Atlantis

by John Cowper Powys

  Okyrhöe made an effort to look more than humanly lovely and her features had certainly never been as goddess-like as at that moment. The sun was still overhead, though his tremendous arsenal of refulgence had sunk sufficiently from the Zenith to pour itself into every curve and cranny of Okyrhöe’s countenance.

  There are faces that cannot endure exposure of this kind, but Okyrhöe’s face could endure anything. Indeed it looked to Arsinöe as she glanced at her companion that the intense emotion in the old Dryad’s voice stirred up in the beautiful wearer of the Podandrikon skin a quivering vibration of self-assertion that rushed like a sea-breath touched by fire through nerves and veins and muscles and fibres and cells.

  But if this rush of abnormal magnetism affected the recipient of the old Dryad’s words, it also affected the Dryad herself. It did more than affect her. Leaving them helplessly standing there—and where she left them they remained; for nothing else at that moment seemed possible—she rushed wildly, blindly, desperately into the centre of Arima. Midway between the two figures of Eurybia and Echidna she paused for a moment, staring at them both like one deprived of speech by reason of the intensity of the feeling that possessed her. Then she cried out in a resonant voice that rang from end to end of that haunted enclosure, “Goddesses! Goddesses! Goddesses! Goddesses! worshipped for fifty thousand years in Argos and Ionia and Crete and Achaia and Lakedaimon! There is a battle going on that will never be repeated if it is not won now!

  “It is a battle to restore to us women the ruling position we held at the beginning of things! In the reign of Kronos we held it—and that age was the Age of Gold. But it is Zeus the son of Kronos who has taken it from us, partly by his thunderbolts and partly by the cunning and strength of his two sons, Hermes and Herakles. Goddesses! My goddesses! You who have been worshipped in Ithaca for fifty-thousand years, harken unto me now!

  “Persephone, the Queen of Hades, has left her Lord Aidoneus, and is now roaming the world seeking for her mother Demeter. But Hermes, that cunning one, has gone to both Aidoneus and Poseidon, yes! both to the Lord of Hades and the Lord of the Sea, and has brought them to the Garden of the Hesperides near the place where Atlas, as a punishment from Zeus, holds up the sky. And from there the three Olympian brothers, Zeus, Lord of the Sky, Poseidon Lord of the Sea, and Aidoneus, Lord of the Underworld, have resolved to resist this attempt of us women, led by Persephone, to seize again the universal rule and power that we once possessed. The great Olympian goddesses are wavering and have hidden themselves away. Athene has gone to Ethiopia.

  “Hera is still alone on Olympos, but in a state of distraction. She has sent Iris to Ethiopia with frantic messages to Athene to return! But Iris seems unable to discover where Athene is hiding. Dionysos and Eros together are doing what Aphrodite cannot do; for Hephaistos has caught her in Lemnos and is keeping her a prisoner there.

  “But Dionysos and Eros have between them ensorcerized the powerful Herakles and laid him low with Desire and Drink, so that Typhon breathing fire and up-rooting mountains can now drag forth Briareos from Tartaros this time for the dethroning, not the throning of Zeus! O great Echidna, Mother of the Sphinx, the Chimera, the Hydra and the Nemean Lion, help us now! O great Eurybia, grandmother of Hekate and daughter of Gaia the Earth and Pontos the Sea, help us now!

  “And harken unto me, ye two, for I have great news! Arcadian Pan himself, yes! Pan with the beautiful horns and the hairy legs of a real living goat, has revolted against his time-serving, treacherous, cunning, thieving, lying begetter, Hermes, and is now, even now, leading by their bridles those two godlike horses Pegasos and Arion, so cruelly mutilated by Enorches the Priest of the Mysteries.

  “And why, O great Goddesses, is he leading them? He is leading them with the idea of offering them to you Eurybia, of wide rule, daughter of Gaia and Pontos! He is leading them with the idea of offering them to you Echidna, daughter of Phorkys and Keto! He is leading them with the idea of being himself their rider and your guide and helping you to intercept Typhon in his fire-breathing course from Sicily to the Garden of the Hesperides, and make use of him, as huntresses make use of savage dogs, to defeat the Son of Kronos even though he is supported by Aidoneus, the Lord of the Dead, and Poseidon the Lord of the Sea.

  “And then, when this resounding victory is won, this victory to which Atropos the oldest of the Fates who is a woman like ourselves will contribute her aid, we shall welcome completely to our side the wavering Hera and the wandering——”

  She was interrupted by a long, melodious, vibrant, tremulous note of music which was so penetrating and far-reaching that it was impossible not to receive it into your inmost identity like a perfect draught of wine. Without any other declaration, or sign, or warning, or announcement, the two godlike horses entered that haunted enclosure, Arcadian Pan repeating from the flute he pressed to his bearded mouth that same meltingly sweet note over and over and over and over.

  Pan himself was mounted on Pegasos, and the young girl Eione on Arion; and she certainly seemed to be riding Arion easily and naturally and as if entirely at her own volition.

  “Lady Okyrhöe!” cried Eione, as they came even with the two women; and into this salutation the young girl threw exactly the right note of respect and courtesy.

  As Eione later discussed what they managed to achieve with Arcadian Pan—for it was remarkable how quickly she felt completely at ease with the goat-foot god—they agreed that it was peculiarly and specially lucky for the success of their scheme that in former times, so rumour said, Echidna had been embraced by the monster Typhon and not only so, but, as one story declared, had given birth by him to the Hydra of Lerna, if not to the famous victim of the club of Herakles, the Nemean Lion itself! But whatever were the feelings, mortal or immortal, of the riders upon those divine horses, the impression they produced upon the two women was noticeable.

  Never to the end of her days did Arsinöe forget what she then beheld. Okyrhöe took it all more lightly, for her whole life had been such a tissue of murderous tensions and such a chain of deep-plotted explosions that for life’s events to jerk and bleed and jitter and squeal as you dragged them clinging to your scraping harrow over the rough and smooth of fate seemed natural enough.

  But apparently those two strange Beings, Eurybia and Echidna who for years and years and years had sighed obscurely, darkly, obstinately, and in a sort of ghastly antiphonic ritual at each other in horrible isolation across the dedicated unholiness of their island Arima, now found themselves bound to move, just as if Atropos herself were in person directing the operation; and there was something about their having to move after so long that was almost geological, giving the impression that the places from which they moved were left raw and in some way not only bloody and excremental but scoriac, volcanic, and like what is left when an avalanche moves.

  Echidna instinctively selected Pegasos as her horse and Pan as her companion, while Eurybia slid easily and inevitably upon the back of Arion. Each of these formidable goddesses, however, had the good sense to allow her fellow-rider to hold the bridle-reins of the particular animal she rode; so that as Okyrhöe the pretended daughter of Hector saw them pass that hero’s carved image, and as Arsinöe, his real daughter, saw the hoof of one of the horses fling a clod of mud against the figure she had broken her heart to carve and bruised her flesh to arm, it was upon Eione and Pan that their attention was fixed rather than upon the two goddesses; and as they listened to that exquisitely magnetic flute-note from the pipe of Pan dying away in the distance long after both horses with their four riders had disappeared, the drift of their separate moods opened between them like a yawning gulf, the mood of the wearer of that weird Podandrikon growing as tense as the mood of a general in the midst of the bloodiest part of a battle, while the mood of the daughter of Hector fell into that sadness, proud and bitter and rejecting all sympathy, which had become her prevailing attitude to life.

  Had the girl possessed any real friend, had Nisos, for instance, not been so much
younger, or Leipephile not so extremely simple, she might have been drawn out of this embittered isolation, for it was so long after the Trojan War that the ancient rancours in most ordinary minds were beginning to lose their edge, if not to wear out. If only Eurycleia hadn’t been so old it might have been different; but of all people an ancient family-nurse, and one who had nursed, as Eurycleia had, three generations of the same breed, would be the last to have any sensitized imagination left over for sympathetic consideration of the feelings of an alien.

  It wasn’t until those heart-breakingly sweet notes—or rather the last long-drawn-out unequalled note—of Pan’s flute had died away that either Arsinöe or Okyrhöe gave a thought to the old Dryad who was the prime instigator of this disturbing event.

  When they did turn to her it was simultaneously and with an equal feeling of something like real awe. “Let us help you home to your oak, Dryad,” whispered Okyrhöe; and if Nisos had heard that whisper, to which Arsinöe added a less articulate murmur, he would have had a thrill of real pride at being a native of a Grecian isle rather than of a Trojan or a Theban plain, for clearly so great is the power of a Greek Nymph even in her extreme old age that formidable foreigners are subdued before her.

  As they approached the skeleton oak-tree on the bark of which flourished a special kind of rich green moss, as if the tree were already horizontal rather than perpendicular, the Dryad’s supporters both recognized that it was possible to look through the interstices of the bark into the interior wood of the tree which was split into long splintery filaments between which there were already oozing out and crumbling upon the lichen-covered ground certain thick masses of a reddish-brown substance which was the clotted heart-stuff or dust-resolved liver, or conglomerated entrail-matter, of that fast-perishing old tree.

  Suddenly the Dryad stood dead-still between them, and laid one withered hand on the sleeve of Okyrhöe and one on the sleeve of Arsinöe.

  “Give my farewell to Odysseus, you two. My name-mother is one of the Graces and just at this moment I felt her passing over me, warning me of my end. Zeus, it seems has got one last thunder-bolt left, a very little one, but large enough to dispose of my oak and me. Lest either of you should feel the shock of my destruction, it is important that you should hasten away. Don’t stop running till you reach the entrance to the Hall of the Pillars. There you will be safe. Fare ye well. Let my memory be forgotten!”

  So intense was the tone of her words that although all was silent round them Okyrhöe snatched at Arsinöe’s hand and together they fled like a pair of panic-stricken pigeons. They did not stop running till they reached the entrance to the corridor of the Pillars; and then, when they did stop at last with their hands still clasped tight, each of them could hear clearly the beating of her own heart as well as that of her companion. In fact as they stood there in a sort of trance there arose from the pair of them a kind of mathematical and mechanical and wholly impersonal heart-beating, which went on till, in one single blinding flash of lightning, followed by a rolling clap of thunder, the Nymph and the oak-tree, and the stretch of ground where the oak-tree’s roots had been, were reduced simultaneously to black ashes.

  “What I don’t understand, dear nurse,” Odysseus was saying at that moment, as together with his new friend Zeuks he watched Eurycleia’s face as he explained his ideas for the calling of the whole people together to listen to his plan for sailing across the drowned continent Atlantis. “What I don’t understand is your objection to my telling the people exactly what I intend to do. Why shouldn’t I tell them, Nurse darling? I shall say that what I want for my sailing is the most necessary thing of all—namely ‘othonia’ or sail-cloth.

  “And I’ll call upon them all, upon the whole people of Ithaca to collect sail-cloth for me. What can Krateros Naubolides do to stop the people, my own people of Ithaca, that were my father’s people before me, from collecting enough ‘othonia’ or sail-cloth for my purpose? And then, you see, Nurse darling, if they begin making the excuse that it’s wrong for me, Odysseus the son of Laertes, to leave the rule of this Island to others, I’ve got this brilliant, eloquent, inspired young daughter of Teiresias to help me with them. Don’t you see, Nurse, how she’ll make all the difference at this open ‘agora’ and meeting-place of our people? I’ll call on her, as we used to call on all those prophets of old; and, girl though she is, she’ll do the trick for us, Nurse, my honey! Now do, for the sake of all the gods tell me what’s weighing on your dear mind, for I know something is! Are you afraid that secretive scoundrel Enorches has got some new trick up his sleeve, some dirty, crafty, clever trick that I’ve never thought of, that he will play on me at the last moment?”

  Eurycleia gazed intently at him, frowning. Then she suddenly shifted in her seat and stared out of the window. Then she addressed herself to Zeuks. “Did you hear anything, Master?” “I certainly did!” Zeuks answered; and in his turn addressed the King.

  “I expect you must have heard it too, my Lord? It didn’t sound as ordinary thunder does at this time of the year either! Something’s going on.”

  The old Nurse rose, not without difficulty, and confronted the two men from her full height, one hand resting on the arm of her chair. Her stark gaunt figure towered imposingly over them in the afternoon sunlight which was now pouring into the chamber.

  “I think you are right, Master Zeuks,” she said quietly. “If I’m not greatly mistaken that wasn’t ordinary lightning or ordinary thunder. That was a thunderbolt from——”

  It was then that there came a hurried step outside Eurycleia’s chamber and with all her simple impulsiveness Leipephile burst in.

  The tall beautiful stupid girl was panting like a hunted animal. “What on earth is it?” asked the old Nurse. “What’s happened? Was that a thunderbolt?”

  “They’re in the Porch,” stammered Leipephile, recovering her breath with difficulty.

  “Who are in the Porch?” cried the Nurse. “For the god’s sake tell us what’s happened, girl!”

  “The strange lady in that funny cloak and Arsinöe.”

  “Well—why shouldn’t they be in the Porch? Are they hurt? What’s happened?”

  “They say that Zeus has thrown a thunderbolt from Mount Gargaros, where he is looking down on the Garden of the Hesperides and on Atlas holding up the sky, and on Poseidon coming up out of the Sea; and on Aidoneus coming up out of Hades. They’ve just met the old Dryad——” Here Odysseus interrupted her. “Met Kleta the Dryad, do you say, girl? What on earth was she doing all that way from her tree?”

  “It is the Dryad and her tree, O king,” replied the betrothed of Nisos’ brother; and she spoke with less timidity and shyness now that she was delivering, or being delivered of, her chief news. “Yes, both the Dryad and her tree together, that the Son of Kronos has destroyed with a thunderbolt. The Dryad told them that the thunderbolt he was going to use was a little one and the last he had where he then was. But they told me to tell you that they know why the son of Kronos was angry with the Dryad.” At this point Leipephile paused in her tale and surveyed her audience with the self-satisfied expression that implies the presence of news in the wind that can’t be blurted out in a few words, and can’t possibly be divined or guessed at, even by the cleverest listener. Her three hearers, not missing this expression, patiently imitated Eurycleia who had now resumed her seat at the table.

  “It was,” Leipephile went on, with obviously deep satisfaction at having such an important tale to relate to headquarters, “it was the goat-foot god Pan who began it all by consorting with the girl Eione—though I don’t think he meddled with her maidenhead. The god Pan and the girl Eione were riding on Pegasos and Arion. And when the Dryad saw this she persuaded the goddesses Eurybia and Echidna who have for so long ruled over that place—” and Leipephile made a vague gesture with her hand in the general direction of Arima—“that place—you know—where everybody’s scared of going—and what the Dryad told them to do was this. She told them, that is she told Eurybi
a and Echidna and Eione and Pan, all four mounted on Pegasos and Arion, to intercept the Monster Typhon and by a little bribing and petting and cozening and cosseting and coaxing—and a few terrifying threats too perhaps!—to make use of him as a savage hunting-dog; and, thus well-prepared for any event, to approach the Garden of the Hesperides.”

  There was a long silence when the girl had finished. Then Odysseus enquired: “Could you tell me, dear child, could any of you tell me, do you think, where the daughter of Teiresias has got to this afternoon while all these unexpected events have been occurring?” Leipephile stared at him with her mouth open, while Eurycleia and Zeuks exchanged a look by which the former said to the latter:

  “Here’s a typical monarch! Having made all this fuss to get hold of this damned girl, he now has let her escape!” while the latter said to the former: “We had better find out exactly from the woman in that weird cloak what kind of trouble this Pontopereia has fallen into on a fine afternoon.”

  But before they ceased to look at each other there were more light steps outside the door and Pontopereia herself appeared.

  “Where’s Eione?” she asked; and then seeing Odysseus she added: “Pardon me, great King, but they told me down there such a mad story that I had to come and see for myself! They said Eione had gone off with the goat-foot god and with two mysterious goddesses who for twenty years or more have been arguing together in a haunted place near here you call Arima.”

  “They seem to have told you the truth, child,” replied Odysseus. “But now that you’re here the best thing you and I can do is to arrange a definite plan of campaign for ourselves at the ‘agora’ tomorrow. So sit you down here and have a sip of my wine. This is our Eurycleia. Yes, give her one of those cups you like using best yourself, Nurse.”

  Unlike many men of genius, whether in thought or in action, Odysseus was always vividly aware of the feelings of women; and he now glanced from Pontopereia to Leipephile and back again to Pontopereia.