Jason and the Argonauts Read Online Free Page B

flame and breathe the smoke.”
    “Why?”
    “It is your father’s wish. You must enter trance and await his instructions,”
    I am not submissive by nature, but neither was I prepared to challenge anything a wooden snake said. A laurel tree stood at the edge of the clearing. I plucked a handful of its leaves, built a fire, and cast the leaves upon it. I knelt to the flame, inhaling its smoke. Darkness swarmed.
    I stood at an oak stump, which was full of rainwater. A small wind blew, riffling the water. It was a miniature sea holding a ship as small as a walnut shell, its sail spread on a splinter of mast as it slid toward an oak-chip island.
    Two huge rocks appeared. They stood apart from each other; the steersman put his bow exactly between them. But with an odd rushing, gurgling sound the boulders began to hurtle through the water toward each other. The ship slowed. I saw oars bend as the men tried to backwater—too slowly. The rocks were going with terrific speed now. They sluiced through the water and came together, crushing the tiny ship to splinters. I heard a frightful thin screaming, and the water grew red as I watched. The rocks sank, sucking the wreckage under. The stump sea was clear again.
    It became a dish of molten silver in the hot sun. Pictures formed in its depths, floated up, and re-formed into something else: a bloody discus flying; a pair of hands cut off at the wrists, crawling like crabs; a pair of brass bulls breathing flame; a giant serpent with a man in its jaws.
    I had left the stump. I sat near the fire, gazing into its heart. It was the sky burning. Under it lay scorched fields. Men and women lay there with blackened faces. Cattle that were racks of bone stood shakily, trying to snuffle something out of a dry riverbed. They lowed piteously and sank to earth. The sky burned. But now there was a golden core to the flame. It became a golden throne standing in the scorched field. On the throne sat a youth. He wore a gold crown. About his shoulders hung a great fleece, as if the pelt of a golden ram had been cut into a king’s robe.
    The young king raised his arms to the sky, and it darkened. The red flame became black smoke; the smoke whorled into storm clouds, and it all turned to rain. Water fell on the king and on his throne and on the parched earth. The riverbeds filled, and the earth was green again. Then it all faded.
    I spoke to the wooden snake. “What does my father wish?”
    “Go fetch Jason. It’s time.”
    “Time for what?”
    “For him to learn what you have learned.”
    “Will he believe me?”
    “Instruct him through vision. Harrow his sleep. Sow a dream.”
    The snake stiffened and twined woodenly about my staff. I was sitting over the ashes of the fire, and the day was hot and damp and still. I wanted to go to sleep, but it was time to be about my father’s business.

NINE
    E KION
    T HE AIM OF dream-tinkering is to frighten or flatter or otherwise persuade someone to do something by sowing certain visions in his sleeping head. There are two steps: first you cast the person into a swoon; then, when the eyes close and shallow breathing signifies deep trance, you begin to plant your dream.
    Now I went about gathering the things I would need: a handful of laurel leaves; flower of poppy and mandragora and other slumberous herbs; some sprigs of withered barley; some shavings of ram’s horn; and six boarlike bristles from the beard of Pelius.
    I loaded my pouch with this potent rubbish and headed for the edge of the forest where it ran down to the sea.
    Two days later, I was in Cythera. I stood at the foot of a cliff, looking up, up, trying to see who was standing on the edge. Whoever it was, he couldn’t dive from that height; nobody could. Suddenly he dropped off.
    I watched him fall. The sun caught him, body arched, arms spread. Did he realize he was plunging toward a sea full of rocks? They stood thickly in the tide, the water boiling among them. He flashed down, his arms