Wonder Stories Part 15

It had the same colors as those of the precious stones that made the bridge, crimson, orange and yellow, green, blue, and violet and so marvellously blended that they seemed to be one pattern and one piece of brightness. There were wings that went with the dress, and when Iris put it on not even Juno had so beautiful a garment.

Iris wore her dress of colors as she took her way along her arched bridge from Olympus to earth and then back again. And her errands were those of help and courage and bright hope.

Have you guessed who she was? Why, of course you have, for you see her bridge of colors in the sky after a shower when the sun is shining through the clouds. Iris was the child of the G.o.ds who gave us the rainbow.

WHEN PROSERPINE WAS LOST

There were lilies and great blue violets growing wild on the banks of the lake in the vale of Enna. How could a little girl resist them, and particularly Proserpine whose mother was Ceres, the G.o.ddess of agriculture, and who had played and lived outdoors all her life?

Proserpine had been racing through the forest with some of her boy and girls friends, farther than was wise.

"Don't go out of sight of our own home fields," Ceres had said that morning.

But here was Proserpine out of sight and sound of her playmates even.

Violets like to grow in damp, dark places, and Proserpine had followed their blue trail until she was shut in the vale of Enna by the trees.

She was quite alone and, suddenly, in danger.

There was the sound of racing chariot steeds and the crash of heavy wheels breaking the low branches and the bushes. A dark shadow made the vale darker than it had been before. A black chariot burst into sight, drawn by black horses and driven by a man who was dressed in black from head to foot. He was Pluto, the king of darkness, who had been waiting for a long time for this chance to kidnap fair little Proserpine. Her flowers fell from her ap.r.o.n in which she had been holding them; she screamed, but there was no one to hear her. Pluto dragged her into his grasp and threw her in the chariot. The horses dashed away, and Proserpine left the land of springtime for Pluto's dark kingdom beneath the earth.

Pluto shouted to his steeds, calling each by name, and giving them the length of the iron colored reins over their heads and necks. He reached the River Cyane which had no bridge, but he struck the waters with his trident and they rolled back, giving him a pa.s.sage down through the earth to Tartarus where his throne was.

It was a prison place that they reached by way of a deep gulf, and its recesses were as far beneath the level of the earth as Mount Olympus was high above their heads. A strange sound of singing came to Proserpine from the depths of the cave where Pluto led her:

"Twist ye, twine ye! Even so, Mingle shades of joy and woe, Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife In the thread of human life."

And when Proserpine's eyes were a little more used to the dimness of the cave she saw three gray women, the Fates, with threads and shears, seated beside the throne and singing those words. One of them spun the thread of life, and another twisted its bright and dark lines together.

But the third Fate cut the threads apart whenever she liked.

Other grim and terrible creatures met Proserpine's frightened gaze. The Furies had spread their couches there as had also Fear and Hunger. The Hydra hissed with each one of its nine heads and the Chimaeras breathed fire. There was a giant with a hundred arms, and Discord whose hair was bound with a fillet made of vipers.

"Take me back to the light. I want to go home. Oh, I beg of you, take me home!" Proserpine cried, but her words only echoed through the vaults of the kingdom of darkness. And when she tried to make her escape, her frail little hands were bruised from beating against the thick iron door that shut her in.

The next morning Aurora rode through the sky to put away the stars and touch the clouds with the pink color of the dawn. Looking down to the earth, she saw a G.o.ddess who had arisen long before the dawn and was hurrying up and down the earth, wringing her hands and with tears in her eyes. She wore a chaplet woven of the golden heads of the grain, and she was straight and strong and beautiful in her flowing robes of green, but she did not lift her eyes from the earth, so deep was her sorrow.

That evening Hesperus, who followed in Aurora's course each sunset to lead out the stars, saw the same G.o.ddess. Her robes were torn and stained from her travels and bedraggled with the dew. She was still weeping, and still searching. She was going to search, without rest, all night.

Many others saw this G.o.ddess in the days that followed. She was always roaming from daylight until dark, in the open, in sunlight and moonlight, and in falling showers. She was weary and sad. In such a plight a peasant, named Celeus, found her one day. He had been out in a field gathering acorns and blackberries, and binding bundles of sticks for his fire. The G.o.ddess sat there on a stone, too tired to go on.

"Why do you sit here alone on the rocks?" Celeus asked her. He carried a heavy load, but he stopped to try and succor her. "Come to my cottage and rest," he entreated her. "My little son is very ill, and we have only a most humble roof, but such as it is we will be glad to share it with you."

The G.o.ddess rose and gathered her arms full of crimson poppies. Then she followed Celeus home.

They found deep distress in the cottage, for the little boy was so ill as to be almost past hope. His mother could scarcely speak for her sorrow, but she welcomed the wandering G.o.ddess and spread the table for her with curds and cream, apples, and golden honey dripping from the comb. The G.o.ddess ate, but her eyes were on the sick child and when his mother poured milk into a goblet for him she mingled the juice of her poppies with it.

At last night came, and the peasants slept. Then the G.o.ddess arose and took the little boy in her arms. She touched his weak limbs with her strong, skilful hands, said a charm over him three times, and then laid him in the warm ashes of the fire.

"Would you kill my son? Wicked woman that you are to so abuse my hospitality!" the child's mother cried, awaking and seeing what the G.o.ddess had done.

But just then a strange thing happened. The cottage was filled with a splendor like white lightning, and a light seemed to shine from the skin of the G.o.ddess. A lovely perfume was scattered from her fragrant garments, and her hair was as bright as gold.

"Your son will not die, but live," she told the wife of Celeus. "He shall grow up and be great and useful. He shall teach men the use of the plough, and the rewards which labor can win from the cultivation of the soil."

"Who are you?" the woman asked in amazement as she saw the boy's white cheeks grow rosy with new life.

"I am Ceres," the G.o.ddess answered, "whose grief is greater than yours, for my child is lost. I search the earth for her, and never find her."

With these words she was gone, as if she had wrapped herself in a cloud and floated away to meet the dawning of another day of her journey.

That was who this wanderer of the earth was, the immortal Ceres, who still did not care to live without her loved little daughter, Proserpine.

She was obliged to neglect her work of caring for the earth in her search for Proserpine, and disaster came to the land for many seasons.

The cattle died and no plough broke the furrows. The seed failed to come up. There was too much sun and too much rain. The birds stole the harvest, little as there was, and seeds and brambles were the main growth. Even Arethusa, the nymph of the fountain, was about to die as Ceres, in her search, came to the banks of the River Cyane, where Pluto had pa.s.sed with Proserpine to his own domain. Ceres had almost given up hope.

"Ungrateful soil that I have clothed with herbs and fruits and grains,"

she said. "You have taken my child and shall enjoy my favors no longer."

But Arethusa spoke:

"Do not blame the earth, Mother Ceres," she said. "It opened unwillingly to take your daughter. I come from the waters. I know them so well that I can count the pebbles in the bottom of this river, the willows that shade it and the violets on the bank. I was at play not long since in the river and Alpheus, the G.o.d of the stream, pursued me. I ran and he followed in an attempt to keep me from going back to my home in the fountain. As I tried to escape him, I plunged through the depths of the earth and into a cavern. While I pa.s.sed through the bowels of the earth I saw your Proserpine. She was sad, but had no look of terror. Pluto had made her his queen in the realm of the dead. I have made my way back to tell you."

Ceres knew then that Proserpine was lost to her unless Jupiter helped in taking her away from the king of darkness. She summoned her chariot and rode to Mount Olympus, but even Jupiter had not complete power over Pluto.

"If Proserpine has taken food in Pluto's realm, the Fates will not allow her to return to earth," he told Ceres. "But I will send my swift messenger, Mercury, with Spring to try and bring her home."

In all that time Proserpine had eaten none of the rich food that Pluto had set before her, only six seeds of a red pomegranate as she had pressed the fruit to her lips to quench her thirst. But Spring, with all her strength that can bring new leaves and blooms from dead branches, with the help of Mercury, the G.o.d of the winged shoes, brought Proserpine the long way back to her mother for six months. The remaining six months of the year, one month for each pomegranate seed that she had eaten, Proserpine was doomed to spend as queen of Pluto's kingdom of darkness.

No one, and particularly not her mother, worried very much, though, about those months of darkness because of the wonders that Proserpine brought when she returned to earth. Every tree that she touched with her garments burst into green, and wherever her feet pressed the earth the gra.s.s and wild flowers appeared and spread. Ploughing and planting were begun again, and the new shoots of the corn pushed up through the ground.

Indeed, it seemed to Ceres that her other child, the corn, was telling the story of lost Proserpine. The seed of the corn that is thrust into the earth and lies there, concealed in the dark, is like Proserpine carried off by the G.o.d of the underworld. Then Spring gives the seed a new form and it appears to bless the earth, just as Proserpine was led forth to her mother and to the light of day.

THE PLOUGHMAN WHO BROUGHT FAMINE.

Erisichthon had made up his mind to kill the Dryad who lived in the oak tree.

He was one of the strongest ploughmen in all Greece, and he knew Ceres who presided over the fields and her favorite Dryad of the oak tree very well. The oak tree had stood for centuries in a grove in which Ceres loved to rest, and it was almost a forest in itself. It overtopped the other trees as far as they stretched above the shrubs. Its trunk measured fifteen cubits around, and it was supported upon roots that were almost as strong as iron cables.

It was supposed in those old days of Greece to be a tree of wonders. It was this oak that guarded the wide agricultural domain of Ceres, and the Dryad who lived inside was one of the messengers of this G.o.ddess through the farms and orchards. She was a slender, fair young creature who would never grow old and carried sunbeams in her hands that brought new growth wherever she spilled them.

When the grove was empty and still, all the other Dryads would step softly from their dwelling places in the cypress, the olive and the pine trees and join hands as they danced lightly about the oak tree, singing their praises of the great Ceres who fed with her bounty the whole of Greece. The country people, and even those from the cities, came to pay their homage to Ceres' oak, bringing garlands of roses and laurel that they hung on its boughs, and carving messages of thanks and love for the Dryad on its bark.

Erisichthon knew all this, but he wanted a quant.i.ty of wood for his farm without the trouble of earning it. He decided the property of Ceres was his, by right, because he had ploughed her fields at the time of the planting. So Erisichthon saw no reason why he should spare the wonderful oak tree, even if it did shelter a Dryad. He called his servants together, armed them with freshly sharpened axes, and they set out for the forest.