Free Hercules by Bernard Evslin Page A

tired. The wounds on his chest had opened again and were bleeding. He chewed more oregano leaves and plastered them to his chest with great scoops of marsh mud. Now half his work was done; but he still had the other half to do, and the sky was growing pale. He had only an hour until dawn.
    He raced back to his rock shelter, spread out his lion skin, and shoveled the chipped rocks onto the hide. Then he drew the four corners of the lion skin together into a great sack and swung the sack to his shoulder. It was so heavy it made him walk bowlegged, but he toiled back into the grove of trees again. One by one, he visited his bent pine trees and stuck rocks into the top branches, wedging them carefully—tightly enough so that they would not fall, but loosely enough so that they would fly out of the trees when the time came. The bent trees strained and quivered against their binding of vine as he wedged in the rocks that the Spear-birds had broken for him. But the vine cables held, and Hercules kept working until the sack was empty and the bent trees were loaded with rocks.
    Now the sky was pink. He heard a loud rusty cawing as the birds settled on the marsh and began to hunt water snakes. But feeding kept them too far apart. Each bird had its own territory and drove its beak into its own space, spearing the snakes. He needed the birds in one tightly packed flock.
    He picked up the two rusty shields again, stretched his arms wide, and clapped the shields together, making a horrid metallic din. The birds beat their wings, tearing their legs from the mud, rising in a great cloud out of the marsh, blotting out the pink sky.
    Hercules turned and bolted toward the grove of trees. The birds hung in the air, waiting for him to show himself. But now he was among his bent pines. He drew his knife and lashed a vine cable. The young pine whipped in an arc, loosing a storm of stones. With all the force of the springing pine behind them, the rocks hurtled more swiftly than an arrow shot from a bow or a stone flung from a sling and swept through the flock in a murderous hail.
    Birds dropped. Hercules watched them fall. He yelled for joy and sprang from tree to tree, slashing vines. The trees whipped up, loosing their hail of stones, sending them among the flock. The flock broke. Single birds began to scoot away. None dived.
    The pink sky was yellow now, a glorious full dawn. The marsh was free of birds. Dead birds lay among the bones of the creatures they had killed, and soon their bones would be added to the rubble.
    Hercules was very weary. He had lost much blood. But he had scattered the flock and killed most of the Spear-birds. It would be a long time before they could terrorize the countryside again. He picked up his lion skin and his weapons and limped away from the marsh, heading for a river where he could swim and cleanse himself.
    “Then,” he thought, “I’ll sleep for the rest of the day and all tonight. And tomorrow I’ll set out, but not for Mycenae. No, I’ve earned a bit of rest. I shall go to Thebes and see my parents and tell Iole the story of my adventures.”

THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA
    I N THOSE DAYS, EVERYONE knew that the earth was flat and that the sky was held up by mountains. But at the very northwestern corner of the world, in the uttermost island behind the West Wind, that part of the sky was held up by a Titan named Atlas, who did a mountain’s work. He was there because in the beginning of time he had fought against Zeus, and it was his punishment to stand in that orchard forever holding the sky on his shoulders.
    The place he stood was called the Garden of the Hesperides, but it was more of an orchard than a garden. Apple trees grew in that orchard, and one tree bore apples of solid gold. This tree had not always been there. It was Mother Earth’s wedding gift to Hera and had been planted in the Garden of the Gods on Olympus. Hera had been very selfish about these apples and would never give any to the other