Thomas Swann - The forest of forever

I am three hundred and sixty years old and I pride myself, not unjustly, on having enjoyed twice as many lovers as I have years. I have loved Men, Minotaurs, Centaurs, and Tritons and no one has ever complained that Zoe, the Dryad of Crete, has failed in the art of love. Saffron, the erstwhile queen of the Thriae or Bee-Folk, once called me as weatherbeaten as my oak. She pointed to the gold tooth fitted by my Babylonian lover of twenty-no, thirty summers ago, and to the streaks of gray in my green hair, like moss among leaves. I, in turn, expanded the twin grandeurs of my unsagging breasts.

“My dear,” I replied, with more courtesy than she deserved, “who wants a sapling when he can have a full-fledged oak?”

I hardly need to add that in these days when everyone is telling his own history-on papyrus, clay tablets, or palm leaves-I have innumerable stories to tell, and since decorum has never been one of my burdens, I am sorely tempted to tell you about some of my escapades. The Babylonian. The Briton. The Achaean (lusty brute!). The only thing that silences me is the fact that some of my friends-and enemies, for every desirable woman is envied as much as she is desired-have a much more ennobling tale to be told. Since those involved are unable to speak for themselves, I must speak for them. As a matter of fact, I do at times take part in the melancholy events: I participated as well as observed. But I neither claim nor wish to be the heroine, poor, dreaming Kora, who was cursed with beauty as some women are cursed with ugliness. However, I will presume to speak for her, even to some of her thoughts, as well as for Eunostos, the last Minotaur, and Aeacus, the Cretan prince.

I promised you a melancholy tale, but where is the forest without its wells of light? If you demand a death or a rape on every tablet, my story is not for you.

Hooves crossed, tail at ease, Eunostos lay on his back in a patch of yellow gagea. He had cradled his head in a deserted ant’s nest and he held a reed pen between his teeth. There is nothing more reposeful than a reposing Minotaur calf. His race has a reputation for ferocity and indeed, when aroused, they are fierce and redoubtable warriors-a match for the Centaurs, more than a match for Men. Under ordinary circumstances, however, they are peaceful beings, given to gardening, carpentry, or contemplation.

He was a strapping boy (and I use the word “boy” not in the sense of his being Human but of being young), tall, muscular, though just fifteen; with a ruddily handsome face and a mane of woodpecker-red hair of which he was justly proud.

“Eunostos.”

He sat up, twitched his tail, which was tipped with red fur and admirably designed for swatting flies, and dropped the pen from his teeth. I noticed the shapely horns beginning to sprout through his mane. Yes, he would soon be a bull.

“Did somebody call my name?” His voice was deep but the tone was mild. It was the kind of voice which says: Linger and chat. Our talk will be small but satisfying.

I stepped out of the trees. He sprang nimbly to his hooves, crossed the meadow in a quick bound, and caught me in a boyish embrace. It always pleased me to see his admiration: a youngster admiring a woman of experience who has kept her looks through years and vicissitudes. In fact, I was looking my best, as my mirror had told me that morning when I donned my leaf-of-the-water-lily gown, adorned my wrists with bracelets of time-greened copper, and, as a small sacrifice to modesty, emplanted a large tourmaline in the cleft of my bosom.

“Aunt Zoe!” It was a courtesy title which I did not particularly like. I was not his aunt, merely a friend of his deceased mother, who had insisted on the title. (Once upon a time-was it forty years ago? — I had been his father’s friend.)

“Eunostos, I’m carrying a basket of acorns to Myrrha and Kora. I thought you might like to join me. That roguish Centaur Moschus has given me no end of trouble since we stopped keeping company and-well, it’s good to have a man on hand.” I was not in the least afraid of Moschus; I rather enjoyed his importunities and intended to resume keeping company with him-after several reassuring interludes with younger men. (You understand that by “men” I mean male adults of any race, and not necessarily Humans.) But I wanted to make Eunostos feel mature and confident. Orphaned for a year, he badly needed the encouragement and guidance of an older woman.

At the mention of Kora, the prettiest Dryad in the Country of the Beasts, he did not have to be urged.

We started through the woods, Eunostos ahead of me like a good scout, thrashing a suspicious looking thicket, prodding for poisonous serpents with a pointed stick while clutching his reed pen and palm leaf tablet with the other hand. (Yes, Minotaurs have hands; it is only their legs that are hooved.)

“What were you dreaming about when I surprised you, Eunostos?”

“Kora,” he confided. “I was writing a poem to her.” A shy pleasure illumined his face; his eyes were wide and green and they looked as if they had drunk their color from the sea, though he had never left the forest.

“What about?”

“Love.”

“What do you know about love, little one?” The term was relative. He was six feet tall, but his full growth would include another foot.

“But that’s what it means to be a poet. You make up what you don’t know. Do you think the author of Hoofbeats in Babylon had ever been to Babylon?” He began to read from the palm leaf clutched in his hand: “A Minotaur with gainly hoof Pursued a Dryad girl. She spied him from her barky roof And spruced a wayward curl.”

“Don’t you mean ‘ungainly’?”

“No, this hoof was very nimble.” He looked down at his own hooves and stamped them, one after the other, lightly on the turf.

“Promising,” I said, “but it needs a bit of polish.” What else can you tell a budding poet, if you happen to be unable to distinguish poetry from doggerel?

“What’s this, giving me the slip, my girl?” A Centaur bestrode our path; he looked quite awesome with his four legs and two arms and his billowing gray mane. But it was only Moschus, who was no more awesome than a deflated wineskin. A small pig, a pink little fellow a long way from becoming a hog, frolicked between his legs.

“No, Moschus, but I have more to do than dally with you in the forest. I’m on my way to Myrrha’s house.”

“Who said anything about dalliance? It was conversation I had in mind. And possibly lunch,” he added, eyeing the acorns, which Centaurs prize almost as much as Dryads. He looked Eunostos up and down. “Hello, young fellow. How goes the wenching, heh?”

Eunostos nodded courteously and between them there flashed the unspoken comradeship of horned, tailed Beasts; though the Centaurs secretly consider themselves superior because they have six limbs instead of four. Also-and I am not speaking out of conceit-there was the tacit understanding of males who appreciate a desirable woman, with a touch of envy on the part of Moschus, who had temporarily lost me, and a touch of pride on the part of Eunostos, who had temporarily found me, even if in the guise of an aunt.

“Watch out in the forest,” Moschus called after us, his breath smelling of beer. “There’ve been-portents.”

Portents? What kind? I wish I had paused to question him. But he is something of a wiseacre and a pause would have given him a chance to retell one of his limited and long-winded anecdotes.

“I hope he won’t step on his pig,” muttered Eunostos. “I’ve just thought of a new poem: Piglet, Minikin-flanked And deft to root and dig, By what mischance do you expand To pig?”