The Dolphin Rider (11 page)

So as soon as dusk began to fill the room, she took a lamp, trimmed the wick, and poured in the oil. Then she lit the lamp, and hid it in a niche of the wall, where its light could not be seen.

Late that night, when her husband had fallen asleep, Psyche crept out of bed and took the lamp out of its hiding place. She tiptoed back to where he slept and held the light over him. There in the dim wavering glow she saw a god sleeping. It was Cupid himself, the archer of love, youngest and most beautiful of the gods. He wore a quiver of golden darts even as he slept. Her heart sang at the sight of his beauty. She leaned over to kiss his face, still holding the lamp, and a drop of hot oil fell on his bare shoulder.

He started up and seized the lamp, dousing its light. Psyche reached for him, but she felt him push her away. She heard his voice saying:

“Wretched girl, you are not ready to accept love. Yes, I am love itself, and I cannot live where I am not trusted. Farewell, Psyche.”

The voice was gone. Psyche rushed into the courtyard, calling after him, calling, “Husband! Husband!” She heard a dry crackling sound, and when she looked back the castle was gone too. The courtyard was gone. Everything was gone. Psyche stood among weeds and brambles. All the good things that had belonged to her had vanished with her love.

From that night on, she roamed the woods, searching. And some say she still searches the woods and the dark places. Some say that Venus, the goddess of love, turned her into an owl who sees best in the dark, and cries, “Who…? Who…?”

Others say she was turned into a bat that haunts old ruins and sees only by night.

Others say that Cupid forgave her, finally. That he came back for her, and took her up to Mount Olympus. It is Psyche's special task, they say, to undo the mischief done to a marriage by the families of the bride and groom. When they visit, and say, “This, this, this…that, that, that… better look for yourself…seeing's believing, seeing's believing,” then Psyche calls the West Wind who whisks the in-laws away — and she herself, invisible, whispers to the bride and groom that only those who love know the secret of love, that believing is seeing.

The Man Who Overcame Death

Orpheus was a young poet with the most beautiful singing voice in the memory of man or god. He had been taught to play the lyre by Apollo, god of music, and there were those who said that the pupil played better than the teacher.

Orpheus wrote his own songs, both words and music. The fishermen used to coax him to go sailing with them, for the fish would come up from the depths of the sea to hear him. They would sit on their tails and listen to him play, and so they became easy for the fishermen to catch. But they were not always caught, for as soon as Orpheus began to play, the fishermen forgot all about their nets. They sat on deck and listened, their mouths open — just like the fish. And when Orpheus had finished, the fish dived, the fishermen awoke, and all was as before.

When Orpheus played in the fields, animals followed him — sheep and cows and goats. Not only the tame animals, but the wild ones too — the shy deer, and wolves and bears. They all followed him. They streamed across the fields, so busy listening that the bears and wolves did not think of eating the sheep until the music had stopped, and it was too late. Then they went off, growling to themselves about the chance they had missed.

The older he grew, the more beautifully Orpheus played. Soon not only animals but trees followed him as he walked. They wrenched themselves out of the earth and hobbled after him on their twisted roots. Where Orpheus played you can still see circles of trees that stood listening.

People followed him too, as he strolled about playing and singing. Men and women, boys and girls — especially girls. But as time passed and faces changed, Orpheus noticed that one face was always there. It was always there in front, listening when he played. The girl not only came to listen when he played for people, she also appeared among the animals and trees that followed him as he played. Finally he knew that wherever he might be, wherever he might strike up his lyre and raise his voice in song — whether among people, or animals, or trees and rocks — she would be there, very slender and still, with huge dark eyes and long black hair and a face like a rose.

One day Orpheus took her aside and spoke to her. Her name was Eurydice. She said she wanted to do nothing but be where he was, always. She said she knew she could not hope for him to love her, but that would not stop her from following him and serving him in any way she could.

Now this is the kind of thing any man likes to hear in any age, particularly a poet. And although Orpheus was admired by many women and could have had his choice, he decided that he must have Eurydice. And so he married her.

They lived happily, very happily, for a year and a day. They lived in a little house near the river in a grove of trees, and they were so happy that they rarely left home. People began to wonder why Orpheus was never seen about, why his wonderful lyre was never heard. They began to gossip, as people do. Some said Orpheus was dead, killed by the jealous Apollo for playing so well. Others said he had married a river nymph, and lived now at the bottom of the river, coming up only at dawn to blow tunes upon the reeds that grew thickly near the shore. Still others said that he had married dangerously, that he lived with a sorceress, who made herself so beautiful that Orpheus was chained to her side, and would not leave her even for a moment.

It was this last rumor that people chose to believe. Among them was a stranger, a young prince of Athens, who was a mighty hunter. The prince decided that he must see this beautiful enchantress, and stationed himself in a grove of trees to watch the house. At last he saw a girl come out of the house and make her way through the trees and down the path to the river. He followed. When he got close enough to see how beautiful she was, he hurtled toward her, crashing like a wild boar through the trees. Eurydice looked up, and saw a stranger charging toward her. Swiftly she ran toward the house, but she could hear the stranger close behind her. She doubled back toward the river and ran. Heedless of where she was going, she stepped full on a nest of coiled and sleeping snakes. They awoke immediately and bit her leg in so many places that she was dead before she fell. The prince, rushing up, found her lying in the reeds.

He left her body where he found it. There it lay until Orpheus, looking for her, came at dusk and saw her glimmering whitely like a fallen birch. By this time, Mercury had come and gone, taking her soul with him to the land of the dead, called Tartarus. Orpheus stood looking down at Eurydice. He did not weep. He touched a string of his lyre once, and it sobbed. He did not touch it again. He kept looking at his dead wife. She was pale and thin, her hair was tangled, her legs streaked with mud. She seemed so childlike. She did not belong dead. He would have to correct this. He turned abruptly, and set off across the field.

He entered Tartarus, the place of the dead, at the nearest point, a secret cave in the mountains. Orpheus walked through a cold mist until he came to the River Styx. He saw a horde of ghosts waiting there to be ferried across. But he could not find Eurydice. The ferry came back and put out its plank. The ghosts went on board, each one reaching under his tongue for the penny to pay the fare. But the ferryman, huge and swarthy and scowling, stopped Orpheus when he tried to embark.

“Stand off!” he cried. “Only the dead go here.”

Orpheus touched his lyre and began to sing about streams running in the sunlight, and how good the river smells in the morning when you are young, and about the sound of oars dipping.

The old ferryman felt himself carried back to his youth — to the time before he had been taken by Hades and put to work on the black river. He was so lost in memory that the oar fell from his hand. He stood dazed, tears streaming down his face, and Orpheus took up the oar and rowed across.

The ghosts filed off the ferry and through the gates of death. Orpheus followed them until he heard a hideous growling. An enormous dog with three heads, each one uglier than the next, was stalking toward him, slavering and snarling. It was the savage three-headed dog, Cerberus, who guarded the gates.

Orpheus unslung his lyre and played a hunting song. In it could be heard the faint far yapping of happy young hounds finding a fresh trail — dogs with one graceful head in the middle where it should be. He sang of dogs that are free to run through the light and shade of the forest chasing stags and wolves, not forced to stand forever before dark gates barking at ghosts.

Cerberus lay down and closed his six eyes. He went to sleep and dreamed of the days when he had been a real dog, before he had been captured and changed into a monster and trained as a watchdog for the dead. Orpheus stepped over him, and went through the gates.

He walked through the Flowery Fields singing and playing. The ghosts there twittered with glee. Then he came to the Place of Torment, where sinners are specially punished. He saw the ghost of a wicked king named Sisyphus who was forced to spend eternity trying to roll a huge stone up a hill. Each time, just as Sisyphus reached the top of the hill, the stone rolled back, and he had to start pushing it up the hill again. But when Sisyphus heard Orpheus singing, he stopped pushing the stone. And the stone itself, poised on the side of the hill, listened and did not fall back.

Orpheus saw the ghost of another wicked king, Tantalus, who was tormented by an awful thirst. He stood waist-deep in a pure cool stream of water, but every time he stooped to drink, the water shrank away from his lips. That was his punishment; always to thirst and never to drink. Now, as Orpheus played, Tantalus listened and stopped ducking his head at the water. The music quenched his thirst.

Orpheus passed through the Place of Torment to the Judgment Place. When the three great judges of the dead heard his music, they fell to dreaming about the time when they had been young princes. They remembered the land battles and the sea battles they had fought, the beautiful maidens they had known, and the flashing swords they had used. They remembered all the days gone by. They sat there listening to the music, their eyes blinded with tears, forgetting to pass judgment.

But Hades, king of the underworld, lord of the dead, knew that the work of his kingdom was being neglected. He waited sternly on his throne as Orpheus approached.

“No more cheap minstrel tricks!” he cried. “I am a god. My rages are not to be calmed nor my laws broken. No one comes to Tartarus without being sent for. No one has before, and no one will again when the story is told of the torments I have invented for you.”

Orpheus touched his lyre, and sang a song that made Hades remember a green field and a grove of trees and a slender girl painting flowers. The light about her head was of that special clearness that the gods saw when the world had just begun.

Orpheus sang of how pleasing that girl looked as she played with the flowers. And how the birds overhead gossiped about this, and the moles underground too, until the word reached down to gloomy Tartarus, where Hades heard and went up to see for himself. Orpheus sang of death's king seeing the girl for the first time in a great wash of early sunlight, and how he felt when he saw that stalk-slender girl in her tunic and green shoes among the flowers. Orpheus sang of the love that Hades felt when he put his mighty arm about the girl's waist, and drank her tears, and knew that at last he had found his bride.

That girl, Persephone, was queen now, and she sat at Hades' side. She began to cry. Hades looked at her, and she leaned forward and whispered to him. The king then turned to Orpheus. He did not weep, but no one had ever seen his eyes so brilliant.

“Your song has moved my queen,” he said. “Speak. What is it you wish?”

“My wife.”

“What have we to do with your wife?”

“She is here. She was brought here today. Her name is Eurydice. I wish to take her back with me.”

“It is impossible,” said Hades. “Whoever comes here does not return.”

“Not so, great Hades,” said Orpheus. “The gods can do what is impossible. Give me my wife again, oh king, for I will not leave without her — not for all the torments on earth, or below.”

Orpheus touched his lyre again. The Furies, hearing the music, flew in on their hooked wings, their brass claws tinkling like bells. They poised in the air above the throne. The terrible hags cooed like doves, saying, “Just this once, Hades. Let him have her. Let her go.”

Hades stood up then, black-caped and towering. He looked down at Orpheus and said, “I leave the poetry contests and loud celebrations to my nephew Apollo. But I, yes, even I of such gloomy habit, can be touched by music like yours. Especially when I hear my dread servants plead your cause. The Furies haven't had a good word to say for anyone since the beginning of time.

“Hear me then, Orpheus. You may have your wife. She will be given into your care, and you will lead her out of Tartarus to the upper world. But if during your journey you look back just once — then my mercy is withdrawn and Eurydice will be taken from you again — and forever. Go!”

Orpheus bowed once to Hades, once to Persephone, and lifting his head, smiled a half-smile at the hovering Furies. Then he turned and walked away. Hades gestured and as Orpheus walked through the fields of Tartarus, Eurydice fell into step behind him. He did not see her. He thought she was there, he was sure she was there. He thought he could hear her footfall, but the black grass was thick. He could not be sure. He thought he recognized her breathing — that faint sipping of breath he had heard so many nights near his ear. But the air was full of the howls of the tormented, and he could not be sure.

But Hades had given his word. Orpheus had to believe. And so he pictured the girl behind him, following as he led. He walked steadily through the Flowery Fields toward the brass gates. The gates opened. The three-headed dog still slept in the middle of the road. Orpheus stepped over him. Surely he could hear her now, walking behind him. But he could not turn around to see, and he could not be sure because of the cry of vultures which hung in the air above the River Styx. Then on the gangplank of the ferry, he heard a footfall behind him. Surely… why, oh why, did she step so lightly? He had always loved her lightness, but now he wished she was more heavy-footed.