Danae had to be polite to the king, for she lived on Seriphus as his guest. But she secretly loathed him and was resolved that she would kill herself rather than become his wife. “But I shall not leave this life without a royal escort,” she said to herself. “If I decide to travel to the Land Beyond Death, I shall play the role of loving bride and insist that my husband accompany me wherever I go.”
Nevertheless, Danae was clever enough to conceal her feelings, and she managed to fend off the king without arousing his fury. But he was growing more ardent, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to go on refusing him much longer.
Polydectes was not a stupid man, and although his mind was larded with the kind of vanity that often dulls the wit of tyrants, he realized that Danae was prepared to repulse him. He refused, however, to ascribe her lack of interest to his own lack of charm. He had to find someone else to blame and decided that it was her young son, Perseus, who was poisoning her mind against him. The king thereupon resolved to get rid of Perseus, but to do it in such a way that he would not be blamed for the boy’s death.
Seriphus was an island whose chief industry was piracy. The most successful pirates became its first nobility; its first king had been a glorified pirate chief. Now, five generations later, king and nobility were still pirates, slightly polished. In such a society, the children tended to play roughly, and Perseus and his friends were the roughest of all; any game was likely to end in a brawl.
But Perseus in sport, as in everything, went further than anyone else. For him fighting was a natural extension of other games—the most exciting form of activity. And he fought with great playfulness and a mounting joy. At the height of a conflict he felt a kind of love for the antagonist who provided such sport. This lightheartedness translated itself into light-footedness. Where others grew grave with determination and heavy with rage, he shed gravity. Perseus moved more quickly, leaped higher, and struck so swiftly that his fists seemed to blur in the air. He kicked like a wild stallion, butted like a mountain goat. He used dagger and sword and spear as a tiger uses its claws, or a wild boar its tusks.
Upon a certain day, the king stood half hidden behind a rock watching the children play at the base of the hill. His heart grew bitter within him as he watched his young enemy move among the other boys like a hawk upon barnyard fowl. His hair burned yellow; his bronze body flashed; his eyes shot rays of light. And the king knew suddenly that the woman he loved and the boy he hated lived somewhere beyond ordinary circumstance; they were a different breed—more vibrant than life. To win the mother and vanquish the son, he would have to do things he had never done before.
He went to consult an oracle. It took two days and a night for the old prophet to search for clues to the king’s future. On the first day he examined the entrails of a pigeon. On the second, he studied the flight of wild geese. And, on the night between, he stayed awake to read the stars.
By this time, Polydectes was boiling with impatience, and the oracle was afraid to take any more time. “Oh Majesty, forgive me,” he said. “But the signs are difficult to read. The pigeon’s liver was where its lungs should be, and its heart was riddled with worms. The stars were pulsing in a way I’ve never seen, spinning like fire wheels, branding the black sky with strange images—a nest of snakes, and statues, bleeding. As for the flying geese, they scrawled the sky in a language more ancient than our own, but I sensed their message—which is ‘peril … peril … peril!’”
“What kind of peril?” asked the king.
“Obscure, sire. Ugly but obscure. What it reduces to is this: Your enemy is the son of a god and cannot be defeated by direct assault.”
“Can he be defeated at all?”
“Only by deceit—by lies artfully told and plots skillfully spun.”
Polydectes looked hard at the old man, who shuddered. He turned and departed; the prophet almost swooned with relief.
“The old dotard only advised me to do what I had already decided to do,” thought the king. “But that’s an oracle’s stock in trade, it seems … especially when his client is a king. As for Perseus being the son of a god, that means that his mother was once loved by a god. And that means …” Polydectes smiled to himself, for it tickled his vanity to think of wooing the woman a god had loved; it seemed to make him something of a god himself. “As for weaving a plot to lead the lad to his own death, that suits me very well. I’ll start with his mother.”
Polydectes invited Danae to his palace. They sat drinking wine on a balcony overlooking a great scoop of sea, painted by the sunset. He had subdued his ferocious manner for the occasion, smiling at her benevolently.
“Hear me, my dear,” he said. “Though I am all-powerful here, I am ready to accept the fact that you do not return my love. Nevertheless, that love abides. What I must do is change its nature. I shall love you not like a husband, but like a brother … or like a father, perhaps.”
“Please!” cried Danae. “Don’t say ‘like a father.’ Don’t say ‘father’ to me.”
“Mystery within mystery!” cried Polydectes. “What do you mean?”
“I welcome your change of heart,” said Danae. “And I shall gladly accept you as my brother.”
“Then I claim a brother’s due and would know the secret that you harbor.”
“Ah, brother, it is a terrible tale I have to tell.” For a moment, Danae hesitated. “My father was Acrisius, king of Argos. I was his only child. Although descended from mighty warriors, he was a coward. And I was causing him much terror. He knew I would soon be ripe for a husband, and that husband would be a prince or a young king—a warrior, certainly. My father visualized the son-in-law he did not have yet reaching for power in Argos, gathering troops, and plotting to murder him. It became unbearable for me to enter his presence; his eyes were glazed with hatred. Finally, a dreadful rumor reached my ears. My father had consulted an oracle, who had stoked his terror by telling him that if I bore a son, that son would kill him. Knowing my father, I decided to flee the palace, but it was too late. He forbade me to leave the royal enclosure and set guards upon me.”
“How is it he didn’t kill you immediately?” said Polydectes.
“He feared the vengeance of the gods. He had heard they inflict terrible punishment on those who kill their children.”
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” muttered Polydectes. “Go on.”
“I had been hearing a daylong clanging of tools against metal, and I didn’t dare think what that sound foretold. My father had ordered a prison built that would need no jailers—for he wanted to deprive me of male society forever. So his slaves were building a brass tower without doors or windows, just a single arrow slit for light and air. I was put into that tower before it was finished and watched the last plate of brass being bolted into place. There my father meant me to dwell until I died—which he expected to happen quickly. For I had always been an active girl who loved to ride and hunt and run on the hillside and swim in the sea.”
“Poor child,” murmured Polydectes. “Poor innocent wild-flower of a child with so cruel a father.”
“So he waited for report of my death, and waited, and waited.… But I was resolved not to die.” Danae broke off suddenly, stifling a sob, then said: “Dear brother, forgive me; I can’t go on. What happened next in that tower is a holy secret to me; I have told no one, not even my son. And I’m still unwilling to talk about it.”
“Don’t fret. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. We shall have many such talks, my sister, and you will find yourself opening your heart to me.”
“Yes … no doubt.”
“And now,” said Polydectes, “to show you how different I am from your cruel father, I shall designate your son to be my heir. Yes, he shall inherit the kingdom after my death. Nor do I fear that he will do anything to hasten that sad event, although many kings would be fearful, for he bids fair to develop into a powerful and ambitious young warrior.”
Danae was truly surprised. “I don’t know how to thank y
ou,” she murmured.
“I am not looking for gratitude. I am here to serve you in all ways without thought of repayment.”
“Your generosity overwhelms me, sire.”
“I must add that my gift to Perseus, like most gifts, carries with it a certain obligation, not to me, personally, but to the state. According to our law, no one can inherit the throne without performing a deed recognized as heroic. I, myself, the son of a king, had to venture forth alone in a small boat to combat a killer whale that was harassing our coast. Armed only with a spear, I succeeded in killing the monster and thus qualified myself for the kingship. Your son will choose his own task.”
“Let me go now, dear brother,” said Danae, “and inform Perseus of your noble generosity.”
That night, mother and son sat long over a driftwood fire as she told him what had happened that day. Perseus listened hungrily, growing more and more excited with each word.
“Mother, mother!” he cried. “What great warrior shall I challenge? What monster shall I hunt? Or shall I go to places no one has ever gone before? Sail to the very end of the world where the sea tumbles off into nothingness? Shall I lean over and peer into the abyss—or leap off, perhaps to land in some new place? Mother, mother, what shall I do?”
“Perseus, listen …”
“I am framed for great deeds! I know I am. And now the king knows it too.… But glory, glory, glory, what shall I do?”
“Nothing, yet.”
“What!!”
“You must grow up first. Become a man before you become a hero. You’re only a boy.”
“Oh, mother …”
“Perseus, the king is not our friend. His one desire is to separate us so that he can force me to marry him. That’s why he wants to send you out before you’re ripe for combat. But I won’t let him.”
“Mother, please.… You have been my defender long enough. It is time for me to be yours.”
“My boy, you have grown beyond me, perhaps. You must ask your father what to do.”
“My father? Are you finally going to tell me who he is?”
“Yes, my son, it is time.”
And Danae told him what had happened to her in the brass tower. Perseus’s eyes grew wider and wider, drinking in the firelight until they became two pools of flame. She had told him before about her imprisonment, but she had never finished the tale.
“… I was penned up in that stifling prison, pining for light and air, struggling to stay alive. I fastened my eyes to the arrow slit and clung to the sight of the one star I could see. Enlarged by my tears, that star grew until it filled the sky. A blade of light slashed through the blackness and stabbed into my cell. Unlike ordinary light, it didn’t spread. The golden blade pulsed, thickened, became a pillar of light, then gathered itself into the form of a man. But taller than any man—with yellow hair and eyes of molten gold, wearing golden armlets and gold sandals, and carrying a jagged shaft of pure light as other men bear spears. I knew he was a god and knelt to him. He raised me gently and spoke in a deep, musical voice: ‘Yes, Danae, I am a god. But for the sake of your beauty I have become a man.’”
“Every night he came into my cell as a shower of gold, and he vanished at dawn—just like the evening star.”
“Was he my father?”
“He was. And is.”
“I am the son of a god,” whispered the boy.
“You are.”
“What am I then—man, god, or something in between?”
“What you may be, my son, what you may become, cannot be defined by titles, only by deeds.… But you are too young to begin, so terribly young! You’re the only thing I have now, and I cannot bear to lose you.”
“Shall I ask my father if the time has come?”
Danae couldn’t speak, she only nodded. Perseus kissed her and rushed out into the windy night.
7
The Dream Tinker
The wind had blown the clouds away, and Perseus prowled the beach under a great chandelier of stars, waiting for dawn. How could so great a day break properly unless he, god-spawned, were there to salute the flaming banners of his cousin, the sun?
It was a sleepless night for the king as well. His brain was a cauldron. “She swallowed the bait,” he chuckled to himself. “By this time she has told that accursed son of hers that he is to be king after me … when he has returned from a perilous task. Today, he will come to me, asking to be sent on that mission—and I will oblige him, as a kindly patron should. Then I’ll turn my attention to his stubborn mother. I’ll break her will and possess her beauty. But I have work to do first. I must find a really foul assignment for the lad. What should it be? I need advice from on high. And that means I need a dream tinker.”
He clapped his hands; servants came running. He sent them off to find a meadow nymph named Dimona.
In those days it was believed that some unusually talented sorcerers could perform a kind of magic known as dream tinkering. Through certain spells, using certain secret herbs and essences, the tinker unlocked a chamber in the sleeper’s mind. In the rich gloom of this chamber, pictures floated, pictures of the future, sent by whatever god or devil manipulated the destiny of that particular person. At this time, an apprentice witch named Dimona was the latest to have impressed the court. She was a long-legged, black-maned filly of a girl with huge, glossy eyes, wild-hearted and fearless as one of the moor ponies, which no one could break. Polydectes disliked her, as he disliked anyone who did not fear him, but he needed her now, and greeted her with a fat bag of gold.
“Keep your money, king,” she said. “I can’t use it. I live on mushrooms and blackberries and river cress, and dress in leaves, as you see.… Lie down and close your eyes and don’t open them till I tell you. Take your crown off first. It’ll only dig into your scalp.”
The king’s eyes wanted to fly open, but he pressed them shut. A heavy incense hung on the air, and he knew that Dimona was throwing herbs on a fire. He heard her crooning. The words were muddled so he couldn’t understand them, but the tune was a sleepy one. The sound became a silver river cutting through blackness, and he was afloat upon it, drifting, drifting …
Bending over the king, the nymph lifted an eyelid, and saw that he was sleeping deeply enough for her to continue her spell. What she did exactly is a secret that has not come down to us. But she opened a chamber in the sleeping king’s mind, revealing a gallery of hideous portraits.
In the dream, Polydectes was himself an invisible presence. A witness. A swift traveler. He swung between sea and land and blue steeps of air … and saw things, huge fanged things that swam and crawled and flew- He saw the three-headed dog Cerberus, guarding the tall black gates of Hades. It was snarling, slavering, one mouth chewing a bitten-off hand.
The king traveled up from Hades, up, up—floating on golden air above a blue sea. What was this flying near him? It was something that should not fly, that should not be. Something with horns, with claws, half-lion, half-ram. He recognized it from nursery tales; it was the Chimera. He was seeing it as he slept, but he knew that somewhere it dwelt beyond his dream.
Something else loomed between the king and the sun. It had the body of a tiger, the face of a woman, a serpent’s tail, and eagle wings. From one clawed foot dangled a horse, from the other its rider. She screamed at him as she swept past. Or was she laughing? Her laughter was worse. It was the Sphinx.
A down-draft forced him toward the sea. He hovered above a channel. What he saw was the worst navigational hazard in the entire world. Upon one side, a great, gross, bladderlike creature squatted on the sea bottom, swallowing ships and spitting timbers. This was Charybdis, he knew.
On the other side of the channel dwelt Scylla. Her upper body was that of a beautiful sea nymph, but from the waist down she was six ravening wolves. A ship passed close to her. The wolf heads swept the deck, seized six sailors, and ate them alive.
The sleeping king swung above the desert now. It was parched, sweltering. He saw a crack i
n the earth, a drying riverbed with a little muddy wetness left at the bottom. Something huge was slouching down to drink. The Nemean Lion, larger than an elephant, yellow as daffodils, stared with eyes of pure green murder. It roared; the desert shook.
Another riverbank, this one cutting through lush meadows. Along the shore was crawling something too dreadful even for a nightmare. It looked like a riverbed full of crocodiles tied at the waist. The king knew he was looking upon that fabled monster known as the hundred-headed Hydra, which had devoured several generations of heroes. One of them was fighting the Hydra now. An arm flashed, a sword cut off one of the heads. But on the nodding stalk of its neck two new heads grew. And many heads were closing their jaws upon the warrior.
The dreamer drifted again, happy that he saw no pictures—hoping that the parade of monsters had ended. But a paleness was blooming in the darkness. A head grew bigger and bigger as it came toward him. The face was beautiful, but the hair was snakes—writhing and hissing, darting their tongues. It was Medusa. He awoke screaming.
8
The Pledge
Next morning the king greeted Perseus on the steps of the palace. Polydectes was a born actor and knew that he cut an impressive figure, standing a step above the boy against a background of marble pillars, disposing himself so that his purple robe was sculpted by the wind.
He listened gravely as Perseus blurted out his thanks, then laid a fatherly hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I know that you want to hear about the task that will qualify you for kingship,” he said. “I could assign you one, but I prefer that you name your own. There are many glorious deeds waiting to be done. Among them, killing one of the monsters that plague mankind is perhaps of the highest merit. If you crave such adventure, I might cite several: those dread flying beasts, the Sphinx and the Chimera; Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the portals of the Underworld and does not allow the living to enter or the dead to escape; the hundred-headed Hydra, whose heads no foe can diminish as two grow in the place of every one cut off. There are also those sea monsters, Scylla and Charybdis, who drink the tides and devour sailors; the Sirens; the spear-birds of the marsh; and many, many more. I hesitate to even name the worst one, Medusa, because no warrior, however brave and skillful, should go against her. Her aspect is so dreadful that anyone who looks upon her is turned to stone.”
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two Page 12