Ideon Andron, or the Cave of the Shepherdess, as the locals called it, was not a challenging cave. The large opening, a great ragged hole torn into the rock, led down into a grand space, with crenellated formations running along its sides like liquid. The ground was easy to walk upon, in the main, and there was a sense of peaceful hospitality to the interior. I did not feel that sense of dread that sometimes pervades these places deep under the earth. I felt quite certain that the Throne of Zeus was not to be found there; there was no residue of power, of greatness, in the rock.
The main chamber led into a series of smaller ones, just as benign, making an easy path into the mountain. I felt nothing – I have always put great store in my natural instincts when it comes to archaeology – but Friedrich seemed certain we were on the brink of a major discovery. He claimed to see colours in the rock face leading him, and he found a tunnel, barely big enough to squeeze through. His excited voice floated back to me as he emerged into a previously undiscovered chamber, describing a lake of such natural beauty, filled with red, blue, yellow and green gems, embedded into the walls. Of course, I followed him down – and found nothing of any import. The utter blackness of the chamber fought to overwhelm the flickering light of Friedrich’s dynamo torch.
It was possible to make out a small pool into which water trickled from the smooth sides of the natural cavern. Dampness pervaded the rock, lowering the temperature, making my skin clammy. A sense of deep unease, of trespass, overtook me. I am afraid of nothing, but the memory of the feeling that conquered me then still makes my stomach clench. I knew I should not be there, but Friedrich and the men that followed me in did not share my emotion, and I could not explain it to them.
I begged Friedrich to come with me, out of that chamber, but he did not see me, or hear me. He talked only of the colours, of the wondrous beauty he beheld. He, and the eight men remaining in our party, were in paroxysms of delight. They stripped off and plunged into the pool, although it must have been icy. Their whoops and howls, animalistic, followed me as I crawled away, back through the tunnel, and returned to our tent to wait.
I read from my Homer for a while, wishing for Friedrich to return and speak to me of those great journeys. Then I slept, and when I awoke it seemed to me all sense of time had been lost; day, night, hours, minutes, meant nothing. I lay still and listened to the men screaming.
Fear cuts through us, and divides humanity into two sides: those who are paralysed by the terror they feel, and those who must act. I could not have stayed in that tent any more than I could have run away. I had to know, no matter if it cost me my sanity, my life, what was happening in that final cavern. I squeezed into the tunnel, and climbed through utter blackness, too terrified to use a torch, every inch taking an eternity.
A faint light beckoned me onwards, no more than a pinkish haze. As I grew closer it intensified into a red miasmic glow that threw grotesque shadows on the walls. As I moved into the mouth of the tunnel and looked upon a vivid, terrible tableau, I could make sense of only the smallest details: the spray of blood on the lantern, suspended above the pool; the gore that fell from it in slowed time, each droplet like the tick of a metronome to which played the music of madness; a man up to his chest in the water, beneath the flow of blood, his head flung back to catch it in his mouth. He brought his hands to his eyes and groped for the meat of his eye balls, clawing them out of their sockets and smashing them together, then rubbing the pulped remains over his cheeks as if lathering soap for a bath. I saw a group of men wrestling, grunting, writhing in a heap, biting each other, attempting to rip out throats, dismember, pull apart whatever they could find, to leave gouged, lumpen corpses.
And Friedrich – that naked, beautiful body of his, thin and straight and golden in that bloodied light – was locked in a standing embrace with a woman I had never seen before, spilling his essence into her with intense concentration, as she sunk her fingers into his chest, broke his ribs with such ease and reached beyond, taking his lungs and pulling them out, stretching them, so that they formed great veined and patterned wings, undulating in the air, spreading out from his coupling like a butterfly on the brink of first, trembling flight.
He came to fulfilment, an expression of blind delight I recognised, and then dropped to his knees and fell backwards. The wings fell with him, splattering the rocks and earth. His head moved; he lived, for a time.
I moved forward, intent on running to him, but the woman—the woman—
She looked at me.
She was very young, no more than sixteen, an Aphrodite with limpid eyes and a mass of long white hair that flowed over her thighs. With Friedrich’s blood glistening on her, she held out her hands to me, and I thought it was not a summons so much as a supplication. Did she ask for help? I shook my head, crouched low; my instinct for survival held me close. I felt the power of her, and yet she wore the expression of an innocent, even as the men screamed around her and ripped each other to pieces in her presence.
And then she changed. As I watched, she aged, to a woman in her thirties, a fuller body, plumping out into fecundity before my eyes, her breasts heavy, the line of her chin thickening. Her attention did not waver from me as she clapped her hands together, once, twice, three times, and the sound, like thunder, reverberated in the cave, so loud, so loud, that the remaining mutilated men dropped to their knees and covered their ears with their hands.
She lifted her eyebrows at me, as if to say: You see how it is? And she smiled. There was such boredom in that smile, a terrible, tired, mirthless expression. This meant nothing to her. Friedrich meant nothing. My fear underwent a sudden transformation into rage, vast and overwhelming.
I found myself shouting at her, shouting Friedrich’s name, what she had taken away from me, the things we had done, the love we had shared. I wanted his meaning restored to him. I came out of the tunnel and stood tall, not caring to survive in a world in which someone so fine could have been used as a momentary indulgence and then destroyed. I told the monster of that mountain – this is love. This is suffering, and this is life. This is a tale worth telling.
And she listened.
The men died in quiet groans, taking their time, and she listened to me with the intense eyes of a starving child. I talked on, my tongue freed by my terror, and I told her of the world outside, of the war, and before then, the men I had known and the beautiful items I had found in the earth and brought home to the quiet chill of England in autumn. I talked until my throat was hoarse, and my breath came in gasps, and still she listened. She never moved. The last man sounded his death rattle and she did not move, although she seemed smaller to me, her expression hardening, hardening, until I realised she was no longer flesh, but a statue, encrusted in my stories.
I stopped speaking, ran my swollen tongue over my lips, felt the desert dryness of my throat. The light from the suspended lantern had turned a pure, clear, yellow, and the bodies of the men, including Friedrich, were intact, without blemish.
I crawled away, back through the tunnel. I climbed into my tent, found my canteen of water, and took a long, long drink, until there was no water left. Then I fell asleep.
The women of the local village tell me they found me on the slopes of Mount Ida, but I do not remember getting there. They took care of me for many weeks until I returned to sanity. They were a soothing balm on a distraught mind, and I never learned their names, or even how to tell them apart. They made up a community without men. It came to me over time that the men were not away fighting for the resistance; they did not live on this mountain, for a man who got close to the monster would most assuredly be driven to insanity. I began to understand what the monster was, and it came to me that I had found the most unique and precious artefact in the world, perhaps the one I had been searching for all along.