Strange to find monster tracks in such a beautiful land. (Monoceros tracks? He knew of no larger beast.) Bushes had clearly been jerked from the ground by their roots, their leaves strewn randomly over the ground. The paths, which led from the sea, seemed heavily trodden by many beasts. Piles of dung lay at frequent intervals, and a musky scent in the air did not come from flowers or shrubs.
They were quick to encounter a maker of the paths. An enormous creature approached them, swaying and shaking his head from side to side, a sort of walking earthquake, Ascanius thought, as he felt a tremor and heard a reverberation. Its back was slightly arched and its ears were as big as Achilles’ shield, and it had a—a—
“Papa, is that a beak?”
“It’s called a trunk,” said Aeneas, who had never seen an elephant, but heard that Egyptians used them in work and war.
“Does he use it to breathe?”
“And also like an arm.”
“I hope he won’t pick me up.” Ascanius, being a handsome boy with hair as yellow as daisy hearts and eyes which put the murex dye to shame, had endured the coddlings and, until he had recently grown too large, the liftings of well-intentioned females throughout their flight from Troy (“poor motherless lad”). He liked affection, but pounces from strangers were meant for little girls.
“Here, stand behind me, Son.”
The elephant clearly had not come to greet the men.
Bypassing father and son, he attacked the ship with his trunk and his powerful feet.
“He knows the Bear’s alive! Bear is already hurt, and the elephant’s making him worse.”
“He wants to remove our means of escape.”
“Then, he will see to us,” Achates called from the shaking deck.
“Harpies, storms, now an el—elefoot.” The other men clung to the benches or the stump of the broken mast.
“Elephant,” corrected Ascanius. “Well, I shall tell him we come in peace.”
Meanwhile, nineteen crewmen gestured and shouted, and Achates smote the elephant on the head with an oar and lost the oar to the animal’s versatile trunk and found himself encircled and raised in the air.
“Put me down, you big-nosed brute.”
“No, no,” Ascanius cried. “We didn’t say hello. He probably thinks we’re enemies,” and he ran to the foot of the beast.
“Please, Sir, Achates meant you no harm. Will you set him on the beach?”
“Ascanius,” shouted Aeneas. “He can’t understand you,” and hurried after his son and poor Achates, who was hanging by one foot.
“Maybe not, but he looks intelligent to me. Not just any old elephant.”
“Till now you never heard of an elephant. You don’t know a thing about him.”
The animal lowered Achates toward the ground and dropped him on his head. Sweat caught the sun and made the Trojan’s freckles twinkle and glow. He brushed the hair from his eyes and looked like a little boy who has lost his knucklebones. Poor Achates! He seemed to attract misfortune, as the late prince Paris had attracted his ladies of doom.
“We were cast on your shores by a storm,” explained Ascanius, “and our ship was wrecked as you see. If you shove her into the water, she will probably sink. We would like you to lead us to the queen of the land.” He spoke with care and used some simple gestures to enforce his words.
Aeneas had overtaken his son and stood behind him, but wisely he did not speak; indeed, the elephant seemed to understand the boy.
He raised his trunk and emitted a noise like the sound of a trumpet, which calls men to war. (Remarkable trunk. There seemed no end to its skills.)
“I think he said yes,” observed Ascanius.
“I think he said, ‘Get the Hades out of here’,” gasped Achates, green in the face from his sudden ride. The combination of green and freckles resembled a rotting pear.
“We understand that the queen is a widow. Wouldn’t she like a hero to call on her? This is Aeneas, the hero of Troy. Why, he slaughtered the pride of Greece. At least a thousand warriors.”
“Ascanius, you know it was more like a hundred. Achilles nearly killed me. Diomedes too.”
“Hush, Papa, this is known as diplomatic parley. And ravished their women. More than a thousand, I think.”
“I never ravished a woman!”
The trumpet sounded a second blast.
“Well, your parley isn’t working.”
“That’s because you sound so cross.” Then to the elephant. “To be honest, sir, we need both food and material. Do you want us to starve on the beach?”
Silence. Elephantine deliberations.
“Papa,” whispered Ascanius. “Notice his ivory swords.” (Could those enormous ears overhear what he said?) “THEY ARE VERY FINE.”
“Tusks. A source of ivory for the Phoenician craftsmen.”
“You don’t mean they kill such animals for their tusks!”
“Yes, I’m afraid they do.”
“Well, they won’t kill him. He’s much too strong. And someone has polished his tusks. He couldn’t do it himself, could he? He must have some slaves.”
“Maybe he wants some more,” muttered Achates.
“He might have been breaking you in.” Ascanius grinned.
“Breaking me’s more like it.”
“Do you know, I think he wants a gift,” said Ascanius, faced with a being so immovable that he might have been stuffed for a megaron, the audience chamber of Grecian kings. “We’re always bringing gifts to the kings we visit.”
The word “King” appeared to delight the beast. A soft purring oozed from his trunk, like olive oil from a lamp. Elephantine decisions.
“You see, he does understand.”
Ascanius searched his mind—and his eyes searched the Gallant Bear to think of a suitable gift for a king among elephants. The ship was little help. Its bread, cheese, and wine had been swept to the fish in the storm; its image of Athena, the fabled Palladium, was hidden under a rower’s bench and could not be given even to a king except in the country where Aeneas settled and built his second Troy.
But Ascanius wore an armlet hammered of gold, an image of Tychon; his good luck god, embedded with malachites. A natal gift from Hecuba, queen of Troy, it was his rarest possession. “But a gift must be loved or else it is merely a bribe.” Aeneas had taught him that truth.
He slipped the armlet over his hand, leaving a circle on his brown skin, and held it in front of the elephant’s eyes. The eyes were small and visibly dim. But, sun enkindled the jewels and demonstrated, to even a dim-eyed beast, the value of such a gift. Ascanius slid the armlet down the tip of the upcurved, shorter tusk; much too small to reach the base. It lodged near the tip and seemed an appropriate gift from a prince to a king.
Ascanius tried to restrain his tears; he felt as if he had sacrificed his luck. (He loved his god and prayed to him as a friend, and told him secrets not even Aeneas must hear…of snaring a wife for a stubborn father; of talking to the ship, and yes, of getting a fuzzy reply in the form of thoughts instead of words…)
The elephant fell to his knees in a bow of thanks, awkward but touching,