Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (62 page)

But he never forgot any of the nymphs he had met, for he forgot nothing, and wove each adventure into song.

Hecate hovered invisibly, watching Orpheus, waiting for him to fall deeply in love with someone—she watched as he flitted from blossom to blossom like a bee gathering honey. For all her ferocity, she kept her patience as only a good hunter can. Nevertheless, Hecate realized that if she did not produce results she might fall into disfavor with her moody king as quickly as she had climbed into his good graces.

“This one's not like other mortals,” Hecate thought to herself. “He has a low boiling point, but is slow to commit himself. What I need is expert advice. I'll go to Mount Helicon where poets swarm. I'll find one there who's clever enough to tell me what I need to know, and squeeze some information out of him.”

H
ecate hovered invisibly over the slope of Helicon, watching a straggle of men and youths wandering about picking flowers, mumbling verse, and trying to work up nerve enough to mount the winged horse, Pegasus, who always bucked them off.

Hecate noticed one small man with twisted legs who sat on a rock watching the others, smiling to himself. “That's the one I want,” she thought. Swooping down, she caught him in her claws and carried him up the mountain to a place where no one walked. Becoming visible, she held him in one hand as she pulled the whip from her belt with the other. She drove the stock deep into the ground, then tied its long lash about his ankle, so that he was tethered like a goat.

She was amazed to see that he was still smiling, and more joyfully than ever.

“What's your name?”

“Thallo. And you are Hecate.”

“How do you know?”

“I have dreamed of you. But you are more overwhelming in the flesh. I am delighted to be your captive and beseech you not to release me.”

“Indeed? People do not usually welcome my attentions.”

“More fools they!” cried Thallo.

“Well, little man, you're as clever as you look, aren't you? And I need your counsel.”

“Glad to serve you, Goddess.”

“I have a friend who is very eager to marry off her son, who is a poet.”

“Does the son share his mother's enthusiasm for wedlock?” asked Thallo.

“That's just it. He's fond of girls, but in a general sort of way. He hasn't fixed his fancy on any of them.”

“Well, he's young, you say.”

“Not that young. Plenty old enough to settle down.”

“No, my lady. Poets retain a certain childishness in such matters. That's how we manage to see the world fresh each time. We tend to look upon marriage as a trap, and babies as a burden.”

“Really? I thought you fellows were of passion all compounded. Generous, tender, reckless in the heat of love, ready to dare anything?”

“That's the other side of it,” said Thallo. “And if your friend's son should happen to meet a girl who inspires such passion, then, no doubt, he will make his mother happy by entering wedlock, and his wife's parents equally miserable.”

“Well,” said Hecate, “I don't see why the young fellow hasn't found anyone to kindle his heart. He has met all the most beautiful nymphs of his generation—nereids, naiads, dryads, oreads—one more ravishing than the next.”

“And did any of these gorgeous, sportive creatures hold still long enough to listen to his verse?”

“What do you mean?”

“Any girl who hopes to snare a poet, my Queen, must adore poetry,
his
poetry in particular, or be able to imitate ecstasy while he intones his verse—at least until she has him married tight and fast.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well, it'll help if she's good-looking—with big eyes, and a trick of widening them while she listens, as if she were actually watching the words dance on air.”

“Must she be a brilliant conversationalist?” asked Hecate.

“She'll need only four short phrases: ‘Sing it again' … ‘Don't stop' … ‘Oh, marvelous!' … and the all-purpose ‘Yes, dear.'”

“You mean she can be an imbecile just as long as she's pretty and submissive?”

“Nobody good-looking is quite an imbecile. Beauty is the body's intelligence. And when a brainy cripple tells you this, it has to be true.”

“I'm not convinced,” said Hecate.

“Besides, the poet is a weaver of fantasy. Whatever she lacks he will tell himself he doesn't want. We all invent our lovers, especially when young.”

Hecate smiled at the little man. “You're brilliant, Thallo! If you were a few feet taller, I'd marry you myself.”

“Don't decide against me too hastily, dear Hecate. I might grow on you.”

6

Eurydice

Orpheus came down from the mountains into the lowlands. He wandered from village to village, playing his lyre and singing his songs. Animals followed him as he went; trees pulled themselves out of the earth and hobbled after him. Fishermen came ashore, farmers left their plows. Hordes of people were following him now as he strolled about, playing and singing. Grown men and women, boys and girls. But as time passed and the faces changed, he noted that one face was always the same. It belonged to a young girl with eyes so big, so full of light that they seemed to linger after she left, burning holes in the dusk.

And when Orpheus went into the woods again, and his audience became animals and trees, there she was too, listening. She was very slender, with a shining fall of black hair and huge black eyes. And noon and dusk and under the moon her face seemed to gather all the light there was.

Orpheus took the girl aside and spoke to her. Her name was Eurydice, she told him. But it didn't matter where she had lived, because she would never go back there. Her home would be where he was. She would follow him everywhere, and if he could not love her, she would make no demands, but follow him anyway and listen to him sing, and serve him in any way he wished.

This is the kind of thing any man in any age likes to hear but seldom does, and never for long. A young poet hearing such praise can go absolutely drunk with joy; old ones too. Now, Orpheus had met many nymphs and beautiful young women, but he decided that this was the one he must have, this childish one with her great doelike eyes and murmuring voice and superb taste in verse. And so he married her.

All this time, Hecate hovered but did not strike. It was she who had found Eurydice and realized her possibilities, tutored her through dreams, and then finally guided her into Orpheus's path. Hecate watched them fall in love and set up housekeeping in a thatched hut on the riverbank. The Harpy hovered but did not strike. She wanted Orpheus to live a while with his new bride. She wanted love to sink its hooks deep into his heart.

Then, at last, Hecate decided the time had come. One morning when Eurydice was out picking berries, the Harpy led a savage-tempered bear toward the blackberry bush. The famished beast arose to his enormous height and loomed over the girl. Eurydice stared up in fright.

Then the bear realized that this girl belonged to Orpheus, whose singing pleased him so. His growl changed to a snuffle. He dropped to all fours and shambled away.

Hecate was not pleased. “All the beasts in this place have been corrupted by that silly music,” she said to herself. “I'll have to find something less appreciative. A snake perhaps? Some of them are musical, but they dwell in holes and may not have heard the Orphic songs. I know … a viper! A green viper. Its brain is the size of a pea, and it's tone-deaf besides. And its venom is absolutely deadly.”

Hecate flew to a certain cave and dug out a tangle of green vipers. She plucked one loose and carried it by its tail, flying to the blackberry bush where Eurydice was still picking. The girl had eaten a berry for every one she put in the basket, and her lips were stained blue.

Hecate dropped the snake at the girl's feet. The viper, furious at being handled in such a way, reared its head and struck at the nearest living thing—which was Eurydice. It sank its teeth into her taut, scratched leg, and shot its poison. The girl stiffened and fell.

Orpheus came home and found the house empty. He waited, but Eurydice did not return. He went looking for her. He ran through the woods, searching, calling. But he could not find her. Then, Hecate perched in a tree over the fallen Eurydice and raised her voice, imitating the girl. Orpheus rushed toward the sound.

He saw something on the ground. He knelt. He refused to believe what he saw. This could not be. She couldn't be lying there like that, arms and legs still, eyes quenched. That slender face, blue smeared, was the face of a child eating berries. Death did not suit her, not at all. It could not be and must not be. It was unacceptable. An enormous error had been made, an unbearable discord at the very core of things.

He would have to go tune the world again, or it would have no place for him. He would go down to Tartarus to reclaim his wife's shade and stuff it back into her unblemished body. Then he would take her to the little house near the river.

Murmuring, “I'll be back soon,” Orpheus kissed her cold brow and rushed off. He didn't know where Avernus was, but knew he would find it. In the Land Beyond Death, he would seek the ghost of his murdered bride.

7

The Healer

But there was one who caused Hades more trouble even than Orpheus; he was Asclepius, the greatest doctor who ever lived. His father was Apollo, the sun god, also God of Music and Medicine. His mother had been a Lapith princess, named Coronis, who hated Apollo because he had abducted her on her wedding night. She ran away from Apollo and rejoined her young husband—saddening the sun god, and, what was worse, enraging his twin sister, Artemis, Goddess of the Moon. Artemis, although only 15 minutes older than her brother, had always considered herself his protector. She sped to Arcadia where the young couple had fled and slew them with her silver arrows.

Asclepius was born during his mother's death throes. But, destined for the healing arts, he had begun his study of anatomy while still in the womb. And continued to watch the events of his own birth with such intense concentration that he uttered no cry—making his midwife think that he had been born dead.

Hermes, who had always been the kindliest god, heard about the incredibly gifted child, who was his own nephew. He took charge of the babe and gave him to the Centaurs to raise. These hill dwellers, the fabled pony-spooks of Thessaly, knew more about herbs, poisonous and benign, than any other living creatures. And they taught the boy all they knew.

Asclepius developed other skills as well. He dosed and splinted, presided over the birth of the Centaur colts, and began to practice battlefield surgery at a very early age. There was plenty of need for this; his adopted tribe was quarrelsome and incredibly rash, always charging out of the hills to fight with the Lapiths of the plain—although vastly outnumbered.

After learning all he could, Asclepius left the Centaurs and began to wander the land, patching broken bodies wherever he found them.

As his talent ripened, he found himself calling on all the powers he had inherited from his father. Sunlight and music, he found, were the best medicines. He forbade his patients to lie in the dark, thinking sad thoughts, but dragged their pallets outside so that the brilliant sunlight could soak into them. Founding his own hospital, a collection of wicker huts set in a large garden on the bank of a river, he filled it with music. At all hours, the patients could hear the natural music of wind-song and birdcall; at certain hours, the flute and lyre, and voices singing. For Asclepius hired musicians, and recruited men and women with beautiful voices, and taught them to chant the praise-songs of Orpheus at sunrise and sunset and blazing noon.

Legends, of course, sprang up about the young doctor. It was said that he had been given a set of scalpels by his uncle Hephaestus, the smith god. It was said that he had stolen a skein of the vital thread used by his ancient cousins, the Fates, and that with such magically sharp knives and magically strong thread could cut someone open, whisk out a diseased organ, and sew the incision up faster than a fisherman could shuck an oyster.

Asclepius laughed when he heard these tales, but did not encourage them. He disliked cutting, and did so only when all else failed.

8

The Strangler

By this time, the song Orpheus was singing in the Land Beyond Death had begun to enter the four infernal rivers and on through underground streams to the rivers of earth. Reeds that grew upon the river banks soaked this song up through their roots. And when the wind moved among them, the reeds uttered the song anew. People, hearing it, learned for the first time what was happening to those who had died. Whoever learned about the torments of hell told others; and the dreadful news spread. The dead were not resting in peace, but were being tormented by demons.

So death was feared more than ever. Men and women, no matter how old, how feeble, how ill, clung desperately to the last flicker of life. And the young doctor, Asclepius, found himself working all day and most of the night. The very old, who were now refusing to die, prevented him from spending enough time among the young. This development, he felt, struck at the very core of his work; for more than any other physician, he had been able to save the lives of men and women in their prime, youths, and a multitude of children.

Using an enormous range of skills to salvage those felled by war or accident, he had snatched them from the very brink of death and restored them to health and beauty and the enjoyment of life.

But there were only so many hours to the day and to the night, and time spent by the bedside of a terrified oldster meant that some young patient, lacking medical attention, would slip into death and be handed over to the demons.

Asclepius, though, was young and strong; he trained himself to sleep less and less. So he was able to treat all who needed him, and save so many lives that Hades took note. He summoned Hecate.