Robert Silverberg - The Last Song of Orpheus

“You know me, Carya,” I said. “I mock no one.”

And I took up my lyre and began to play.

The birds in the trees heard my song and ceased their chatter.

The snakes wrapped in the maenads’ hair heard me. The wild animals of the forest heard me.

Golden Apollo himself heard me. He hovered in the air above me, visible as though through a bright shimmering veil. He touched his lyre and I heard his music answering mine. And I saw the stars shining by day all about him, pulsing and quivering like drumheads beating of their own accord, filling the heavens with all their many colors, and I heard once more those thousand thousand lyres all at once, and the stars were singing their blessed song, that vast eternal harmony, that celestial music that has ever been my joy.

“Now you know who you are, Orpheus, and who you will be,” said Apollo to me, as he had in my boyhood.

I smiled, and I felt the warm glow of his smile upon me.

But the Bacchantes themselves heard only the imagined voice of their god, who was Apollo also, but in the form of fiery Dionysus.

Hesione threw the first stone, which struck me in the forehead. The healer Carya threw the next; and then the air was thick with them, striking hard, knocking the breath from me. I fell to my knees. They came rushing toward me, shrieking.

So it was about to happen, the thing I had seen so many times in my memories of the future, the thing that had happened before and would happen again, and again and again. Well, so be it. It had been decreed. The stones battered me, but I did not stop playing. In another instant the women were swarming around me like hungry beasts. Their deafening shrieks assailed my ears. I felt the blows of their ivy-wrapped staffs. In a moment they would rake my skin with their nails and seize my arms and tear at my flesh.

But I held tight to my lyre and continued to play. I am Orpheus, Apollo’s son, and the gods had placed me here for this. So, calling on all the strength that remained to me, I played and I sang. By grace of Apollo, I played and I sang. I would not cease my song until the end. I knew that the time was coming once again for me to die; but it was not here yet, and, until that time had come, I would not cease my song.