She squinted at me through the moonlight with glassy eyes and shook her frowsled head. "Belleras. O wow." Sibyl too had changed in twenty years, not apparently for the better. Granted that her vocation as sacred prostitute and prophetess involved considerable orgiastic activity, characteristically cryptic speech, the use of laurel and other mantic drugs, and a certain abandon in costume and coiffure, I saw no good reason why she couldn't come off it a bit with an old friend, especially as my own address to her was so informal and confiding. A far cry from my vision of her in Athene's temple, she was in my estimation not so much disheveled as wrecked, her hair wild, her clothes filthy and torn from the abuse of her current lover, who I was distressed to learn was not even a man, much less a deity or demigod, but the "boss dyke of the horsebarns," according to Sibyclass="underline" one of the few of our Amazons who had not drifted south to Tiryns, "where the action's at." At forty, the dream of my adolescence was overbreasted and underwashed, thick-thighed and — waisted, hairy of leg, lip, armpit; even when not officially entranced she swallowed, sniffed, and smoked large doses of her sundry herbals and talked seldom more than half-intelligibly; feast-day or not, she took on all comers to Aphrodite's well, regardless of number, rank, or gender, drew the line at no perversion, masturbated casually between visitors when not comatose. She also burped a lot. On the other hand, she was generous with her scanty means, let all sorts of bums and drifters share her stuffed grape-leaves as well as her pallet, seldom stole from drunks, and gave without charge to needy suppliants oracles neither more nor less enigmatic than those she dispensed to me.
I told her what I was in search of. "One stud's hippomanes is another's saltpeter," she declared. "But the first dose is free. Let's see what you've got under your toga these days."
When it became (relatively) clear that I must make love to her in exchange for a sample of the herb, I reluctantly did so — stallion-fashion at her insistence, "for old time's sake" — though the combination of her appearance and the memory of that old time was anaphrodisiac. Sibyl knew her trade: though I never saw the hippomanes itself, as I came I heard a whinny overhead and saw Pegasus erratically circling the grove, his first real flight in several seasons.
"Hooray!" I cried as he crashed into the creepers.
"Plus ça change," Sibyl incanted dryly. "Bellerus my ass. Again."
Crude as was the invitation, after a spell I managed to remount her briefly, and Pegasus briefly reflew. Overjoyed to have found so quickly what I sought, and eager to lay hold of it for good and learn its use, I stayed with Sibyl the night through, and the next and next, as had Perseus with cowled Medusa on the lakeshore, 11-F-1, but with opposite effect: instead of flying higher and farther each time we coupled, Pegasus rehearsed in four nights his pattern of four times four years, and my own potency diminished as rapidly.
"Dum dee dee," said Sibyl on the fifth, "heroes aren't what they used to be."
"Neither is hippomanes. Don't you have the kind that grew here in the old days?"
"One toke of the good stuff left," she said, tapping an amulet like the one her shifty father used to use. "Secret of my success in the whore and oracle way. When this is gone I'm out of business."
"Can it take me where I want to go, Sib? Where is that, anyway?"
It was a palpable hit, she replied in her fashion, and "would send a man like me skyhigh enough before his downfall to drop him into another world.
"Olympus? Olympus?" I asked excitedly. "That's a swell idea! But do I become immortal just by flying there?"
Sibyl scratched her rump and shrugged. "Not many immortals among my customers, you know? Anyhow, I don't remember saying I was going to make you a present of my last good high. What did you ever do for me?"
I agreed there was nothing for her in my apotheosis except what satisfaction she might derive from having been party to it — a reflected glory, to be sure, but apparently one not to be sneezed at: look how it had driven her father; look how (the late lamented) Deliades, in time past, had thriven in the glow of his twin's predestination; look how she herself, when we three disported in that grove in the bright mid-morning of our lives, had said, "Bellerus can have Corinth the way he has me: by taking it, whenever he wants to."
"Let's have it, Sib," I said.
"Are you kidding?"
"Please?"
She hooted. "You're self-centered enough to be a hero, at least! Don't you give a fart what happens to me? Or to your wife and kids when you go flapping off to heaven? You don't even remember that your mother's name is Eurynome, not Eurymede! And Jesus, it's not as if you're benefiting mankind! What good does it do anybody in this world if you make it to another one?"
"You're the sibyl," I said: "Figuring out things like that is not my line. My business is to be a Mythic Hero, period, and to do it I need the hippomanes in that amulet, so I guess I'll threaten you with this sword. I can show you the Pattern, if you want to see it; it was your dad who drew it up. Now please do the heart-of-gold thing and help your former boyfriend Bellerus become immortal, at whatever sacrifice to yourself. I'll appreciate it. As to Mom's name: some accounts give it as Eurymede, some Eurynome; that's a not-uncommon discrepancy in the case of accessory characters in a myth, for that matter, the hero himself will often have variant names: Deliades, for example, was also called Alcimedes, which I believe means 'big genitals,' and Alcmenes — 'mighty as the moon'? Also Peiren, after the Muses' well on our acropolis. So. I just call her Mom. Please?"
"A hero that says please," Sibyl said, but handed over the amulet with a yawn.
I kissed her (pocked) cheek. "Thanks a lot. I really mean it."
"Sure. Here's an airmail special for your hostess at the next stop. No peeking. Fuck off, now, and leave me to my dykes and winos."