The Forest of Forever by Thomas Burnett Swann Page A
Authors: Thomas Burnett Swann
Tags: Fantasy
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must not jeopardize my mission with any outbursts of temper; I must imitate Kora.
“I have come to welcome you to the Country of the Beasts.”
“Your presence in itself is a welcome. Your gifts are beyond measure.” What would she have said if I had brought her diamonds or sapphires? “As you see, my humble dwelling is far from finished. Still, there is a room where we may visit and exchange those confidences which unite the ladies of all lands. Perhaps you will teach me the customs of your land so that I may comport myself with fitting decorum. In my own country, I was a queen. Here, I am a guest, and perhaps I may unintentionally give offense.”
The so-called humble dwelling was a labyrinth which would have put the famous architect Daedalus to shame. The wax-glazed walls glittered like many mirrors, and at every turn we confronted our own images: Saffron’s perpetual smile, my own stout, reddish features which looked unbelievably coarse beside such exquisiteness and which, try as I might, wore a look of stoic determination instead of pleased expectation. Corridors led into corridors, rooms into rooms. Candelabra, burning with myriad lily-shaped candles, hung from the ceilings and bathed us in a shifting gauze of light. In one room, honey bees were depositing nectar in silver bowls; in another, a worker with a ladle was mixing pollen and wine and stirring the mixture as vigorously as a female Centaur might sweep a floor. Finally we found ourselves in Saffron’s audience room, hexagonal like the hive and apparently situated at its exact center.
Leopard skins covered the floor to a thickness of several inches, and the black and golden spots, reflected endlessly in the polished walls, gave me the feeling of a jungle infested with beautiful, merciless animals. A wicker chair, supported by silken threads and backless to accommodate the wings of the queen, swayed from the ceiling. In the center of the room there was a stone pedestal curiously lacking a statue. Perhaps it was intended to hold an image, as yet uncarved or uncast, of a winged deity.
She shrugged a tiny helpless shrug. “Because of the storm, we arrived with few belongings. You must forgive my poor room. Not even a statue for my pedestal.” (Never mind, I thought. Given a little time and you’ll have stolen all you need.) She motioned me to the skins and nodded deprecatingly at the chair. “You will not find it comfortable.” (She meant that my weight would snap the supporting threads.) With a brief flutter she settled into a chair, dangling her ankles, and peered down at me with a curious mixture of deference and—derision? Defiance? I could not read such inscrutability. I took my revenge by imagining her a cockatoo on a perch in the palace of an Egyptian pharaoh, and the ludicrous image salved my pride.
“And the Minotaur youth. Your noble-maned young friend? I saw him with you the day of our arrival. Where is he now?”
“His name is Eunostos and he got in a fight when he—”
“Yes?”
I might as well tell her the truth and watch her reaction. “When he quarreled over a Dryad with a band of Panisci. He thought they had kidnapped her.”
“And had they?” She never flickered an amber eyelash.
“Yes. But they sold her, it seems. Nobody knows who bought her.”
“A pity. But this Eunostos. I should imagine he gave a good account of himself.”
“He always does,” I said proudly. “This time he took on six at once and left all of them with a cracked horn or a broken hoof. He’s recovering in my tree.”
“I trust his injuries will heal? Nothing vital is permanently impaired?”
“Nothing at all.”
“A beastly young bull,” she said with admiration, using the term “beastly” as we do here in the country, just as a Man might say “manly.” Saffron herself was a Beast according to our definition, much as I hated to claim her.
Then I saw the pendant; Kora’s pendant, the silver effigy of her Centaur father. Or rather I
“I have come to welcome you to the Country of the Beasts.”
“Your presence in itself is a welcome. Your gifts are beyond measure.” What would she have said if I had brought her diamonds or sapphires? “As you see, my humble dwelling is far from finished. Still, there is a room where we may visit and exchange those confidences which unite the ladies of all lands. Perhaps you will teach me the customs of your land so that I may comport myself with fitting decorum. In my own country, I was a queen. Here, I am a guest, and perhaps I may unintentionally give offense.”
The so-called humble dwelling was a labyrinth which would have put the famous architect Daedalus to shame. The wax-glazed walls glittered like many mirrors, and at every turn we confronted our own images: Saffron’s perpetual smile, my own stout, reddish features which looked unbelievably coarse beside such exquisiteness and which, try as I might, wore a look of stoic determination instead of pleased expectation. Corridors led into corridors, rooms into rooms. Candelabra, burning with myriad lily-shaped candles, hung from the ceilings and bathed us in a shifting gauze of light. In one room, honey bees were depositing nectar in silver bowls; in another, a worker with a ladle was mixing pollen and wine and stirring the mixture as vigorously as a female Centaur might sweep a floor. Finally we found ourselves in Saffron’s audience room, hexagonal like the hive and apparently situated at its exact center.
Leopard skins covered the floor to a thickness of several inches, and the black and golden spots, reflected endlessly in the polished walls, gave me the feeling of a jungle infested with beautiful, merciless animals. A wicker chair, supported by silken threads and backless to accommodate the wings of the queen, swayed from the ceiling. In the center of the room there was a stone pedestal curiously lacking a statue. Perhaps it was intended to hold an image, as yet uncarved or uncast, of a winged deity.
She shrugged a tiny helpless shrug. “Because of the storm, we arrived with few belongings. You must forgive my poor room. Not even a statue for my pedestal.” (Never mind, I thought. Given a little time and you’ll have stolen all you need.) She motioned me to the skins and nodded deprecatingly at the chair. “You will not find it comfortable.” (She meant that my weight would snap the supporting threads.) With a brief flutter she settled into a chair, dangling her ankles, and peered down at me with a curious mixture of deference and—derision? Defiance? I could not read such inscrutability. I took my revenge by imagining her a cockatoo on a perch in the palace of an Egyptian pharaoh, and the ludicrous image salved my pride.
“And the Minotaur youth. Your noble-maned young friend? I saw him with you the day of our arrival. Where is he now?”
“His name is Eunostos and he got in a fight when he—”
“Yes?”
I might as well tell her the truth and watch her reaction. “When he quarreled over a Dryad with a band of Panisci. He thought they had kidnapped her.”
“And had they?” She never flickered an amber eyelash.
“Yes. But they sold her, it seems. Nobody knows who bought her.”
“A pity. But this Eunostos. I should imagine he gave a good account of himself.”
“He always does,” I said proudly. “This time he took on six at once and left all of them with a cracked horn or a broken hoof. He’s recovering in my tree.”
“I trust his injuries will heal? Nothing vital is permanently impaired?”
“Nothing at all.”
“A beastly young bull,” she said with admiration, using the term “beastly” as we do here in the country, just as a Man might say “manly.” Saffron herself was a Beast according to our definition, much as I hated to claim her.
Then I saw the pendant; Kora’s pendant, the silver effigy of her Centaur father. Or rather I
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