The Forest of Forever (1987)

by Thomas Burnett Swann

  He looked at me and dropped his ax. Evidently I had filled his eye, and his nostrils too, for he sniffed greedily at the myrrh in which I had bathed my face and breasts. He also looked at me with suspicion: what was this ample, not young but decidedly not superannuated woman doing in a bell-shaped skirt embroidered with conch shells and starfish and, boldness of boldness, in an open bodice which revealed, nay, accentuated and framed her two glories, her glowing pomegranates, her full moons, their nipples painted a titillating crimson to match her lips? Furthermore, I had ripped the gown in order to suggest an escape from bandits who had attempted my honor, and I had ripped in provocative places—a lure of thigh, a tantalization of leg. My hair, though brown with umber, scintillated with mica dust; my ears were concealed—at least their pointed tips—but the lobes were graced by big silver earrings, a loan from Amber, shaped like beehives and tinkling when I walked as if their inhabitants were about to take flight. I had touched enough kohl to my eyes and carmine to my cheeks to make me look not quite a courtesan, but at least a woman of experience, not a great lady but definitely not a peasant—perhaps a merchant’s wife whose husband was often at sea; in short, a woman with a roving eye and the wherewithal to rove.

  The farmer grinned and gaped. He was sleek and just short of being plump, since the Cretan countryside was luxuriant enough to support its farmers without wearing them to the bone. He wore an unembroidered loincloth which reached almost to his knees and over which his bare stomach had started to bulge. Give him a year, perhaps two, and he would become fat. As I approached his house I affected a limp and slyly observed him slyly observing the undulation of my bosom. He sucked in his stomach. Thus diminished, he was not unattractive and I vowed that if necessary I would sacrifice my rarest possession to secure the oxcart.

  “Achaean raiders,” I said in a throaty whisper. “I was going to visit my cousin in Gournia. Carriage stolen. Slaves killed. Wandering since dawn.” I swayed toward him and he extended a steadying hand which lit on my shoulder but gradually crept toward my twin glories.

  “Where?” The tone was peremptory; the speaker, his wife. She had not so much emerged from the house as flurried; a little, swallowlike woman with a blackbird’s voice. The steadying hand was arrested in its descent.

  “Where did they attack you?” I paused to fathom her curious accent. The “you” resembled an “e.” (Cretan peasants take enormous liberties with pronouns, but I will regularize them for the sake of my scroll.)

  “Three or four miles from here. Over that hill—” I swept expansively with my hand to include the whole horizon and at least a dozen hills. I could not be specific since all I knew of the terrain was the general direction of Knossos. “But they’ve gone back toward the coast to their ships. No danger to you.”

  Apparently he was having similar troubles understanding me. Beasts and Cretans share the same tongue but not the same inflections. There is a certain huskiness in the voice of a Beast, whether Dryad or Minotaur, a lilt in the voice of a Cretan.

  “Needs some beer, Chloe,” said the husband at last, frowning at his wife and guiding me through the door. She returned his frown—for even peasant women stand up to their men on Crete—and followed us into the house.

  The house was a single room, a hearth in the middle of the floor with an unlit fire whose smoke would have to escape from the one window, a pallet of straw, a low table without chairs, and an outsized and surprisingly clean pig. No, not surprising, since pigs like cleanliness; if they dwell in filth it is the fault of their masters. There was also a wooden cupboard from which the wife reluctantly drew a sheepskin of beer. I will have to say that in spite of the sparseness of furnishing, there was not a mote of dust, not a smudge of smoke. What is more, the cupboard was painted like a rainbow shell and graced with a single plain but exquisitely wrought cup of Kamares ware. But this was Crete, where even the peasants have a passion for cleanliness and an eye for color.

  “I can’t pay you,” I said. “They took everything.” Chloe’s frown intensified to a scowl. If she had the delicate frame of a bird, she also had the beady, incriminating eyes and, one guessed, the claws. She stared at my large leather pouch, which looked heavy enough to contain gold and jewels.

  “Except my earrings,” I added. “It nearly cost me my honor protecting them.” I cast a quick, knowing look at the farmer, as if to say: Not that my honor is unassailable. That was my problem: to allure him and lull her. “They’re real silver. Very old. Egyptian. I was born in Egypt, you see.” Since I did not speak like a Knossian, I had to account for what must seem to them a foreign accent. I unfastened the earrings and presented them to the woman.

  “Fetch her some cheese, Tychon,” she piped in a much kindlier voice, a blackbird turned swallow. “Who’re we not to show hospitality to the poor dear?” She was already inserting the bars of the earrings into her own pierced ears. They were so large in proportion to so small a woman that they brushed her shoulders, but she peered at her reflection in the side of a bronze kettle and seemed to find them becoming, for she gave her hair a quick sweep and looked at her husband with the expectation of a compliment.

  “Charming,” I said, trying to direct his attention from me to her. “Aren’t they?”

  “Yus.” He was still looking at me, as if he wished to return the earrings to their original ears.

  “He don’t talk much,” she said. “Do you think, ma’am, that—?” She pointed to her gray, shapeless gown of lamb’s wool, more exactly to the part which concealed her breasts and, indeed, raised the question if she had any breasts to conceal.

  “I think,” I said, “that you could billow the sleeves a bit and cut away the front down to here—”

  Her husband’s pronouncement was terse but final. “Nope.”

  The swallow reverted to blackbird. “Ain’t as if I were flat.”

  “Git supper for the lady.”

  Petulantly she began her preparations, but her petulance was directed at her husband, not at me. Now I was receiving covert looks from her as well as him. His said: “Style’s fine for you, not her.” Hers said: “Men got no taste for the new styles.”

  Supper, if not sumptuous, was clean and nourishing. Wheaten bread without worms or mold, fresh goat’s cheese, peppercorns, and carobs from a tree in the yard. As I ate, I saw that both of my hosts, as well as the pig, were staring at me with unabashed fascination. My beauty, it would seem, appealed to the farmer, my gift to his wife, and my scent of myrrh to the pig. But all three stares asked the same question: What did I want besides a meal and a temporary place to rest? Was Tychon going to be asked to drive me into town in his oxcart? Was Chloe going to be asked to put me up until I could send for friends to fetch me home? Was Bottom going to eat less heartily with an additional mouth to feed?

  “If I could just stay the night with you… I don’t even need a pallet; I’ll be on my way tomorrow.”

  “Walkin’?”

  “I like to walk.”

  “All the way to Knossos?”

  “I’ll rise early and no doubt meet a farmer bound for market.”

  “I could drive you.”

  I forestalled a screech from Chloe. “I wouldn’t think of it. You have your duties here on the farm. Besides, your wife is far too lovely to be left alone when there’s even the slightest risk of Achaean raiders.” (Not for nothing had I been captive to a deceitful Bee queen.) “They would steal her away to the mainland with them.”

  “Pass the beer to the lady, Tychon. And give a swig to Bottom.”

  I put my lips to the mouth of the skin (actually a leg, which served as the spout) and smacked with excessive pleasure. The beer was at least palatable. I had tasted worse at Moschus’s table.

  “An excellent beer,” I exclaimed while Tychon dangled the leg above the snout of his pig.

  “Made it hisself,” the woman volunteered, fondling her new earrings and giving him a final chance, half plea, half command, to compliment them.

  “Nice.”
/>   Her hand moved questioningly toward her breasts. “Nope. Some things is best left indoors.” It was his longest communication.

  The moment seemed propitious for my next move. Thievery, I was learning, could be fun. No wonder the Bee queens cultivated the art.

  “And there’s something else I managed to save,” I said, reaching into my pouch, which was made of the sturdiest leather; though perforated with tiny holes, and drew out two—Striges! Yes, I had borrowed them from Amber, she who had been apprehended in the theft of sandals and chastised by Chiron. Now she was eager to appease him, and of course she knew that he and I were old and devoted friends.

  “By the navel of Mother Earth,” swore Chloe. “What be they?”

  “Pets.” I said. “Gentle, docile, and very affectionate. Let me show you.”

  They exchanged glances as if to say, “We’ll be on our guard, but what’s the harm?” and reluctantly permitted me to coil a Strige around each of their necks.

  Tychon grinned and relaxed his stomach.

  “Tickles.”

  If he looked a little less like a sheep, I thought, I could forgive the bulge. After all, I myself am not exactly a sapling, in age or girth.

  “Looks like a bit of fur,” said the wife, gazing at her reflection in the side of the pot to evaluate the combination of neckpiece and earrings and liking what she saw. You may give me credit for introducing a new feature of feminine adornment, though in later years ladies preferred their neckpieces to be inanimate.

  Tychon yawned.

  “Hoed too much,” Chloe volunteered. “Ain’t a boy. Tychon! Let her have the pallet.” But Tychon had already sprawled on his bed of straw and begun to snore.

  She shrugged. “Works hard, sleeps hard. Never mind. Don’t talk much when he’s awake.”

  I saw that we were headed for an exchange of confidences. I would no doubt be questioned about the fashions of the town, the affairs of the court. Drawing on my past visit to Knossos and what I had learned from Aeacus, I had prepared answers for all possible questions, even down to the false rumor of an indiscretion between the king and the wife of the Egyptian pharaoh’s emissary.

  But she pointed to my breasts and said, “Paint your nipples, dear?”

  “Always. Whoever said we can’t improve on nature? An unpainted nipple is like a green apple. Unappetizing.”

  “What do you use?”

  “Carmine.”

  “Too dear for me.”

  “Had you thought of a vegetable dye? I’ve even made do with the juice of wild strawberries.”

  But she had slid as quietly to the floor as an empty gown sliding from a wall hook.

  Remembering my own unpleasant experience with those pernicious creatures, I removed the Striges before they had glutted themselves and returned them to my pouch. Then I turned to the business at hand. I could not resist a smile. Zoe, old girl, I told myself, you’re going to keep your promise to Kora.

  Darkness came as stealthily as a member of Phlebas’s band bent on theft, and I felt in league with the night, bent upon my own machinations, however benign, and hugely enjoying the adventure in spite of the hazards and the stakes. With a certain reluctance, I exchanged my elaborate gown for a shapeless gray horror which I found, of all places, in the cupboard. Now I could approach Knossos driving an oxcart and looking like a peasant woman and Chloe could mend a few tears and have a fashionable gown which for better or worse would liberate what her husband preferred to remain in captivity. Then I knelt beside Chloe to recover the earrings. Had they belonged to me, I would gladly have left them in exchange for the oxcart, but the Bee queen had lent, not given, and I must return them to her along with the Striges (which I would have liked to strangle).

  However, I had underestimated the pig.

  He bared his tusks and instantly transformed himself from a docile pet to a ferocious guard. In the forest, he could have passed for a wild boar. I understood why Tychon did not need a watchdog. Bottom advanced upon me with cautious but deliberate steps. Doubtless he was still making up his mind whether to gore me or ram me. Hastily I sprang to my feet. Chloe could keep the earrings so long as I got the cart. At the moment, the getting seemed in doubt. It was out of the question to implant a Strige on the back of that advancing brute. If I could only think of a bribe—

  I had just seen Bottom partake of the family skin with some relish. I hastily emptied the rest of the skin into a pot, the same which had served Chloe for a mirror, and shoved it under his snout.

  A moment of indecision. Was I really a threat? After all, I had left a better gown for the one I had taken and I had not stolen the earrings, merely fingered them. Furthermore, there was no reason to connect me with the sudden but not unnatural-looking sleep of his master and mistress. He sniffed, examined, partook: daintily at first, then mightily. I edged toward the door; Bottom stopped lapping. It seemed that I was still suspect. I paused. Bottom resumed his lapping.

  A drunken pig is far more fastidious than, say, a drunken Moschus. Bottom finished the bowl, walked without staggering to his master’s pallet, leaned comfortably against Tychon, and joined his snores to those of his master. Fighting down the temptation to recover the earrings and risk arousing Bottom—later I could make amends to Amber—I moved out of the house to claim the cart and ox.

  The ox was tethered under the lean-to beside the house. When I untethered him, he refused to budge. I coaxed, I prodded, I swore twenty oaths to the Great Mother, but I could not move him from the house. I felt like a beaver which has found a tree impervious to its teeth or, to use a comparison more fitting to my race, like a transplanted oak which has failed to take root in rocky soil.

  To compound my disgrace Eunostos at that very moment loomed over the horizon, stooping and trying to minimize his almost seven feet but still looking like a Minotaur or, to the country folk if they had seen him, a demon from the Underworld.

  “But Zoe,” he cried, “you only have to talk to him.” He turned to the ox, muttered a few, to me, unintelligible sounds, and the stupid animal sauntered, yes, sauntered, in spite of his bulk and with undisguised scorn for me and affection for Eunostos, from under the lean-to and over to the cart, which leaned against another wall of the house. A few more words, some quick, sure movements of his hands, and ox was joined to cart for the journey to Knossos.

  “What did you say to him, Eunostos?”

  “I invited him to join us on a trip.”

  “But he’s going to have to pull us. You make it sound as if he’s going to ride in the cart.”

  “I know, but he has his pride. It’s better to make him feel like an equal.”

  “I didn’t know you spoke ox.”

  “You forget I have an affinity for the race. I expect we have a common ancestor. Besides, his vocabulary is limited—a mere hundred or so words.”

  “Eunostos, you’re a wonder.”

  He gave me an impulsive hug. “Aunt Zoe, you’re the wonder. The way you handled the farmer!”

  I shushed him with a finger. “And his wife and pig. But they may wake up. Into the cart with you now.”

  “Can’t I drive while it’s dark?”

  “Not even while it’s dark.”

  “But the farmers are all asleep.”

  “But not their sons and daughters.”

  It was like squeezing a Triton into a lobster box.

  “Leave me a breathing hole,” he pleaded as he lay on his back, knees drawn up, arms pressed against his sides, chin on chest.

  I shoveled hay over him. “It’s only a foot deep over your head. I have to hide your horns. You won’t suffocate.” It was no time to pamper him. “Just don’t sneeze,” I cautioned with a last toss of the pitchfork. Then I mounted the driver’s seat and addressed the ox:

  “Ho there, fellow, off to Knossos.”

  The ox refused to respond.

  “My good Beast, let’s be on our way!”

  His inertia bordered on insolence.

  A sound filtered through t
he straw, rather like a series of grunts.

  “That’s the most primitive language I ever heard,” I snorted. “And he’s not my equal, even if I did call him Beast.”

  But the cart began to move.

  CHAPTER XIV

  WE HAD driven our oxcart for three days and lived on blackberries and mushrooms and crayfish caught in streams swollen by the melting snows from the mountains. Once I inveigled goat’s milk and eggs from a credulous farmer’s wife, who took me for a widow light in the head, while Eunostos remained in his crypt of hay. Every night, when we stopped to rest and my body seemed one intolerable ache from the jolts of the oxcart, I ate of the acorns in my pouch and scarcely thought of my tree. With the resilience of youth, Eunostos unbent himself and slept soundly under the cart, his horns and hooves concealed by straw or wrapped in old strips of linen torn from the folds of the gown I had borrowed from Chloe. The last night before Knossos, I waited among the papyrus stalks and watched for intruders while he swam in a pool and cleansed himself from the journey, and then I took his place in the sweet-chilling water, though careful to guard my hair and not expose the forbidden Dryad’s green.

  I dare not call it a happy time, while childless Kora waited in the Country of the Beasts, her strained white face a spectre in our minds. But the plans, the risk, the hope—and hope seemed almost a certainty while we were on the move—bound us together with the comradeship of soldiers sharing danger, and also with the tenderness only possible between a boy and a woman who might have been his mother (or except accident of years, his beloved).