Herotica 2. Kerry Greenwood

of animals, cleverly depicted and beautifully coloured. Some were of people, everyone from old men to young boys. But there was no dedicatory statue. No image of the God or Goddess to whom this temple belonged.

      He was mulling this over when he heard the most dreadful howling that had ever insulted mortal ear. He clutched his head. The sound went on and on, shaking him to the bones. He fell to his knees. The lamb cowered against him. The kid had vanished.

      And then came the Beast.

      He was huge. His body was man-shaped, streaked with blood and blue paint, but his head was the head of a bull, with lolling tongue and rolling eyes. A minotaur. Just Ion’s luck, he thought. The howling cut off. The Beast stared, fists on hips. It glared through its strangely glassy eyes.

      ‘A fine evening,’ said Ion, getting to his feet and bowing as he did to his own Goddess. He was not going to be just torn apart and eaten like common prey. The Beast was going to remember Ion.

      The beast did not reply. Ion approached it. The beast did not move. Ion sniffed. He knew that scent. A herbal smell connected with making tapestries.

      ‘You are a very beautiful beast,’ he said. ‘Can I be of some service? Polish your horns? Comb your forelock? Which I now perceive to be horse hair? And I can smell glue. And woad. That bull mask must be very heavy. Wouldn’t you like to take it off and explain to me what this is all about?’

      A strange noise came from the bull mask. It took Ion a while to identify it. Inside that echoing shape, the Beast of the Grove was giggling helplessly.

      Ion helped him to sit down on the bench and lifted off the mask. It was heavy and packed with some sort of machinery ¹⁷.

      He set it gently on the floor. The Beast was revealed to be a good looking man with the blue eyes and golden hair of a God. He put both hands to his aching belly and positively cried with laughter, gathering Ion to his painted chest the while.

      ‘No one,’ he gasped after some time, ‘no one has ever reacted like that. Come, bring the lamb, come to my house. I’ll tell you everything, my wise young virgin.’

      Ion complied. The beast lived in a pleasant, conventional house. Ion added his lamb to the small flock grazing outside. The walls inside were painted by the same hand as the temple - radiant, ingenious, engrossing. The Beast watched as a couple of maidens sat Ion down, washed and dried his feet, and gave him a clean tunic. Then, smiling, they laid out a feast, filled wine cups, and left, hand in hand.

      ‘You don’t kill the sacrifices, do you?’ he asked. ‘You aren’t even interested in changing their status.’

      The Beast snorted. He really was very good looking, once you got used to the pale eyes. His mouth was red, with full sensual lips. His voice was deep and pleasant.

      ‘Of course not. I take virgins so they won’t be leaving a spouse or a baby. I take the ones who want to leave the village. And find them proper destinations. However, Elene and Sappho wanted to stay with me. And now, make a good meal,’ urged the beast, ‘and I will explain.’

      Ion remembered that hour as the strangest that ever clepsydra ¹⁸ measured. He ate soft cheese and new bread and listened avidly. The beast was attractive, though his colouring was so strange. He was having a Demetrian effect on Ion, who had never missed having a lover before. Now he was wondering what the beast tasted like, if he were to just touch the tip of his tongue to that scarlet mouth.

      The beast spoke fast and used idiom freely, but Ion suspected that this was not his native tongue. And his story was strange, but to someone who had spent a childhood reading Hesiod ¹⁹, not impossible to believe.

      ‘So you travel in time, you were bored where you were born, and you came here to paint and because you like the people and the climate,’ he summarised.

      ‘Indeed,’ sighed the Beast, scratching idly at the flaking paint on his hip. Ion went on.

      ‘You guard the demos of Karanthos with strange devices, including that howling produced by sub-sonics, whatever they are ²⁰, and in return the demos feeds you,’ continued Ion.

      ‘Yes,’ said the Beast, popping another olive into his mouth. ‘The olives of the future have lost all savour.’

      ‘And you take a tribute so they don’t take you for granted, and find places for the virgins the village didn’t want, and who didn’t want to stay.’

      ‘I specified a willing sacrifice,’ replied the Beast. ‘I never had such a beautiful and clever one before.’

      ‘Will you let me stay with you?’ asked Ion. ‘Take me with you when you leave?’

      ‘Yes,’ said the beast, starting slightly as Ion laid a hand on his painted thigh.

      ‘And, since I am now dedicated to another God,’ Ion breathed into his mouth, ‘meaning you, I don’t have to stay a virgin anymore.’

      ‘Charite,’ said the Beast of the Grove, embracing him.

       Footnotes

      1. Minoan cities, indeed, were not defended, which argues command of the seas, see Rule Brittania.

      2. basic unit of Greek government - the village council.

      3. Crete.

      4. The original word is thirio, which is beast, not echidna, which is monster. An important difference.

      5. When cross, Apollo fired his arrows of plague into a village and everyone died. A touchy deity.

      6. Aphrodite came from Cyprus, and thus as known as ‘the Stranger’. She was the goddess of Erotic Love.

      7. A complex machine of wheels and gears, probably designed by Heiron of Alexandria, as such things tended to be, also a magnetic compass.

      8. Athene the Powerful Self-born, a virgin goddess.

      9. Wine was usually mixed in proportions of one in four - three for drunks.

      10. Love of strangers, to which Greeks are still prone.

      11. A really expensive wine cup.

      12. The cult of Attis required votaries to remove their genitalia with a sharpened clam shell.

      13. Ouch.

      14. This phrase is apparently older than presently believed.

      15. Honey from the bees of the Mother Goddess, feeding on thyme and oregano on Mount Hymettus. Pound for pound worth much more than mere gold. A cure for everything but advanced cases of death.

      16. Groves of holly trees were uniformly bad news. They were the haunt of the cthonic deities - death and fate. Among others even more unpleasant.

      17. Scholars suggest that this may have been made by Heiron of Alexandria.

      18. Sand-clock, see Heiron of...etc.

      19. A cosmogeny so confusing that each page of his writing has more footnotes than print. Study of Hesiod produced several cases of brain fever and one duel (fortunately not fatal) amongst Oxford Graecians in the 18thC.

      20. Posited but never proved by Heiron of Alexandria, due to lack of time.

      21. Rejoice!

      SAPPHO OF LESBOS

      I DESIRE

       AND I CRAVE

       YOU.

      Phaon had just reached the highest step of the white marble villa when he stopped abruptly. As a fisherman from the bay, he had no errand high on this hill, where the legendary poet Sappho dwelt with her coterie. But it was not social embarrassment which had caused him to stay his footsteps.

      It was the long and above all, sharp spear which was levelled in a workmanlike manner at his breastbone by Demetrius of Lesbos, the guard. Demetrius was long limbed, sloe eyed, and very attractive, with a half-moon smile. At