Thomas Swann - The forest of forever

“I don’t need a disguise. One good bellow will send those rustics scurrying like Bear Girls chased by a bear.”

“And if you get to Knossos?”

“The Cretans aren’t monsters. Not the city folk, anyway. The king is said to be a fair-minded Man. I’ll ask him to make Aeacus return the children.”

“And you think he’ll listen to you? His own brother’s children, heirs to the throne?”

“I don’t know. At least he might let them spend half the year with Kora. But we have to do something, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do. We’ll go together, Eunostos, you and I. I’ll be the peasant, not Kora, and I’ll find a way to smuggle you into the city. You’re right, the king is fair. He will probably refuse you but I don’t think he will harm you. If he does refuse, then it will be my turn to act. I won’t ask, I will steal back what has been stolen.”

“But they’re my children,” Kora cried. “You’re making plans as if I didn’t exist!”

“Kora,” I reminded her. “I am approximately seventeen times your age. I can stay away from my tree a good two weeks without so much as getting a headache. What is more, I am something of a traveler. I have been to the coast with Achaeans and I took a short voyage on one of their ships. Once, I even dyed my hair with umber from the banks of the Beaver Lake, combed it over my ears, and went to Knossos with a Cretan sailor who had taken my fancy. For a solid week, he showed me around the city-taverns, bull ring, theater, palace, everything. I was downright faint before I got back to my tree, but I didn’t regret a minute. There is no more to be said if you want your children back. Swallow your pride and turn their rescue over to experts.”

Perhaps it was wicked of me to feel a strange exhilaration even while Kora was grieving for her lost children and I sincerely and deeply felt her loss. But then I never claimed to be the Great Mother. I was nothing but a free-living Dryad who loved an adventure, amorous or martial. And loved Eunostos.

And so I prepared for my greatest adventure with my greatest friend.

Most of the Beasts had gathered at the edge of the forest to watch my departure. Chiron and his Centaurs, wives as well as husbands, had arrived en masse, with their beloved pigs hovering between their hooves; and the Bears of Artemis, forgetting their shyness, scurried around me in a frenzy of excitement and wanted me to add some berries, some honey, some catnip, to the already laden pouch suspended from my sash. There were others too: some thirty or more Dryads, who took turns trying to reassure Kora that Icarus and Thea, having a human father, would not suffer even if separated indefinitely from their tree; the better behaved Panisci, among them Partridge, who was close to tears because Eunostos was going to the Wicked City without him; the Bee Queen Amber, who had made a special contribution to my pouch; and of course Eunostos, flanked by his faithful Bion and three other Telchins. Phlebas and his band were conspicuously absent, and his special Girl, chomping insolently on a weed, had been heard to say that she hoped the children-spoiled things-were never recovered; it would serve them right to be eaten by the Knossians.

As for myself, I had stayed in my tree all night to absorb its vitalizing powers, which now permeated my body like a glow of wine, and to make my plans and preparations. I could not have slept even if I had taken the time.

Now I was ready. It was not a small thing to leave the Country of the Beasts. I had left in the past only when accompanied by one of my lovers and returned with depleted energy, even if enriched experience. It was not a small thing to leave my oak. There were wispy little oaks in the world of Cretans but they were not Dryad trees and who could say what small sustenance I might draw from them?

Kora separated herself from the band of Dryads and threw her arms around me. Her eyes were moist but she did not allow the tears to fall down her cheeks.

“It seems I’m one of those women to whom things happen. You’re one who makes things happen. Find my children for me, Zoe.” She looked incredibly pale and young; she was both the devoted mother, inseparable from hearth and loom, and the dreamer of the early days, though now bereft of her dream. The sight of her briefly sobered me from the intoxication of the adventure.

“I will, Kora,” I swore. “By the Great Mother’s breast, I will.” Confidence returned to me, and I felt that there was nothing in the forest or in the city which I could not accomplish, except become a fine, proper lady (or be loved by the one dearest to me).

Eunostos said nothing. There was nothing he needed to say. His smile said: “You and I, Aunt Zoe, who can stop us? Not those puny Cretans.” He planned to follow and overtake me that very night.

I held him by the horns-the intimate, loving gesture shown him in the past only by his mother, Kora, and little Icarus-and kissed his cheek.

“Be cautious. I don’t need to tell you to be courageous.”

And then I left the country, marching out into the meadow where Aeacus, three years ago, had fought his battle. The grass was soft beneath my sandals; butterflies, like winged buttercups, fluttered away from me and meadowed the air. It is a good omen, I thought. The air has partaken of earth, and earth is my friend.

Omens can be deceptive.

I approached the farmhouse feeling-trepidation, did you expect me to say? Caution, perhaps? I refuse to be falsely modest. I approached with the complete assurance that I would get what I wanted, by wiles or sheer animal appeal, from the farmer: the stone-wheeled oxcart in which he carried his produce to Knossos and in which I would hide the undisguisable immensity of Eunostos. Of course I knew my limitations. Place me beside Kora and I was clay beside alabaster. But Cretan farmers were not acquainted with women like Kora. I glittered, I glistened, I rippled like a snake goddess in a breast-revealing gown which my Cretan lover had bought for me in Knossos. Compared to the average, woolen-garbed farmwife, I was a finely glazed cup beside a crude earthenware jug. I was, to be frank, sufficient to fill a farmer’s eye and make him drop his hoe.

This particular farmer was chopping wood with the rhythmic, leisurely motion of a man who had never known a bad harvest-not on rich Crete-or confronted Achaean marauders. His cart leaned against the blue, almost windowless thatched mud box which passed rather prettily for a house. His ox grazed in a neighboring pasture bosomed with hay ricks and besprinkled with daisies. Immediate theft was out of the question. Nor could I wait until night and make off with ox and cart without arousing either the farmer or the inevitable watchdog found in peasant homes. Cretan farmers are as wary as Bee queens, though for different reasons. They eat well on the fat of the land, but they own few possessions and guard them with a zeal enforced by pitchforks, hoes, and knives, to say nothing of dogs whose immediate ancestors roamed the forests and held their own with wolves. I must bide my time; I must wait till night, when Eunostos could creep out of the forest, some three miles away, and join me outside this very house. Meanwhile, however, I must beguile and ingratiate-and incapacitate the farmer and whatever family and animals he might possess.

He looked at me and dropped his ax. Evidently I had filled his eye, and his nostrils too, for he sniffed greedily at the myrrh in which I had bathed my face and breasts. He also looked at me with suspicion: what was this ample, not young but decidedly not superannuated woman doing in a bell-shaped skirt embroidered with conch shells and starfish and, boldness of boldness, in an open bodice which revealed, nay, accentuated and framed her two glories, her glowing pomegranates, her full moons, their nipples painted a titillating crimson to match her lips? Furthermore, I had ripped the gown in order to suggest an escape from bandits who had attempted my honor, and I had ripped in provocative places-a lure of thigh, a tantalization of leg. My hair, though brown with umber, scintillated with mica dust; my ears were concealed-at least their pointed tips-but the lobes were graced by big silver earrings, a loan from Amber, shaped like beehives and tinkling when I walked as if their inhabitants were about to take flight. I had touched enough kohl to my eyes and carmine to my cheeks to make me look not quite a courtesan, but at least a woman of experience, not a great lady but definitely not a peasant-perhaps a merchant’s wife whose husband was often at sea; in short, a woman with a roving eye and the wherewithal to rove.