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

This story ought to end with the hero returning his winged steed to the Muses and entering the kingdom of Lycia in great triumph, but something very different happened. Bellerophon decided to keep Pegasus, and he rode him so long and so hard that he grew very full of pride and presumption in his success. One day Bellerophon made up his mind to drive Pegasus to the gates of the gods in the sky which was too great an ambition for a mortal who had received no invitation as yet from the dwellers on Mount Olympus. Jupiter saw this rider of the skies mounting higher and higher and he became very angry with him. He sent a gadfly which stung Pegasus and made him throw Bellerophon to the earth. He was always lame and blind after that.

It really had not been the fault of Pegasus at all. He was only the steed of those who followed dreams, even if he did have wings. When his rider fell, Pegasus fell too, and he landed unhurt but a long distance from his old pastures. He did not know in which direction they lay or how to find the road that led back to his friends, the Muses. Pegasus' wings seemed to be of no use to him. He roamed from one end of the country to the other, driven from one field to the next by the rustics who mistook him for some sort of a dragon because of his wings. He grew old and lost his fleetness. It even seemed to him that his wings were nothing but a dragging weight and that he would never be able to use them again.

Finally the same thing happened to Pegasus that happens to old horses to-day that have enjoyed a wonderful youth as racers. He was sold to a farmer and fastened to a plough.

Pegasus was not used to this heavy work of the soil; his strength was better suited to climbing through the air than plodding along the surface of the earth. He used all the strength he could put forth in pulling the plough, but his wings dragged and were in the way and his master beat his aching back with an ox whip. That might have been the end of this winged horse, but one day good fortune came to him.

There was a youth passing by who was beloved of the Muses. He was so poor that he had often no other shelter than the woods and hedges afforded, or any food save wild fruits and the herbs of the field. But this youth could put the beauties of the earth, its hills and valleys, its temples, flowers, and the desires and loves of its people into words that sang together as the notes of a lute sang. He was a young poet.

The poet felt a great compassion for the horse he saw in the field, bent low under the blows of his clownish master, and with wings dragging and tattered.

"Let me try to drive your horse," he begged, crossing the field and mounting upon Pegasus' back.

It was suddenly as if one of the gods were riding Pegasus. He lifted his head high, and his heavy feet left the clods of earth. His wings straightened and spread wide. Carrying the youth, Pegasus arose through the air as the country people gathered from all the neighboring farms to watch the wonder, a winged horse with a flowing golden mane rising and then hidden within the clouds that opened upon Mount Olympus.

Terminus was the god of boundaries, and a kind of picnic was being held in his honor one day in the long-ago myth time on the edge of a little Roman town.

No one had ever really seen Terminus but every farmer who owned a few acres of land, and the men who governed the cities were quite sure as to how he looked. It was likely that he wore such garb as did Pan, they had decided, and carried instruments for measuring similar to those that a surveyor uses to-day. His chariot was loaded with large stones and finely chiselled posts for marking the limits of a man's farm, or that of a town. There were no fences in those days, but the gods had appointed Terminus to protect land holders and to safeguard citizens by keeping all boundaries sacred from invasion by an enemy.

No wonder the Terminalia, as they called this holiday, was a joyous time. All through the neighboring vineyards and fields and on the edge of the village stones had been placed to mark the boundaries, and there were stone pillars, also, having carved heads to make them beautiful. Everyone who came to the picnic brought an offering for the god Terminus, a wreath of bright roses, a garland of green laurel, or a basket of grapes and pomegranates which they placed on one of these boundary stones or posts. The law of the gods that prevented invasion was the greatest blessing these people had, for it made them free to till the earth and build homes and keep their hearth fires burning.

Suddenly the merrymaking was interrupted. The children who had been gathering wild flowers ran, crying, to their fathers and mothers, for the sky was darkened in an instant as if a hurricane was approaching. The young men who had been playing games and the maidens who had been dancing huddled together in frightened groups, for they saw between rifts in the clouds the tracks of dark chariot wheels making their swift way down to earth from the sky. And the older folk, who knew the meaning of the rumblings and dull roar and occasional darts of fire that parted the clouds, shuddered.

"See who stands in our midst in his black cloak, scattering hoar frost that blights the fields and freezes us!" they exclaimed. "It is Dread, the courier of Mars, the god of war, who is approaching in his chariot."

There came dreadful sounds soon that almost drowned the voices of the people, the crashing of swords and shields, and the cries of women and little children as a chariot plunged through their midst, its wheels dripping with blood. It was driven by two other attendants of war, Alarm and Terror, the face of one as dark as a thunder cloud, and the other with a countenance as pale as death.

"What shall we do; we are unarmed and will perish?" one man cried. And another answered him.

"Look to yourself and your own safety. Why did you leave your sword at home, and what care is it of mine that you have no means of protecting yourself?"

Strange words for a noble people to speak to one another in a time of such need, were they not? But it was not the heart or the soul speech of these Romans. The two other attendants of war, Fear and Discord in tarnished armor, had appeared in their midst and had put these thoughts into the minds of the men.

"Mars comes!" they said then, and the air grew dense and suffocating with smoke, only pierced at intervals by fiery arrows. Thunderbolts forged by the black, one-eyed Cyclopes in their workshops under the volcanoes fell all about, tearing up the earth and bursting in thousands of burning pieces. Through this slaughter and carnage rode the mailed Mars, one of the gods of war.

His steeds were hot and bleeding, and his own eyes shone like fire in his dark, cruel face, for Mars had no pity and took pleasure in war for the sake of itself. It was never the purpose but always the battle that gave him pleasure. With his attendants he sat on a throne that was stained with blood, and the worship that delighted his ears like music was the crash of strife and the cries of those who were sorely wounded.

Mars' palace on Mount Olympus was a most terrible place. Fancy a grim old stronghold built for strength only, without a chink or a crack for letting in Apollo's cheerful sunlight, and never visited by the happy Muses or by Orpheus with his sweet toned lute, or by jolly old Momus, the god of laughter. The palace was guarded, night and day, by a huge hound and a vulture, both of them the constant visitants of battle fields. Mars sat on his throne, waited upon by a company of sad prisoners of war, and holding forever the insignia of his office, a spear and a flaming torch. Why had he left his abode and descended upon the peaceful merrymaking of the Terminalia?

Mars was a very ruthless kind of god. In fact he was so cruel and thoughtless that the family of the gods was rather sorry that Jupiter had appointed him to so important a position, and they decided at last to have two war-gods. But who the other one was and what happened when this second chariot of war crashed down through the clouds is another story that you shall hear presently. The reason for Mars riding out with those frightful friends of his, Dread, Alarm, Fear, and Discord, was that he had not the slightest respect for Terminus, the god of boundaries. He had decided to knock down his stones and shatter his pillars.

Everyone, from the days of the myths down to the present time, has believed in a fair fight. It is about the greatest adventure a man can have, that of using all his strength and giving up his life perhaps in a battle to right a wrong or protect a defenseless people. But fancy this old fight of Mars when he rode down in the chariot that the gods had given him upon a people who were without arms and with the purpose of violating their boundaries.

With a rumble like that of all the thunder storms in the world rolled into one and a crashing like the sound of a thousand spears, Mars touched the earth and rode across Terminus' carefully laid out boundary lines and destroyed them. The wheels of his chariot ground the stones Terminus had so honestly placed to powder, and the beautifully carved pillars were shattered, and the pieces buried in the dust. The shouts of Mars and his followers drowned all the peaceful melody of earth, the singing of birds, the laughter of the children, and the pleasant sounds of spinning and mowing and grinding.

It was indeed a most dreadful invasion and for a while it seemed as if it was going to end in nothing but destruction of the people and the industry on the earth which the gods loved and had helped. But in an instant something happened.

There was a roar as if wild beasts of the forests for miles around had been captured, and the earth trembled as it did when the giants were thrown out of the home of the gods, for Mars had fallen and was crying about it. He had thought himself invulnerable, but whether an arrow from some unseen hero had hit him or whether his steeds had stumbled over one of Terminus' boundary posts, the invincible Mars lay prostrate on the field he had himself invaded, and before he could pick himself up, something else happened.

It was really rather amusing, for Mars was not hurt. He was only taught a much needed lesson.

Just beyond the lines of Terminus which Mars had violated there lived two giant planters, Otus and Ephialtes, whose father had been a planter also and his father before him. They had been much too busy to attend the Terminalia picnic. In fact they almost never took a holiday, but toiled from sunrise to