Erebos, Week Zero, Episode One
Copyright © 1999, Susan Putney

     He'd had some experience with broken bones, and so he climbed more carefully than he had climbed as a young boy.  But some of the youthful feeling came back to him as he lowered himself by the old, stone-chipped footholds.  Groping with his booted foot for a root to stand on, Dane Tilssen lowered himself another two feet, then dropped to the ground.  The climb down to Wild Horse Ledge was trickier than he remembered.  He must've been half monkey as a boy.  He turned, dead leaves rustling under his steps, and looked the place over.

     Of course, it was smaller than it had seemed when he was ten years old--maybe thirty feet wide at most, before dropping off sharply into the misty hollow which was not a part of his family's farm.  Still it had a whiff of childhood adventures about it.  He and his sisters had not been allowed to come here.  His parents had considered the cliff edge, not to mention the cave, much too dangerous.  Naturally, this had been his favorite place.

     He was a big man, with black hair on his hands and arms and shoulders, and a slab face with a broken nose and a wide mouth.  Neither a handsome man nor built for show, he was nonetheless good to look at in the way that a well-made barn is good.

     He inhaled, savoring the cold, faintly damp November air with its trace of mist.  That would be from the cave, he knew.  There was always mist in the cave.  One of its two greatest charms.   The ledge was forested, the trees all naked now except for a couple of spreading pines.  He followed what had once been a path, his thoughts wandering back to the problem which had driven him here.

     The second movement needed a theme.  Well, it had one, but he didn't really like it.  The first movement had oomph, it grabbed you and made promises.  The second movement didn't deliver.  He needed something more... more haunting, some wild thing to be born in the music that would grow in the third movement and be something the listeners would take home with them.  Not that his music had listeners, yet.

     He saw the grape arbor, and stopped.  He'd completely forgotten about this, a project he'd built when he was seventeen, the summer before he went away to college.  It was around ten feet long and it arched over the path--not a true arch, more of a half-octagon, plenty tall for a well-grown teenager although it required a bit of a stoop for him now.  It looked like some of the posts were rotting at the bottom.  The near end of the tunnel leaned to the right a bit, and dry brown vines thickly covered the rusty chicken wire.  Curiously, he examined the vines, then opened his pocket knife and stooped to make a small cut in one of the stems, down near the ground.  It was still alive.  If he was still here next fall, he could have concord grapes!  It had been a long time.  Supermarket grapes couldn't even come close to the flavor.

     He stood up, straightened the leaning arbor with one big hand, and made a guess at how much lumber he'd need to repair it.

     The sound must have started long before he was aware of it, but he had pruned half the arbor with his pocket knife before he paused to listen.  Wind in the cave, just a few yards from the arbor.  Almost like a flute.  God, that took him back.  And then... yes, faintly, borne on the wind... something like the howling of wolves.  The cave's other great charm.  That haunting, haunting music.

     Just what the second movement needed.

     Folding his knife as he walked, he brushed the black earth from his hands and hurried back to the path up to the farm, and to his piano.

Week Zero, Episode One
Copyright © 1999, Susan K. Putney

 The Greek Isles, 1000 B.C.

     The traveling musician still sat by the well in the center of the market, playing a syrinx--but the villagers had stopped listening.  Only one old woman sat crosslegged in the shade of a house, nodding her head in time with the hypnotic swirling of the notes.  Her eyes were closed.

     She dreamed that she had climbed to the top of a high plateau, and now stood at the edge, looking down.  At the foot of the cliff, spreading away to the horizon and glittering like the Mediterranean, she saw the tapestry of the Moerae.  Each shining thread represented the destiny of some person, human or divine.  There was always motion in the threads, disturbances rippling out from the touch of her glance.  But from such a height, although she could see farther than ever before, it was hard to make out details.  The tapestry appeared almost frozen.  Intently, with all her being concentrated in her keen gray eyes, she located her own thread and traced it out into the future.  Twice she lost sight of it, but returned to the base of the cliff and found it again.  Under the pressure of her attention it shifted, its old pattern forever lost.  And its new course--

     With a cry of fear, she opened her eyes.

     The people of Myrmida had forgotten the piper.  Farmers, fishermen, housewives, even children hastily picked up loose goods and packed them away, as though expecting a big storm to sweep in from the sea.  There was no storm.  The sky was clear and burning blue, and the sea glittered in the sun.  But one of the village boys had sighted a chariot on the road that came up from the beach.  That could mean only one thing:  tax collectors.

     Still the piper played, his blond head bent over the ancient pipes and his lithe body swaying with the music.

     The old woman watched as a grape grower paused to drop an obol in the piper's bowl.  "That's in case I don't have a coin later, to show my appreciation," he said.  "I like listening to music on market day.  It's like a festival, almost.  Wish I had a gift like that."  Returning to his stall, he busied himself concealing the better grapes under older, withered clumps.  He was a big man, with soil under his fingernails and black hair on his arms.  He wasn't handsome, but there was an upward curve at the corners of his mouth even when he wasn't smiling.

     The old woman, who had been gazing abstractedly at the musician, now followed the grape grower with her eyes.  Though her mind no longer dwelt on the plateau above time, she had not fully descended to the present instant, and she saw his future in a single flash--what little there was of it.  This man was fated to die very soon.  She could save him if she wished, but at a cost.  Was he worth the price?

     Getting up from the dust, she walked over to the table full of grapes.  "How much for these?" she asked, holding up a head-size bunch.

     "Five pennies," he said.

     "So much?  The birds have been at these--here, see?"

     "Four," said Halios.  There was no damage to the grapes, but he seemed in a hurry to get the money and hide it before the king's men drove into town.

     "Still too much," the old woman said.  "How will I buy flour to make bread for my grandchildren?"

     The grape grower frowned, and looked as though he might be weighing his own needs, and a certain healthy skepticism, against his pity.  The old woman knew she looked very poor and ragged.  If she was the sole support of her grandchildren, they must be starving.  "Two, or no sale!" he said.

     "No," said the old woman, "I'm afraid you'll have to take five pennies, after all.  I can't take advantage of your kindness, as I have no grandchildren."  She handed him five coins.  One of them had a barnacle scar on it.

     Thrusting the grapes into her woven straw bag, she smiled as he sat there on the stool with his mouth with his mouth open.  Then they heard the clatter of a chariot on the road, and the grape grower hastened to slip the coins into the linen money belt under his tunic.  He paused over the stained one, rubbing it with his thumb.

     The chariot was drawn by a pair of bronze-colored mares that gleamed as brightly as the metal eagles on the wheels.  Three soldiers rode in it.  Two were youths.  The driver was older, a foreigner with slanted eyes, his hair and beard like slick black strings.  He wielded his horsewhip with too much pleasure, not only on the horses but on the backs of a goatherd boy and his goats, who had not cleared the road fast enough.

     "Step forward!" he shouted, hauling on the reins of the half-wild mares so that the chariot rolled more or less to a halt.  One of the youths jumped down, ran to the front, and caught their bridles, calming them.  "All of you, come before me and pay tribute to your lord!"

     One of the fishermen shuffled forward.  The other villagers began to move, as well--more slowly than usual, because they especially disliked this kind of talk from a foreigner.  For some reason the musician continued to play.  The grape grower came out of his stall, fingering his money pouch.  It was leaner than it had been a minute ago.

     "King Korybantes thought you Myrmidons would try to hide your money from him," said the foreign sergeant.  (This was an insult, as the old woman knew.  Of course they would hide their money, as they always did, but it was a thing understood and accepted.)  "Therefore, he demands, out of the coins you do show me, two shares of every three."

     An angry mutter swelled from the crowd. The youth holding the horses' heads looked alarmed as the villagers crowded closer.

     "What about those who hid nothing?" demanded a potter.  "Left with only one third of our money, how will we live?"

     "That's not the king's problem," the officer said, "or mine, either.  You'll be first, since you put yourself forward.  Hand over your pouch, and I'll give back the part the king doesn--YOU!  You with the pipes!  Stop that racket!"

     The musician, who still sat crosslegged against the side of the well, lowered his pipes and smiled.  He was a handsome lad with the first down of manhood on his cheeks, and his voice was sweet.  "I don't think you should refer to the inspiration of the Muses as a ‘racket,' sir.  It's hardly wise to disparage an art beloved of the gods."

     The sergant worked his mouth and spat.  "You Greeks and your precious gods!  You act as though you expect to see one walking down the road at any moment.  I'll tell you something I've learned in my travels, piper: If the gods do exist, they don't concern themselves with us."

     With a shrug, the musician lowered his head to his pipes and began playing again--a laughing melody that must have sounded to the king's men like outright mockery.

     The sergeant's face darkened to the color of ripe grapes.  He uncoiled his whip.  It cracked over the player's head, showering his hair and shoulders with white plaster chips from the well.  The music stopped.  The musician looked up at him from under dust-whitened brows.  Suddenly the marketplace was still.  The sergeant pulled back his whip for another lash.

     "Stop!"  The grape grower surged forward, reaching up to grab the sergeant's arm.  "You can't!  What he said is true!  Besides, he--he's quite good.  Good enough to play in the king's house, which ought--"

     The grape grower never finished his argument, because the sergeant shook off the interfering hand and reached for his sword with a roar of outrage.  The lad holding the horses' heads let them go and grabbed the young farmer's arms.  The other youth jumped down from the chariot to help hold him.  At the sight of the wide bronze blade, the villagers fell back a step.  Above the struggling trio loomed the sergeant, sword raised, as though weighing whether to run the upstart through, or simply cut something off.

     When the old woman dropped her woven straw bag, she saw the sergeant glance her way.

     Then he looked again, eyes widening.  She was getting smaller, hands pulling back into her sleeves, dress slowly crumpling until it collapsed on the ground.  Out of the neck hole  she flew, now in the form of a hornet the size of a man's thumb.  The villagers took another step back.  With a loud buzz, the hornet zigzagged up and then landed on the nose of a startled mare.  "Hold the horses!" the sergeant cried, but too late.  With a crazed neigh the mare reared up, hooves lashing.  The soldier youth who had leaped to grab its bridle screamed as he was struck down.  The horses bolted.  Dropping his sword, the sergeant grabbed at the whipping reins, but the hornet-woman stung his palm so the cords flew out of his hand.  Then the horses went completely wild, careening through the marketplace and down the road, with the hornet stinging first one and then the other, and the sergeant clinging to the sides of the chariot for his life.  The villagers ran along behind, shouting.  Some of them might have been shouting helpful advice, but others were definitely cheering.  As the mares galloped around a bend, the chariot swung against a tree.  The wooden tongue snapped off.  The chariot hit a pothole, tipped over, and skidded on its side into a thicket.

     Still harnessed together, the runaways raced down the beach until they were lost to sight.  From the thicket came a groan.

     Buzzing closer, the hornet-woman saw the sergeant sprawled among the thorns with one leg bent at an unnatural angle.  Had she had lips, she would have smiled.

     The villagers all ducked as she buzzed over their heads.  Landing in front of them, she began to grow into an old woman again.  The grape grower helped himself to the sergeant's red cape and dropped it over her.  She continued to grow past her original size, shedding the burden of age, her back straightening, wrinkles filling in, gray eyes brightening and raven hair growing more lustrous, until a tall and voluptuous young woman stood before them.  She was far too polite to smile.  It might come across as smugness, considering the expressions of stunned wonderment on the faces of all the villagers.

     "Hear me, good people of Myrmida," she said.  "There is one among you who has earned a blessing for your village.  You shall prosper for as long as the gods have their might.  You, Halios--" and she turned to the grape grower. "--for your kind heart, and your reverence for the arts, I grant you and your descendants a blessing which will outlive the age of the gods.  The firstborn of each generation of your line will live a long and happy life, knowing no strife, evil times or undue hardship.  And one of your line will be a great musician."  Touching him on the forehead, she placed a portion of her power into him and his descendants, to make it so.

     Halios bowed low.

     "What a pompous performance," came a voice from the road.  The villagers parted to let him through, and she saw it was the musician who spoke.  Though he smiled at her, there was malice in his eyes.  "You obviously have some power, lady--but who are you to speak of the end of the age of the gods?"

     The villagers took a step back.

     "Aripathe is my name," she said.  "My father is Prometheus.  You know him, I think."

     The piper nodded slowly.  "If this is true, your predictions carry some weight.  But don't keep us all in the dark.  How much longer until the gods fall, and how may it be prevented?"

     "Their doom is set in motion already," said Aripathe.  "And mine, too.  There is no escape."
 

Week Zero, Episode Two
Copyright © 1999, Susan K. Putney

Nebraska, this past autumn

     She swam in the cold black depth, drinking the current that had no end, breathing it, dissolved in it.  Sometimes she tried to swim against it, and felt it bunch up against her body like formless fists.  But there was no way to tell whether she had achieved anything.  It was still cold and black, and the current was always there.  Always she would give up and swim with it again.

     "...ripathe?  Aripathe?  Can you hear me?"

     The sounds were very near, but she sensed no meaning in them, and soon they fluttered away again.  She thought, That must have been a fish.  I have not met a fish in this sea before.  I have swum all this way, never met a fish, and never thought it odd.  I had forgotten all about fish.  What a beautiful fish it was!

     She contined to swim.  The current began to have a sound in it, like the slow beating of a giant drum.  Its motion became ruffled: not choppy, but less featureless, as though she were moving into shallower water.  She had a sense of leaving some greater presence behind.  She turned back, fought the current briefly, surrendered, and was swept ahead.

     "Aripathe?"

     That was her name!  Someone was calling her name!  She tried to answer but seemed to have forgotten how.  She reached out, and her hand encountered something, soft as a kiss.  Silver ripples raced from her fingertips, and her eyes remembered the power of vision.

     Whatever she faced was all silver now.  Touching it, she knew what it was: the surface of the black sea.  She could see her reflection in it: hair floating like a cloud of ink around her pale limbs, face staring, hand stretched forward.  Beyond the surface there was something else--shadows, moving.  Speaking.

     "Aripathe.  Wake up!"

     So, then, she had been asleep.  She needed to remember how to wake up.  She drifted closer to the silver veil.  It became transparent, although her own reflection was still there.  Two faces loomed close to the surface: a woman's face, old and gentle, with skin like thin, wrinkled deerskin and eyes like black beads; a male face, young and fair, with light brown eyes and small horns.  They peered at her, smiling.  She reached out to them.  Her fingers touched the silver and went through; or rather, carried the silver along, clinging like a mass of spiderwebs.  Her silver-wrapped hand met the old one's cheek, but all she felt was the silver web.

     "She's awake," the woman said.  "Thank Gaea!  I was afraid it had been too long."  Her Greek had a very strange accent.  It took a moment for Aripathe to understand.

     The satyr said something.  His words sounded a little like Greek, but no meaning came through.

     "Good idea," said the old woman.  "But I'd better handle that.  Go and warm up the chicken soup.  Did you understand that, dear?  Don't try to move.  I'm going to give you a massage first.  We need to get your blood moving."

     Aripathe said, "How long have I been asleep?"

     The woman frowned, as though it were Aripathe whose Greek was not clear.  Comprehension dawned.  "A very long time, child.  We had to wait, you know, until the heir of Remalhaut's line had blue eyes.  Your own prophecy said that would be the time to wake you.  All this time we've watched, and nothing but brown-eyed babies, generation after generation.  Now Harald Remalhaut has been run over by a truck, and his son, Giorg, has blue eyes. A more worthless heir to a noble name I never did see, but they're blue as the sky, and so we woke you.  It's been close to three thousand years."

     Aripathe sighed.  The number was unreal.  She was very tired.  The silver curtain shimmered and then only her own reflection was there, dwindling to a pale blur and then to nothing as the black current swept her away.

     "Mind if I come too?" Stacy said, from the door of the barn.  She was breathing hard from sprinting across the farmyard, her breath making a white cloud around her face.  She pulled a stocking cap over her short black hair, and dug in the pocket of her jacket for a pair of grimy red gloves.

     Dane Tilssen glanced up at his sister as he tugged on the cinch.  Despite the nine-year difference in their ages, they resembled each other strongly--big, tanned, black-haired and wide-mouthed.  Of his three sisters, he liked her best.

     Puddin'head exhaled explosively.  Dane fastened the cinch, and patted the big gelding's rump.  "Sure, but I'm not going anywhere special," he said.  "Just out to give Puddin' a little run, and blow the cobwebs out of my brain."

     Stacy came in.  "Everyplace you go, something happens."  She stopped as a massive white face came out of a stall and tried to bite her.  She planted a kiss on it.  "Should I take Chevalier?"

     "Not if you want to keep up."  Dane suppressed a smile.  Stacy was sensitive about Chevalier.  The huge beast was bred to be a draft animal--even Dane could not comfortably straddle him--yet when Stacy had set eyes on him at the auction, no other horse would do.  She had the idea that knights in armor had ridden such horses (surely not, Dane thought, since medieval knights were Stacy's size or smaller), and that a proud warrior spirit inhabited the lumbering hulk.  At that time, her parents had considered it necessary to distract Stacy from an unfortunate situation in high school, and no one else bid on the horse, so she became the ecstatic owner of Moby Dick, instantly renamed Chevalier.

     "Aww, c'mon," Stacy said.  "You're not going to gallop, are you?"

     "I had planned on it, yes.  Why don't you ride Sugar?  She hasn't been out in a couple of days."  He led Puddin'head out of the stall.  "I'm heading down to the creek to see if the beavers have rebuilt their dam.  I'll take it slow so you can catch up.  After that, I thought I'd ride over to the Bassangers' for a cup of coffee."

     Stacy wrinkled her nose.  "That sounds really boring, Dane."

     "Well, I told you so."  On his way out the door he took a coiled rope and slung it over the saddle horn, thinking he might lasso a few fence posts for excitement.

     It was November, and humidly cold, although there was no snow yet.  The hills were shades of brown, textured by contour plowing and terraces, the various fields outlined by rows of black, naked trees.  The sky was gray.  It was a gray that permeated houses and brains, which was why he had left his piano and come in search of exercise to blast him awake.  Not that there was any real escape from a Midwestern November.  Except, of course, to go away to someplace like Las Vegas, as his parents had done.

     Grass crunched under his boots as he led Puddin'head over to the pasture gate to go down to the creek.  As he opened the gate, however, he felt watched, and turned to face the accusing stares of a pair of young Angus bulls.

     They were standing by the fence in their pen of frozen black mud, looking out mournfully at the grassy farmyard.  One of them blinked its big brown eyes at him and uttered a disconsolate moo.

     "Yeah, I know exactly how you feel," Dane said.  "I guess we'd all rather be someplace else."  An idea struck him.  "Well, Las Vegas is pretty much out of the question, but how about the cornfield?"

     He led Puddin'head around their pen and past a shed and a haywagon to another gate, which opened into the cornfield.  The corn was all cut down, of course, leaving broken stalks in dingy yellow rows, but there would be enough ears of dried corn scattered in the rows to make good foraging.  The cornfield had a sturdy fence around it and the bulls would have no reason to leave, so they ought to be all right there.  He opened the gate, mounted up, got his rope ready, and walked Puddin'head back to the bullpen.  His sudden caution communicated itself to the horse, who moved with a mincing step, ears forward.  It paid to be careful with bulls.  Reaching down, he unhooked the chain and pulled open the gate of the pen, backing the gelding.  Then he shook out the rope.  It already had a noose in it which he swung gently.  Not much defense against bulls, except they'd known ropes when they were calves, and might not want to get too close.

     The bulls had turned to watch him.  They stood dumbly for a few seconds.  Then one of them noticed the open path to the cornfield.  It trotted out of the pen, paused, shook its curved horns at the man and horse, then trotted toward the field.  Its brother followed automatically, repeating the horn-shaking gesture as though it were a game of "walk this way."  A few yards into the cornfield, both of them dropped their heads and began eating. One thing Dane liked about animals was how easy it was to make them happy.  As he closed the gate, a west wind sprang up, sweeping toward him.  That's nice, he thought, maybe the weather will change.

     "Dane!"  It was Stacy, coming out of the barn with reins in her hand.  "Thought you'd be down to the creek by now!"  She tugged on the reins and Chevalier lumbered out of the barn, a saddle perched ridiculously on his back.  Their dad had fastened two cinches together to get something long enough to go around the animal.  Chevalier wore a leather-padded yoke to which the saddle was tied, for more stability.  The stirrups did not stick straight out from his back, but they certainly didn't hang very far down his sides.  He took two steps out of the barn, dropped his massive head and began cropping the frozen grass.

     "I let the bulls into the cornfield," Dane said.  "Weren't you going to ride Sugar?"

     "I never said--" Stacy was interrupted by a commotion from the direction of the cornfield.  Dane turned to look.

     The two young bulls, bellowing their heads off, galloped up the hill away from the gate.  Dane saw nothing that could have frightened them.  It was a long hill, but not steep, and they ran all the way to the top, where a fence and a line of poplars marked the boundary of the field and of the Tilssen property.  With a crash of dry wood splintering, the bulls kept going.

     Grabbing a pitchfork from the haywagon, Dane yelled, "Stacy, get the cattle prod!"  He turned Puddin'head and the big gelding ran four steps and cleared the gate in a mighty leap, knocking it with one hind hoof on the way over, and landing in a gallop.  Dane grabbed the saddle horn.  He'd planned on opening the gate, not jumping it.  This wasn't like Puddin'head at all.  Normally the only direction his horse wanted to gallop was toward the barn.  Regaining his balance, he hauled on the reins and slowed the horse to a walk.  "What the heck got into you?" he said.  "Save some energy for dealing with those bulls!"  Then he allowed the gelding to trot, and they headed up the hill.  Loud bellowing sounds came from the other side.

     A moment later, he urged the horse into a gallop again, when above the bull noises rose the sound of a man's scream.

     The fence on the hilltop was a bit tricky.  Some saplings and two fence posts were broken, and another post was uprooted, but the trees and brush had more or less pulled the fence upright again after it was trampled.  It was only waist-high but it had barbed wire at the top.  Normally he wouldn't have tried to jump a horse uphill over that, but he asked, and the gelding responded.  Twigs brushed his face and yanked at the pitchfork, there was a jolt, and then they were running downhill through a pasture.

     At the bottom of the hill were not two bulls, but three!  A small maple tree was broken off two feet from the ground and lay spanning the creek, and another small tree had a man in it.  The man's pale suede jacket was stained bright red on one side.

     The third bull was twice the size of the Tilssens' sleek black two-year-olds.  It was a red-gold monster with massive, black-tipped horns, and with shoulders like a buffalo.  While the young bulls pawed up the frozen turf and uttered bovine threats, it very deliberately placed its head against the tree and pushed.  The wood made a snapping sound.  The tree did not fall, but the man in it looked around wildly, obviously seeking a better retreat.  The next nearest tree still standing was twenty yards away, and had no branches lower than twelve feet.

     Taking in this scene on the gallop, Dane uttered a whoop and brandished his pitchfork, charging down the hill like Geronimo's army.  His father's bulls did a double-take and one of them actually backed up a little.  The other one held its ground and kicked up some more grass.  Calmly, the golden bull turned to face him.

     Dane's intention had been to distract it from its work before the tree broke.  This he had achieved.  He swept past, swinging the business end of the pitchfork past its face--not striking, just making sure the bull's attention didn't wander.  Urging the gelding across the ankle-deep creek, he glanced back, expecting to see the bull right behind him.

     It put its head against the tree and pushed, calmly and relentlessly.

     One of his dad's bulls, maybe emboldened by the golden one's lack of bluster, bellowed and charged.  The big bull pivoted on its front end.  There was a crack of horns and a thud of meat against meat, and the youngster was down.  It scrambled to its feet and swerved away, helped along by the point of a black-tipped horn.  The big bull snorted and shook its head.

     The other young Angus lowered its head and pawed the ground.  It was the slightly larger and dominant one of the pair.  The big golden bull stood quietly, waiting for it.  Dane looked up at the man in the tree, who gave him a pained half-smile.

     "I'm going to walk closer," Dane said.  "When the black bull charges, be ready to drop onto my horse behind me."

     "All right," said the man in the tree.

     The golden bull glanced at Dane.  Then, to the consternation of both men, it backed around the tree, positioning itself between Dane and the tree.