Thomas Swann - The forest of forever

They exchanged glances as if to say, “We’ll be on our guard, but what’s the harm?” and reluctantly permitted me to coil a Strige around each of their necks.

Tychon grinned and relaxed his stomach.

“Tickles.”

If he looked a little less like a sheep, I thought, I could forgive the bulge. After all, I myself am not exactly a sapling, in age or girth.

“Looks like a bit of fur,” said the wife, gazing at her reflection in the side of the pot to evaluate the combination of neckpiece and earrings and liking what she saw. You may give me credit for introducing a new feature of feminine adornment, though in later years ladies preferred their neckpieces to be inanimate.

Tychon yawned.

“Hoed too much,” Chloe volunteered. “Ain’t a boy. Tychon! Let her have the pallet.” But Tychon had already sprawled on his bed of straw and begun to snore.

She shrugged. “Works hard, sleeps hard. Never mind. Don’t talk much when he’s awake.”

I saw that we were headed for an exchange of confidences. I would no doubt be questioned about the fashions of the town, the affairs of the court. Drawing on my past visit to Knossos and what I had learned from Aeacus, I had prepared answers for all possible questions, even down to the false rumor of an indiscretion between the king and the wife of the Egyptian pharaoh’s emissary.

But she pointed to my breasts and said, “Paint your nipples, dear?”

“Always. Whoever said we can’t improve on nature? An unpainted nipple is like a green apple. Unappetizing.”

“What do you use?”

“Carmine.”

“Too dear for me.”

“Had you thought of a vegetable dye? I’ve even made do with the juice of wild strawberries.”

But she had slid as quietly to the floor as an empty gown sliding from a wall hook.

Remembering my own unpleasant experience with those pernicious creatures, I removed the Striges before they had glutted themselves and returned them to my pouch. Then I turned to the business at hand. I could not resist a smile. Zoe, old girl, I told myself, you’re going to keep your promise to Kora.

Darkness came as stealthily as a member of Phlebas’s band bent on theft, and I felt in league with the night, bent upon my own machinations, however benign, and hugely enjoying the adventure in spite of the hazards and the stakes. With a certain reluctance, I exchanged my elaborate gown for a shapeless gray horror which I found, of all places, in the cupboard. Now I could approach Knossos driving an oxcart and looking like a peasant woman and Chloe could mend a few tears and have a fashionable gown which for better or worse would liberate what her husband preferred to remain in captivity. Then I knelt beside Chloe to recover the earrings. Had they belonged to me, I would gladly have left them in exchange for the oxcart, but the Bee queen had lent, not given, and I must return them to her along with the Striges (which I would have liked to strangle).

However, I had underestimated the pig.

He bared his tusks and instantly transformed himself from a docile pet to a ferocious guard. In the forest, he could have passed for a wild boar. I understood why Tychon did not need a watchdog. Bottom advanced upon me with cautious but deliberate steps. Doubtless he was still making up his mind whether to gore me or ram me. Hastily I sprang to my feet. Chloe could keep the earrings so long as I got the cart. At the moment, the getting seemed in doubt. It was out of the question to implant a Strige on the back of that advancing brute. If I could only think of a bribe-

I had just seen Bottom partake of the family skin with some relish. I hastily emptied the rest of the skin into a pot, the same which had served Chloe for a mirror, and shoved it under his snout.

A moment of indecision. Was I really a threat? After all, I had left a better gown for the one I had taken and I had not stolen the earrings, merely fingered them. Furthermore, there was no reason to connect me with the sudden but not unnatural-looking sleep of his master and mistress. He sniffed, examined, partook: daintily at first, then mightily. I edged toward the door; Bottom stopped lapping. It seemed that I was still suspect. I paused. Bottom resumed his lapping.

A drunken pig is far more fastidious than, say, a drunken Moschus. Bottom finished the bowl, walked without staggering to his master’s pallet, leaned comfortably against Tychon, and joined his snores to those of his master. Fighting down the temptation to recover the earrings and risk arousing Bottom-later I could make amends to Amber-I moved out of the house to claim the cart and ox.

The ox was tethered under the lean-to beside the house. When I untethered him, he refused to budge. I coaxed, I prodded, I swore twenty oaths to the Great Mother, but I could not move him from the house. I felt like a beaver which has found a tree impervious to its teeth or, to use a comparison more fitting to my race, like a transplanted oak which has failed to take root in rocky soil.

To compound my disgrace Eunostos at that very moment loomed over the horizon, stooping and trying to minimize his almost seven feet but still looking like a Minotaur or, to the country folk if they had seen him, a demon from the Underworld.

“But Zoe,” he cried, “you only have to talk to him.” He turned to the ox, muttered a few, to me, unintelligible sounds, and the stupid animal sauntered, yes, sauntered, in spite of his bulk and with undisguised scorn for me and affection for Eunostos, from under the lean-to and over to the cart, which leaned against another wall of the house. A few more words, some quick, sure movements of his hands, and ox was joined to cart for the journey to Knossos.

“What did you say to him, Eunostos?”

“I invited him to join us on a trip.”

“But he’s going to have to pull us. You make it sound as if he’s going to ride in the cart.”

“I know, but he has his pride. It’s better to make him feel like an equal.”

“I didn’t know you spoke ox.”

“You forget I have an affinity for the race. I expect we have a common ancestor. Besides, his vocabulary is limited-a mere hundred or so words.”

“Eunostos, you’re a wonder.”

He gave me an impulsive hug. “Aunt Zoe, you’re the wonder. The way you handled the farmer!”

I shushed him with a finger. “And his wife and pig. But they may wake up. Into the cart with you now.”

“Can’t I drive while it’s dark?”

“Not even while it’s dark.”

“But the farmers are all asleep.”

“But not their sons and daughters.”

It was like squeezing a Triton into a lobster box.

“Leave me a breathing hole,” he pleaded as he lay on his back, knees drawn up, arms pressed against his sides, chin on chest.

I shoveled hay over him. “It’s only a foot deep over your head. I have to hide your horns. You won’t suffocate.” It was no time to pamper him. “Just don’t sneeze,” I cautioned with a last toss of the pitchfork. Then I mounted the driver’s seat and addressed the ox:

“Ho there, fellow, off to Knossos.”

The ox refused to respond.

“My good Beast, let’s be on our way!”

His inertia bordered on insolence.

A sound filtered through the straw, rather like a series of grunts.

“That’s the most primitive language I ever heard,” I snorted. “And he’s not my equal, even if I did call him Beast.”

But the cart began to move.

We had driven our oxcart for three days and lived on blackberries and mushrooms and crayfish caught in streams swollen by the melting snows from the mountains. Once I inveigled goat’s milk and eggs from a credulous farmer’s wife, who took me for a widow light in the head, while Eunostos remained in his crypt of hay. Every night, when we stopped to rest and my body seemed one intolerable ache from the jolts of the oxcart, I ate of the acorns in my pouch and scarcely thought of my tree. With the resilience of youth, Eunostos unbent himself and slept soundly under the cart, his horns and hooves concealed by straw or wrapped in old strips of linen torn from the folds of the gown I had borrowed from Chloe. The last night before Knossos, I waited among the papyrus stalks and watched for intruders while he swam in a pool and cleansed himself from the journey, and then I took his place in the sweet-chilling water, though careful to guard my hair and not expose the forbidden Dryad’s green.