Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two (38 page)

Theseus screamed, twisting his voice so that the shrieking seemed to come from the sack. Evander stood among the boars, ignoring their tusks, their hooves, and the terrible hurtling weight of their bodies. They did him no harm. Those that were not feeding snuffled around him like dogs.

Evander made a sharp downward signal with his palm and Theseus ducked. The lid came down. It was dark inside the basket. It swung from side to side, and he knew he was being carried out of the sty. When the lid finally opened, he saw blue sky and jumped out. The sun was a golden wheel; the air, untainted by pig, was a joy to breathe.

“Hey—that screaming was great!” cried Evander. “Grandpa was sneaking around, I saw him. And he thought the sack was you. He went away snarling, which is his way of smiling, the old beast.”

“How come you're so safe with those dreadful pigs?” asked Theseus. “Is it because you go in and out all the time?”

He stared at Evander. His question had quenched all the pleasure on his friend's face.

“They're very smart, those swine,” said Evander slowly. “They know I'm to be the husband of their queen.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm to marry the Sow.”

“I don't understand a word you're saying. What sow?”

“The Sow, the Sow, the Great Sow, Queen of the Swine. They're selling me to her for a yearly herd of pigs.”

“How can you marry a sow?”

“She's only half a sow, really.”

“What's the other half?”

“Giantess. She's woman-shaped, more or less, but bigger than my biggest uncle, and covered with bristles. And she has hooves instead of feet and two tusks sticking out of her mouth—oh, and poisonous little red eyes!”

“You're to marry that monster?”

“And soon.” Evander choked back a sob.

“Let's run away,” whispered Theseus.

“They'll catch us.”

“Maybe not. You look like you can run very fast. And I have a donkey up there that goes like the wind.”

Again Theseus heard the terrible slurping howl of the sty, but magnified tenfold. Evander's rosy face went white as cheese.

“Oh no!” he cried. “No, no.”

Theseus saw something charging across the field so fast that it was upon them before they could move. He gaped in horror. It was enormous, woman-shaped, but covered with bristles. It had tusks jutting out of its mouth, hooves instead of feet, and eyes like drops of blood.

“Husband!” she howled. “I'm here! I've waited long enough!” She snatched Evander up, big as he was, tucked him under one arm, and galloped off. His screams came drifting back to Theseus.

Murder sang in the lad's heart. It drove out fear. He knew what he had to do. He reached into his pouch to see whether the mushrooms he had picked that afternoon were still there. Then he ran off toward the inn.

10

Wild Mushrooms

Creeping into the kitchen, Theseus could hear Procrustes in the dining hall, spouting numbers above the clink of gold. He heard the rumblingvoices of the bandit sons.

In the kitchen was the meal Evander had prepared. An entire ox had been divided into three portions for the three brothers. Great slabs of roasted beef were still on the spit hanging over the hot ashes. For Procrustes' dinner a whole sheep had been flayed and roasted. There was a huge keg brimming with barley beer mixed with fermented honey.

Theseus dipped out four flagons of the brew. Into each of them he dropped a minced mushroom—a white one with orange stripes, a green one with yellow ruffles, a brown one shading to black, and a gray and black one. He stirred them carefully so that the fragments were lost in the foam. Then he sneaked into the dining hall, where the four were hunched over the great oaken table. The stacks of gold were lighted by a sheep-tallow lantern that stank and smoked and cast the huge, wavering shadows of Procrustes and his sons upon the wall. Theseus merged with one of these shadows and, agile as a gecko, scuttled up into the rafters.

Crouching on a beam, he watched Procrustes divide the treasure and then sweep the stacks of gold and smoldering heaps of jewelry to one end of the table in preparation for the game of knucklebones.

The brothers brought in the slabs of beef and the roasted sheep. They slashed off great chunks with their daggers, stuffed them into their mouths, and washed them down with barley beer. Theseus was very pleased to see that they drank off the flagons he had drugged with mushrooms before pouring fresh drinks from the keg.

They never finished dinner. Basher, who had quaffed the flagon spiked with the white and orange mushroom, began to spin on one leg. He tried to stop, but spun faster and faster as the others roared with laughter. They thought he was simply drunk and waited for him to fall and hurt himself.

Bender stopped laughing. He jumped to his feet and kept jumping. Higher and higher he jumped. Finally, he jumped on the table. Ox bones and sheep carcass flew through the air. A glittering shower of treasure went scattering across the floor.

Procrustes and Shady were no longer amused. This was serious, kicking gold and jewelry around. Shady lunged for his brother, hoping to catch him by the leg and swing his head against the wall. But suddenly he began to stamp, pounding the floor with his larger foot, harder and harder as he tried to stop. The floorboards splintered, trapping his foot. He began to stamp with his other foot.

Procrustes, enraged by the way his sons were behaving, seized the thighbone of an ox and advanced on Shady, intending to brain him first, then tackle the others. Then he stopped, dropped his bone club, and clutched his sides as he began to howl with laughter. He howled and gasped and gagged. The laughter had no mirth; it was a grating, phlegmy seizure, which left him breathless and staggering.

Theseus watched in wonder. The mushrooms were succeeding beyond his wildest expectations. He could dare now to hope that the monster band would dance themselves into a drugged sleep. Then he would come down and cut their throats before they awoke.

In the middle of this thought, however, Bender leaped so high that his head crashed into the rafter. That huge head, whose bone was thick as a helmet, hit the beam with such force that the wood splintered. Theseus was hurled off the beam but was able to turn in the air and land upright.

He had to scuttle swiftly across the floor to avoid their trampling feet, but the eyes of Procrustes were upon him. And the terrible old man, although staggering with gusts of laughter, was moving in his direction, those bloody hands reaching out to grab him.

His plan was of no use. Theseus didn't dare wait until they fell asleep. He scampered out of the hall, out of the inn, and across the boneyard, vaulted over the fence, and raced up the hill as fast as he could go.

He finally slowed down and looked back. No one was chasing him, but he couldn't risk stopping. He swung into a trot and continued uphill, whistling the two-note signal for Melissa. Mist was rolling into the valley. It was hard to see. He kept whistling. He was terrified that one of the bandits might have caught her. A gust of wind blew a rift in the mist, and Theseus almost wept with joy to see the barrel head and long tulip ears coming toward him.

11

Rehearsal for Vengeance

Theseus rode Melissa back along the road toward the cliff where he had watched Shady sit and collect his terrible toll. The boy was thinking hard, trying to work out a strategy. But he was empty of ideas.

A gull swooped low, almost brushing his head, and, instead of uttering its usual cry, spoke words:

Balance a boulder

on the left shoulder,

And when you will,

roll it down the hill.

The bird hovered close by as if waiting for an answer. “Must mean something,” Theseus mused. “But what? When birds speak, or beasts, or any of the creatures that throng our sleep, is it perhaps a god's ventriloquism? But what god speaks to me now?

The gull swooped again:

Ask not my name,

nor whence I came.

I speak to your need,

so give me heed.

“A gull,” thought Theseus. “The very voice of the sea. So it must speak for Poseidon, my favorite god.”

All at once he felt a great salt wave of health breaking upon his blood.

The gull flew away, screeching wordlessly.

“Its instructions are clear,” thought Theseus. “Balance a boulder on a shoulder, then roll it down some hill. What hill? What shoulder? When the gods deign to speak, why must it always be in code?”

Gazing upward, he saw that the formation of the peak beyond Shady's cliff resembled a great craggy head with cloud-fleece beard, set between two lower peaks resembling shoulders. And the left one, the left one, yes! was hunched over the shelf of rock where Shady always sat to have his feet washed.

The lad's yell of joy split the air. The donkey responded with an exultant hee-haw, as if she had been following his thought from the first. She went into a gallop and carried him right up the hill. He dismounted and studied the slope. Sure enough, there, right below, was Shady's ledge, Shady's rock throne.

The boy knew what to do, and the donkey worked with him as if they had been rehearsing this for years. Theseus lashed strong branches together into a kind of sled, rolled a big round rock onto it, then harnessed the sled to Melissa, who dragged it up the ridge, allowing Theseus to balance it on the edge of the shoulder-shaped hill.

“So far so good,” he said to Melissa. “We'll come back with a surprise for the big-foot ogre. Now to Bender!”

Theseus wanted to visit each bandit station before the brothers awoke from their drugged sleep and returned to the hills. The gull had inspired him. As he rode along, strategies flashed through his head, details slid into place.

When they reached the pine grove that Bender prowled, Theseus dismounted and explained to Melissa what he had in mind, speaking to her as if she were human. She tilted her ears so attentively and looked at him with such glowing intelligent eyes that he knew she understood.

In Bender's grove they worked by the light of the moon. Their preparations were simple but strenuous. Theseus climbed to the top of a pine and wound a rope around the top of its trunk. He descended and tied the other end of the rope to Melissa. The donkey pulled, slogging through pine needles as the tall pine began to slowly bow. The tree groaned. Birds departed. Theseus walked with Melissa, his hand on her withers, feeling his muscles tremble with hers as she struggled against the tremendous strength of the tree. It was too hard, this task. No donkey could bend that pine. But boy and beast were filled with a kind of magic that night. Moonlight danced in their veins, and with it the wild salt temper of the god who was their patron.

The pine groaned and creaked, bowing lower and lower, until its top branches brushed the ground. Theseus snatched the rope from Melissa's neck and looped it about the base of an oak, racing around and around, circling the fat trunk with his rope, binding the pine to the oak. The rope stretched tight; it sang in the wind. But it was good thick rope, and it held.

When they were finished, Melissa foraged in a hollow tree for honeycombs, which she crunched, bees and all. Theseus ate a crust of bread saved from the inn. They both drank from an icy stream. By this time, boy and beast were exhausted. Donkeys, like horses, sleep standing, but Melissa was so tired she stretched out on the grass. Theseus cushioned his head on her flank, and they slept until dawn.

12

The Bent Pine

The boy and the donkey awoke at first light. Before bedding down the night before, Theseus had searched through the bales left by a caravan and had found a merchant's clothing. Now he changed costume in the lilac dawn. He donned a clean tunic, a traveling cloak, and a hat large enough to shade his face. He bunched up a length of cloth and stuck it under his tunic to lend him a paunch. He wanted to disguise himself as a fat, middle-aged merchant. It would be difficult to fool Bender for long. Everything had to happen fast or it would not happen at all.

He filled two empty moneybags with rocks and bound them to Melissa's saddle. Then they hid themselves in the woods and waited for Bender to return.

Theseus had chosen a spot that overlooked the road. He saw someone coming up the slope. The figure loomed larger and larger as it came, and the boy recognized Bender. Mounting the donkey, Theseus went a short way down the road, pausing at the bent tree. He sat in the saddle, hat pulled over his eyes, pretending to be unaware of the bandit's approach. He heard a voice rumble, “Dismount!”

“Good morning,” said Theseus. “Here's a wonder now—a pine tree bowing to the ground. It could not have been the wind that did this, for the other trees stand straight.”

The bandit gazed at the tree and then walked toward it. As Bender approached, Theseus slowly backed the donkey toward the oak to which the pine was tethered. When he saw Bender leaning over the tangled boughs, he snatched out his dagger and slashed the taut rope with all his strength and all his fear and all his hunger for vengeance. The blade sliced through the thick hemp.

The pine tree whipped up with enormous force, hurling Bender into the air. He fell heavily and lay there shaking his head. He tried to rise, but Theseus was upon him with his dagger. He cut Bender's throat, then pulled a hatchet from the bandit's belt and chopped off his head. Theseus spilled the rocks out of the moneybags and stuffed one pouch inside the other so that no blood would seep through. Then he placed Bender's head in the bags and tied the bundle to Melissa's saddle.

He stripped off his bloody tunic and searched among the bales for a fresh one. Taking one last look at the pines, the rejoicing birds, and the big, sprawled headless body of his enemy, he leaped onto Melissa's back, crying, “Well done, old girl! We'll visit Basher now.”

13

The Man with the Club