She rose to her haunches. The movement was not precipitate. In her slow, deliberate way she was coming for us.
Behind her she left the body of Silver Bells. The bells were stripped from his horns and mangled in the dust. Nausea rose in my throat like that furry spider, the Jumper, with knotted legs.
Behind her she left a trickle of blood.
Somehow, under that crushing weight, that smothering fur, he had driven his knife through the fur and into her underbelly. Oh, he had hardly struck her a mortal blow. He had merely pierced the skin and perhaps the cartilage. But he had angered her. She paused and turned and stared at the impudent creature who ought to be dead.
The pale red chest expanded with air.
He lives, he lives. . . . Silver Bells, where is your knife?
He seemed to have lost his will. She raised a leisurely paw and talons projected like the quills on the back of a Libyan porcupine. He could not even roll from her path.
But the paw remained in the air, as if transfixed by an invisible rope. Something had joined blood-lust in her face. Surprise.
She shrugged, as if to dislodge a noxious mosquito; she lashed her tail in annoyance. She stared at the dais, at Marguerite and me. Were we the cause of her aggravation? Impossible.
One of her lidless eyes revolved in its socket, yellow fading to gray, gray bespeckled with blood.
“Someone has injured an eye,” I cried.
“But who—”
“Zoe!”
“No. Zoe’s pygmies, at her command. The Goat Girls. That’s why she brought them with her. No one is looking at them. See. There! The slings. Hidden under their robes. They fire a pebble and quickly hide the sling. Have you ever seen such speed? And Silver Bells is starting to move!”
Not dead, not dead. . . . Oh, to raise my arms and shout a prayer to the sky or kneel and hug the earth! To wreath an altar or garland an image with laurel and hyacinths!
Silver Bells brushed the ground in search of the knife; perhaps it was caught in the Sphinx’s fur. He found the flagon of wine.
“Is he going to drink?”
“He must be dazed. He thinks he has found the knife.”
Holding the flagon, he crouched and lowered his head; attacking, the Sphinx would meet his horns. Perhaps they would wound her but scarcely more than the knife.
She circled him warily; at least he had taught her caution.
“Can he get the other eye?”
“With what? A flagon of wine?”
She paused above him and slowly lowered her bulk. His horns were caught in her mane. She knew that he had not found the knife.
“Suffocation again.”
Silver Bells’ movements seemed both sluggish and dazed. His hand was uselessly slow, or so it seemed to me; perhaps it was only slow when compared to my wing-heeled wish!
“She can’t close her jaws. He’s wedged the flagon between them!”
“But this time he’s truly dead. He has closed his eyes.”
The death of hope in a friend is the bite of a thousand ants.
“No!” I shouted. “Silver Bells is immortal.”
“Even the gods may die. Who can withstand a Sphinx?”
And then she came for us.
She came, she came,
inevitable as the tide (under what moon’s compulsion?),
but not the friendly touching of the sea . . .
Riptide, Triton-tide,
To steal, rend, kill . . .
Slowly. . . .
The beach is entrapped by the earth and has no weapon against the sea.
Egypt . . . the lotus pool . . . the remembered scent. She had followed us all of these years and found us on Crete.
“I wish she had killed us then,” said Marguerite. The ghost of a child, she seemed, bodiless on the wind. Thin, far words . . . sad, sad, like prickles of frost in the face. “We were meant to die. We must have angered a god.”
“No! The years we have had were good.”
“But we have killed Silver Bells. Except for us. . . .”
The stairs ascended directly in front of me, and only I could watch her ascent. Paw over deadly paw, she climbed the stairs; she seemed to drag, but not from her wound. I think she wished to delay and heighten the feast. She could not dislodge the flagon and shut her jaws; she could not truly smile. And yet I saw delight in her single, seeing eye; gray, it glittered with yellow flecks.
The shaggy fur, how loathsome it must have become in the dirt of the ring: There should be a scent of blood. But the fur looked immaculate, the blood invisible, and the scent was curiously that of a melon, one of those oval fruits with succulent yellow centers from the Nile. Shark-like in eyes, cat-like in cleanliness She will feast and lick her paws until she is clean.
I felt the heat of her body and shrank against the pole. A leather-tough paw, claws retracted into their sheaths, pressed me lightly against the arm. I waited until the paw should project its claws; recoiled against the post (and wished it into a spear).
Fear has been called a spider in the throat or a lizard along the spine. Such are little fears. Fear at its worst is reversal: night instead of day, order disordered, creation uncreated. It is being alone in an infinite dark. Neither sun nor moon nor companionable stars . . . neither sound of voices nor scent of grass and trees . . . neither Marguerite nor Zoe nor Silver Bells nor even those bad little Goat Girls with their unerring slings.
Thus do the pharaohs companion their mummies with what they have loved on the earth, the sceptres and pectorals, the boats and the chariots . . . even the slaves (once, it is said, the wives and the children, the friends and the concubines—except for the eldest son and heir to the throne).
I was afraid of the dark.
She enclosed my shoulder within her mouth. I felt the tongue like a brush, a bristle with hairs from a hog. I felt the teeth like a row of broken knives.
The jaws began to close. . . .
She did not make a sound. In all of that time, she did not make a sound. A Triton hisses, a Harpy shrills. . . . Not her, not the Sphinx.
Till now.
A single cry, and I thought she would burst my ears. A wind devil’s shriek; the thunder which follows the jagged spear of the God. Sounds which were sucked from a stormy sky, from the God’s domain (though even he had disavowed the Sphinx).
She had forgotten the flagon between her jaws. The waterless desert is the home of a Sphinx. A Sphinx is afraid of water. Wine is the watery juice of the grape.
The odor of rotting melon was rank in the air.
The crowd, hushed with the splendid drama of their Games, the gore, the death of the Sphinx, emitted a universal shriek of exultation. Not that it mattered to them who had died. They would sooner have cheered the Sphinx, I suspect, for she would have teased and devoured us and extended the Games. Still, their Bull-man had won, and against unthinkable odds, with surprises, reversals, and blood.
Only then did they see to Silver Bells. Achaeans opened the doors in the pit, entered the ring, and lifted him to his feet. He did not greet the Prince; he looked at me; he looked at Marguerite.
I whispered a “thank you, Silver Bells” and saw from his smile that he could read my lips. Marguerite had dissolved into noisy tears.
“Cousin,” I teased, feeling a little drunk, “you have forgotten your trade. Courtesans never bawl.” I squeezed her hand and called to the guards for our release. The guards awaited an order from the Prince.
Minos rose to his feet and raised a wobbling spear. (He ought to have watched Eunostos to learn the art.) The cheers became sporadic, faded, and died into expectation. They turned to their prince, these curious people, to learn his plans for us. We had come as captives into the ring. We had surely earned our freedom, but Cretans negotiate in curious currency.
“The God has spoken through his mortal exemplar. The Bull-man has killed the Sphinx!”
The words rang clearly across the ring and up and down the tiers. He was going to make a speech.
>
“Set him free?” he echoed, looking about him to see who presumed to demand. “But he was never our prisoner. He was our honored guest!”
“But you kept him in shackles and risked his life.” Zoe, reminding but not reproachful.
The young man shook his head in befuddlement. She leaned to his ear and whispered inaudible words.
“Silver Bells,” he commanded. “Approach us and receive your reward.”
Silver Bells shrugged the Achaeans away from him. With infinite dignity and yet with a limp which made him infinitely touching, woundingly lovable, he approached the Prince in his circle of palms. He did not bow or kneel.
“And let him bring his friends!” Zoe, still in command of the Prince’s ear.
“Untie them, untie them. But I have not decided—”
And thus we stood before the Prince and Zoe and the miraculous Goat Girls, and the jester, Phlebas, swinging the tiger tail around his head; and of course Eunostos, the King of the Pygmies. His hat, awry, revealed a pointed ear. I made him a secret sign and he hid the ear. (Did I hear a muffled “Cor” from one of the Girls?)
“Silver Bells, we would like you to join the Court and—”
“Become a curiosity,” he said. “I want to return to the Country.”
“Return to the Country,” echoed Phlebas. “And keep my tail for proof. That I have had an Adventure!”
“The King of the Pygmies and I will sail them there in the Nilus,” announced Zoe, a wonder of womanhood to dazzle a princelier prince, “before I return to Nubia to honor our trade agreement with Crete.”
“And we’ll go too,” I shouted, clasping my cousin’s hand. “Won’t we, Eun—uh, your Littleness.”
Eunostos looked to the Prince. “The Bull-man has surely earned the freedom of your other guests. I request that they be permitted to join Queen Zoe and me on our ship and return to Nubia with us.” His voice was manly and strong for a child of eight.
The Prince was slow to answer; an intimation of thought appeared in his face. A reservation. He was, I fear, an excessively dense young man. He liked to be told while seeming to give commands; at the same time, he wanted to please the people whom he was destined to rule. Marguerite and I—well, we were not indispensable to the Cretans, in spite of her beauty and our golden hair. They could free us and feel no irreparable loss. But a Minotaur who could duel with a Sphinx and win! What other court could boast such a wonderment?
“Remember our agreement,” Zoe reminded, smiling her most irresistible smile (her least irresistible smile is hard to resist). “Slaves from my sturdiest tribes.”
Perplexity from the Prince.
“Ivory.”
Indecision.
“Apes.”
A look at his people to gauge their wish. Uncertainty trembling on the verge of a “now.” (Perhaps I could steal an armlet—the amethyst? His stubbornness gave me license to resume my trade.)
“Last night.”
A beatific smile illumined his face.
“Last night,” he murmured, rising to order his guards. “The Queen of Nubia and the King of the Pygmies shall have their wish.” Authority ruled the indecisive voice.
Zoe winked at me. The time away from her tree had sapped her strength but neither her spirit nor looks. “I have always had a way with younger men, eh, Oryx?”
Chapter Eleven
Zoe
The Nilus, low in the water, eased a sluggish course toward the northern forest, the beach of embarkation, the Country of the Beasts. The sail, straining with wind to pull its passengers, looked like a Cyclops’ puffed and swollen cheek. The Goat Girls plied the oars without complaint and Melissa, proud though garlandless, stood at the till and alternated her look between the horizon and her hero, Oryx. We were dangerously crowded since Silver Bells, Oryx, and Marguerite had joined the crew. But who could worry at such a triumphant time? The Prince had sent a pair of galleys as escorts—long and sleek and painted with purple moons—sea gull on the prow in cedarwood; marlin’s tail at the stern—for fear some roving Tritons should sink us and capture us, and make another sale, to a master of games in another town. (If I were disclosed as a Dryad, what would they pay for me, in the prime of my years with my green-as-a-maple-leaf hair, its gray discretely concealed by a twist of curls? I would doubtless fetch as much as a Minotaur—that is to say, except for Silver Bells.)
“Zoe,” said Silver Bells. “You are a queen in truth. You have done the work of a queen and I, your subject, salute you as I may.” He dipped his horns; and his bells, which I had laboriously straightened and reattached to his horns, reverberated an argent melody. I read in his words an unaccustomed warmth, or did my wishes exceed the truth? Alyssum, eternal Alyssum, she had never delivered her man from a Sphinx. I loved her; truly I loved the blue-haired Naiad, with her sweet and obstinate ways. But a rival, even though dead, especially when dead because she remains perfected in the heart, arouses fear as well as love, at least in the imperfection known as Zoe, Dryad of Crete.
“The umber is starting to run,” I smiled. “My tiger skin robe is making me want to scratch. Is scratching a royal gesture? I hardly have strength to stand. And I am a queen?” I waited hopefully for a heated denial (even a gallant lie).
Phlebas—may Hermes press his olive-sized brain!—hurried to interrupt.
“But the Sphinx. Where did they get her, Zoe? I thought they were gone from Crete.” Adventure had heightened his fancy and also increased his size. He had dined with the Prince and eaten a squid, a pheasant, a parrot fish, and a suckling pig. He did not look like an adolescent goat; trim the fur and behold, a walking feast!
“They are. The Minotaurs drove them into the sea—oh, toward the end of the Silver Age. They can’t swim a stroke, you know—the water poisons them—and the Tritons ate their remains.”
“And most of the Minotaurs died in the fight,” said Silver Bells. “There were ten of us for every one of them, but you have seen how they fight. That’s why Eunostos and I are the last of our race. That and the wolves.”
I shook a tear from my eye with a rapid turn of my head. “But of course a Sphinx can become a beautiful woman. Or so it is whispered by the country folk. And then she is called a Lamia. No one has ever seen the change. Still, it is thought to happen from the deeds of the women. Nefarious. For that matter, who can see a windstorm, and yet we can guess her presence when the trees bend down their boughs—and sometimes break.”
“What was that word you said, Aunt Zoe?”
“Nefarious.”
“Liking affairs, you mean?”
“Wicked. Such changeable creatures are frequent in every land. Zeus can become a snake or a bull. Proteus changes to suit his whim.”
“Are any Lamias left on Crete?”
“Not that I know. They generally keep to desert lands. Egypt. Lybia. The Cretans told me that this particular Sphinx assumed the guise of a Lamia, sailed to Phaistos without arousing suspicions and then reverted to Sphinx. You see, with their love for ugliness, they do not like to remain for long as women. They will only change to work their evil designs. To move without detection and prey on children at night or break the hearts of men and drink their blood. They prefer to look—well, like an afterthought of a god whose name we do not remember. One of the old Sumerian gods, perhaps, forgotten with his decaying kingdom.”
“I think she came for us,” said Oryx. “Marguerite and me. She has probably tracked us since we were children.” Quickly he told me about the death of his parents and how he and Marguerite had escaped and fled and dreaded a Sphinx which might have caught their scent. It was not an easy confession. He looked like a man instead of the callow youth who had grabbed me behind the oak; I could swear he had grown since he came to the Country; muscles beneath the sun-saffroned skin; slender waist but broadening shoulders. Still, he had to return for the moment to little boy, the fear and the fight. His eyes grew dim with remembering and blue retreated to gray; his husky voice descended into a gasp. I placed a hand
on his arm and reproached myself for reproaching his thievery.
“But how could that creature know we would come to Phaistos?” asked Marguerite. Practical girl . . . except when she looked at Silver Bells.
“Harpies,” I said. “The Harpies are friends of the Sphinxes. Allies in evil. Both of them winged and ugly and bent on destruction. You have already told me how the Harpies attacked your ship on your way to Crete. They saw you again in the Country of the Beasts—they circle our skies, you see—but may not have known of your ancient quarrel with their friends. But a Harpy can fly to Libya in a single day. One of them flew, it would seem, and told the Sphinxes of spotting you in the Country, and the Sphinx who remembered your scent proceeded to make her plans. She took the form of a woman and sailed to Crete—a rapid trip in midsummer—and waited for further news. The Harpies alerted her when you left the Country—together with Silver Bells-and Tritons captured your boat and sold you for the Games. She assumed her rightful shape, allowed herself to be caught, and met you in the ring. To get at the two of you, she must first kill Silver Bells. Not that she minded, you understand. Indeed, she seemed to exult at the chance. Perhaps she remembered the old ancestral feud.”
“And the scent of Oryx and me,” shuddered Marguerite, a monument to disordered loveliness. “And how we hid in the pool and she tracked us these many years.”
I liked her; Zoe, I said in my thoughts, you like Marguerite. The Country has cured her of her affected ways (and probably ruined the skills of her trade). I wanted to hate her because of Silver Bells; she loved him, of that I was sure. But when has Zoe lost to a human rival (even with golden hair)?
“Are we truly saved?” asked Oryx. “We saw her escape from the ring as a butterfly.”
“What you saw was her soul.”
“Can a soul revert to the shape of a Sphinx?”
“No,” I said. “A butterfly she remains. She can harm you no more than an actual butterfly, buffeted by the rains or chased by birds. A soul is immortal, of course, whether good or bad. But if you can catch her, you can destroy her incarnation and she will wander forever without a house, prey to the winds and, like them, invisible. Yes, you are safe. Now I must rest. How many days from my tree? Five or six, I should think. Well, I am strong. I was longer away with my Babylonian lover, though he had his little tricks to lessen the pain. But someone else will have to captain the ship, and it can’t be Silver Bells. For he needs ‘a rest like me, what with being a couch for a Sphinx and feeling the gash of her claws. Phlebas, fan me, will you, my dear? You may use your tail.”
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