She awoke to find him gone, and the children with him.
Luckily I found her before she had left her tree. I had been concerned about the consequences of her visit to Eunostos, though I had not anticipated quite so dire and sudden an outcome.
“It’s a long way to Knossos,” she said, “and I won’t be able to carry much. A little food: a flask of wine and a cheese. And acorns to last me for a week.” She had not been crying; she had not taken time for tears. She was not even angry. She was lost.
“It will take you three solid days to reach Knossos. You’ll never find your children and get back to your tree alive!”
“I may overtake them on the way. He’s burdened with the children.”
“And if you do, how can you stop him?”
“I can’t stop him but I can ask him to leave my children. Let him go, if he must, but leave my children.”
“He won’t listen to you. I won’t let you go, Kora.”
“You can easily stop me,” she said. “You have the strength. But you will have to kill me. Will you do that, Zoe?”
I looked into her face and saw, for the first time, the utter implacability of a Dryad who had remained a girl too long and become a woman too quickly and meant what she said. I saw an unreasoning courage which, if rebuffed, might become madness.
“I’m going to get Eunostos,” I said. “Wait for me till I bring him back. You can surely do that much for me. Together we’ll think what to do.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Ankles be damned,” I swore, and ran like Artemis at the hunt-ran all the way to Eunostos’s trunk and fell in a heap at his gate.
“Aeacus has taken the children.”
“Where?” It was his only question. He did not seem surprised, but anguish lashed him like the branch of a fir tree. I expected him to scream.
“Toward Knossos,” I said. “Go after her. I’ll follow when I get my wind back.”
I overtook them where the forest opens onto the field. At least Eunostos had held her until my arrival, but she was even now breaking free of him, a tall, resolute figure encumbered only with a wicker basket and striding toward the Country of Men.
“Listen,” I shouted after her. “How do you think you can get to Knossos? You’ve never been out of the forest!” She paused until I caught up with her. She had no words for me, but I had made her think. “Do you know what the Cretan rustics say of Beasts? They fear and despise us. They frighten naughty children with stories about our cannibalism. They would capture or kill you.”
Her face was that of a bewildered little girl. “I could hide my ears and hair,” she protested. “Dirty my cheeks and pass for a peasant going to market.”
“And die before you found your children. How long do you think you can live away from your tree?”
“But I’m not bound to a tree,” cried Eunostos. “I can go anywhere. I’ll get your children for you, Kora!”
“And how are you going to disguise yourself short of a funeral shroud? Horns on one end and hooves on the other! You sound like Partridge.”
“I don’t need a disguise. One good bellow will send those rustics scurrying like Bear Girls chased by a bear.”
“And if you get to Knossos?”
“The Cretans aren’t monsters. Not the city folk, anyway. The king is said to be a fair-minded Man. I’ll ask him to make Aeacus return the children.”
“And you think he’ll listen to you? His own brother’s children, heirs to the throne?”
“I don’t know. At least he might let them spend half the year with Kora. But we have to do something, don’t we?”
“Yes, we do. We’ll go together, Eunostos, you and I. I’ll be the peasant, not Kora, and I’ll find a way to smuggle you into the city. You’re right, the king is fair. He will probably refuse you but I don’t think he will harm you. If he does refuse, then it will be my turn to act. I won’t ask, I will steal back what has been stolen.”
“But they’re my children,” Kora cried. “You’re making plans as if I didn’t exist!”
“Kora,” I reminded her. “I am approximately seventeen times your age. I can stay away from my tree a good two weeks without so much as getting a headache. What is more, I am something of a traveler. I have been to the coast with Achaeans and I took a short voyage on one of their ships. Once, I even dyed my hair with umber from the banks of the Beaver Lake, combed it over my ears, and went to Knossos with a Cretan sailor who had taken my fancy. For a solid week, he showed me around the city-taverns, bull ring, theater, palace, everything. I was downright faint before I got back to my tree, but I didn’t regret a minute. There is no more to be said if you want your children back. Swallow your pride and turn their rescue over to experts.”
Perhaps it was wicked of me to feel a strange exhilaration even while Kora was grieving for her lost children and I sincerely and deeply felt her loss. But then I never claimed to be the Great Mother. I was nothing but a free-living Dryad who loved an adventure, amorous or martial. And loved Eunostos.
And so I prepared for my greatest adventure with my greatest friend.
CHAPTER XIII
Most of the Beasts had gathered at the edge of the forest to watch my departure. Chiron and his Centaurs, wives as well as husbands, had arrived en masse, with their beloved pigs hovering between their hooves; and the Bears of Artemis, forgetting their shyness, scurried around me in a frenzy of excitement and wanted me to add some berries, some honey, some catnip, to the already laden pouch suspended from my sash. There were others too: some thirty or more Dryads, who took turns trying to reassure Kora that Icarus and Thea, having a human father, would not suffer even if separated indefinitely from their tree; the better behaved Panisci, among them Partridge, who was close to tears because Eunostos was going to the Wicked City without him; the Bee Queen Amber, who had made a special contribution to my pouch; and of course Eunostos, flanked by his faithful Bion and three other Telchins. Phlebas and his band were conspicuously absent, and his special Girl, chomping insolently on a weed, had been heard to say that she hoped the children-spoiled things-were never recovered; it would serve them right to be eaten by the Knossians.
As for myself, I had stayed in my tree all night to absorb its vitalizing powers, which now permeated my body like a glow of wine, and to make my plans and preparations. I could not have slept even if I had taken the time.
Now I was ready. It was not a small thing to leave the Country of the Beasts. I had left in the past only when accompanied by one of my lovers and returned with depleted energy, even if enriched experience. It was not a small thing to leave my oak. There were wispy little oaks in the world of Cretans but they were not Dryad trees and who could say what small sustenance I might draw from them?
Kora separated herself from the band of Dryads and threw her arms around me. Her eyes were moist but she did not allow the tears to fall down her cheeks.
“It seems I’m one of those women to whom things happen. You’re one who makes things happen. Find my children for me, Zoe.” She looked incredibly pale and young; she was both the devoted mother, inseparable from hearth and loom, and the dreamer of the early days, though now bereft of her dream. The sight of her briefly sobered me from the intoxication of the adventure.
“I will, Kora,” I swore. “By the Great Mother’s breast, I will.” Confidence returned to me, and I felt that there was nothing in the forest or in the city which I could not accomplish, except become a fine, proper lady (or be loved by the one dearest to me).
Eunostos said nothing. There was nothing he needed to say. His smile said: “You and I, Aunt Zoe, who can stop us? Not those puny Cretans.” He planned to follow and overtake me that very night.