“We can take him to my house,” he said.
“Mine is closer, Eunostos. But first I must clean his wounds.” She knelt beside him and touched damp moss to a cut on his shoulder. The relief was immediate, but whether from the moss or the administering hand, he could not be sure.
“And what shall I do?” asked the Minotaur boy, seemingly aggrieved at being replaced as the rescuer of this wounded stranger. Aeacus liked him.
“After he has rested,” she said, “you shall help me carry him to my house. We shall make a litter from sticks and vines and carry him as hunters carry a stag, though much more gently, of course.”
“What is your name?” Aeacus asked.
“I am Kora, the Dryad.”
“And where is your house?”
“In a tree. Where else?” she laughed.
Aeacus closed his eyes, assured of his rescue and unashamed of his helplessness, since there is nothing more welcome to helpful people than those who need to be helped. It was not long until the girl and the Minotaur boy had fashioned the litter and his body swayed to their gliding steps as they carried him into the forest, into the Country of the Beasts.
In spite of his wounds, he did not sigh.
CHAPTER IX
In Eunostos’s absence, I greeted his guests and tried to put them at ease. Here was Partridge, heading at once for the skin of fermented onion juice and avoiding the other guests with the zeal of one whose conversation was limited to “huh” and “can’t” and “don’t know.” Here was Bion, hovering at the door as though he were not sure of his right to mingle with the higher orders of Beast; after all, there were those who considered him a mere domestic. I took him at once to the largest table and soon he was clutching a loaf of wheaten bread between his forelegs and happily bobbing his head. And Moschus-surely I would have trouble with Moschus, who always arrived drunk and began his amorous advances with his salutations. Tonight he was drunker than usual and accompanied by an uninvited guest, no friend of Eunostos, a frowsy young Dryad of about fifty.
“There are more birds on the limb than one,” he smirked to me, proceeded to fling a large beerskin over his shoulder, and retired with his friend to the garden.
“Yes, cuckoos,” I called after him.
There were Centaur boys who clamored to see Eunostos’s workshop, though they could not climb his ladder and had to content themselves with peering into the shadows at the workbench, the tools, a chair without legs, the embryo of a table. There were Bears of Artemis who had to be coaxed out of corners with compliments on how artistically they had strung the black-eyed Susans, and-But why bore you with a list of the guests? Eunostos had innumerable friends; he had only excluded Panisci (except for Partridge) and Thriae.
But all the time I was worrying about Eunostos and waiting for him to return, and feeling that the Cretan could not have chosen a worse day in the year to invade the forest, even if he was wounded, and Chiron ought to exile him as soon as he had recovered his strength.
Just about dusk, Eunostos walked in the door as if he had forgotten it was his own wedding day, looking puzzled, troubled, and solitary.
But of course everyone hailed him as the happy bridegroom and in the next breath wanted to know about the Cretan. Some had glimpsed him but no one had dared to speak to him. Being a Man, he was presumed to be dangerous.
“Weren’t you scared, Eunostos?”
“Is it true he doesn’t have horns or hooves or fur or anything?”
“Did he soft-talk you and then try to slip a knife between your ribs?”
“He was badly hurt,” said Eunostos. “Kora took him to her house to nurse his wounds.” The guests remained quiet, waiting for details; waiting in vain.
“But the wedding,” I cried at last. “It’s time for us to go and summon the bride from her tree!”
“She said we were to go on with the feasting without her. Pretend it was a festival to the Great Mother or something. The wedding will have to wait a day or two. Otherwise, the Cretan may die.”
There was a babble of voices. No bride? No wedding? Kora nursing a Man?
“Shut up and don’t spoil the party,” Moschus whinnied from the garden. “When Kora’s ready, we’ll have another feast at my house.” (Moschus had never been known to give-or miss-a feast.)
At the first chance, I led Eunostos into the flower garden (Moschus and his friend were sprawled among the vegetables). He had a curious look about him. An old look in young eyes.
“What is he like, this Cretan?”
“A little fellow, but manly. There were wounds all over him but he never complained once. I liked him.”
“What did he look like, Eunostos?”
“Like a prince, I’d say. His loincloth was purple, with a silver clasp on the belt. And his face-it was somehow royal.”
“Eunostos, see to your guests, will you? I’ve drunk enough and talked enough for a year. My ankles are killing me.” I left him standing with his hand on Bion’s head.
But I did not return to my tree, I went to Kora’s tree. Myrrha was downstairs fondling the bridal robe, bright as a field of goldenrod, in which she had married her Centaur and which she had taken out of a cedar chest and freshened with myrrh for Kora. She started talking at once.
“I told the girl to go ahead and get married. That I would look after the young Man. But now, you would think she’s the only Dryad in the Country who knows how to treat a wound. And she even sent me down here! Said he needed to sleep and mustn’t be disturbed by female chatter. That from my own daughter.”
“Well, he’s going to hear a little female chatter now,” I said, charging up the stairs in spite of Myrrha’s protest.
He was lying on Kora’s couch, faintly smiling, eyes closed; sleeping comfortably but needing his sleep, from the look of his wounds. Still, they were obviously not going to kill him, and Myrrha, for all of her frivolity, knew the right remedies and could have been left to nurse him even at the price of missing her daughter’s wedding.
Kora was sitting on the floor beside the couch. She had not begun to dress for the wedding; she was wearing a simple brown tunic, caught at the waist with a sash of grapevine, and her hair for once needed a comb. She saw me and put a finger to her lips. I seized her hand and pulled her after me into the little hall at the head of the stairs. A single window, hardly large enough for a woodpecker to confuse with his nest, admitted a slender beam of moonlight.
“I’m not going to wake your precious friend,” I said, “but I am going to give you a piece of my mind. Such a thing to tell your groom! To have the wedding feast without you! If you don’t trust your mother to look after this interloper, what about me? I was mixing potions and simples long before you were born, and I have a lighter touch than you might suppose from the size of my hands. You can still join Eunostos and have the wedding.”
“No.” That was all. Silent Kora.
“No what? I think you had better qualify that answer.”
“I found him, Zoe. I brought him home. He’s my responsibility.”
“I thought we were talking about Eunostos. As for your Cretan, nonsense. Partridge found him first anyway. Does that make him Partridge’s responsibility? He’s lucky to find anyone to look after him since he broke the covenant.”
“But I called him here.”
I felt as if the fire in my brazier had died on a bleak winter night. “You mean-”
“In one of the dreams I told you about, there was a young Cretan. I tried to call out to him. I didn’t think he heard. But he did. And came. And when he lay wounded in the forest, he called to me.”
“Did he say that?”
“He doesn’t need to say it.”
I seized her shoulders and shook her as if she were a naughty child who had robbed a swallow’s nest. “You’d better think what you’re going to tell Eunostos.”