Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two by Bernard Evslin Page A

Spring
    The Amazons, coming from Scythia, had ridden up the northern slope of the mountain. Hercules, coming from Thebes, was mounting its steeper southern slope, and was unaware of what the warrior women were doing on the other side.
    He climbed steadily, and it was hot work. Hera had bribed Apollo to swing his sun chariot low that day, and the land lay sweltering. Nor was it much cooler on the mountain. Hercules was parched. He had to drink, and soon. Nostrils quivering, he snuffed the wind like a horse and tried to pick up the scent of water. A faint, cool odor did drift to him. He strained his ears and heard a distant splashing. He turned off the path and made his way over rough ground to a natural cupping of rock. Here, from deep in the mountain, a spring spurted with such force that it made a plumed fountain. Flowers grew there, wild roses and iris and hyacinth, and the one known as heliotrope because it always turns to face the sun.
    Hercules knelt and plunged his face in. It was the most delicious water he had ever drunk, ice cold, sparkling, tasting faintly of mint; it was like drinking some pure essence of earth. He had no way of knowing that this was the Hippocrene Spring, whose coolness touched those who drank it with the incurable fever called poetry.
    Hercules pulled his dripping face from the spring and gazed about in wonder. Everything had changed. Colors pulsed. Things presented themselves, insisting that he see them—a cypress, a berry bush, a soaring eagle, a goat far off. They uttered their names, and he heard them as if for the first time. This became a dance of names, seeming not only sound but colored music. The eagle he was watching became a white stallion balanced on golden wings, proclaiming the reliability of magic and the necessity for transformation—which poets know.
    Hercules had drunk of the Hippocrene Spring and was becoming a poet. But he was unused to words and felt himself choking on a song unsung.
    The fountain mist was making dim, gauzy rainbows, and Hercules couldn’t quite see what had come to the other side of the spring. It was huge, a looming brightness. He stepped to one side and looked past the plume of water. He saw a stag, larger than any he had ever seen, and of a blinding whiteness. Its hooves were silver; its antlers were a candelabra of silver fire.
    â€œA moon stag!” he said to himself. “Wandered away from the chariot. Artemis must be searching for him high and low. I shall catch it and bring it to her.”
    It was not a stag belonging to Artemis, although of the same breed, and it had always run free. But beginners in poetry are apt to prate wildly about the moon.
    â€œYes,” thought Hercules. “Surely he is one of the team that draws the moon chariot across the night. And Artemis, maiden huntress, who swings the tides on a silver leash and hangs a torch for lovers, will thank me when I return this stag to her.”
    He thought these things, but could not say them. He didn’t yet know how. In that big, superbly wrought body, poetry bypassed words and became action. And he began to chase the stag as it bounded away. The stag fled, became a white blur going up the hill. Hercules watched it race to the top, then bound over, to go down the other side.
    â€œTerrific sprinter,” thought Hercules. “We’ll see how well he goes the distance.”
    But Hippocrene fever was coursing through his veins. He half forgot about the stag even while following it.
    Some miles off Attica, a wedge-shaped head split the water. It was the serpent, Ladon, swimming toward the coast. Iole rode his head, her red hair snapping like a pennant behind her in the wind of their going.
    Informed by the sea nymphs that Hercules was on Helicon, she had asked Ladon to take her there, without telling him why.
    Ladon crawled ashore and began to undulate across Attica. His body moved by contraction like a giant worm, and he moved very fast. He was heading