Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two (54 page)

Upon that early spring day Charon was in a strange mood also. The wind blowing off the mountain was heavy with fragrance. Odor of clover and hot meadow grass mingled with the cool smell of mountain trees—cedar and pine. And the warm wind was striped with a colder air—a whiff of the last snow clinging to the crags. It was a maddening incense. Charon drew great draughts of it into the bellows of his chest. Then it seemed that fragrance became song as the birds welcomed the day; meadowlark and blackbird and the silver-noted throstle.

Charon felt himself boiling with restlessness, the kind that could not be drained off by terrific labors. Using his muscles was not enough upon this day; he wanted to use more of himself. But what more was there? The question burned in him. To cool himself off he jumped into the river, and was seized by a strong undertow—something he had not known since he had begun working as a ferryman. It was sucking him under.

Snorting, he broached like a dolphin, arching up out of the water. When he fell back he was again clutched by the undertow, which had grown stronger. He was delighted to be fighting something. The thews of his back and upper arms writhed like serpents under his bronze skin as he cleaved the water with powerful strokes. He drew himself onto the wharf.

“Bravo!” said a thin voice. “You're a marvelous swimmer.”

“Marvelous!” piped another voice. “A pleasure to watch you.”

Charon brushed the water from his eyes and saw two little people, very ancient, either twins or husband and wife who had grown to look exactly like each other—except for the long white beard worn by the man.

Charon pointed to the raft and across the river.

“Yes,” said the wife. “We'd like to cross, please.”

“What's the fare?” asked the man.

Charon shrugged.

The woman unpinned a brooch from her tunic, her only ornament; it was made of bronze, with a tiny blue stone. Charon shook his head and motioned her to pin it back on. She smiled and fished into a small sack she was carrying. She took out a loaf of bread.

“New baked,” she said. “And delicious, if I say so myself.”

The man nodded and smiled greedily to show how good he knew it to be.

Charon took the bread, broke off half a loaf, and stuffed it into his mouth. He tore the rest of it in two and gave a piece to each of the old couple. They had no teeth but their gums seemed very tough, and they mumbled the bread hungrily as Charon helped them onto the raft and began rowing toward the far shore.

Then, Alpheus struck.

He hunched his mighty shoulders, twisting the river currents into a single taut sinew of water that slid under the raft and flipped it over. Alpheus chortled and spun about, churning the river into a gigantic whirlpool. The old folk were sucked under. Charon was swimming toward them as fast as he could when he saw them disappear.

Without hesitation, he dived after them. He was in a whirling funnel of water. He felt himself being spun violently, his head knocking against his knees. The brutal force behind the water made it seem solid, not liquid. Battered as Charon was, he kept churning his way toward where he saw the old man and old woman sinking, hands clasped. The thought that they loved each other so much that they couldn't bear to be parted, even in death, filled him with a rage of pity—which turned into strength and allowed him to cleave the water toward them.

He reached them, tucked them under one arm, and kicked his way to the surface.

Alpheus couldn't believe he hadn't drowned them. He seized the three of them in a gigantic watery hand and swept them toward a rock. They were going with such speed that Charon knew that they would be crushed to a pulp against the boulder. Trying to slow himself, he sank under, drawing a huge breath before he submerged, holding one arm above the surface so that the old folk could cling to it.

He curled his legs as he went, and as soon as he felt his feet touch the rock, he uncoiled, exerting all his strength in one last desperate leap. He shot out of the water.

Still clutching the man and woman, he curved in the air and landed on the shore.

Alpheus hurled water after them, a heavy sheet of it, curling like an ocean breaker, but Charon jumped away, bearing the old couple far enough inland to be safe from the boiling river.

But when he set them gently on the grass, they felt like a bundle of wet rags, and he feared that, despite all his efforts, Alpheus had succeeded in drowning them.

Out of the rags sprouted a form. Charon gasped. It was not the old woman rising, but taller than her, taller than a young woman, taller than a man. A nymph. A meadow nymph with a mane of glossy chestnut hair and leaf-green eyes. She smiled at him and he felt the heat rising in his huge body, squeezing his windpipe, pressing his eyeballs.

He looked her up and down. Her bare feet spurned the rags. Her long, bronzed body gleamed with wetness. She cast a fragrance of sunshine and crushed mint. She seemed to be swaying closer without moving. For the first time in his life he felt himself trembling.

“Who are you?” he muttered.

“I am Menthe.”

“And the old woman?”

“What about her?”

“Who was she? Where is she?”

“Nowhere now. She was just a disguise.”

“And the old man?”

“Nowhere too. Part of the costume, you know.”

“I don't know. Tell me: Why all this bother? Who were you trying to fool?”

“Enemies.”

“Who would try to harm you?”

“Those who try to harm my mistress. I serve a goddess who is feuding with someone even mightier than herself. She was afraid he would learn about my mission and send his creatures to catch me before I could get where I was going. Therefore did I travel as that feeble old couple you were so kind to.”

“And this form I see before me now—is this another disguise?”

“No. It is me, myself, as I am.”

“An improvement,” grunted Charon. “So have you gotten to where you're going?”

“I have. Right here. It is you I have come to see.”

“But why?”

“My mistress needs your assistance.”

“Didn't you say she was a goddess?”

“I did.”

“Which one?”

“Demeter. The Barley Mother. Lady of the Harvest. Mistress of Growing Things.”

“Why should such a one need the help of a mere ferryman?”

“I don't know. But she says she does. It is not for me to question her.”

“But it's for me if she wants me to do something for her.”

“Indeed, yes. But she will tell you herself. We must go to her.”

“Where is she?”

“Eleusis.”

“A long journey.”

She smiled at him. “We shall travel together.”

“I'm ready.”

5

The Barley Mother

They passed through an empty landscape. No one was working the fields. No one was visible about the occasional farm hut, save one chained dog howling miserably. Charon thought that the people must have flocked to the village upon this day for some celebration. But when they came to the village, it too was empty; not even a dog to be seen.

Then, as they passed through the village into the fields again, Charon heard a seething murmur that grew louder and louder as they walked. It sounded like the surf battering cliffs, but they were far from the sea.

And then he saw where the people had gone. They were thronging a huge plain; in the middle of this plain sat a low hill. The people did not stand. Men, women, and children were crouched upon the ground, some kneeling, as if in worship, or fear, or both.

Now Charon saw what had brought them there and was pressing them to the ground. On the hill towered something tall—so tall that at first he mistook it for a tree. But as he walked through the kneeling people and came closer to the hill, he saw that it was an enormous female figure clad in flowing robes. Upon her head was a braided crown of flowers. She was shaking her long white arms, now roaring at the crowd, now seeming to scold the skies.

“Hunger will stalk the land,” she cried. “No seed shall sprout, no furrow quicken. Barren shall be the fields, the orchards blasted and fruitless. And the cattle, unable to graze, shall starve, and the herdsmen and the plowmen, and their families also. For I, Demeter, Bestower of Crops, am angry, furiously angry, and my wrath is famine. Until high justice is done, until Zeus reverses his decision and declares in my favor, and bids the foul abductor return my daughter to her mother's arms, then all the land shall share my grief.”

As the goddess was pronouncing these terrible words Charon and Menthe were threading their way toward her. Finally they could go no farther. The crowd was denser near the hill—a stiff, resistant hedge of crouched bodies. Charon saw that the green-clad one was beckoning to him and knew that he would have to go to her. To do so, though, he would have to brutally trample a path through the mob. His neck swelled with cruel energy—like that of a bull about to charge.

Menthe put her hand on his neck, and he felt a coolness wash through his hot, throbbing body. “Wait,” she murmured. She raised her arm.

A huge white goat appeared between them, and stood there like a pillar of white fire. Its horns were golden in the slant afternoon sun; its eyes were amber slits of light. Menthe floated onto the goat's back and grasped its horns. Charon pulled himself up after her. The goat leaped. A gigantic leap. It soared over the crowd and landed on the hill—knelt to the goddess so that Menthe and Charon slid off and stood before her.

Charon was enveloped in her fragrance. She smelled like ploughed fields after a light rain. Her voice wrapped about him also; it was like the wind among trees.

“Thank you,” she said. “I have sent for you, and you have come.”

Charon heard himself speaking words he hadn't thought of. “How may I serve you?”

“I need your help to save my daughter from her foul abductor.”

“He must be powerful as well as foul,” said Charon, “if someone like you needs help to reclaim her own.”

“He is Hades, Lord of the Underworld, my eldest brother, and brother to Zeus too, of course. You heard me pronounce his name to these poor starvelings, did you not?”

“I was too busy trying to get through the crowd to attend to what you were saying. But I understand now. Hades has taken your girl. I don't know her name.”

“Persephone, the April Child, Maiden of the Changing Year. Just five days ago she was in the meadow with her paint box coloring the wildflowers, when the earth cracked and out charged a black chariot drawn by six black stallions. The charioteer was my accursed brother. He snatched her up from among her flowers, wrapped her in his cloak, drank her tears, and whipped the stallions back into the pit … down into his damned realm—into Tartarus itself. And there he keeps her, and defies me to take her back.”

“And you have sought justice from Zeus—is that what I heard you tell the multitude?”

“Aye, and you heard me say that justice was denied. Certainly I rushed up to Olympus, confronted Zeus in the Hall of Judgment. There he sat on his golden throne in his cloak patterned with stars, and listened silently as I poured out my tale. I expected him to react in rage and sorrow, fully expected that he would send messengers to Hades ordering him to release my daughter. But his face was as hard as that rock there. Not a glimmer of sympathy did he show. When I had finished my tale, he said simply that he would take the matter under advisement, and that he would let me know his decision later. Later! Later!” She pounded her chest. “That delicate flower of a child will wither away in dark Tartarus. She needs air, sunlight, birdsong. Not darkness and smoke and the screams of the tormented. I couldn't believe how Zeus was acting, couldn't accept what he was saying. Then I saw that he had a new scepter: a magnificent volt-blue zigzag thunderbolt. And I understood that he had been bribed. That Hades had his pit demons dig up the rarest of metals and fashion this thunderbolt as a gift to the judge. Yes, the king of heaven and earth has been bribed; he will do no justice. My daughter must languish down there unless I can summon strength to save her.”

“And how can I help you?” said Charon. “Your tale touches me, and I am prepared to make your enemies mine. But, although reasonably well grown, I am only a mortal, after all. What use can I be in a battle between gods?”

“You underestimate yourself,” said Demeter. “I have heard tales of you, and now that I see you I understand that the tales have not been exaggerated. You are mortal, true, but of heroic size and gigantic strength—which means that you have a spark of divinity in you. I don't know your pedigree, but somewhere among your ancestors, I am sure, is a god or goddess who came down to earth long enough to love a mortal. Be that as it may, I have a specific use for you. I happen to know that you are the best and boldest ferryman in all the land. And I have learned that Hades is in dire need of a ferryman to transport the shades across the Styx. It is a treacherous, difficult job. All his ferrymen have been overcome by the sights they have seen and the sounds they have heard and have drowned themselves in the black river. You must go down there and apply for the post. There is no question but that you will be accepted. And then, having won Hades' trust, you will be able to serve me.”

“And am I to be condemned to dwell forever in Tartarus, forever to cross and recross the Styx with boatload after boatload of miserable wailing shades? Is that not damnation before I am dead?”

“Damnation?” said Demeter, almost crooning, and laying her heavy hand upon his shoulder. Immediately he felt a strange new energy surging through him, a green, sappy strength seeming to flow from the very center of the earth, up through the soles of his feet and coursing through his huge body—a wild need to do what he had never done before, a marvelous carelessness of consequence. “Damned? Do you say damned?” crooned Demeter. “Why, in serving me so nobly you will earn my eternal gratitude. And the gratitude of all these poor wretches whom you will have saved from famine by returning the Spring Maiden to the earth. I shall pour blessings upon you. You shall live where you wish, do as you wish, enjoy enormous wealth and prestige and the endless thanks of all who will know what you have done.”