Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two (45 page)

“Farewell, Scylla.”

As she watched, he turned into a hawk—not a human with hawk-head and wings, but an entire hawk, a magnificent peregrine, and among the black feathers of its head sprang one gold plume.

The hawk spread its wings and flew out of the room.

Kings are not a grateful breed, and Minos was even less so. He was born to be served, he believed; others were born to serve. It was the natural order of things, and anyone in a position to do him a special service should be considered immensely privileged, and needing no further reward.

So he had no intention whatsoever of keeping his promise to Scylla. Why, he had already done much for the girl. Had changed his shape for her, spent an entire hour with her, actually vowed affection. A girl so honored should live happily the rest of her life on the rich memory.

“Besides,” he said to himself, “I don't want to take her to Crete. She approached a domestic problem by trying to cut off her husband's head. And that sort of thing can be habit-forming. I know. I have a heavy decapitation habit myself. Is not my royal insignia the executioner's double axe? … So I'll rid myself of her before she gets any ideas about my own valuable head.”

Whereupon he instructed the men of his guard to admit no one to his presence but members of his military staff; all strangers were to be kept away. “Especially,” he said, “a big gray-eyed wench. Don't let her anywhere near.”

Thus it was that after ridding herself of her husband, the young widow was truly bereaved by being denied the sight of her lover. Befuddled by passion, however, she blamed everyone but him. Blamed the Royal Guard for being overzealous in their duty. “If he knew I was out here trying to get in, he'd tell them to let me through,” she said to herself. “But there's no way to get word to him. Besides, he's busy with the truce, and withdrawing his army, and preparing the fleet. He's king and has to make all the decisions himself. No wonder he can't think of other things. But when all this damned business is wound up why then he'll come to me. He
will
. Because he loves me. I know he does. He told me so himself.”

Nevertheless, when the Cretan ships departed, Scylla found herself on the beach gazing after them. In the very center of the fleet was a somewhat larger vessel with purple sails and a polished brass ram—the king's own galley. Scylla heard herself whining like an abandoned dog. She couldn't stand the sound of her voice. She dashed into the surf …

As it happened, the fleet was sailing before a slack wind. As Scylla began to cut through the water she saw sailors scurrying about the decks. Sails dropped, oars poked out of the row-holes. The maneuver slowed the fleet so that Scylla was able to thread among the vessels, catch up to the king's galley, and grasp its stern.

“Minos!” she screamed. “Oh Minos, my king, my wolf, my love!”

The king, standing in the bow, heard her voice. He kept his face expressionless, and did not turn his head, but barked a command. Two rowers leapt from their bench, rushed to the stern and swung their heavy oars, pounding Scylla's hands until they were bloody pulp and she could hold on no longer.

The ship sped away. She was alone in the sea, many miles from shore, and so grief stricken that she didn't even try to swim. She sank then, and would have drowned.

But Poseidon, God of the Sea, who had been watching this interesting spectacle, was so moved by Scylla's strength and beauty that he immediately made long-range plans for her, and began by changing her to a sea nymph—who could not drown. Long practice, however, had made his wife, Amphitrite, very skillful at dealing with rivals. Without hesitation, she worked a second transformation on the new Nereid, changing her into a sea monster—a beautiful powerful nymph from the waist up, but six ravening wolves below the waist.

No sooner did Scylla become a monster than all memory of her past was blotted from her mind. She lost all ability to feel or think, and knew only hunger, a raging unappeasable hunger—for human flesh.

Obeying blind instinct, she swam westward from the waters of Corinth to a much-trafficked sea-lane, the Strait of Messina, off the coast of Sicily. There she sank to the bottom and waited for a ship to pass.

11

Charybdis

Demeter, Goddess of Growing Things, was furious with her nephew, Ares, Lord of Battles. Many times she had pleaded with him to refrain from fomenting his wars until the harvest was in. Often, he had agreed. But this year, a prime growing year with a rainy spring and a gentle summer, when Demeter was exulting in rich crops, Ares suddenly decided he couldn't wait an hour longer before launching a series of bloody battles.

Evenly matched armies attacked and counterattacked across the ploughed fields, trampling everything green and leaving the earth littered with corpses. So Demeter was in a foul mood as she overflew the fields in her winged chariot, observing the devastation.

She spotted something moving, and flew lower. A richly clad young woman was striding across the field, followed by two gnarled men carrying spades. Demeter kept watching them because they were headed for a certain orchard sacred to herself, which no mortal was permitted to enter.

Demeter hovered invisibly, still watching, as the young woman, whom she recognized as Charybdis, princess of Thessaly, marched into the orchard and straight up to Demeter's most cherished tree—one that grew the world's sweetest figs. But their chief virtue was that every fig would replace itself as soon as it was picked.

Charybdis spoke to her gardeners. “Start digging,” she said. “Uproot this tree. Take it to the palace orchard and plant it there. Right outside my window, please—so that I may be able to reach out and pick the figs and eat them in bed.”

The gardeners drove their spades into the earth. A wind blew through branches and became a voice, saying, “Stop … Stop …”

“Who speaks?” cried the princess.

“It is I, the dryad who dwells in this tree and is its spirit.”

“And I am Charybdis, the king's daughter, to whom no one ever says ‘Stop!'”

“But your gardeners must not dig me up,” said the voice. “For you must know that I am sacred to Demeter, Goddess of Growing Things. No mortal is allowed to eat of my fruit, let alone transplant me.”

“I am a princess,” said Charybdis, “and not accustomed to denying myself anything I desire. Nor do I discuss my intentions with trees. Dig on!” she called to the gardeners.

“No, no, you don't understand. Demeter is a kindly goddess but terrible in her wrath. She will do dreadful things to you if you dare to lay impious hands on me, her favorite tree.”

“Such threats do not faze me in the slightest,” said Charybdis. “I don't believe in that fat old witch anyway. Nobody's actually seen her. She's nothing but an ignorant myth.” She turned upon the gardeners. “You there, what are you standing around for? Dig this thing up immediately or your heads will be on the chopping block before morning.”

Demeter had heard enough. She whistled up a hailstorm. It struck out of the cloudless sky; sharp chunks of ice rattled into the orchard, touching no tree, but lashing the princess and her gardeners—who fled across the field, whimpering with pain.

But Demeter's wrath was not appeased. “She's arrogant, that hussy,” the goddess said to herself. “And not used to being thwarted. She'll be back with her gardeners and their spades … No, she won't. I'll give her something else to think about.”

Whereupon Demeter returned to Olympus and sent for one of her servants. This was a dreadful servant whom she employed only when people seemed to be losing respect for the Queen of Harvests. The servant's name was Famine. She was an emaciated hag, almost a skeleton. Her flesh hung on her like rags on a scarecrow. The fleshy part of her nose was gone; her eye sockets gaped, and she had gnawed her lips away … so that her face was four holes and a hank of hair.

“Where have you been?” said Demeter sternly.

“In Persia, my lady, with your nephew, Ares.”

“Don't talk to me about that murderous lout,” cried Demeter. “Look what he's done to my crops with his damned wars.”

“I don't mean to anger you, Goddess,” said the hag. “But you asked me where I was and I had to tell you. I was with Ares, as my duty demanded. For Famine follows War, you know.”

“Your first duty is to me.”

“Yes, my lady; that's why I left Persia and hurried here at your first summons.”

“Enough of this. I have a special job for you.”

Charybdis awoke early the next morning. Something drew her to her window, and she gasped with pleasure. There in the orchard, twigs webbed with dew, was the fig tree she had failed to get the day before. It was stretching one branch toward her; on that branch grew a luscious fig.

“What magic is this?” murmured the princess. She had no way of knowing that the tree was a mirage planted by Demeter, and that the fig, the luscious fig was Famine itself, transformed.

Charybdis reached out, plucked the fig from the bough, and stuffed it into her mouth. It was sweet to chew; it went down smoothly. But when it hit her stomach it blossomed into hunger. More than hunger; it was a thirst, but for food. A thirst that dried every juice in her body, squeezing her entrails into one burning mandate—food!

It was early for breakfast. But roaring like a lioness, she stormed into the servants' quarters and slapped the cook awake. He gathered the other servants and rushed to the kitchen. She sat in the great dining hall, pounding on the table, roaring with impatience.

The servants came in, bearing food. A tureen big as a trough, full of porridge. An enormous ham, smoked but not sliced. Forty eggs. A barrelful of milk. She devoured it all.

“Half-rations!” she bellowed, flinging the ham bone at the cook's head. “Starvation fare! Bring food—fast!”

The cook scurried back to the kitchen and bade the undercooks serve what had been meant for lunch. Charybdis sat in her place, pounding at the table. Her father, a small man, quite mild mannered for a king, sat staring at her in amazement—which changed to horror when the servants piled food before her and she attacked it as if she hadn't eaten for a month.

A haunch of roast ox, an immense platter, the size of a chariot wheel, loaded with barleycakes soaked in butter. A great glistening ball of cheese. Also cakes made of ground nuts and honey, and a peck of fruit.

Stupefied by food, she went back to her chamber and slept heavily … and awoke hungrier than ever. She charged into the dining hall, roaring for food. No one answered. The king had prudently decided that this was a good time to visit foreign lands, and had slipped away. And the servants, seeing the king go, had left also.

Silence hung over the castle. She rushed to the storeroom and studied the carcasses hanging from meat hooks. She lifted down an entire flayed sheep, sat on a keg and began to consume it. It wasn't cooked, but she didn't care. In a few hours, all the carcasses were gone, the sheep, and oxen, the dressed goats, the pigs; she had eaten them all.

She decided to take another nap before dinner. But when evening came, there wasn't a scrap of food to be found in the castle. She thought for a moment, then went out to the field where the cattle grazed.

Charybdis grew huge on her gross diet, became a giantess with a bladder of a face, keglike arms and legs, and a quadruple paunch. But for all her size she was as swift-moving as an angry sow, and usually caught whatever or whomever she was chasing. Having eaten all the livestock—cows, calves, bulls, sheep, goats, and pigs, and swept the barnyard clean of hens and chicks and roosters and ducks and geese—she had to go far afield for her meat.

She visited farmhouses, snatched babies from their cradles, and ate them raw. And when the parents came to object, she ate them too, clothes and all—belching, and spitting buttons. The terrified people flocked to the temple of Zeus, and their prayers rose to Olympus.

Now, Zeus rarely heeded prayers. He enjoyed paeans of praise, but preferred to ignore unpleasant facts, and most prayers were complaints. Now, however, the special agony in these voices caught his attention, and he listened closely. Then seethed with rage. For he had recently passed an edict prohibiting cannibalism—with extra penalties for eating children.

He looked down and saw what Charybdis had become. He whirled her off her feet and out of Thessaly—across mountain and plain to the sea, and westward to the Strait of Messina, where he dropped her to the bottom, just opposite the place where Scylla squatted.

He penned her in an underwater cave, saying, “Your hunger shall become thirst. As you once devoured all within reach, now you shall drink the tides twice a day. Swallow them and spit them forth, and your name shall be cursed by sailors forever.”

And so it was. Twice a day, Charybdis burned with a terrible thirst and drank down the sea, shrinking the waters to a shallow stream—then spat the water out in a tremendous torrent, making a whirlpool near her rock in which no ship could live. Broken timbers floated up again and were washed onto the beaches, and became driftwood. The corpses sank to the bottom and were eaten by crabs and octopi and other creatures who dwelt in the sea.

The Strait of Messina became known as a deadly passage. But Sicily was a rich coast, and ships were sent there despite the peril. Vessels trying to steer away from the whirlpool as they passed through the strait would come too close to Scylla, who would turn her body in the water so that the wolves were uppermost. Six savage heads would sweep the deck, seizing sailors in their terrible jaws and devouring them on the spot.

And if a captain couldn't stand the idea of six great sea wolves eating his men, and steered to the left, he would feel his ship spinning like a chip as Charybdis drank the tide and drew his vessel out of sight forever …

12

Between Scylla and Charybdis