The White Bull (19 page)

It must have been a very peculiar conversation that the two of us, that god and I, enjoyed that day. At one point, as I remember, Dionysus expressed the wish that I might someday fashion a pair of wings for him. Of course I assured my powerful companion that I would, and at the time I undoubtedly meant it. And when he heard me mention my skill in plumbing, he spoke wistfully on that topic as well. He hoped, he said, to have a truly magnificent palace of his own one day, and it would be wonderful if he could have plumbing in it too. Thus are the gods—at least the ones that I have met—subject to the same indignities as the rest of us.

The personal wings would be useful, Dionysus told me, because his own flying machine had lately been giving him trouble. To begin with, some months ago, it had always carried him immediately to the exact place where he wanted to go, but lately it had shown signs of becoming unreliable. And there was no longer anyone on Thera capable of repairing the flying chariot for him, restoring its full proper magic. None of the Bull-people were any longer on that island. And besides, my kind of man-made wings just looked like more fun.

I drained my water-cup with delight, as if indeed it had contained some nectar of the gods.

None of the Bull-people
. My companion had spoken those words so calmly that at first I almost missed them. Besides, I was too dazed by the Dionysian powers employed to make me think of nothing but debauchery to take much conscious note of exactly what he said. But I had certainly heard those words, and I was not going to forget them.
None of the Bull-people
. Then the White Bull had not lied to me, on that point anyway; there were certainly more of the Bull's race in the world.

As Dionysus and I continued our conversation, some demon of foolishness urged me to volunteer to repair this young god's flying machine for him—I wanted to do so mainly because I was so curious about the strange device that I wanted to examine it closely. But fortunately I realized there was a strong possibility that my skills would prove inadequate to the task; and so I bit my tongue and with some effort remained silent.

At about this time Dionysus said: "There are still those living on Thera who want me to come back there. And stay."

"Those? Do you speak of other gods, Divine Leader?"

"Gods? What are gods?" It was as if he really wanted an answer to the question, though he did not really expect to get one. And for the moment he seemed scarcely more than human.

Then the moment passed. "No, the gods are all gone from that island," Dionysus told me, almost frowning. Then he brightened quickly. "Thera is the place, my friend," he said. "Where the real gods once decided to make their home�and where they proved not to be so godlike after all." And Dionysus laughed, enjoying some private joke.

I puzzled over everything he said, trying to understand it. Meanwhile about a dozen more women had begun to emerge from the forest, singly and in couples, and to gather around us. These women were all of them healthier and better-looking than Ariadne's ill-favored attendants, and to my vision, distorted now by the influence of Dionysus, they appeared as nothing less than visions of divine beauty. They bore slings and bows, the weapons of hunters, and most of them were carrying fresh-killed game. It was as if these women had sensed the presence of their master here; or, more likely, they had simply observed the arrival of his flying machine, and were gathering from the surrounding woods, coming to adore their god. These newcomers cast looks that would have frightened me under ordinary circumstances; even under the influence of the god as I was, I found them vaguely disturbing. But none of those women would do anything to molest a man who was engaged in such friendly conversation with their master.

Prostrating themselves before Dionysus, they offered him their fowls and rabbits. He accepted these gifts in a kindly, indolent way, and indicated that it was time for someone to get busy cooking.

Now one of the older women was beating on a drum, and another was blowing on the pipes of Pan. Additional female voices were singing, chanting, in the distance, coming closer. Somehow I had seated myself on a patch of grass, and had become an audience; and now one of the two girls who had arrived in the magical chariot of Dionysus had cast aside her last scraps of clothing, and was moving before me in an abandoned dance. The young dancer smiled at me invitingly. There seemed to be nothing in the whole world beyond the craving of my flesh, and when she threw herself down on the grass beside me, I without thinking enfolded her in my arms and wings. Around us the music continued, amid screams of laughter.

Some little time later I disentangled myself from the dancer, who immediately arose to dance again. I noticed now that the smell of food was beginning to arise from cookfires. And when I looked toward Dionysus, I saw with mixed feelings that this god was obviously beginning to overindulge in wine. His laughter was louder than before; his eyes looked glazed, and he swayed lightly upon his Arcadian throne of grass and pillows.

Ariadne kept repeatedly refilling her master's golden cup, and his control over the minds and souls of others was starting to become erratic. By now I had dimly realized that I too had been brought at least partially under that control. There were moments of confusion, when fear tried to establish itself in my mind, and could not; and then I would wonder what I was doing in this strange glade, and why I should feel such overwhelming excitement and devotion whenever I looked at the young god.

The women around me were affected even more intensely, to the point of madness. From time to time one of them would suddenly turn aside from her cooking, or her more personal service to her lord, and weep.

But for the most part we all existed in an atmosphere of pleasure and excitement. No one but myself was even faintly shocked when at last Ariadne, Princess of Crete, lost all shame and in the presence of all threw herself wantonly upon her young lord, moaning and wrapping all her limbs around him. Grinning, he rolled over on his couch and began to try to know her; but it appeared that the excess of wine he had drunk, or his earlier frolicking with one of his handmaidens, might prevent his achieving what he wanted now.

Turning my gaze away from this embarrassing sight, I stared at the other women. A number of them were beginning to embrace each other in an unnatural way.

The realization struck me belatedly that, besides the god himself, I was the only male in sight. Also some vague echo of the warnings I had received from the lowland people now awoke in my memory: the most terrible of the rites attributed to these groups of Dionysian worshippers required a male victim.

By now all of the women had joined the orgy, in one way or another, and there was no one left to serve as cupbearer. The god, when he had finished with Ariadne for the moment—or else had temporarily abandoned his attempt—lurched to his feet and stumbled behind the hut, where, as he seemed to know, the supply of red wine, real wine, was kept concealed. I heard the sound of divine retching; then a moment later the god reappeared, raising to his lips a rare glass flask, in the apparent act of polishing off the last of the good stuff.

I had long since dropped my own poor, cracked cup and had seen no reason to pick it up again.

For a few moments the idea of getting away had labored to establish itself in my mind, but for the time being that thought was gone again. My mind struggled to attain coherence. My mood, under the varying influence of the god's power, was changing with the swiftness of a summer storm at sea.

Two drums were sounding now, along with a stringed instrument and the ancient pipes of Pan.

The dancing girl was back before me, and had once again thrown herself down in the grass where she lay moaning lustfully. She was trying to entice me to lie with her again. But instead, with a growing sense of terrible danger, I staggered to my feet. Slowly and with a feeling of growing horror I realized that when I had lain with the woman earlier I had taken off my wings, being frantic to free my arms for other matters. And now the pinions were missing.

I questioned the dancing girl, and shook her as she lay moaning in the grass, but she only laughed, and clutched at my arms and refused to let me go. Desperately I struggled free, the skin of my arms torn by her nails. As in a nightmare, I ran in circles, searching.

Fortunately for me, the other women were all distracted by their own sensations. The god, as powerfully affected by drink as any mere mortal might have been, had now begun to sing; Dionysus had a truly inferior voice, as I look back on it, yet at the time, of course, I thought it of surpassing beauty. Several times I paused in my search for the wings, forgetting the deadly peril in which I stood, to listen to the song.

The song was interrupted, began again, broke off once more. And as Dionysus nodded in the midst of song, with his own consciousness swaying in its sovereignty over his body, so did his control over me waver also. I suppose that the women, too, may have been released at this time, but as I remember nothing in their behavior changed. It may have been that they had been so long and so willingly his slaves, and were now so caught up in their orgy, that no effect of freedom was apparent in them.

Unless it were that cruelty now began to take a place in the festivities. Or perhaps it was only when my mind grew relatively clear that I began to notice it. I saw two of the women pinning down a third, burning her deliberately with a hot brand from a cooking-fire—and as the screams of pain and laughter of this trio went up into the sunny sky I felt an urgent need to get away while I was still able to do so. But I could not find my wings.

At last I found them. The young dancer had recovered them from somewhere, and was trying to put them on her own shoulders, meaning, I suppose, to dance in them. But it was impossible for her to put them on, for in her ignorance she had them reversed right to left. I had to struggle briefly with her to get my wings away, but when I had them in my hands again, to my unspeakable relief they appeared to be essentially undamaged.

Immediately I began to edge my Way toward the trees, carrying my wings rolled up under my arm. I thought I now had a better understanding of what might have happened to Theseus and Phaedra, if they had left the island only after the arrival of Dionysus. I understood now that if this god, in full possession of his faculties, had ordered them to leave, refusal would have been impossible, even for a hero. And in the circumstances, if Ariadne were already under the god's spell, it would have been impossible to persuade her to come with them.

I was still edging my way toward the trees when at last Dionysus drained the last of the red wine from the last glass flask, and passed out completely. He fell unconscious to the turf, his handsome face raised to the sky in blank stupidity.

Moments later the Princess Ariadne, lost in her own trance of ecstasy, her clothing torn and in a shameful state of disarray, sprawled unconscious beside him. But the frenzy that had been growing among the other women showed no signs of diminishing, and they continued their orgy, complete with pounding music. The screams of the victim who had been selected for burning torture went up and up. The celebration gave promise of degenerating rapidly into something truly horrible.

As for myself, I had to struggle at every step to somehow retain enough wit to recall the warnings given me by the native men below, warnings that no longer sounded at all foolish or exaggerated. The revel had not yet attained its climax. Someone else was going to be required as the next victim, and I managed to realize how eminently I, as a man and an outsider, met the qualifications.

The dancer, her face bloodied where I had struck her to get the wings away, still beckoned with her arms and body to get me to return. But step by step I moved away.

With a total disregard for the glory a true hero might have gained by enduring these circumstances and somehow overcoming them, I sneaked off into the woods, while the women who were still conscious were momentarily engaged in trying to arouse their master. And from the rocky crag where I had landed I sprang into the air and climbed on my wings to safety.

Flying once more around the low hills, retracing my aerial course back down to the harbor, I lurched through the air somewhat unsteadily, feeling the aftereffects of my experience, as much or more than if I had been drinking real wine.

Topping the last hill, I knew a shock of horror at seeing that the Phoenician ship and its crew were gone from the harbor.

But by this time fear, and the rush of cool sea air, had restored me almost to sobriety. In a moment more I was able to get a grip on myself, and realized that the absence of the ship presented no insuperable problem to an active man with wings. It was the work of only a few minutes to fly high enough to see where they had gone, and of only a few minutes more to overtake them, cruising as they were a couple of stadia offshore. I assumed that Kena'ani had felt confident that I would be able to rejoin them at sea, if I had survived at all.

I landed on the trader's deck—much to my friend's delight, and to the consternation of his crew, none of whom had ever before seen me fly. Immediately I began to give my friend an explanation—it must have been somewhat incoherent—of what I had discovered on the island.

But I had not been able to proceed very far with my account before we were interrupted by a cry from a man in the stern.

Turning, we saw that a pirate ship had emerged from concealment amid a cluster of tiny islets nearby. Her prow was set in our direction, and she was quickly overtaking us.

The ship had appeared with great suddenness, popping out of concealment amid a cluster of brush-grown islets so closely grouped that they might have been designed as a place of ambush. She had her white sail already hoisted and was rapidly overhauling us. No one aboard our vessel had any doubt that our pursuer was a pirate�who else would chase a Phoenician merchant in such a fashion? The men on the stranger's deck, already almost within the range of voice, were yelling something to us across the water, but with the wind and the crash of waves against our prow, we could not hear. In any case it could hardly be anything but a demand for surrender. Squinting into the sun, I was able to make out that the lines of our pursuer's hull, and of her sail, strongly resembled those of an Athenian warship. In the circumstances I did not find that reassuring.