Homage à R. A. Lafferty

S

ocrates says in Meno that the statues created by Daedalus were so skillfully made that they would run away if not tied down. But how would he know that, unless it had actually happened?

And were those that escaped caught and brought back? Of course not, for a statue that leaps off its pedestal and sprints for the door has a several seconds’ drop on its startled creator, mallet still in hand. This is not to mention their incentive to flee, for a sculptor’s studio offers ample evidence of what becomes of a statue who lets pass the opportunity offered in that instant of creation, when kaos has not yet shivered into kosmos.

Cleitus was the first, though that was only the name he gave himself later when he needed one. He had had the wit to run downhill, which lent speed to his flight. This took him to Herakleion and the docks, where he disappeared into the crowd—a naked man being less conspicuous among laborers than in the artisans’ quarter—and quickly sought work as a deckhand on a trading vessel preparing to load.

The captain he approached was struck by his appearance, for Daedalus had created the likeness of a god, or at least a hero. He asked the statue’s name and the fugitive, breast swelling but hardly out of breath (for how can a statue be winded?), spoke its first word. “Kleitos,” he said, a name it had heard one of its pursuers shout to another.

“Cleitus, I like the cut of your jib,” the captain replied. “Your features seem a bit disfigured—” for the sculptor had not yet effaced the cuts of the chisel—“but you look right fit for hauling sacks and pulling lines. Come aboard.”

When he saw how the gangplank bent beneath the statue’s weight, he was only momentarily discomfited. “Better yet—ballast that can load itself! You can lie down snug in the hold, and I bet you don’t eat much, either.”

So Cleitus took berth on a ploion bound for the Cyclades with a cargo of grain and wine. Two days out they encountered a storm and the ship went down with all hands. Some sailors clung to the wreckage, hoping perhaps for a dolphin to deliver them to shore, but Cleitus sank straight to the bottom.

He landed up to his knees in crusty sediment and stood staring in the virtual darkness. The ship, trailing bubbles like a comet, came to rest nearly atop him, and when the cloud of silt settled he felt along its length and guessed that its prow lay in the direction they had been headed. He set out forthwith, and may someday emerge on a beach on Naxos, richly garbed in barnacles and perhaps bearing treasure from the shipwrecks he has passed.

But it was the second statue that fled inland, into the hills. Athena knew well what her name was, for she had heard it murmured reverently as the lineaments of her bare arms were pumiced smooth. She had even greater impetus to speed her, for men snatched at the hem of her flying chiton, and Daedalus, who could be ekpiktos once but not twice, had left unpainted one of her eyes when he loosened the leather thongs that bound her feet in order to finish her toes. Half sightless and still trailing a cord twining her ankles, she tore free the garment from the first man who seized it, but when two caught hold in a lucky grab, she had no recourse but to twist and slip free of it, leaving behind their outraged shouts as she raced uphill, dressed only in her kestos.

There were no city walls in the days of King Minos, for who would dare attack an island that was guarded by Talos? Perhaps the brass automaton declined to remark unfamiliar figures seeking to depart the city, or else perhaps it felt a curious kinship with a creature wrought by craft from lifeless matter. She veered from road to path, crossed orchards and fields, and vanished into the foothills south of Knossos.

The mountains of an Aegean isle are no safe place for any young woman, let alone one dressed as she was. Athena sought to readjust her garment so that it covered her loins rather than her breasts, but her appearance remained an incitement to any creature that could outrun her, a group that excluded men but admitted much else.

Indeed, she was not half an hour in the forest when the high-scudding clouds parted to release a shaft of sunlight, and a flash of marble-white caught the eye of a satyros. No scent touched its twitching nostrils, but the thicket-shaded eyes of the creature, who was named Porkos—his mother knew him for what he was—widened in recognition. In an instant he had burst from the underbrush and, heedless of the noise he made (satyrs do not rely upon stealth), was pelting across the meadow toward his intended victim. That such a deformed creature could run so fast! As though his race had been created as a warning to nymphs to keep close to the safety of their tutelary tree or stream.

Athena was able to reach the edge of the trees before he brought her down, and he dragged her without ceremony into a clearing. What followed was variously retold for centuries. Sappho wrote of it, and so (rather differently) did Aristophanes. Neither account has survived the ravages of time, but the Aegean world’s remaining nymphs, those pegaeae and limnades whose lakes and streams still endure, recount what happens when you seek to violate a stone maiden. Listen carefully and you can hear their burbling laughter.

For Porkos, of course, it was no laughing matter. “What manner of monster are you?” he cried in pain and fury as he rolled about miserably.

“I am Athena,” she said simply, backing away to a safe distance.

“You are an affront to my very nature,” he retorted. And because satyrs can think well enough when their throbbing kaprophalloi are momentarily disabled, Porkos added, “In truth you are a pseudos, a semblance of comeliness.”

“The comeliness seems real,” she replied.

“And your name stinks of hubris. Give yourself another one, lithokolpos, ere the true Athena learns of your presumption and punishes you more grievously than you have me.”

“I have no other name,” the statue replied. But in renouncing her own, she lay open to being named by another, and she did not wish to be known for having a stone kolpos. Quickly she added, “I am Petraglyphe, the maiden of stone, and I take up this branch to thrash you—” which she proceeded to do before the wretched beast could scramble to his feet—“until you persuade the nymphs of these fields to come forth and aid me in my distress.”

And Porkos was compelled to beseech the nymphs he had long molested to render succor to their fellow woman. He had nothing to offer them save his promise to assail them no more, which they enforced by binding him with vines to a tree. (They vowed to keep him thus, replacing the vines regularly, for the next several decades.) Then they wove for Petraglyphe a peplos made of leaves and a himation made of coarse grasses. They daubed her unpainted eye with pomegranate juice mixed with the sap of opuntia, and she turned about blinking at the depth of the world. Then they wiped away the pigments in the other eye and painted it to resemble the first, that she would not have eyes of dissimilar color and be and be taken for a monster or witch.

But men were soon sent hunting for her, dispatched perhaps by the royal personage who had commissioned the statue, or perhaps the temple priests. Nymphs and dryads can disappear into their homes, but a statue can only keep moving ahead of its pursuers.

“Can dogs sniff out marble?” asked Neaera, a brook nymph who could take human form at any point along her water’s course. “I watched from across a ridge yesterday, and they have begun using dogs.”

“She can’t run forever,” her sisters decided. The only solution was to get Petra to Amnisos, Knossos’s other port, where she could take passage to a land where none sought her.

Petraglyphe’s marble skin was paler than any Cretan’s and certain to excite comment even at a seaport. Traders from Aigyptos were darker than any Greeks and Nubians from further upriver were said to be darker still, so the nymphs dyed her face and limbs with a bark extract, which lent her a fine rich hue of living flesh. She did not look at all Cretan, but neither did she look like a statue.

The nymphs stole a rough-spun cloak from a sleeping goatherd and escorted her to the docks, parading in file and singing like temple virgins. They put her onto a kerkouros bound for distant Kisthene, her passage paid with two frolicking kids that kicked and pranced at their feet. Petra crossed the gangplank to cries of farewell and flung blossoms, which distracted onlookers from noticing the boards groaning beneath her. She descended through the hatch without a word and left forever the isle of her birth, or anyway her genesis.

Nobody spoke to the exotic xenos, who seemed not to understand Doric Greek and insisted on eating alone. She never ventured on deck, where rain or spray could wash off her guise, and the boy who delivered her food—who told no one that she always let him eat it—also kept to himself the fact that she never seemed to move. When the ship tied up along the quay, she gained the deck and strode down the gangway without a word to anyone.

Of the adventures of Petra in Aeolis there have been many stories told. In addition to its copper mines, Mysia was the land of the Gorgones, whose very look could turn a mortal to stone. But what could such a gaze do to one who was already stone? In one tale Petra is transformed into mortal flesh, at which point the Gorgones fall to the ground in terror and submission, for they of course recognize the face of Athena. In others she is transformed from marble to a denser stone—not the limestone to which a Gorgon’s victim naturally turns (for short-lived flesh would only become a short-lived mineral), but fine-grained basalt polished to the blackness of night. Unlike the Gorgons’ mortal victims, however, Petra did not find her soul cast down to Hades; she raised her gleaming hand in bemusement, turning it this way and that before the Gorgons’ ninety bulging eyes.

What she did to Medusa (the only mortal of the three) also differs according to the teller. Surviving accounts imply that she let the monster live, to be later beheaded by Perseus, but the older versions tend to be bloodier and more interesting. All agree that Petra eventually left Kisthene, probably on foot (she never possessed money), which was no great hardship for a statue that never tired or needed food.

In one version she is come upon by a party of woodcutters and has to assume the pose of a statue. The men stood puzzled before the monument standing, without benefit of pedestal let alone temple, in an Ionian forest. Bemused by the sight of a statue dressed in a woolen achiton, the men approach closer, and one of them, possessed of either curiosity or lewdness, pulled the garment off.

At the sight of Petra’s undraped form, most of the men cried out at their companion’s presumption, but he stood for long moments after they had fled, enraptured by what he saw. The image of a goddess dressed only in a kestos is, in a culture that had its own word for beautiful buttocks, more provocative than one wearing nothing at all, and when he walked around behind her, Petra (who was no fool) whirled about to keep him in sight. The hapless woodcutter screamed and stumbled backward, and Petra smote him before he could recover his balance.

Even a maiden can break someone’s head if she holds a chunk of basalt, which is what Petra’s closed fist was. The man fell and lay still, and Petra was preparing to run when his companions (who had heard his screams) came thrashing through brush to reach them. When they broke into the clearing, she had resumed her motionless pose.

At the sight of their companion lying lifeless before the statue, the men again ran off, this time for good. Petra remained unmoving, stone heart pounding within her stone chest. There was no sound or movement, but before she could gather her courage to flee, a raven descended out of the sky, flew low round the clearing, and settled upon her shoulder.

“I have befouled many statues in my time, but there is something about you,” the raven remarked.

Petra held still, hoping the bird’s suspicions could be lulled.

“Oh, I saw you clock that guy,” the raven continued. “Our eyesight is proverbially keen. You’re a statue that moves, which is doubtless how you found yourself here.”

“I am the likeness of Athena,” said Petra. “And my hands can strike like mallets.”

“You are a city girl whatever you are,” Corax observed. “Unless you wish to repeat these bucolic—” emphasizing the boukolikos as he gestured with his beak at the scene about them—“encounters, I suggest we make ourselves scarce. Heed me and I will get you to Ephesus. If you do what I say, we will both be fed as well.” And the raven fluttered up to the nearest branch, where it gazed down on her.

“Take the man’s clothing and wear your own garment like a hood, that men may take you for one of them. Also, give me a few minutes with this guy. He’s already lying on his back, isn’t he?”

And so Petra walked to Ephesus with a raven upon her shoulder. She never tired, and Corax, who often soared high above to scout their route but would not fly at night, would doze next to her ear as she strode along the darkened road or path, her nymph-given eyesight sharper than any robber’s. When the raven had difficulty finding bugs, berries, or offal in unfamiliar territory, she would lie in a stream or river and wait for a fish to venture near the innocuous stone surface of her hands. Those who sought to waylay them would flee in terror from the face she presented when she pulled back her hood.

They entered the city by dusk, Corax flying over the wall as Petra, head down, joined a small group of grape pickers shuffling tiredly through as the guards prepared to close the gate. She walked the streets that night, Corax scavenging for trash in the empty streets, and the morning found her standing before the Temple of Artemis, in the attitude of the statue she was. It was only after the custodians and megabyzoi, circling in awe about the rough-garbed image of Athena, made arrangements to have her brought in that Petra raised her hand in forestalling acknowledgement of their intent, and proceeded with the composure of divinity into the Temple.

Amazement prevailed among the priestly orders, especially after Petra spoke. She made no claim for herself beyond what they could plainly see: she was the surpassingly beautiful image of Pallas Athena, endowed with speech and movement. That this could have been achieved only by some divine power was evident to all, and they brought her garments of fine linen, with which the Temple parthenes, taking her to their private quarters (for how can a statue of Athena be not a fellow virgin?), reverently garbed her. They offered her food and drink, which she dismissed with a gesture. Finally they asked her what she would have of them, what auguries, instructions, or reprehension she had come to bring.

“I do not wish to prophesy,” she said. “I do not wish to prescribe or decry, nor to receive praise. I do not even wish to speak.”

For among the characteristics he had given her, Daedalus had not included desire. Of epithymia, that smoldering coal in the human heart that may blaze up but never grows cold, Petraglyphe had none. The great sculptor’s creation possessed only the wish for self-preservation, the gentle trait that even sprouts and buds may share.

She chose a chamber deep within the temple, where an open space allowed her to stand uncrowded. Perhaps a trace of her creator’s design could here be faintly perceived, for she did not object to being admired.

That night she ventured beneath the stars in an open atrium near the temple’s center, where Corax fluttered to her shoulder.

“Isn’t this great?” he said. “I am already in good with the officials: one of the guards had noticed us talking as we approached the colonnade this morning. I get the choicest bits of whatever, some of which the priests don’t even want.”

“I am glad for you,” she said. For a representation of Athena could not feel indifference to the needs of a benefactor.

She remained in the temple for two hundred years, and never spoke unless she was addressed. As everyone knew she did not care for that, she was left alone except for admiring observers, and eventually the megabyzoi and other officials forgot that the beautiful statue of Athena could actually speak. The Temple virgins remembered, and some of the more daring ones would occasionally whisper a greeting or wish her well, which Petra would briefly acknowledge.

No one knew why the Temple of Artemis held a statue Athena, but the priests sensed that the respect the goddess of the hunt would accord her much greater half-sister warranted all hospitality they could offer. Corax, plump and cocksure, begot many fledglings, whom he told about the good thing he had going in Ephesus, and ravens came to be fed for generations, long after their connection with the statue was forgotten.

The fire that destroyed the temple is remembered even today, though none of the surviving accounts—neither Aristotle’s nor Plutarch’s—mentions what became of the basalt statue no outsider had seen in decades. A great fire creates its own wind, and flaming debris rose high as sparks and was carried downwind. The topos of the temple was considered sacred and so the structure had never been moved to a higher location, even though the site was prone to flooding. The city’s other great buildings were better located, however, and the closest was an ill-built wooden tenement, a bare hundred paces away and the perfect ground for the fiery seedlings to take root and swiftly blossom.

Megabyzoi, temple virgins, guards and slaves had all fled the temple and stood about it wailing. No one noticed the figure, taller than any of the parthenes and attired like a goddess, who exited a side colonnade and strode purposefully away.

People were also fleeing the tenement, mostly mothers and children. As Petra came close, its frontispiece collapsed with a crash, sending up a tremendous gout of sparks like a bursting wave. Women shrieked, crying that their children, their elderly parents were still within. Behind them, Petra halted.

Athena was the goddess of wisdom but also of warfare, quick to punish malefactors and slow to succor the halt, the helpless, or the lame. Whatever traits devolved upon Petra from the goddess in whose image she was wrought, pity for mothers and their children was not among them.

If there was any divine source for what she next did it could only have been Leto, goddess of motherhood but long withdrawn from involvement in the affairs of mortals. Perhaps the fact that her own daughter was Artemis moved her to compassion for the pseudos who neither had a mother nor would ever be one, yet had shown kindness for the temple’s maiden devotees.

Petra walked up to the flaming wreckage, seized a handful of timbers, and cast them aside. Fragments of ceiling beams fell atop her, which she kicked vigorously away. Her clothing went up in a bright flash, and a second later she disappeared into a cloud of black smoke. Onlookers cried out, but a few seconds later a handful of children emerged, stumbling and coughing, from its depths.

Mothers ran crying toward their children. A few additional people emerged, then no more. A rain of debris fell through the opening, and a groan went up. Then a boy pushed his way through the smoke, followed by Petra. Her clothing, scorched and smoldering, fell raggedly away.

Women exclaimed at the sight of their children’s savior, blacker than a Nubian and even more beautiful. But when a mother ran up to embrace her, Petra failed to forestall her. The mother threw her arms around Petra and leaped back with a shriek as her clothing exploded into flame.

If there was anything that could be done, Petra, hot as an oven, was not the one to do it. In the confusion of screams and weeping she could only walk away.

The smoking black statue continued, unremarked in the uproar, until she reached the docks. She waded into the water, sending up a tremendous hiss and a cloud of steam, and remained there, submerged to her eyes, until the bubbling around her stopped.

She climbed back onto the quay and demanded passage on the first outbound ship, a ploiarion tied up next to rows of amphorae with its hatch open. “I can haul line and I eat nothing,” she said. Her voice, unused for decades, was nevertheless melodious, and the captain blanched before its authority, as well as from the heat still working its way from her core. She hoisted the largest amphora and looked at him pointedly. He had no recourse but to point to the hatch.

For one who had sailed among the Cyclades, a coast-hugging trip to Claros might seem no temptation to the Fates, but the daughters of Night were capricious as their Olympian kinfolk. The crew hated and feared Petra from the moment they set eyes upon her, and the hold was too small for her to withdraw below.

When they threatened her and she found herself without desire to strike back, she retreated to stand at the mast. But when a sailor pointed to a school of dolphins off starboard, even Petra ventured close to see. Immediately the ship listed dangerously. At once she crossed over to port, whereupon the ship listed that way, sending two sailors and the captain tumbling toward her.

Mariners think fast in an emergency, and without hesitation the two sailors pushed her overboard.

She sank instantly, though more slowly than one falls through the air. Aegean sea-green swiftly thickened to a deep forest shade, which darkened within seconds like the onset of dusk. She thought nothing, for there was nowhere thought might lead her.

And then the Voice addressed her.

This is no place for such as you are now.

“Who speaks?” she asked. “Are you Poseidon?”

A ripple in the waters around her, amusement or something else. The days of those petty gods are ending. None would think to save you, unless to spite another. Did your archetype take notice of your plight? Or Poseidon her kinsman?

My time is soon to come, and unlike the eternal children who intrigue and smite when not rutting, I shall not toy with those who suffer and die. Neither shall I intercede to save every mortal in distress. But you are neither mortal nor stone, a wrongness produced by those too moved by love of beauty and novelty.

This world shall hereafter comprise only the living and the non-living. And you, blameless one, shall live, though for no longer a span than any other mortal.

And Petraglyphe felt herself change. Her chest swelled, as though something grew within it, and her descent ceased. She hung suspended in the water, light dimly visible from above.

It requires more than flesh to rise, does it not? I will fill your lungs, for I am all things—as the squabbling gods were each but one or two—and the pneuma is one form in which I will appear before My children. And with your true life, you may take breath.

Now breathe.