Free The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy by Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe, Robert E. Howard, Paul di Filippo, Lin Carter, Tanith Lee, Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffmann Price, Thomas Burnett Swann, Brian Stableford, John Gregory Betancourt, Brian McNaughton, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Clive Jackson, Darrell Schwetizer, Achmed Abdullah Page B

bank, lifting water in their sinuous trunks, stared at us with lordly indolence. Beyond the mouth of the river we paused and circled. Directly below us a galley wavered in the lucid depths. Then Atthis dove. On the floor of the sea, anemones pulsed their tentacles in a purple twilight, and diminutive lantern fish, with rows of luminescent spots, twinkled from our path. In a forest of rockweed a blood starfish curled its crimson legs. Redbeard sponges clung to the planks of the ship, which rested as lightly on the bottom as if it had settled at anchor. We circled the deck and found the cabin, whose roof lay open to the water. Hurriedly we searched the room.
    The furnishings were Cretan: a terra cotta priestess with snakes in her hands; a tiny gold frog embedded with pearls; a tall-backed chair in the shape of a throne. I opened a chest and lifted a woman’s robe, with a bell-like skirt, puffing sleeves, and a tight bodice cut low to expose the breasts. For an instant, as the gown unfolded, Circe herself seemed to rise, a ghost, to greet me. Atthis shared my discovery. She caught the skirt in her beak and wrapped it around her flanks, as if to savor its richness and regret its inevitable destruction by the sea. Yes, this was Circe’s ship. It had sunk not hundreds of years ago but less than a hundred and, since there were no skeletons, Circe and her crew had presumably escaped.
    My lungs felt like burning asphalt. I mounted Atthis and rose with her to the surface. We dove again. Astyanax retrieved the frog and I found a pair of daggers for Frey and Balder. Then we returned to the Halcyon . Our friends were waiting on deck. Because of the elephants, the boys had hesitated to cook ashore and had gathered stones from the river to make a little oven, where Aruns was baking prawns. Excitedly I told them what we had found.
    “It’s unlikely that she turned inland. The land seems too marshy for travel. Probably she built another ship and continued down the coast. We’ll keep on our course.” I gave the brothers their daggers. “For elephants.”
    Astyanax gulped and a tear rolled down his cheek. Had he expected a gift?
    I laid my hand on his shoulder. “But you came with me. Balder and Frey stayed behind. That’s why I brought them the daggers.”
    “It isn’t daggers,” he said. “It’s Atthis. She’s gone.”
    “Gone?”
    “For good.” He pointed to the river which smoldered like copper in the dying sun, hushed and unmoving.
    “She told you?”
    “She didn’t have to. I saw it in her eyes when she brought you back to the ship. You have broken her heart.”
    “But how? I don’t understand.”
    “She brought you a gift. What did you do? Hurried off to the wreck without a thank you. That was all right, she understood your eagerness. But when you came back to the Halcyon , you brought the boys daggers and still gave her nothing. A ring, a lamp, a sandal with antelope straps—anything would have done.”
    “But what could she do with such things?”
    “Hide them, in a sea-cave. Dolphins have caches, you know, where they keep their treasures—pearls and amber and coral from the floor of the sea, objects fallen from ships or lost in the sand and carried out by the tide. In their journeys from coast to coast, they visit their caves and show them to their friends. You made Atthis feel unwanted—like a Greek wife. She’s always been a little jealous of you anyway.”
    “Why should she be jealous? I’m terribly fond of her.”
    “Still, you treat her like an animal. Did you know that dolphins have a literature, passed down by word of beak? ‘Hide it if you must, deep as the deepest trireme crusted with coral, but beauty will burn into light.’ Atthis can quote such lines for hours.”
    “Find her and bring her back!”
    “I don’t know where she is.” He sighed. “She’s probably gone up the coast. Forgive me for saying this, Bear. But people grow terribly fond of you—you’re sleepy and warm and