The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy (7 page)

“You and Balder, perhaps,” said Astyanax. “I am not edible. At least the captain didn’t think so.”

I had to explain that an elephant’s trunk was not, as it looked, a serpent appended to his head, but a sort of elongated nose used like an extra limb.

Near the mouth of the river we anchored for the night. When I reassured the brothers that the elephants would not swim out and throttle them with their trunks, they stripped and went for a swim. Astyanax darted between them, catching prawns with his hands. Some he swallowed and others he flipped on deck for Aruns to clean. I myself withdrew to the cabin.

The couch looked irresistible. Succumbing, I fell asleep and dreamed of Circe. Redolent of myrrh and pine-needles, she leaned above me. “I have waited, my love.” Then she called my name: “Bear.” And again, “Bear.”

I awoke with a start. Astyanax, not Circe, was calling me. Annoyed, I walked on deck. He was still in the water, with Atthis beside him.

“You have been asleep,” he accused.

“No,” I snapped. “Thinking.”

“Atthis has brought you a present.”

He took a bronze-bladed sword from her beak and lifted it into my hands. In the black niello and gold of the hilt, youths and maidens whirled over charging bulls: a Cretan scene. The old sea-kings, a thousand years ago, had explored this very coast, but the sword did not look ancient.

“Where did she find it?” I cried.

“In a sunken galley beyond the mouth of the river.”

“Is the water very deep there?”

“Less than twenty feet, she says.”

“Ask her to show me.”

I straddled her back and held to her dorsal fin. Her tail flashed up and down, up and down, and we foamed toward the sunken ship while Astyanax trailed in our wake. Elephants along the bank, lifting water in their sinuous trunks, stared at us with lordly indolence. Beyond the mouth of the river we paused and circled. Directly below us a galley wavered in the lucid depths. Then Atthis dove. On the floor of the sea, anemones pulsed their tentacles in a purple twilight, and diminutive lantern fish, with rows of luminescent spots, twinkled from our path. In a forest of rockweed a blood starfish curled its crimson legs. Redbeard sponges clung to the planks of the ship, which rested as lightly on the bottom as if it had settled at anchor. We circled the deck and found the cabin, whose roof lay open to the water. Hurriedly we searched the room.

The furnishings were Cretan: a terra cotta priestess with snakes in her hands; a tiny gold frog embedded with pearls; a tall-backed chair in the shape of a throne. I opened a chest and lifted a woman’s robe, with a bell-like skirt, puffing sleeves, and a tight bodice cut low to expose the breasts. For an instant, as the gown unfolded, Circe herself seemed to rise, a ghost, to greet me. Atthis shared my discovery. She caught the skirt in her beak and wrapped it around her flanks, as if to savor its richness and regret its inevitable destruction by the sea. Yes, this was Circe’s ship. It had sunk not hundreds of years ago but less than a hundred and, since there were no skeletons, Circe and her crew had presumably escaped.

My lungs felt like burning asphalt. I mounted Atthis and rose with her to the surface. We dove again. Astyanax retrieved the frog and I found a pair of daggers for Frey and Balder. Then we returned to the
Halcyon
. Our friends were waiting on deck. Because of the elephants, the boys had hesitated to cook ashore and had gathered stones from the river to make a little oven, where Aruns was baking prawns. Excitedly I told them what we had found.

“It’s unlikely that she turned inland. The land seems too marshy for travel. Probably she built another ship and continued down the coast. We’ll keep on our course.” I gave the brothers their daggers. “For elephants.”

Astyanax gulped and a tear rolled down his cheek. Had he expected a gift?

I laid my hand on his shoulder. “But you came with me. Balder and Frey stayed behind. That’s why I brought them the daggers.”

“It isn’t daggers,” he said. “It’s Atthis. She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“For good.” He pointed to the river which smoldered like copper in the dying sun, hushed and unmoving.

“She told you?”

“She didn’t have to. I saw it in her eyes when she brought you back to the ship. You have broken her heart.”

“But how? I don’t understand.”

“She brought you a gift. What did you do? Hurried off to the wreck without a thank you. That was all right, she understood your eagerness. But when you came back to the
Halcyon
, you brought the boys daggers and
still
gave her nothing. A ring, a lamp, a sandal with antelope straps—anything would have done.”

“But what could she do with such things?”

“Hide them, in a sea-cave. Dolphins have caches, you know, where they keep their treasures—pearls and amber and coral from the floor of the sea, objects fallen from ships or lost in the sand and carried out by the tide. In their journeys from coast to coast, they visit their caves and show them to their friends. You made Atthis feel unwanted—like a Greek wife. She’s always been a little jealous of you anyway.”

“Why should she be jealous? I’m terribly fond of her.”

“Still, you treat her like an animal. Did you know that dolphins have a literature, passed down by word of beak? ‘Hide it if you must, deep as the deepest trireme crusted with coral, but beauty will burn into light.’ Atthis can quote such lines for hours.”

“Find her and bring her back!”

“I don’t know where she is.” He sighed. “She’s probably gone up the coast. Forgive me for saying this, Bear. But people grow terribly fond of you—you’re sleepy and warm and
lovable
—but sometimes you seem to look right through them. You are always searching for things or going somewhere—if you aren’t asleep. What I’m saying is, you won’t stand still to be loved.”

“But that’s because of my faith,” I protested. “Etruscans, you see, have a terrible fear of death. Most of us go, we believe, to a region of fire and demons. That’s why we hurry so much—one man gives banquets, another races a chariot, another wanders. We want to forget the demons.”

“Forget the demons,” he said, “but not Atthis.”

I looked at the river and the sea. Somewhere a woman waited for me to find her, a sorceress and a queen. Was she worth the dream and the long wandering, the loss of Atthis? Perhaps. But now I was with my friends, the best of whom I had hurt by hurting Atthis. I lifted him onto the bulwark and, with my arm, shielded him against the gathering twilight and the darkness in my own heart.

* * * *

We sailed southward along a coast of forest steppes, where spiny trees, a little like the olive, sparsely strewed the sand. In the small protection of trees, antelopes sought concealment from lions with tangled manes and rawboned bodies. Luck, or at least high spirits, had left us. We sailed slowly, fearful of hidden shoals; we counted dolphins, frolicking in the water, and wished for Atthis. Once, at a great distance, I saw a whiteness on the horizon. Atthis? No, I was seeing what I wished to see. It was foam or a trick of light. No one mentioned her name, but Astyanax looked wistful and Aruns stared at the waves, and I knew what was in their hearts. We had lost our friend.

At night we heard drums and wondered if the natives, who never showed themselves, were signaling our approach to Circe. Or perhaps they beat us a warning:
strangers, beware.
In desperation we questioned the will of the gods. Aruns, like many Etruscans, knew the arts of augury: reading the liver of a sheep and interpreting the flight of birds or the color, shape, and direction of lightning. In a fringed robe and pointed cap, with a curved stick in his hand, he faced the south and looked for a sign. We had no sheep to yield us its liver; we had seen no birds for several days; but the gods, if indeed they had not forsaken us, might speak through lightning. We waited. The drip of our water clock measured the passage of time. Seconds. Minutes. An hour.

Aruns shook his head. “The gods are sil—“

Blood-red lightning flashed to the right, three times in quick succession.

“Ah,” he groaned. “The triple lightning of Tinia. Danger awaits us.”

* * * *

The forest steppes became desert, humping into the sea like the yellow Nile at flood time. We lived on cheese and a few bony fish, for even the waters were barren. The parties we sent ashore saw nothing but horned vipers and scorpions. There was no rain; we drank our wine unmixed. The sand, blowing from shore, covered our deck with dry coarse grains and scratched our eyes until they reddened and watered. Heat drained us like fever. In the shade we stripped to the skin; in the sun we covered our heads and bodies to prevent exposure.

One morning a vessel barred our path: a dugout canoe with a square sail set on sprits. Twenty paddles flashed in rapid unison and the captain, hurling commands, stood in the bow. The rowers were black and very short—three feet or less, I judged—with enormous heads and Negroid features.

I thought of the pygmies in Homer, the little black men who warred with the iron-billed cranes. But these were women, even the captain, bare of breast, long of hair, with blue paint on their faces. I raised my hand in the universal salutation of good will.

But the pygmies called no greeting. At their sides they wore wooden tubes which looked like blowguns, and they never looked up from their oars.

“Change course,” I shouted to Aruns. “Head for the deep!”

We jibbed and ran with the wind. The dugout changed its course. The pygmies strained at their oars and began a savage chant, and their captain lashed them with shrill, hissing commands. Balder and Frey seized sweeps and used them for oars, but the dugout, with sail and twenty rowers, rapidly overtook us. Like large black spiders, the pygmies could scale our hull and kill us with darts before we could use our swords. Then I saw Atthis between our ships. I thought with horror,
It is she who has led them to us.

Thank Nethuns I was wrong. The sea around her erupted with dolphins. They rose behind us with a great thrashing and thrust their beaks against our stern. Scores of them, sleek and glistening, spouting through airholes as if to shout encouragement. The stern rose high in the water, we poised and the timbers shuddered; the mast, like a pine in a storm, creaked and swayed. Then we moved. Swifter than pirate penteconters driven by Boreas, swifter by far than dugouts with pygmy rowers. We clung to the bulwarks to keep our balance. We sucked in air and laughed it out of our lungs. Astyanax held to Tages and caught the spray in his face.

And the dolphins! They were saving our lives but also playing a game. They squealed like children, they plunged and whirled and somersaulted, and one leaped over the vessel, showering foam in his wake. They tried to take turns at pushing but some grew impatient and nosed their friends out of place. And Atthis led them. I wanted to hug her.

The captain of the dugout, waving a blowgun, shouted a final threat. It was strange to hear Greek spat from the lips of a pygmy.

“Seek her at your peril.”

“Tell her to wait for us!” I called.

She crossed her arms and glared at us balefully as the dugout altered course and returned to hug the coast.

Except for Atthis, the dolphins followed the pygmies, no doubt to make sure that they did not change their minds and return to give us chase. Gray-backed gods, the dolphins seemed, swift, powerful, and lordly. We lined the deck and cheered them as they went.

Atthis remained. Astyanax swam to meet her and threw his arms around her neck. “Atthis, you’ve come back to us!” I wanted to go to her myself, but my going must not, like my parting, seem thoughtless and crude. I must go to her partly as suppliant and partly as a friend, indebted but not obsequious; grateful and gracious, with love and a gift which betokened love. I searched my mind for something which, even though belated, should not seem too late. I remembered the gown she had fondled in the sunken galley. I had no gowns or woman’s cloaks, I had no jewels, no bracelets of amber stars nor necklaces of hammered gold. But I owned one object more precious to women than pearls: a bronze mirror with a handle like the neck of a swan.

Mirror in hand, I called to Atthis from the deck. She did not move; she waited on the surface, watchful, poised for flight—and also, no doubt, appraising the mirror. Guessing my intention, Astyanax left her and returned to the ship. I swam to her side.

Treading water, I held the mirror in front of her. She looked at the bronze and, seeing her image, recoiled; she returned, and this time lingered. She tilted her head, she opened her beak, she rolled on her side with an artless and touching vanity. Then, having shown her delight, she spoke her gratitude—and her forgiveness—with a simple and eloquent gesture: she rested her beak on my shoulder.

At last she took the mirror from my hand and dove below the surface—to a sea-cave, no doubt, to hide her treasure. I returned to the ship and waited for her. Hardly had I settled on deck when she reappeared. My crew welcomed her, Balder and Frey with tears. Astyanax offered her a yellow cheese which she took from his hands and swallowed in one large gulp. Aruns was grave, courtly, and yet affectionate. He recited a verse well known to sailors, “Follow the dolphin, fly the shark,” and commended her people for having inspired such a tribute. For me, it was not enough to call to her from the deck. I entered the water and, like Astyanax, threw my arms around her neck.

“Atthis,” I said. “I am often unworthy of my friends. I have been unworthy of you. But you have forgiven me. Dear friend, do you know that I love you?”

I felt the throbbing of her noble heart.

* * * *

We came at dusk to a bay which enclosed a small island. Around the bay stretched yellow arms of the desert, but the island lay green and living, with grassy rocks tumbled along its beaches, with tamarisk trees and oleanders and date palms clustering fruit. Giant cranes, trailing their legs, looped above the trees or plunged after fish in the water. Though we badly needed supplies, we dared not land till morning for fear of the pygmies, whose deadly darts we had glimpsed if not felt. Atthis and two of her friends kept watch around the ship. If a dugout tried to surprise us, the pygmies would find themselves capsized and possibly drowned. We dined meagerly on cheese and wine, but happily, because Atthis had returned to us.