“I will have to see about supper,” I said. Remember, I had found no meat in my cave. The carnivorous Telchines would rather turn cannibal than resort to vegetables. “First I will show you your room. I will sleep in here, and you may have my bedroom.”
It lay at the foot of a ladder: round and snug as a rabbit’s burrow; small for me but large for Thea and Icarus. The floor was carpeted with moss and the down of bird’s nests. There was no furniture except for a three-legged stool and a citron chest in which I kept a tunic to wear on cold days and a pair of round sandals to shod my hooves when I went to gather gemstones in the quarry.
Icarus threw himself on the floor and uttered a cry like the neigh of a donkey which has pulled a cart since sunrise and come home at dusk to a bed of straw. “Soft as clover,” he said, snuggling into the down and releasing Perdix to find his own nest.
Thea, I saw, did not share his enthusiasm. I had rather expected a compliment on my room, but she thrust an explorative toe into the down to see if it were clean. Suddenly I realized that the room was not designed for a woman.
“We’ll find you some toilet articles tomorrow,” I promised. “I have a friend with a Babylonian mirror. Shaped like a swan, with the neck for a handle.”
“Your room is charming,” she said with well-meant insincerity. “You must forgive me if I appear unappreciative. I’m very tired.”
“I’ll bring you a tub of hot water.”
Escaping up the ladder, I remembered the time a fastidious Dryad (not Zoe) had told me that I needed a haircut: all over. Unkempt, I thought. That’s what I am, and so is my house.
In the garden, I found the tub which I used for washing vegetables and, thrusting it under the fountain, began to plan my dinner. I could pick some figs and squashes in my garden; I could bake a loaf of bread and gather mushrooms and woodpecker-eggs for an omelette. But what would I do for meat? Perhaps I had time before dark to shoot some hares.
It was then that I heard the scream. When a woman screams, sometimes she means: I need some help but there is no real hurry. It’s just my way of attracting attention and pointing up my helplessness. But Thea’s scream was sheer, spontaneous terror; it bubbled onto the air like the black poison of hemlock. I jumped down the stairs in three large leaps, slid down the ladder almost without touching the rungs, and found a Telchin crouched at the foot, waving his feelers in consternation. Behind him, Thea was brandishing the three-legged stood and shouting, “Out, out!” It was, of course, her first meeting with a Telchin, a three-foot ant with almost human intelligence and with six skillful legs which make him the best lapidary in the world; he can carve and set gems more delicately than the surest human craftsman. But Thea saw only the great bulbous head, the many-faceted eyes, the black, armored skin.
“It crawled down the ladder,” she said in a whisper. “Then it came at me, waving its feelers.”
“He didn’t come at you, he came looking for me,” I snapped emphasizing the he, for I saw that her scornful it had hurt his feelings. “And he understands every word you say. He is quite harmless except to other Telchines.” I stroked his antennae. He indicated pacification with a pleased buzzing which vibrated through my fingers. Icarus, belatedly rousing himself from his nap, climbed to his feet and walked without hesitation to the trembling Telchin. He knelt and leaned his head against the creature’s armor. “What’s his name?” he asked.
“Telchines hide their names except from their mates. I call him Bion.”
“Bion,” said Icarus. “I want you to meet Perdix.” The pleased buzzing became a roar.
Thea, meanwhile, had started to cry.
“Don’t cry,” I said. “He’s forgiven you now.”
“But I’m still afraid. Of—of everything in the forest!”
“Of me?”
She looked at me for a long moment before she spoke. “At first, in the cave. Even after Icarus said you were friendly. Not any more, though. Not since I saw your flowers. But the forest terrifies me. I thought I was safe down here, and then I saw Bion, and it seemed as if the forest had followed me.”
“It had,” I said, “but the good part. The forest is like a Man or a Beast, with many moods. Bion would rather eat his brother than than hurt my guests. Wouldn’t you, Bion?”
“I’m a terrible coward, Eunostos.”
“You were very brave when you met me in the cave. You waved your fist in my face.”
“I seemed to be brave, but I wasn’t really. My heart was jumping like a startled quail.”
“It doesn’t matter what your heart does so long as your feet stand still. In the last two days your heart has had good reason to jump. You have lost your home, crashed in a glider, fallen into the clutches of Ajax, and faced the Minotaur in his cave. But all those things are behind you.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “You will protect me here. I see that now.”
She was the first real lady to look on me for protection. I did not know, however, that she planned to improve my manners and redecorate my house.
Chapter IV
DOMESTICATIONS AND DOMESTICITY
She never said to me, “Eunostos, you ought to comb your hair or get a new pair of sandals.” It was always “Perhaps you should…” or “Don’t you think…” Sometimes she worked through her brother. Two weeks after their arrival he told me in confidence, “Thea hasn’t complained, but I think she misses Cretan plumbing.”
“But she has a hot shower,” I protested. “Or else I bring her a tub. What more does she want?”
“What she wants is a bathroom,” he confided. It is universally acknowledged that the Cretans are the best plumbers in all the lands of the great Green Sea. Not only do they pipe water into their palaces, but they build limestone toilets with wooden seats and, wonder of wonders, a lever for flushing. Like my ancestors, I am something of an engineer, and I lost no time in diverting a part of the spring from the garden. With her usual delicacy, Thea did not refer to my innovation, but she showed her gratitude by making me a pair of leather sandals which pinched my hooves like chains on a mule. At least in the house, I had to wear them or hurt her feelings.
Once out of the house, however, I kicked them under a tree and happily pursued my business in the forest; now that my cave no longer received a weekly sacrifice—the local farmers, it seemed, were feeding the conquerors instead of the Minotaur—I hunted daily to keep my guests in meat. But one such hunt landed me in a much more serious predicament than the mere discomfort of sandals. I had bagged a wild pig with my first arrow and started back to the house with the carcass strapped across my shoulder.
“Ho there,” a voice boomed from the trees, and Moschus, the Centaur, cantered up beside me with thumping hooves and a swirl of dust. A robust fellow, Moschus, in spite of his years. His flanks glistened with olive oil; powerful muscles rippled beneath his coat; chestnut hair tumbled down the back of his neck in a glossy mane. It was true that his hair had begun to thin, for Moschus was a good two hundred years old; he had been a colt in the days when the Beasts had lived on the coast, sharing their secrets with the fast-learning and still friendly Cretans. But age became him as it did the oaks and the cedars.
Physically, at least. His intelligence, never high, had begun to decline before I was born. His noble exterior suggested learning and promised wise utterances, but his only interests were wenching, storytelling (bawdy), and playing the flute, and his conversation was threadbare on all other subjects.