Orpheus and Eurydice

In the misty recesses of fantasy and history, there was once worshiped a god of the fiery sun, Apollo. And in this world so long ago, there was a golden-crowned muse known as Calliope, renowned for her wisdom and strong will, venerated as the muse of history. The two were lovers, for a time, and their child was born shortly. He was a fair and grave in face, with long dark hair falling about his shoulders. His name, Orpheus.
    When he was a very young lad, he lived with his mother and her sisters, the muses, he met his divine father when he was courting Thalia, rosy-cheeked and jovial muse of comedy. Apollo, pleased with his son more than any of the other children of his many trysts, gave him the gift of a delicate lyre of gold and taught him how to play laments and rhapsodies on it, how to create the most beautiful music in the world. And Calliope instructed Orpheus in the art of poetry. Whenever Orpheus sang and played his lyre, every one nearby could not help but be almost enchanted by it, so lovely it was.
    As he grew into a young man, his worship turned to the dark goddesses of the underworld, and as a missionary, as it was, of Hecate, mother of all witches, and vengeful Demeter, spread worship of them to lands far and wide, from the lonely islands in the sea to the deserts of Egypt. But even this could not sate his wanderlust, and Orpheus eventually he went to sea, boredom and the youthful disregard of the gift of life driving him to risk his life. He accompanied the Argonauts into parts of the sea few survived, and when the sirens sang their alluring melodies, he only played on his lyre a song more beautiful that drowned out their songs, himself unaffected by any woman's charms.
    But one day came when he chanced to meet an oak nymph, Eurydice. Eurydice, dusky-skinned and quiet as the forests are in the twilight, with strange, large black eyes that seemed to always be staring, staring...he met her in the twilight, too, and in the blue shadows he became fascinated with her. But strangely, Eurydice proved to truly be silent, never uttering a single word for the time he knew her. But what matter? He loved her, and she loved him, and they had their wedding in the first breaths of spring.
    At the wedding in the fields of lilies, Orpheus played the loveliest song he'd ever played, a wavering melody of tremulous joy, and Eurydice danced amongst the lilies. For a brief time they were lovers, companions, Eurydice's slightly uncanny silence to Orpheus just as musical as songs. But can anyone ever be truly happy? For one day, a bacchante faun, laughing raucously, tried to have his way with Eurydice. Eurydice fled, and stumbled on a venomous serpent, which bit her on her bare heel. The venom filled her veins quite quickly, and she died a painful but brief death. But perhaps that's not the right phrase. Death is not a brief affair.
    Orpheus later discovered her wan and lifeless body amongst the thickets, and heartbroken, he began to play the most sorrowful lament he could conceive. The nymphs of the forest were touched by this and mourned for their sister and her lover, and came to him and whispered in his ear that he could, perhaps, take back his Eurydice from the arms of Death by entering the land of the dead.
    Desperate, half mad from sorrow, and almost to spite the gods who let this happen, so Orpheus thought, he traveled to the underworld. He entered the ghostly meadows of the dead where Eurydice was, sprays of pale asphodel in her russet hair and a stranger still look in her eyes. He was about to call her name, when from the shifting shadows stepped Hades, god of the underworld, and trailing behind him his embittered consort, Prosperina, regarded the living trespasser with proud indifference.
    "What are you doing here? Why are you in the land of the dead?" Hades snarled.
      Orpheus looked upon Hades with eyes dimmed with tears. "Eurydice, my wife--"
      "Eurydice, your wife! She is dead. There is no returning to the land of the living for her." Prosperina frowned and folded her pale hands. Her eyes flickered to his golden lyre, and she began to speak slowly. "We, here in the land where the sun is never seen and the only music we hear are the screams of the wicked...could perhaps...allow an exception. If you pray grant me a favour. Even here we have heard much of the mortal who plays the most beautiful music in the world. I would like to hear it." For a second, a shade of melancholy passed Prosperina's eyes.
      And so Orpheus played on his lyre of gold a rhapsody of the only happiness he could find left in his heart, and Prosperina listened. Hades scowled and floated off back in the shadows, leaving Prosperina behind. Orpheus sang and played that rhapsody, and when he was done, Prosperina rose and gestured to Eurydice's wan spectre. "She may come back to the land of the living. On one condition, pray you -- only if as you are leaving with her, you do not look back."
    Orpheus' heart filled with joy and he headed back to the surface, nervous only that Eurydice was not following him. What if she had stopped? Had she forgotten him? They were so close to the moonlit surface now...what if she was lost? Orpheus glanced behind, and the last he saw of Eurydice was her widened eyes as she faded back to the Meadows of Asphodel, forever gone.
   
For a decade Orpheus lived a solitary life, growing bitter. His music never lost his beauty, but in his eyes there was no beauty in the world any longer. He became a young hermit, and renounced worship of any other god or goddess except his father, Apollo. One morning he traveled lonely to the holy places of the dawn, and prayed to Apollo. But a few Maenads, mad, intoxicated on wines and wild-haired, shrieked at the follower of Apollo, rival to Dionysus, and tore him to bloody pieces in a passionate frenzy, and cast his head into the river.
    His head floated, still strangely singing his melancholy songs, all the way to the island of Lesbos, were a few maidens curiously found it, and kept it as an oracle in a hidden temple. What has happened to it now, few know.

THE END