“Can’t they have both?” Eunostos cried. “The forest and the city?” His cry was sulphur in the honied air. “Kora is lost. I think she will die without her children.”
“She has her friends, Eunostos. You and Zoe and the rest. Good friends. I would have brought her gladly to Knossos. But she would have died in the city, away from her tree. You know that better than I. Had there been no children, I would never have left her. But there are two, and both are royal. Do you really think I can send them back to a forest of wolves and goat-footed thieves and kidnapping queens?”
“Is that how you saw the forest? Is that all you saw?” It was at once an accusation and a lament.
“Not you, not you, Eunostos. I liked you from that first day when you wanted to heal my wounds. I never stopped liking you, even when I forbade you my house.”
“It’s true I love Kora. But I couldn’t have taken her from you. I would never have tried.”
“It wasn’t Kora I was afraid of losing to you.”
“Not Kora?”
“It was my children. My son, at least. In fact I have already lost him. Now I must do my best to win him back. To teach him to rule a kingdom. It was you I feared, Eunostos, because the longer he knew you the more impossible it would have been for me ever to have taken him from the forest. And that’s why he mustn’t go back with you.”
“But you can’t be afraid of me,” Eunostos protested. “I’m just a rough carpenter who stumbles over his own hooves.”
“Who is wild and yet gentle, free and yet bound by the bronze ties of love, and binding to those who meet him. There are two forests, Eunostos. I feared-a little-the forest of wolves and thieves. But yours-and you-struck terror to my heart. The first was a danger I knew how to fight. The second was a magic against which I had no defense except flight.”
“I didn’t mean to make you afraid. I hope Icarus loves me, but I never thought about taking him away from you, his own father. I never thought anyone would love me as much as they loved you. Kora couldn’t.”
“Even Kora returned to you at the last. In her heart, I mean. So you see I’m not really forsaking her. I’m leaving her with you.”
Aeacus was befuddling him with these strange compliments. Who could believe the Man? Lyre-tongued Aeacus, no doubt with another lie!
He turned to the king with a last desperate plea. “The Achaeans have a goddess, haven’t they, who was stolen by the lord of the Underworld. Not the kindly Griffin Judge, but a cruel tyrant called Hades. Her mother-whether she was the same as our Great Mother I don’t know-grieved for her and wandered over the world in search of her, and Zeus felt pity and returned the girl to the surface for half of every year.
“Even in the Country of the Beasts, we know you as a fair-minded king. You deliver justice to peasants as well as courtiers. What about Beasts? Our races were friendly, long ago. I don’t know what divided us. Reunite us now! Become our Zeus, great King. Let Kora have her children for half of every year. The Great Mother will thank you for it.”
Minos was slow to answer. He was not Aeacus. Words did not come glibly to his tongue. “But the goddess you speak of was stolen by a strange god. A father can hardly be accused of stealing his own children. These are my heirs, Eunostos. You see me enthroned in splendor. You’ve heard of my fleet which holds the Achaeans at bay. We are friendly with Egypt, unthreatened by decadent Babylon. My ships have sailed beyond the Misty Isles, and around that great dark island to the south. What you see and think and hear is the truth. For now. This cubit in time called now. It is true that I am great in wealth, powerful with ships. But power is no more constant than the rain. Inevitably there must come a drought. I must conjure the rain. I must fight to retain my power and leave it in fitting hands. My brother has spoken truly, though he was very wrong to wed your friend. Kora must suffer so that a great empire shall be justly ruled. Icarus and Thea must be taught to rule, you see, not to run wild and free in a forest as most of us would like to do. Do you think I want to sit on this throne and pretend to be a god, and condemn this man and praise that man, and order my ships into battle? No, Eunostos. I would much rather go hunting with you in your forest and drink beer with your friend Zoe and join Chiron on his travels. But I follow the will of the Goddess because she has marked me-both honored and cursed-to be a king.”
“But there are two heirs. Can’t I take one of them back to their mother? At least for a little while?”
“There are two of them now, but will both grow up to rule? The Great Mother sends death even to laughing Knossos. Pestilence comes with our returning ships; the winter wind blows cold from the north. I myself was stricken as a child. A demon of plague denied me the power to beget children. He might as easily have killed me. No, my son. Both children must remain in Knossos.”
This, then, was the ultimate anguish: that Minos was just. Eunostos knew that in the king’s place he would have delivered the same judgment.
But he could fight that judgment. His allies were hope and courage and, much to his surprise, a wiliness which would have done credit to a Bee queen.
“May I see the children to say good-bye?” How easy it was to lie for Kora’s sake! He did not even feel shame and no one appeared to notice what this hitherto guileless rustic had learned from the Cretans.
Aeacus’s smile darkened. “What good will it do, Eunostos? Icarus cries for you every day, as it is. If he sees you again, he will have to get used to losing you again.”
“At least I can tell their mother if they’re well. She thought they might sicken when taken from their tree.”
“She needn’t have been concerned. Chiron himself assured me that they could live without their tree, though of course he never suspected what I had in mind.”
“Yes, you may see them, Eunostos.” It was the king. It was a command.
Aeacus turned to him with a flush of anger. “My brother-”
Minos was quick to forestall him. “Eunostos has risked his life to bring these children back to their mother. The Great Mother, I think, would wish him a final visit with them. In our household shrine, we worship her son in the form of a bull. Eunostos is closer to divinity than you and I.”
“May I see them in your garden with the pool of silver fish?”
Aeacus forgot to be angry. “You remembered my telling you about it? And that was three years ago!”
“You played there as a boy. It sounded so beautiful that I wanted to see it. And I want to see the children out-of-doors, not under a roof. For a little it will be almost like the forest again.”
He waited beside the pool. The silver fish idled among conch shells and coral. Blue lotuses languished in the bright sun, like maidens weary from the heat who had waded into the pool. Palm trees imported from Libya, and oleanders tapering their long green leaves from clusters of white and pink blossoms, and grapevines climbing trellises against the wall, and a single blue monkey scampering among the flowers with the insolence of possession: here was Kora’s dream, Aeacus’s truth.
Aeacus walked into the garden carrying Icarus and leading Thea by the hand. There were no guards with him. There seemed no need for guards, since the wall was too high to climb. Thea withdrew her hand and boldly approached Eunostos. Out of the forest, she did not seem to fear him. Perhaps, he thought, she remembers that only for a little while I seemed to her a horned demon. Perhaps she remembers me, at the first and at the last, as one who loved her.
She did not hug him but she smiled with a wise little smile and touched his hand.