John Powys - Atlantis

“Hera is still alone on Olympos, but in a state of distraction. She has sent Iris to Ethiopia with frantic messages to Athene to return! But Iris seems unable to discover where Athene is hiding. Dionysos and Eros together are doing what Aphrodite cannot do; for Hephaistos has caught her in Lemnos and is keeping her a prisoner there.

“But Dionysos and Eros have between them ensorcerized the powerful Herakles and laid him low with Desire and Drink, so that Typhon breathing fire and up-rooting mountains can now drag forth Briareos from Tartaros this time for the dethroning, not the throning of Zeus! O great Echidna, Mother of the Sphinx, the Chimera, the Hydra and the Nemean Lion, help us now! O great Eurybia, grandmother of Hekate and daughter of Gaia the Earth and Pontos the Sea, help us now!

“And harken unto me, ye two, for I have great news! Arcadian Pan himself, yes! Pan with the beautiful horns and the hairy legs of a real living goat, has revolted against his time-serving, treacherous, cunning, thieving, lying begetter, Hermes, and is now, even now, leading by their bridles those two godlike horses Pegasos and Arion, so cruelly mutilated by Enorches the Priest of the Mysteries.

“And why, O great Goddesses, is he leading them? He is leading them with the idea of offering them to you Eurybia, of wide rule, daughter of Gaia and Pontos! He is leading them with the idea of offering them to you Echidna, daughter of Phorkys and Keto! He is leading them with the idea of being himself their rider and your guide and helping you to intercept Typhon in his fire-breathing course from Sicily to the Garden of the Hesperides, and make use of him, as huntresses make use of savage dogs, to defeat the Son of Kronos even though he is supported by Aidoneus, the Lord of the Dead, and Poseidon the Lord of the Sea.

“And then, when this resounding victory is won, this victory to which Atropos the oldest of the Fates who is a woman like ourselves will contribute her aid, we shall welcome completely to our side the wavering Hera and the wandering—”

She was interrupted by a long, melodious, vibrant, tremulous note of music which was so penetrating and far-reaching that it was impossible not to receive it into your inmost identity like a perfect draught of wine. Without any other declaration, or sign, or warning, or announcement, the two godlike horses entered that haunted enclosure, Arcadian Pan repeating from the flute he pressed to his bearded mouth that same meltingly sweet note over and over and over and over.

Pan himself was mounted on Pegasos, and the young girl Eione on Arion; and she certainly seemed to be riding Arion easily and naturally and as if entirely at her own volition.

“Lady Okyrhöe!” cried Eione, as they came even with the two women; and into this salutation the young girl threw exactly the right note of respect and courtesy.

As Eione later discussed what they managed to achieve with Arcadian Pan — for it was remarkable how quickly she felt completely at ease with the goat-foot god — they agreed that it was peculiarly and specially lucky for the success of their scheme that in former times, so rumour said, Echidna had been embraced by the monster Typhon and not only so, but, as one story declared, had given birth by him to the Hydra of Lerna, if not to the famous victim of the club of Herakles, the Nemean Lion itself! But whatever were the feelings, mortal or immortal, of the riders upon those divine horses, the impression they produced upon the two women was noticeable.

Never to the end of her days did Arsinöe forget what she then beheld. Okyrhöe took it all more lightly, for her whole life had been such a tissue of murderous tensions and such a chain of deep-plotted explosions that for life’s events to jerk and bleed and jitter and squeal as you dragged them clinging to your scraping harrow over the rough and smooth of fate seemed natural enough.

But apparently those two strange Beings, Eurybia and Echidna who for years and years and years had sighed obscurely, darkly, obstinately, and in a sort of ghastly antiphonic ritual at each other in horrible isolation across the dedicated unholiness of their island Arima, now found themselves bound to move, just as if Atropos herself were in person directing the operation; and there was something about their having to move after so long that was almost geological, giving the impression that the places from which they moved were left raw and in some way not only bloody and excremental but scoriac, volcanic, and like what is left when an avalanche moves.

Echidna instinctively selected Pegasos as her horse and Pan as her companion, while Eurybia slid easily and inevitably upon the back of Arion. Each of these formidable goddesses, however, had the good sense to allow her fellow-rider to hold the bridle-reins of the particular animal she rode; so that as Okyrhöe the pretended daughter of Hector saw them pass that hero’s carved image, and as Arsinöe, his real daughter, saw the hoof of one of the horses fling a clod of mud against the figure she had broken her heart to carve and bruised her flesh to arm, it was upon Eione and Pan that their attention was fixed rather than upon the two goddesses; and as they listened to that exquisitely magnetic flute-note from the pipe of Pan dying away in the distance long after both horses with their four riders had disappeared, the drift of their separate moods opened between them like a yawning gulf, the mood of the wearer of that weird Podandrikon growing as tense as the mood of a general in the midst of the bloodiest part of a battle, while the mood of the daughter of Hector fell into that sadness, proud and bitter and rejecting all sympathy, which had become her prevailing attitude to life.

Had the girl possessed any real friend, had Nisos, for instance, not been so much younger, or Leipephile not so extremely simple, she might have been drawn out of this embittered isolation, for it was so long after the Trojan War that the ancient rancours in most ordinary minds were beginning to lose their edge, if not to wear out. If only Eurycleia hadn’t been so old it might have been different; but of all people an ancient family-nurse, and one who had nursed, as Eurycleia had, three generations of the same breed, would be the last to have any sensitized imagination left over for sympathetic consideration of the feelings of an alien.

It wasn’t until those heart-breakingly sweet notes — or rather the last long-drawn-out unequalled note — of Pan’s flute had died away that either Arsinöe or Okyrhöe gave a thought to the old Dryad who was the prime instigator of this disturbing event.

When they did turn to her it was simultaneously and with an equal feeling of something like real awe. “Let us help you home to your oak, Dryad,” whispered Okyrhöe; and if Nisos had heard that whisper, to which Arsinöe added a less articulate murmur, he would have had a thrill of real pride at being a native of a Grecian isle rather than of a Trojan or a Theban plain, for clearly so great is the power of a Greek Nymph even in her extreme old age that formidable foreigners are subdued before her.

As they approached the skeleton oak-tree on the bark of which flourished a special kind of rich green moss, as if the tree were already horizontal rather than perpendicular, the Dryad’s supporters both recognized that it was possible to look through the interstices of the bark into the interior wood of the tree which was split into long splintery filaments between which there were already oozing out and crumbling upon the lichen-covered ground certain thick masses of a reddish-brown substance which was the clotted heart-stuff or dust-resolved liver, or conglomerated entrail-matter, of that fast-perishing old tree.

Suddenly the Dryad stood dead-still between them, and laid one withered hand on the sleeve of Okyrhöe and one on the sleeve of Arsinöe.