Vergil felt rather somewhat the same surprise as once, when so very young a man as scarcely to be called a man at all, after even so some long time (to him, then, some long time) of not having seen a certain sight, a certain she had bared her breast to him: a gesture in the great game between the sexes (“The silly game,” who had said that? certain it was not that certain she, he’d instantly bethought him), but where he’d thought to have seen something like the size and shape and color of one-half the small fruit of the rose-mulberry, he saw instead something like an omelette made from the egg of a damned odd bird. And the voice of Emmalina murmured at his ear-well, “Now you know what a woman’s nipple looks like.” And what am I supposed to do about it? was his thought. Emmalina solved the mystery, said to the servant, unseen by him till then, “Give me the child.”
The satyrs had sometimes been beset by children of men (though certainly and surely not by any children of the Lotophages, and indeed they left the one the other entirely alone: why did the satyrs never drink of the liquid of the Scarlet Fig nor eat of its fruit? because it reminded them of honey they conceited it was of honey-taste, a laithly taste to them. The satyrs were always enemy to the bee.) … beset by children of men, who hooted and cast stones. In saying, “children of men,” this is metaphor as used by the ever-licensed poet; one does not mean boys and girls. The crew of foreign ships is meant, or some of the crew; crews very seldom being recruited from aristocrates or philosophes. Nor would one suppose them to be the crews of ships of Tartis: the Tartis-system, though in decay, would from ancient usage and experience well know better than to antagonize any on any shore or coast. Men off casually-come-thither ships of the less dulcet ports of empery had sometimes hooted and cast stones. Did thee and me ask them why, the whores’ gets, they would stone thee and me. The satyrs were perhaps not very deep of apprehension, yet perhaps they were … Beset, they fled to their homes in the rocks, to eat of their harsh, dull diet: the prickly eringion, for example, which grows only on salt sea-sand or on rugged, stoney waste and is by mankind used only as antidote for deadly nightshade; such things as those they ate.
But of the soothing Scarlet Fig, ate they never, not.
Folk thought that satyrs were funny. It was common and frequent at festivals for some to be got up as satyrs — the horns all wrong and the ears all wrong — mincing along or conveyed along in wagon, wearing protrusive artifacts fashioned of wood and leather; and folk would laugh, for folk thought that satyrs were funny. But they were not funny. Word could not convey their sometime brutal malignity.
There were no happy satyrs.
Often he had seen them eating samphire, raw, on crag-faces where, he might have, moments earlier, have made his oath, even the chamois and the rock-tibbu dared not adventure; once, in such a place, just, he had seen them copulating, fast and bloody and fierce. Twice he had encountered a set of them mumbling off the splintered ground handfulls of windfalls of some small stone-fruit which lay in ragged heaps smelling as sour as an unwashed rustic wine-press; two simply moved away as even sheep would move away; old Teter remained squatting and munching; and one had stamped off, making that noise deep in his chest; and one, before leaving, had looked at him — for a swift flash of time like a glint off a shard of glass — had looked into his face, and spat the small fruit-stone at his, the man’s chest. Perhaps — ah no! the first time the satyr had spet the stone on the man’s back; it was the second time that one spat it almost in his face, but hit his chest: the spittle had left a stain, a smear. Samphire and stone-fruit often had he seen them eat … harsh eryngion carobs, often; pod and all … and the fleshy leaves of some thick succulent, and stalks of giant fennel and mallows in the marsh, he had seen them eat.
He had seen them crushing between their inhuman teeth the seeds and stalks of the common asphodella: a lily, edible, but just quite barely.
One need be very well-fed indeed to admire a mead of golden asphodel indeed from an æsthetic viewpoint alone, and from as far away as possible. It damned well stank, for one thing. Its seeds were hard to gather and hard to grind, for another. Hard-handed, hard-hearted masters would feed the mealy mush of asphodella to their slaves; wild men and satyrs would crunch it and munch it, seeds, stalks, and all. It was, in short, well-suited to feed the common ghosts in hell, whilst the shades of kings and queens and heroes dined off golden apples in The Islands of the Blessed; far, far beyond the twain Pillars of Melcarth or Hercul or Atlas (take your pick), nigh unto the inhumanely wide and wild waters of the great dark grey and green Atlantis Sea, there where Melcarth bathed. So The Matter sayeth. And more, The Matter sayeth not.
Asphodel the man knew, samphire, small stone-fruit he knew, eryngion and carobs, succulents and fennel and mallows of the marsh he knew: and he knew the satyrs ate them for their meat.
What else did the satyrs eat?
What else.
Once, abruptly and terrifyingly, he had turned a corner of some natural buttress below the cliffs, and there squatted a band or sept of them: all stained with blood, they were eating … well, one of them was eating … the still-green content of a goat-kid’s maw. And the rest of them were eating the goat-kid. There was of course, no fire.
After that, he made him careful where he walked. And in what mind and manner. By now he was quite sure that the insolence of the satyrs towards him was daily growing; they must not have been used to the near-presence of a man so much, and it hostiled them. By now he was sure in particular of one such sullen satyr in particular, a shaggy, scarred bull-buck with half-coil horns turning sharply aside which did not quite match; and he was sure, too, of the thick, thick nails upon the creature’s so-odd hands or paws (though in no manner odd for a satyr) thick, thick spotted yellow-brown nails they were, like … in a way … the nails upon the toes of some rough country man of the human folk. And he was sure, too, of the bull-buck’s member: in full view, one could hardly call it his privy member: set, like those of all bull-buck satyrs, at a prominent angle forward and upward; this phallus, then, though not in full truth ithyphallic (those of the younger bucks, dark-glans half-slid forward had half-protruding from the hoodskin more like those of some men, like so many men, like so many acorns: and it seemed to him, to this man, that he himself for long had felt assured that this was why the oak was most sacred of sacral trees, in that it sembled, this generative part of this tree, this acorn, that same part of man himself) — and, he felt, this man, that he felt, this man, he felt he knew his name was Vergil (Vergilius M., carved thin and deep into the small wooden spoon still in the pouch he still had been able to keep with him), and this feeling was a now fairly new one, for, living among the satyrs, almost, and living much upon their own wild fresh food (he had not eaten any flesh-meat-food): and no more upon the sweet and yielding fruit and its liquid juices used of the island men and women, he felt, too, that his mind was clearer now than foretime.
Clearer now than foretime, but not at all by all means clear, “foretime” itself was not clear; uncertainties and fears swirled about him in more ways than that now. So much more often, rocks fell upon him: stones, then, they had not gotten to rocks; stones clinked and clicked and clattered, rather like the clattering and clicking of the satyr hooves. Stones bouncing off the hills and clifts and clephts upon him, not hurled (it seemed), merely they had been scruffed and kicked down upon him; not by an accident had their compact turds — good that they were compact! — had their dungins been thrown … not yet … could the satyrs throw things, actually? one did not know … of much other was he uncertain, also fearful, and it was the uncertain nature of his fears, and the fearfulness of his uncertainties which lunged and rippled in his mind and heart.