Thomas Swann - The forest of forever

“Wait, my dear.” I had no wisdom for him; only platitudes; only a tenderness which welled into my heart like hot water into a Cretan bath, wounding even while it warmed.

“For what?”

“Another Kora. A worthier Kora.”

“I’m never going to love again.”

“Everyone does. If they let themselves.”

“You do, Aunt Zoe, but you’re different from me. You can fall out of love.”

“I don’t fall out of love, I just add one love onto another and keep them all, and so will you.”

“No,” he said. “There’s only Kora.”

How could I tell him that what he felt for her was as sharply hurtful as the thrust of a Thriae spear but not beyond healing? The Kora he loved lived only in his poems; it was his misfortune that he expected her soul to equal her beauty. Her soul was not unbeautiful, but being young had not had time to match her face.

“We’ll see, my dear. Meanwhile, do you want to stay with your Aunt Zoe awhile? You don’t have to go back to that lonely house yet. Bion and I will clean it for you and have it waiting.”

“I’d better go back. It’s all I’ve got.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “you have more than you think,” but he had already left the room, and I heard my ladder sagging under his weight, and the thump of his hooves on the ground, and the slow, sad steps toward his house.

No one has ever seen me cry. I choose my times.

Three days had passed. Eunostos sat at his workbench with a saw in his hand. But the saw was idle, the hand did not move, and the chair which he had begun before the proposed wedding remained a mere beginning. Bion prodded him with a feeler. It was Partridge who had brought him material for the chair as a wedding gift: tanned oxhide to be stretched across a framework of willow rods. It was Bion who had brought him the tools. Partridge had gone in search of his dinner, since Eunostos would not allow him to graze in his garden, but Bion had remained to keep him company. Eunostos stroked his head and never noticed that his friend was too miserable to wave his antennae.

Someone called his name. Someone was wandering in his garden and looking for him, but did not seem to know the location of the workshop, whose entrance was hidden by a blackberry thicket to discourage Panisci or Thriae. He had better confront his visitor before his roses were trampled.

He climbed the earthen staircase and stepped into the sunshine. It was so bright, after the pale lanterns of his workshop, that he blinked, and only then did he recognize the visitor.

Aeacus.

“I thought you were wounded,” he growled.

“I was-I still am. This is my first day out of the tree. I wanted to talk to you.”

At the sight of his limp, Eunostos stifled an urge to butt him. He did not want to talk to Aeacus. He did not want to look at his kindly smile, at the kind violet eyes. He wished that Aeacus had looked smug and condescending, or arrogant and boastful, and then he might have butted him in spite of the limp.

But Aeacus breathed heavily and leaned his weight on a trellis where wild roses were twining tentative feelers.

“You’re about to knock down my trellis. Kora wouldn’t like that. She says roses have souls.”

“Forgive me. Kora should know.” His pain was evident when he tried to stand without support. The wound in his leg had hardly begun to heal.

Eunostos pointed toward his house. “There are chairs inside.”

“It looks like a crown of bamboo. Light and airy and graceful. Did you build it yourself?”

“Yes, but the Centaurs brought me the bamboo.”

They sat facing each other, silent, and Aeacus lost his smile. He looked sad and perplexed, though his bronzed little body glittered in his murex-purple loincloth, with its silver clasp in the shape of a halcyon bird.

At first they carefully avoided a direct discussion of Kora.

“Chiron is going to let me stay in the forest,” Aeacus said. “I’ve broken the covenant but only by accident. However, if I stay, it must be for good. I can’t go back to Knossos and expect to return here. People might want to follow me, and where would the covenant be?”

“And you’ve accepted his conditions?”

“Yes.” The answer was strangely subdued. He paused. “Till you came with the grapes,” he said, staring at the fountain as it cascaded above the seashell castle, “I didn’t know that Kora had promised to marry you. I thought you were just her friend. Like a younger brother. I wanted you to be my friend too. Since I woke up in the forest and you were there to help me-well, I’ve liked you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why else would I come here now?”

“I believe you then, but I still don’t like you.”

“Of course you don’t. But I hope you will in time. When you understand.”

Why did older people-Men as well as Beasts, it seemed, even dear Zoe-always talk about understanding as if it came with years? He understood well enough at fifteen; he was rough and graceless and Kora had preferred a prince from a glamorous city. He understood but he still hurt.

Helplessly he pointed to the house and the garden. “I made it for her. The house is bamboo, but it’s right in the middle of a hollow oak trunk so she could have left her tree and lived here with me. Dryads can change oaks, you know. Now there’s nobody to share it with.”

But Bion was standing in the door and Eunostos saw that the Telchin had heard him and his feelers had wilted with disappointment.

“I didn’t mean you,” Eunostos cried, jumping to his hooves and leading Bion into the room. “But you have your own workshop and relatives. I meant somebody to stay with me all the time.”

“I think you have a lot of friends,” said Aeacus. “Zoe says you’re the nicest Beast in the country and I had better consider myself lucky if you’ll even speak to me. I think you can have as much company as you want.” He held out a coaxing hand to Bion, but the Telchin scuttled away from his touch and retreated into the garden.

“Not Kora.”

“Kora too. She does love you, Eunostos, but not in the way you want. She can’t help herself. I couldn’t help coming to her, and I can’t help staying now that I know she wants me.”

“You’ve fallen in love with her in just three days? I’ve known her all my life.”

“I’ve always been in love with her. At least, with someone like her I was waiting to meet. The Great Mother arranges these things, and all we mortals can do is accept gracefully if we lose, and graciously if we gain.”

“I’m not very graceful. My hooves are clumsy and I would trip on my own tail if it reached to the ground.”

“Kora says she loves you better than anyone in the whole forest next to me. She says you saved her life and wrote poems to her and made her feel that her beauty was something precious, and not a worthless, empty shell. I wish-I wish-”

Eunostos had not expected to see an eloquent Cretan groping for words. He wanted to hate or at least dislike this Man who had stolen his bride, but he could not stay angry except with a wicked and heartless person like Saffron. It would seem that Aeacus had not intended to wrong him and that he was truly ashamed. Otherwise, why had he left his couch before he was well and walked through the forest to bring his apologies?

“Well,” said Aeacus, straining to his feet. “I must let you get back to your shop. But I warn you, I’m coming again soon, and going to keep on coming until you become my friend!”

He swayed and started to fall. Eunostos caught him and settled him into the chair.

“Now stay there,” he ordered as gruffly as he could. “I’m going to get you some catnip tea. Zoe says it will cure anything.”

In the next room, he kindled the coals on the hearth and sprinkled some dried leaves in a pan of water. “Damn,” he muttered. “Great-Mother-damn.” Here he was taking care of the last person in the world he wanted as a friend, and it was quite impossible to dislike anyone in your care.