Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

I’d wanted to write about Ganesha for a long time. I could readily see him behind my eyes, involved in a drama. There was one huge obstacle, though. I really didn’t know that much about him. The Hindu religion is extraordinarily old and complex, and the more you study Ganesha the more your perception of him changes to reveal some new aspect you’d been previously unaware of.

A few semesters ago, I was teaching a creative writing class, and one of the students was an older gentleman, a retired physician, Dr. Patel. He was a good guy, very smart but very laid-back and with a sense of humor. One day after class, I asked him about Ganesha. Having been born in India and brought up in the Hindu religion, he had what seemed to me a very deep understanding of the subject. He had all kinds of interesting insights and stories about the god.

I told the doctor my plans to write about Ganesha, and I also told him about my trepidation, worrying I didn’t know enough. He thought for a moment or two and said to me, “If you write with an open heart, Ganesha will accept it.” I thought about that for a year and a half, and then I wrote the story.

If you’re interested, there’s a lot of information online about Ganesha. As a reference for this story, I used the book, Ganesha: The Auspicious. The Beginning by Nanditha Krishna and Shakunthala Jagannathan. It’s a general source with stories and information and has a lot of great pictures.

The Elephant’s Bride was not as wide as her husband, or as deep.

JANE YOLEN just counted up her books published — and under contract to be published — and the astonishing number is 320. Of course if you counted her single poems, the count would be much higher. Her first love has always been poetry.

Her Web site is www.janeyolen.com.

I have long been fascinated by the horrifying tradition in India of suttee, in which a widow climbs onto her dead husband’s funeral pyre to die with him. I am a recent widow myself. So when I was invited to contribute to this anthology, I was at last able to write about the custom (and my own widowhood) one step removed.

The daughters of Cadmus have a duty to their father’s house, and so do all of the sons, as well. And thus it is that we can never be truly happy, my brother and I.

For he loves the night, the strange time when all men are asleep. He loves the swoop and glitter of the stars that the gods have set in the heavens, loves to watch the heroes and the monsters cartwheel their way across the sky until rosy-fingered Aurora strokes them away before Apollo’s chariot. Only then will he fall into bed, my big brother, sprawled out on his couch half the day until the sun has passed the zenith of the heavens, when he comes lumbering out of his chamber, blinking and rubbing his eyes, looking for something to eat. I can usually find him something.

It’s a wonder my brother and I ever meet at all. For I love the cold gray dawn, when the grass is still wet with dew. I love to be up before everyone except the household slaves, and the keepers of the hounds, readying for the hunt, which I love best of all. The chase through the woods in the waking dawn, the dappled trees and morning shadows, pursuing the sweet, swift animals that we love even as we seek to break them and bring them to their knees to furnish our tables and our bellies and our feasts. I love to run with my spear and my hounds in my short chiton, legs free and arms free.

But those days are finished for me. I am Creusa, the daughter of Autonoë, the daughter of Cadmus, king of Thebes. I am of an age to be married, now.

You will have heard of our grandfather, Cadmus: he who sowed the serpent’s teeth, and brought forth a race of warriors to build our fair city of Thebes. He did not do all this alone. The god Phoebus Apollo told Cadmus where to find his fate, and Pallas Athena herself stood by him as he scattered the dragon’s teeth across the fields of Boeotia. The gods love our grandfather Cadmus.

And we, in return, must love and honor them.

And so I do. I make my sacrifices to Zeus the Thunderer, to Hera of the Hearth, and to red Mars, fierce in War, who is father to my grandmother Harmonia, whose mother is sea-born Aphrodite.

But it is Artemis, virgin goddess of the hunt, I love. And that is my despair.

My sister Creusa is quite mad. I said as much to my tutor, Chiron the Centaur, and he chided me, as he so often does. He is always whisking his tail at me — it stings but does not really hurt. And I would take ten times that sting to remain his pupil. For while Cadmus and my parents think the great centaur is teaching me hunting, we left that behind long ago. Chiron is a noble archer, true, and I’m not a bad shot thanks to him. But Chiron is a master of the art of healing and knows the movements of the stars.