A Flying Carpet that Was Once a Man

Chapter 13
Terrible News and the Flying Carpet who was once a Man

In which Circe recalls  the time when she
was threatened with extinction and
Aphrodite urged her to journey on a
quest for the ambrosia of immortality.
On her adventures she meets Carpetbagger
and other strange Beings, including
the camel whose dung is much sought after. 
 






Having all the men and all the time to have them in is the most  wonderful thing about being immortal.  But  I'm wary of  love.  Love, (if it be love, difficult to tell) traps you in illusion.    Love changes the colour of things, robs you of  your objectivity, your powers of reasoning.  Love is blind to the  flaws and terrible realities of the beloved  a truth I realised when I had answered the riddle of the Sphinx. 


When you're beautiful and immortal you don't waste    precious time worrying about your first wrinkle, your first  grey  hair.  Unlike a mortal who must depend on silly cones.  How can a  woman claim she has lovely breasts when  they're false?  True, I gave Cleopatra a nose job, but then history  depended on it. Of course, I depend on my daily goblet of ambrosia for my immortality and my youth.  I suppose if I neglected this dose of elixir, I would, in a month's time look so ancient, you wouldn't see my face for the wrinkles!  O horrible thought!

I may be immortal but I watch every sunset, every  moonrise, every blade of grass, every leaf as it changes colour  with the seasons.  I know a lot of lazy immortals who never weed  their gardens or read a book or watch a sunset because they  think they have time enough for all that.  But no one sunset is  like any other.  Just like no one man is like another.  You've  got to have them all. 


A decade  before the long awaited shipwreck, I found myself    threatened with extinction.  Ambrosius, the
ambrosia brewer of  the  gods lost his head after Ares out hunting boar, accidentally struck it with a boulder.  Olympus was in chaos.  Ares felt like a heel, (not the kind Achilles had), sulking about the clouds,  hiding from everyone, even his beloved Aphrodite.  Many a divine  hand had to arrest itself from beating him up.  You don't  taunt  the  god of war.   


Zeus ordered Ares to hit Ambrosius on the head again, but  that didn't work either.  Aphrodite was devastated by the news.    Her eternal air of nonchalance had given way to hysteria. 
"Now Ares shall kiss me and at that very instant I shall shrivel    into a pile of dust!  My great age will catch up with me!" 
"A mountain of dust, more likely," I said,"but it won't matter    anymore.  Ares too shall be dust."  She began to weep noisily. Her nose, grown red, dripped mucus onto her voluptuous upper lip, great pearly drops rolled down those alabaster cheeks.  You must never weep like Aphrodite.  It makes you look ugly, and who knows, the man in your life may walk in on you.  When I weep  (which is seldom), I weep alone and in silence.  Not too many  tears either, unless you're courting a seal  man, a selkie.  In which case you must drop exactly seven tears into the sea to get  him to notice you.  Seven's too many.
"Dust kissing dust!" shrieked Aphrodite, breaking into sweet  peals of  laughter, robin egg blue eyes insane. 
"More than old age, I'm afraid of ugliness," I said. 
"Oh Circe, friend, sister, lovely enchantress!  Do something soon before we begin to look like prunes!  I'll give you all my pigs!"  She was shaking all over and deadly serious.  At last, Aphrodite and I were one, if not in our views on love, then in  our paranoia.   
"And the Girdle, will you lend me your Girdle?"  She hesitated  before she said, 
"Ah the Girdle!  I knew you'd ask for that!  You can have that  too...only find an elixir ... or it will be the end
of Love and Ecstasy!" 
"I, my dear Aphrodite, am the Goddess of Ecstasy!" 
"Lust, more likely."  She was looking nonchalant again. 
"Be careful what you say, my dear," I said softly. "Or I won't    share my elixir with you." 
"Please don't be angry, lovely enchantress, I'll loan you my Girdle for a whole  day.  Even Hera is not that fortunate.  She  got just one night!" Her eyes were pools of panic.
"All right.  The Girdle and forget the pigs!"  I could have    asked for two days, but I didn't want to deceive my Chosen One for    too long. Like a woman wearing false breasts and buttocks.  And after all, what would I do with more pigs?  It was really the  Girdle I was after. 

         
On the other hand, I'm beautiful enough without Aphrodite's  Girdle.  I fantasised about my Chosen One.  Would he be blonde,  red head  or what?  (Cloud Seeker tells me there are even purples and greens available these days.) Would he be from Greece, Australia or  another planet?


When Ganymede, delicate and blushing after his descent from Olympus, had brought me the heart stopping news, I had run almost all over Aeaea, searching for Cloud Seeker.  He had seen so much, surely he could tell me where to find the  elixir of life.  He was in my sacred grove of cypress, snoring like thunder above  the feathery treetops. 
"Wake up," I said, "something terrible has happened!" 
With a final snore and a snort, he poured himself down the tree trunks to the mouldy earth. 
"What is it, Mama?" 
"Don't call me that!" 
"You look like Zeus' thunderbolt struck you!" 
I told him.  If a cloud can pale, he paled. 
"I can't imagine you old and ugly." 
"Neither can I." 
"We can try India." 
"Good thought.  The Indian gods churned up a whole ocean of    elixir.  They ought to be generous!" 


I climbed into his softness.  His cloudy arms embraced me.  Father Helios who was fast sinking behind the ocean rim blew me a warm flying kiss of good luck.  It was beautiful. And my son, all rosy and orange in the evening light, sky and sea afire. 
"If we're fortunate, we'll find an elixir before we get to  India," I said, sipping from my gold ambrosia bottle I kept  slung around my waist.  Sweet, tingling liquid, full of shooting  stars, slid down my throat like a  soothing balm.  Ah Ambrosia!  I thought, if I should ever lose you! 

         
The following day towards noon, the shining white walls and minarets of Baghdad spread out below us.  It was a graceful city, with its white domes and houses with exquisitely filigreed windowpanes.  She-asses with their sweet faced young ambled docilely through the crowded marketplace, their sides laden with    sacks of palm dates.  There was an awful din down there, the braying of donkeys, vendors trying to out-scream each other, the  hoarse cries of brilliantly coloured macaws waiting in gilded    cages to get picked up.   


Suddenly there was a carpet flying alongside us.  Or was it a man flattened by a road roller?  He had hair  too, like a carpet fringe.  His loose trousers, tied at the ankles, his bright green turban, his little jacket, even his skin was patterned with a constantly changing  motif of nightingales  that turned into parrots, peacocks and  roses that changed into  lilies and daffodils in a never ending story.   
"Looks like a flying carpet," said Cloud Seeker, "with that ever changing pattern all over him!" 
"You're right," it said. "I am a carpet who was once a man." 
"What happened?" I asked, after I had finished laughing. 
"It's a long story," it said, looking very hurt. 
"Tell me or curiosity will kill me." 
"I was once a man searching the earth for a missing family  heirloom  the flying carpet bought by an ancestor as dowry for the hand of a fairy princess.  Turned out her father wasn't impressed.  So the poor man took the carpet home with him.  One day he was fornicating on the carpet with a palace maid when the carpet flew out through the window to the public square.  He fell from it, breaking a leg and ever since he lived as a recluse.  No one in the family saw the carpet or the maid again. A month ago I found the very same carpet in a forgotten corner of a pawnshop in Athens.  The last of it was being devoured by rats even as I came upon it!  So what was I to do?  I ate the vermin!  Can you believe it?  I ate a dozen rats so I could absorb the magic qualities of the carpet.  When I brought them up, I had to eat them again!  Allah!  It was most horrible.  But it worked and I went back to my home a happy man.  My family shunned me, except for the children who occasionally come for rides on my  back.    That's my story." 
"Most interesting.  It must be wonderful to be able to go  anywhere you like." 
"Depends who's flying.  Could I take you anywhere, beautiful lady?" 
"I'm looking for the elixir of life.  You see, I'm a Goddess from  Greece and all the gods and goddesses there have run out of  ambrosia." 
"A lovely creature like you deserves to live forever.  I    know where you'll find the elixir.  Mount me!" 
"Son," I said to Cloud Seeker, "follow us if you like.  I must go  along with  " 
"Carpetbagger," he folded himself into a curtsy.


Sitting on Carpetbagger wasn't as comfortable as sitting on Cloud Seeker. But it was faster and he enjoyed my weight on his crotch where a bunch of red roses changed constantly into a  bunch of parrots.  Indeed, he moaned all the way.  It was a truly unearthly experience.  It's no small accomplishment to arouse a carpet.   


The desert he took me to was awe inspiring with its gently rolling sand dunes: a sea of sand as far as the eye could see. We alighted in front of a wall of sandstone and Carpetbagger  cried, "Hashpash!" The cliff wall slid open. By the light of torches mounted on the rock walls  I could see bulging sacks of black velvet, brocades, exquisite rugs, piles of aquamarine silk, and rubies and emeralds as big as  my breasts.  A  gigantic clay urn stood in a corner and some large clay jars  flanked a wall near the entrance. 
"Ah," said Carpetbagger hovering over the floor, "the Camel Dung must be in one of these jars." 
"Camel Dung?" I was alarmed.  Would I eat camel dung to make    myself immortal?  I didn't know myself. 
"It makes you immortal.  This camel is different...it's immortal    and many chase it for its dung, but never get close enough for a    splatter.  Lo and behold!" he lifted the lid of the jar nearest    the door with a flourish of carpet fringe.  Out popped a red    turban with a red face beneath it. 
"Aha!" said the red turban, "I knew I was sitting on something  special  camel dung!  Aren't you going to wish me a happ " 
"Happy birthday!" Carpetbagger and I said in unison.  From the  corner of my eye I saw one of the velvet sacks stir. 
"I thank you," said the man, now shoulders showing above the jar's rim, "but what are you doing here?  And you," he jabbed the air    around Carpetbagger, "what are you?" 
"Never mind who I am." 
"He's my lover," I said. 
"Hah!" said the red turban. 
"Just get out of the jar," said Carpetbagger. 
"Why should I?  I'm the one that discovered this treasure trove in the first place while I was calling my dog, Hashpash!"  He    stood up.  He was wearing orange harem pants and a brocade jacket    over a hairy chest. 
"Don't be a miser," I said, running a finger down his chest. "Give me a bit of that dung.  What's your name, Handsome?" 
"Ali Yucka," he blushed and the tip of his parrot beaked nose from which hung a bead of sweat moved when he said "Yucka". 
"You won't regret giving me a bit of the dung," I said, sticking my breasts out at him.  There was a lustful gleam in his  piercing little dark eyes. 
"We'll start with a kiss!" he lunged at me.  The velvet  sack jumped. 
"I should have known!" cried a muffled female voice and the    sack burst open.  It was a matronly looking woman standing  with hands on billowing hips.  She wore green harem pants and the rest was hidden by a white veil that hung from the lower half  of her face.  Beads of sweat broke out on Ali Yucka's forehead, but    he tried to seem unperturbed as he said, 
"Known what?  About the Camel Dung?" 
"Betrayer!  Adulterer!" 
"It's my birthday!" 
"I don't care!  Now I know why you spend so much time here, and your birthdays too!  Wine and women, it's all you men want!"
Picking up a great ruby, she swung at a gigantic clay urn. Blood red wine poured out in a torrent that got bigger and bigger, drenching the brocades, the aquamarine silk and everything else near the floor including my feet, ankles and the hem of my gown.  Ali Yucka tried to get at his wife, whose sagging ample  mountains were heaving with excitement and rage.  He fell along  with the jar and all the dry greenish dung toppled out to melt  into the wine, giving forth an awful stench. 
"Look what you've done, Mother of Hashish and Khoshkhesh!" cried Ali Yucka, shaking his fists at his wife.  She swung at him with    the ruby.  He ducked, cursing in Persian.  He sounded like he was spitting. 
"The dung!  The dung!" cried Carpetbagger. 
"Let's go," I said. "I'm glad I have an excuse not to eat the stuff!"