The Forest of Forever (9 page)

“Will he?” The child looked up at him with astonishment. He was ugly, almost monkeylike in his small brown leanness. In the court of Knossos, such ugliness might have repelled him. Not now. Not here. “I thought it was only the great lords like you he watched over.”

“It’s everyone.” He spoke with assurance, but until that moment had never considered if peasants, like kings and courtiers, went to the Underworld. Was there room for them? Did they continue to serve their earthly masters?

“And one of my men will stay with you till we come back, and then we will find a home for you closer to a town, where you will be safe.”

The child clung to him with the tenacity of the animal he resembled. Aeacus had to disengage his fingers, gently but firmly, and hand him to one of his men. He would have liked to stay in the ruined house, bury the parents with the proper services (wherever their ghosts might roam), feed the child, and tell him stories of friendly dolphins and dog-headed fish. When I return to the court, he told himself, I will wed and have a child. Many children. Perhaps it was for them I have sighed, for my unborn children. The tree had whispered of—something.

* * * *

An hour’s march from where he had left the boy, in the midst of a rocky, pitted meadow, he met the Achaeans. The pits disgorged warriors, the rocks came to life, and the little Cretans found themselves beleaguered before they could draw their daggers.

Draw them they did at last, and then it was an equal fight. Like blue monkeys beset by dogs, they fought the big-bodied, blond intruders, nimbly sidestepping their sword thrusts, thrusting with their own daggers, until a single Achaean limped from the field, and Aeacus stood alone among his fallen men, too tired to give chase, scarcely strong enough to support his own weight, wounded—if not to death—at least to a dazed benumbment.

He looked at his slain friends in the midst of the field and looked around him dazedly and saw that he was not far from two great cliffs with a forest narrowed between them like a wedge. He caught the healing fragrance of bark and oak leaves and heard the faint rustling of water. Perhaps he could find a stream and bathe his wounds and return to bury his friends. Could he walk so far?

Dimly he recognized the forest. The Country of the Beasts, where no Cretan ventured, half from fear and half from remembering a covenant made before the beginning of recorded time, before there had been any scribes to scratch history on clay tablets, that this one forest belonged inviolably and eternally to the Beasts.

Still, the trees whispered to him: cone-shaped cypresses, smoothed and sculptured as if by the nimble fingers of the Great Mother, and tumultuous oaks whose branches seemed little jungles. “You may break the covenant,” they seemed to say. “Enter our deepest shadows and learn our mysteries and yes, our terrors, but even terror can be beautiful.”

The sun gaped like a wound; the limbs were succoring hands which comforted and promised to heal even while they threatened to hold.

He stumbled into the forest.

He lay on the ground, eyes closed, poised between sleep and waking. He heard the rustle of bushes. Painfully he opened his eyes and saw a young boy, no, a young bull. No, a brawny bull-boy with silken red hair punctuated by horns. He tried to raise his hand. The boy stepped back from him with evident alarm.

“I can’t get up,” Aeacus said. He lay in his own blood and wondered with more curiosity than fear if he were going to die. The boy circled him, approached, confirmed his helplessness, and spoke in a deep but musical Cretan.

“Shall I help you up?”

Aeacus deliberated. “I don’t know. I might start to bleed again. Perhaps you could first bind my wounds.”

“Let
me
bind your wounds.”

She had come so quietly that Aeacus and evidently the Minotaur boy (for that seemed to be his race) had not even heard her approach. She had come through the trees, or out of a tree, it was hard to say. She was taller than Cretan ladies and she wore, in place of their bell-shaped skirts and open bodices, a loose flowing gown the color of leaves and a necklace of orange berries. Her hair was green like her gown, swept above her head in a knot, and held by a silver pin in the shape of a grasshopper. Her ears, thus revealed, were delicately pointed. The boy looked at her with surprise and doubt.

“We can take him to my house,” he said.

“Mine is closer, Eunostos. But first I must clean his wounds.” She knelt beside him and touched damp moss to a cut on his shoulder. The relief was immediate, but whether from the moss or the administering hand, he could not be sure.

“And what shall
I
do?” asked the Minotaur boy, seemingly aggrieved at being replaced as the rescuer of this wounded stranger. Aeacus liked him.

“After he has rested,” she said, “you shall help me carry him to my house. We shall make a litter from sticks and vines and carry him as hunters carry a stag, though much more gently, of course.”

“What is your name?” Aeacus asked.

“I am Kora, the Dryad.”

“And where is your house?”

“In a tree. Where else?” she laughed.

Aeacus closed his eyes, assured of his rescue and unashamed of his helplessness, since there is nothing more welcome to helpful people than those who need to be helped. It was not long until the girl and the Minotaur boy had fashioned the litter and his body swayed to their gliding steps as they carried him into the forest, into the Country of the Beasts.

In spite of his wounds, he did not sigh.

CHAPTER IX

IN EUNOSTOS’s absence, I greeted his guests and tried to put them at ease. Here was Partridge, heading at once for the skin of fermented onion juice and avoiding the other guests with the zeal of one whose conversation was limited to “huh” and “can’t” and “don’t know.” Here was Bion, hovering at the door as though he were not sure of his right to mingle with the higher orders of Beast; after all, there were those who considered him a mere domestic. I took him at once to the largest table and soon he was clutching a loaf of wheaten bread between his forelegs and happily bobbing his head. And Moschus—surely I would have trouble with Moschus, who always arrived drunk and began his amorous advances with his salutations. Tonight he was drunker than usual and accompanied by an uninvited guest, no friend of Eunostos, a frowsy young Dryad of about fifty.

“There are more birds on the limb than one,” he smirked to me, proceeded to fling a large beerskin over his shoulder, and retired with his friend to the garden.

“Yes, cuckoos,” I called after him.

There were Centaur boys who clamored to see Eunostos’s workshop, though they could not climb his ladder and had to content themselves with peering into the shadows at the workbench, the tools, a chair without legs, the embryo of a table. There were Bears of Artemis who had to be coaxed out of corners with compliments on how artistically they had strung the black-eyed Susans, and—But why bore you with a list of the guests? Eunostos had innumerable friends; he had only excluded Panisci (except for Partridge) and Thriae.

But all the time I was worrying about Eunostos and waiting for him to return, and feeling that the Cretan could not have chosen a worse day in the year to invade the forest, even if he was wounded, and Chiron ought to exile him as soon as he had recovered his strength.

Just about dusk, Eunostos walked in the door as if he had forgotten it was his own wedding day, looking puzzled, troubled, and solitary.

But of course everyone hailed him as the happy bridegroom and in the next breath wanted to know about the Cretan. Some had glimpsed him but no one had dared to speak to him. Being a Man, he was presumed to be dangerous.

“Weren’t you scared, Eunostos?”

“Is it true he doesn’t have horns or hooves or fur or
anything?”

“Did he soft-talk you and then try to slip a knife between your ribs?”

“He was badly hurt,” said Eunostos. “Kora took him to her house to nurse his wounds.” The guests remained quiet, waiting for details; waiting in vain.

“But the wedding,” I cried at last. “It’s time for us to go and summon the bride from her tree!”

“She said we were to go on with the feasting without her. Pretend it was a festival to the Great Mother or something. The wedding will have to wait a day or two. Otherwise, the Cretan may die.”

There was a babble of voices. No bride? No wedding? Kora nursing a
Man?

“Shut up and don’t spoil the party,” Moschus whinnied from the garden. “When Kora’s ready, we’ll have another feast at my house.” (Moschus had never been known to give—or miss—a feast.)

At the first chance, I led Eunostos into the flower garden (Moschus and his friend were sprawled among the vegetables). He had a curious look about him. An old look in young eyes.

“What is he like, this Cretan?”

“A little fellow, but manly. There were wounds all over him but he never complained once. I liked him.”

“What did he
look
like, Eunostos?”

“Like a prince, I’d say. His loincloth was purple, with a silver clasp on the belt. And his face—it was somehow royal.”

“Eunostos, see to your guests, will you? I’ve drunk enough and talked enough for a year. My ankles are killing me.” I left him standing with his hand on Bion’s head.

But I did not return to my tree, I went to Kora’s tree. Myrrha was downstairs fondling the bridal robe, bright as a field of goldenrod, in which she had married her Centaur and which she had taken out of a cedar chest and freshened with myrrh for Kora. She started talking at once.

“I told the girl to go ahead and get married. That I would look after the young Man. But now, you would think she’s the only Dryad in the Country who knows how to treat a wound. And she even sent me down here! Said he needed to sleep and mustn’t be disturbed by female chatter. That from my own daughter.”

“Well, he’s going to hear a little female chatter now,” I said, charging up the stairs in spite of Myrrha’s protest.

He was lying on Kora’s couch, faintly smiling, eyes closed; sleeping comfortably but needing his sleep, from the look of his wounds. Still, they were obviously not going to kill him, and Myrrha, for all of her frivolity, knew the right remedies and could have been left to nurse him even at the price of missing her daughter’s wedding.

Kora was sitting on the floor beside the couch. She had not begun to dress for the wedding; she was wearing a simple brown tunic, caught at the waist with a sash of grapevine, and her hair for once needed a comb. She saw me and put a finger to her lips. I seized her hand and pulled her after me into the little hall at the head of the stairs. A single window, hardly large enough for a woodpecker to confuse with his nest, admitted a slender beam of moonlight.

“I’m not going to wake your precious friend,” I said, “but I am going to give you a piece of my mind. Such a thing to tell your groom! To have the wedding feast without you! If you don’t trust your mother to look after this interloper, what about me? I was mixing potions and simples long before you were born, and I have a lighter touch than you might suppose from the size of my hands. You can still join Eunostos and have the wedding.”

“No.” That was all. Silent Kora.

“No what? I think you had better qualify that answer.”

“I found him, Zoe. I brought him home. He’s my responsibility.”

“I thought we were talking about Eunostos. As for your Cretan, nonsense. Partridge found him first anyway. Does that make him Partridge’s responsibility? He’s lucky to find anyone to look after him since he broke the covenant.”

“But I called him here.”

I felt as if the fire in my brazier had died on a bleak winter night. “You mean—”

“In one of the dreams I told you about, there was a young Cretan. I tried to call out to him. I didn’t think he heard. But he did. And came. And when he lay wounded in the forest,
he
called to me.”

“Did he say that?”

“He doesn’t need to say it.”

I seized her shoulders and shook her as if she were a naughty child who had robbed a swallow’s nest. “You’d better think what you’re going to tell Eunostos.”

* * * *

Chiron had come and, finding no bride to marry, returned to his compound with injured dignity. The Bears of Artemis had long since retired to their hollow logs and bed. Moschus, his new conquest caught in a tangle of arms and legs which might charitably be called an embrace, was snoring among the vegetables. Partridge, rotund with onion juice, drowsed under one of the tables. Bion was gathering fallen scraps to hoard in his workshop.

Eunostos scratched Bion’s head. “You’ll look after things while I go to see Kora, won’t you, old friend?” He was taking her a basket of grapes.

Bion’s look was questioning: shall I come too and carry the basket?

“No, I’d better go alone. Too many of us might disturb the Cretan.” He looked behind him at the fallen garlands, the swaying lanterns which lit only sleep, the revelers who had reveled without a bride. I won’t come back until I come with Kora, he thought.

It was early morning when he arrived at Kora’s tree. Myrrha, who had just entertained and dismissed a Centaur on his way home from the feast, met him with a sleepy greeting.

“Kora sat up all night with the Cretan. She’s still awake and you can go right up to her room.”

He found that she had propped Aeacus’s head on a cushion and was feeding him a warm posset of fennel leaves steeped in sparrow broth. She and Aeacus turned to Eunostos when he entered the room. Aeacus smiled. There was a gash in his left leg which Kora had dressed with moss, and several scars on his chest, and one above his right eye. He must have been in pain but you would not have known from his smile.

“It’s the Minotaur boy,” he cried. “I’ve wanted to thank you but I’ve been asleep.” He started to rise from the couch, but Kora pushed him back against the cushion.

“I brought you some grapes,” said Eunostos to Kora, then to her guest. “For you too, sir.”

She stood above the couch like a warm green flame; her cheeks were flushed and her hair, usually swept above her head, tumbled over her shoulders in a sweet abandonment. Strangely, she was crying. No sobs shook her body, but tears streamed down her cheeks. She was radiance troubled with shadows.

She may be crying for the Cretan, Eunostos told himself, and looked at Aeacus to see if his condition had worsened since they had found him in the forest. But he looked much better than he had the previous day; he was clearly improving, in spite of his multiple wounds, and enjoying good spirits, except that he too saw Kora’s tears and his smile became astonishment and then dismay. He caught and pressed her hand and she gripped his fingers with a frantic yearning. And then Eunostos knew that she was not crying for Aeacus but for him, because she had found her dream.

He dropped the basket of grapes and stumbled down the stairs.

“Eunostos,” Myrrha greeted him as he flung aside the curtain in the door. “You hardly spoke on your way up. Isn’t he ‘a handsome young man? Eunostos—”

* * * *

When I left Kora’s tree, I did not return to Eunostos’s wedding party. How could I tell the groom that his bride had forsaken him for a Man? Kora must tell him; Kora must make her peace with him. I returned to my tree and tried to sleep. I alternated between tossing on my couch and walking to a window to look at the moondusted oak trees, Kora’s faintly visible at some distance, and the field of flowers where Eunostos had written his poems and dreamed of a Dryad to love him.

Then, the sun was a faint presentiment behind the trees, and a creeping of yellow back into the flowers, and belated sleep for me.

Someone touched my shoulder. “Zoe.”

“Go away. I just got to sleep.”

“Zoe, please!”

“Eunostos!”

He fell to his knees and buried his head in my bosom. I ran my hand through his mane. “You’ve come from Kora.”

“Yes.”

“And she told you.”

“What am I to do, Aunt Zoe?”

“Wait, my dear.” I had no wisdom for him; only platitudes; only a tenderness which welled into my heart like hot water into a Cretan bath, wounding even while it warmed.

“For what?”

“Another Kora. A worthier Kora.”

“I’m never going to love again.”

“Everyone does. If they let themselves.”

“You do, Aunt Zoe, but you’re different from me. You can fall out of love.”

“I don’t fall out of love, I just add one love onto another and keep them all, and so will you.”

“No,” he said. “There’s only Kora.”

How could I tell him that what he felt for her was as sharply hurtful as the thrust of a Thriae spear but not beyond healing? The Kora he loved lived only in his poems; it was his misfortune that he expected her soul to equal her beauty. Her soul was not unbeautiful, but being young had not had time to match her face.

“We’ll see, my dear. Meanwhile, do you want to stay with your Aunt Zoe awhile? You don’t have to go back to that lonely house yet. Bion and I will clean it for you and have it waiting.”

“I’d better go back. It’s all I’ve got.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “you have more than you think,” but he had already left the room, and I heard my ladder sagging under his weight, and the thump of his hooves on the ground, and the slow, sad steps toward his house.

No one has ever seen me cry. I choose my times.

Three days had passed. Eunostos sat at his workbench with a saw in his hand. But the saw was idle, the hand did not move, and the chair which he had begun before the proposed wedding remained a mere beginning. Bion prodded him with a feeler. It was Partridge who had brought him material for the chair as a wedding gift: tanned oxhide to be stretched across a framework of willow rods. It was Bion who had brought him the tools. Partridge had gone in search of his dinner, since Eunostos would not allow him to graze in his garden, but Bion had remained to keep him company. Eunostos stroked his head and never noticed that his friend was too miserable to wave his antennae.

* * * *

Someone called his name. Someone was wandering in his garden and looking for him, but did not seem to know the location of the workshop, whose entrance was hidden by a blackberry thicket to discourage Panisci or Thriae. He had better confront his visitor before his roses were trampled.

He climbed the earthen staircase and stepped into the sunshine. It was so bright, after the pale lanterns of his workshop, that he blinked, and only then did he recognize the visitor.

Aeacus.

“I thought you were wounded,” he growled.

“I was—I still am. This is my first day out of the tree. I wanted to talk to you.”

At the sight of his limp, Eunostos stifled an urge to butt him. He did not want to talk to Aeacus. He did not want to look at his kindly smile, at the kind violet eyes. He wished that Aeacus had looked smug and condescending, or arrogant and boastful, and then he might have butted him in spite of the limp.

But Aeacus breathed heavily and leaned his weight on a trellis where wild roses were twining tentative feelers.

“You’re about to knock down my trellis. Kora wouldn’t like that. She says roses have souls.”

“Forgive me. Kora should know.” His pain was evident when he tried to stand without support. The wound in his leg had hardly begun to heal.

Eunostos pointed toward his house. “There are chairs inside.”

“It looks like a crown of bamboo. Light and airy and graceful. Did you build it yourself?”

“Yes, but the Centaurs brought me the bamboo.”

They sat facing each other, silent, and Aeacus lost his smile. He looked sad and perplexed, though his bronzed little body glittered in his murex-purple loincloth, with its silver clasp in the shape of a halcyon bird.