The Forest of Forever Read Online Free PDF Page A

“The way she was holding your arm, you must have reached an understanding.”
    “I’m going to wait,” said Eunostos.
    “Wait! How long?”
    “I don’t know. A year maybe.”
    Partridge stamped his hoof angrily and tore a hole in the turf. “These virgins. Give me a willing Dryad any day.” (Poor Partridge. All Dryads were unwilling with him.)
    “I’m through with wenching,” said Eunostos, but not without a certain wistfulness.

CHAPTER III
    KORA AWOKE when the sun slanted across her face like the soft creepers of a morning glory vine. She touched her feet to the mossy floor, found her sandals, and lifted a green linen gown from a chest of cedarwood and a cloak which seemed to be woven from pink and white rose petals. She bathed her face from a bowl of rainwater trapped among the branches; she did not bother to look in her mirror, for she had slept peacefully, even if dreamfully, and knew that she had not mussed her hair enough to require a comb.
    She walked onto the porch and looked around her at the garden of foliage which enfolded the room like the hand of a friendly Cyclops.
    “Father tree,” she whispered. “I am going to buy Eunostos a gift.” She always spoke to the tree before she left on her day’s errands, and the tree shuddered with the pleasure of a stroked animal. She had his consent. He liked Eunostos. Reentering the room, she descended the staircase in the hollow trunk and paused at her mother’s couch to look down at the frail, sleeping figure who, having entertained a Centaur during the night, would doubtless sleep until noon. Poor mother. She bad no dream to accompany her; she had to rely on earthier companions.
    She opened her arms to embrace the morning, her only lover, with its sunbeams and fragrances, its grass besprinkled with dew like mica. Her reverie was broken by a tapping above her head. Woodpeckers had started to peck at the limbs of her tree. She hurled an acorn at the rowdy birds. Other birds were welcome: swallows and nightingales. But the woodpeckers wounded her tree-father with their cruel beaks.
    Eunostos’s proposal yesterday had deeply touched her. Not that she meant to accept; not that she wished to encourage him in his pursuit of her. At the same time, she did not wish to discourage him. She could hardly envision a better husband. Gentle yet strong; reasonably faithful; a poet to compensate for also being a carpenter. But did she want a Minotaur for a husband, she who had dreamed of cities and palaces and nimble young Cretans wrestling bulls?
    Thus, she must find Eunostos a handsome but not too personal gift. The gift of a sister, not of a lover. What then? The Bears of Artemis were celebrated for their necklaces of black-eyed Susans and they picked raspberries for market, but the thought of Eunostos adorned with black-eyed Susans made her smile and he could surely pick his own berries. The Panisci, rascally youngsters, were totally unproductive. The Telchins hammered metal and set stones for men as well as women, but she could not imagine a ring on one of Eunostos’s big fingers. Had he wanted such a ring, or silver tips for his horns, which had been fashionable in his father’s day, Bion would long since have made them. The Centaurs then, the practical, agricultural Centaurs, who produced most of the food staples for the country—grain, olive oil, and milk—and all of the farm implements, like rakes and mattocks and bull-tongue ploughs. Since Eunostos had shown her his garden, she would buy him a mattock or hoe (somehow a bull-tongue plough seemed inappropriate for a Minotaur, as well as too large for so small a garden).
    But remembering last night’s dream, she forgot Eunostos. Dream? No. She had seen too clearly, remembered too vividly. Every night now, it seemed, her soul went out from her body and returned with visions of terror and wonder. Wonderful indeed last night, and a little terrible. She had seen a young prince beside a pool of blue lotuses and