Tales of Wonder by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online

momentarily between flawless teeth. Then She clicked to the hounds, who sprang up. Mounting the moonbeam again, She squeezed it with Her thighs and was gone, riding to another grove.
    The moment She disappeared, the glade was filled with breathy gossip.
    â€œDid you see—” began Dryope. Trembling with projected pleasure, she turned to Pyrena. “The Huntress looked at you. Truly looked. Next time it will be you. I know it will.”
    Pyrena wound her fingers through her hair, letting fall a cascade of blossoms that perfumed the air. She shrugged, but smiled a secret, satisfied smile.
    Arrhiza turned abruptly and left the circle. She went back to her tree. Sluggishly the softened heartwood rings admitted her, and she leaned into them, closed her eyes, and tried to sleep though she knew that in spring no true sleep would come.
    She half dreamed of clouds and birds, forcing them into her mind, but really she was hearing a buzzing. Sky, she murmurmed to herself; remember sky.
    â€œOh trees, fair and flourishing, on the high hills
    They stand, lofty. The
    Deathless sacred grove …”
    Jeansen practiced his Homeric supplication, intoning carefully through his nose. The words as they buzzed through his nasal passages tickled. He sneezed several times rapidly, a light punctuation to the verses. Then he continued:
    Deathless sacred grove
    Men call them, and with iron never cut.”
    He could say the words perfectly now, his sounds rounded and full. The newly learned Greek rolled off his tongue. He had always been a fast study. Greek was his fifth language, if he counted Esperanto. He could even, on occasion, feel the meanings that hid behind the ancient poetry, but as often the meanings slid away, slippery little fish and he the incompetent angler.
    He had come to Greece because he wanted to be known as the American Olivier, the greatest classical actor the States had ever produced. He told interviewers he planned to learn Greek—classical Greek, not the Greek of the streets—to show them Oedipus from the amphitheaters where it had first been played. He would stand in the groves of Artemis, he had said, and call the goddess to him in her own tongue. One columnist even suggested that with his looks and voice and reputation she would be crazy not to come. If she did, Jeansen thought to himself, smiling, I wouldn’t treat her with any great distance. The goddesses like to play at being shopgirls; the shopgirls, goddesses. And they all, he knew only too well, liked grand gestures.
    And so he had traveled to Greece, not the storied isles of Homer but the fume-clogged port of Piraeus, where a teacher with a mouthful of broken teeth and a breath only a harpy could love had taught him. But mouth and breath aside, he was a fine teacher and Jeansen a fine learner. Now he was ready. Artemis first, a special for PBS, and then the big movie. Oedipus starring the Jeansen Forbes.
    Only right now all he could feel was the buzz of air, diaphragm against lungs, lungs to larynx, larynx to vocal chords, a mechanical vibration. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
    He shook his head as if to clear it, and the well-cut blond hair fell perfectly back in place. He reached a hand up to check it, then looked around the grove slowly, admiringly. The grass was long, uncut, but trampled down. The trees—he had not noticed it at first—were a strange mixture: birch and poplar, apple and oak. He was not a botanist, but it seemed highly unlikely that such a mix would have simply sprung up. Perhaps they had been planted years and years ago. Note to himself: check on that .
    This particular grove was far up on Mount Cynthus, away from any roads and paths. He had stumbled on it by accident. Happy accident. But it was perfect, open enough for re-enacting some of the supplicatory dances and songs but the trees thick enough to add mystery. The guidebook said that Cynthus had once been sacred to the Huntress, virgin Artemis, Diana of the moon. He