“We’ll have to make a landfall and see if they’ll go away.”
The coastline did not look promising. There were smoke trails from distant hearth fires in the hills. But the verdant coastline, thick with wild vines and stands of poplar and pine, bore the look of a land ravaged by some mighty destructive force—as if a sequence of small cyclones had windrowed through them.
Odysseus was looking about like a cat in a dog pound. “Cyclops country,” he said nervously, as they pulled the ship up. The sound of the dreadful conch was now distant enough to make speech plausible.
“Oh, great!” said Liz. “I presume the one-eyed giants won’t be pleased to see you back.”
“We’d better get out there again,” said Mac.
Liz pulled a face. “I don’t know if a blind one-eyed giant isn’t better than that racket. Doesn’t it bother you?”
McKenna shrugged. “I guess my ears are toughened. The volume is a bit much, but it reminds me of myself trying to play the bugle. Ma used to make me go and practice at the far side of the south forty. She said I was putting the cows off their milk.”
Lamont snorted and nodded in sympathy. “Yeah. I tried the sax for a bit.”
“I always wanted to be one of those really wild drummers,” said Jerry with a grin. “Of course, I haven’t got any sense of rhythm.”
Henri looked regretfully at the ground. “It was the wish of my mother that I should become a great violinist.” He shrugged. “She ran out of teachers prepared to attempt this labor, and became tired of the complaint about the mistreatment of the cat. I remain devoted to classical music, of course. But alas, I cannot play.”
Cruz allowed a slight smile to crack his impassive countenance. He looked at his thick stubby fingers. “Me, I decided I was Carlos Santana’s natural heir. Or Jimi Hendrix.”
Jerry looked at the thick fingers and wondered how they’d ever managed to press chords. “Well, it’s a good thing one of us has got some musical talent.”
There was a flash of teeth. “Hey, I said I thought I was. Not like anyone else did.”
Lamont looked pensive. “Do you think all of us taken are bad musicians?”
“Nah. I think the world has a lot more failed musico-wannabees than anything else,” answered Cruz.
Liz stuck her nose in the air and said, in a lofty tone. “Ha. I wasn’t about to tell you guys this, but seeing as you’re all such musical geniuses, I was lead singer for an all-girl group at high school. We called ourselves ‘The Supremes.’ ”
There was a moment of silence. Lamont looked at Jerry. Jerry looked at Lamont.
“And what did everyone else call you?” they asked together.
Liz pursed her lips. Her shoulders were shaking. ” ‘The Sub-standards.’ They said they even preferred my attempt to play the bagpipes.”
The laughter was stilled by a running trill of notes, liquid and gentle, yet with enormous depth and power. Goat-footed and shaggy Pan arrived, playing his syrinx. He stepped around the grape-laden wild vines. The still-green grapes darkened and swelled. They were silent as the god continued to play. Haunting and bittersweet . . . then abruptly the music shifted to a quick leaping of notes, and the shaggy Pan began to dance. Then he lowered his pipes. Looked the group over carefully.
“So this is the group which has all Olympus in a tumult.” He didn’t look as if that displeased him much. Especially after his eyes fell on Liz’s voluptuous figure.
* * *
Jerry was determined to confront these “gods” with what he saw as the glaring inconsistency. “How come you can speak English?”
Pan looked mischievously at him. “I’m not.”
Jerry realized he’d become so used to Medea’s translation magic that it had never occurred to him that their latest “divine” visitor might be speaking Classical Greek.
“Okay. So why are we here and how do we get out of being here?”
Pan blew a couple of thoughtful notes on his seven-reed pipes, eyeing Liz all the while. “No wonder you disturb Olympus with your direct questioning. I think you mortals have been called into the realms of heroes and gods because we were fading away. There are things afoot that Pan wants no part of. I am a shepherd god, not a god of blood and pain.”
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