Our villa lay at the edge of the green and irrigated land around the city of Memphis in Upper Egypt. Beyond, the waterless desert. . . . Beyond, the water-despising Sphinxes, older than pyramids, older than men. We kept their little cousins for pets and worshipped a goddess, Bast, in the shape of a cat. But Sphinxes were cats perverted into monsters. In Egypt (perhaps the world?), the land of balance, every virtue has its opposite vice, every friendly animal, its opposite predator. . . .
She reeked of my parents’ blood. She breathed with a whining breath which stung my ears like a wasp.
Eternity poised at the side of the pool . . . and tired . . . and returned to the house. It had only killed; now it must feed.
There was nothing left of our family to mummify.
Why did I think of a Sphinx in a Cretan villa awaiting a game with bulls?
Of padding feet and blood?
“Oryx,” said Marguerite.
“Yes?”
“You have broken our promise. I can see the memories in your face.” She kissed my cheek.
“I’m sorry. Never again.”
Never say never. . . .
Chapter Seven
Zoe
I did not waste the time to seek an official audience with the King. Those who wished a favor were expected to follow a circumscribed course, send him a gift, bribe his messenger (who shared the bribe with Chiron), and await his whim—perhaps a day, perhaps a week. He had learned a pharaoh’s ways.
I followed Zoe’s way. I strode through the fields surrounding his palisade; I trampled cabbages in my haste, demolished hayricks, ignored the patterned beauty of vineyards and olive trees, wine presses bright in brick and water-mills perched over streams like Titans kneeling to drink. Travelers in their youth, settled agriculturalists in their maturity, the race claimed many achievements (except their king), but I had come to seek and not admire. I did not even chaff with the Centaurs at their work, several of them my lovers, who hailed me with a blithe, “Good morning, Zoe.”
“I have come to see your king.” Terse and abrupt. Pruning grapes which were soon to be ripe, or shaking the olive trees to gather the green and precious fruit, they paused and watched with alarm and seemed to forgive my haste.
Then the palisade, a thick circular wall of cedar beams, with a gatehouse perched on the wall to the left of the gate, like a bodiless head, the stakes in its lower windows, teeth; its upper oval windows, squinting eyes.
“And whom shall I say is calling?” asked the guard at the gate, a young steed of a fellow, proud in a scarlet jerkin and armed with a bronze-tipped spear.
“You know very well,” I snapped. “Or ought to.” (I had taught him the facts of life.)
“But it’s e-expected,” he stammered.
Of course. Expected by Chiron, who liked a show of force by his peaceable race. I had my doubts that the guard could hurl a spear. I gentled my tone but not my urgency.
“Announce that Zoe, the Dryad, has come to call on the King.”
“I believe he is meeting with foreign emissaries,” he said, with the look of a man who does not like to lie.
“Sleeping off last night’s orgy, you mean. Say that Zoe demands to be heard.”
Let him do his worst, let him impose a year of chastity. Because of him and his evil mind, my friends, already captives, would soon be sold as slaves.
He did not take offense; he saw my concern and quickly called to a friend:
“Zoe, the Dryad, requests an audience with his Greatness.” Then to me. “And Zoe, may I ask you the reason? He always wants to know. And, uh, have you brought him a suitable gift?” (Suitable meant expensive.)
“The gift must wait. The Tritons have captured Silver Bells.”
His long ears quivered and twitched; the question in his face became concern.
“Silver Bells. You don’t mean—”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’ll go myself. Here, Peppercorn. Take my place. Take my spear. Hold it straight now.”
“What for?” demanded Peppercorn, a rustic type on his way to the, fields with a hoe. “No more wolves. Nothin’ to spear.”
“Because.”
The gatemaster, circumventing various guards and orderlies, led me directly to Chiron’s private stall—not the audience chamber in his palace, but the long, lean room where he entertained his mares, whether wives or mistresses, and special friends like Silver Bells. The stall was narrow to let him stand and sleep, leaning against a wall, for Centaurs always stand when they sleep, unless with a two-legged mate. Still, a Centaur is a tremendous Beast, what with his many limbs, and a space which was narrow for him was wide for me. I sat on a six-legged stool with a cushion, stuffed with rushes and prickling through my gown, and tried to order my words. An unlit lantern—daylight shone in the four rectangular windows—swayed its boatshape above my head; boat like a crescent moon, brought from the East. Other Eastern objects adorned a niche in the wall at the opposite end of the room, a dragon of green, veined jade, a screen in miniature, with rose quartz signs and figures, and an incense jar emitting a scent which I
would have called a smell. But the charms of the room—even the smell—escaped me on this particular visit. I had visited the stall for happier times and always remembered to compliment Chiron on his objets d’art. He was very proud of them; when he added another wife, he always let her choose from his collection: except the dragon of jade.
The time for compliments was yesterday.
I did not address him by title or even name.
“Because of your sentence, Tritons have captured Oryx and Marguerite. And Silver Bells swam after their boat, and they got him too.” Chiron had his feelings, in spite of his affectations. His respect for Silver Bells was touchingly real, though envy was mixed with admiration (a king by chance, not merit, mistrusts a kingly friend).
He snorted and stomped his hoof. “Damnable Tritons. Slavers, thieves, murderers. And in my kingdom. Or almost.” Then, a wistful shake of his mane. “And Silver Bells—they would steal him. It’s a Minotaur’s nature to rescue those in distress. So of course he had to help those troublemakers.”
“Silver Bells is hardly typical. He is the best of his race. He helped for the sake of friendship and not for duty. And that should be our reason for helping him. One way or another, we have to get him back.” I did not repeat the names of Oryx and Marguerite, who would not have advanced my case.
“A bribe, do you think? I have my objcts d’art. Possibly, I could part with my dragon.”
“There is nothing as valuable to them as Silver Bells. I was thinking of guile. We’ll have to go after him.”
“But how can you leave your tree for the time it will take?” A dryad’s dependence on her father tree increases with her years.
“Three or four days,” I said, “before I start to pine.”
“And sicken and die?”
“At least a week. But that should be long enough to find Silver Bells. If it isn’t, we shall have lost him anyway.”
“And of course we’ll need a ship, won’t we, Zoe?”
“Strong. Ship-shape.”
“Alyssum’s ship. After all, it brought her from Egypt. The Tritons can’t overturn it, can they?”
Memory can be the flash of a firefly. I remembered Alyssum’s coming. . . .
I was walking with Silver Bells beside the sea. He liked to compose a poem in his mind or count the seagulls or gather coquina shells to string for the Bears of Artemis. And then we saw the diminutive ship . . . Egyptian. Never intended for the Great Green Sea. Still, there was a tiny deck house, a sail the height of Melissa, a till without a tiller, a broken oar.
Alyssum lay on the deck, hand clutching the oar. Pale, barely conscious, beautiful as—well, there was no one with whom to compare her, she was so much comelier than her sister Naiads. She made me look like a common wench. Bluer-than-lazuli hair en-wreathed her head, a cushion against the papyrus-deck. Between her toes were the nacreous webs which signified a Na
iad. The race had come with the Centaurs from the East, but some had lingered in Egypt, haunting the caves of the Upper Nile and rarely seen by traders or explorers, their habits as secretive as their haunts.
Silver Bells entered the water and lifted the prow of the ship upon the shore and bound it with a line to heavy rock.
“We mustn’t move her yet,” he said, clambering onto the deck. “Zoe, can you fetch her a posset from your tree? Here, I’ll bathe her face with a damp cloth.” Lacking a jerkin or loin cloth, he tore the hem from her gown, dipped it into the sea, and stroked it lovingly over her brow.
She Opened her eyes. They were almost the color of aquatnarines; as haunting and melancholy. (“The heart of the sea,” they are called. The fury lies in the storms; the heart in the stones.)
“Tritons,” she murmured. “Thought I was dead. Let me drift.”
“Where are you from?” asked Silver Bells. His voice would have reassured a frightened child whom woodsmen have rescued from a pack of wolves.
“Egypt,” she whispered. “Upper Nile.” Her voice was the wind in a coconut frond. “Where am I?”
“Crete.”
Her eyes grew wide and afraid. “A storm,” she said. “It drove me from the Nile and into the Great Green Sea. Drowned my crew. I had only meant to visit a Human friend in the Delta region.”
“Never mind,” he said. “We’ll get you back to Egypt. Zoe, what about that posset?”
But he fell in love with her and asked her to stay with him and become his bride. Thus, they were married and she was a queen to us. Until her death.
He had kept her ship in a cluster of seagrapes, under a canopy, and painted the hull and repaired the sail even after her death, as if it were one of those funerary boats in Egyptian tombs.
“But you must have protection” said Chiron. “Against the Tritons. Or they will get you too and do their worst. The ship is much too small to hold my Whinnies, and as for myself, my duties of state keep me close to the palisade.”
“Eunostos,” I said. “Small, but he never misses a bird with his bow. Melissa. Her teeth could make a Triton show his tail. And as many of those Panisci girls—ill-mannered though they are, they do love Silver Bells—as I can crowd on my deck. Their slings can be deadly. And now. There is no time to lose.”
“But I haven’t dismissed you from my presence!”
“Dismiss me twice when I return from my quest. I’ll bring you a special gift.”
Too much time had already been lost. Beasts who were trapped by Tritons were quickly sold to the Cretan Arena Masters.
The ship sat jauntily under its canvass roof. If a snake or a butterfly can incarnate a soul, why should a ship not epitomize its owner? It was Alyssum’s ship which would guide us to Silver Bells (her ship, her spirit, herself). I felt a sunburst of hope.
A failing perhaps, my eternal hopefulness. I have suffered my disappointments. (I have not had children; in all of my lovers I have not found a Silver Bells. Still, I remember the Golden Age. It will come again, it will come again. . . .)
“Eunostos,” I cried. “Have you brought your bow?”
“And a quiver of arrows too! We will find my uncle won’t we. Aunt Zoe?” His solemn face had lost its smile. His feathered hat, awry, deserved to sit like a crown atop his head.
“Yes, my dear, we will find the three of them. I swear by my father’s oak. Now go and fetch the provisions I told you about. And our means of disguise, if it should come to that.”
“And Oryx” added Melissa. “Will we save him too? He has stolen my heart and I want to get it back.”
“We will save him too.” I forced myself to add, “And Marguerite.” She wore a chain of coquinas instead of her usual violets, a gift from Silver Bells. But she carried a calyx of honey, a gift for Oryx. “He may be hungry when we find him,” she said. Bees and Bear Girls share an affinity. The Bear Girls scout for places to build a nest; the grateful bees are quick to share their honey.
“All right now, you Panisci,” I shouted. “Are we going to work together?” Six were the most I could hide in the cabin or crowd aboard the deck. Six were a multitude, six were a mob.
“‘Ear, ‘ear,” mocked one of the girls. “Are we goin’ to work together?” I heard the whirr of a sling and a coconut fell from a distant tree. “Practicin’,” she grinned.
I gave her a Gorgon stare. “Why don’t you practice for him?”
“Cor, if a look could kill. Reckon we are. For ‘im, not for ‘er.”
“Aunt Zoe,” asked Eunostos. “Where is my uncle’s butterfly?”
“Why, I expect she will follow us when she may,” I said.
“Can’t. Not over the sea. Well, we shall have to go without her. Will we lose our luck, do you think?”
“We will make our own.”
“I’m coming too! Got the whole story from Chiron.” Moschus, who else? Bless him, his heart was kind, whatever his weakness for spirituous beverages.
“My dear, you are much too large, but thank you for the thought.”
“Large and strong. What’s wrong with that?”
“You’ll overturn the boat.”
“Oh.” I saw a tear in his eyes. “What can I do then, Zoe?”
“Drink a libation to Dionysus. Besides his other duties, he’s also a guardian of ships.”
“Right away!” He hurried to look for a cache.
And so we launched our boat in a dangerous sea, the Whinnies to shove us through the surf, and Chiron to shout encouragement from the beach. Blue sail, red hull, green till and oar. . . . Deckhouse like a bird nest of rushes and stalks of papyrus. Eunostos the tiller, I the oarsman, Melissa the lookout; the Panisci girls our company of marines. A nimble ship, a stout crew, and a purpose stronger than bronze.
“Tritons,” I cried. “Stop us if you dare!” Only they could tell us where we must sail. They had seen us leave the beach, and a taunt was the quickest way to get them to show their faces and establish communications. I knew the risk; I also knew the need.
I felt the slap of a tail against the hull, saw the flicker of green as the owner rose on the other side of the boat. Testing. I felt a bump and a nudge, but the Nilus held to her course.
“We aren’t a cockleshell,” I laughed. “You can’t sink us and you can’t stop us. I suggest you talk.”
A Triton clambered over the gunwale and faced Eunostos’ bow, aimed to kill.
“Sir, did you hear my aunt? She asked you to talk. Politely.”
“Got friends,” he hissed.
Whoosh, went Melissa’s sling and a friend took a sudden dive.
“What do you want?” inquired our first invader, switching from words to Tritonian hisses. Fortunately, I understood his tongue.
“What have you done with Silver Bells?”
“Who?”
He was playing ignorance, plotting mischief.
“Eunostos,” I said, “I believe he needs a lesson.”
The bow tautened. The little-boy hands seemed scarcely able to restrain the arrow.
“The bull-man with bells on his horns,” I amplified.
“Oh, him. Why should I answer you?”
“If you don’t, you and your friend—the one who is trying to creep onto the bow—will feel the bite of Eunostos’ arrows before you can even dive.”
“That boy?”
“That boy is Silver Bells’ Nephew.”
“Ummmmm.” He had to weigh and deliberate. Thought comes hard to a Triton. He had to measure the speed of a dive against the flight of an arrow. His stupid yellow eyes held glints of craft but also shadows of fear. An arrow in his tail, his pride, his propellant! The prospect gave him pause. At last. “Sold him, we did. Others too.”
“To whom?”
He shrugged. “Fishermen. Look the same to me.”
“Why?”
“For murex shells. Want to see?”
“I mean, why did the fishermen buy them?”
“Games.”
“Where? In Kno
ssos?”
“Phaistos.” The name made me feel as if a rat had started to climb my back. The games of Knossos were gaudy but rarely cruel. The games of Phaistos ranged from merry to barbarous. Phaistos was not so civilized as larger, northern Knossos. It fronted Libya, the Sphinx-haunted deserts, and below them, the pygmies of Nubia who tipped their darts with slivers of human skulls.
“You are a bloody murderer,” I snapped.
“Trader,” he shrugged. His grin was a glitter of shark-ragged teeth. He was doubtless thinking of murex shells. “Go now?”
“Yes. I never want to see you again.”
“Tell him to lower his bow.”
“Once you have dived. You will have to trust him.”
“Trust?”
“You don’t know the word, do you? Learn it then.”
He scowled and dived and Eunostos lowered his bow and ran to my side.
“What shall we do now, Aunt Zoe?”
“You have already been a hero,” I smiled, hugging him to my breast. (I wanted to keep him a child; I wanted to stop that impossible meddler, time, and be forever his “aunt.” I have never been one afraid of change. But something gave me pause, and more than the growth of Eunostos from child to man. Change had seemed in the past the Sphinx of Achaea, mysterious rather than evil; maker of riddles for me to solve. Change had become the evil Sphinx of Egypt, insatiable to kill; the “desert shark.”) “Are you still feeling heroic?”
“More. I’ve practiced, don’t you see. I was scared before.”
“So was I.”
“You, Aunt Zoe?”
“Only fools are fearless on such a mission.”
Our course was clear: We must sail to Phaistos and somehow contrive to rescue our friends from the Cretans; worse, from the Games.
“What shall we do then, Aunt Zoe?”
“Keep sailing,” I said. “Toward Phaistos.”
Cry Silver Bells Page 8