Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two (31 page)

There was a horrid screaming that sank to a gurgling moan. Palaemona heard bone cracking and the small ripping of flesh, saw the body part in the middle and blood spout as the bulls galloped to the opposite ends of the field. They turned quietly and walked back, dragging the body stumps behind, and began to crop the bloody grass.

At the edge of the field was a hut and a stall. Palaemona watched as the man took the halters off the bulls and drove them into their stall. Then he went into the hut.

She ran back to the castle as fast as she could. Ran into the banquet hall where Melampus sat drinking from his golden cup. “Father, Father!” she cried. “I saw a dreadful thing. I disobeyed you, dear Father, and went into the woods alone. And I came to a field and saw a man tying another man to two big bulls, and—and—” She burst into wild sobbing and could not go on.

He lifted her to his lap and stroked her hair. “Do not weep,” he said. “Little daughter, do not weep.… Sunny little thing, you have not wept in all the days I have known you. You were rash, very rash, but you paid too heavily for it. You have seen the Bullman at work.”

“It's so terrible,” she said. “So ugly and foul. Can't you stop it? I've been hearing screams at night. I didn't know what they meant, but now I do.”

“I'll send for this Bullman immediately,” he said. “You shall hear no more screams, my girl.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Now let me see you smile.”

She gulped back her tears and smiled.

“Let me hear you laugh.”

He tickled her. She laughed. “Ah, the sweetest sound in all the world,” he cried. He kissed her. “Run off now. But remember, don't go out the gate again.”

Melampus instructed his men. They went down to the killing ground, fettered the Bullman, and brought him in, slavering and bloody handed. He showed no fear as he faced Melampus.

“I'm only trying to earn a living,” he said.

“By robbery and murder?”

“What can I do? I'm a robber and murderer.”

“I can do something,” said Melampus. “I can order your head chopped off.”

“You wouldn't do that!” cried the man.

“Any reason why not?”

“A sackful of reasons. Five hundred of them, all gold. A half-year's take is buried in a secret place.”

“Are you trying to bribe me?”

“I'm trying to save my life. I can't think of any other way.”

“No, this does seem the best way. My coffers are empty and my wine casks dry. In the name of thirst and justice I fine you five hundred pieces of gold.”

“Thank you, your honor.”

“But I must ask you to change your place of business. The screams are keeping us awake.”

“There's a field a mile west. I'll take my bulls there.”

“Very well, expect to be summoned six months from now for a review of your case.”

“Yes, your lordship. I'll start saving.”

7

The Stretching

That night Palaemona heard no screams. She was very pleased. The silence was like a song sung to her by Melampus, who sang no more.

The next day Melampus's steward visited the Bullman and was given a sack of gold. Some hours later a great ox-drawn wagon loaded with empty wine casks went forth from the castle. When it rolled back through the gates that evening the casks were full.

The banquet hall rocked with revelry that night. Melampus made up for a week's drought by drinking off cup after cup of undiluted wine. He drank himself into a stupor, finally into insensibility. Fragments of song drifted up to Palaemona in her chamber. She listened only for his voice threading among the shouts and the sounds of breaking crockery. She heard the loud braying laughter of the oreades. She fell asleep clinging to his voice.

Melampus was sick and disgusted when he woke up the next morning—a lovely sunny day it was, but the brightness only made his head ache. Just as he was dragging himself out of bed he heard Palaemona laughing. The clear, joyous sound went through his head like a lance. He rushed from his room and roared at her as she danced down the hallway.

“What are you laughing at? I don't see anything funny.”

The girl stopped laughing. She looked at him as if she had never seen him before. She turned swiftly and ran out of his sight. From that hour no one in the castle heard her laugh again.

There was nothing for her now but silence. The comic dance of leaf shadows was blown away by the blast of his voice. The joke of young things—of puppy, lamb, and puffed-up frog—was darkened by his anger. Streams hissed instead of giggling; the birds did not sing but mourned in different voices.

She took to following him everywhere to spy upon the force that had robbed her of laughter. So light was her foot—she flitted so quickly from tree to tree and knew so well how to melt into shadows—that he never actually saw her following. He felt the pressure of a witness nevertheless, and his mood grew heavier. Indoors, too, she followed him and was hard to catch. She darkened the mirrors so that she could hide. Calling to him rarely, her voice was like bells in the cold glass. Fingering his bedclothes, she tied one knot, almost by accident, but that was enough to give him strangling dreams.

He was easy only among his oreades, finally. Early each morning he went to the stable and whistled. A mountain nymph appeared, stretching her long arms and laughing at the sky. She grasped him about the waist, lifted him over her head, and set him solidly on her shoulders. For that first instant, astride one of his magnificent tall nymphs, the bewildered pain slipped from his face. He grasped the reins of her hair, and she galloped away. And Palaemona wandered by herself in the garden, trying to match things up.

“How he dotes on them,” she thought. “Long legs, strong back, wild eyes, flying mane, violent obedience—that's the way to earn my lordship's care.”

Now the hungry love in her mixed with the forbidden laughter and made a striving in her so great that the sleeping girl either had to burst into tiny pieces or be stretched. She was racked by monstrous pain. She could not stretch; her bones were locked by primal blight. She arose from her bed, took her leather jewel box, and climbed down a vine that grew to her window.

A full moon rode the sky. She went to the field where she had first spied the Bullman. It was empty. “Where is he?” she called to the birds, who answered, “A mile away—away. He drives his bulls three fields to the west.”

“Thank you, friends.”

“Do not seek him, sister. Do not—not—not.”

“Farewell.”

She went westward until she saw him plowing his field in the moonlight. She floated toward him, clinking her jewels.

“Do you travel alone, little girl?” he said.

“I do, good sir. All alone.”

“What do you have in that box?”

“Nothing really.”

“Nothing? I hear something. What's in there?”

“Just some jewels.”

“Would you like to give them to me?”

“I'd rather keep them.”

“But I need them, you see. I must have them.”

“You'd better not rob me. I live in the castle, you know. My father is Lord of the Hill. If you offer me harm, he'll surely cut off your head.”

With one hand he clasped her about the waist and lifted her into the air, holding her before his face. She saw the wet gleam of his mouth and snaggle teeth. He twisted the jewel box from her grasp.

“I'll tell my father!”

“No, you won't. You'll be dead, little one, and eaten by worms. And I'll keep your dainty bones to make buttons of. All your father will know is that his girl ran away and never came back. And I shall keep working my bulls and entertaining travelers and growing richer and richer.”

Quite gently he stripped her, carried her to the bulls, which he had turned tail to tail—then bound her legs to the trailing reins of one bull and her wrists to the reins of the other. He took two cudgels and struck the animals, crying, “Go!”

Wave after wave of scalding pain passed through her body. Her intention flickered in the red mist of torment. She knew that she could ease her suffering by going limp and allowing herself to be torn in two. But she braced her muscles and gave herself to agony. She heard the crackle of bones being wrenched out of their sockets, the foul twang of ligaments stretched too far. She held herself together. The bulls, angered by the unexpected resistance, lowered their heads and dug their hooves into the earth—and heaved and grunted, pulling themselves toward opposite ends of the field. Palaemona clenched her teeth upon a scream, saving her breath for breathing, and knew a final starry anguish as she passed from the safety of blight to the peril of growth.

The Bullman, watching, saw his beasts going too slowly. He walked toward them and saw a tall shadow swimming in the moonlight. He heard reins snap. Saw a figure towering over him. He turned to flee but felt long, long fingers lock about his neck, felt himself being lifted into the air, dangling helpless as a kitten.

He saw tumbling hair and eyes that were pits of light. He shuddered with awful dread as he saw a great white arm rising. He heard himself sobbing. Palaemona held her hand poised, savoring the idea of this brute whimpering like a whipped child. He wriggled in her grasp. She tightened her hand. His head lolled. She didn't know whether she had crushed the breath out of him or whether he had swooned with fear. She didn't care. He was a foulness in her hands. She threw him to the bulls, who poked at him doubtfully with their horns, then began to trample him under their razor hooves.

She snatched up the plow and hurled it high. Listened, and finally heard it crash to the ground. She looked about—at the bloody rags that had been the Bullman, at the bulls still trampling. Nothing would convince her of herself. She was unaccustomed to triumph. She loped homeward under the blazing moon, watching her enormous shadow run before.

“This is but the cruelty of dreams,” she said to herself. “How many nights have I grown tall in my sleep, to be dwarfed by morning. Ogres … moonlight … bulls … plows … leaping over rivers … killing enemies … surely a dream.”

She vaulted over the castle wall. Too heavy now for swinging on vines, she crouched and leaped through her chamber window. She curled up in her bed as tightly as she could to defend herself against dreams. But she moved in her sleep. Her head pressed against the wall; her legs dangled over the edge of the bed. She was so uncomfortable that she woke up and balanced herself on tottering long legs like a colt unused to itself. She walked up and down her room. Everything seemed as tiny as a doll's furniture. She looked down the glossy length of her legs with great satisfaction. She lifted the huge pier glass from the wall and held it like a hand mirror so that she could see her face. It seemed the same but the golden eyes glared wildly back at her. She slanted the mirror this way and that so she saw her tall tapering legs from different angles, and her muscled belly and new wide shoulders. She was fascinated by her long muscular column of neck.

She was full of angry joy. She smashed the mirror so that it could never be used by a shorter girl, and tried to laugh; the splintering glass laughed coldly back. The moon leered whitely beyond her windows. It stroked her hot quivering body. She felt its maddening weightless fingers, and was able now, she knew, to pluck Melampus from his couch and set him on her back and canter away with him, past the fields and into the hills, running with him until he awoke from the drowse of sloth and rancor that had fastened on him like a poisoned sleep. And he would know whom he was riding, and whom to thank.

Howling softly, “Father, Father,” she ran from her chamber and sought his.

It was not to be. His chamber was empty. She coursed through the castle searching for him. He was gone. Everyone was gone. Silence lay upon the stone pile thick as fog. She rushed to the stables. The stalls were black holes; no oreades, no horses. Not even a mouse rustling in the straw.

She heard a creaking and a rumbling and ran out of the stable. The castle was gone. The walls were falling. The great stone slabs did not crash to the ground but crumbled as she watched, subsiding into dust. The flagstones were gone; she stood upon earth. Where the castle had been, a cave mouth now yawned. She rushed to the cave. A huge rock blocked its entrance. She picked it up as if it were a pebble and tossed it away—stooped and crawled into the cave. But no one was there. She came out again and ran downhill. Her garden was where it had been; it was all weeds.

“Melampus!” she cried. “Melampus! Melampus!” and heard the new musical thunder of her voice bouncing off the hill.

She heard a dry choking sound and whirled about. There in the middle of her garden was a pile of leather coils, and rising from it a long stem of neck and leather wedge of head.

“Is it you?” she whispered.

“Myself.”

The serpent did not sound like himself. Something muffled the hissing clarity of his speech. Tremors rippled down his long throat. She saw that he was weeping. One by one his tears dropped. Nothing glitters so coldly as the tears of a serpent weeping in the moonlight.

“Where is he?” she said.

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“Tartarus.”

“I don't believe it. He can't be dead.”

“He is not dead.”

“Then why is he in Tartarus?”

“He was taken there,” said the serpent. “Hades' spies kept vigil. As soon as you left the castle, word flashed to the Dark Realm. ‘She has gone. She loves Melampus no longer. She has gone out the window with her jewel box and will never return.'

“This is what Hades was waiting for. Now he could strike. He sent his Furies to take Melampus, and to bring him to Tartarus alive, for it is only the living who can suffer ultimate torment. Especially one like Melampus who has trained himself to endure bodily pain. Such a one must be punished in another way. So there he stands in an alcove of hell beginning that ordeal which only the imagination of Hades could devise.”