Hercules felt the fingers shift on his body, and knew that the giant was about to throw him into the stewpot. He braced himself. His own fingers felt for the blue feather taken from the breast of the Phoenix. Prometheus had promised that this magic plume would protect him from heat. But would it protect him from drowning in the abominable stew? Or, if he did not drown, from suffocating in its stench?
Anteus suddenly drew Hercules toward his face as if he meant to eat him raw. The young man saw the great yolky eyes glaring at him, saw the teeth big as tombstones, and the huge meaty tongue behind them.
“No,” grunted Anteus. “On second thought, you’re too vile a creature for my stew. You might spoil the flavor. Under the pot is where you belong, in the cook-fire. Yes … roasting’s just as slow as boiling, and just as painful.”
Anteus lifted Hercules over his head again, roared, “Behold!” and hurled him into the very center of the wood fire that was blazing under the huge stewpot. Hercules landed in the heart of the fire, and crouched there, clutching his Phoenix feather. Steam arose from him as fire touched his wet body. He welcomed the steam for it hid him from sight. And he didn’t want Anteus to see him sitting amid flame in a magical sheath of coolness cast by the ice-blue plume.
Nevertheless, he felt the enchantment beginning to melt in the intense heat. He needed a more intense blueness, more whiteness, the more powerful magic of ancient wisdom. Perching there in the core of flame, he sent his thoughts halfway across the world to a mountain in the Caucasus where Prometheus lay shackled. Once again he was fixed in a cone of stormy blue light. Once again, he saw snow in cracks of rock. And the sight of bloody-beaked birds tearing at the Titan’s guts made his own pain seem insignificant. He heard the rich voice rising above the screaming of the birds and the howling of the wind:
“You are he.”
“Who?” whispered Hercules.
“The Promised One. For the Libyans. For me.”
“For you?”
“Even for me. In the watches of night, a voice has spoken with utter authority, saying, ‘Whom the father torments, the son will save.’”
“What father? What son?”
“In time to come, son of Zeus, all shall be made clear. But for now, the now that must always come first, hearken to this: As your enemy, Anteus, the son of Earth, is restored by touching his mother, so shall you, Hercules, be restored by fire. I, the fire-giver, tell you so. The sacred flame shall heal you, restore you. In return, you shall deliver me one day. And now, arise. Go forth. Fight again.”
Anteus approached the fire, waiting for the steam to lift, hoping to see his enemy charring as he sizzled in his own juices. The steam did lift. Something moved behind it. Anteus gaped in horror as Hercules hopped out of the fire. The young man was smiling. He seemed to gleam with health. His wounds were healed. He was uncharred, unscarred.
For the first time in his life, Anteus took a backward step in the presence of an enemy. But he was stupefied by shock. Then his fighting instincts took over. He stood where he was and considered what to do. One thing he knew: that when he caught that little rat again he wouldn’t let him out of his hands until he was in many pieces.
Hercules did not wait for his enemy to move. Because all ways of fighting Anteus seemed equally impossible, Hercules did what he always did when he was in doubt: he charged. And the people who thronged the courtyard were amazed to see the man hurtling toward the giant.
Anteus stood waiting. Then he swung his leg in a terrible kick. Hercules glimpsed the foot coming toward him with enormous speed, and in full stride scooped up a paving stone, which he held before him. The giant’s foot hit the stone. The small bones of the instep and ankle shattered like glass. It was agony. He hopped on his other foot. Hercules shoved his shoulder against that leg and pushed it out from under Anteus, who crashed to the ground.
The walls of the courtyard trembled as the giant fell full length, cracking his head on a flagstone. Hercules heard the dry sound of the head splitting. Heard the rattling gasp of his enemy’s breath. Saw blood welling out of the split head and forming puddles on the stone. He stood over his enemy, watching him die.
He was astounded to see the blood stopping. To hear the hoarse gasping stop. He saw the giant’s eyes flare with rage, saw the great biceps swell. Before he could dodge, Anteus reached out. His huge fingers caught Hercules by the throat and began to squeeze. The flagstones tilted; the sky darkened. Hercules tried to tear those strangling fingers from his throat. But in no fight he had ever fought with monsters of land and sea had he known a force to match that of Anteus—who, lounging on the ground, was easily choking him to death with one hand.
And as his sight faded, he heard again the voice of Prometheus saying: “He is born of Mother Earth. When he touches her, his strength is restored.” And Hercules realized that he had repeated his first mistake—had laid his enemy in his mother’s lap, and she had revived him, healed him, restored his strength.
This awful truth glimmered in his murky mind, but flared up brightly as truth does even when things look darkest. Again he heard the voice of Prometheus. “You shall be restored by fire, even as he is by earth.” And the idea carried by these words cast a light that became power beyond the strength of muscles. He slashed the edge of his palm at Anteus’s elbow, making the elbow crook, and loosening the grip on his throat. He moved closer to Anteus and wedged his hands underneath the giant.
Drawing enormous breath into his tortured lungs, he grasped Anteus about the waist and began to pull him off the ground. Anteus kicked and flailed and clung to the earth. His mother, Gaia, Mother Earth, knowing her favorite son in danger, put forth her magnetic strength—which is called gravity—trying to hug her son to her, to keep him safe.
Hercules couldn’t pull him off the ground. And knew that if he didn’t he was lost. He pulled with all his strength. Anteus clung to the earth—who hugged him close. “Fire-giver, help me now,” whispered Hercules. And with these words, he felt his veins begin to run with flame. He saw the suffering Titan whose gift had transformed humankind, lifting it out of brutish darkness into light—he felt that magic voltage enter every fiber of his body, filling him with a power that enabled him to tear the giant from the clutch of earth and lift him slowly toward the sky.
Holding Anteus away from earth, he saw the great cracked head begin to bleed again. Saw the light fade from his eyes. Felt the huge throbbing body go limp as a bladder. He kept holding the body even after he knew it was dead; he didn’t dare let it touch earth again.
People were shouting now, roaring, shrieking with joy. He marched toward the stewpot and threw Anteus in. The body landed with a great splash. Hercules turned to the roaring crowd:
“He will feed you now whom you have fed so long.”
People clustered about the pot. They lifted it from its hooks. They did not dip in. They refused to eat the stew. They wanted no part of Anteus, even dead. They bore the great cauldron to the beach and emptied it into the sea and watched the black fins cut through the water. Sharks prefer live meat, but Anteus was only recently dead, and very large; so they feasted happily as the people danced on the beach.
Another group of dancing, cheering youths bore Hercules on their shoulders. They carried him to the harbor where he had asked to go. There he borrowed a sailing vessel, for the south wind was still blowing, and his ship would be able to run before it all the way home. This pleased him; he felt too stiff to push a raft through the Middle Sea.
THE CALYDONIAN BOAR
For a lovely, dreamy huntress
named PAMELA — who also
had trouble with her father
Characters
Monsters
The Calydonian boar
(KAHL ih DOH nee uhn)
A giant wild hog, handmade by Artemis
Gods
Zeus
(ZOOS)
King of the Gods
Artemis
(AHR tuh mihs)
Moon goddess, Goddess
of the Chase, Lady of the Silver Bow
Apollo
(uh PAHL oh)
Artemis’s brother, the sun-god, God of Music and Medicine
Ares
(AIR eez)
God of War
Atropos
(AT roh pohs)
Eldest of the Fates, Lady of the Shears
Charon
(KAHR uhn)
Giant ill-natured boatman who ferries the souls of the dead across the River Styx
Mortals
Atalanta
(at uh LAN tuh)
Princess of Arcadia, a huntress
Meleager
(mehl ee AY juhr)
Prince of Calydon, a hero
Clymene
(KLYM eh nee)
Queen of Arcadia, Atalanta’s mother
Iasos
(EYE ah suhs)
King of Arcadia, Atalanta’s father
Althea
(al THEE uh)
Queen of Calydon, Meleager’s mother
Oeneus
(EE noos)
King of Calydon, Meleager’s father
Plexippus
(pleck SIH puhs)
Meleager’s uncle, Althea’s brother
Lampon
(LAMP ahn)
Plexippus’s and Althea’s brother
A shepherd
A robber band
Pirates
Assorted kings, heroes, and warriors who join the hunt
Animals
Alcon
(AL kohn)
The simba hound
The bear
Atalanta’s bear brother, a cub grown into a killer
Mother Bear
Various other dogs, horses, bears, and wolves
Contents
CHAPTER I
Birth of the Boar
CHAPTER II
Give Her to the Mountain
CHAPTER III
The Wild Child
CHAPTER IV
Gain, Loss, and Revenge
CHAPTER V
The Fatal Crones
CHAPTER VI
A Prince, a Hag, and Two Evil Uncles
CHAPTER VII
The Simba Hound
CHAPTER VIII
A Death and a Promise
CHAPTER IX
The Bear’s Sister
CHAPTER X
Two Jealousies
CHAPTER XI
The Monster
1
Birth of the Boar
March wind whistled through the trees. Pine needles clashed softly. Epaulets of snow were melting off the high shoulders of Olympus. But in the Garden of the Gods it was always May; the air was scented always with summer flowers, cooled by the rumor of snow.
The gods had dined and were lounging about, gossiping. The talk turned to sport and how they had entertained themselves during the winter, tormenting humankind. This led to a discussion of monsters. Now the gods and goddesses began boasting furiously.
Some time before, Zeus, alarmed by the shrinkage of his human herds, had passed a law, limiting each god to a kill-bag of six humans a month. But the High Ones had found a way to evade this law. They employed monsters. Poseidon bragged of a sea serpent that could flail a fishing fleet to splinters in the space of an hour, and devour all the crews. Hera spoke smugly of her three-bodied giant, Geryon, and of the hundred-headed Hydra whom it was useless to decapitate because for every head cut off two sprang in its place. Athena spoke of the once-lovely sea nymph, Medusa, whose hair she had turned to living snakes, making her into a sight so frightful that anyone looking at her turned to stone. Hades, who was on one of his rare visits to the upper world, told of his hell-hags, the brass-winged, brass-clawed Harpies, and of Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the gates of the Land Beyond Death.
Apollo, the sun-god, who had been listening quietly, noticed that his twin sister, Artemis, Goddess of the Moon, was growing sullen. “What’s the matter?” he murmured.
“Come away,” she whispered, and led him among the roses. “I can’t stand those old braggarts!” she cried. “It’s disgusting when they begin yammering about their dreadful pets.”
“I know what’s really bothering you,” said Apollo, who understood his sister perfectly. “You’re angry because you have no monster of your own.”
“Since you’re so understanding of my needs, dear brother, give me some advice. What shall I do?”
“Obviously, there is only one thing to do. Get yourself a monster of your very own.”
“The trouble is, Apollo, I loathe and despise the creatures I’ve been hearing about. I love animals, as you know, beasts of forest and birds of air. Hawk and hummingbird, stag and wolf. I love some for fleetness, others for ferocity, and all for grace and strength. For their natural beauty, in fact. But these slithery sea serpents and fire-breathing dragons, these hundred-headed reptiles and three-bodied giants—no, not for me. Too freakish, too ugly.”
“You’re hard to please, Sister mine.”
“Always have been,” said Artemis.
“Well if you don’t fancy any of the huge assortment of monsters now available, then you must make your own.”
“How do I do that?”
“Oh, you must ask someone more bloodthirsty than I. I am God of Music and Medicine, you know, and must preserve my reputation for gentleness.”
Artemis smiled to herself, for she knew how savage her radiant brother could become when angered. She also knew that he would give her no more advice that day, and wandered away from him. She passed near Ares, who was sucking the marrow from two beef bones at once. The bones sticking out of his mouth looked like tusks. And these tusks taken together with his gross snout and poisonous little red eyes made him look like a wild boar.
Artemis drifted up to him and said, “Greetings, kinsman. Have you ever happened to make a monster?”
“I don’t need monsters to do my killing for me,” growled the God of War.
“Why not? Are you exempt from the game laws?”
“No,” said Ares. “As the eldest son of our king, it behooves me to obey his edicts. And I do dutifully limit my personal kills to six per month.”
“Do you?” murmured Artemis. “But you are famous for your foul temper, and are surely moved to rage by more than six humans per month.”
“Oh yes, Moon. By more than six, or sixty, for that matter. What I do then is simply start a war in the right place. I fan the hot ashes of hatred that reside in the human heart, fan those cinders into flame—either against neighbors or against another tribe, for normal men entertain both kinds of hatred. And when the flame grows huge and red-hot, it is called war. I then take care to move those who have offended me into the worst part of the battle. And lo—those who have angered me are killed, and I am technically innocent of their death.”
“Thank you for your courteous explanation, Lord of Battles.”
“Nevertheless,” said Ares, “I have observed our uncle Hades making monsters when he needed to restaff hell. What he does is take up a handful of vital mud and mold it into any form he desires.”
“And where does he get this vital mud?”
“From the River Styx, which borders his dread realm, and is also known as the River of Tears. Over it, vultures hover like gulls. And the winds that blow from shore to shore carry the stench of the roasting pits, the demonic laughter of the torture crews, and shrieks of the tormented. These odors and these sounds sink to the bottom of the River of Tears, and invest its mud with a vicious potence, very good for the making of monsters.”
“Thanks again, War,” said Artemis, and drifted away, thinking hard.
The moon-chariot driven by Artemis was wrought of silver. Of silver also were the horns and hooves of the six white stags that drew the chariot across the sky, and their eyes were amber. Upon this rainy night, however, the moon was hidden; the goddess rode behind cloud cover.
Down to earth came the silver chariot. Across the meadow and plain it flashed, a
nd through deep valleys, until it reached a chasm called Avernus, which was the gateway to the Land Beyond Death. Here Artemis untethered her stags and let them graze upon the plain. She made herself invisible then, and entered Avernus.
The chasm was really a chain of interlocking caves plunging toward the center of the earth. Down, down, the goddess sped, troubling bats; even invisible, she cast a faint radiance upon the rock walls as she passed. The caves ended in a rocky plain that stretched into darkness. But a river-smelling wind cut through the sulphurous murk. Borne upon the wind also were the curious yearning hopeless cries uttered only by ghosts.
Artemis followed the sound to the shore of a river, which she knew must be the Styx. She heard a strange thwacking sound and saw an enormous creature driving a flock of something before him. White things they were, seeming now like clouds, now like sheep, now like spouts of steam. And she realized they were today’s crop of the dead, half-vaporized, flesh still clinging to their bones, memories half-alive in their hearts. She also realized that the one herding them must be Charon, the dread Ferryman, who would take them across the Styx and through the gates of hell.
Charon was a giant. His arms were as big as tree trunks, his hands so broad that he needed no oars to row his heavy boat across the Styx. He simply reached into the water and rowed with his hands. Now, however, he was using those hands cruelly as he drove the whimpering shades toward the dock. Snarling and growling, he swung his tree-trunk arms, beating his flock toward the moored boat.
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One Page 11
