The Song of Orpheus (2 page)

Okay. They tore me to pieces, right there, and if you think it didn’t hurt, you need to think harder. So you’d assume I would die, right, since I wasn’t attached together anymore? No. That would have meant I’d go straight to the realm of the dead and be reunited with Eurydice, and the king and queen were still too angry with me to let that happen. So instead, they kept me alive while the nymphs scattered my body around. Then they turned my head into a rock and left me here by this stream.

There’s only one way I can turn back into a human being. Oh, I won’t be alive—nobody can live three thousand years, and when the sun sets tonight, it will be three thousand years since I was torn apart and then cursed with this rock head. But it will be a pleasure to die if I can just get out of here and finally be reunited with Eurydice.

This is what I have to do: I have to tell three hundred stories within three thousand years. The catch is that they have to be stories that the other person has never heard before.

You’d think it would be easy, telling just three hundred stories in three thousand years, and at first, I figured I’d be out of here in a few months. But not many people come around this deep in the forest, and most of the ones who do get a little nervous when I start talking and they don’t see anyone, so they don’t stick around. And some of the ones who do stay have already heard a lot of my tales.

So I’ve only managed to tell 2,983 stories. Actually, 2,984, if you count me telling you how I got here, but I think it would be cheating to count that one. This time I’m going to be extra careful to play by the rules. So seventeen more to go.

What do you say? Want to hear a story? How about seventeen stories? If I tell them to you before the sun goes down, I’ll be free. If not—well, I hate to think about it, but I imagine the gods will leave me here forever, and I just couldn’t stand that. I’m tired of freezing in the winter and baking in the summer, and the bird poop alone is enough to make me sick of all this. Plus, I miss my wife, and I at least want the chance to apologize to her for being such a bonehead.

You will? You’ll stay until I tell you seventeen stories you’ve never heard? Great! Let’s start at the beginning—or rather, before the beginning.

I hear that nowadays Greece is a single country, but in my time, what is now the Greek nation was a bunch of small city-states. The people in the different city-states had different customs and they told different stories about the world, including how the world itself and the stars and planets came to be.

According to one of the stories, before humans walked the earth—before there even was an earth to walk on—before the gods ruled from Mount Olympos, or the stars shone in the sky, or there was light or air or even time, all that existed was Chaos (or Χάος, in Greek).

Now, I know that
chaos
is a familiar word in English, one that people use all the time. It means confusion, a lot of things happening at once, people bumping into each other, hurry, noise, activity.

But that’s not what Chaos meant to the Greeks. The word χάος comes from the same root as the word
chasm
, which means “a big hole in the ground.” Far from being a scene of bustling confusion, χάος is nothingness—it’s a gap, an abyss. It’s related to the Greek word for “yawn.”

So if a gap or a hole was all that existed before the world (and everything else) came into being, the question is: a gap between what and what? A hole in what?

Just as the ancient Greeks didn’t agree among themselves about what existed before the world, they also didn’t agree about what the gap was in. Some of them said that Chaos was surrounded by a circle of flowing water called Okeanos. Others kind of ignored the question.

Still others said that far from being the only thing in existence, Chaos was ruled by a goddess named Eurynome, the daughter of Okeanos and his wife Tethys (but where did
they
come from?). The name Eurynome means “wide-roaming,” so she might have been a moon-goddess, since the moon roams across the entire sky. Eurynome wasn’t an only child, though. Her mother, Tethys, had more than three thousand children. Among them were the three Graces, goddesses who presided over gracefulness, celebration, singing, dance, merriment, and everything else that brings joy to humanity.

Other Greeks rejected the whole Chaos theory. They said that the first beings were Kronos (Time) and Ananke (Necessity), who must have been something like snakes. They twined themselves around an enormous egg, squeezing it tighter and tighter until it burst, sending the lightest atoms inside it upward to make the sky, and the heavier ones downward to become the earth.

Like Tethys, Ananke was the mother of three daughters, but her girls were gloomier than Tethys’s Graces. Ananke’s daughters were the three Fates: Lakhesis, who sings about the past; Klotho, who sings about the present; and Atropos, who sings about the future. Klotho spins a thread that represents a human life, Lakhesis measures how long that thread and the life that goes with it will be, and Atropos cuts it where Lakhesis tells her to. Atropos means “unturnable,” and once this grim Fate has made up her mind about when someone must die, there’s nothing, the Greeks said, that anyone can do about it.

One story down, sixteen to go. If things keep going this well, I should get through in plenty of time. You don’t have any place you have to be, do you?

How about something with a little more action this time? And maybe something funny to help us forget those gloomy Fates?

So however it was that the universe came into being, soon afterward there was an earth, too, with people and animals and plants living on it. There were also gods. Most of them lived on a mountain called Mount Olympos, but they came to earth pretty often, and they appear in a lot of myths, some of which you may know. There were also demi-gods, who were half god and half human. A demi-god named Herakles stars in a lot of myths. You might know him better by his Roman name, Hercules. He was big and strong and heroic.

Or was he? Like most bullies, Herakles couldn’t stand to be teased, as he was in this story of two mischievous brothers.

The brothers were named Akmon and Passalos. Their mother was the daughter of the king of Ethiopia and their father was a water spirit. The brothers were small and homely. They were also clever and quick, as well as being thieves and mischief-makers. They climbed trees expertly, which made it easy for them not only to steal fruit but also to escape from the farmers whose crops they ruined.

Their mother despaired that her boys would ever grow up to be good citizens. She constantly told them to behave themselves, but they ignored her. When she tried to punish them, they just laughed. But one warning made them curious.

“Watch out for Burntbottom!” she would say, her voice serious. “Don’t bother Burntbottom!”

“Who’s Burntbottom?” her sons would ask, but she always refused to say more. She just repeated her warning with a shake of her finger.

So they would shrug and run off to cause more trouble for their neighbors, having a great time and never getting caught.

One summer day, the brothers had wandered farther from home than usual when Akmon noticed someone asleep under a tree. He nudged Passalos and pointed. Curious, they crept close and stared. It was a huge man, and all he wore was a lion-skin. A quiver full of arrows was slung over one of his big shoulders, and he clutched an enormous bow in his fist. He looked like a hunter, taking a nap through the hot part of the day.

A sleeping man was too great a temptation for the brothers to ignore. What could they steal from him? They eyed the lion skin with longing, but its gigantic paws were knotted around the man’s neck, and they knew they could never untie them without waking him up. The bow was a beauty, but even if they managed to make away with it, they were much too small to handle such a large weapon.

Then their eyes lit on the arrows. They exchanged a glance and crept closer. Passalos squatted behind the man and slowly, carefully, drew one of the long shafts out of its quiver. He passed it to Akmon and reached for another.

Akmon couldn’t help snickering with excitement, and at the sound, the man woke up. Moving more quickly than seemed possible for someone so large, he grabbed the feet of the two brothers, a pair in each hand, and stood up.

Akmon and Passalos were dangling head down, but they weren’t worried yet; they had been caught before and had always managed to get away.

“Who are you? How dare you disturb my sleep?” The man’s eye fell on the arrow in the grass. “And how
dare
you steal from me?”

“I’m Passalos,” Akmon answered.

“I’m Akmon,” Passalos said. Even in their dire situation, they couldn’t help lying. It was just in their natures.

The huge hunter shook the brothers until their teeth rattled. “And what about my arrows? Do you know what happens to thieves?”

They did. The punishment for stealing something valuable, like arrows, was severe; it could mean the loss of a hand, a severe whipping—even death. But they still weren’t worried.

“You can’t punish
us
,” Passalos said. “Our mother is a princess. And our father is a water spirit.”

The man laughed scornfully. “My mother is a princess, too. But my father is no water spirit.”

“Not everyone can have a water spirit for a father,” Akmon said pityingly. “You just have to learn to live with it.”

“Now let us go before you get in trouble,” Passalos added.

The man paid no attention. “No, he’s not a water spirit.” He lifted the brothers higher and boomed right in their faces, “My father is
Zeus
!”

The man whose arrow they had stolen was no mere hunter. He was Herakles, son of the king of the gods, and he was a demi-god, himself. He was stronger than any human alive. He was also known for having quite a temper.

For once, the brothers had no answer. They stared at the demi-god, and then at each other in sudden terror as Herakles bound them by the ankles to each end of a long stick, which he then slung over his shoulder. He turned and strode toward town.

“Where are you taking us?” Passalos managed to squeak.

“To the town well,” Herakles said grimly. “I’m going to drown you.”

Akmon and Passalos begged and pleaded to be let go. They said that they’d had no intention of keeping the arrows, that they were just having a little fun, but Herakles didn’t answer. After a while, they too fell silent as they were carried along, dangling upside down, one in front of their captor, the other behind, both swaying with each step he took.

But they didn’t stay silent for long. Since Herakles was so tall and they were so short, their eyes were level with his knees, and being the mischief-makers they were, they couldn’t resist sneaking a peek up the lion-skin cloak he wore. Akmon, who was in back, let out a hoot of laughter.

“What is it?” Passalos asked.

At that moment, Herakles switched the pole from one shoulder to the other, and this time, Passalos was hanging behind him. As he bounced along, his head bobbing, he too looked up under the lion skin, and he saw what his brother had already noticed.

Herakles must have been hunting in the nude earlier in the day, and his rear end had gotten sunburned.

“Burntbottom!” Passalos jeered.

“Burntbottom!” Akmon joined in.

Herakles tried to ignore them, but as they laughed and teased, his face turned bright red. He wasn’t used to people making fun of him. Finally, he bellowed, “SHUT UP!”

Up on Mount Olympos, Herakles’s father, Zeus, heard the angry shout. He looked down to earth. He saw his huge son striding along with two little humans bobbing on the ends of a pole over his shoulder, both of them laughing, and Herakles glowering and looking almost as though he was going to cry. The king of the gods burst out laughing. The other deities ran over to see what was so funny, and soon the sky echoed with their laughter.

Herakles pretended not to hear and kept walking, his face turning redder and redder, until he reached the town square. Keeping his captives’ ankles bound together, he slipped them off the pole and dropped them over the side of the well.

Zeus decided to reward Akmon and Passalos for providing the Olympians with so much amusement. He threw a spell down to the earth, and as the brothers fell, their faces flattened. Hair grew all over their bodies, and long tails sprouted from their behinds. Their legs and feet grew so thin that the ropes slipped off their ankles, and they grabbed the stone walls of the well just before they hit the water.

The brothers had always been good climbers, but even they were surprised at how quickly and easily they pulled themselves up and out. But no one was more surprised than Herakles, for instead of two human boys, what scampered out of the well were the first monkeys the world had ever seen.