Thomas Swann - The forest of forever

“I have to go now,” he said in a voice which implied: “But I could be coaxed into staying a little longer.”

“Since when was Eunostos concerned with time?”

“It’s the Thriae,” he admitted.

“You think they might be up to some mischief?”

“You said yourself they were thieves. I saw one yesterday and didn’t like the look of her. And Kora is so trusting.”

“You’re right, I did say they were thieves. But for all we know, they might have returned to the mainland.”

“I hope so. Still, I just better make a door for Kora’s house. A wolfskin isn’t going to keep out thieves.”

“That’s her mother’s concern. She can get a door from the Centaurs.”

“She’s a bit forgetful these days. Besides, she hasn’t as much to trade as she used to.”

“So you have to do her work.”

“I haven’t till now, unless she asked me. I’m not very dolent.”

“You mean you’re indolent?”

“That’s what I said.”

“But you’ve been busy with your poems.”

“A Minotaur with gainly hoof,” he began to recite. “I do think that one has possibilities. But”-and a wistful maturity shone in his young face-“poems don’t build doors. I’m not even a traveling singer who can hawk his poems for bread. From a practical point of view, I must get on with my carpentry.”

The Thriae had alarmed him more than I had anticipated. I almost wished that I had not told him about their inclinations.

“One more mug of beer and then you shall go.”

The old Eunostos, the dreamy boy, reasserted himself and he dawdled over the beer.

“I’ve thought of a rhyme for ‘mane,’” he said at last. “Lain.”

“Eunostos, what is on your mind?”

“Well, it’s better than ‘bane,’ and certainly ‘slain’ won’t do. I don’t want a sad ending. I want her to come into his arms, as it were. She left the bed wherein she lain…”

“Laid. Your mother would come back from the Underworld if she knew an ignorant Dryad like me had to correct her son’s grammar.”

“I’m a poet, not a grammarian. But you’re right. It’s lie, lay, laid.” With that he sprang to his hooves, kissed my cheek, and clambered down the ladder.

“Eunostos, come back soon.”

“I will, Zoe.”

“And next time, stay longer.”

“I promise.”

In the forest, he jumped and kicked his hooves together and tried to tell himself that he was as happy as he had been in the field of yellow gagea, composing his poem. Before the storm. Before the arrival of the Thriae. After all, he had just visited his best friend (his own word for me). But his hooves returned heavily to the earth, his head bowed, and the lines of the poem flew right out of his mind.

He sensed at once that there was something unnatural about Kora’s house. In appearance it was unchanged, the same reed walls, the same red-ringed windows like square smiles. A trim, happy house which seemed a natural outgrowth of its tree. Then he realized that there was absolutely no sound even as he approached the door. Myrrha was not chattering to Kora, and she was not even humming at her preparations for supper. Had she gone to visit the Centaurs? Most unusual at suppertime, when she should have been frying pigeon eggs in a terra cotta skillet over the stone brazier.

Without waiting to knock, Eunostos lifted the wolf-skin and stepped into shadows, for the sun had already set and no lamp had been lit. Only the brazier, devoid of skillet or eggs, gave a thin, flickering light. Myrrha was lying on the couch, her body sunk in cushions and protected by a cloak of funereal black.

She turned her head and faced him, as white as a sun-bleached shell.

“Kora didn’t come home.”

“Where did she go?” The implication had not yet reached him.

“For a walk. But she didn’t come home. And that was before breakfast.”

Kora was known to be fond of solitary walks, but even when she ventured to the compound of the Centaurs, she never spent more than a morning away from her tree.

In a word, Kora was lost.

Eunostos felt as if he had plunged into a stream of melting snow. First he was numb; then the cold went through him like splinters of ice.

“Did you look for her?”

“Yes. And the Centaurs. All afternoon. All we found was a shred of cloth from her gown. And hoofmarks. Eunostos, I think the Panisci have her.”

The news of Kora’s disappearance reverberated through the forest. She had no enemies, so we thought, and we-her fellow Dryads, the Centaurs, even the little Bears of Artemis-were shamed and frightened by our failure to find her. Myrrha was inconsolable. Moschus brought her beer. The Bears of Artemis brought her pails of blackberries. I brought her a smoked goose and a loaf of bread. She greeted all of us with the same blank expression. She moved with a slow, shambling gait and spoke in monosyllables or disconnected phrases.

And what about Eunostos? She did not know where he had gone when he fled from her house; she hardly remembered his going. Others were a little more helpful. The evening of Kora’s disappearance, a Bear Girl had seen him cross the meadow of yellow gagea.

“It was like there were bees after him,” she said. “He didn’t even speak to me. And he’s usually so friendly.” A Paniscus who, like most of his self-centered race, seemed unconcerned about Kora, thought that he remembered seeing Eunostos head for the hills which climbed toward Mt. Ida. On the other hand, he mused, it was dark and he might have seen a Centaur boy.

Needless to say, I went in search of him myself as soon as I had seen that Myrrha was in good hands. Misled by the Paniscus, I lost the whole morning in the foothills of Mt. Ida. But in the afternoon, I tracked his hoofprints to the limestone ridge which shuts most of our country from the outer world of the Cretans. There, in the darkest and most inaccessible cave, I found him huddled so tightly that you would have thought him a bear cub instead of a six-foot Minotaur. “Eunostos.”

Silence. Then, as if from the end of a beaver’s warren, the slow, reassuring words. “Yes, Aunt Zoe.”

“But my dear, you’ve had an accident.”

“It was the Panisci.”

“But how did you get here?”

“I don’t remember. I must have wandered here after they beat me up.”

“Well, now you’re coming home with me!”

He had been roughhoused from hoof to tail-not exactly mauled, you understand, not quite crippled, but scratched, clawed, bitten, and butted in a fashion which indicated a pack of cowardly Panisci. It was all that I could do to push him up my ladder and guide him to a couch, where he sank to his haunches and dropped his head into his hands. I was barely able to keep him from toppling onto the floor.

“My poor calf,” I cried, brushing the mane from his eyes and baring a large gash across his forehead. “What have they done to you?”

“I went looking for Kora. I thought the Panisci had her.” He coughed and shuddered. “You know how they’ve lechered after her.”

“And-?”

“They didn’t have her, but Phlebas-he’s the cross-eyed one-said he wished they did. He knew what to do with her even if I didn’t. I rammed him in the belly until he admitted that they had had her but had sold her to one of the Bee queens. Then his friends jumped me. I could have handled three or four. But six at the same time! After that, I don’t remember a thing till you found me in the cave.”

“Wait till Chiron hears about this,” I muttered angrily. “The Thriae will wish they had never blown this way. Have you any idea which queen?”

“Not really. But the one who spied on Kora and me was wearing a tiger-colored tunic. Will that help?”

“It may help a great deal. Each of them seems to have her special color. But no more talking now, Eunostos. You’re no good to Kora like this.” I managed to stretch his long frame onto the couch. His hooves stuck over the end, but I supported them with a stool. I bathed his face with a cloth dipped in rose water and raised his head on a pillow.