Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (15 page)
Read Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One Online
Authors: Bernard Evslin
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
A Prince, a Hag, and Two Evil Uncles
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 giantsâno, 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 flameâeither 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 loâthose 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.
T
he 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, and 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.
His hard hands smacking the ghosts sounded like a hundred fishwives softening the bodies of newly caught squid by beating them against rocks.
It was one of the saddest sights on earth, or beneath it, but the moon goddess, watching, was no more moved than we are watching cattle graze on their way to becoming beefsteaks.
She waited until Charon had driven the last of the shades across the pier and into the ferryâwatched him dip his enormous hands into the water and begin to row. Watched the boat dwindle and vanish. Then she walked along the shore searching for a shallow place. For she did not wish to enter the black water; she needed a place where the shore shelved gradually so that she might kneel upon dry land and dip her hands into the water.
She did finally find such a place, reached into the river, and took a double handful of mud. The water was black, but the mud was a curious reddish brown, and was warm to the touch, seeming to pulse faintly as she watched it. She knew that whatever she molded would come terribly alive in her hands.
She began to shape the mud, working furiously, dipping into the river for more mud, pulling out great gobs of it as the wild beasts took form in her hands. Wolf, bear, panther, each one perfect of its kind, but three times the normal size. She set them on the riverbank to study them. Although she had not yet breathed final life into her creations, the magic mud had translated itself instantly into muscle, sinew, hot blood. The forms waited only for her to awaken them into full, throbbing life.
She couldn't decide which one to keep; they all looked beautiful to her. “I need only one,” she said to herself. “And each of these magnificent fierce creatures could serve as my instrument of vengeance, when needed. Let's see then, which of these do I prefer? Shall it be the bear? He's wonderfully big, but bears are sleepy in winter, and my beast must be able to serve the year round. How about the wolf? He's superb, and would be fully alert in all seasons. But wait! Wolves hunt deerâvery successfully. A wolf this size might decide to devour the silver-horned stags that draw my moon-chariot. I can't have that. So it will have to be the panther. On the other hand, the great cats are even more frantic for live meat than are the wolves. And the deer family is their favorite prey. No, none of these will do. Back to mud they must go.
“What I need is a beast as fierce as these, and as powerful, but one that will kill only people. Is there such a one?”
Artemis pondered. Suddenly the snouted, red-eyed face of Ares gnawing beef bones floated before her. She laughed with joy. “Of course!” she cried. “A wild boar! It can pierce armor with its long, sharp tusks, trample a warrior to bloody rags beneath its razor hooves. And the only animals it kills are hunting dogs that bring it to bay.”
She pointed her hands at panther, bear, and bull. They lost shape, became mud, a heap of steaming mud on the riverbank. Artemis dug her hands into it and began to work again. She made an enormous wild boar with tusks like ivory spears and hooves like hatchets.
She stood on the bank of the Styx, admiring it. “Now that I've made this magnificent thing, what shall I do with it?” she murmured to herself. “I'm not yet angry enough at anyone to need an instrument of vengeance. I know! I'll set it down in Africa. There among the lions and apes and crocodiles, it will learn to fight and be ready with its deadly skills when I need them.”
She pried open the jaws of the great boar and breathed into it. The mud shape quickened with life. Its red eyes rolled. The goddess leaped onto its back and began to ride it like a horse, urging it into a terrific short-legged gallop, making it go faster and faster. For she was weary of Hades' realm, and wild with eagerness to get back into a drench of sunlight, to breathe air that smelled not of basted sin and ashy tear, but of sea and grass.
2
Give Her to the Mountain
Springtime in Arcadia. Trees were budding, birds singing, flowers opening. Cows were calving; sheep were lambing. It was a happy time; earth and sea rejoiced, and the kindling sky. But all this fertility made King Iasos very uneasy. He summoned his wife, and said: