Starfall (7 page)

“The steeds of sunlight are already in harness,” said the sun god in a voice that did little to disguise his pride in the spirited creatures. “My horses are almost too strong for me on a weary day. Look – they're enough to awaken fear in anyone.”

The sounds of the team echoed across the pulsing darkness, hooves resounding, breath thundering, the winged horses already tossing and biting the air, impatient for the touch of their master's whip.

But Phaeton could not spare a glance for these beasts, unable now to tear his attention from the glowing spokes of the chariot.

The frame of the carriage was cunningly crafted of a metal like the purest gold, and the sides of the chariot were formed of shining works of art, smithed from dazzling ore. To see such beauty made Phaeton feel joy – but it frightened him, too. He felt that a mortal youth should not be allowed to see such splendor, and that perhaps the danger this chariot represented was real after all.

And yet he stretched forth a hand, hesitated, and then touched the rim of one of the pulsing wheels.

It was warm, and vibrated under his hand. Feeling this power – an entire carriage simmering with the power of daylight – Phaeton wanted to master it. He was impatient to set off, without a further word.

“Vulcan, the divine artist, crafted her,” said Apollo, his voice husky with affection for his son – and pride in the chariot. “No work of art is so fine, under the dome of heaven.”

Phaeton barely heard his fathers words, thinking only that Epaphus would not dare jeer at the sight of the bright wheels. His rival would not laugh – not when the archer beheld Phaeton at the reins of this legendary chariot.

The air shook as horses struck sparks with their hooves, nickered and thundered, eager to fly, as Phoebus Apollo laughed again. “You are right to look so alarmed, dear Phaeton. But hurry – we must be quick. Run your hand along Pyrois and see how uncontrollable he is.”

But Phaeton disregarded his father's prompting and stepped up, into the chariot. The well-balanced carriage shifted only very slightly with the young man's weight, and the reins were so heavy that at first he could not heft them.

The iridescent horses tossed their bright manes, their nostrils flaring with excitement, and Pyrois, the leader, looked back over the traces to see what novice groped the reins. The scent of these creatures, fed on ambrosia, was sweet, and their eyes sky-blue. The team mock-battled one another, arching their necks and biting the air, and only Apollo's touch on the harness kept the chariot from vaulting off.

Phaeton felt the wheels continue to grind and tremble, and the reins he parted at last shifted like living things in his hands. He was dumb with wonder – but his heart quickened, too, with an increasing confidence.

If I can climb the sky-filling Nymph Tree seeking a gift of honey, he told himself, and if I can find my way to the temple of the sun, surely with a little effort I can master such a carriage.

Apollo lifted a hand and hooked a finger under the bridle of Pyrois. At a whisper from their master the horses grew calmer, and the sun god said, “You see, my son, how no touch but mine can command them.”

“I can do this, father, you'll see,” said Phaeton, his voice rough with feeling. “I will make you proud of me.”

Apollo ran his hands over Pyrois's fetlocks and hooves, studying the horseshoes long ago fashioned by Vulcan, the divine, moody artist whose skill sometimes amazed even the gods. Apollo took a long moment to consider Phaeton's words.

Why am I so troubled?
the sun god silently inquired of the air around him.

“When has any doubt ever chained my spirit?” said Apollo aloud. “Why don't I choose hope, that ever-returning faith in things to come?”

Pyrois snorted, a rumble like a mountain heaving.

Apollo loved the look of eagerness and joy in Phaeton's eye.

Mortals and gods alike, the god thought, will say:
See how brave young Phaeton is – he is every bit his father's son
.

Apollo smiled.

“I'll cover your face with balm,” said the lord of daylight with growing excitement, “to keep your cheeks from blistering.”

Phaeton held the reins in both hands, recalling all that he had learned of horses, too delighted – and anxious – to trust his voice.

“Phaeton,” the god said, smiling, “they'll remember this day as long as there is poetry and song.”

He laughed again and was lost in a brief vision of triumph, great Jupiter admiring Apollo's human son.

“Ah, Phaeton,” sighed the god, “you'll win honor for us both.”

EIGHTEEN

Phaeton's father anointed his son's face with balm from a
pyxis
– a small medicine box.

The balm smelled sweeter than the oil of nard Clymene kept, a gift from her mortal husband. Phoebus Apollo's fingers were gentle as they soothed the protective oil across Phaeton's cheeks and forehead.

“Now you'll be able to brave the heat, my son,” said Apollo with a smile.

Phaeton smiled in return, struck by the care and affection of his father.

But all the while the horses tossed their manes, Pyrois storming in his harness, eyes wild again. Now the steeds sliced the air with their wings, kept from leaping into the heavens only by Apollo's sudden grasp on the side of the carriage. The sun-god used all his might to steady the team as the wheels fought forward and back.

The reins sank deeper into Phaeton's grasp, just as the sound of an ironlike echo ripped the fading dark.

The sound of this metallic crash, above all else, dented Phaeton's confidence.

The young man took a firmer stance against the jostling of the chariot as it trembled, nearly a living thing, and he could not keep from asking with his eyes,
Father, what was that?

“That rumbling sound, Phaeton,” said the god of the sun, his smile fading, “is the barrier between night and day falling open. Tethys herself, mother of the rivers and sister of the ocean, lets the gate fall at the end of every night.”

The young man was too troubled by the weight of the reins in his hands to ask further. They had already drained his arms of strength, but at the same time the reins felt alive, wrestling and twisting in his grip as the horses struggled to set forth. Even so the sound of this ancient name awakened further awe in the youth.

And uttering the name of such a timeless being brought a new sobriety to the god. “Do you insist on fulfilling your desire, Phaeton,” inquired Apollo, “despite all that you see and hear?”

“I will do this, Father,” Phaeton barely managed to say. He was no longer so confident, but all the more determined.

The immortal nodded, still hopeful of honor, but weighed down by the knowledge he struggled to put into words, the god of prophecy and epic shaken with renewed doubt. “Then follow the ruts worn in the sky-road, my son – the marks the wheels have left from all the other circuits I have taken.”

“I will,” managed Phaeton, his jaw clenched.

“Skirt the southern reaches of heaven and avoid the far north,” continued Apollo. “You can master this, if you put your will into it,” counseled the immortal one, as though trying to convince himself. “Ride the middle road. You'll have to avoid the writhing serpent on the right hand, and struggle to avoid the great scorpion on your left. Fortune guide you, my son! And never touch the whip.”

“Never!” Phaeton agreed.

The god touched young Phaeton's arm, the divine grasp enclosing the youthful strength of his offspring. His warm touch made Phaeton's vision all the brighter, his pulse even stronger.

“You will bear no shame, Phaeton,” said the lord of daylight, “if you relent and watch me set forth, illuminating seas and mountains just as every day before.” The god spoke with feeling, already hungering for the vista of the spreading earth and all the lively creatures he loved so well.

The reins glowed with an increasing light, dawn flooding the darkness.

“Father, I thank you,” said Phaeton formally, remembering the courtesy he had learned in Merops's home.

His son's speech was not poetry, but it was deeply felt. Touched by these words of gratitude, the lord of daylight stepped back and readied his farewell.

But the act of removing his hand from the rim of the chariot lightened its weight.

The winged steeds leaped forward.

The way was open, and the temple of the sun rocked and fell away behind the youth, the reins at once snaking from his grasp.

NINETEEN

Phaeton gathered the streaming reins with great effort, and pulled back on the surging team, just as he had seen chariot drivers do on racing days in his boyhood – it now seemed so long ago.

The wheels radiated heat, and the reins grew even warmer. The team sensed the young man's strain, and Pyrois looked back, taking in the sight of the sweating youth. The team leaped higher, the chariot lighter than ever before, the temple of the sun far behind – far beyond the spinning clouds.

Too high.

They were already far too lofty, the early morning light descending from the glowing wheels of the chariot, land and ocean dropping away below. The heat from the churning, bounding wheels made Phaeton cringe and crouch, as far down as he could in the safety of the chariot while the horses escaped their usual course. Those powerful creatures, used to the burden and touch of a god, were liberated by the feel of a nearly empty carriage.

Far north they fled, celebrating their freedom – but half-panicked, too. Toward the frigid polar limits they climbed, the ice below glowing for the first hour since time began, frozen seas reflecting the spinning brilliance of the spoked and fiery wheels.

It could have been a moment, or it could have been an hour, as the shock of the chariot's heat steamed the frozen waste. White-pelted bears dived into the seas, the water in turmoil under the sudden flood of ice-melt. Avalanches tumbled down the face of virgin mountains, glaciers heaving into pieces, icebergs cascading. The tusked walrus floundered, simmering in brine.

The serpent that hides in the northern vasts, the legendary sullen giant, awoke, singed and angry, his scales blistering. The fanged head lifted from its cavern, seeking upward, wanting to strike this blinding source of danger.

The team of horses sensed the uncoiling menace and winged higher. Phaeton gathered his courage and stood erect again, leaning back with all his power, pulling on the reins to no effect as he prepared to look down to find the proper course, the route they had abandoned.

Not yet.

I'll look down in a moment
.

Bracing his spirits, he leaned over the side of the chariot, and the steaming, cooking abyss of the northern ice rose up to meet his gaze, the fabled serpent writhing, turning away defeated by the heat, seeking refuge in the earth.

Phaeton recalled a youth impatient with his gentle stepfather, and the meaningless mockery of a foolish archer.

Now Phaeton wished he had not so much as glimpsed his divine father's horses, and he longed to be nothing more than a daydreamer again, taking his ease beside his stepfather's fountain.

The team of coursers fled south across the heavens, heedless of the chariot they trailed. They rampaged far across the sky, ever higher, further south, until the figures of the zodiac began to stir, the ram and the fabled bull startled into life.

Before Phaeton could cry out, the scorpion itself twitched its tail and stretched its weapon far, the point of the fabled stinger reaching, striking, and striking again.

Almost spearing Phaeton.

The reins fled the young man's grasp, and the team plunged.

FOUR

TWENTY

Cycnus woke.

It was still dark, that weakening, silvered darkness that so often appeared just before dawn, an hour Phaeton's young cousin had never liked.

He loved night well enough, especially in the rain, a storm whispering over the roof. He enjoyed early evening, family gathered to enjoy watered wine and sing songs of ancient heroes. But best of all he preferred daylight, Cycnus and Phaeton pretending they were battling giants under the wide blue, or putting on mock sea battles, a meadow transformed by their imagination into a rolling sea.

An owl broke off one of her sharp cries, and in the roof overhead Cycnus heard the soft, brief scrabble of talons as the flying hunter returned. Some people said that the owl was beloved of the goddess Minerva, and Cycnus believed it must be true.

“Wise goddess, keep my cousin safe,” prayed Cycnus.

Phaeton had always chuckled at Cycnus for believing that the eagle belonged to Jupiter, and the peacock to his consort Juno, but Cycnus took such matters seriously. When local villagers took the trouble to feed a leaf to a passing tortoise – believing that the slow-moving creatures brought good luck – Cycnus joined in, offering the lowly creature fresh slices of apple.

Phaeton's cousin rose from his pallet bed and padded out into the hallway, shivering in his nightshirt. Someone in the courtyard was carrying an oil lamp, the flame trembling, one of the servants setting forth braziers of glowing coals against the predawn chill.

Lampetia and Phaethusa were whispering somewhere, already awake and dressed by the sound of it, and the sound of their voices made Cycnus fade back again to his bed chamber.

Cycnus pulled the blanket over his shoulders against the cool air.

How long can the dark continue? he wondered.

Surely it should be morning by now.

Clymene was awake just as dawn chased the stars from the sky.

The ascending light of day, on this particular morning, was somewhat slow to follow. Birds stirred, sang, and then settled once again, as shadows that had begun to lift deepened once more.

Clymene had been unable to sleep for hours, feeling the weight of Phaeton's absence with every heartbeat. She had breathed a prayer to Juno, queen of the gods and wife to Jupiter – she was the goddess most likely to attend to the cares of a mother.