“In five hundred years I’ll be an old crone.”
“And I’ll be an old dotard like Moschus, so I don’t expect I shall notice.”
“I haven’t Zoe’s bosom.”
“You’ll develop.”
“How much do you love me?”
“More than my new house. More than my friends Partridge and Bion.”
“I should hope so.”
“More than any other Dryad in the forest!”
“Even Zoe?” (The bitch! And I had cooked the pie for her and sewn the linen pillows.)
He deliberated. (I will have to say that for him.) “I love Zoe very much. Like an aunt and a friend at the same time. But yes, I love you more.”
“Go on…”
“Enough to go to work for you! Did you know that there’s a trapdoor in the garden which leads to an underground workshop? That’s where I made the chair and couch. That’s where I’ll make furniture for a livelihood. Kora, I’m going to be a carpenter!”
“That’s very nice for you.”
“But not for you?”
“Somehow carpentry is not very—poetic.” (I would have slapped her.)
“Have some acorns,” he said in desperation while he wracked his brain for a poem, and one which he had written to another Dryad, another year, flashed into his mind. Sentimental, to be sure; but Dryads, it seemed—females in general, experience had taught him—thrived on sentiment. It was about a sea-bird instead of a forest bird, but perhaps it would suffice for a moment.
“A halcyon is my love,
Who nested on the sea,
But when I raised a silken net
My love eluded me.
“A halcyon is my love,
Who nested on the sea,
But when I lifted open hands
My love came down to me.”
“Dear Eunostos. No one has ever written me such a charming poem!”
“Then you’ll share my house with me?”
“You are offering marriage, aren’t you?”
“We’ll have the biggest wedding in the country. Zoe will play her flute and Moschus will lead the Dance of the Python. All the Centaurs will come, and the Bears of Artemis, but only Panisci like Partridge who know how to hold their beer. What do you say, Kora?”
She turned away from him and wandered among the delicacies of his meticulously stocked kitchen and returned to the room of the fountain. For a long time she stared into the water.
“Not yet, Eunostos. I’m still waiting.”
“But Kora, for what?” Her evasions were maddening him.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have these dreams, you see. Of places beyond the Country of the Beasts. Palaces and people, dragon-prowed ships and big beautiful wagons covered with painted canopies and drawn by animals that look like the bottom part of Centaurs.”
“Horses.” He had read Hoofbeats in Babylon.
“And right here on Crete, ladies in great belled skirts, and men who wrestle bulls—”
“Personally,” said Eunostos, “I don’t think it’s very nice to wrestle with bulls, and keep them penned up, and maybe kill them for beef.”
“The Cretans don’t kill them. At least not in the ring. It’s a kind of ritual. Men and bulls perform together. It’s an honor for the animals, who are considered sacred to the gods. And the Men are very valiant and agile.”
“Oh,” he said, reassured about the bulls. “And these are the things you want?”
“I can’t be sure until I see them for myself.”
“Are you thinking about taking a trip? Like the Centaurs when they build their rafts?”
“How far do you think I could get from my tree?”
“You could build a raft out of oak trees.” It was worse than a slip of the tongue; it was a desecration.
“And murder all those trees? No, I shall just have to wait here in the country until something comes to me.”
“Well, a bull isn’t coming, you can be sure of that. At least not the wrestling kind.” (Foolish Kora, he wanted to cry, can’t you see that another kind is right here in the house with you?) “Let’s go into the garden.” He was not given to long conversations. Pen and palm leaf in hand, he waxed eloquent. But with speech he could be as inarticulate as Partridge, at least in the company of Kora. It was time for another gesture. The violets had wilted but there were roses and columbine.
“No, Eunostos,” she cried as he bent to pick a large bud on the verge of opening into crimson opulence. “Let it grow. That way it will live for days. Otherwise, you’ll kill it.”
He stood up without the rose. “I can’t give you anything, can I?” He wanted to recite the poem he had written especially for her—“A Minotaur with gainly hoof…”—but the words stuck in his throat. “I’ll just have to wait till I grow older. When I’m sixteen and you’re nineteen, the difference between us won’t seem quite so great. Whatever you say, the difference does make a difference.”
She touched his horns and smiled with infinite sweetness. “I can’t expect you to wait for me, Eunostos.”
“I don’t mind.” He thought of the yielding Dryads, wreathed in leafy fragrances and soft as their nest-like couches, who had come into his arms with cries of anticipation and left him with sighs of gratitude. “Eunostos, how did you learn so much so fast? Moschus is four hundred and he could take lessons from you!” Pliant Dryads. Grateful Dryads. Could he forego such delights for as long as a year? Perhaps. At fifteen, anything seems possible (and an occasional lapse, forgivable).
“But don’t you see, my dear, in the meantime I may find what I’m waiting for.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
A shadow fell between them and the sunbright flowers suddenly lost their color. They looked up into the sky and Kora cried:
“Eunostos, who is that lovely woman with wings? She must be one of the Bee queens you were telling us about!”
“She looks skinny to me,” he said. “And she has no right to spy on us, even if she is a queen!”
“I think she was spying on you,” said Kora as the queen dipped above them and vanished over the rim of the tree trunk. “She almost seemed to be—measuring you.”
Was there a hint of jealousy in her voice? At any rate, she took his arm as they left the trunk and headed for her tree. It was a liberty which she had accorded to no other male except her presumed father. Of course, thought Eunostos, she may be treating me as a younger brother. On the other hand—
The eyes of the forest watched them with surprise and speculation. The Bear Girl emerged from asylum among the roots of a tree and, regardless of bears, stared after them and spilled the blackberries out of her pail. Phlebas gave a knowing “ha” as he skulked behind a plane tree. Had the grape been plucked?
Partridge and Bion were still idling at the foot of Kora’s tree. Kora’s mother had invited them to join her for catnip tea, but she boiled her leaves until there was little nip in them, and Partridge was not much for listening to long-winded monologues unless you bribed him with beer. He had declined the invitation with the unarguable excuse that he was not dressed for calling.
“And?”