The Forest of Forever (1987)

by Thomas Burnett Swann

  A second child, Icarus, had been born to Kora less than a year after the birth of Thea. Eunostos had asked to adopt him and, being refused, came even more frequently to visit at her tree. Kora’s beauty was undiminished but different. There was a greater fullness to her body; her alabaster cheeks were faintly flushed, like roses reflected in snow. If mystery had gone from her, even for Aeacus, familiarity had given her a becoming softness, and she seemed indistinguishable from loom and cradle and brazier. As for Aeacus, he kept his own counsel. He still hunted with Eunostos, though not so often as in the early days. If he loved the maternal Kora less than he had loved the maiden, at least he was unfailingly courteous to her, and no one could question his love for his children, especially Thea, whom he adored with the adoration which he had once reserved for her mother. But his walks in the forest had become a frequent occurrence and I, for one, wished that one day he would keep on walking until he reached Knossos.

  It was morning. Eunostos sat with Kora on the porch. Icarus and Thea lay side by side in a large cradle, a product of Eunostos’s workshop. Eunostos was talking; at the same time he was gently rocking the cradle with his hoof and watching the babies with the corner of his eye. Icarus was gurgling happily, plump as a robin, but Thea was looking uncomfortable, if not quite disgruntled.

  Eunostos was eating raisins in large handfuls and when Kora turned her head, he would slip a few to Icarus, who was not supposed to eat them, said Kora.

  But Eunostos knew better, since his own mother had fed him raisins as soon as he was weaned. Thea, on the other hand, grimaced whenever he made her an offer.

  “The Centaurs destroyed Phlebas’s lodge yesterday,” he said, sharing some news brought to him by Partridge. “They rowed out in a raft and threw torches onto the roof before the Panisci could get out their slingshots. Of course the lodge burned in a few minutes. All the Goat Boys and their Girls escaped, as the Centaurs intended, but they’ll have to find a new place to keep their stolen goods now.”

  “It’s high time,” said Kora. “It was the dirtiest place you can imagine.”

  “I can imagine. I know Partridge,” said Eunostos, “though,” he hurried to add, “his dirt is honest.”

  Aeacus walked onto the porch in noiseless sandals. “I’m going to call on Chiron,” he said without explanation. He was not rude; he was never rude. But there was something a little strained about his smile. Surely he isn’t jealous of me after all this time, Eunostos thought. Perhaps he is just homesick for Knossos.

  “Would you like to take Thea with you?” Kora asked.

  “You know she’s afraid of the forest.”

  “But she wouldn’t be with you. At least not after the first few times. Do you realize she’s never been further than Zoe’s house in two years?”

  “She’s safer where she is.” It was not that Aeacus considered her a burden who would spoil his walk. In the house, they were inseparable. It was almost as if he did not want her to know and love the forest.

  He lifted her out of the cradle and laid her over his shoulder and patted her. She almost never laughed, but she seized him around the neck and hugged him, and looked displeased when she was returned to the cradle. Eunostos felt a lingering pang. Scarcely a month ago, she had come to him as soon as to her father, but all of a sudden she had begun to seem frightened of him. “Was it something I did?” he asked me. “It’s only a phase,” I reassured him, but I had a hunch that Aeacus, in his smooth Cretan way, had somehow turned her against Eunostos. Perhaps he had told her a story about a demon with horns and a tail and a red mane. At any rate, Icarus hugged Eunostos as often as he had the chance and clearly preferred him to his father. I wondered how soon Aeacus would start to tell him stories.

  “Good-bye, little Thea,” Aeacus said. “Rest well while I’m gone.” Then, with a pat to Icarus’s head and a kiss on Thea’s cheek, and no farewell at all for Eunostos, he reentered the house to descend the ladder and waved to Kora from the ground. It’s because he’s so used to me, Eunostos told himself. I’ve become like a piece of furniture to him.

  “Kora,” said Eunostos suddenly. “Thea is nearly two, and she’s never seen my house. Do you realize that every time I invited her, Aeacus thought of a reason why she should stay at home? For that matter, you and Icarus have stayed at home too much lately, too. If you aren’t careful, you’ll turn into a loom.”

  “I don’t think Aeacus would like me to bring her,” she said hesitantly.

  “Well, why not? I’m Zeus-father to both children, and if I don’t have a right to entertain them, I don’t know who does. Remember, I built a special room for them. There are still toys in it—the ones I haven’t brought over here.”

  “Aeacus seems to think that something might happen to Thea in the forest. He keeps bringing up the time I was kidnapped by Phlebas and sold to Saffron.”

  “Saffron is dead and Phlebas was so frightened by Chiron that I don’t think he’s much of a threat. Besides, there’s some kind of danger everywhere, even here. Your tree might catch on fire.”

  “All right, we’ll go!” she said with the sudden enthusiasm of someone about to be slightly mischievous. “We’ll have a real outing. Which baby do you want to carry?”

  “Icarus.”

  “Shame on you, Eunostos. You’re partial.”

  “I love them the same,” he said (and he did—well, almost—except that he was a little frightened of Thea since her estrangement from him). “But Icarus is easier to entertain. I can talk Beast to Beast with him. He understands me, you know, even if he can’t answer. Though he did call me ‘Zeus-father’ yesterday.”

  “Eunostos, he was only gurgling! He can’t even say ‘mother’ yet.”

  ‘Well, he can say ‘Zeus-father.’ I distinctly heard him. Anyway, he’s too heavy for you to carry.”

  “Empty the arrows out of Aeacus’s quiver and bring it along. Icarus likes to ride in it.”

  They set off together for Eunostos’s house, with Icarus and quiver strapped to Eunostos’s back, and Thea in her mother’s arms. Icarus was so excited by the journey that he almost squirmed out of the quiver; he kept up a constant happy gurgle which Eunostos insisted contained several “Zeus-father’s.” Thea, however, began to look around her apprehensively the moment they left the tree and, when a Bear Girl scampered across their path, she set up a howl which she steadily increased until they reached Eunostos’s stump. You would have thought that she was one of those superfluous girl-babies which the Achaeans abandon to the wolves. Only when she saw the inviting walls of bark, green with ivy and entered by a door like a big smile, did she subside, and once within the walls she managed a faint coo, which Eunostos dared to hope was directed to him. If I could bring her here often enough, he thought, she would stop being afraid of me.

  “Oughtn’t you to latch the gate behind us?” Kora asked.

  “Oh, no, some of my friends might come to pick vegetables. I give them the run of the garden.”

  To roses and columbine he had added forget-me-nots, violets, and hyacinths; and his fruits and vegetables now included carrots, radishes, squashes, gourds, and even a grapevine with several succulent bunches. He had also planted three olive trees which eventually, he hoped, would supply him with oil. He had built an olive press in his workshop.

  “One of these days you’ll be completely self-sufficient,” said Kora with admiration. “You’ll grow and make everything you need. Eunostos, I’m proud of you.”

  “Three years ago, you said that carpentry wasn’t very poetic,” Eunostos reminded her.

  “That was three years ago. Now I can see poetry in a well-made chair.”

  “I wish—” he began. But no, he must not express or even entertain such wishes. “Come into the house, Kora.”

  Icarus had visited the Zeus-father room on several occasions and he crawled at once to the toy glider, which he had already battered—broken a wing, bent the tail—but which remained his favorite toy. Thea, who could walk for short distances, headed
for a doll of terra cotta, a little girl with round painted eyes and smiling mouth, who looked like a happy Thea. The resemblance was no accident; Eunostos had used her for his model. She sat in a corner and cradled the doll in her arms and looked at him for the first time in a month as if his horns were friendly instead of frightening.

  With the children thus occupied, Eunostos invited Kora to walk into the garden. It never occurred to him that there might be danger in his own house.

  “I want to ask you about one of my rose bushes.” He led her among the flowers and indicated a particularly woebegone bush. “I water it every day and can’t understand what’s wrong.”

  “She isn’t eating properly. You can get some potash from the Centaurs. To roses, it’s what bread is to you and me.”

  “I knew you’d know. That’s just what I’ll do.”

  They strolled from the roses to the workshop and climbed down the ladder to greet Bion, who was polishing a large amethyst. He greeted them with a wave of his feelers but, dedicated worker that he was, never stopped the rapid swish-swish of his forelegs.

  “We’d better get back to the children,” said Kora. “Thea might get scared.”

  As they emerged from the workshop, they heard a whispering—not the children’s—from the house.

  They broke into a run.

  “It’s only a Bear Girl,” said Eunostos with relief. “They’re very gentle with children.”

  The Girl was cradling Thea in her arms and talking to her. She looked up at them, startled, and then she smiled, no more than a child herself. Her smile was engaging, but her fur was in need of a comb.

  Kora darted across the room and snatched her daughter as if from the jaws of a Hydra. Eunostos was about to defend the Girl, poor thing. The Bears of Artemis were always welcome at his house and free to pick his grapes. Often they came in his absence and left him pails of blackberries.

  “It’s one of Phlebas’s Girls,” explained Kora. “She’s spruced herself a bit but I still recognize her after three years. You’d better see if anything is stolen.”

  Quick as a rabbit, the Girl shot out of the door. There was nothing in her paws and it seemed pointless to chase her, since she wore no garments in which to conceal any loot.

  “Well, she would have stolen if we hadn’t caught her,” Kora said.

  Eunostos was not sure. “I have an idea that with the lodge burned down, she just got homesick for her old way of life in the log village. She couldn’t go back there—Phlebas’s Girls are outlawed, you know—so she came here instead and found a baby and felt maternal.”

  “If she’s the one I remember, she has a baby of her own, and it’s a horrid little thief.”

  “Well, no harm done,” he said. “But I expect we had better head back for your house.”

  They had hardly begun their walk, however, when they saw that Thea was not just quiet, she had fallen asleep, and she never slept during the day, least of all when she was being carried through the forest and had an excuse to wail. Furthermore, her face was flushed as if she had lain in the sun or caught a fever.

  When they reached Kora’s house, she had not so much as flickered her eyelids.

  Aeacus was waiting at the head of the stairs in the trunk. He greeted them with his customary noncommittal smile and Eunostos wished for a scowl. It was what he deserved, he felt, for taking the children into the forest without their father’s permission.

  “Thea seems to be sick,” he said quickly, to save Kora from having to make the confession.

  Aeacus took Thea out of Kora’s arms and hurried her onto the porch and into the cradle. He fell to his knees and peered anxiously at her face. Then he placed his hand on her forehead.

  “She’s not hot. Are you sure she’s sick?” he asked, looking more puzzled than angry. “She seems to be sleeping quite peacefully.” In fact, to judge by her smile, she seemed to be having a euphoric dream.

  “We can’t wake her up,” said Kora.

  Puzzlement became alarm. “Eunostos, get Zoe.”

  Minutes later I too was kneeling beside the bed and since I have acquired certain medical skills through my long friendship with Chiron, I recognized the symptoms. In a way, Aeacus was right. She was not sick, she was drugged.

  “Where has she been?” I asked. Eunostos told me about the outing and the Bear of Artemis he had found in his house.

  “One of Phlebas’s Girls, you say. Do you know what they do when they want their own babies to stop crying? They drug them. They give them a bit of weed to chew, or else they brew some in hot milk.”

  “But why would the Girl drug Thea?” Kora cried. “Was she going to kidnap her?”

  “I don’t think so. I think she probably came to steal from Eunostos. She had lost everything when the lodge burned down. She had heard how he leaves his gate unlocked and she just walked in, hoping to find him gone. She probably heard him with Kora and Bion down in the workshop but hoped she could come and loot and go before he came out. In the house, she found Thea, who was about to cry and give her away. So she quieted her with some weed. Then Eunostos and Kora surprised her and she pretended she was just rocking the baby in her arms.”

  “Will she be all right?” Aeacus demanded.

  “Oh, yes, though she may act a little strange when she wakes up.”

  Thea’s strangeness took the form of hilarity. She woke up giggling and giggled for almost an hour. Then she demanded dinner, ate like a hawk instead of a sparrow, and fell into a natural sleep. It had not, after all, been a tragedy, merely a mishap with certain amusing aspects. At least, that was how Eunostos saw the incident, and I had to nudge him when he started to suggest that they give Thea some weed every day. Kora sat on the floor rocking Thea’s cradle and looked up at Aeacus with a smile as if to ask his forgiveness, but—at the same time—to say, It wasn’t so bad after all, was it?

  Aeacus did not return her smile.

  “Thank you for coming, Zoe,” he said, and then to Eunostos he said some words which were all the more terrible for being spoken with measured politeness and with an impassive face.

  “Eunostos, you’re not to come back for awhile.”

  Kora jumped to her feet. “But what has he done? He just wanted our children to see their toys. You ought to thank him!”

  “For taking my daughter into the forest where she might have been killed?”

  “But she’s not even hurt.”

  “She might have been, though.”

  For once, Kora stood up to him. “Our daughter is a Dryad. She lives in a forest. She needs to get to know her own country. Do you think she can spend five hundred years in this tree?”

  “No,” he said. “I do not.”

  His words were cruelly prophetic.

  CHAPTER XII

  “ZOE!”

  I muffled my ear with the corner of a wolfskin. It was early morning and I had scarcely fallen asleep after the departure of Moschus; wineskins littered the floor and wine cobwebbed my thoughts.

  “Zoe, will you lower the ladder?”

  I recognized Kora’s voice. Anyone except Kora or Eunostos I would have ignored. I dragged myself from my womb of coverlets and staggered to the door.

  “Yes, dear?” I felt like a Cretan feigning a smile when he wanted to frown.

  “May I come up?”

  She was laden with both of her children, Thea in her arms, Icarus in the quiver strapped to her back. She wore a russet gown embroidered with green clover leaves, and her smile was as radiant and natural as mine was forced.

  I lowered the ladder; what is more, I forced myself to descend, rung after painful rung, and lift Thea from her arms. I felt my years when that little bud of a girl seemed as heavy as Icarus. Inside the house I hastily returned Thea to her mother and sprawled full-length on the couch. For once, Kora would have to guide the conversation. I hardly had energy to listen—until I heard her announcement.

  “I’m going to visit Eunostos,” she said as if such visits were a daily occurrence. “Sin
ce I can’t carry both children all the way, I wondered if I could leave Thea with you.”

  “Do you think it’s wise to call on Eunostos? After what Aeacus said?”

  “Aeacus doesn’t know. He’s hunting again. Besides, it’s mainly Thea he doesn’t want carried about the forest.”

  “You know very well he doesn’t want you to see Eunostos.”

  “I don’t care.” There was bronze in her voice. “Eunostos wants to see me, doesn’t he?”

  “Of course he wants to see you.” How could I explain that seeing her and Icarus so rarely and under surreptitious circumstances might hurt him more than seeing them not at all? He was trying his youthful best to build a life without her and his Zeus-children. In the past few weeks he had turned out a three-legged stool to rest my ankles, an olive press for Chiron, a slingshot for Partridge to defend himself against the rough Panisci, and endless other artifacts which he gave to his friends or traded to his acquaintances. Partridge had come to stay with him in the stump; Bion was already staying with him. He was seldom alone, rarely unoccupied, and only cheerless when he thought himself unobserved.

  “It’s just that—well, he’s taken to wenching again, and it’s good for him, and the sight of you might make him stop. You know what I say: ‘A celibate Minotaur is a sick Minotaur.’”

  “I’m glad,” she said resolutely, though she looked more wistful than glad. “Is he—popular?”