Jason and the Argonauts by Bernard Evslin

Author:Bernard Evslin [Evslin, Bernard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-6446-1
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-10-03T21:43:00+00:00

TWENTY

EACH YEAR, UPON THE night of the first full moon after the spring sowing, the women of Colchis performed their rain dance. The moon would rise slowly, beckoning a mob of wives to follow it up the mountain. Among the leaping, shrieking women walked a young man. Wearing a pair of gilded horns, clad in the Golden Fleece, he strutted up the slope.

He had reason to be proud. Was he not the best athlete of the year, winner of the long race, high jump, spear-throwing? Had he not been chosen Rainmaker, Horned Man, Wearer of the Fleece? Was he not being taken to the mountaintop to be loved by the seven most beautiful wives?

Then, after the last embrace, would not the sacred knives cut the heart cleanly from his body before age could slacken his muscles or blotch his hide? Should he not die in the flame of youth, giving his blood to the furrows? And then, unhoused by the knives, would not his potent ghost spin up into the low sky and freshen the cow-goddess, whose milk is rain? No wonder he walked proudly among the women, who leaped about him waving their knives and trying to kiss his shoulders as he went.

On that night, also, the maidens of Colchis climbed the mountain by another path and scattered about the lake shore, crouching there between two moons. For to look upon the moon in the water that night was to see the face of the man you would marry. If you had prayed ardently and otherwise pleased the goddess, you would see the drowning moon become the face of the young stranger who, from that night on, would inhabit your dreams.

The princess knelt on the shore, gazing up at the trees. She would see no moon mirrored in the lake, she knew, until it had untangled itself from the branches of tallest cedar and floated clear. As she watched the light trembling in the branches, she heard voices singing:

“You Hags of Heaven

Number seven;

Harpies favor hell …

But when the Horned Man

Mounts the Moon,

You all come here to dwell.”

And that was where she wanted to be, among the wives, wild with summer, singing the moon out of the cedar and into the sky as they danced on the mountaintop.

But to do that, she had to be a wife herself.

Just then she saw light staining the water. The moon appeared very bright and solid, as if it had not dived into the lake but had swum up from the bottom. She stared at it. It paled under her gaze and began to wobble. Its edges melted into golden flame. Her breath caught in her throat. The moon shook itself into pieces of golden light; they swam together and made a face.

She looked at it. It looked at her. The light blinded her eyes. Blackness swarmed. She didn’t fall. She knelt there at the edge of the lake, unconscious but erect, hands digging into clay. When she opened her eyes, the moon was gone.

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