He climbed steadily, and it was hot work. Hera had bribed Apollo to swing his sun chariot low that day, and the land lay sweltering. Nor was it much cooler on the mountain. Hercules was parched. He had to drink, and soon. Nostrils quivering, he snuffed the wind like a horse and tried to pick up the scent of water. A faint, cool odor did drift to him. He strained his ears and heard a distant splashing. He turned off the path and made his way over rough ground to a natural cupping of rock. Here, from deep in the mountain, a spring spurted with such force that it made a plumed fountain. Flowers grew there, wild roses and iris and hyacinth, and the one known as heliotrope because it always turns to face the sun.
Hercules knelt and plunged his face in. It was the most delicious water he had ever drunk, ice cold, sparkling, tasting faintly of mint; it was like drinking some pure essence of earth. He had no way of knowing that this was the Hippocrene Spring, whose coolness touched those who drank it with the incurable fever called poetry.
Hercules pulled his dripping face from the spring and gazed about in wonder. Everything had changed. Colors pulsed. Things presented themselves, insisting that he see them—a cypress, a berry bush, a soaring eagle, a goat far off. They uttered their names, and he heard them as if for the first time. This became a dance of names, seeming not only sound but colored music. The eagle he was watching became a white stallion balanced on golden wings, proclaiming the reliability of magic and the necessity for transformation—which poets know.
Hercules had drunk of the Hippocrene Spring and was becoming a poet. But he was unused to words and felt himself choking on a song unsung.
The fountain mist was making dim, gauzy rainbows, and Hercules couldn’t quite see what had come to the other side of the spring. It was huge, a looming brightness. He stepped to one side and looked past the plume of water. He saw a stag, larger than any he had ever seen, and of a blinding whiteness. Its hooves were silver; its antlers were a candelabra of silver fire.
“A moon stag!” he said to himself. “Wandered away from the chariot. Artemis must be searching for him high and low. I shall catch it and bring it to her.”
It was not a stag belonging to Artemis, although of the same breed, and it had always run free. But beginners in poetry are apt to prate wildly about the moon.
“Yes,” thought Hercules. “Surely he is one of the team that draws the moon chariot across the night. And Artemis, maiden huntress, who swings the tides on a silver leash and hangs a torch for lovers, will thank me when I return this stag to her.”
He thought these things, but could not say them. He didn’t yet know how. In that big, superbly wrought body, poetry bypassed words and became action. And he began to chase the stag as it bounded away. The stag fled, became a white blur going up the hill. Hercules watched it race to the top, then bound over, to go down the other side.
“Terrific sprinter,” thought Hercules. “We’ll see how well he goes the distance.”
But Hippocrene fever was coursing through his veins. He half forgot about the stag even while following it.
Some miles off Attica, a wedge-shaped head split the water. It was the serpent, Ladon, swimming toward the coast. Iole rode his head, her red hair snapping like a pennant behind her in the wind of their going.
Informed by the sea nymphs that Hercules was on Helicon, she had asked Ladon to take her there, without telling him why.
Ladon crawled ashore and began to undulate across Attica. His body moved by contraction like a giant worm, and he moved very fast. He was heading northward through the Peloponnese, then would angle northeast toward Thessaly, where Mount Helicon stood.
Hercules ambled down the slope toward the encampment. Tall, suavely muscled young women milled about. Some were grooming horses. Some were in a pool, scrubbing little men who spluttered and wept. Others were sharpening swords against flat rocks. One group was playing with ropes, making their captives run and lassoing them as they ran. A pair of frolicsome twins, aglow with the excitement of their first raid, had tied their men to trees and were giving them a taste of the lash … not hitting hard—it was just an introductory flogging—the girls chatted and laughed as they swung their whips. Four Amazons were practicing archery with a human target. He was spread-eagled against the bole of a thick tree, and the women were shooting in turn. The idea was to come as close as possible without hitting him. And the archers were so expert that arrows outlined his body but none had touched him.
Then they spotted Hercules. Saw a towering, bronzed, wide-shouldered youth wearing a lion skin and bearing an oaken club. They immediately stopped what they were doing and gaped in wonder. Their voices mingled.
“Look at him, would you? What a big one!”
“Can’t be a man; must be a woman!”
“Must be, absolutely!”
“What does she want here?”
“She’s on a raid of her own. Hurry, or she’ll take the best ones.”
“It’s no woman!” bellowed Hippolyte. “It’s a man, definitely.”
“A man that big, can’t believe it.”
“Let’s take him and throw the little ones back. He’d be more use than a mountainful of these runts.”
“A prime cut! After him, girls!”
They shouted with eagerness, uttered war cries, beat sword against shield. The clamor came to Hercules like a dim murmur. He was trying to find a rhyme for tree and had forgotten why he was on the mountain. He waved absently to the ranks of warrior women, then wandered off, mumbling to himself.
Thinking always in terms of warfare, the sisterhood thought this stranger might be leading them into ambush and followed him warily. But, danger or no, they were determined to catch so fine a specimen.
“When I give the signal, we’ll move in,” called Hippolyte. “And don’t forget, he’s mine!”
No one answered, but every young Amazon there, except for Nycippe, had decided that Hercules must be hers alone, and was ready to fight Hippolyte for him.
13
The Silver Stag
Hera and Hecate hovered, watching. They had been pleased by the Amazons’ campaign, delighted when they saw Hercules drinking of the spring, but were dismayed now as they saw him bounding down the mountain after a stag.
“I thought that springwater was supposed to do things to him,” said Hera. “Scatter his wits, drain his strength. That’s what you told me. But look at the brute. Look at him chasing that stag. He’s tireless.”
Indeed, as the stag raced down the mountain and onto the Thessalian plain, Hercules had put on speed and was managing to keep the animal in sight. He had no idea he was being pursued, but it didn’t matter. For he was running faster than the Amazons could gallop their horses.
Furiously disappointed, the warrior women reined up and galloped back to retrieve their captives. But the battered poets had fled, finding holes and caves for themselves and burrowing so deep that the Amazons abandoned the search. They had been hunting listlessly anyway. The memory of the glorious big youth who had outrun their horses made these scruffy little cowards seem most unappetizing. As for the lost sister, Thyone, they had never even caught a glimpse of her. Hot and disgruntled, they trooped off the mountain and headed for Scythia—all but Nycippe; she had deserted.
In the darkest hour of night, she had gone to where she had hidden her captive, slung him across the withers of her horse and ridden toward the peak. She meant to find a cave and oil his cuts and bruises, and find out whether his silence meant song.
It was then that Ladon arrived, bearing Iole on his head, and began to climb the slope. The girl was wild with excitement. She stood up on the head to look about. She had come, finally, to the place where Hercules was supposed to be. Her gaze traveled up, up. She was at the foot of the mountain; its rock walls towered above her. He could be anywhere up there, or on the other side. She saw a flash of gold and stared in disbelief. A white horse was poised on golden wings, hanging between sky and peak. She was flooded with joy. She knew that wonders never came singly.
Perhaps another wonder, the most wonderful of all, was about to happen … It did! A silver stag fled by, followed by Hercules running almost as fast.
She jumped off Ladon’s head, crying, “Farewell!”
“What do you mean, ‘farewell’?” asked Ladon.
“I must go now.”
“Why?”
“To catch up with that man who just ran by.”
“Why?”
“That’s Hercules. He’s why we’ve come here.”
“Don’t go.”
“I must! I have something to tell him.”
“What?”
“That’s my affair! We’re not married yet, you know. And never will be if you go on this way.”
“What way?”
“All this hissy jealous stuff. ‘Why … what … when …’ It’s unbearable!”
“You don’t care for me then?”
“I do, I do, but I don’t know how much. I have to go away to see if I care enough to come back.”
She heard herself lying, she who had always been too much of her own girl to bother lying to anyone. But she would have said anything that would help her get away from the serpent and go to Hercules.
Hera and Hecate hovered invisibly over Hercules, watching him jump rocks and logs as he chased the stag. “Well,” said Hera. “Why hasn’t that ruffian been enfeebled by poetry, as you promised?”
“I made a slight miscalculation,” said Hecate. “Hercules is a demigod. And I suppose poetry acts differently on him than on a mere mortal. It doesn’t become song but a white-hot intellectual activity, igniting all his vital forces. But be easy, Hera. It’s all happening for the best.”
“The best!” cried Hera. “How can you claim that if he’s getting stronger instead of weaker?”
“Patience, patience. Drinking of the Hippocrene Spring has suspended his judgment. He has forgotten about consequences, and has suddenly dropped everything to serve the moon. He will be chasing that stag across the wide earth, through the deepest valleys, over the highest mountains. It will flee and he will pursue. Such a chase must exhaust even a Hercules. And—I said this before, and I say it again—he will be easy prey for any monster you send against him.”
Northward raced the stag, Hercules following, and Iole following him. And Ladon following all of them. The serpent didn’t know what to do. He knew that Iole, unlike the others, would have to sleep some time, and he didn’t know whether to stay with her and try to win her affection again, or to follow his enemy, Hercules.
“Perhaps she’s lost her love for him in this grueling chase,” thought Ladon. “If so, I won’t have to kill him.”
Therefore Ladon made himself go slowly, keeping the same distance behind Iole till he saw her finally fold herself beneath a tree and fall asleep. Moonlight sifted through the branches, making sequins of silver on the forest floor, and making him almost invisible as he crept toward the sleeping girl. He rose up on his coils and arched down to look upon her. In the gauzy moonlight she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And love fought with murder in his untried heart.
He heard her voice. Was she awake? Was she speaking to him? He lowered his head close to her face, and saw that she slept. Was she speaking out of her sleep? Was she calling to him from that deep place where truth abides? That would be good, very good.
“Hercules,” she moaned. “Oh, Hercules … Wait for me. Please?”
It was to be murder then; she had decreed it from her sleep. Ladon uncoiled and glided away, going much faster now. After several miles he caught sight of Hercules but did not attack. He was very confident of victory in the battle that was to come; nevertheless, he wished that that man, that entangler of young girls, that enemy, would exhaust himself running. Then he, Ladon, the patient one, the eternal waiter, the one who killed and fed at his own pleasure, would close in for the best kill of all—would drink the young Theban’s blood and crack his bones.
At the very western edge of the world lay a small island that had been chosen for gigantic events. Here the Titan, Atlas, who had rebelled against Zeus, was condemned to stand forever, holding the sky on his shoulders. In happier times, he had wed a starry Titaness named Hespera, and she had borne him three beautiful daughters called the Hesperides. They had gone with their father to his place of punishment, had become apple nymphs, and guarded an orchard where grew a wondrous tree bearing golden fruit. This was the very tree that Ladon had wrapped himself about when he first climbed out of the sea and where he had first tasted human flesh.
And it was here, to the Island of the Hesperides, that the stag had come. Without pause, it had raced through Thessaly, northward through Thrace, through the land later to be called Rome and now called Italy, north again across mountains not yet called Alps, then through a fair, forested country that was to become France. Westward then, running as fast as it could, but beginning to slow down a bit—and all this time with Hercules still the same distance behind.
The stag came to an arm of the North Sea. It was as cold and choppy and foggy then as it is now under the name of the English Channel. Without hesitation, the stag leaped into the water and began to swim west.
Hercules had slowed down too now, and had not gained on the stag by the time he reached the water. He looked westward. A strong wind had begun to blow, sweeping the fog away. Across the water he saw dim white cliffs. He squinted, trying to locate the stag. Far off upon the water he spotted the silver gleam of its antlers.
He plunged into the channel. The icy water revived him. He began to swim very fast, faster than the stag was swimming, and had gained slightly on the animal by the time it reached shore. But when it did wade to the beach, it seemed as if it had been storing speed for a last sprint. One huge bound carried it over the sand past a fringe of trees, and it vanished. By the time Hercules reached shore the stag was nowhere to be seen.
He began to press inland, but was weary now. He had enjoyed the swim, but it exhausted him, and he knew he needed to rest before resuming the chase. Nor did he have any idea that he was upon the Utmost Isle. For the wind had dropped again, and an evening fog cloaked the figure of Atlas, so that it looked like a mountain peak.
Hercules slept, and awoke to a sunny morning. He arose immediately, swam in the sea, ate a handful of blackberries, and struck inland to search for the stag. All at once he found himself surrounded by three rosy young nymphs who joined hands and danced about him, singing:
Welcome, stranger,
welcome, man!
Don’t try to leave us;
no man can!
“Greetings, lovely nymphs,” he said. “Have you seen a silver stag?”
“No, but we have golden apples. We’ll give them to you if you stay.”
“I must go. I’m hunting that stag. It’s somewhere on the island. But I’ll come back when I’ve caught him, I promise. And we’ll dance the night through.”
“Daylight is fine for dancing too, almost as good as night. Dance now and hunt later.”
“That cannot be.”
“But you’ll come back?”
“I always do what I promise—sooner or later.”
Make it soon,
make it soon …
We’ll dance up the sun,
dance down the moon …
“As soon as ever I may,” said Hercules.
“Be careful of our father, though, sweet lad.”
“He doesn’t like us to have friends.”
“When they come he starts avalanches.”
“Who is your father?”
“Atlas is his name. There he is standing on that mountain, holding up the sky.”
“That snowy peak?”
“It’s not snow; it’s his white beard.”
“Farewell until I return,” said Hercules.
He left the nymphs and went on his way, going through a grove and crossing a plain and coming to the foot of the mountain. He searched the slopes, trying to spot the stag. No matter how high it had climbed, its silver an
tlers, he knew, would catch the sun.
The mountain loomed. It rose and rose and ended in a plateau on which stood Atlas, legs braced, arms raised, holding the edge of the sky on his bowed shoulders. Hercules heard thunder rumble. But the sky was clear, and he realized that the Titan was calling down to him.
“What are you gawking at, little rat?”
“I come in peace,” said Hercules.
“Depart in haste! I welcome no visitors. Have you come to steal the golden apples?”
“No, My Lord.”
“To steal my daughters?”
“Not that either.”
“Well, you look like a thief, and thieves steal.”
Atlas stamped his foot, dislodging a huge rock that tumbled down the mountain. Hercules sprang aside. The rock just missed him and buried itself in the earth.
“Begone, begone!” roared the Titan. “Or I’ll stamp up an avalanche that will cover you in tons of rock.”
“He can’t turn his head,” thought Hercules, “or he’ll shake the sky. I’ll just go around behind him and search for the stag at the other end of the island.”
But he was to find more than he wished on the other shore, for that was where Ladon had landed an hour before.
As soon as he touched shore, the serpent thrilled with recognition. This was the first island he had crawled upon when he had left the sea, ages before. Here was the first place he had eaten a meal that wasn’t fish. That tree, gleaming afar … it was there he had couched until men and women came to eat its golden fruit, and he had eaten them. Remembering this, a savage craving for meat seized him … Live meat!
“I can eat what I want now,” he thought. “She doesn’t love me anymore.”
He saw something else gleam. He couldn’t tell what it was. He crept closer, and saw that it was a stag grazing. White fire glanced off its antlers; they were of pure silver, and its hooves were silver, too. But in between was a ton of venison, for the animal was huge.
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two Page 9