fastidious Thea, who keeps a watchful eye on both of her men. Does she know that her little brother is up to mischief?”
Icarus bristled. “It’s no business of hers if I am.”
“And what would she think of me? The wanton Amber, soliciting innocent boys.”
“She would think you were very pretty.”
Indeed, she was smooth and bright as a tiger lily from the Land of the Yellow Men, with gold, violet-flecked eyes which did not change expression even when her lips curved to a smile, but looked like hungry mouths. When she spoke he saw that her tongue was long, thin, and freckled with gold like her.
She was even smaller than Thea. It should not be hard for her long wings to lift so small a body, thought Icarus. A winged lily she was, with catlike, sinuous grace; scarcely a girl at all except in the tightness she brought to his throat and the lizard with fiery feet she lashed across his limbs.
“Would you like to see my house?” she asked. “You will find it refreshing after your walk.”
“I am going to call on Zoe,” he repeated, with decidedly less enthusiasm than the first time he had made the announcement.
She laughed. “I think you are afraid of me. Of all women, perhaps, except little Bear Girls and blowsy old ladies like Zoe. Possibly you would prefer my brother. In the Cities of Men, I am told, the love of a man for a man is not uncommon. You will find it the same with drones like my brother. Among my people, the Thriae, queens like myself are rare and workers are no more excitable than a drudging mule. What can the poor drones do except console each other? They succeed rather well, I am told.” She turned to her brother. “Does Icarus please you, my dear? He is succulent as a fig, and no bees, I think, have rifled his hive.”
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