PREPARING THE BEAST FOR THE FERRYMAN
PREPARING THE BEAST FOR THE FERRYMAN
"Empower me with your ancestors' sword and a scabbard to place it in, sire," I asked the king, "and your confidence, in addition, and I will travel to the lake of Lerna and slay the Hydra who lives there." So he did and off I went, out on a terrific journey on a strong horse with the wind in my hair and I stopped along the way at taverns and roadhouses and ate roasted game hens and drank beers. And I chatted with the wenches in the taverns and roadhouses and told them what I was about to get myself into, mainly because their lives were horrifically dull and without the tales of adventurers such as I they'd grind to a halt altogether. And also because the telling was fun. "Will you die?" They asked me. Probably. Maybe. Maybe they'd scrape me out of the cave with a long stick and take one bone home to my father. I let that hang in the air. I was to do battle with an enemy who had passed into legend, and I felt it was important for me to give them, which is to say the wenches and their associates, something to make songs about.
And when I got to the lake where inside a cave the Hydra did dwell, I tied my horse's bridle around the branch of a cherry tree and patted its big smooth snout and said, "There now, good horse. Whenst thou see me again I'll have either slain the beast who has so dreadfully mutilated the good people of yonder hills or... Well, either that or you won't see me." And I stroked its flank with a solemn eye which hinted at the deep pool of melancholy within. Then I set off down to the lake shore to hopefully ascend into the rank of mythic heroes myself.
I stood in the mouth of the Hydra's cave and made a terrible ruckus until the fearsome beast within was roused from its slumber and stalked out on legs of bone and corded muscle to kill and devour me. It was horribly ugly and stunk of poison. Thin and stooped, with a sallow and scaly body, it swayed and dipped under the weight of its many heads. Its eyes burned like coals in a fire, not hot, but the coals in the dead of the night when all have let slip the tether of consciousness, when the night is darkest and coldest and the tiny glimmers in the hearth offer only an aching memory of warmth. Its necks swooped and arced. I was hypnotised, and only at the last moment did I remember to cover my face with rags to protect me from its poisonous gases. It would have been embarrassing if I had died from poison before I'd even chopped a head off. "Prepare to pay the ferryman, beast," I snarled, and it darted at me lightning fast with one head and then another. I parried with my sword and darted quickly to the side, but I was freaked out by how quick it was. I grabbed a tree branch with which to fend off other heads.
Again the beast attacked and again I parried. Bang bang bang. It was a vicious monster. I yelped and scampered around. Its serpent heads were scaly and dripping, with venom, and also malice in a metaphorical way that was still so real and full on. Its horned head impaled the air. It snarled and hissed. The scales that protected it danced with an otherworldly sheen. I became transfixed by the shapes between the awful creature's necks and only my years of discipline and training as a warrior saved me from being slain where I stood. Back and forth we danced, the Hydra and I. Eventually it pounced and I swung my sword and one awful head came crashing to the ground. I kicked it hard and it grubbed along the cave floor. The beast wailed. "Too bad," I sneered. Refreshed, I attacked once more. But to my frustration the severed stump, which had been gushing thick, black-blue blood, began to dry up, and before I knew it two new heads had begun to grow out of them. I tried to keep fighting but it was disheartening. It was embarrassing, too. It trivialised the effort I had just put into cutting off the first head. And these ones were even worse. The malice that shone from their eyes made the malice of the first head look friendly, by comparison. And the ugly jaw and wicked fangs and snaggled horns and so on were twice as awful to look at. I hated it. "Begone, foul beast!" I shrieked and threw my tree branch at it. It caught a glancing blow on one neck, from which gushed a new torrent of blood, and which just as quickly dried up and a stumpy new head grew from the wound. "Are you kidding me?" I whined.
I hacked, I stabbed, I slashed. Ho hum. I grabbed little handfuls of honeyed nuts from my bag whenever I got a second so I could keep my strength up, and swigged from a gourd that a terrifically buxom tavern wench had filled with a nectar or nectars. The beast was both vicious and wily. It was hard to cut its heads off. Eventually my sword found one of the heads that had replaced the first and I watched with great chagrin as yet more heads pushed out of the stump. "Ah, forget about it," I complained as I stomped out of the cave, "Get lost. I hate this and I hate you," and I hurled my sword into the lake and I sat down on the sand and kicked my feet in pure anger and fell asleep in the sun. When I awoke I took a stick and drew a picture of the tavern wench in the sand, including her big bosoms. And I looked over and saw the Hydra's head in the mouth of the cave and went and picked it up. It was peaceful in death. Its scales, also peaceful, were elegantly pearlescent instead of disgusting or greasy. Its eyes were half closed in a gracious acknowledgement of defeat. I sighed at it. "You have a beauty of your own," I told it. No kidding, it seemed to say. I remembered its savagery, its speed, its skill. The more heads it grew the more ungainly it became. It was a shame. I started to eulogise it. “You were an original,” I enthused. “A marvel of nature... a horror, yes. But a testament to the gods’ infinite creativity. If only you didn’t grow more heads.”
Inside the cave the rest of the Hydra howled and hissed, angrier and with more heads than ever before. It was bad news for the peasants. I sighed. “Things were better then,” I told it. "If only you’d known. Look at us.” I warmed into it. I was angry. It was an abusive pattern. Its chain reaction of heads was punitive, plain and simple. “You fool. You perversion,” I spat, “Look what you’ve done to yourself. Look what you’ve done to these peasants. Look what you’ve done to me. I'm going to be embarrassed in front of the king," and the Hydra’s head glinted in the afternoon light and replied that I didn't have to try to destroy it; that some dark things may live in caves. That the sun was not entitled to reach its grasping fingers into every corner. That not every hero received a shrine in antiquity, that some would lose their thread in the Labyrinth, and some would grow tired and need a rest by a lake and before they mounted their horse and returned to a familiar roadhouse.
That was the last straw. I tossed the head into the lake in disappointment. The beast’s self-interest rankled. I threw a handful of silty gravel in chagrin and watched as the tiny brown and white stones drifted down and rested on the head of the Hydra, its half-closed eyes cloudy in the lake water. Of course I had to try to destroy it. Of course I did, though it may argue. To walk into a cave with a sword and chop what lived inside was the only thing there was. To swing and to swing again. Perhaps, I reflected generously, to bite he who stepped through the mouth of your cave. Perhaps. Well, that was none of my business. The sun warmed my back as my noble horse crested the hill and rejoined the road that led home. The air carried birdsong.
Thanks for reading Infinite Gossip. If you’d like more stories, my book, BLUE NIGHT AT THE CULT, is available on Kindle and Kobo. If you’ve read it, perhaps you could leave a review on Goodreads! Thanks to Josie, who had this brilliant review the characters of the book:
