Thomas Swann - The forest of forever

There was a babble of voices. No bride? No wedding? Kora nursing a Man?

“Shut up and don’t spoil the party,” Moschus whinnied from the garden. “When Kora’s ready, we’ll have another feast at my house.” (Moschus had never been known to give-or miss-a feast.)

At the first chance, I led Eunostos into the flower garden (Moschus and his friend were sprawled among the vegetables). He had a curious look about him. An old look in young eyes.

“What is he like, this Cretan?”

“A little fellow, but manly. There were wounds all over him but he never complained once. I liked him.”

“What did he look like, Eunostos?”

“Like a prince, I’d say. His loincloth was purple, with a silver clasp on the belt. And his face-it was somehow royal.”

“Eunostos, see to your guests, will you? I’ve drunk enough and talked enough for a year. My ankles are killing me.” I left him standing with his hand on Bion’s head.

But I did not return to my tree, I went to Kora’s tree. Myrrha was downstairs fondling the bridal robe, bright as a field of goldenrod, in which she had married her Centaur and which she had taken out of a cedar chest and freshened with myrrh for Kora. She started talking at once.

“I told the girl to go ahead and get married. That I would look after the young Man. But now, you would think she’s the only Dryad in the Country who knows how to treat a wound. And she even sent me down here! Said he needed to sleep and mustn’t be disturbed by female chatter. That from my own daughter.”

“Well, he’s going to hear a little female chatter now,” I said, charging up the stairs in spite of Myrrha’s protest.

He was lying on Kora’s couch, faintly smiling, eyes closed; sleeping comfortably but needing his sleep, from the look of his wounds. Still, they were obviously not going to kill him, and Myrrha, for all of her frivolity, knew the right remedies and could have been left to nurse him even at the price of missing her daughter’s wedding.

Kora was sitting on the floor beside the couch. She had not begun to dress for the wedding; she was wearing a simple brown tunic, caught at the waist with a sash of grapevine, and her hair for once needed a comb. She saw me and put a finger to her lips. I seized her hand and pulled her after me into the little hall at the head of the stairs. A single window, hardly large enough for a woodpecker to confuse with his nest, admitted a slender beam of moonlight.

“I’m not going to wake your precious friend,” I said, “but I am going to give you a piece of my mind. Such a thing to tell your groom! To have the wedding feast without you! If you don’t trust your mother to look after this interloper, what about me? I was mixing potions and simples long before you were born, and I have a lighter touch than you might suppose from the size of my hands. You can still join Eunostos and have the wedding.”

“No.” That was all. Silent Kora.

“No what? I think you had better qualify that answer.”

“I found him, Zoe. I brought him home. He’s my responsibility.”

“I thought we were talking about Eunostos. As for your Cretan, nonsense. Partridge found him first anyway. Does that make him Partridge’s responsibility? He’s lucky to find anyone to look after him since he broke the covenant.”

“But I called him here.”

I felt as if the fire in my brazier had died on a bleak winter night. “You mean-”

“In one of the dreams I told you about, there was a young Cretan. I tried to call out to him. I didn’t think he heard. But he did. And came. And when he lay wounded in the forest, he called to me.”

“Did he say that?”

“He doesn’t need to say it.”

I seized her shoulders and shook her as if she were a naughty child who had robbed a swallow’s nest. “You’d better think what you’re going to tell Eunostos.”

Chiron had come and, finding no bride to marry, returned to his compound with injured dignity. The Bears of Artemis had long since retired to their hollow logs and bed. Moschus, his new conquest caught in a tangle of arms and legs which might charitably be called an embrace, was snoring among the vegetables. Partridge, rotund with onion juice, drowsed under one of the tables. Bion was gathering fallen scraps to hoard in his workshop.

Eunostos scratched Bion’s head. “You’ll look after things while I go to see Kora, won’t you, old friend?” He was taking her a basket of grapes.

Bion’s look was questioning: shall I come too and carry the basket?

“No, I’d better go alone. Too many of us might disturb the Cretan.” He looked behind him at the fallen garlands, the swaying lanterns which lit only sleep, the revelers who had reveled without a bride. I won’t come back until I come with Kora, he thought.

It was early morning when he arrived at Kora’s tree. Myrrha, who had just entertained and dismissed a Centaur on his way home from the feast, met him with a sleepy greeting.

“Kora sat up all night with the Cretan. She’s still awake and you can go right up to her room.”

He found that she had propped Aeacus’s head on a cushion and was feeding him a warm posset of fennel leaves steeped in sparrow broth. She and Aeacus turned to Eunostos when he entered the room. Aeacus smiled. There was a gash in his left leg which Kora had dressed with moss, and several scars on his chest, and one above his right eye. He must have been in pain but you would not have known from his smile.

“It’s the Minotaur boy,” he cried. “I’ve wanted to thank you but I’ve been asleep.” He started to rise from the couch, but Kora pushed him back against the cushion.

“I brought you some grapes,” said Eunostos to Kora, then to her guest. “For you too, sir.”

She stood above the couch like a warm green flame; her cheeks were flushed and her hair, usually swept above her head, tumbled over her shoulders in a sweet abandonment. Strangely, she was crying. No sobs shook her body, but tears streamed down her cheeks. She was radiance troubled with shadows.

She may be crying for the Cretan, Eunostos told himself, and looked at Aeacus to see if his condition had worsened since they had found him in the forest. But he looked much better than he had the previous day; he was clearly improving, in spite of his multiple wounds, and enjoying good spirits, except that he too saw Kora’s tears and his smile became astonishment and then dismay. He caught and pressed her hand and she gripped his fingers with a frantic yearning. And then Eunostos knew that she was not crying for Aeacus but for him, because she had found her dream.

He dropped the basket of grapes and stumbled down the stairs.

“Eunostos,” Myrrha greeted him as he flung aside the curtain in the door. “You hardly spoke on your way up. Isn’t he ‘a handsome young man? Eunostos-”

When I left Kora’s tree, I did not return to Eunostos’s wedding party. How could I tell the groom that his bride had forsaken him for a Man? Kora must tell him; Kora must make her peace with him. I returned to my tree and tried to sleep. I alternated between tossing on my couch and walking to a window to look at the moondusted oak trees, Kora’s faintly visible at some distance, and the field of flowers where Eunostos had written his poems and dreamed of a Dryad to love him.

Then, the sun was a faint presentiment behind the trees, and a creeping of yellow back into the flowers, and belated sleep for me.

Someone touched my shoulder. “Zoe.”

“Go away. I just got to sleep.”

“Zoe, please!”

“Eunostos!”

He fell to his knees and buried his head in my bosom. I ran my hand through his mane. “You’ve come from Kora.”

“Yes.”

“And she told you.”

“What am I to do, Aunt Zoe?”