look in another man’s eyes. It says: I am tired of hunting and tired of gardening, of a man’s work and the company of other men. I want soft lips and the teasing fragrance of myrrh, I want soft hands and the silken brush of hair.”
“I am going to call on Zoe, the Dryad,” said Icarus. (How, he wondered, had the young man learned his name?) “Do you know where she lives?”
“I know where everyone lives.” He captured Icarus’ arm and guided him through avenues of lofty carob trees, whose branches were freighted with pods like those which Thea had eaten for breakfast, while Pandia trailed behind them, peeling her eye in case the fellow should prove a thief after all and wish to steal her belt (or, horror of horrors, her pelt). Icarus, of course, had nothing to lose.
They stepped into a meadow riotous with flowers and murmurous with bees; flowers jabbing from the ground on pillar-straight stalks or undulating in green torrents of foliage; and bees which wavered above them like a black and golden nimbus and then exploded upward like sparks from a lightning-blasted tree and disclosed the cinnabar walls of black-hearted poppies, the lemon of green-backed gagea, the purpler-than-murex of hyacinths beloved by the gods. From just such a garden, thought Icarus, all the flowers of the earth, even the tame crocuses grown at Vathypetro, had come in the time before men, transported by bees and migratory birds and swift nomadic winds.
In the very midst of the flowers, a vine-covered pole like the mast of a ship uplifted a light-seeming house with hexagonal walls of reeds, a thatched roof of dried water lily fronds, and opaque windows of waxed parchment. The first storm, you felt, would scatter the walls and collapse the roof. A summer house, hardly more enduring than flowers and hardly less beautiful: built to please and not to endure.
“Here,” said the guide, “is the house.”
“But Zoe lives in a tree.”
“This is my sister’s house.”
Lifting aside a curtain of rushes, a young girl appeared in the door and looked down at Icarus with a confidence which seemed to say: “You will soon come up to me.”
“Icarus,” she chided. “You took your time in coming to call.”
“How do you know my name? I don’t know yours.”
“The whole forest has heard about the handsome boy who has come to live with Eunostos, the Bull. And also about his sister, the very fastidious Thea, who keeps a watchful eye on both of her men. Does she know that her little brother is up to mischief?”
Icarus bristled. “It’s no business of hers if I am.”
“And what would she think of me? The wanton Amber, soliciting innocent boys.”
“She would think you were very pretty.”
Indeed, she was smooth and bright as a tiger lily from the Land of the Yellow Men, with gold, violet-flecked eyes which did not change expression even when her lips curved to a smile, but looked like hungry mouths. When she spoke he saw that her tongue was long, thin, and freckled with gold like her.
She was even smaller than Thea. It should not be hard for her long wings to lift so small a body, thought Icarus. A winged lily she was, with catlike, sinuous grace; scarcely a girl at all except in the tightness she brought to his throat and the lizard with fiery feet she lashed across his limbs.
“Would you like to see my house?” she asked. “You will find it refreshing after your walk.”
“I am going to call on Zoe,” he repeated, with decidedly less enthusiasm than the first time he had made the announcement.
She laughed. “I think you are afraid of me. Of all women, perhaps, except little Bear Girls and blowsy old ladies like Zoe. Possibly you would prefer my brother. In the Cities of Men, I am told, the love of a man for a man is not uncommon. You will find it the same with drones like my brother. Among my people, the Thriae, queens like myself are rare and workers are no more excitable than a drudging mule. What can the poor drones do except console each other? They succeed rather well, I am told.” She turned to her brother. “Does Icarus please you, my dear? He is succulent as a fig, and no bees, I think, have rifled his hive.”
Her brother smiled and smiled; his golden tongue flickered between his moist lips and he did not need to speak.
“I’ve changed my mind,” said Icarus to the girl. “How do I climb to your door?”
She lowered a ladder with rungs of cowhide. “When you’ve tasted my honey, you will feel as if you have wings. You will hardly need a ladder.”
As he placed his foot in the first rung, Pandia caught at his arm. “I’m coming too.”
“She hasn’t any honey cakes, Pandia.”
“She said honey, didn’t she?”
“I think she meant hospitality.”
The Bear Girl was close to tears. “It isn’t really cakes I want. I don’t want her to hurt you, that’s all. She is a wicked woman. I can can tell by the way she darts her tongue.”
Laughter tinkled silverly above their heads. “Do you think me wicked, Icarus? Perhaps I am. How else would I know the thousand paths to pleasure?”
Hand over hand, his feet sinking in the hide of the rungs, Icarus climbed to the door. Amber gave him her hand and drew him over the threshold.
There were wicker chairs suspended from the ceiling on tenuous chains of grass. There were hangings of spider-spun silk through which the walls revealed their ribs of reed. Most of all, it was a room of flowers, which glowed in mounds like the heaped treasures spilled in Egyptian tombs when thieves are caught at their theft. One of the walls was coated with polished wax which mirrored the room like a misty garden and Amber’s face as the queenliest of the blossoms. Surely, thought Icarus, no evil can touch me among so many flowers—there are even bees at work collecting nectar.
And yet the garden was captured; shut from the sunlight He saw that Amber had quietly withdrawn the ladder.
“You have caught my friends at their trade,” she smiled, pointing to the bees above a mound of jonquils. “Those are my workers. When the nectar enters their sacks, their bodily juices turn it into honey. Then they eject it into waxen trays and beat their wings to evaporate the water, leaving pure honey, which I in turn will trade for silks, jewels, and gold. Your own Eunostos has sometimes traded me bracelets. But you must not think that I also am a worker. I am a queen.” She spoke the word with such impassioned pride that a crown seemed to glitter above her head and murex-colored robes tremble about her shoulders.
“What does a queen do?” He rather hoped that her answer would be mysterious and provocative. He was not disappointed.
“She lives like a flower, only for pleasure. For soft breezes and warm suns, the solicitations of butterfly and hawk moth, and all the sweet indolences of a vegetable existence. But one pleasure is known to her which the flowers cannot comprehend.”
He waited for her to reveal the name of this rarest pleasure.
“The gift of a man’s embrace,” she said at last, caressing the words as if they were priceless silk. “Shall I tell you the wealth of your own beauty? Number your masculine graces until a young god walks before the eye of your mind?”
“Would you?” he asked. He could not think of a more reassuring catalogue.
“A head of noble dimensions aureoled with luxuriant hair. A body swelling to manhood, the strong sinews of maturity asleep beneath the down of youth.” She looked at him with a look between calculation and desire. “My dear, I am weary of butterflies. I crave the golden savagery of the bumblebee.”
“I’m afraid,” said Icarus, “that you want Eunostos instead of me. I think like a bumblebee, but I haven’t learned how to buzz.”
She seated him in one of the chairs suspended from the roof. She handed him a dish of pollen; she heated wine in a copper vessel over a small brazier and poured honey into the steaming liquid.
“Drink,” she said. “Pleasure will stir in your veins even as the wine caresses your throat. Powerful wings will seem to beat at your shoulders.”
He emptied the cup with one quick swallow. Was it a sudden breeze through the thin door of rushes? Was it the pounding of his own heart which swayed the chair into motion and disembodied him from the honeyed room and the weight of his limbs? Or did he move at all except in his mind?
