Thomas Swann - How are the Mighty fallen

“Yes, the sons of Poseidon, the sea king. They stand as tall as a mast and peer through a single eye at a world which seems to them created only to be destroyed.”

“Can he hurt us?”

“Not as long as we have our palaces and spears, and our bears to warn and guard us.”

“Let’s show them we’re not afraid. Let’s walk in the forest and look for mushrooms! Well tiptoe so the Cyclopes can’t hear us.”

It seemed to me then that the Goddess had forgiven my people: she had given me you. Doubly armed, I with a spear, you with a little knife, both of them dipped in the venom of the Jumper, that deadliest of spiders, we stepped into the light. I felt like a morning glory as it greets the sun. The workers, as always, toiled at their various jobs, returning with nectar from a field of saffron crocuses; manufacturing wax with the help of propylus secreted from their mouths; storing honey against the winter sleep. The drones, arm in arm, meandered through the avenues where Cretan gallants had walked in the smile of the Goddess. At the mating time, when buds were greening the winter-forlorn trees, they would follow me in the nuptial flight-or swim, I should say, since the punishment of the Goddess denied us the sky-and I would choose as my mate the drone whom I wished to crown. We would meet and embrace and my consort, stricken by love, would fall like a broken boat to the bottom of the sea, even while his soul ascended to the Celestial Vineyard. Meanwhile, the drones must seek each other for love. My workers lived only for work. Neither did they beget children nor receive lovers, but the drones were passionate beings, and who was I to deny them the love of their friends? The Goddess never decreed that men should lie only with women. All of the races which worship her-the Wanderwooders, the Cretans, the Philistines, the Canaanites, the Phoenicians- accept the love between two men as one more affirmation of the divine plan, the tide which rises and falls to the moon’s compulsion, the inevitability of the seasons, the certainty that those who love will meet, after death, in the Celestial Vineyard. A man’s love for a man is neither more nor less than a man’s love for a woman, it is only different.

“Honey Hair!” A young drone with a white tunic caught by a belt of tourmalines had called my name. He was small and trim like an ivory dancer from the workshop of the Sea Kings. His name, Myiskos, meant “Little Mouse.” He released the arm of his friend and bowed to me.

“Yes, Myiskos?”

“Please don’t leave the hive without an escort.

“My spear will keep us from harm, my son and me.”

“Beautiful things get broken.”

“Dear Little Mouse,” I said. “Perhaps I will choose you for my next king.”

He smiled wistfully. “If only you could choose Hylas at the same time. Even the Celestial Vineyard would seem lonely without him.”

I looked at the young drone who was waiting for Little Mouse. Like most of his friends, he was smooth and beardless, with a saffron glow to his skin. But his tunic revealed a sturdy frame; he was quick with a spear, strong to wrestle, swift to swim. It is folly to think that men who love men are mincing and high-voiced like the eunuchs of Egypt. More often they are brothers in battle, comrades under the deaf, indifferent stars.

“I could not spare the both of you.”

They resumed their walk and paused to examine a flower which had sprung between the cobblestones.

“A mustard flower,” said Hylas. “I am glad that our sandals did not crush her.”

In perilous times they could speak of flowers. Yet, under attack from the Cyclopes, they were valorous warriors; the two of them fought as one.

It was good to walk in the forest, among the yearning oaks which remembered the reign of Father Saturn, that wise old king who, it was said, had nested swallows in his mosslike beard. The latticed branches formed a wizardry of light and shade. Woodpeckers drummed against Dryad oaks.

“Mama, let’s visit Alecto. I can hear the breakers. We’re near her home.”

Alecto was also a Siren, but she was a solitary queen, like the bees which never build hives. She spent her time in the sea disporting with dolphins or lying on beaches where the crackle of shells would warm her of an approaching Cyclops.

An oaken wilderness yielded to a carob grove, cultivated by the Cretans, now forsaken along with a summer house of blue-rimmed windows and a rusting bronze plow. Beyond the grove, the land fell away to purple rocks, where the tide, withdrawing, had bared a multitude of treasures and trifles- murexes with fragile spines; starfish with broken legs; flotsam from — the foreign galleys which sometimes plied the coast. I held your hand and we clambered over the rocks until the waves broke at our feet in diamonds of foam.

“Out there lies Philistia,” I said. “Sometimes her sailors still return to this island, once their home. And beyond them, so I am told, are the Israelites, a race of warrior-farmers led by a young king named Saul.”

“I want to go there,” you said, staring across the green, disheveled waters. The look in your eyes was old and wise and full of journeys; it was the way of our race, sometimes, to remember what we had never seen, and to foretell what we were yet to see.

Then we spied Alecto, the Siren called Silvergilt because of her hair, which looked like foam in the sun. She had heard our approach, recognized us as friends, and continued to sun her tresses on a rock. She opened her arms and you dropped my hand and pressed your face against her opulent breast You liked her scent of foam and ambergris. I tried to hide my concern. It was the solitary queens like Alecto who, in our northern homeland, had eaten some little sailor boys and brought upon us the wrath of the Goddess, to say nothing of a bad reputation with mariners.

She reached to her throat and removed from her necklace a tourmaline in the shape of a bee, which she presented to you as a gift.

“It came from the sea,” she said. “A treasure from the dolphin folk. It will bring you luck one day.”

She released you with some reluctance, rather as one foregoes a banquet, and turned to me.

“Honey Hair, I’m glad you’ve come. You see, I’m going away.”

“Where are you going?” I cried, envious of her free and wandering life.

‘To Philistia. Perhaps to Israel.“

“You can’t fly,” I reminded her.

“I'll swim. It will take me at least a week. But I can rest on the sea like a gull.”

“You were close to tears. You did not want to lose your friend. ”Don’t go away from us, Silvergilt!“

“Dear little Bumblebee, I have to go. A Cyclops killed my sister Electra only last week.”

“The Cyclopes,” I repeated, shuddering. “Yes, they are dreadful beasts. I fear for my palace at times-”

“Only if you scorn us.”

The voice boomed and reverberated among the rocks.

“Goliath,” Alecto screamed and, quick as a diving gull, she dove in the water and disappeared in a maelstrom of foam. Clutching you by the hand, I sprang after her; I beat my wings in frantic flurries and barely escaped Goliath’s hairy fist as it slapped the sand behind us even as we reached the surf. He waded into the water up to his hips, but in spite of his parentage, no Cyclops can swim; heavy as elephants from Nubia, they sink at once to the bottom of the sea. Remember how Polyphemus stood on the shore and hurled boulders at Odysseus’ ship He couldn’t swim after him.

“Come back to me, Honey Hair,” Goliath pleaded with a voice which tried to be intimate and succeeded in being sinister. His single red eye glowed like an open wound. “We have no females. The Dryads are much too small and most of the Sirens have fled the island. I would give my eye for a woman like you.”