The God Beneath the Sea

by Leon Garfield

  He was casting stones into the basin, and watching them as they fell. He neither spoke nor turned his head. The fall and pattern of the pebbles absorbed him entirely.

  Pyrrha and Deucalion knelt. They had come upon a god.

  ‘You must go down the mountain to the temple by the river,’ murmured Hermes, reading from the Muses’ five stones. ‘And there you must pray. Your prayers will be answered, I promise you. But think carefully on the answer you receive. Consider it well before you act.’

  The god gave a sideways smile. ‘It is all in the stones, my friends. Believe me . . .’

  The temple was dark and cold. Water lay in smooth black pools on the stony floor and dimly reflected the roof. Thick ropes of weed clung round the ankles of the pillars and draped the forsaken altar like the careless garments of some nymph gone bathing in her stream.

  ‘The god in the glade bade us pray,’ whispered Deucalion as he and Pyrrha knelt before the altar. ‘He promised we would be heard. He promised it was all in the stones . . .’

  His words drifted aloft and set up echoes amid the tall columns: stones – stones – stones – till they sank into a silence.

  This silence seemed to grow deeper and more absolute as Pyrrha and Deucalion knelt, gazing humbly into the black, still water that lay about the altar’s foot.

  For long minutes they knelt thus; and no answer came. Then, very, very softly, the echoes seemed to return. A hundred tiny voices seemed to be murmuring, their words all overlapping till the air in the temple was set beating and quivering. ‘Stones . . . stones . . . bones . . . bones . . . mother’s bones . . . mother’s – mother’s – cast them – throw them – mother’s bones—’ The dark water shook and trembled. Strange flickering lights appeared in it, like the reflection of countless fireflies. ‘Mothers’ bones – cast them – shoulders – shoulders – walk – bones of mothers – mothers—’

  Then all the voices died away and a single utterance of vast gentleness whispered: ‘Take the bones of your mother and cast them over your shoulders as you walk away.’

  The silence flooded back. Deucalion and Pyrrha left the dark temple for the shining solitude of the world outside.

  ‘The bones of our mother?’ murmured Pyrrha; she shivered.

  Deucalion stared about him. The quiet mountain was littered with stones and pebbles the sea had wrenched from river-beds.

  ‘It is all in the stones.’ Wonderingly, Deucalion repeated the god’s words. Then his eyes widened. ‘The stones! Pyrrha – are they not the bones of earth, the mother of us all? Pyrrha – it is in the stones! We must gather them and walk down the mountain, casting them behind us. The stones. Pyrrha! Quick – gather as many as you can carry!’

  Chiefly the stones were smooth and greyish-white, but here and there were shining, deeply coloured pebbles of green, blue and brown with delicate veinings. They had come from remoter parts and had been left by the careless sea.

  It was Pyrrha who gathered these – while Deucalion, in his greater haste, contented himself with the more plentiful grey.

  At last, when they could carry no more, they began to walk down the mountain, sometimes stumbling under the weight of the stones they had cradled in their gowns. And one by one – as the voice in the temple had commanded – they cast the stones over their shoulders and heard them fall on grass or rock.

  They did not look back.

  It was Deucalion who cast the last stone; and when this was done, he reached out once more for his wife’s hand. Together they stumbled towards the silent valley, still not daring to look back. Then they halted, holding fast to each other. No sound came from behind them. All they heard was their own beating hearts and panting breath.

  Yet they knew the prickling sense of being watched. They turned, and stared back at the mountain.

  Pyrrha cried out, and tears of joyful wonderment stood in Deucalion’s eyes.

  The mountain was stirring; it seemed to be glimmering with movement. The sun shone down, catching the quick gleamings amid the trees and between the rocks.

  Shy faces peered down; briefly vanished, then peeped again, inquisitively. Hands, arms, shoulders bloomed in the long grass . . . and where the last stone had fallen, a young man crouched with his chin in his hands, gazing at Pyrrha and Deucalion with grave curiosity. His eyes were grey, like the stone; but they shone with a mortal eagerness.

  He stood up and, with a wide gesture, encompassed all the valleys and hills and richly wooded countryside that the mountain overlooked.

  ‘All this,’ he said wonderingly, ‘belongs to us?’

  THIRTEEN

  THE LADY OF THE HARVESTS

  Of all the Olympian gods and goddesses, it was Demeter who loved the earth best. The very skirts of her gown had been drenched in the sweeping flood; for she’d lingered in her fields, unable to take her farewell.

  And while the waters had covered the world, she’d wandered desolately across the barren sky whose stars and milky clouds pleased her less than daisies in the grass.

  Then, when the waters sank, the great goddess smiled again and in her heart declared herself for man. She blessed the harvests, and her gentle spirit was ever in the fields and granaries; and in the long evenings, she loved to take her ease in some countryman’s home and listen to the talk of sunshine and grain, and new shoots and old trees and the mischief-making nymphs.

  None of mankind remembered the flood – for its memory only burned in the brains of wolves, creatures accursed by gods and men.

  Though the goddess never came in her blinding Olympian glory, there were few who did not know her for an immortal; and in many a home, an honoured place was kept at table, never to be sat in till the great gleaming lady came again.

  Indeed, she was more of a stranger to Olympus; and in the high council-chamber her gold and ivory throne stood empty far more often than did those rush-and-pinewood chairs kept for her by the brief tenants of her pastures and fields.

  Her sister Hera, the proud queen of Heaven, condemned her for this – and declared contemptuously that the hot lady Demeter was over-fond of tumbling in the hay with her stone-eyed muddy mortals.

  But almighty Zeus frowned warningly and bade great Hera hold her tongue. Though the lord of the sky did not choose to admit it, he had himself tumbled in the hay with fair Demeter; and the child she’d borne was of Olympian stock. It had been a daughter and her name was Persephone . . . though Zeus and Demeter, between themselves, still called her Core, on account of a comical sound she’d made when first she’d begun to talk. ‘Core . . . Core . . .’ it had sounded like; and even the two immortals had been unable to make more sense of it than that.

  She inherited much of her mother’s gentleness, together with a passion for flowers. Poppies were her favourites, and she loved to gather them among the fields of Enna, in Sicily, with her little court of nymphs.

  Sometimes when Demeter would come in search of her, the goddess would see nothing but the nodding cornfield speckled with scarlet blossoms. She’d call: ‘Persephone – Persephone! Core, my child!’ But there’d be no answer.

  Then perhaps a crow would fly up . . . and all at once the myriad flowers would seem to explode into the air in a scarlet storm. With shrieks and fearsome cries, Persephone and her wild nymphs would rise up and pelt the laughing goddess with poppy-heads till she sank, helpless with laughter, amid the bending spears of corn. Then she’d open wide her golden arms and Persephone, still fierce with flowers, would fly into that citadel – and be armisticed with kisses.

  Sometimes, it was true, even as proud Hera had declared, the great lady of the harvests would honour some particular mortal with her embraces. But she was not alone in this. Other goddesses and gods had been snared by the haunting charms of the frail creatures of Prometheus. For, though Zeus had created them anew, they were still the children of the tragic Titan’s vast brain. Their tenancy of the earth was still brief; and to the immortals it seemed no more than an afternoon. Perhaps it was this that drew the Olymp
ians down into arms whose loveliness had to be caught on the wing of time before it withered away.

  Golden Demeter, walking the world, would many a time feel the prick at her heart when she came into some well-remembered room and found more chairs than her own standing empty.

  ‘So soon?’ she’d murmur. ‘Have they gone to my grim brother’s kingdom so soon?’

  ‘They were old,’ would come the sad reply: and the goddess would shake her lovely head. Then perhaps some infant would be brought to her for blessing, and she would smile and marvel that hope could be renewed.

  But Persephone was always young and lovely, and swept dark dreams away. So Demeter would go to Sicily again, and call across the fields of Enna till the poppies blazed and whirled. ‘Core! Core!’ The goddess called to her child. The sun stood high and the crumpled poppies trembled faintly in the nodding sea of gold. Then they grew still again . . .

  ‘Core! Core!’ The goddess clapped her hands. At once a cloud of crows fIew up, tattering the bright air with their black wings.

  ‘Core – Core!’ they screeched, as if in harsh mockery. This time, the field was empty, and Demeter frowned. A shadow crossed her heart as the memory of empty chairs crept over the empty cornfield like a ghost.

  No . . . no. Demeter shook her immortal head. Her Core was not subject to the three blind sisters and their dreadful shears; nor was her joy and brightness destined to be quenched in grim Hades’ cold, lightless halls.

  The goddess smiled and gathered up her gown that was embroidered with yellow and violet flowers. She had remembered that Persephone loved the meadows of Arcadia almost as much as Sicilian Enna. Most certainly she was in Arcadia . . .

  But even as Demeter’s chariot rose and the clustering golden spears bent and swayed under the wind of her going, the goddess started. Peering from a wood that fringed the deserted cornfield, the goddess fancied she saw one of her daughter’s attendant nymphs. She fancied that the nymph’s eyes had been wild and dismayed; and that she had been watching the goddess with terror.

  Then the scene whirled away as the chariot sped . . . and great Demeter brushed it from her mind.

  But Persephone was not in Arcadia, nor was she in neighbouring Attica.

  ‘Core – Core!’ cried Demeter. The rich, wide cornfields stirred only with the breeze; and the dappling poppies lay as still as drops of blood.

  So she rode to Crete; and for the first time there was fear in a goddess’s heart.

  ‘Core – Core!’ she called across the island’s rippled meadows and down the hillside pastures. She waited – then, as before in Sicily, a cloud of crows rose screaming out of the gold, their ragged wings flickering in a pattern of fatal black. Demeter fled.

  Now began her great search. From land to land she rushed, crying and calling across fields and riverbanks and wherever the gay flowers grew. When night came, she left her chariot and, with two flaming torches of pine held aloft, stumbled through meadows that had been empty by day – as if she thought the sun had cheated her. Fearfully, men and women looked out from their mansions and cottages and saw the moving blaze twisting and jerking among the dark pastures, then darting into some nearby wood where the trees suddenly leaped out in attitudes of black dismay. Sometimes shepherds, sleeping out in the gentle night, would waken and see her coming. Her lovely face in the torchlight would be all rippled with shadows and scarlet light; and her golden eyes would be wild. Then they’d bury their frightened faces in the grass; and in the morning think it a dream – till they saw the trail of grey, feathery wood ash, that lay like a streamer of bereavement and marked the goddess’s passing.

  ‘Core – Core!’ Men in the fields stopped and grew pale when the goddess’s voice was heard. ‘Core – Core!’

  The sound, once sweet, now sighed and moaned across the world like the wailing of some bleak and bitter wind. It echoed through the pillared halls of palaces, and under the sleeping eaves of cottages so that children would waken and cry out wildly – as if they would answer the mighty mother who searched and called for her lost child.

  The corn withered and shrivelled in the husk; the gold turned brown and the harvested fields resembled weird graveyards where the stiff and scanty sheaves leaned like broken memorials to the riches of yesterday. Demeter’s blessings had been used up; the ever-searching goddess’s heart was emptied of all but an aching fear.

  ‘Core – Core!’

  Birds flew up in speckled throngs and sped southward to escape Demeter’s terrible cries . . . and in the woods and forests, small creatures fought over the last of the nuts and berries from the dying trees. Some hid pitiful stores in secret hollows, to prolong their lives for scanty months; others thinly stretched themselves on the bare ground, whimpered and perished, even as the grieving goddess passed.

  ‘Core – Core!’

  Desolately the goddess wandered till she came at last to the harsh stony mountain in whose deep cleft the three blind sisters crouched.

  Clotho’s wheel creaked and whistled as the bright thread grew . . . to be measured and cut, measured and cut by the hateful shears.

  The sound they made was neat and quick and as they pounced on the stretched thread, they flashed like the wings of a bitter silver crow.

  ‘A goddess is near us,’ mumbled Clotho, rocking back and forth at her wheel. ‘I feel her light.’

  ‘There’s a smell of corn and poppies in the air,’ croaked sinewy Lachesis. ‘It is great Demeter.’

  But shrunken Atropos, her coarse white robes stained with sweat, only nodded. She kept her breath to wield the terrible shears. Nothing stopped her; nothing slowed her, and the mighty goddess gazed in dread as the cut threads fell like rain.

  They lay on the stony ground in a mad profusion and the goddess began to pull and pluck at them. Her great search had led her to this, the last place in the universe.

  But she found no severed strand that was bright enough to have been her daughter’s life.

  ‘Why so short, why so quick?’ she whispered as she stared once more at the toiling Three.

  ‘You should know, great Demeter,’ grinned Clotho, turning her ancient blind face this way and that till she felt the full force of the goddess’s light.

  ‘Without your blessing the yarn comes thin,’ muttered Lachesis. ‘It must be cut short.’

  Then Clotho raised an arm that seemed no more than naked bone, bandaged with yellowed skin. She pointed to the gnarled thorn bush. ‘Soon there will be nothing left for us to do. The wool grows scarce. The huge goats no longer climb this way. Their strength is failing; their pastures have shrivelled and died.’

  ‘No!’ cried the goddess in a sudden anguish. ‘Stop!’ She seized the dreadful Atropos by the wrist so that the shears fell open and a frail strand lay waiting between the blades.

  ‘Begone, great goddess!’ snarled Atropos, and shook herself free. ‘We are not subject to you.’

  The shears snapped shut. The thread divided and fell. And Demeter fancied that she heard across the world a faint cry, then a sigh, and a ripple of tears . . .

  ‘Core – Core!’ wept mighty Demeter. ‘My heart is emptied of everything save you! It is cold, my child; cold and dark as the Kingdom of the Dead. Core – Core!’

  Then the goddess’s voice faded and dwindled away till it was no more than the sighing of the wind that mingled with the creaking of Clotho’s wheel and the ceaseless snapping of shears.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘CORE . . . CORE . . .’

  Close by Eleusis, in Attica, there was a home that had seen better days. Some said that it had once been a palace. Certainly, parts were very old and were pillared with a crumbling grandeur quite out of keeping with the newer part that had been built in the ancient forecourt.

  This cottage – for so it was – squatted with unkempt thatch, like some ragged child in the shadow of its ruined father, as if listening to tales of long ago: to tales of when the crops grew and the harvests were golden, and when the wind was not so bitter nor the
nights so cold.

  This dreaming on former glories was shared by the family who lived there; but otherwise they were hospitable and kindly enough. Provided travellers would sit and listen to their harmless boasts, they would entertain them to the very best of their slender substance. Kings could have done no more. Only a boy called Abas, one of their sons, ever disgraced them with any show of insolence. For this boy lived too much in the pillared ruins where he strutted and postured with as dry and scaly an arrogance as the long-dead past.

  To him, all strangers were beggars and targets for his childish contempt.

  Thus, when the tall woman came, knocking on the door and asking for something to drink, Abas pushed past his grandmother and stood menacingly in the doorway as if the thirsty woman was some vagrant thief.

  Her gown, embroidered with yellow and violet flowers, had once been beautiful; but now it was much torn and muddied about the hem – as if she had been wandering among gorse and thorns in search of something.

  This air of searching was very strong. Even as she waited patiently for the drink that was being fetched, her eyes kept turning this way and that so restlessly that the contemptuous Abas could scarce make out whether they were brown, blue or as golden as her wind-wild hair.

  ‘What are you looking for, beggar woman?’ he asked. ‘Something to steal?’

  Momentarily the woman’s eyes flashed. Then she frowned and shook her head, and tried to smile as if she well knew the ways of children.

  ‘No,’ she answered softly. ‘I am looking for – for my child.’

  ‘There’s been no beggar brats round here,’ said Abas coldly. ‘So you’d best be on your way.’

  Just then, the boy’s grandmother returned with a pitcher of barley water into which she’d sprinkled some refreshing mint. Abas frowned as the old woman poured it into a finely carved stone cup. This was singularly ancient and was considered one of the chief treasures of their home. Not even he was allowed to drink from it; and now it was offered to the vagrant woman whose stained gown fluttered out its rents and tears like the very banners of poverty.