The Perilous Seat

by Caroline Dale Snedeker

Oh, how could Nikander have let forth upon her gentle head the wrath that should have gone to his sons? Where was his fatherly tenderness? How could he in the first place have put her away in the Pythia House, that cruelty, that fearfulness, tales of which were rife in the Precinct? How could Nikander have placed her there to be a barren maid, she who was so full of life, so fit to be the mother of children? As Eëtíon mounted his anger mounted with him. He longed intensely to take her away from cruelty and neglect and to give her henceforth only tenderness and the visionary love that was his.

He climbed up the Kaka Skala, passed the wood in which Theria had hidden over night, on up into the pathless heights beyond her, into despair of finding her alive. A mountain bear padded past him and broke its way into the thicket to hide. “Oh, Artemis, Protector of maidens; help the little maid who is now in thy care alone!”

By some instinct, for Eëtíon could now no longer reason, he turned back. He descended to the Kaka Skala, he entered the wood, and there on a jagged branch found some torn yellow shreds of dress.

Then as in fever he ran hither and yon searching; found, now a broken twig, now a footprint. He began to call, “Theria! Theria!” He lost time here for he was so sure she would stay hiding in the wood. But at the last some god led him out upon the upland where he caught a glimpse of a fluttering yellow garment on the ground. He ran to it and at last saw her, slender and prone, her hair lying in soft dark billows upon the rock and hiding her face.

With a sob he knelt, lifted her in his arms and tenderly put back her locks. Then he saw her death-whiteness and the terrible gash upon her forehead where she had hit the rock in her fall. He was too wild at first to help her, kissing her, calling her, feeling her cold hands, holding his lips against hers to make sure if any breath was there.

But when she responded not at all Eëtíon grew more careful. He brought out the wine but could not give it between the set lips.

Then he gathered her in his arms to carry her up to a spring which he remembered in the heights. He was too frightened now to feel any emotion. He only knew that he was carrying Theria away from Delphi, away from the bitterness and mishandling. It was right that he should do so. She belonged to him, to nobody else in all the world! Away in some colony over seas they could be truly wedded and live the years. He even forgot her Apolline priesthood and the sacrilege of loving such a one.

Meanwhile, perhaps she was dying in his arms.

In the upper slope among the firs he found his spring. He laid the dear burden on the ground, bathed her white face, bathed the wound and poured the wine into it. At last life, like a visible prayer, came back into her face and the colour of life was there.

Then indeed did Eros, the tall youth, earliest of all the gods, send power into Eëtíon’s heart, filling it with a strange uplifting worship—that invisible power with which the son of Chaos holds the cosmos together, Eros the mighty one.