Cupid (15 page)

Venus motioned to the attendants. They opened the bags, and onto the floor, they dumped pile after pile of grains and seeds—wheat, barley, millet, lentils, beans, poppy, and vetch.

"Now," Venus ordered, "mix them all together!"

The attendants did so. When they finished, the pile had grown until it almost touched the domed ceiling.

"Your task, you piece of vermin, is to sort out the different kinds of grains and seeds and to put each in its own pile. Oh, yes. Have it done by the time the sun goes down. Now I have a wedding to attend." Venus went outside, got in her carriage, and flew off.

Psyche slumped to the floor. Why hadn't she been content with her life? Allowing people to stare at her had not been so awful, had it? What were a few moments of being looked at compared to the wrath of a goddess? She could
not do what Venus asked even if she lived a hundred years. And so, Psyche lay there sobbing.

It just so happened that an ant was making its way across the floor at that very moment. Something appeared in its path. To the ant, whatever it was would not be an obstacle. If he could not find a way around it, then he would go over. If it was too high to go over, he would find a way under.

However, when the ant got close to the object, he stopped. He stared. He had not seen anything so beautiful since the day he had seen a tiny portion of Psyche's big toe. He looked closer. Could it be? Could it? Oh, my Jupiter! It was! Psyche's big toe! This was Psyche's foot!

But before the ant could jump up and down and start shouting with joy, he heard sobbing. Quickly, he hurried up to Psyche's head.

"Oh, dear lady. What is making you weep?"

"The goddess Venus has commanded me to separate all the grains and seeds into separate piles according to their kind, and to be done by sunset. That is impossible!"

"How cruel the goddess is to you," the ant replied. "She is jealous of your beauty. Wipe your eyes and do not worry. What is impossible to a mortal is merely routine for ants."

Quickly, he called for all the ants in the area, and that was thousands. "Do you remember when I told you I had encountered the most beautiful creature in the world?"

All the ants agreed that they did.

"She needs our help. There is no telling what the goddess
Venus might do to her if she does not have this great mound of seeds and grains separated into their own piles by the time Sun goes to bed. Quickly, let us get to work!"

The ants swarmed over the huge mound. Grain by grain, seed by seed, they began carrying and sorting.

Although Sun had promised himself to stay out of the affairs of mortals, he could not let Psyche fail. He asked Night if she minded coming a little later. Night did not mind at all. Anything that was going to let her get a little more sleep was fine. So Sun delayed his going down until the ants had finished sorting the grains and seeds and putting them in piles of their own kind. Sun inspected each pile to make sure none of the ants had made a mistake and put a seed in a pile where it did not belong. But they were ants and would not have made a ridiculous mistake like that. Satisfied that all was as it should be, Sun resumed his journey downward.

It was evening when Venus returned. She was a little tipsy from having drunk too much champagne at the wedding. However, she was not too drunk to see that all the seeds and grains had been sorted into their proper piles.

"Who did you put a spell on to do this for you? Don't tell me! It doesn't matter. Tomorrow I will give you a task no one can do for you. For now, come with me! You will spend the night in my palace so I will know where you are!"

Psyche slept that night under the same roof as Cupid. She did not know this. Cupid, still lying on his bed, heard
his mother return. Someone was with her, someone to whom his mother spoke with more anger than he had ever heard from her. There was only one person with whom his mother could be that angry. For the first time since he had returned to his mother's house, Cupid sat up, his mind and body alert.

Could it be? Was Psyche there?

Psyche slept well that night, even if her bed was the cold dirt floor of a narrow room in the basement. She had not expected to sleep at all, but she had. Although she feared what Venus would ask her to do next, she was also relieved to no longer be wandering aimlessly looking for Cupid. Maybe he was here in his mother's house and would come to her rescue. But what need would a god as beautiful as Cupid have of her? However, she had felt his love and was carrying his child. That had to mean something to him.

The sound of footsteps interrupted her reverie. The door opened. A servant holding a candle beckoned for Psyche to follow her. When they reached the main floor, Psyche blinked her eyes against the brightness of the light streaming through the palace windows. The servant put Psyche in a small room where there was a large bowl of fruit.

"You are to eat," the servant said, and then left.

Psyche had just finished the last piece of fruit when the door opened and Venus walked in.

"I'm glad to see that you ate. I wouldn't want you to faint and deprive me of my vengeance. Come! I don't know who helped you sort the grains and seeds, but whoever it was won't be able to help you today. Follow me."

Venus took Psyche into the countryside. They walked until they came to a grove of trees on the banks of a stream.

"You see those trees?" Venus said, pointing.

Psyche nodded.

"If you look closely, you will see sheep with fleece of gold."

Psyche nodded again.

"Bring me some of the wool," Venus commanded, and then left.

That seemed easy enough, and that was the problem. Venus would not have given her an easy task. Psyche walked closer to the grove to get a better look at the sheep. Their fleece was like finely spun gold, but on their heads were massive horns. They also had long, curved teeth from which dripped a thick, clear liquid. It looked like the poison Psyche had seen her father's physician take from a deadly reptile once.

Psyche understood now how Venus was going to have her killed. When she went to take the fleece, the sheep would stab her with their sharp horns while others would bite her and flood her body with the poison from their long teeth. If, by some chance, Psyche did the impossible and got
fleece from the sheep, what would it matter? Tomorrow Venus would give her an even harder task. And if she succeeded at that one, there would be a task of greater difficulty the following day, and this would go on until one of the tasks resulted in her death.

"Why delay the inevitable?" she thought. If she killed herself, at least she could deny Venus the pleasure of bringing about her death.

Psyche looked at the river and thought about flinging herself in, then remembered the water's refusal to receive her before. But that was on Earth. This was Olympus. Perhaps this river would take pity on her.

As Psyche started toward the stream, Pan was at the far end of the meadow, cleaning his pipes. He saw Psyche, her head down and shoulders slumped, and he knew what she was going to do. He wanted to call out to her, but she was too far away. So he reached down and pulled from the ground a green reed like the ones of his pipes. He threw the reed as hard and far as he could. The reed landed in front of Psyche just as she reached the edge of the stream.

"Wait!" the reed said. "Please wait!"

Psyche stopped.

"This stream is sacred to the god Pan. He often sits beside it and listens to the melodies of the rushing water and then plays them on his pipes. If you drown yourself here, the only melodies the water will ever sing will be dirges and laments, and those will be the only melodies Pan will be able to play."

Psyche remembered how kind Pan had been to her and she remembered what he had said to her, and her self-pity vanished. She stepped back from the stream's edge.

"Thank you," the reed said. "Now listen carefully. The golden-fleeced sheep are very dangerous. They are most dangerous now, when the sun is shining on them. The heat makes them angry, and anyone who enters the grove will be gored to death by their horns, crushed by butts from their heads, or poisoned by their fangs. Wait until Sun begins his journey down from the top of the sky. The sheep, ex-haused by the heat and their anger, will fall asleep. Then you can enter the grove and pick all the fleece you need from the briars the sheep have brushed against."

Psyche did as the reed told her. That evening she presented Venus with a lap full of golden fleece.

The goddess sneered. "You obviously had the help of someone for this task, also. Well, your ability to get others to take risks for you exceeds what I imagined. Let's see how you fare with what I have in store for you tomorrow."

One of Venus's servants took Psyche back to the basement and locked her in for the night. Psyche sat on the dirt floor, her back against the stone wall. She thought about how Pan had come to her rescue again. Favonius had enlisted her help in dealing with her sisters. Could it be that the gods and nature itself did not want Venus to succeed? That was almost too much to hope for, but could it be? The thought filled with her with such joy that she laughed aloud.

In the room above, Cupid lay on his bed. For a moment he thought he heard laughter, but who would feel such happiness in the house of his mother?

The next morning, the servant came and again took Psyche up to the small room, and like the morning before, there was a bowl of fruit, which she devoured. The servant then took her to the back of the palace, where Venus waited, a crystal goblet in one hand.

"I hope you slept well," Venus greeted Psyche. "You are going to need every ounce of strength and all your wits for what I have planned today."

"I slept very well, Goddess."

Venus did not like that answer, but she said, "Good! I am glad! Now, see that mountain?" She pointed at a nearby peak. "On it there is a river of rushing white water, the river Styx. Take this crystal goblet and fill it with cold water from the river." She stopped and laughed. "However, the water must be taken from the middle of the river, at the place where the river comes out of the underground."

Psyche nodded and took the goblet from Venus. The goddess sneered, then turned and walked away, laughter extending behind her like the train of a gown.

Psyche stood for a moment, despair threatening to make her its own yet again. However, before it could do so
this time, Psyche remembered: only when she felt that she would have to accomplish a task alone did despair and self-pity overtake her. But she was not alone. And so she turned and started walking toward the mountain.

However, when Psyche reached the top of the mountain, she stared in disbelief. The river Styx began deep in the underworld and burst forth in a roaring torrent from a gaping hole in the mountain, which was guarded on both sides by dragons who never slept or blinked their eyes. And as the river tumbled and swirled and roiled down the rocky mountainside, it sang out: "Death! Death! Death! Be off! Be off!"

Unknown to Psyche and Venus, Jupiter had been watching. He was disappointed that Venus had allowed her anger to obliterate her common sense. It was as if she had married her soul to that of her son, and no mother should love her son in that way. While it was Cupid's task to free himself from his mother and marry his soul to Psyche's, someone had to keep Psyche alive until Cupid came to his senses.

"Aquila!" Jupiter called out.

The giant eagle, Jupiter's royal bird, heard his master's voice and flew down from his aerie, high on the highest mountains. Jupiter pointed to where Psyche stood on the bank of the river Styx, a crystal goblet in her hand. Aquila understood, for he, too, had been watching the drama between Venus and Psyche. If he was going to favor one over the other, it would be Psyche, because Cupid had
helped him when Jupiter wanted Ganymede brought to Olympus to be his cupbearer.

The great bird flew swiftly and snatched the crystal goblet from Psyche's hand. However, being Jupiter's bird did not mean accomplishing the task was going to be easy. The dragons saw the eagle coming toward them, and he saw them. Aquila flew high. The dragons, baring their fangs, stretched their long necks into the sky and struck at the eagle with their three-forked tongues. The royal eagle folded his wings tightly against his body and, like an arrow from the bow of Apollo, shot down to the place in the mountain where the river poured forth.

But just as he reached it, the river stopped and said, "Who comes to steal my water? Leave now before I rise up and drown you."

"The goddess Venus has sent me," the eagle said. "She is concocting a love potion that requires only the purest of water, and what water is purer than that of the river Styx?"

The river, flattered that Venus needed it, filled the goblet. By this time, the dragons had located Aquila, and just as they struck at him again, the great bird raised himself into the air and flew back to where Psyche stood on the shore, watching in awe.

Aquila gave the goblet to Psyche.

"Thank you!" she said.

"You're welcome," the eagle responded. "I am Aquila, Jupiter's bird."

"Jupiter!" Psyche exclaimed.

"Jupiter," Aquila repeated. "Do you understand?"

Psyche nodded, and the magnificent bird flew back to his aerie.

This time, when Psyche returned to the palace and handed Venus the goblet filled with water from the mouth of the river Styx, she looked the goddess in the eye and smiled.

"I keep underestimating your powers, Witch!" Venus screamed, beside herself with rage. "Such powers as you have should belong only to a deity. No mortal should have access to the powers you have stolen from somewhere. You are a danger to mortals and deities. Tomorrow you die!"

Psyche was returned to the cold, dark room in the basement. As she lay down to sleep on the cold dirt floor, she thought she heard weeping from the room above hers.

The story and I have been having a big argument. We are getting close to the end, and the story wants to hurry up and get there. I keep telling it that we will get to the end when we get there and not a minute sooner. Sometimes stories don't know the best way to tell themselves. That's especially true of some of the very old stories like this one. It has gotten used to being told one way, and I'm having a hard time getting the story to understand that people listen to stories differently than they did back in the year one hundred. People today are surrounded by stories. There are radio and television stations that do nothing but broadcast news, and what is news except stories? Then there are the stories people see in the movies and on television—love stories, funny stories, stories about murders, robberies, kid-nappings, and on and on. People today probably know more about stories than people did in the year one hundred, which is why I know the people listening to this story have been wondering, "What's up with Cupid? The dude just dropped out of the story."