The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Thirty-One

I whip around.

Greetings, the voice seems to echo, redoubling on itself. Greetings, lady. But there’s no one here. I move slowly, keeping my back against Ajax’s warm flank. The circle is empty. There’s not a soul to be seen.

“Are you a wraith?” I say. “Show yourself!”

There is silence and then a beat before the whispers begin again.

She hears us.

Hears us.

“Lady, we mean no harm.”

The voice is light, almost childlike.

No harm; no harm, the echoes come.

“Then why can I not see you?”

We, the voice said. Not I. There are many of them, then—whatever “they” are.

“You do see us,” the voice protests. “We are here. Around you. Above you.”

I stare. There’s nothing here but this great ring of spruce trees. As I look at them more closely now, I see there is something different about them. Despite the wind and rain, their boughs do not sway and saw, and their leaves appear to be dry. Each trunk is lithe and long, unusually perfect. I thought when I entered that this circle seemed a protected place. But perhaps I did not understand the nature of that protection.

I clear my throat, my fist tight on Ajax’s bridle. “Are you dryads?” I demand.

There’s a faint hiss, almost like a sigh, that seems to drift from many places at once.

“We were dryads, lady,” the voice comes. “Hunting companions to the goddess Artemis. She had many, but we were her favorites. We were the nimblest, the fastest, and…” The voice becomes coy, then: “deemed by all, the prettiest.”

A stray raindrop trickles from my scalp and down my forehead, blurring my vision. Dryads are much like nymphs, I tell myself. And certainly, the nymphs in Eros’s gardens meant no harm. The childlike voice goes on:

“When a mortal poet stumbled across our party, he wrote great ballads in our honor. The goddess— you know of whom we speak, lady—became jealous. All because the mortal poet praised us so lavishly. All because he called some simple tree-nymphs the finest of goddesses.”

The finest, the other voices chime, like whispers.

“And so she cursed us,” the voice resumes, tinged with longing. “While other dryads may roam among their forests and transform at will, we , lady, know no freedom now. These trees are our cages. We must stay here forever.”

Forever, the echoes ebb and flow. Without end.

I swallow, the hairs on my neck prickling, and not just from the damp and cold. These plaintive voices are so melancholy and strange—beautiful, in fact. But there is something cloying about them too, something that seems to fill the air too thickly, making my thoughts move slower than before.

“I am very sorry,” I say. Indeed, it is a painful story.

“Yes, we have suffered at the hands of the goddess too, you see.” The voice pauses, and I hear a note of excitement now, a shiver that seems to ride the gusts of wind from outside. “But now we can help each other, lady. We will help you, and you will help us.”

I stick close to Ajax; his warmth soothes me. I feel his breaths through his flank.

“I have little to offer,” I say. “I am just a mortal. I came here for a moment’s shelter. All I want is to wait out the storm and continue on my path.”

“But we will show you a quicker path,” the voice says. “We can tell you how to reach the summit before nightfall.”

Before nightfall. I shiver. I still see no end to this mountain. How many more hours, how many nights, must Ajax and I ride?

“You do not want to be here at nightfall,” the voice says, as though it knows something I don’t.

There’s a quivering and fluttering around me. The trees are restless and unquiet now, almost nervous.

Nightfall! the eager echoes come. I hesitate.

“We were supposed to stay on the path. The oracle told me.”

“It is a safe path, a protected one,” the voice persists. “Known to the dryads but not to mortals. It will be our gift to you.”

I stroke Ajax’s mane. His head butts against me, soft and restless. He is not comfortable among these voices, this strange glade. I cannot blame him. And yet what they’re offering…

“And what is it,” I say, “that you seek in return?”

“Petition for us,” the voice says. She pauses. “We know whom you seek, lady. We know the one you journey to reclaim.”

The son, the son . The voices stir with excitement. The goddess’s son!

“State our case to him,” the leader says. “Ask for his help.”

I look away, out past the safety of the leaves. Water cascades down the canopy outside. So it is not really my help they seek, but his. I am only to be a messenger.

“And what if he cannot help you?” I say. “Or will not?”

She pauses.

“Our bargain is for the attempt, lady. We ask only that you carry the message.” There is something urgent about her voice, I think. She is trying to please me. I wonder why she should try so hard, when the bargain sounds like it’s more to my advantage than the dryads’.

I rub Ajax’s mane as he snorts and stamps. The sooner we move on from here, the better. The dryads are making him so agitated, I’m half-afraid he’ll bolt without me. But I must consider the offer I’ve been made. It is a good one, after all, since the trust is all on their side. For all they know, I won’t honor my bargain and Eros will never hear of their petition. But I would never cheat them like that.

I had always thought of immortality as an extraordinary gift, but only now does it strike me what a risk it can be, too—a curse is a curse forever, a miserable situation preserved for eternity.

“I thank you for your offer,” I say at last. “If I manage to rejoin Aphrodite’s son, I will offer your petition in good faith.”

She accepts! faint voices chatter.

A rain droplet falls from my wet hair onto my neck, and trickles slowly down my spine. I push down the queasy feeling in my stomach.

“Then come into the heart of the glade,” the voice says. “We will show you with our branches; we will point your way.”

I tug on Ajax’s reins and lead him, reluctant, to the circle’s heart, where the biggest tree stands. This one, then, must be the leader, the mother tree.

“A few paces more, lady,” it says.

I don’t know what it is, but something about the voice…there is a sweetness there, something artificial, that disquiets me. I want to secure the bargain, but the hairs are standing up on my neck, my breathing has quickened. I don’t move forward. A few paces in front of me is the trunk of the great mother-tree, its bark thickly ridged, with a great whorl that makes me think of a tremendous cyclops-eye.

I stand my ground, and open my mouth to say something— what, I don’t know.

But then Ajax tosses his neck, gives a last whinny, and bolts—with my arm still caught in the reins. I stumble forward, crying out as my shoulder jolts with pain. In the second it takes to loose myself from the tangle of reins I topple to the ground, my shoulder protesting, my lungs heaving. The reins whip through the grass in Ajax’s wake as he hurtles out of view, and my eyes prick with furious tears.

No food or water. No cloak. And now no horse.

How long will this cursed journey take on foot? How am I to survive it?

Then I feel a cool, rough grip across my legs. It tightens, and there’s a rustling sound; another rough touch snakes across my back, drawing me in, binding me tighter. I gasp through the tangle of my disheveled hair.

The mother-tree, the leader of the dryads: she has roped me in against her trunk, bound me tight with her great tree-limbs. One heavy branch imprisons my shoulders, another my waist. Smaller ones shackle my ankles.

Ours now, the voices say. She is ours.