Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two

by Bernard Evslin

  Ladon circled, moving downwind, so that the stag could not pick up his scent. He crept closer. He was invisible against the grass. His entire length stiffened like a cable and became a blur of speed as he struck. His head was a battering ram, knocking the stag down. He opened his jaws and slowly engorged it. The head went in last, and it was still screaming as it vanished.

  Ladon spat out the antlers, spat out the hooves, and crawled off to digest his meal.

  14

  Hero Meets Monster

  Hercules, hunting the stag, saw a patch of white fire, and rushed forward. He stopped in horror as he saw the broken antlers on the ground, and the silver hooves. Where they lay, the grass was trampled and bloody.

  When Hercules was priming for battle, he grew both hot and cold. The heat was rage coursing through his veins. At the same time, he was sheathed in coolness. Wit and thews were fusing, thought becoming action. He stood where he was and searched the meadow. Finally, he was able to distinguish the mottled coils of a serpent from the mingled light and shade where it lay. It seemed to be sleeping.

  Hercules circled until he was downwind, then crept forward. He wanted to see whether the coils were bulging. They were.

  “Yes,” he said to himself. “The silver stag reposes in the belly of the beast. And now I shall prepare a bitter sauce for that meal.”

  Ladon awoke, and thrilled with ferocious glee to see Hercules coming toward him. But he pretended to be asleep still, and did not open his jaws, for he wanted his enemy to come within reach. Hercules kept creeping forward.

  Ladon lashed out suddenly with his tail, a powerful, sweeping blow that could cave in the planking of a ship. Hercules saw the terrible tail scything at him, and leaped straight up, hacking down with his sword. But the serpent’s scales were hard as armor plate; the blade skidded off.

  Hercules fled. He dodged behind a tree as the tail swept back. He crouched low, letting the tail pass above his head and wrap itself about the thick bole. Hercules slipped away as the tree was wrenched, groaning, out of the earth. It came up, roots and all.

  Ladon raised the tree like a club and smashed it down on Hercules’ head. It could not dent his rocklike skull, but the blow drove him into the earth like a tent peg. At that moment, as Hercules was struggling to pull himself out of the hole, the serpent could have wrapped its tail about him and crushed him to death right there.

  Instead, Ladon chose to whip about and come at him, jaws agape. Hercules snatched up the fallen tree and wedged it between the serpent’s jaws. Ladon roared, swinging his head violently, trying to shake the tree out. But the sharp branches pierced the roof of his mouth.

  He flailed about in agony, and Hercules had to dodge the sweeping tail. He saw now that the wedge wouldn’t last. The serpent was biting down on it. Despite the agony, he was forcing his jaws together, crushing the tree. Hercules knew that if those jaws closed, they would spring open again, and close again—on him.

  “He’s bleeding,” thought Hercules. “The roof of his mouth is bloody—must be the only place on his body not armored in leather. And this, perhaps, gives me one last chance.”

  Risking all, he sprang right into Ladon’s mouth. Trying to balance himself on the slippery, heaving mass of the beast’s tongue, he drove his sword upward, stabbing the unarmored palate again and again. Now, the palate lies beneath the head. And the sword, driven with Hercules’ last desperate strength, finally stabbed through the palate into the brain.

  The serpent’s eyes dulled. The great cable of its body went limp.

  Hercules leaned on his sword and gazed down at the beast. It was dead. The stag was gone. The chase was ended. He was hungry and thirsty, and lusted for the orchard’s fruit. He was cut and bruised, but nothing that frolicking in the moonlight with three luscious nymphs wouldn’t cure.

  He grinned up at the dim figure of Atlas. “I’ll take them to the edge of the sea to dance,” he said to himself. “And be able to dodge the avalanche by diving in.”

  The nymphs welcomed him joyously. They wreathed themselves about him, dancing up the sun, dancing down the moon. Their arms were smooth as apple blossoms, and their fragrance was of windfall apples. Atlas stamped furiously. But his daughters only laughed and made a dance of dodging rocks.

  And Hercules, drunk on apple fragrance and blossoming touch and the whirling spirals of the dance, knew that he would have to leave at dawn or stay there forever, courting nymphs, dodging avalanches.

  As if sensing what he felt, the Hesperides pressed closer. Their fragrance beat about him, and the hurtling rocks seemed harmless as falling blossoms. But the sky was flushing pink, shading to rose; there was a wash of lilac and a promise of hot gold. And he remembered a girl with a red mane of hair and jade green eyes and long ivory-brown arms and legs, and a tunic of lilac and rose.

  “Farewell,” he cried to the nymphs. He swept them into his arms and kissed each blooming face, kissed their crystal tears away. “Do not grieve; rejoice, rejoice! Others shall come to dance with you, my lovelies, and stay as long as you wish.”

  “Why are you leaving us? It must be for a girl.”

  “I have seven more monsters to face. And, in between, I must search for the girl who is searching for me.”

  He dived into the sea and swam eastward as dawn became day and the grieving voices of the Hesperides mingled with the cry of gulls.

  Iole, being a daughter of the rainbow, whose home is the sky, could sometimes read the passage of birds and the pattern of stars for signs of what was to be.

  When a black arrow of cranes crossed the sunset, and later that night was followed by a falling star, she knew that she must climb a cliff the next morning—for her destiny would move upon the waters.

  She stood upon a cliff in Troezen and gazed out over the sea. Her hair was a red-gold pennant in the wind and her fluttering tunic was of lilac and rose. Far out, she saw something coming, and prepared to flee. For it was big, big; it could only be Ladon. Nevertheless, she waited until she could see it more clearly, then began to laugh and cry at the same time.

  For it was a raft made of huge logs bound together, the slowest, clumsiest craft in the world, but it was scudding along like a canoe under the powerful strokes of a bronzed youth in a lion skin who was rowing with an uprooted tree.

  She saw the raft swerve toward the beach, and she began to race down the cliff, her sobbing laughter turning to song as she ran to meet him.

  As we have seen, monsters were not immortal; they could be slain by heroes and other monsters. But a dead one could always find employment with Hades. It took its place among his fiends and demons, and roamed the plain, terrorizing and mangling whomever it met, just as it had in life. For the theme of ancient Hell was that death changed nothing—and that hasn’t changed either.

  So it was that Ladon was welcomed into Tartarus. Although officially dead, he kept his hopes alive. He knew that Iole, being a demigoddess, was only half immortal, and that in a thousand years or so her shade would descend—and find him waiting, as he had waited since the beginning of time.

  MEDUSA

  For my granddaughter

  KELLY EVANS

  whose eyes once turned a stony heart

  into enamored mush.

  Characters

  Monsters

  Ceto

  (SEE toh)

  Matriarch of the First Family of Monsters; half woman, half serpent; wife of Phorcys and mother of Echidne, Ladon, the Gray Ones, the Gorgons, Medusa, and several other litters of fearsome creatures

  Phorcys

  (FOR sihs)

  The Sea Hog; husband of Ceto and father to all of the above

  Echidne

  (ee KID neh)

  Eldest daughter of Ceto and Phorcys; also part woman, part serpent, but worse all around than her mother

  Ladon

  (LAY duhn)

  Totally serpent, and entirely lethal

  The Gray Ones

  Three hags, born old and growing steadily older,
who must share a single tooth and eye amongst them and do so most unwillingly

  Medusa

  (muh DOO suh)

  Youngest of the Ceto-Phorcys brood; as beautiful as the others are ugly, and cursed for her beauty

  The Gorgons

  (GOR guhnz)

  Hideous elder sisters of Medusa, equipped with brass wings and brass claws

  Andromeda’s Beast

  Sea dragon sent by Poseidon to harass the seaport city of Joppa

  Gods

  Zeus

  (ZOOS)

  King of the Gods

  Poseidon

  (poh SY duhn)

  Brother of Zeus; God of the Sea

  Athena

  (uh THEE nuh)

  Daughter of Zeus; Goddess of Wisdom

  Hera

  (HEE ruh)

  Sister and wife of Zeus; Queen of the Gods; her jealous wrath carries its own legend

  Humans

  Danae

  (DAN ay ee)

  Princess of Argos; loved by Zeus and hated by her father, Acrisius

  Perseus

  (PUR see uhs)

  Son of Zeus and Danae; young hero who meets many monsters in his quest for rightful succession to King Polydectes’ throne

  Acrisius

  (uh KRIS ee uhs)

  Cowardly king of Argos; father of Danae

  Polydectes

  (pahl ih DEHK teez)

  King of Seriphus; pursuer of Danae

  Cepheus

  (SEF ee uhs)

  King of Joppa; father of Andromeda

  Andromeda

  (an DRAHM ee duh)

  Princess of Joppa; betrothed to Perseus; later queen of Argos, Mycenae, Seriphus, and Joppa

  Others

  Proteus

  (PRO tee uhs)

  Poseidon’s aide; a minor sea-deity who changes shape at will

  Dimona

  (DEE mon uh)

  Meadow nymph talented as a dream tinker

  Atlas

  The Titan condemned to bear the sky upon his shoulders

  Apple Nymphs

  Daughters of Atlas; also known as the Hesperides; three beautiful dryads who tend a perilous orchard

  Chrysaeor

  (kry SAY or)

  A handsome warrior born from the body of the beheaded Medusa

  Pegasus

  (PEG a suhs)

  The magnificent winged horse born from the body of the beheaded Medusa

  Contents

  CHAPTER I

  A Fearsome Brood

  CHAPTER II

  The Necklace

  CHAPTER III

  Family Council

  CHAPTER IV

  Bride of the Sea

  CHAPTER V

  The Curse

  CHAPTER VI

  Guests of the Tyrant

  CHAPTER VII

  The Dream Tinker

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Pledge

  CHAPTER IX

  The Gray Ones

  CHAPTER X

  The Apple Nymphs

  CHAPTER XI

  The Gorgons

  CHAPTER XII

  Fruit of Victory

  CHAPTER XIII

  The Princess of Joppa

  CHAPTER XIV

  A Hero Comes Home

  1

  A Fearsome Brood

  This story begins in the sea and returns to the sea, but strange and terrible things happen in between.

  In those first days there was no land, only water, until the gods grew bored with endless ocean and floated a few islands. A certain deep-dwelling family of monsters were happy to see these dry places heaving out of the sea. They knew that land would mean land animals, and they were tired of eating fish. The reason they had to live underwater is that they were so ugly the gods couldn’t bear to look at them.

  They hated the gods and vowed vengeance upon them—also upon a new species the gods were breeding for their entertainment, to be called humans.

  The mother monster was named Ceto. She was half beast and half woman, with the body of a gigantic snake and the arms and breasts of a woman.

  Her husband was Phorcys, the Sea Hog, a gross blob of flesh but much smaller than Ceto, who allowed him little freedom. She kept him wrapped in her coils except when she was laying her eggs.

  These eggs hatched in strange ways.

  Echidne crawled out of the first one. She lengthened into a woman-serpent like her mother but larger and of a much more ferocious nature.

  Out of the second egg wriggled Ladon. He was pure serpent, a hundred feet long and every inch fatal. Half his length was jaw: fifty feet of living gullet lined with teeth. When the islands appeared, he crawled up out of the sea to hunt and could devour a hippo in two bites. An elephant took three.

  The next egg cracked to reveal a set of triplets. At the sight of them, no one rejoiced. For they were born old: three crones with decaying hair and withered skin. They were blind and toothless most of the time, for they possessed but one eye and one tooth among them. These they had to share, passing them about to take turns seeing and chewing and always railing at one another for taking too long. The Gray Ones they were called, and Ceto couldn’t wait to get rid of them. She carried them northward, swimming through water that grew colder and colder. Finally, she deposited them on an ice floe and swam away, never looking back.

  Ceto laid two more eggs. The larger one was colored the usual leaden green to make it almost invisible underwater and more likely to escape the attention of a hungry neighbor. But the other egg, the smaller one, was a wonderful greenish gold, the color of the sea when the day dawns fair.

  Now, Ceto and Phorcys had produced one ghastly offspring after the other and had no high expectations this time. But when the larger egg hatched, Ceto gasped in horror. Out crawled two scaly creatures with the bodies of infant girls. But they had brass wings and claws and were covered with brass scales. And their faces! Squashed noses, jutting fangs, and bulging red eyes. Their hair was seaweed.

  “They’re uglier than the Gray Ones,” muttered their mother. “I’ll take them to the ends of the earth and leave them there—and hope they don’t fly back.”

  Finally, the smaller egg cracked. Out crawled the third sister. Again Ceto gasped, but in wonder. For this daughter was beautiful.

  Monsters have no childhood. They grow up as soon as they leave the egg. So Ceto sat coiled in her undersea cavern, gazing upon her three tall daughters. “I can’t exile these ugly ones,” she muttered. The ancient Greek word for ugly one is Gorgon. “They must stay here and guard their sister. For anyone who sees her will want to abduct her immediately. Her name shall be Medusa, the lovely creature.”

  “Medusa?” grunted Phorcys, who spoke only once every hundred years; the rest of the time he was busy eating. “Why Medusa? The word means ‘wise,’ not ‘beautiful.’”

  “Quiet, Hog,” said Ceto. “Or I’ll squeeze you to a pulp. What is beauty but the body’s intelligence?”

  Indeed, the lovely girl who had been sent by fate to live among this monster brood lit up the undersea cavern, startling the shadows. She didn’t stay underwater, of course. She craved sunlight and demanded that her sisters fly her as high as they could. They cleaved the air, swinging Medusa between them. Wingless though she was, she wanted very much to fly and made them drop her from great heights. She would straighten into a dive, hair streaming, and knife the water, then swim so swiftly that her sisters could not outrace her, no matter how fast they flew.

  2

  The Necklace

  Arumor arose that Poseidon was about to choose a bride. For some reason gossip spreads just as fast underwater as it does above. Immediately, every Nereid in the Ocean Stream, every river nymph, and every naiad of fountain and lake swam into the Middle Sea. There they hovered in shoals about his great sunken palace of coral and pearl. Wherever Poseidon went he found them swarming, darting in and out of his path, brushing against him, tweaking his beard, and calling to him in the cur
ious bubble language of the submerged.

  “I’d better do something drastic,” he muttered. “Or they’ll wear me down by sheer weight of numbers. I have a great deal of endurance, but I can’t handle them all.”

  Poseidon thought and thought and finally hit on a plan. He summoned his chief helper, a watery demigod named Proteus, who was gifted with the ability to change his shape. He could become jellyfish, octopus, shark, abalone—whatever the occasion required, and all in the wink of an eye. But his favorite guise was that of a blue-eyed white seal, and it was in this form that he now appeared to Poseidon.

  “You called me, oh master, and I am here.”

  “Yes, faithful Proteus. I have need of your services.”

  “Command, and I perform.”

  “As you know, I am about to take a bride,” said Poseidon. “Every nymph and naiad and Nereid from every waterway of the world seems to be competing for the honor. And they are all so bewilderingly beautiful that I simply cannot choose among them.”

  “A pleasant dilemma, my lord.”

  “What I want you to do is organize a swimming race.”

  “They all swim superbly, your majesty.”

  “Some have to be better than others, and among those, one has to be the best. It is the nature of things; there is always one who’s best.”

  “Shall I announce that you will marry the winner?”

  “No, no … we must still leave ourselves some options. Announce that they will be racing for a prize, a jewel most sumptuous, the exact nature of which we shall not disclose until after the race.”