CHAPTER XXVIII
AN OUTCAST ON PARNASSOS
Theria stood still in front of the house. She was stunned as one must be when life turns a sharp corner and shows undreamed-of paths of dread. “No place in the Pythia House, no place at home—anywhere.” Her father’s words were true. She did not feel sad nor terrified. She did not feel at all.
She looked down the twilit road toward Kirrha, the port. No, in Kirrha they would find her and kill her publicly. She must not die that way. The Pleistos glen also was out of the question. The hills! Her true hiding place was the hills. She turned swiftly into the little lane and threaded its shadows to the cliff. A steep climb brought her to a height above the house-roofs. Here at once she was in the wilds, on a slant hillside where grew laurel, wild olive, and the hemlock. Here the twilight was silvered by the rising moon, the same full round under which the Thermopylæ soldiers were keeping their heroic guard.
Here the laurels were threaded by a slender path, surely the one made by Eëtíon’s feet coming to her. She knelt down and kissed it. The Greeks were lovers of the earth and not seldom did they kiss it for their love. Oh, gods, if she could but hide herself completely! Then Eëtíon would never know her sins and would continue to love her.
She tried to make haste, but her whole body ached with weariness as though she were very old. The repeated fastings had told even on her strong body.
She won past the higher terraces of hill and found the so-called Kaka Skala, “bad stairs” indeed, steps partly hewn out of the rock and winding up Parnassos Mountain until they were lost in cloud. These she began to climb. No thought was hers to see the glory about her, the crags ghost-like in the moon, the abyss of glens black with fir and cedar, the heights which soared and melted into infinity, the starry sky—a grandeur hardly to be borne. Theria only knew that she was very lonely, that the grandeur was terrible. She seemed very small and childlike in that vastness, stumbling along ever slower, stopping sometimes with labouring breath, then pushing on again higher, higher.
In an upland meadow she passed a herd of cows, small wild things which fled trampling at her approach. She thought vaguely of the cattle of Apollo, which he kept on Parnassos and which of yore the baby Hermes had stolen. Of course, these could be no other cows. She shuddered at the supernatural creatures. Now she came to a fir wood, black like a cloak. The mottled moonlight sifted in at the edge pricking out fern-brake and rock, but within it was ebony. In such a place might the Bacchantes well go mad in worship of their god. With a sob she entered it. For the fear of being found was greater than her fear of the haunted place.
Theria lay down to rest among the mosses. Even her double terror could not contend against her utter exhaustion. At once she fell asleep.
She awoke in the dawn shivering with cold, hungry beyond telling. The fear with which she had gone to sleep, the fear of being found, met her at the door of waking. It made her get up and, though she ached in every bone, to push onward, upward into safer hiding. Sometimes she came to a bare stretch across which she stumbled in haste. For surely in such a place they would see her, and would catch her and drag her back and doubtless bury her alive. In this thought she forgot even her old grief for the loss of her god. Indeed she half believed that this present fate of hers was Apollo’s punishment which he had delayed so long.
Now again she must cross a bare upland. The sun was high and burning as it can burn only on such heights. She started across in the fearsome blinding glare, the sweat pouring from every member. Curiously enough, in the midst of the sunlight she saw moving along in front of her—a shaft of golden light! When she entered a shadow of jutting cliff the golden light endured in the shadow. If she paused, it paused. It was quiet as if a dream pervaded it. It seemed to smile as do those faces that peep from bushes or caves, which smile and afterward destroy.
Theria shrank back. It shrank with her. No evading it that way. A terror seized her. She wrung her hands. Should she run back to the forest? No, there it would only gain power. She tried to remember a charm against spirits which Baltè had taught her, but she had no memory left. Now a lofty cliff baulked her path. Against this cliff, facing her, the light stopped and stayed very tall and stately. It quivered, growing brighter to a focus, and suddenly out from it as from a sheath stepped a youth, tall as befits an Immortal and of beauty tender as the dawn. Golden were his tresses, golden his flowing vesture, golden his sandalled feet which did not touch the ground. But the quiver girt upon his shoulder was silver-white, silver also the bent bow in his hand.
Should she not know him, she who had known him so well? Up went her hands in worship; up higher yet her worshipping heart.
“Thou hast come to kill me,” she whispered. “Blessed art thou, glorious child of Leto. Not lightly shall thy dear Oracle be flouted and thy worshippers deceived.”
Apollo did not gaze upon Theria, else she would forthwith have died. But just above her he gazed, delicately smiling, and as he smiled, he toyed with his silver bow. Already was the shaft set on the string, and along that arrow back and forth ran the white fire which whensoever it reached the tip broke into flame. Now he nodded his head and spoke aloud:
“Theria, daughter of Delphi, begone from my tripod!
No priestess of mine art thou.
No voice of Apollo can enter thy mind close-guarded with reason,
Begone! Begone!”
Theria cowered before that voice, crouching to the earth.
But the god spoke on, almost tenderly, as to a frightened child:
“Nay, cower not, my maiden, my bow shall not hurt thee.
Nay, for I love thee. Hast thou not sung at my bidding
Hymns for my glory, songs which I to thy spirit
Breathed and created?”
Suddenly the god threw back his golden head and laughed. And with his laughter the cliffs echoed as with stricken lyres and heavenly flutings. He was laughing at Theria!
He spoke again:
“Thou poor child of a mortal wouldst compel good fortune for Hellas
Steal it—from gods unwilling! Good lack! But I love thy courage!
“But now behold, little one, wilt thou grant me to speak in Delphi?
“Ha, thou advisor of gods. Thou helper of gods in trouble,
Without thee Apollo shall succour. Without thee give aid to his people
I SHALL CARE FOR MY OWN!”
Again he laughed—a merry, loving mockery.
Oh, the dear joyous god! the dear Son of Leto—Phœbus of the bright hair! Had he not always spoken at Delphi since his glorious mother bore him upon Delos? And Theria had doubted! Her heart filled with a very agony of faith and joy.
But now the god was looking again at his bow. Perhaps he had changed his mind, and would destroy her, after all. Even so, Theria had no regret to die.
But he spoke thus—
“See now, child of Nikander, whither my arrows are destined.”
He turned, lifted his bow, and shot the flaming shaft toward the north. It flew with a peal like a lightning bolt when the bolt falls so nigh that it quenches the thunder; it soared white and blinding over the peak of Parnassos and fell crashing beyond.
But with the noise of the arrow Theria fell prone on the earth and knew nothing more.