Wonder Stories - Carolyn Sherwin Bailey (sci fi books to read txt) 📗

the gods had punished the bee-man for his sordidness. Still, he was her son and Cyrene decided to try and help Aristaeus out of his difficulty.

"You must go to old Proteus, who is the herdsman of Neptune's sea-calves," Cyrene said. "He can tell you, my son, how to get back your bees, for he is a great prophet. You will have to force him to help you, however. If you are able to seize him, chain him at once; he will answer your questions in order to be released. I will conduct you to the cave where he comes at noon to take his nap. Then you can easily secure him, but when he finds himself in chains he will cause you a great deal of trouble. He will make a noise like the crackling of flames so as to frighten you into loosing your hold on the chain. Or he may become a wild boar, a fierce tiger, a lion with ravenous jaws or a devouring dragon. But you have only to keep Proteus fast bound and when he finds all his arts to be of no avail he will return to his natural shape and obey your commands."

So Cyrene led Aristaeus to the cave by the sea and showed him where to hide behind a rock while she, herself, arose and took her place behind the clouds. Promptly at noon old Proteus, covered with dripping green weeds, issued from the water followed by a herd of sea calves who spread themselves out on the shore. The herdsman of the sea counted them, sat down on the floor of the cave, and then in a very short time had stretched himself out, fast asleep. Aristaeus waited until he was snoring and then he bound him with a heavy chain he had brought for the purpose.

When Proteus awoke and found himself captured, he struggled like a wild animal at bay. Next, he turned to flame and then, in succession to many terrible beasts, but Aristaeus never once let go of the chain that secured him. At last he returned to his true form and spoke angrily to Aristaeus.

"Who are you, who boldly invades my domain and what do you want?" Proteus demanded.

"You know already," the bee-man replied, "for you have the powers of a prophet and nothing is hidden from you. I have lost my bees, and I want to have them returned to me."

At these words, the prophet fixed his eyes on Aristaeus with a piercing look.

"Your trouble is the just reward sent you by the gods because you killed Eurydice," he said. "To avenge her death, her companion nymphs sent this destruction to your bees."

"I killed Eurydice?" Aristaeus asked in amazement. "Does she no longer listen to the music of Orpheus?"

"Yes, but not in Arcadia," Proteus explained. "When she was stung by the viper, she was obliged to make her way alone to the dark realm of Pluto. Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and then he started out to search for Eurydice. He passed through the crowd of ghosts and entered the realm beyond the dark river Styx. There, in front of the throne of Pluto, he sang of his longing that Eurydice might be restored to him, until the cheeks of even the Fates were wet with tears.

"Pluto himself gave way to Orpheus' music and called Eurydice. She came to Orpheus, limping on her wounded foot. They roam the happy fields of the gods together now, he leading sometimes and sometimes she. And Jupiter has placed Orpheus' lyre among the stars."

As Proteus finished telling his story, the penitent Aristaeus fell on the ground at his feet.

"What can I do to appease the anger of the gods for my wickedness?" he asked.

"You may use your skill to build temples to the two in the country of Arcadia which they so loved," Proteus said. "Take your way home. Forget your own gains for a while and gather stones to fit together for the altars."

So the bee-man did this, and he discovered that he came to enjoy the work very much. He took pleasure in cutting and polishing the stones until they were as beautiful as those of any temple in Greece. As he worked in the grove that he had selected for his building he often thought that he detected the music of Orpheus' lyre as the birds sang, and the streams rippled, and the wind blew through the leaves. He found it very sweet indeed.

One day, shortly after his beautiful altars were built, Aristaeus found a wonder. It was spring, when the nearby orchards were white and sweet with blossoms, and there were all his honey bees returned, and busily starting their hives under the shadow of the temple of Eurydice.

WHEN POMONA SHARED HER APPLES.

Pomona was a dryad, and Venus had given her a wild apple tree to be her home. As Pomona grew up under the shadow of its branches, protecting the buds from winter storms, dressing herself in its pink blossoms in the spring time, and holding up her hands to catch its apples in the fall, she found that her love for this fruit tree was greater than anything else in her life. At last Pomona planted the first orchard and lived in it and tended it.

The dryads were those favored children of the gods who lived in the ancient woods and groves, each in her special tree. Dressed in fluttering green garments, they danced through the woodland ways with steps as light as the wind, sang to the tune of Pan's pipe, or fled, laughing, from the Fauns. They missed Pomona in the woods, and tales came to these forest dwellers of the wonders she was working in the raising of fruits fit for the table of the gods.

She had trees on which golden oranges and yellow lemons hung among deep green leaves. She raised citrons and limes, and even cultivated the wide spreading tamarind tree whose fruit was of such value to Epictetus, the physician of Greece, in cooling the fires of fever. The wood folk left their mossy hiding places to peer over the wall of Pomona's orchard and watch her working so busily there.

They were a strange company. Pan came from Arcadia where he was the god of flocks and shepherds. He had fastened some reeds from the stream together to make his pipes, and on them he could play the merriest music. It sounded like birds and the singing of brooks and summer breezes all in one. With Pan came his family of Fauns, the deities of the woods and fields. Their bodies were covered with bristling hair, there were short, sprouting horns on their heads, and their feet were shaped like those of a goat. Pan was of the same strange guise as the Fauns were, but to distinguish his rank, he wore a garland of pine about his head.

These and Pomona's sisters, the dryads, watched her longingly from the budding time of the year until the harvest. It was a pleasant sight to see Pomona taking care of her apples. She was never without a pruning knife which she carried as proudly as Jupiter did his sceptre. With it she trimmed away the foliage of her fruit trees wherever it had grown too thick, cut the branches that had straggled out of shape, and sometimes deftly split a twig to graft in a new one so that the tree might bear different, better apples.

Pomona even led streams of water close to the roots of the trees so that they need not suffer from drought. She looked, herself, a part of the orchard, for she wore a wreath of bright fruits and her arms were often full of apples almost as huge and golden as the famous apples of Hesperides.

The dryads and the Fauns begged one, at least, of the apples, but Pomona refused them all. She had grown selfish through the seasons in which she had brought her orchard to a state of such bounteous perfection. She would not give away a single apple, and she kept her gate always locked. So the wood creatures were obliged to go home empty handed to their forest places.

In those days Vertumnus was one of the lesser gods who watched over the seasons. The fame of Pomona's fruits came to the ear of Vertumnus and he was suddenly possessed of a great desire to share the orchard and its care with her. He sent messengers in the form of the birds to plead his cause with Pomona, but she was just as cruel to him as she had been to the family of Pan and to her own sisters. She had made up her mind that she would never share her orchard with any one in the world.

Vertumnus would not give up, though. He had the power to change his form as he willed, and he decided to go to Pomona in disguise to see if he could not win her by appealing to her pity. She was obliged to buy her grain, and one day in October when the apple boughs bent low with their great red and yellow balls a reaper came to the orchard gate with a basket of ears of corn for Pomona.

"I ask no gold for my grain," he said to the goddess, "I want only a basket full of fruit in return for it."

"My fruit is not to be given away or bartered for. It is mine and mine alone until it spoils," Pomona replied, driving the reaper away.

But the following day a farmer stopped at the orchard, an ox goad in his hand as if he had just unyoked a pair of weary oxen from his hay cart, left them resting beside some stream, and had gone on to ask refreshment for himself. Pomona invited him into her orchard, but she did not offer him a single apple. As soon as the sun began to lower she bade him be on his way.

In the days that followed Vertumnus came to Pomona in many guises. He appeared with a pruning hook and a ladder as if he were a vine dresser ready and willing to climb up into her trees and help her gather the harvest. But Pomona scorned his services. Then Vertumnus trudged along as a discharged soldier in need of alms, and again with a fishing rod and a string of fish to exchange for only one apple. Each time that Vertumnus came disguised to Pomona he found her more beautiful and her orchard a place of greater plenty than ever; but the richer her harvest the deeper was her greed. She refused to share even a half of one of her apples.

At last, when the vines were dripping with purple juice of the grape and the boughs of the fruit trees hung so heavily that they touched the ground, a strange woman hobbled down the road and stopped at Pomona's gate. Her hair was white and she was obliged to lean on a staff. Pomona opened the gate and the crone entered and sat down on a bank, admiring the trees.

"Your orchard does you great credit, my daughter," she said to Pomona.

Then she pointed to a grape vine that twined itself about the trunk and branches of an old oak. The oak was massive and strong, and the vine clung to it in safety and had covered itself with bunches of beautiful purple grapes.

"If that tree stood alone," the old woman explained to Pomona, "with no vine to cling to it, it would have nothing to offer but its useless leaves. And if the vine did not have the tree to