Thomas Swann - The forest of forever

“Is he badly hurt?” she cried.

“No, just a bit sore. He’s recuperating in my tree.”

“I’m not worthy of him. He thinks of me as a heroine out of his favorite epic, Hoofbeats in Babylon. People interpret my silence however they like. To Eunostos, it means mystery and wisdom.”

“You may not be worthy of him, Kora.” I was her best friend but also her frankest critic. “But you’re worthier than most. He’ll find us, you know, and when he does, see that you show your appreciation.”

“Will he, Zoe?” Her voice lacked conviction. “I would give my Centaur pendant-if I still had it-to see him now.”

“You never encouraged him much when you had the chance.”

“Not in the way you mean. He seemed like a younger brother. Always stumbling over his hooves.” I did not tell her that in some ways both of them were still children and that she, from her seemingly sublime eminence of eighteen years, was likely to stumble over her dreams. That is, if she lived to continue dreaming them.

Speech was beginning to tire her but silence was frightening to both of us. If any sounds came to our ears, it was the faint whirring of wings or the mellifluous piping of Saffron as she directed the workers. Finally the piping stopped. She’s gone to my tree, I thought.

Then the workers brought us the promised dinner.

Saffron had sent us the uneaten acorns.

Eunostos opened his eyes and stared at the thatched roof above his head. He saw the walls which I had hung with tapestries commemorating my lovers, the square windows which filtered the light through a lattice of foliage. He smelled the bark and leaves of my tree. Zoe’s house, he thought. But how did I come here? At last he remembered.

“Zoe.”

“No. Saffron.”

He recognized the queen who had spied on him in his garden. “How did you find this house?” he asked angrily.

“Zoe herself gave me directions. And she left the door unlatched. Of course I don’t need ladders, though there was one handy if I did.”

He was not in the least impressed with her fabled beauty. Yes, she was prettily formed, like a cowslip or a buttercup. Yes, her skin was as smooth and golden as honey, and her wings were a tremulous translucence as she stood above his couch and smiled down at him with what seemed to be admiration and expectation. But she doesn’t have Kora’s height, he told himself, nor Zoe’s opulence, and there are too many bracelets on her arms, and her wings look as if the faintest breeze would shred them. Actually, he was not prepared to see anything good in a woman who might be responsible for Kora’s disappearance.

“Don’t look so angry!” she teased. “You look as if you would like to butt me. Did I wake you up, dear boy?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Never mind. You’ll sleep like a drone after we’ve had our little visit.”

She sat down beside him on the couch, touching his leg with her thigh. The thigh felt silken beneath its thin silk tunic. He tried to contract himself away from her touch, but he was already pressing into the reeds of the walls. Perhaps resignation was indicated under the circumstances.

“You have a lot of hair on your chest to be so young,” she remarked. “It’s rather becoming, you know. Our drones never grow hair except on their heads. The only thing you can say for them is that they never get bald.”

“We’re born hairy. It keeps us warm in the winter. We don’t get bald either. What do you want?”

“To visit, as I said. To talk. To become acquainted with the last Minotaur. But I shouldn’t imagine you’ll always be the last. You’ll have sons and grandsons, and one day there will be a whole new tribe of Minotaurs. That is, if you choose the proper mate. One whose fertility matches your virility.”

“Zoe isn’t here now.”

“You’re not listening. I didn’t come to see Zoe, I came to see you.”

“I’m trying to listen. But you’re sitting on my hoof. And how did you know I was here?”

“From Zoe. And Kora.”

“Then you must be holding them prisoners!” Angrily he swung his arm and knocked her onto the floor.

She resumed her place on the couch as if she had fallen by accident. Her rueful laugh was like bells with copper tongues, sweet but metallic. Kora had laughed like wind chimes. “I see that no amenities are necessary between us, my dear. Yes, I am holding your two friends in my hive-unwilling guests, you could say-and it lies in your power to rescue them.”

He glared at her. “What do I have to do?”

“Eunostos, I must tell you a sad truth. My daughters are diligent workers, but unintelligent and unresourceful. It has taken them seven days to build the hive, which is not yet finished. I myself have given them a long, proud lineage. I can trace my ancestry back to the days when the Yellow Men were living in crude stone huts and Cretans were cowering in caves. But the males of my tribe-well, to call them Beasts is a monumental exaggeration. The very best of them-Sunlord, for example-is a poor specimen of bestiality. At the next nuptial flight, I’m not even sure that I shall be able to conceive, and a queen who doesn’t conceive is dethroned.”

“In other words, you need a husband from another race.”

“Precisely.”

“Well, you might consider a Centaur.”

She shuddered. “Too large. Too many legs.”

“A Paniscus? They’re the right size for you.”

“Odorous. Onion grass, don’t you know.”

“Just who did you have in mind?”

Impatience flickered behind her smile. “Don’t be dense, dear boy.”

“Me?”

“Who else?”

“For a stud,” he muttered. “Like the Cretan bulls who are bred for the ring.”

“Stud? Husband, you mean. Didn’t I speak of a nuptial flight? Or lover, if the notion of matrimony frightens you. Yes, Eunostos, you are to sire my next eggs. I spied you from the air when I first arrived in this land, and you seemed to me as a dragonfly to a rose. As a tiger moth to a night-blooming cereus. As a-”

“And that’s all I have to do to rescue Kora and Zoe?”

“That’s all,” she snapped. The Thriae do not like to be interrupted in their figures of speech. “I have no other reason to hold them.”

“Set them free first.”

She pouted and turned her back. “You make it sound like a crude bargain. Here I’ve swallowed my pride and come to your arms like a common little Dryad, and you want guarantees of my good faith.”

“At least give me proof you’re holding them.”

She proudly produced the Centaur pendant. “I believe this horsy fellow is a close relative of your dear one.”

He nodded with reluctant recognition. “Kora’s pendant. You do have them, then.” He did not think to ask for guarantees of our safety. It never occurred to him that Saffron might have murdered or be in the process of murdering us. His bluff male heart could not conceive of such perfidy in a female.

“After all, what have you to lose?”

After all, what did he have to lose? He did not know the traditional fate of a drone.

“Am I so unlovely?” she continued. “Are my wings uncouth, my color disagreeable? Is this any way to treat a stranger in your land?”

“You’re a bit skinny,” he said, “and you must be a hundred or so.”

“If you think me plain, you ought to see my workers. Why they don’t even know how to paint their faces!”

“You’ve never taught them?”

“It might distract them from their work. As for my age, I am a hundred exactly without a so. This Zoe creature, I believe, is in her three hundreds.”

“You’ve held up well at that,” he admitted. “You’re sure I won’t tear your wings?”

“As sure as I am that the earth is flat and supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”