Rhodendron

Once upon a time on a worn living room rug that is now collecting dust in my grandmother’s home in a land far, far away, my mother told me a most disturbing story. She pulled my small self into her lap and toyed with my hair, fingers threading through the thick strands, gently breaking up knots and snarls. My face rested against her shoulder, the scent of detergent rising from her t-shirt. As I rested there in her embrace my mother spun me a glorious tale of gods and goddesses, beauties and beasts, the miseries and joys of ancient Greece.

The story began with an ancestor on my mother’s side, a young woman named Ivy. She was chaste and still untouched despite her recent marriage to her husband. Supposedly the reasoning behind the lack of consummating was that Ivy’s husband was to leave soon for the war, and he wanted to save their first touches as man and wife until he came back from battle and had proved himself a worthy man. Mother went on to say that way on high in the world of the Gods, Hera was once again upset with Zeus and his adulterous ways. Being the wicked Goddess that she was, Hera decided to give her husband a taste of his own bitter medicine and find a man that would for once be faithful to her.

So it was that Hera set off to find the most loyal man in the entirety of Greece. She came upon the man in his journeys, and was at once infuriated to find that he was already married. Knowing that it would be foolish to attempt to sway the most loyal of men away from his beloved, she instead cast a curse upon him in her rage. His wife was never to bear children – her womb would be barren for the rest of her life. Hera then took her leave, satisfied that she had at least made someone else’s day miserable, even if it wasn’t her husband’s.
Ivy’s euphoria at seeing her husband home from battle was quickly dashed when he told her of his encounter with the angry Goddess. She immediately took herself to the temple of Artemis, who she had always worshiped faithfully. Ivy wept and explained her plight to the Goddess, who after assessing the situation bent her head in thought. Ivy had always been faithful, and was a strong, healthy and chaste woman. After much internal debate, Artemis told Ivy that she would find a way to help her, considering it a reward for the fact that Ivy had guarded her virginity well and was a devoted woman. Ivy swore that she would agree to whatever solution Artemis found for her.

Knowing that she would be unable to counteract Hera’s work on her own, Artemis sought the aid of Dionysus and Pan, who both found suitable amusement in the meddling. Dionysus and Pan went with Artemis to observe Ivy in secret while she knelt in Artemis’s temple in prayer. Pan immediately took a liking to the woman for his own reasons, and attempted to strike a bargain with Artemis. If Pan could have Ivy’s virginity, he would restore her ability to have children. Dionysus thought that was a lovely compromise and seconded the motion. Artemis was reluctant, but Pan would hear no other options. Artemis called out to Ivy and explained the situation to her in a voice loud enough for the mortal woman to hear. Unfortunately, Hera heard it as well, having decided to see just who the loyal man’s unfortunate wife was and gloat over her suffering. As soon as Ivy agreed to the conditions set down by Pan and Artemis, Hera let them all know that she had set yet another curse on Ivy, and this time all of Ivy’s descendants. Every female child born of Ivy’s line would have to first mate with a beast before she could bear children to any human man. Satisfied once more with her work, Hera left.

Artemis, Dionysus and Pan gazed upon the distraught Ivy, who, unable to tell her husband of what had occurred in the temple, slowly and surely went mad under the weight of her dishonesty and grief. Pan took his end of the bargain from Ivy, who went on to have a large and healthy family with her husband. Surely enough every one of her daughters could not bear children to their husbands. In their dreams they were terrorized by lustful and hideous fauns and centaurs, and slowly one by one they all fell to what they considered their own private madness. One daughter finally broke to the advances of her faun, and many months later she discovered herself pregnant by her husband. She found the courage to impart this knowledge to her sisters. Upon confronting their mother, Ivy told them of the happenings so many years ago in the temple. She explained the compromise between Pan and Artemis, and Hera’s final curse. That closely guarded family secret passed from generation to generation until it was believed that one daughter gave birth to only sons and Hera’s curse died with their generation.

Here my mother gazed at me sadly, brushed my hair back from my face and pressed her lips to my forehead. “Darling Rho,” she crooned in a voice that made my small heart tremble with worry. “What I want you to learn from this fable is that sometimes very sad things happen, but the results are not always as terrible as you think them to be. You should never be afraid of your dreams.”

That was the first night that I dreamed of him, that night so long ago when I was seven years old and twisted in bed sheets that smelled like my grandmother.

My eyes fluttered open for the first time to a world of damp green. My body was resting heavily on a bed of springy moss, dirt and grass smeared across my skin, staining it. Motes of dust floated about, tickling my nose. I pushed myself up to my knees, head tilting back to try and drink everything in. Sunshine filtered lazily through the canopy of dark green, dancing on the ground in a series of slow, lethargic steps. The place smelled of rain and flowers, a deeply clean and invigorating scent that sent a tiny shudder of joy down my spine. Whatever it was that I felt, it certainly wasn’t fear. I pushed myself to my feet and lurched into a walk, palms dragging across tree trunks, my bare soles sinking into the dirt.

My dream-self came upon a clearing with a cave set into the very back. The cave itself seemed to have just been punched into the surface of the rock, and then as if in apology, gently smoothed into an appealing shape. Flowers bloomed in large, colorful clumps to either side, and vines crawled up the craggy surface of the rock. My nose quivered. Something here smelled different. It was no longer just the clean scent of dirt, grass, flowers and sun. There was a kind of light musk that wound through the air, an almost discernable color in the wind the way that it stuck out so starkly from its surroundings. So much braver in my dreams that I ever was when awake, my dream-self wandered curiously towards the small furry lump that leaned against the left side of the cave entrance.

The lump shifted with my approach, rolled, stretched, looked at me with slightly annoyed eyes. Its hands reached out and grabbed the collar of my pajama shirt, fingers snarling in the thin cotton. It dragged my face down to its level, before a tiny smirk tugged at its lips and it pushed me backwards. As I thumped on my bottom and emitted a startled yelp, the thing stood up and gazed down at me, hands on its furry hips. He looked like a little goat boy, with the stomach, chest, arms and face of a boy, and the legs and feet of a goat. He even had a little tail. Nestled in his mop of hair were the very beginnings of two tiny horns. I giggled despite myself, regretting it when he immediately looked miffed. “You’re a horrible little girl,” he announced even as his tail gave a happy flick. I pushed myself up from the ground for a second time, delighting in the fact that I was taller than he was. “And you’re a smelly little boy.” The retort left my mouth before I had even thought about it, and horrified hands slapped themselves over the lower half of my face. What if he got mad? Instead, a genuine smile spread across his chubby little face, and his laughter shook his entire body. He stamped his miniature hooves and guffawed, reaching out and grabbing my hand. “Rhodendron,” he cried, “we’re going to be the very best of friends!”

I never questioned how he already knew my name. We spent what felt like hours lying in that meadow beside one another, trading questions and stories. I learned that his name was Mikhail, and that he was called a faun. He seemed to already know everything about me, and I found myself divulging my deepest seven-year-old secrets to him in an attempt to shock him with something he didn’t already know. He was never surprised, until I took it upon myself to tell him the story that my mother had shared with me earlier that day.
Mikhail grew very, very quiet and just gazed at me with a mix of irritation and sadness. “One day you’ll understand all the hidden meanings in that story, Rho,” he muttered, rolling onto his side to face away from me. “You’ll learn everything and then you won’t want to talk to me anymore.” I gave him a funny look. “But this is just a dream – I’m never going to see you again, anyway.” That one flippant comment earned me the angriest look I had ever received from anyone who was not my mother. Years later I’d be able to recognize the pain in it as well, but at seven years old all I could tell was that Mikhail was mad at me.

“You’ll see me every night in your dreams!” Mikhail cried, rocketing to a standing position and stomping a hoof, pointing an accusatory finger at me. “You won’t be able to get rid of me, ever! You’re stuck with me until we’re both old enough and smart enough to figure out how to get me out of this realm and into yours!”

I blinked at him owlishly, stunned at his impassioned declaration. “Why would you ever want to leave here…?” Mikhail stared at me, huffing, his little chest rising and falling in an aggravated manner. Suddenly he cocked his head to the side, one little goat-like ear twitching in response to a noise I couldn’t hear. “Your mother is calling for you. It’s time for you to wake up, Rho.”

Surely enough when I woke I was once again twisted in the sheets of the bed I shared with my mother for the duration of our stay at my grandmother’s house. I pressed my nose into the faded pink and inhaled the dusty scent, then rolled over and hugged my mother tight. I wanted to make sure that I was really awake that time. She cradled me, buried her face in my hair, and after a few moments I could feel the wet of her tears. Unable to figure out why she would be so sad upon first waking up in the morning, I allowed myself to think instead of why I was so well-rested. Maybe all that business with the little goat boy was really just a very, very complicated and weird dream brought on by the strangeness of my mother’s tale, and my brain had overreacted to it in a typical fashion. When my mother eventually withdrew, she wiped her face with the back of her hand and smiled at me sadly. She murmured something quietly to herself before leaving the bed to get ready for the day. Drawing the blankets off of myself to follow her, I looked down and noticed the grass stains on my ankles, and the dirt beneath my toenails. Horror gripped me, and for the longest time I just sat there staring at my feet.

Years later I sit in my own bed in my own home, staring at feet that have grown larger, but have the same traces of dirt. I wet my lips with my tongue, shaking my head to pull myself out of my day-dreaming. Visiting Mikhail always makes me think of the first time I met him, and the sensation of having a full night’s sleep still unsettles me when I ‘awaken’ in the morning from my visits. Twelve years of these dreams have done nothing to dull their intensity, and Mikhail’s prediction ultimately came true. We are the very best of friends. Really, he’s one of my only friends. That’s not particularly his fault, though. I heave myself off of my bed and lurch out of my door and into the hallway, stumbling into the bathroom, still wrapped in my haze of sleep. As I turn on the shower to begin my morning, my mind continually turns over the question that Mikhail asked me before I left him. It was cryptic, which is really pretty normal for him, but even after manner years of his riddling speech I still don’t grasp all the intricacies of it. I guess I’m just stupid. As steam begins to billow from behind the shower curtain I shake my head, pulling my hair out of its confining ponytail. His voice continues to bounce around in my head even as the hot water beats at my back.

“Have you asked your mother who I am to you, yet?”