Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One

by Bernard Evslin

  If only the pattern could be challenged at just one point it might alter the whole. If just once, he thought, size could be overcome by wit, foulness by fair intent.

  The dragon was overhead, hovering. Cadmus, holding his sword, felt a nausea of fear. For all his fancy thoughts, he knew he was afraid of pain, afraid of dying, and terror held every priority.

  “No wonder evil always wins,” he said to himself. “We fatten it with our fear.”

  Cadmus looked up at the dragon. “What’s it waiting for?” he asked himself. “Bigger game? A worthier foe? Look at it. It’s only an oversized lizard after all, winged and armored, to be sure, and bristling with iron spikes and shooting fire. Still, this formidable apparatus is directed by a brain the size of a hazelnut. Or is it? It seems to be making a decision. Does it really find me too small to bother with? Do I hope so? Then why have I come all this way? I warned Prometheus I was miscast in this role. One needs to be a bit monstrous to vanquish monsters. I’m too light for this work, not ruthless enough. I have the impulse, though, I just lack the equipment.

  “Still hovering.… If I possessed an ounce of heroism, I’d beat sword on shield until it dived. Heroes need dragons. Who needs heroes? Men do. And the gods need men for their entertainment. Yes, but this entertainment will fail. I warn you, gods, if evil continues to be so successful, success will lose its prestige. Losers will inherit your earth, and you’ll grow so bored with them you’ll send another flood.”

  A cleft of lightning stood weirdly on the blue sky. Cadmus heard thunder; it rumbled like the voice of Prometheus.

  To make the dragon yield,

  let him dread his head

  upon your shield.

  Then silence. Cadmus tried to puzzle out the message. He knew it was of the utmost importance and that he did not have much time. He heard the brass scales clanking. The dragon was still directly overhead, wheeling. “These rhymes and riddles have proved useful,” he said to himself. “And I dare not ignore this one. But what does it mean? I have a shield, true enough, but what does it have to do with the dragon’s head?”

  Cadmus stared into the shield. It was a blur of brightness. He blinked. What he saw was his own face. “That’s it!” he cried. “I understand! The dragon must see itself in my shield. But to do that, it will have to come very close, much too close. Bless me, Prometheus, for here it is!”

  Indeed, a great shadow had darkened the plain. The hot breath of the beast was scorching the grass. Cadmus saw it, jaws yawning, swooping toward him in a long, curving dive. The dragon swept low and struck at Cadmus with one great brass claw. Brass rang on brass as claw struck helmet. But Cadmus was not hurt; the claw did not pierce the helmet. The dragon swerved in the air, flailing its spiked tail. Cadmus stood, sword lifted. “Keep your bargain, Hephaestus,” he muttered. “I’ve paid in advance. The sword has killed the one I love. Let it now kill the one I hate.”

  He swung the blade and sliced off the tip of the dragon’s tail. The beast howled in agony, rose to a great height, and came diving down again, furiously beating its wings and lashing its mutilated tail. He looked up and saw the monster hurtling toward him, jaws agape, teeth flashing. It was falling with tremendous force, but Cadmus stood his ground.

  “Now’s the time to test the rhyme,” he thought. He held up the shield so that its bright disk covered his face and torso. He stood rooted to the ground. The dragon dove headfirst toward the polished brass disk and saw a terrible sight—its own reflection in the mirror of the shield. The beast had never seen itself before and did not know it was looking at itself, but thought another monster was attacking. When it spat flame at the shield, it saw the monster facing it spit flame right back. The dragon gasped in horror.

  Now gasping in horror means drawing one’s breath in. And that’s exactly what the dragon did. It drew in a great draft, not of air, but of fire. It inhaled its own flame. Fire entered its body, burning everything inside. Lungs, liver, and heart were burned to a crisp.

  With a choking shriek of agony the dragon fell to the scorched plain. The fire quickly worked itself outward, and, as Cadmus watched, the whole great length of the monster burned with a bright blue flame. The air was filled with bitter smoke. But the fumes were sweet to Cadmus. The fire finally subsided, leaving only a handful of brass scales and ivory teeth.

  The dragon, in its last agony, had scorched and flattened the grass in a great circle.

  “Thank you, Prometheus,” cried Cadmus. “In your rhyme evil saw its face and choked on its own bile. And thank you again for choosing so unlikely a champion and holding to your choice. Thank you, Hephaestus, for sword and shield. The cost was heavy but no more than you warned. And thank you, thank you, beloved goat, for flinging yourself between me and the monster and taking the death that should have been mine.”

  He could say nothing more. He was wracked by loss. He wanted to weep, but could not. His sorrow was too deep for tears. He returned to the body of the goat. Not much was left; the dragon’s final fire had consumed it. He lifted a charred piece of skull and looked into the scorched eye sockets. Abrim with yellow light they had been, fierce with loyalty, smoldering with intelligence. They were charred pits now. Cadmus wept. Where she had lain and begged for death, he stood and wept.

  His tears fell on the charred bones. Flowers sprang—beautiful yellow and black flowers like the first spillings of sunlight on the grass. They were a kind of daisy, a brave, hardy flower, bright and joyous, strong as weeds. We call them black-eyed susans.

  Cadmus stood looking at them. He was weary, battered. He wanted to fling himself full length into that flower bed and sleep there forever. A breeze arose. The flowers swayed and murmured. The murmuring became words: “Do not rest,” whispered the flowers. “Not yet …”

  “Who are you who speak?” asked Cadmus. “My goat? The voice of madness? If so, let me be mad.”

  The flowers whispered again: “I die but shall live in a tale that will be told. Not just in song, but dwelling forever in your magic signs.”

  Then the breeze had fallen; the voices of the flowers had faded; they were almost too faint to hear. Their final words were “Beware the dragon’s teeth.” But the sound was so faint that Cadmus heard it as “Bury the dragon’s teeth.”

  It seemed an odd instruction, but Cadmus could not ignore the last words spoken by the flowers that had sprung from the body of his beloved goat. He stumbled to the heap of teeth and picked up a handful. With his sword he poked holes in the field, made even rows, and one by one buried the teeth as a gardener plants his seeds.

  13

  The Buried Teeth

  These seeds grew with monstrous speed. Spikes poked out of the ground. Then brass pots pushed out; they were not pots, but helmets. The helmets were on heads, and the heads on shoulders. Cadmus watched in wonder as full-size warriors burst from the soil, brushing clods of earth off their gear. The brass armor they wore had been corroded by the damp earth and seemed as green as dragon’s hide.

  The warriors stood in ranks, motionless. Cadmus realized that they were awaiting some word of command. But no one had emerged as their leader. Cadmus hated them at sight, and feared them. They had been spawned by the dragon, and he himself had been tricked into planting the seed from which they had sprung. How? Why? Was this another jape of the Fates? Must his victory contain defeat?

  Cadmus had stepped behind a tree when the helmets had begun to appear so that he could not be seen. He picked up a rock and threw it. The rock struck a helmet. The warrior whirled about and smote the one standing next to him with the haft of his spear. The man who had been hit struck back. In a moment, the whole troop was fighting—striking, slashing, thrusting. Cadmus had never seen such power and grace. They used their weapons not as tools but as natural extensions of their bodies, as a wild animal uses its teeth and claws.

  Then the largest warrior sprang out of the fray and beat his spear against his shield, making a great, masterful noise.

  “Halt!” he roared.<
br />
  The others stopped fighting and stood at attention.

  “Comrades! We must not fight among ourselves. We have been planted here on earth to impose our will upon others. We must begin! We are here to conquer. To sack cities. And kill! Kill! Kill!”

  The dragon-men beat shields with spears, yelling, “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Their faces shone with ferocious glee. Their leader raised his sword and rushed off. They rushed after him.

  Dazed with horror, Cadmus had drifted out from behind his tree. One of the warriors spotted him. Without breaking stride, the soldier made a backhand swipe with his spear, pierced Cadmus’s side, withdrew the spear all in one motion, and raced off.

  The breeze had risen again. The flowers sighed, “Cadmus, Cadmus.”

  He felt a fever pulsing inside of him. He realized that he must finish his magic code, but his strength was going fast. He scrabbled at the tree and peeled off a piece of bark. He dipped a twig into the blood of his wound, and began to draw.

  Pictures flowed into his head—ordinary things, the closest things, things everyone knows. He drew them—water, fish, hand, mouth, field, fence, camel, door, hook. With his blood he drew simplified pictures of these things, each picture standing for the first sound of their names.

  How many sounds were there? Did he have them all? The field was tilting. The trees were spinning. The flowers were silent. How many sounds? Twenty-two. He lacked one. Yes. P-p-p-p. What word began with that sound? He was puckering his mouth. That was it! Of course! Pe, “mouth.” He drew a mouth.

  The sounds were all scrambled. Someone else would have to straighten them out. But he had found them all, every one. Now he could rest, and search for the black goat in the Land Beyond Death. There too, he knew, he would finally find his sister Europa again.

  His eyes closed. He had done what he had to do; he could die now.

  Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, fell into a rage when she learned that one of her fields had been used to grow a crop of dragon-men, spawned by the monster she herself had cursed. When she looked down and saw Cadmus lying dead near the riverbank, and learned that he had killed the dragon, she decided to bless his labors and make them fruitful.

  She cast a healing spell upon the field. Where the blood of Cadmus had soaked into the earth, another crop grew, not of killers, but of clever, gentle creatures who roamed the lands of the Middle Sea basin, teaching the Cadmean alphabet. They were known as Sileni, the wood gods, and wherever they went they trapped language in their net of magic signs. They taught others to read and write so that the bitter lessons of history, the wisdom of Prometheus, and the beauty of the old songs were able to utter themselves anew.

  And when people could read what wiser ones had said, it became more difficult for the dragon-men to prevail.

  THE FURIES

  For MARY EVSLIN

  whose sorceries humanize bears

  Characters

  Monsters

  The Furies

  Three flying hags who serve Hades: Alecto (uh LECK toh), the Strange One; Megaera (meh JEE rah), Dark Memory; and Tisiphone (ti SIFF oh nee), Vengeance

  Gods

  Uranus

  (YOOR uh nuhs)

  The rain god, first King of Heaven, and Father of the Gods

  Cronos

  (KROH nuhs)

  Titan son of Uranus, second King of the Gods

  Rhea

  (REE ah)

  Wife of Cronos, mother of Zeus, earth goddess

  Zeus

  (ZOOS)

  Last King of the Gods

  Hera

  (HEE ruh)

  Wife of Zeus, Queen of the Gods

  Hades

  (HAY deez)

  Brother of Zeus, Ruler of the Dead

  Poseidon

  (poh SY duhn)

  Another brother of Zeus, God of the Sea

  Athena

  (uh THEE nuh)

  Daughter of Zeus, Goddess of Wisdom

  Apollo

  (uh PAHL oh)

  Son of Zeus, new solar deity

  Helios

  (HEE lih ohs)

  A Titan, first sun god

  Dione

  (dy OH nee)

  Former oak goddess

  Circe

  (SUR see)

  Daughter of Helios, demigoddess

  Mortals

  Shepherd, shepherdess

  Guardians of the infant Zeus

  Little Husband

  Husband of Dione

  Salmoneus

  (sal MOH nee uhs)

  King of Aeolis, who pretends to be a god

  Hairy Man

  Bandit of Argos

  Ulysses

  (u LISS eez)

  Greek war chief, King of Ithaca

  Contents

  CHAPTER I

  Trouble in Heaven

  CHAPTER II

  The Furies

  CHAPTER III

  The Angry Titan

  CHAPTER IV

  The Stolen Sun

  CHAPTER V

  The High Council

  CHAPTER VII

  Dione

  CHAPTER VIII

  Sorcery Lessons

  CHAPTER IX

  Salmoneus

  CHAPTER X

  Jealousy

  CHAPTER VI

  Judgment Day

  CHAPTER XI

  Athena

  CHAPTER XII

  Final Enchantments

  1

  Trouble in Heaven

  Helios was the first sun driver, a Titan who guided the fire-maned stallions as they pulled the golden chariot east to west across the blue meadow of the sky, casting daylight on the earth below.

  Now, Cronos and his court Titans were all very vain and haughty, quick to anger and slow to forgive, but Helios, who dwelt amid flame, had the hottest temper of all.

  Down on earth, that new race of creature called human—who understood nothing yet but were amazed and awed by everything—stared in wonder at the daily miracle of the enormous black sky growing pale, then flushing pink. Joy flowered in them as they watched darkness being scattered by sheaves of light. They watched as a golden disk of light trundled over the sky, allowing them to see again, making them warm again. Although informed by nothing but the light itself, they knew that they were seeing one wheel of a great fire chariot called the Sun, and that its charioteer was a god named Helios.

  And so the first prayers of mankind were raised not to Cronos, King of the Gods, but to Helios, the only god they saw, the only one they knew about. And Helios was pleased by these songs of praise rising from earth and by the stone altars loaded with fruit and flowers and joints of meat—all for him.

  “Ho ho!” he chortled to himself. “Cronos may call himself king and strut about Olympus telling us what to do and who is to do it, but it’s me man worships. Me, me, me!”

  So he was very happy in his work. He loved his great sleek fire-maned stallions, loved the golden chariot and his daily ride over the sky, watching the new-made earth and its jeweled seas unreeling beneath him. Riding high, he was able to pick out the most beautiful of the nymphs who dwelt on mountain slope, wood, and stream. Often, he would dive out of his chariot and chase one of them, knowing that his sun stallions would trot about in slow circles until he flew up to the chariot again.

  Once or twice, however, it happened that he spent so much time with a nymph that his horses dipped low to search for him, firing the earth and leaving great scorched places that were later called deserts. And nobody knew how these places came to be until long afterward. Once, while Helios was chasing an oread, or mountain nymph, the horses circled the same peak until it melted inside, blowing its top, spitting flame and red-hot rock. And so, it is told, were volcanoes born.

  Uranus, whose name means “rain,” was the First One, Ruler of Sky and Earth and the new boiling seas—and All Above, Beyond, and Between. He ruled wisely and well, and the lesser gods expected him to be king forever, but his son Cronos thought otherwise. Cronos w
as loud in admiration of his father, pretended utter devotion, and kept singing his praises up to the time that he murdered him.

  Actually, murder isn’t the right word. Gods are immortal. They can be surprised and dismembered by other gods; even so, each piece will hold a life of its own. But Cronos was as cunning as he was cruel. He had the great body of his father chopped into a thousand bloody gobbets and scattered them over the entire surface of the earth and dropped them into every sea.

  Then Cronos announced that because of the tragic and mysterious disappearance of the mighty Uranus, he, Cronos, eldest son, would take the throne until his father chose to reappear. Everyone knew what had happened, if not exactly how, and knew that Uranus would never reappear. But they all feared Cronos and vowed to serve him faithfully.

  So Cronos proclaimed himself king, put on the star-encrusted crown and the gorgeous cloud-wool Judgment Cloak, dyed in all the colors of the sunset, and began his reign. He imposed a stricter order upon the wild new earth and divided the work of controlling nature among the Titans, who were his brothers and sisters. It was at that time that he awarded Helios the important task of driving the sun chariot.

  Although Cronos held absolute and unchallenged power, he was familiar with fear. For he was haunted by a certain memory, which, instead of fading, seemed to grow more vivid as time passed. The memory was of himself holding a bloody sword as he watched his father’s head tumbling in the dust. But the head stopped rolling—stood on its stump of a neck and spoke: