“Heard about you and the kids,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, noncommittal. “Did you?” I did not want him to suggest a meeting. Thea would not understand his libertine ways.
“Big daddy himself. Though I hear the girl is not exactly a child (heh).”
“Not in years,” I said loftily, “but she’s led a sheltered life.”
“Time for a party then—lower the parasol! How about tonight?”
“Busy. Tanning hides.” I pointed to the pig on my shoulder.
“Tomorrow night?”
“Cutting gems.”
A look of suspicion narrowed his equine eyes. “I thought your workers did that.”
“Too many gems; not enough help.”
“The next night?”
“At your house?” I sighed, defeated.
“You’re a better host. More beer, more room. Zoe and I will come after lamplighting time.”
“Zoe too?”
“Who else? You know we’re keeping company.” With a loud, anticipatory neigh, he galloped into the trees.
I groaned. Zoe, the Dryad, and Moschus, the Centaur. I loved them devotedly as friends, but together they well might precipitate an orgy.
I knelt to retrieve my sandals, wondering how I would broach the party to Thea.
I found her visiting with my three workers. With the help of Icarus and several bribes of raw meat, she had won their confidence—at least, their acceptance—and often watched them work. Not only were they lapidaries, but blacksmiths, weavers, dyers, shoemakers, and tanners, and their various tools of trade—loom, forge, anvil, assorted vats and tables—lent to my shop the air of a small but handily equipped marketplace. To see only three of them with so much equipment had astonished Thea until I explained that I myself was the fourth worker and, like my extinct countrymen, equal to any four Men or two Telchines. It was not a boast but a simple statement of fact.
The shop was illuminated by six large lamps in the shape of fishtailed ships which navigated the air on swaying chains. One of the workers stood at the forge, holding a bent dagger over the flames; another worked at a table, cleaning the dirt and shale from gemstones; and the third examined a large carnelian, smoothed to the round flatness of a seal, and bobbed his head in evident perplexity.
Thea was watching the holder of the stone as he turned it over and over between his multiple legs. The room was warm with the heat of the forge, but she looked immaculate in her saffron kilt; as far as I knew she never perspired. Three meticulously arranged curls adorned her forehead like pendant snails.
“Eunostos,” she said. “Have you ever seen such a gem?” Its smoky gray surface imprisoned the six fires of the lamps in a small constellation, and the many-faceted eyes of the Telchin reflected them again to numbers beyond counting.
“Would you like it to wear as a ring?” I asked.
She looked like a child who has just been offered a dolphin or a rare, white-plumed griffin. “Oh, yes, but don’t you trade these things to the other Beasts?” I had told her how every Beast contributed to the self-sufficiency of the forest: I traded my gems to the Centaurs for seeds to plant in my garden; the Dryads built wooden chests and swapped them to the Thriae for the honey stored in their great hexagons; and even the little Bears of Artemis gathered black-eyed Susans in the fields and strung necklaces to trade for dolls.
“Not this one,” I said. “What design would you like?”
She thought. “A blue monkey.” Her eyes looked beyond me, wistful no doubt with memories of the palace at Vathypetro, the well-ordered garden, and of course her father. “Is that possible?”
“A blue monkey and—” I whispered to the Telchin. In spite of their skill, they are not inventive, and unless you give them suggestions, they will settle on one design and duplicate it a hundred or more times. Nodding sagely, he set to work with a pointed file.
“May I watch?” Thea asked.
“No,” I said. “Surprises are best.” And then, unobtrusively: “Thea, some friends are coming to call. After supper, two nights from now.”
She reserved judgment. “How many?”
“Just two. A Centaur and a Dryad.”
“Zoe,” she said. “You’ve mentioned her several times.” It was almost an accusation.
“An old friend,” I explained.
“Older than you?”
“Let’s see. About fourteen times as old.”
“Elderly then.”
“Not exactly. Dryads reflect the state of their trees. Zoe’s oak is well-preserved.”
She stifled a sigh. “But have we enough wine in the house?”
“Beer,” I said. “Beer is what they drink. Both of them.”
“A woman drinks beer?”
“She can outdrink me!” Then, subdued: “I brew it from barley right here in the shop. You ought to try some.”
She smiled magnanimously. “Perhaps I will. You attend to the beer and I will bake some honey cakes.” She paused. “It’s good I’ve finished your new tunic.”
“Tunic?” I cried. In the spring and summer, no male Beast wore clothes. Why should he? The air which blew from the torrid continent of Libya was warm and dry, and female Beasts were no more disturbed by a free expanse of masculine flesh than Cretan males by the bare breasts of their women.
“Yes,” she said, fishing the depths of a basket with nimble fingers. “The Telchines wove it, but I did the dyeing and needlework.”
“I see you did.” Lavender, with embroidered sleeves. “Why not a loin cloth?”
“For Icarus, perhaps, not for you. You are—well, more mature.” She observed the hair on my chest as if she were thinking of scissors. “Try it on now and see if it fits.”
The tunic pinched me in seven places. I felt like a snake imprisoned in his old, discarded skin. “I can’t move,” I said. “I can’t breathe. I think I’m going to suffocate. And,” I added delicately, “you forgot to leave access for my tail.”
“Hush. All it needs is a bit of taking out.” She proceeded to pinch and pat me as if I were no more animate than a side of beef. “Or else you could reduce, if only the party were next week instead of in two nights.”
“I can’t postpone it,” I snapped. “Besides, I’m not fat, I’m muscular.” I guided her hand to the stomach as firm and hard as a coconut.
“You’re right. Sheer muscle. I’ll have to let out the waist.”
As soon as I entered the den, I saw a change. Ever since Thea’s arrival, the room had been orderly: No more unwashed dishes stacked by the grainmill; for that matter, no more mill, which now scattered its flour beside the fountain. The change at the moment, however had been added rather than subtracted. In the glow of a freshly lit lamp, three dove-shaped vases nested among the roots and bristled with poppies out of my garden. The sad little heads of my flowers stared reproachfully from every corner of the room, five heads to a dove.
“You’ve killed them,” I cried. “You’ve cut their throats.” “Housed, not killed. In the garden, nobody noticed them.”
“I did. Every day. Here it’s like putting them in jail.”
“I shall try to be a kind jailer,” she smiled, straightening a flower.
At the mention of jailer, I recalled my own imprisonment in the tunic. Her alterations had not improved the fit, nor had she remembered the access for my tail, which pressed stiffly against my back like a sun-dried reed. As soon as she turned her back to straighten another flower, I filled my chest with air, hoping to burst my belt and split the tunic. I only increased my discomfort. I stared with envy at Icarus in his new loincloth, which was green and unembroidered. He looked both spruce and comfortable. Thea herself wore a blue, divided skirt almost to her ankles, each side falling in tiers embossed with gold-leaf. Her hair, combed as always to hide her ears, rippled in three rivulets down her back like cascading autumn leaves with faint twinkles of summer’s departed green. On her middle finger she wore the agate ring which the Telchin had already finished incising, not only with a blue monkey but with a Cretan maiden who is unmistakably Thea, receiving from her pet the gift of a crocus. From my whispered description of her garden at Vathypetro, the artist had realized the scene beyond my expectations. After cutting the figures, he had filled them with microscopic particles of lapis lazuli. A scene of play, you would think, but the austere blue stone imparted a dignity ind sadness which seemed to say: playful moments endure only in stone.