"And by the novelty," Calyxa said, "and by your fear you wouldn't get it up for her, which of course you didn't. No need to go on about ample young body wide-hipped et cetera; I get the picture."
"Excuse me."
"Don't apologize."
"Sorry."
No more that night, Calyxa insisted, and turned away, pouting as it were with her very scapulae, her back's small small, pouting I declare with her lean little buttocks.
"No need to go on about small smalls and lean little buttocks."
Sorry, love, and good evening. I was sorry at once, reached to caress those same et ceteras and remarked, not ungently I hope, that just as Perseus was not the sole gold-skinned Greek hero, and the Calyxan religion not monotheistic, so she might allow that lean small what-had-she's were not the only you-know's deserving admiration. She spun to me merry-faced and tear-eyed and kissed me hard enough to fetch me at last full-length into her precinct proper — if only for a moment, as I'd threshold once again my offertory. But we were pleased,
"You're getting better," she said. "Now tell me how you know you'll meet Medusa in Series Two, Mural F, Panel One."
I replied, I thought I had the picture, but would withhold hypotheses until next day — when, if I was not far wrong, II-D (using her system of enumeration) would show my ignominious Gray-Ladying at Lake Triton.
Calyxa smiled. "We'll see." I was not; we did: I fetched her couchward from the scene swiftly as Pegasus had me Lake Triton Samos and, lacking that splendid stone-horse's Bridle of Restraint, yet again fired surely but too soon. I was right, I told her eagerly: as the mural showed, I had been wrong to wrong the Gray Ladies in despite of the cowl-girl's counsel. But old habit had died hard: even passing over Seriphos, en route to North Africa at an altitude of forty stadia, when it had occurred to me to drop in unexpectedly and check on Andromeda, it had been my.impulse I checked instead, deciding to surprise her less directly by coming back rejuvenated from Medusa. And when Pegasus touched down at Triton, I could not bring myself to tell my old victims straight out who I was. There they railed, craned, and cooted on the beach, old past aging, and gummed their breakfast; I altered my voice and asked crisply, "May I be of service, ladies?" What flap, cackle, and plop ensued! "Pah!" said Pemphredo; "Perseus!" said Enyo; "Puncture him!" said Dino — vituperating serially as they took the tooth.
"Not at all," said I, side-stepping their pecks. "Self-centered Perseus is my enemy as much as yours. I understand he dropped your eye somewhere hereabouts? I'll find it for you if you'll tell me where the Styx-Nymphs are."
Pre-payment was my hope, for the lake though shallow was wide, and I despaired of finding in it an eye lost twenty years before. But "Pfui!" said Pemphredo, "Fool!" Enyo, and Dino "Find it first!" So we coracled off in all directions, the Graeae blindly paddling, I pondering, and Pegasus grazing back on shore.
"See it?" asked Pemphredo; "Sure he does!" Enyo; and Dino, "Say something, silly!"
"I see it," I said. "But I won't dive for it until you tell me where the nymphs are."
Alas, I was so banking on that desperate deceit I failed to cloak my voice.
"Tooth-thief!" Pemphredo cried at once; "Eye-dropper!" Enyo added; and Dino, "Ditch him!" In a jiffy they had me jettisoned; the air-waves were my medium, not the sea-; I sank like a stone — and saw clearly, just before I drowned, not mere folly, but three eyes peering eerily from the weedy bed, whereof one — useless miracle! — was disembodied, the very Graeae's. Dropped from the high point of my hubris, it winked now from the depths. I clutched it, closed my own, and gave up hope, not knowing my life was to be —
"Continued in the next installment," Calyxa put in. "Do you remember now what happened then?"
"Three days ago," I said, "I'd've said I was fetched here from my drowning in Two-D, if I'd remembered even that. But One-E reminds me that I wasn't. Now answer me a question: how far do these murals go?" For I'd seen, belatedly, how each in the second whorl echoed its counterpart in the first, behind which it stood — yet no amount of examining the final panels in Series One called anything to mind from my late mortality. Calyxa, however, declined reply: I'd slept a night on my hypothesis; she demanded equal time.
And sleep she did, or feigned to, but I couldn't: like a bard composing, who reviews each night his day's invention in order to extend it on the morrow, I studied wide-eyed in the dark my recollection of I-E, (the acquisition of my gear from the odorous nymphs) and imagined its correspondence in next morning's scene.
We stood before it gravely, II-E, a relief as vast and nearly empty as the desert and deserted shore it showed. Owing to the spiral's grand proportion, the thirteen meters of I-E were stretched to near two hundred; yet in all that stadium but two things caught one's eye, even mine, who had caught the Graeae's: Pegasus, winging off to the upper left corner with Pemphredo astride his neck, grin-toothed Enyo sidesaddle, and Dino leering backward over his crupper; and, on the lakeshore far down right, myself looking mournfully up after, a drip-dry-hooded lady by my side.
"Same one as in the temple?" Calyxa asked. "Or a Styx-Nymph?"
I wondered how to tell her. "That's what I wondered when she rescued me," I said. "But don't forget our rule." We gazed awhile longer, until Calyxa let go my hand, said flat: "It was an easy picture to draw," and went back inside. I sneaked one preview over my shoulder of II-F-1, which quickened certain sluggish memories and dredged up others, then followed after, and found her not naveled on-center as usual, but briefed still and cross-legged on the couch, in her lap a gameboard.
"I'm bored with fucking," she announced. "Let's play chess."
"Are you jealous, Calyxa?"
"Whatever of?"
But she mated me in no time, four games straight, declaring frankly and frequently that I made stupid moves, rooking and queening me unmercifully until I put by board and pieces, bolstered her firmly by the shoulders, and ditto'd her. Dutifully she opened, but looked away the while, none of her usual frank inspection of our coupled parts. Therefore, perhaps, I did okay, if still briefly, even eliciting a minor moan of pleasure from her toward our pleasure's end. When we rolled, still a-clip, to rest sweating on our sides, she twirled a finger in my chest-hair and said, "I thought you said Styx-Nymphs stank."
"On the other hand," I retorted, "sea-nymphs douche with every stroke. You must remember how it was with Ammon, in the Nile?"
She apologized then for sulking and merely asked whether, as she supposed, it was Medusa herself who'd salvaged me, and in whose embrace I would be stranded in the panel to come.
"That's putting it disagreeably."