The Forest of Forever by Thomas Burnett Swann Read Free Book Online

indeed it was not as old as the pyramids.
    “I have to go now,” he said in a voice which implied: “But I could be coaxed into staying a little longer.”
    “Since when was Eunostos concerned with time?”
    “It’s the Thriae,” he admitted.
    “You think they might be up to some mischief?”
    “You said yourself they were thieves. I saw one yesterday and didn’t like the look of her. And Kora is so trusting.”
    “You’re right, I did say they were thieves. But for all we know, they might have returned to the mainland.”
    “I hope so. Still, I just better make a door for Kora’s house. A wolfskin isn’t going to keep out thieves.”
    “That’s her mother’s concern. She can get a door from the Centaurs.”
    “She’s a bit forgetful these days. Besides, she hasn’t as much to trade as she used to.”
    “So you have to do her work.”
    “I haven’t till now, unless she asked me. I’m not very dolent.”
    “You mean you’re indolent?”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “But you’ve been busy with your poems.”
    “A Minotaur with gainly hoof,” he began to recite. “I do think that one has possibilities. But”—and a wistful maturity shone in his young face—“poems don’t build doors. I’m not even a traveling singer who can hawk his poems for bread. From a practical point of view, I must get on with my carpentry.”
    The Thriae had alarmed him more than I had anticipated. I almost wished that I had not told him about their inclinations.
    “One more mug of beer and then you shall go.”
    The old Eunostos, the dreamy boy, reasserted himself and he dawdled over the beer.
    “I’ve thought of a rhyme for ‘mane,’” he said at last. “Lain.”
    “Eunostos, what is on your mind?”
    “Well, it’s better than ‘bane,’ and certainly ‘slain’ won’t do. I don’t want a sad ending. I want her to come into his arms, as it were. She left the bed wherein she lain…”
    “Laid. Your mother would come back from the Underworld if she knew an ignorant Dryad like me had to correct her son’s grammar.”
    “I’m a poet, not a grammarian. But you’re right. It’s lie, lay, laid.” With that he sprang to his hooves, kissed my cheek, and clambered down the ladder.
    “Eunostos, come back soon.”
    “I will, Zoe.”
    “And next time, stay longer.”
    “I promise.”
    * * * *
    In the forest, he jumped and kicked his hooves together and tried to tell himself that he was as happy as he had been in the field of yellow gagea, composing his poem. Before the storm. Before the arrival of the Thriae. After all, he had just visited his best friend (his own word for me). But his hooves returned heavily to the earth, his head bowed, and the lines of the poem flew right out of his mind.
    He sensed at once that there was something unnatural about Kora’s house. In appearance it was unchanged, the same reed walls, the same red-ringed windows like square smiles. A trim, happy house which seemed a natural outgrowth of its tree. Then he realized that there was absolutely no sound even as he approached the door. Myrrha was not chattering to Kora, and she was not even humming at her preparations for supper. Had she gone to visit the Centaurs? Most unusual at suppertime, when she should have been frying pigeon eggs in a terra cotta skillet over the stone brazier.
    Without waiting to knock, Eunostos lifted the wolf-skin and stepped into shadows, for the sun had already set and no lamp had been lit. Only the brazier, devoid of skillet or eggs, gave a thin, flickering light. Myrrha was lying on the couch, her body sunk in cushions and protected by a cloak of funereal black.
    She turned her head and faced him, as white as a sun-bleached shell.
    “Kora didn’t come home.”
    “Where did she go?” The implication had not yet reached him.
    “For a walk. But she didn’t come home. And that was before breakfast.”
    Kora was known to be fond of solitary walks, but even when she ventured to the compound of