John Powys - Atlantis

“Unlike the jealous and tyrannical Dryops, whose despotic arms Erikepaia joyfully exchanged for those of this famous god who fills the udders of Arcadian cattle with the richest milk and the hives of Arcadian bees with the sweetest honey, I have been proud, though she was loved by this kindly god, to have myself loved the lovely Erikepaia long and loyally, and long after she grew too old for a god’s embraces I loved her. I loved her when she grew old with the oak of her adoption, which she and I together dug up from that Arcadian valley and planted here, here by the side of this rock, here where thou, O great Pan, whether thou knewest it or not, wast sleeping a moment ago.

“Her oak has fallen into dust and Erikepaia with it; but never once did the Nymph who had been loved by Pan or the farmer, my poor self, who loved the Nymph that had been loved by Pan, ever think of him save with true worship.”

It was only when Zeuks had finished speaking that the last thing anyone of them expected happened.

The goat-legged Being swung away from Pegasos and approached Odysseus. Then with a movement so swift and yet so gentle that Nisos imagined he was lifting the hero’s hand to his lips as a sign that he would himself be his guide to the house of the fugitives from Thebes he bit the king’s hand with such sudden and vicious force that the old man dropped his club to the ground.

In an instant the god was upon the back of Arion, who with mildly startled up-tossed head tore his bridle from Odysseus, and, while what was left of his beautiful black mane was tossed across his rider’s lean, goat-hairy shanks, set off at a gallop in the direction from which they had all just come; but as he rode away, the god of milk and butter and honey looked back over his shoulder at Nisos, as if deliberately wishing to include him also among the victims of his mischievous and shameless amorousness.

“Pegasos has told me,” he cried, “that you’ve left at the palace a sweet little shepherdess called Eione who is just made to delight my simple taste. She’ll suit me better, I fancy, than any prophetic daughter of Teiresias!”

Horse and rider, they were soon out of sight; but the shrewd Zeuks had not missed a swift instinctive move towards Pegasos made by Nisos the moment the goat-horned one flung out that word: “Eione”.

“No, no, my dear boy!” he cried sharply. “’Twould be crazy to try to catch them! And what could you do if you did catch them? All the while I lodged — and in this very place — with Erikepaia, she never once told me of any occasion during the time she was loved by Pan when he made her jealous of a mortal maid.”

He turned to Odysseus with a look of whimsical appeal, which, though it had something at once gravely conspiring and gaily mischievous, contained also an immediate and extremely practical warning. And then, while he kept one hand in kindly restraint on the boy’s shoulder, he boldly laid the other on the Club of Herakles which the king, having picked it up from the ground, had carefully balanced, too absorbed to give it more than a secondary place in his mind, on the unwounded portion of the back of Pegasos.

“Our young friend here, O great king,” protested Zeuks; “is impatient for our return so that he can protect his girl from the advances of this amorous goat-foot; but I tell him that, though, we can wound these immortal creatures and even draw ichor from their veins till they are too weak to move, we cannot plunge them as they can plunge us into that vast company of spirits beyond counting, such as have lately, the rumour runs, broken loose from Hades — into the company of those who can only fly like the flight of birds where no birds are and can only cry like the echoes of voices where no voices are, until the end of time.”

“Let us, O great Master,” begged Nisos, who for all Zeuks’ words could not help vividly visualizing the white soft body of Eione helplessly yielded up to those lean hairy shanks and to those gross bristly lips of the immortal Goat-foot, “pray desperately to Atropos that fate may conquer both necessity and chance and bring us quick, quick, quick, to that House by the Sea whence without delay we can return home! O dear master, O great king, this, I swear, is what Pegasos wants, for I can feel him trembling and quivering under our hands!”

All the while the boy was making this appeal he was working hard with both his hands to get the great sack of treasure nearer the horse’s tail and further away from its shoulders.

“But, my friends,” groaned Odysseus, raising his bowsprit beard and drawing in his breath towards the four quarters of the horizon one by one. “How, in the name of Pallas Athene, are we to know in what direction this accurst place lies? If only we could hear the sea; that would be a surer help than any praying to any goddess of fate.”

For a moment they were all three silent. Then the two men became aware of unrestrained sobs breaking from the throat of Nisos. And for another moment, however intently they listened, that was the only sound.

Suddenly Odysseus murmured, as if thinking aloud: “I have felt this happen before, once, twice, three times before! There may be nothing in it; but, on the other hand, it may be — We must doubt everything— including doubt. Yes, there ! There it is again! So be it. I can only try.” He lifted the club an inch or two, held it very lightly, and waited again. He held it as if he were testing its weight. He held it so that in its whole length it was removed from contact with the back of Pegasos. Then, still holding it lightly with his right hand, but grasping the horse’s bridle with his left, he began walking rapidly straight past the rock and into what looked like the thickest part of the fir-forest that completely surrounded them. Nisos, lifting his head now, thought silently: “He is making the club lead us! O Atropos, let us get back in time to save her!” The path by which they had come had vanished; and now indeed there was no path at all. But Odysseus led them forward without the faintest hesitation, nor was there any hesitation in the manner in which Pegasos followed, the treasure-sack propt on his rump, and Nisos keeping it from falling, while Zeuks with a large fern in his hand followed close behind, driving the flies from the raw on the horse’s back whence Enorches had wrenched the wing.

Thus they steadily advanced, weaving their way in and out among the closely-growing fir-trees, and every now and then ascending and descending some small eminence usually of a circular shape and not unfrequently crowned with incredibly ancient stones of a kind totally different from any the island itself supplied, and in some cases, Nisos noticed as they passed, engraved with hieroglyphs not one letter of which he could recognize as Achaean or Hellenic.

And as they went on it was still the club of Herakles who led them; and Nisos often wondered whether he himself or Zeuks could have possibly caught, just through the palm of their hand, that subtle, illusive, delicate quiver, like the faint ripple of water seeking its level, by which the club conveyed its intimation of direction to the hand that had blinded Polyphemos.

Meanwhile within his “life-crack”, as to himself the club called their refuge, the silky wings of Pyraust, the brown moth, were fluttering with a desperate desire to fly homewards in the track of Arion and Pan.

“You shan’t! You shan’t! You shan’t!” shrilled the black fly in its highest-pitched voice. “I’d perish before I’d let you do anything so crazy! Don’t you see, you sweet, delectable, adorable, little fool, that the trees are already throwing long shadows, and didn’t you notice that on the crest of that last little hill we crossed the tree-trunks had a golden glow on their bark?”