Hercules

by Bernard Evslin

  “I’ll be there tomorrow, goddess, on my fastest horse.”

  The next day, Hercules came to the castle and gave Dienera one of his golden apples. She was delighted. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Shall we get married today?”

  “Not today, princess. I have to go somewhere.”

  “You just got here.”

  “I have a long way to go and must start.”

  “Where?’

  “To find the girl who gets my third golden apple.”

  “You have another girl? Another apple? I want you to forget her and give it to me.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”

  “Who is this girl? Do you love her?”

  “I guess so.”

  “More than you love me?”

  “Well, it’s different. She’s still a child, I guess, but she’s very brave and very clever. She saved my life twice. You’d like her if you knew her.”

  “I hate her! And I hate you too.”

  Blinded by tears, she ran away from him. She ran out of the garden and into a field. Then ran more slowly and peeked over her shoulder to see if he was following. She felt a hand clutching her arm, felt herself being whisked into the air. Nessus had galloped out of a grove of trees where he had been hiding and snatched her into the saddle.

  “Help!” she screamed. “Hercules! Help!”

  Nessus galloped away. Hercules heard her scream and saw a horseman speeding away with her. He ran after the horse. Now, Nessus was riding a great raw-boned stallion that was the fastest horse in Calydon. Its flying hooves ate up the miles. Hercules ran with all his might. He saw that he was gaining, but too slowly. If the horseman meant to harm Dienera, he would have time before Hercules could catch him.

  Hercules thought quickly. “The only way I can get him is with an arrow,” he said to himself. “But it’s a long way, and he’s moving fast. I might hit her instead. I could kill the horse, but then they’d go flying off, and she might get hurt. I can’t use an ordinary arrow; it will have to be a poison one. Then I can aim at his foot, and a scratch will stop him.”

  He knelt on the grass, searching in his quiver for a poison bolt. He notched the arrow. He pulled on the bowstring, drew it back, back, until the bow bent almost double and let fly. The arrow cut through the air and grazed the rider’s arm. Arm and shoulder immediately went blue. Poison ran through the man’s veins. He stiffened and fell out of the saddle. The horse planted its feet, and stood there, trembling. Dienera slid off, bewildered. She looked down at her kidnapper. His face was blue. There was a bloody froth on his lips. His breath rattled in his throat.

  “Dienera,” he whispered, “I’m dying.”

  She dropped to her knees and looked into his face. Hera, who had planned all this, hovered invisibly over them. She whispered to the dying Nessus, “I’m sorry this happened. But I’ll show you a way to avenge yourself on Hercules even after you’re dead. If your poisoned blood can touch him, he will die too.”

  She kept whispering, telling Nessus exactly what to do. The dying man listened greedily. Dienera held him in her arms. She was sorry for him. She tried to cry, but couldn’t quite. She did squeeze out a tear or two, which proved to her that she was really tenderhearted. And she shed a few more tears. They splashed on his face.

  “Princess dear,” whispered Nessus, “I’m sorry I kidnapped you. I know you’ll marry Hercules, and I want to give you a wedding gift. Take my tunic and cut away the part that is stained with my blood. Weave that bloody cloth into a shirt you will make for Hercules. The heart blood of one who has loved you so well will be a magic potion. If Hercules wears that shirt, he can never love anyone but you.”

  “Thank you,” said Dienera. “That’s just what I need.”

  “Farewell, dear princess.”

  Nessus died. Dienera quickly tore away the bloody part of the garment and hid it in her tunic just before Hercules reached her. Hercules gazed down at the fallen horseman. He couldn’t bear the look of him, lying there so blue-faced and rigid. He couldn’t bear the thought that he had poisoned him.

  “Go back to the castle,” he said to Dienera. “I’ll gather wood and make a fire and burn his body, so that his blood won’t soak into the ground and poison the grass. I’ll come to you when I’m finished.”

  Dienera returned to the castle. She went to a loom and wove a shirt for Hercules. She had never woven anything before; she had left that to her slaves. But now Hera hovered invisibly, guiding her hands. And the shirt she wove was a gorgeous thing, decorated with pictures of the battles fought by Hercules … the Nemean Lion, the Hydra, Anteus … pictures of all his adventures woven into the shirt with colored threads. In the very middle of its back, she inserted the patch that was taken from the shirt of Nessus and steeped in poison blood. Hera kept helping her, and her fingers flew with magical speed. She was finished by the time Hercules returned to the castle. She went to him and said:

  “Hercules, dear, I’m sorry I was so mean before. But I won’t be jealous, I swear. Go have a nice visit with Iole. And to show that you love me too, take this shirt that I have woven and promise me that you’ll wear it when you see her—so that I’ll know you’re thinking of me.”

  “Thank you,” said Hercules. “I’ll wear it with pleasure.”

  Hercules ran along the shore toward the driftwood shack where Iole lived with the Blind Man. Iole, with her keen eyes, spotted him while he was still a long way off. She ran to meet him. It was a sunny day, too hot for a heavy embroidered shirt, but Hercules had promised Dienera that he would be wearing it when he met Iole, so he had put it on.

  He was so eager to see Iole that he was running fast and was hotter than ever, so hot that the clot of Hydra blood began to melt, and the wet shirt clung to his back. The girl came running to him and leaped into his arms. He set her on his shoulders, and gave her a golden apple. She rode his shoulders, laughing with joy, and tossing the apple into the air.

  “Why are you wearing this tapestry?” she said. “Some girl made it for you—that weepy princess, I’ll bet.”

  She heard a curious gasping sound and thought he was laughing. She felt him stagger and just managed to slide off his shoulders before he fell. She thought he had stumbled. He climbed to his feet and stood there swaying.

  The Blind Man came limping up. “Greetings, Hercules,” he said.

  Hercules didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. He tried to speak, but no words came. Iole screamed as she saw his face turning blue. The Hydra venom melted the inside of the shirt, turning each of its fibers into a thorn, which pierced his back and shoulders. The thorns wove themselves into the fibers of his flesh, fusing them into one mat of nettles. He felt himself scorching. The pain was worse than anything he had ever known. It burned through his flesh, into his marrow. For the first time in his life, he screamed.

  Iole saw his face twist in agony, saw his hands lift and claw his face. She saw those hands grasping the shirt at the shoulders, trying to tear it off. The shirt stuck. It was part of his skin now. Hercules pulled at the shirt. He pulled with all his might, and tore the shirt off his back, tearing his own flesh away, peeling himself to the bone.

  Pain killed him before the poison could reach his heart. His legs folded. He fell in a puddle of hissing blood. Iole’s face was white as bone. With him gone, she didn’t want to stay in the world for one second. She knelt to him and kissed his lips, drinking the poison froth, and fell dead with her head on his chest.

  Tyresias raised his blind face to the sky and howled like a wolf. “O Zeus,” he cried. “Father Zeus, hear me now, I pray. Hear me as I bear witness to this man, the best of his kind. He killed a monster once, and that monster was the Hydra. He cut off a hundred dragon heads and buried them under rocks, for they kept snapping after death. And each of those poison heads became a stream. The streams mingled and became a river, the river Hydra, clear and pure, and very beautiful in the tumbling of its waters. For in your wisdom, O Zeus, you have made the earth use everyt
hing it is given, even monstrous matter. So now I call upon you, O mighty and mysterious one, whose shadow is justice, and ask that the same Hydra blood which this man’s courage made into a river of singing waters, that this same poison running in his body now, shall run pure again, restoring him to the wholeness of his flesh.”

  Zeus stood with Athena on Olympus. She had heard the Blind Man howling and had made her father listen. The words of the prophet drifted up to Zeus and made him frown.

  “Hera has done this deed,” he said. “I forbade her to kill him herself, but she has done it through trickery.”

  “Behold the man,” said Athena. “He, lying there, was the best and strongest, the bravest and most gentle of humankind. Let him join us here on Olympus and teach us to be human, too, before man, learning cruelty from us, destroys himself.”

  “So be it,” said Zeus.

  Far below, on the shore of the flashing sea, Hercules arose. He was clothed in flesh again, all new, milky and lustrous. His face was like the evening star, streaming light. He stood taller than before, changed, joyous, godlike.

  He called. A chariot coasted down the steeps of air, drawn by twelve golden eagles, and the chariot was golden too. He lifted Iole into the chariot. And the gold of the eagles and the gold of the chariot flying straight toward the sun made so hot a stream of golden light that it pierced the old man’s blindness. His sight was restored, and the first thing he saw after forty years of darkness was the golden chariot streaking away, and Hercules holding Iole in his arms.

  So Hercules was taken among the gods and lived among them, teaching them humanity. And Hera pretended it was all her idea.

  There are different stories about what happened to Iole. Some say she became a goddess, that her name was shortened to Eos, and that she rode in the sun chariot, painting the dawn. Some say that Hercules drove that sun chariot, and that his name was changed to Helios. Others say, though, that Athena simply changed the girl into a gull, who flies forever over the sea, crying “Hercules, Hercules …”

  We do know, though, what happened to the shirt. It fell into the hands of Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, who washed its poison away and cut out its embroidered pictures. From time to time, she takes a handful of these pictures and visits her hearths, scattering them among the flames, so that boys and girls, dreaming into the fire, see pictures in the heart of the flame and pin their own face on Hercules as he fights the Nemean Lion and the Hydra and the three-bodied giant … as he wrestles the river in all its changes and ties the octopus into knots and throws Anteus and does all those other brave and wonderful things. And these boys and girls, dreaming into the fire, promise themselves that they will be brave when they grow up and always fight those shapes of evil called monsters and always dare to be gentle, too.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 1984 by Bernard Evslin

  Illustrations copyright © 1984 by Jos A. Smith

  cover design by Omar F. Olivera

  978-1-4532-6447-8

  This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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