"Actaeon, the hunted hunter" by João M. Oliveira

Actaeon, the hunted hunter

            The sun no longer shined on the horizon but its light still crossed the skies and spilled with red the other colours of the forest. The birds began their chants that yet cautious flooded the air along with the smell of blood, the blood of the animals Actaeon had once again hunted.

            A fine day, it was, he could not complain. Two stags and a few minor preys was definitely not something you could catch everyday. Artemis was surely admired and Chiron would be very pleased if he could see his “young and inexperienced” student now.

            Actaeon smiled to himself, thinking of the warm noontimes he jumped and ran around, just like a bee dances between flowers, while his tutor the centaur Chiron tried fruitlessly to teach him how to use the bow. Back then he didn’t thought of the hunt. Back then he didn’t have that mad passion for the smell of the prey’s fear or for the feeling of fresh blood spilling all over his face and body as he fought a wild beast. No, back then he enjoyed berries and the small things Zeus gave him.

            But alas, no longer was he a child. Actaeon shuddered is own head to wipe away those girly thoughts: he was a man, not a child, never a child that would run to his mother’s knees as soon as danger strokes him. No, he was the man who told other men how men should behave.

            “Cursed mosquitoes!”  He excused himself as he realised Lemteus was watching him “One cannot hunt without having them chasing us at the slightest sense of blood!”

            “And they are not the only ones!” His friend looked to Actaeon’s own hounds which boiled around their master, or better yet, around the stag their master carried on the shoulders, jumping and trying to catch even if only a taste of the splendid beast’s dead body.

            Those hounds were his pride. They could smell any animal miles away and chase it until its legs would fall down as he was overthrown by the darker shade of tiredness, the shade that comes before Thanatos strikes. Surely not even the goddess Artemis herself would refuse a gift of such magnificent hounds like those he himself had trained in the sunny days, while the other boys would play, listen to the old philosophers speak foolish things or watch girls in their most private doings.

            And in the morning classes with the centaur he began to show more and more interest, making his father proud with his son’s curiosity in weapons and arts of war, the real men stuff. No the arts and music the centaur loved so much – those were things for girls and boys that would fall for Apollo’s enchantment, not things for him. Men should have the courage to be men, like he had – like he had to have.

            Suddenly one of his hounds, Arcas, a dog like no other that showed up nobody knew quite well from where, strong and proud akin to one of Artemis’, darted in a wild race away from the others and entered the deep forest.

            “Arcas!” Shouted the dog’s master disoriented by the behaviour of the one among his hounds he called the best “Cursed dog! He must have caught the sense of something that raged him like that. Arcas!”

            For a while he called for his dog but the animal did not answer.

            “It is best we get going ‘cause the night is almost here. Arcas will return, he knows the way best than you do.”

            Lemteus wasn’t sure about whether or not the dog was best than his owner, but he knew that Nix was already spreading her dark arms around the world and soon it would be night. But looking into his friends face was enough to know that he wouldn’t leave the forest without his finest.

            “I better find him before the sun completely disappears.”

            Looking into the sky was enough for Lemteus to know the sun had already disappeared, but he knew he couldn’t move his friend from searching the forest, so he told nothing as Actaeon ran the same way the dog did a few minutes before and faded in the forest just like the animal did.

            The prince hunter scouted the woods, tracking his dog’s trail, which although not a clear one, was enough for Actaeon. What had troubled the animal so much? He kept his search as a million ideas crossed his mind to be immediately suppressed by his logic. A trained hound wouldn’t leave like that because of a simple prey – it had to be something more.

Actaeon stopped his march. Something was wrong: the forest was in complete silence, but not by the absence of sound: that was a deeper silence, the one made when you don’t want to make any noise in fear something will hear it. That was the silence of awe. Slowly he heard the sound of a stream and to his surprise the voice of girls laughing and singing filled the previous silence.

What was happening? The pour girls needed someone to help them, although judging by their laughing they didn’t seem troubled by being in the forest that late in the night. Late? Night? He had to look into the sky and check if it was really night already: the full moon cast brightness so strong that the forest seemed as clear as when the first light of morning runs through the leaves and flowers before the sun casts his first beams on the horizon. Never had he seen such a night, and he knew the forest like no one else did.

He decided to follow the sound and find the girls. To his surprise the animals didn’t seem shy like they had previously and the birds were copiously singing. A stag even crossed his path without running away or even trembling. Actaeon hated to admit, but he was getting a little scared. But nothing, not his harsh years as a hunter, his education by the finest of the centaurs nor the tales nor the stories had prepared him to what he saw.

A choir of nymphs bathed. Like butterflies their voices danced, their bodies naked in the water, their laughs like the sound of wind, their hair long, their eyes big. A single of them would make any man fall in love, a choir like that could kill one of a heart attack. But to none of them did Actaeon’s eyes give more than a glance. In the middle of them the goddess Artemis shined like the full moon among the stars and her body reminded him of a wild Aphrodite, and entrancing beauty, attractive yet dangerous like the forests.

Her eyes met his like the eyes of a thousand bees catch the bear as he steals their honey and the attraction he felt suddenly turned to fear. The nymphs and the animals made a silence that iced him. His body shivered and he lost his speech as the goddess, surrounded by the nymphs, spoke:

“See now the mortal that violated my holiness!” She said in a voice that reached him not through his ears but through his mind.

“It was an accident! I didn’t violate you, great Artemis!” He managed to say, as the blood in his veins slowly regained his vigour.

“Was it? Were the stags and the rabbits an accident? Were the boars and the birds a mistake? Did you not want to kill the beasts? Did the dart slip out of you hand? Indeed it didn’t. You violated me, mortal, through your acts, through your unnecessary hunt, not through your eyes. The way you love the blood is not a healthy way.”

“But you love the hunt too!” He shouted, immediately repenting afterwards.

“You don’t love the forest; you don’t understand the delicate balance between the births and the deaths. You don’t comprehend that there is as much poetry and necessity and innocence in the lion that kills a stag as in the egg that hatches a bird to be. The forest is a soul: the forest is me and you have corrupted it. Your punishment will be swift.”

He thought of the boar that tried to kill him in his innocence years. He reminded how he had to learn to hate it in order to survive. All the memories crossed his mind, how the boar thrown is friend against a tree and how he felt rage filling each particle of his being. How after killing the beast he swore never again to love the forest that caused him such grief and how the wise Chiron tried in vain to comfort him. But his mouth refused to speak.

And when he looked again the goddess and the choir had faded like a thin mist and there was nothing but his reflex in the water. But he did not recognize himself; he did not recognize the stag that stared at him through the water. In panic he ran through forest until he heard his stags barking and his friend’s voice.

“Actaeon!” He called as the dogs barking increased “What is it dogs? Do you smell your master? Go to him!”

Actaeon herd the dogs getting closer and he felt a momentary happiness immediately replace by a paralysing fear. He knew his dogs would see him as the prey, he knew they would tear him apart and eat the pieces. And he knew no stag could stand to his dogs. He himself had taught them to be merciless.

In a hopeless run he darted across the forest as the hounds chased him and the memories of his life flashed through his mind. And in a moment the dogs caught him.

When he reached the dogs, Limteus saw the pieces of the stag and only the head intact.

“Damn dogs, another stag?! Actaeon would be proud of you, a fine stag this was! Now go look for your owner!” He quieted his mouth as he saw how the dogs seemed embarrassed and one of them cried grievingly. Limteus look at the stag’s head, and in horror he saw Actaeon’s head.