Tanith Lee - The Gorgon

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THE GORGON

Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee has been, from the beginning of her remarkable

career, one of the best, most sensitive purveyors of Dark

Fantasy—that is, someone who understands that a story does

not have to be thunderous and explicit throughout in order to

succeed on the primary, horror, level. Her people are people,

and her settings, fantastical or not, are real. She also is about

the best in layering her stories; none are exactly what they

seem. This, perhaps more than anything, is what gives Ms. Lee

's material that marvelous depth peculiar to her. Not

necessarily a philosophical depth, but the kind you find in a

black-water lake— deceptive; but it's just as terrifying down

there as it is up here, and there isn't a damn thing you can do

about it once you go under.

"The Gorgon" is yet another example of what a shadow

can do; it also won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short

Story.

~~oOo~~

THE SMALL ISLAND, which lay off the larger island of

Daphaeu, obviously contained a secret of some sort, and, day by

day, and particularly night by night, began to exert an influence

on me, so that I must find it out.

Daphaeu itself (or more correctly herself, for she was a female

country, voluptuous and cruel by turns in the true antique

fashion of the Goddess) was hardly enormous. A couple of roads,

a tangle of sheep tracks, a precarious, escalating village, rocks

and hillsides thatched by blistered grass. All of which overhung

an extraordinary sea, unlike any sea which I have encountered

elsewhere in Greece. Water which might be mistaken for

blueness from a distance, but which, from the harbor or the

multitude of caves and coves that undermined the island,

revealed itself a clear and succulent green, like milky limes or the

bottle glass of certain spirits.

On my first morning, having come on to the natural terrace

(the only recommendation of the hovel-like accommodation) to

look over this strange green ocean, I saw the smaller island, lying

like a little boat of land moored just wide of Daphaeu's three

hills. The day was clear, the water frilled with white where it hit

the fangs in the interstices below the terrace. About the smaller

island, barely a ruffle showed. It seemed to glide up from the sea,

smooth as mirror. The little island was verdant, also. Unlike

Daphaeu's limited stands of stone pine, cypress, and cedar, the

smaller sister was clouded by a still, lambent haze of foliage that

looked to be woods. Visions of groves, springs, a ruined temple, a

statue of Pan playing the panpipes forever in some glade—where

only yesterday, it might seem, a thin column of aromatic smoke

had gone up—these images were enough, fancifully, to draw me

into inquiries about how the small island might be reached. And

when my inquiries met first with a polite bevy of excuses, next

with a refusal, last with a blank wall of silence, as if whoever I

mentioned the little island to had gone temporarily deaf or mad,

I became, of course, insatiable to get to it, to find out what odd

superstitious thing kept these people away. Naturally, the

Daphaeui were not friendly to me at any time beyond the false

friendship one anticipates extended to a man of another

nationality and clime, who can be relied on to pay his bills,

perhaps allow himself to be overcharged, even made a downright

monkey of in order to preserve goodwill. In the normal run of

things, I could have had anything I wanted in exchange for a

pack of local lies, a broad local smile, and a broader local price.

That I could not get to the little island puzzled me. I tried money

and I tried barter. I even, in a reckless moment, probably

knowing I would not succeed, offered Pitos, one of the younger

fishermen, the gold and onyx ring he coveted. My sister had

made it for me, the faithful copy of an intaglio belonging to the

House of Borgia, no less. Generally, Pitos could not pass the time

of day with me without mentioning the ring, adding something

in the nature of: "If ever you want a great service, any great

service, I will do it for that ring." I half believe he would have

stolen or murdered for it, certainly shared the bed with me. But

he would not, apparently, even for the Borgia ring, take me to the

little island.

"You think too much of foolish things," he said to me. "For a

big writer, that is not good."

I ignored the humorous aspect of "big," equally inappropriate

in the sense of height, girth, or fame. Pitos's English was fine,

and when he slipped into mild inaccuracies, it was likely to be a

decoy.

"You're wrong, Pitos. That island has a story in it somewhere.

I'd take a bet on it."

"No fish today," said Pitos. "Why you think that is?"

I refrained from inventively telling him I had seen giant

swordfish leaping from the shallows by the smaller island.

I found I was prowling Daphaeu, but only on the one side, the

side where I would get a view—or views—of her sister. I would

climb down into the welter of coves and smashed emerald water

to look across at her. I would climb up and stand, leaning on the

sunblasted walls of a crumbling church, and look at the small

island. At night, crouched over a bottle of wine, a scatter of

manuscript, moths falling like rain in the oil lamp, my stare

stayed fixed on the small island, which, as the moon came up,

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Tanith Lee - The Gorgon

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