HYACINTHUS

Chapter Ten

I DECIDED TO STAY by my father's side, in order to not get lost in the thick-wooded forest, but I soon came to regret that decision.

We had decided to take the route to the south, and my brothers went up north. In the beginning, I just made sure to follow in my father's footsteps in the earth, avoiding snakes beneath the rocks and venomous insects hiding in the long, overgrown plant leaves.

"The soil is muddy," my father said. "We must be nearing the river."

He was right. Somewhere, I wasn't sure exactly from which direction, we could hear the fast song of water streaming down rocky terrain.

"That's a good sign", he said, twisting his javelin, throwing it in the air and then catching it, as if it were a harmless stick of wood, and not a piece of metal that could pierce skin. "Beasts often come to the river to drink water."

We followed the music of the stream, forging our way through the trees, my father using his javelin to cut through the thick vegetation.

And soon, there it was. The Eurotas: pearlescent water flowing through a wide indent in the earth, a few rocks and boulders rimming it on each side. The current was fast and strong and noisy, and deep below the surface, dark shadows of fish swam through green algae and anemones.

Yet, I was disappointed, not marveling at the beautiful sight at all. I couldn't detect even a sign of the presence of naiads, the river nymphs, rumored to have built their water kingdom on the banks of the Eurotas.

The music of the stream was just the quick gargling of the water, and I could note the complete absence of angelic nymphly vocals.

I had hoped I would meet the nymphs, and perhaps, even befriend them; they were told to be good-spirited, easy-going, and most of all, bore no judgment to rankings and hierarchy among mortals.

My father understood my dissapointed expression completely incorrectly.

"Don't worry," he said, laughing heartily, his voice bellowing around us. "There are no beasts to hunt at the river for now, but we have all the time in the world. We can wait."

He approached the river bank, and started climbing down the rocky boulders, descending as easily as if it were a staircase, until his calloused sandaled feet were in the water.

He looked back to me, grinning, and gestured with his hand for me to follow.

Propping myself on my hands, I descended down the sharp rocks, almost on all fours. The rocks felt as if they would cut through my palms, and they succeeded. I felt their raw edges scraping against my skin, drawing fresh blood, hot and dense on this summer day.

Once down by the water, I crouched and immediately plunged my hand into the water, to relieve the pain. Red liquid flowed out of my palm, mixing with the river's opalescent waves like carmine paint.

My father sat on one of the rocks, delightfully whistling the popular melody he often commanded the palace bards to play, completely unaware of my wounded hands, taking in his surroundings.

There once was a pretty girl, the Gods named her Pandora;
Zeus gave her a pretty vase, yet she was a foolish child;
She peeked into it, and with a gust of wind, the world's evils came out!
And oh, the sight of it wasn't pretty at all!

Birds chirped in the pine trees, up high in the forest, trying to replicate my father's out-of-tune song. The river water accompanied the music with a constant low gargle.

The water creatures, drawn to the scent of fresh spilled blood, swam to my hand, surrounding it, wanting to munch on readily available meat. I quickly took my hand out at the first sting of sharp teeth.

I had heard of carnivore fish, but this was my first encounter with them. I quickly wrapped my wet, injured hand in the end of my purple robe.

A deep-voiced yell made me flinch, and I turned my head to see my father run, javelin in hand, to a deer that came to appease its thirst by the river.

The poor animal quickly tried to escape, its horns getting tangled in the low branches of trees, but it always somehow got out and continued racing forwards in a frantic gallop of hooves. My father kept chasing it, cursing it loudly for always escaping out of his javelin's throwing reach.

I tried to lift myself up, but I was slow. My father and the deer quickly disappeared out of my eye's view. On the rocky soil of the river banks, no foot imprints were left.

I half-walked, half-ran upstream, clutching my own javelin my father gave me in my uninjured hand, but I knew my search was futile. Far and wide, no human and no deer were to be heard or seen.

Perhaps they had crossed through the river, onto the other side?

I was too afraid to do so myself. Swimming would make my wound open and my blood flow again, and the deep middle of the huge Eurotas river harbored many dangerous creatures, not to speak of the fast current that might drag me Zeus-knows-where.

I walked upstream, my legs carrying me in a completely unknown direction. The thin soles of my sandals barely protected my feet from the sharp edges of the rocks. In little waves, the water would come brush the end of the banks, lightly wetting my toes, and then subside back towards the middle.

Although my hand hurt hellishly, the solitude in nature filled me with a strange sense of delight. The wind was blowing towards my face, bringing with itself a warm gust of air from the south.

I brushed back the strands of hair that were constantly falling into my face with my uninjured hand. I had outgrown my adolescent phase when I had shaved my head smooth.

My hair grew incredibly quickly, almost inhumanly so, so that it was incredibly difficult to maintain the style of Spartan soldiers. I contented myself with keeping my lower face and cheeks smooth and devoid of hair using honey and wax.

The wind played with my locks, tangling them with invisible fingers. The sun warmed my skin with gentle rays, and I was thankful that this summer day wasn't unbearably hot like those of the other times of the year.

I should have felt agitation and desperation; my father, nor my brothers, nor even the horses near which I could wait were nowhere to be seen. I was abandoned to the mercy of wild beasts.

Yet, it felt strangely freeing; alone, far from the confines of the palace walls, a mortal happily aware of his mortality walked in nature, taking in its beauty, the pain in his wounded hand only sharpening his senses.

To both my sides, an immensity of green stretched, trees of pine visible at every corner.
To my right, the turquoise blue of the river seemed to deepen to an unbelievable elysian hue.
Below my feet, the gray rocks glimmered with silvery specks.
And above my head, a pure blue vastness, the realm of the gods, with only soft, squishy white clouds in sight.

The green, turquoise, silver and blue mended together in a beautiful fresco, and I felt as if I was thrown into a paradisiacal landscape, out of place here yet just right where I should be.

From somewhere near in front of me, just after the turn of the river, it sounded as if there was someone playing beautiful sounds on a divine harp, to accompany the atmosphere. It was as if, in my head, a melody resonated, sounding real, but also not quite there, a delusion built by a dreamer's restless mind.

Yet soon, after a few hundred feet, I realized that the music was, in fact, very real.

Sitting in the opening of a cave hidden inside a huge boulder on the bank of the Eurotas, a man of unseen-before beauty was perched above his instrument, producing the kind of music that must have resonated in the halls of Olympus.

And that man, I knew from the first glance, I was fated to meet him.