Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play

by

Michael Swanwick

On a hilltop in Arcadia, Darger sat talking with a satyr.

"Oh, the sex is good," the satyr said.  "Nobody could say it wasn't.  But is it the be-all and end-all of life?  I don't see that."  The satyr's name was Demetrios Papatragos, and evenings he played the saxophone in a local jazz club.

"You're a bit of a philosopher," Darger observed.

"Oh, well, in a home-grown front porch sense, I suppose I am."  The satyr adjusted the small leather apron that was his only item of clothing.  "But enough about me.  What brings you here?  We don't get that many travelers these days.  Other than the African scientists, of course."

            "Of course.  What are the Africans here for, anyway?"

"They are building gods."

"Gods!  Surely not!  Whatever for?"

"Who can fathom the ways of scientists?  All the way from Greater Zimbabwe they came, across the wine-dark Mediterranean and into these romance-haunted hills, and for what?  To lock themselves up within the ruins of the Monastery of St. Vasilios, where they labor as diligently and joylessly as if they were indeed monks.  They never come out, save to buy food and wine or to take the occasional blood sample or skin scraping.  Once, one of them offered a nymph money to have sex with him, if you can believe such a thing."

"Scandalous!"  Nymphs, though they were female satyrs, had neither hoofs nor horns.  They were, however, not cross-fertile with humans.  It was the only way, other than a small tail at the base of their spines (and that was normally covered by their dresses), to determine their race.  Needless to say, they were as wildly popular with human men as their male counterparts were with women.  "Sex is either freely given or it is nothing."

"You're a bit of a philosopher yourself," Papatragos said.  "Say - a few of our young ladies might be in heat.  You want me to ask around?"

"My good friend Surplus, perhaps, would avail himself of their kind offers.  But not I.  Much though I'd enjoy the act, I'd only feel guilty afterwards.  It is one of the drawbacks of having a depressive turn of mind."

So Darger made his farewells, picked up his walking stick, and sauntered back to town.  The conversation had given him much to think about.

"What word of the Evangelos bronzes?" Surplus asked.  He was sitting at a table out back of their inn, nursing a small glass of retsina and admiring the sunset.  The inn stood at the outskirts of town at the verge of a forest, where pine, fir, and chestnut gave way to orchards, olive trees, cultivated fields, and pastures for sheep and goats.  The view from its garden could scarce be improved upon.

"None whatsoever.  The locals are happy to recommend the ruins of this amphitheater or that nuclear power plant, but any mention of bronze lions or a metal man causes them only to look blank and shake their heads in confusion.  I begin to suspect that scholar in Athens sold us a bill of goods."

"The biters bit!  Well, 'tis an occupational hazard in our line of business."

"Sadly true.  Still, if the bronzes will not serve us in one manner, they shall in another.  Does it not strike you as odd that two such avid antiquarians as ourselves have yet to see the ruins of St. Vasilios?  I propose that tomorrow we pay a courtesy visit upon the scientists there."

Surplus grinned like a hound - which he was not, quite.  He shook out his lace cuffs and, seizing his silver-knobbed cane, stood.  "I look forward to making their acquaintance."

"The locals say that they are building gods."

"Are they really?  Well, there's a market for everything, I suppose."

Their plans were to take a strange turn, however.  For that evening Dionysus danced through the town.

Darger was writing a melancholy letter home when the first shouts sounded outside his room.  He heard cries of "Pan!  Great Pan!" and wild skirls of music.  Going to the window, he saw an astonishing sight: The townsfolk were pouring into the street, shedding their clothes, dancing naked in the moonlight for all to see.  At their head was a tall, dark figure who pranced and leaped, all the while playing the pipes.

He got only a glimpse, but its effect was riveting.  He felt the god's passage as a physical thing.  Stiffening, he gripped the windowsill with both hands, and tried to control the wildness that made his heart pound and his body quiver. 

But then two young women, one a nymph and the other Theodosia, the innkeeper's daughter, burst into his room and began kissing his face and urging him toward the bed.

Under normal circumstances, he would have sent them packing - he hardly knew the ladies.  But the innkeeper's daughter and her goat-girl companion were both laughing and blushing so charmingly and were furthermore so eager to grapple that it seemed a pity to disappoint them.  Then, too, the night was rapidly filling with the sighs and groans of human passion - no adult, apparently, was immune to the god's influence  - and it seemed to Darger perverse that he alone in all the world should refuse to give in to pleasure.

So, protesting insincerely, he allowed the women to crowd him back onto the bed, to remove his clothing, and to have their wicked way with him.  Nor was he backwards with them.  Having once set his mind to a task, he labored at it with a will. 

In a distant corner of his mind, he heard Surplus in the room down the hall raise his voice in an ecstatic howl.

 Read the full story here.