by Gene Wolfe
Echoes and silence and then the shrill mockery of the birds.
Again: “FREY. Frey. Frey-y-y-y.”
At last the answer: “Balder! Bar!” Urgent, desperate. A cry for help.
We found him in a clearing where the sun on the grass seemed a pool of fire and we drew up sharply to keep from burning our feet. There were two birds in the clearing, neither of them the phoenix; larger than eagles, as large as men, with the breasts and faces of women. Their black, mottled wings resembled the skin of a snake. Their armless bodies curved into talons and oily feathers. Harpies. Centuries ago they had plagued the Black Sea and harassed Jason and the Argonauts. Like thieves with a bag of gold, roughly yet greedily, they were lifting the now unconscious body of Frey. Balder ran at them and snatched, too late, at his brother’s feet. They circled over his head and cackled harshly, flaunting their capture. The sunbirds piped approval.
Eyes, mouth, nostrils: the features of women, but joined together as if by a child modeling with clay, the eyes unmatched, the mouths twisted, agape, the nostrils projecting into horny beaks. Twisted. That was the word for them. Neither women nor birds, but—Harpies, horrors. Circling a last time, showering us with the fetid oil from their wings, they rose among the treetops, jerkily, and disappeared. The landscape, blackened by their presence, flickered back into greenery.
Except that a Harpy remained, concealed, no doubt, to cover her friends’ retreat. I did not see her until she flew at my head. The first time she brushed me with her wings—caressed, I should say—wetly, intimately. The bare skin of my shoulders crawled with the slime of her. I heard her laugh. The second time she came at my face, talons lowered like hooks from a fishing boat. I stood my ground until she was almost upon me. Ducking under the talons, I whirled and seized her by the back of her legs. She dragged me after her; my sandals skidded along the ground. But I kept my grip until Balder came to my help. He seized my waist, and together we bore her to earth. She writhed fiercely, then, realizing her helplessness, relaxed and looked at us with the arch, simpering smile of an old woman who thinks herself young and beautiful.
“Where have they taken him?” I cried. “Where is your nest?”
Grinning, she remained silent. Balder struck her across the mouth. “I vill kill you unless you tell us.”
The simper became a pout.
“Perhaps she doesn’t understand,” said Balder, eyeing her doubtfully.
“She understands,” I said. “If not the words, the meaning. Kill her, Balder. We’ll find the nest ourselves.”
I had only meant to frighten her, but he took me at my word. He grasped her scrawny neck between his hands—big hands, those of a man, not a boy of sixteen—and began to choke her. By the time I had him stopped, she was ready to show us the nest.
She spoke in a kind of whistling, archaic Greek. “It is not far. I will show you.”
We bound her wings with the cord we had brought for the phoenix. Since she had no arms and needed her legs to stand or walk, she could not attack us with her talons. Pausing to scatter the sunbirds with a few well-aimed rocks, we set off through the forest. Out of the air, the Harpy was slow and clumsy; her vicious power was reduced to a duck-like waddle.
She lost no chance to brush against our bodies. Her grin revealed yellow, rotted teeth. “My name is Podarge,” she whistled. She spoke the name with emphasis, as if she were saying ‘Helen’ or ‘Aphrodite.’ “If you let me go, I will tell my sisters you come as guests. We will give you our favors and send you on your way—your friend as well.”
“Favors?” whispered Balder. “Vhat does she mean?”
“Er, kisses,” I replied, as discreetly as possible.
Balder jerked on her rope. “The favor ve vant is to find my bruder unharmed.”
She walked quietly between us the rest of the way.
The nest of the Harpies, obviously patterned after those of the sunbirds, was a large, flat-topped oval, about the size of a cowshed, suspended from a branch by a thick, knotted cord. The walls were built of twigs and cemented with clay, and the roof which projected above the entrance was woven of rushes. It was not a graceful house. Where the nests of the sunbirds enjoyed the charm of smallness, this outsize counterpart bristled with twigs and bulged with excessive clay. Clumsy hands, it was obvious—or feet, I should say—had done the building. They had not neglected, however, to strip the supporting tree of all its branches except the one which held the nest. Without wings, it would not be easy to reach the nest, seventy feet or more above our heads.
“Call your friends,” I said.
Podarge gave a sharp, sustained whistle, bird-like, and yet with the high keening of a she-wolf. The nest swayed, the single limb groaned in its wooden socket. Two Harpies appeared in the entranceway.
“Return my bruder,” cried Balder. “If you don’t ve vill kill your friend.”
Podarge strained toward her sisters. Her bloodshot eyes widened in supplication. “Listen to them,” she shrilled. “They mean to kill me!”
“Kill her,” screamed the first. “The nest is too small for her now.”
“Kill her,” echoed the sister. Her look was anticipatory.
Podarge’s wings strained at their fetters. Her talons quivered as if they were rending flesh. Her face—well, it was the face of an old, evil woman who has collected crimes as some women collect intaglios and others, bronzes; a woman who, for once, had become the victim instead of the victimizer. She bared the stumps which served her for teeth. Like tree roots torn from a brackish pond, they oozed a yellow liquid.
“You don’t even have him,” cried Balder, running to the foot of the tree and shaking his dagger at the Harpies. Anger became him. I thought of the god for whom he was named, Balder, the Sun, stalwart and beautiful. He was still a boy, but his rage was titanic and timeless. “If you’ve killed him, I vill burn your tree!”
The Harpies vanished and reappeared with Frey between them. Bruised and semiconscious, he had to lean on their wings to support himself. He stared down dazedly and saw his brother. Recognition, like the sudden flaring of a lamp, lit his face. He held out his hand with infinite trustfulness, as if he expected his brother to reach across air and draw him to safety.
A Harpy spoke. “Burn us, burn your brother. Why not join him instead?”
“If you set him free, you can take me in his place.”
They seemed to deliberate, to view his beauty and measure him against his brother.
“I am taller,” he said. “Stronger. My arms are like hammered bronze.”
A Harpy screamed in triumph. “Pretty boy! Why should we not have both? Throw down your dagger and wait at the foot of the tree. Otherwise, we will cast your brother to the ground.”
Balder looked at me with anguished indecision. “What must I do?” he seemed to ask.
The sly phoenix. The forest of watchful birds. The yellow-haired boy beside the mammoth tree. The black abortions screaming over his head, Frey between them. Were these things real, or the hellish figments of a mind which, nourished on dreams, had darkened to nightmares?
They were real. I shook off my lethargy of horror and ran toward Balder. “No,” I cried. “You must not do what they say!”
Podarge screamed behind me. “Let me go. I will stop them!”
I had to trust her. Trust to her hatred. I struck off her fetters. The air groaned with the massive sweep of wings.
Her sisters shot to meet her like javelins to a stag. The three Harpies met in mid-air and whirled, screaming, over the treetops, a black thundercloud of wings and gashing talons. I ran to Balder, who had started to circle the tree.
“Here,” I said. There were stumps of limbs and hollows left by lightning.
We climbed the tree. I was hardly aware of the bark scraping my skin, of my fingers clawing the bark. Soon we were inching along the limb which held the nest. Balder followed me down the rope to the roof; the twigs and clay sagged beneath our feet. The nest swayed like a wave-tossed ship, and we could not move until it rocke
d to stillness. We crept down the side, like mice across a cheese, around and under the roof and into the door.
I saw that the nest held a single room, circular, divided by a low partition of stakes. A ladder led from the doorway into a small compartment, where beds of moss surrounded a slab of stone, putrid with rotting meat. Light from cracks in the wail revealed a clay bowl heaped with gems and gold ornaments. I looked in vain for Balder.
Then I saw him, across the nest in the shadows beyond the partition. He must have fallen from the ladder. Two young Harpies, about the size of sea gulls, were trying to claw him. He crouched on his knees and fended off their talons.
I did not wait to descend the ladder. I jumped. A Harpy had fixed her talons in Frey’s arm. I choked her until she released him. Ignoring her claws, I raised her above my head and dashed her to the clay floor. Green blood oozed from both of her ears. Balder, I saw, had disposed of the second Harpy. I did not feel like a murderer.
Balder embraced his brother. For a long moment he held him in his powerful arms.
“I vas very stubborn,” Frey said. “You had to come and get me.”
“You knew ve vould come. Bar and I.”
“Yes. I wasn’t afraid.” He paused. “Much!”
“We must get you out of here.” I said. “Quickly.”
Frey’s strength had begun to return. The sight of his brother was better than healing herbs. We climbed the ladder. The clean air struck us like spray from the sea and cleansed our lungs. I toiled up the porous side of the nest. Secure on the roof, I leaned to give Frey my hand, while Balder remained in the doorway and lifted his brother toward me.
It was then that the Harpies returned. Two of them, one pursued and one—Podarge—pursuing, while blood ran rivulets from her out-thrust claws. The threatened victim, in spite of her imminent peril, flew at Frey. I held him, then I held air. Balder cried his name: “Frey!”
I watched him fall; I wanted to take his place.
Only Podarge could help him.
Her talons caught him, but not to wound. She could not sustain his weight. She could, however, break his fall. In a wide arc, she curved toward earth and released him before she struck. He fell in a clump of bushes, limply but lightly. At once she mounted the sky and, hissing like a cat, grappled again with her sister.
By the time that Balder and I had reached his side, Frey was trying to stand.
“Falling vas easier than climbing down the tree.” He grinned, but a dozen wounds had streaked his body. He looked as if he had run through brambles.
“Where do you hurt?” I asked.
“One big ache.”
Before I could test him for broken bones, the Harpies fell to the ground with a crackle of undergrowth. I picked up a stick and ran to help Podarge. There was no need. The fall had finished her sister, and she herself seemed dying. She lay on her back, blinking, her talons thrust in the air.
“Can we help you?” I asked.
Like a stricken bat she breathed in whistling gasps. “Is she dead?”
“Yes.”
“Both of them, then.”
“You saved my friend.”
“Not for his sake.” The shrill voice had fallen to a whisper. “I did not want to waste him.”
“Waste him?”
The old lust flickered across her face. “Harpies are women. Women need males in order to propagate.” Her eyelids drooped. “Leave me now.”
Frey insisted that he be allowed to walk, but Balder, inflexible, scooped him into his arms. “My bruder for vonce vill do as I say.”
Frey smiled at us. “Bar,” he said, “ye lost the phoenix but ye vill find your Circe.”
“Vill you?” mocked the Harpy.
I looked back at her. “You know about Circe?” I thought of the jewels and gold we had seen in the nest. How had the Harpies come to own them? Why had the phoenix lured us from our ship?
“You know about Circe?” I repeated.
She was dead, smiling evilly.
IV: THE ISLAND OF OLEANDERS
For several days the coast was mountainous, with arc-shaped bays where we moored in the late afternoons and fished for our supper; then it was low and sandy, with dunes like giant turtles scattered at the edge of the sea. On the fifth day after the Harpies, we rounded a promontory beetling with trees, and Astyanax, who had taken Aruns’ place as lookout, called to us from the bow.
“Pygmies,” he pointed. “Swinging in the branches.”
“That’s not pygmies,” Balder snorted. “It’s monkeys! I saw vone in Graviscae vonce. He came on a ship from Egypt.”
“Pygmies,” the Triton repeated. “Monkeys have longer tails.”
“Not all of them,” I explained. “This is the stub-tailed macaque. Notice their puffy cheeks and—“
“Monkeys, then,” he said with composure, and continued his observation.
On the sixth day we came to a marsh of corn-brakes beside a river. Elephants fed on low, scrubby trees and birds hopped from back to back with, apparently, the entire approval of their host. Frey and Balder, who had never seen an elephant, were terrified.
“Fabulous beasts,” Frey muttered. “Do you think they will eat us?”
“You and Balder, perhaps,” said Astyanax. “I am not edible. At least the captain didn’t think so.”
I had to explain that an elephant’s trunk was not, as it looked, a serpent appended to his head, but a sort of elongated nose used like an extra limb.
Near the mouth of the river we anchored for the night. When I reassured the brothers that the elephants would not swim out and throttle them with their trunks, they stripped and went for a swim. Astyanax darted between them, catching prawns with his hands. Some he swallowed and others he flipped on deck for Aruns to clean. I myself withdrew to the cabin.
The couch looked irresistible. Succumbing, I fell asleep and dreamed of Circe. Redolent of myrrh and pine-needles, she leaned above me. “I have waited, my love.” Then she called my name: “Bear.” And again, “Bear.”
I awoke with a start. Astyanax, not Circe, was calling me. Annoyed, I walked on deck. He was still in the water, with Atthis beside him.
“You have been asleep,” he accused.
“No,” I snapped. “Thinking.”
“Atthis has brought you a present.”
He took a bronze-bladed sword from her beak and lifted it into my hands. In the black niello and gold of the hilt, youths and maidens whirled over charging bulls: a Cretan scene. The old sea-kings, a thousand years ago, had explored this very coast, but the sword did not look ancient.
“Where did she find it?” I cried.
“In a sunken galley beyond the mouth of the river.”
“Is the water very deep there?”
“Less than twenty feet, she says.”
“Ask her to show me.”
I straddled her back and held to her dorsal fin. Her tail flashed up and down, up and down, and we foamed toward the sunken ship while Astyanax trailed in our wake. Elephants along the bank, lifting water in their sinuous trunks, stared at us with lordly indolence. Beyond the mouth of the river we paused and circled. Directly below us a galley wavered in the lucid depths. Then Atthis dove. On the floor of the sea, anemones pulsed their tentacles in a purple twilight, and diminutive lantern fish, with rows of luminescent spots, twinkled from our path. In a forest of rockweed a blood starfish curled its crimson legs. Redbeard sponges clung to the planks of the ship, which rested as lightly on the bottom as if it had settled at anchor. We circled the deck and found the cabin, whose roof lay open to the water. Hurriedly we searched the room.
The furnishings were Cretan: a terra cotta priestess with snakes in her hands; a tiny gold frog embedded with pearls; a tall-backed chair in the shape of a throne. I opened a chest and lifted a woman’s robe, with a bell-like skirt, puffing sleeves, and a tight bodice cut low to expose the breasts. For an instant, as the gown unfolded, Circe herself seemed to rise, a ghost, to greet me. Atthis shared my discovery. Sh
e caught the skirt in her beak and wrapped it around her flanks, as if to savor its richness and regret its inevitable destruction by the sea. Yes, this was Circe’s ship. It had sunk not hundreds of years ago but less than a hundred and, since there were no skeletons, Circe and her crew had presumably escaped.
My lungs felt like burning asphalt. I mounted Atthis and rose with her to the surface. We dove again. Astyanax retrieved the frog and I found a pair of daggers for Frey and Balder. Then we returned to the Halcyon. Our friends were waiting on deck. Because of the elephants, the boys had hesitated to cook ashore and had gathered stones from the river to make a little oven, where Aruns was baking prawns. Excitedly I told them what we had found.
“It’s unlikely that she turned inland. The land seems too marshy for travel. Probably she built another ship and continued down the coast. We’ll keep on our course.” I gave the brothers their daggers. “For elephants.”
Astyanax gulped and a tear rolled down his cheek. Had he expected a gift?
I laid my hand on his shoulder. “But you came with me. Balder and Frey stayed behind. That’s why I brought them the daggers.”
“It isn’t daggers,” he said. “It’s Atthis. She’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“For good.” He pointed to the river which smoldered like copper in the dying sun, hushed and unmoving.
“She told you?”
“She didn’t have to. I saw it in her eyes when she brought you back to the ship. You have broken her heart.”
“But how? I don’t understand.”
“She brought you a gift. What did you do? Hurried off to the wreck without a thank you. That was all right, she understood your eagerness. But when you came back to the Halcyon, you brought the boys daggers and still gave her nothing. A ring, a lamp, a sandal with antelope straps—anything would have done.”
“But what could she do with such things?”
“Hide them, in a sea-cave. Dolphins have caches, you know, where they keep their treasures—pearls and amber and coral from the floor of the sea, objects fallen from ships or lost in the sand and carried out by the tide. In their journeys from coast to coast, they visit their caves and show them to their friends. You made Atthis feel unwanted—like a Greek wife. She’s always been a little jealous of you anyway.”