by Jane Yolen
I know the beginning of the tale, but not yet the end. Perhaps this time the wisdom of the Old Ones will miscarry. Naught may come of naught. Such miracles are often barren. There have been rumors of white ones before. Beasts sometimes bear them. But they are weak, they die young, they cannot conceive. A queen without issue is a dreadful thing. Unnatural.
And the mage has planned it all except for the dark prince. He is a young bear of a king and I think will not be bought so easily with hand-wrought miracles. His hunger for land and for women, his need for heirs, will not be checked by the mage’s blanched and barren offering. He is, I fear, of a lustier mind.
And I? I am no one, a singer of songs, a teller of tales. But I am the one to be wary of, for I remake the past and call it truth. I leave others to the rote of history, which is dry, dull, and unbelievable. Who is to say which mouth’s outpourings will lift the soul higher—that which is or that which could be? Did it really flood, or did Noah have a fine storymaker living in his house? I care not either way. It is enough for me to sing.
But stay. It is my turn on the boards. Watch. I stride to the room’s center, where the song’s echo will linger longest. I lift my hands toward the young king, toward the old mage, toward the gwynhfar swaddled in silk who waits, as she waits for everything else. I bow my head and raise my voice.
“Listen,” I say, my voice low and cozening. “Listen, lords and ladies, as I sing of the coming days. I sing of the time when the kingdom will be one. And I call my song, the lay of the dark King Artos and of Guinevere the Fair.”
The Sleep of Trees
Never invoke the gods unless
you really want them to appear.
It annoys them very much.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
It had been a long winter. Arrhiza had counted every line and blister on the inside of the bark. Even the terrible binding power of the heartwood rings could not contain her longings. She desperately wanted spring to come so she could dance free, once again, of her tree. At night she looked up and, through the spiky winter branches, counted the shadows of early birds crossing the moon. She listened to the mewling of buds making their slow, painful passage to the light. She felt the sap veins pulse sluggishly around her. All the signs were there: spring was coming, spring was near, yet still there was no spring.
She knew that one morning, without warning, the rings would loosen and she would burst through the bark into her glade. It had happened every year of her life. But the painful wait, as winter slouched toward its dismal close, was becoming harder and harder to bear.
When Arrhiza had been younger, she had always slept the peaceful, uncaring sleep of trees. She would tumble, half-awake, through the bark and onto the soft, fuzzy green earth with the other young dryads, their arms and legs tangling in that first sleepy release. She had wondered then that the older trees released their burdens with such stately grace, the dryads and the meliades sending slow green praises into the air before the real Dance began. But she wondered no longer. Younglings simply slept the whole winter dreaming of what they knew best: roots and bark and the untroubling dark. But aging conferred knowledge; dreams change. Arrhiza now slept little, and her waking, as her sleep, was filled with sky.
She even found herself dreaming of birds. Knowing trees were the honored daughters of the All Mother, allowed to root themselves deep into her flesh; knowing trees were the treasured sisters of the Huntress, allowed to unburden themselves into her sacred groves, Arrhiza envied birds. She wondered what it would be like to live apart from the land, to travel at will beyond the confines of the glade. Silly creatures though birds were, going from egg to earth without a thought, singing the same messages to one another throughout their short lives, Arrhiza longed to fly with one, passengered within its breast. A bird lived but a moment, but what a moment that must be.
Suddenly realizing her heresy, Arrhiza closed down her mind lest she share thoughts with her tree. She concentrated on the blessings to the All Mother and the Huntress, turning her mind from sky to soil, from flight to the solidity of roots.
And in the middle of her prayer. Arrhiza fell out into spring, as surprised as if she were still young. She tumbled against one of the birch, her nearest neighbor, Phyla of the white face. Their legs touched, their hands brushing one another’s thighs.
Arrhiza turned toward Phyla. “Spring comes late,” she sighed, her breath caressing Phyla’s budlike ear.
Phyla rolled away from her, pouting. “You make Spring Greeting sound like a complaint. It is the same every year.” She sat up with her back to Arrhiza and stretched her arms. Her hands were outlined against the evening sky, the second and third fingers slotted together like a leaf. Then she turned slowly toward Arrhiza, her woods-green eyes unfocused. In the soft, filtered light her body gleamed whitely, and the darker patches were mottled beauty marks on her breasts and sides. She was up to her feet in a single fluid movement and into the Dance.
Arrhiza watched, still full length on the ground, as one after another the dryads and meliades rose and stepped into position, circling, touching, embracing, moving apart. The cleft of their legs flashed pale signals around the glade.
Rooted to their trees, the hamadryads could only lean out into the Dance. They swayed to the lascivious pipings of spring. Their silver-green hair, thick as vines, eddied around their bodies like water.
Arrhiza watched it all but still did not move. How long she had waited for this moment, the whole of the deep winter, and yet she did not move. What she wanted was more than this, this entering into the Dance on command. She wanted to touch, to walk, to run, even to dance when she alone desired it. But then her blood was singing, her body pulsating; her limbs stretched upward answering the call. She was drawn toward the others and, even without willing it, Arrhiza was into the Dance.
Silver and green, green and gold, the grove was a smear of color and wind as she whirled around and around with her sisters. Who was touched and who the toucher; whose arm, whose thigh was pressed in the Dance—it did not matter. The Dance was all. Drops of perspiration, sticky as sap, bedewed their backs and ran in slow rivulets to the ground. The Dance was the glade, was the grove. There was no stopping, no starting, for a circle has no beginning or end.
Then suddenly a hunter’s horn knifed across the meadow. It was both discordant and sweet, sharp and caressing at once. The Dance did not stop, but it dissolved. The Huntress was coming. The Huntress was here.
And then She was in the middle of them all, straddling a moonbeam, the red hem of Her saffron hunting tunic pulled up to expose muscled thighs. Seven hounds lay growling at Her feet. She reached up to Her hair and in one swift, savage movement, pulled at the golden cords that bound it up. Her hair cascaded like silver and gold leaves onto Her shoulders and crept in tendrils across Her small, perfect breasts. Her heart-shaped face, with its crescent smile, was both innocent and corrupt; Her eyes as dark blue as a storm-coming sky. She dismounted the moon shaft and turned around slowly, as if displaying Herself to them all, but She was the Huntress, and She was doing the hunting. She looked into their faces one at a time, and the younger ones looked back, both eager and afraid.
Arrhiza was neither eager nor afraid. Twice already she had been the chosen one, torn laughing and screaming from the glade, brought for a night to the moon’s dark side. The pattern of the Huntress’s mouth was burned into her throat’s hollow, Her mark. And Her words were still in Arrhiza’s ears. “You are mine. Forever. If you leave me, I will kill you, so fierce is my love.” It had been spoken each time with a kind of passion, in between kisses, but the words, like the kisses, were as cold and distant and pitiless as the moon.
The Huntress walked around the circle once again, pausing longest before a young meliade, Pyrena of the apple blossoms. Under that gaze Pyrena seemed both to wither and to bloom. But the Huntress shook Her head and Her mouth formed the slightest moue of disdain. Her tongue flicked out and was caught momentarily between flawless teeth. Then She clicked to
the hounds, who sprang up. Mounting the moonbeam again, She squeezed it with Her thighs and was gone, riding to another grove.
The moment She disappeared, the glade was filled with breathy gossip.
“Did you see—” began Dryope. Trembling with projected pleasure, she turned to Pyrena. “The Huntress looked at you. Truly looked. Next time it will be you. I know it will.”
Pyrena wound her fingers through her hair, letting fall a cascade of blossoms that perfumed the air. She shrugged, but smiled a secret, satisfied smile.
Arrhiza turned abruptly and left the circle. She went back to her tree. Sluggishly the softened heartwood rings admitted her, and she leaned into them, closed her eyes, and tried to sleep though she knew that in spring no true sleep would come.
She half dreamed of clouds and birds, forcing them into her mind, but really she was hearing a buzzing. Sky, she murmurmed to herself; remember sky.
“Oh trees, fair and flourishing, on the high hills
They stand, lofty. The
Deathless sacred grove …”
Jeansen practiced his Homeric supplication, intoning carefully through his nose. The words as they buzzed through his nasal passages tickled. He sneezed several times rapidly, a light punctuation to the verses. Then he continued:
Deathless sacred grove
Men call them, and with iron never cut.”
He could say the words perfectly now, his sounds rounded and full. The newly learned Greek rolled off his tongue. He had always been a fast study. Greek was his fifth language, if he counted Esperanto. He could even, on occasion, feel the meanings that hid behind the ancient poetry, but as often the meanings slid away, slippery little fish and he the incompetent angler.
He had come to Greece because he wanted to be known as the American Olivier, the greatest classical actor the States had ever produced. He told interviewers he planned to learn Greek—classical Greek, not the Greek of the streets—to show them Oedipus from the amphitheaters where it had first been played. He would stand in the groves of Artemis, he had said, and call the goddess to him in her own tongue. One columnist even suggested that with his looks and voice and reputation she would be crazy not to come. If she did, Jeansen thought to himself, smiling, I wouldn’t treat her with any great distance. The goddesses like to play at being shopgirls; the shopgirls, goddesses. And they all, he knew only too well, liked grand gestures.
And so he had traveled to Greece, not the storied isles of Homer but the fume-clogged port of Piraeus, where a teacher with a mouthful of broken teeth and a breath only a harpy could love had taught him. But mouth and breath aside, he was a fine teacher and Jeansen a fine learner. Now he was ready. Artemis first, a special for PBS, and then the big movie. Oedipus starring the Jeansen Forbes.
Only right now all he could feel was the buzz of air, diaphragm against lungs, lungs to larynx, larynx to vocal chords, a mechanical vibration. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
He shook his head as if to clear it, and the well-cut blond hair fell perfectly back in place. He reached a hand up to check it, then looked around the grove slowly, admiringly. The grass was long, uncut, but trampled down. The trees—he had not noticed it at first—were a strange mixture: birch and poplar, apple and oak. He was not a botanist, but it seemed highly unlikely that such a mix would have simply sprung up. Perhaps they had been planted years and years ago. Note to himself: check on that.
This particular grove was far up on Mount Cynthus, away from any roads and paths. He had stumbled on it by accident. Happy accident. But it was perfect, open enough for re-enacting some of the supplicatory dances and songs but the trees thick enough to add mystery. The guidebook said that Cynthus had once been sacred to the Huntress, virgin Artemis, Diana of the moon. He liked that touch of authenticity. Perhaps her ancient worshipers had first seeded the glade. Even if he could not find the documentation, he could suggest it in such a way as to make it sound true enough.
Jeansen walked over to one birch, a young tree, slim and gracefully bending. He ran his hands down its white trunk. He rubbed a leaf between his fingers and considered the camera focusing on the action. He slowed the movement to a sensuous stroking. Close-up of hand and leaf, full frame.
Next to the birch was an apple, so full of blossoms there was a small fall of petals puddling the ground. He pushed them about tentatively with his boot. Even without wind, more petals drifted from the tree to the ground. Long tracking shot as narrator kicks through the pile of white flowers; lap dissolve to a single blossom.
Standing back from the birch and the apple tree, tall and unbending, was a mature oak. It looked as if it were trying to keep the others from getting close. Its reluctance to enter the circle of trees made Jeansen move over to it. Then he smiled at his own fancies. He was often, he knew, too fanciful, yet such invention was also one of his great strengths as an actor. He took off his knapsack and set it down at the foot of the oak like an offering. Then he turned and leaned against the tree, scratching between his shoulder blades with the rough bark. Long shot of man in grove; move in slowly for tight close-up. Voice-over.
“But when the fate of death is drawing near,
First wither on the earth the beauteous trees,
The bark around them wastes, the branches fall,
And the nymph’s soul, at the same moment, leaves
The sun’s fair light.”
He let two tears funnel down his cheeks. Crying was easy. He could call upon tears whenever he wanted to, even before a word was spoken in a scene. They meant nothing anymore. Extremely tight shot on tear, then slow dissolve to …
A hand touched his face, reaching around him from behind. Startled, Jeansen grabbed at the arm, held, and turned.
“Why do you water your face?”
He stared. It was a girl, scarcely in her teens, with the clearest complexion he had ever seen and flawless features, except for a crescent scar at her throat which somehow made the rest more perfect. His experienced eyes traveled quickly down her body. She was naked under a light green chiffon shift. He wondered where they had gotten her, what she wanted. A part in the special?
“Why do you water your face?” she asked again. Then this time she added, “You are a man.” It was almost a question. She moved around before him and knelt unselfconsciously.
Jeansen suddenly realized she was speaking ancient Greek. He had thought her English with that skin. But the hair was black with blue-green highlights. Perhaps she was Greek.
He held her face in his hands and tilted it up so that she met him eye to eye. The green of her eyes was unbelievable. He thought they might be lenses, but saw no telltale double impression.
Jeansen chose his words with care, but first he smiled, the famous slow smile printed on posters and magazine covers. “You,” he said, pronouncing the Greek with gentle precision, his voice carefully low and tremulous, “you are a goddess.”
She leaped up and drew back, holding her hands before her. “No, no,” she cried, her voice and body registering such fear that Jeansen rejected it at once. This was to be a classic play, not a horror flick.
But even if she couldn’t act, she was damned beautiful. He closed his eyes for a moment, imprinting her face on his memory. And he thought for a moment of her pose, the hands held up. There had been something strange about them. She had too many—or too few—fingers. He opened his eyes to check them, and she was gone.
“Damned bit players,” he muttered at last, angry to have wasted so much time on her. He took the light tent from his pack and set it up. Then he went to gather sticks for a fire. It could get pretty cold in the mountains in early spring, or so he had been warned.
From the shelter of the tree, Arrhiza watched the man. He moved gracefully, turning, gesturing, stooping. His voice was low and full of music, and he spoke the prayers with great force. Why had she been warned that men were coarse, unfeeling creatures? He was far more beautiful than any of the worshipers who came cautiously at dawn in their black-beetle dresses, creeping down the
paths like great nicophori from the hidden chambers of earth, to lift their year-scarred faces to the sky. They brought only jars of milk, honey, and oil, but he came bringing a kind of springy joy. And had he not wept when speaking of the death of trees, the streams from his eyes as crystal as any that ran near the grove? Clearly this man was neither coarse nor unfeeling.
A small breeze stirred the top branches, and Arrhiza glanced up for a moment, but even the sky could not hold her interest today. She looked back at the stranger, who was pulling oddments from his pack. He pounded small nails into the earth, wounding it with every blow, yet did not fear its cries.
Arrhiza was shocked. What could he be doing? Then she realized he was erecting a dwelling of some kind. It was unthinkable—yet this stranger had thought it. No votary would dare stay in a sacred grove past sunfall, dare carve up the soil on which the trees of the Huntress grew. To even think of being near when the Dance began was a desecration. And to see the Huntress, should She visit this glade at moonrise, was to invite death. Arrhiza shivered. She was well schooled in the history of Acteon, torn by his own dogs for the crime of spying upon Her.
Yet this man was unafraid. As he worked, he raised his voice—speaking, laughing, weeping, singing. He touched the trees with bold, unshaking hands. It was the trees, not the man, who trembled at his touch. Arrhiza shivered again, remembering the feel of him against the bark, the muscles hard under the fabric of his shirt. Not even the Huntress had such a back.
Then perhaps, she considered, this fearless votary was not a man at all. Perhaps he was a god come down to tease her, test her, take her by guile or by force. Suddenly, she longed to be wooed.
“You are a goddess,” he had said. And it had frightened her. Yet only a god would dare such a statement. Only a god, such as Eros, might take time to woo. She would wait and let the night reveal him. If he remained untouched by the Huntress and unafraid, she would know.