TWENTY-EIGHT

Mother, daughters, and cousin all hurried through the bulrushes along the shore, only to stop at the sight of Phaeton’s grave, the nymph-carved lettering visible in the limestone surface.

“This can’t be true!” protested Cycnus.

“What have they done with brave Phaeton?” asked Lampetia, bewildered.

Phaethusa, with her steady gaze, began an ancient, heartfelt song, a hymn of mourning.

“Any song but that,” beseeched Cycnus, the youthful cousin certain that he would some day see Phaeton alive once more.

Clymene joined in, the words quieting the river, and stirring the naiads to rise from the water’s depths.

One hour, three,

our starlight on the tide,

too brief.

Lampetia was too sorrow-struck to sing this time-honored song.

She raised her arms to heaven. As she shook her fists in sorrow and anger, her hands trembled in the sunlight. Her fingers started into leaves and her arms snaked into branches.

“Mother, help me!” gasped Clymene’s youngest daughter.

Her feet speared twin roots down into the soil.

Phaethusa, too, sang with such grief that her voice was enclosed by the sinuous branches of a tree, her hair twisting – belly womb, and heart all turned to wood as her song ebbed.

Clymene ran from one daughter to another, embracing them, their pulses dimming into solid pith.

Divine Phoebus Apollo loved poetry and song, and delighted in cunning tales of love and victory. Perhaps this power, and his musical voice, had won Clymene’s heart, all those years ago.

Now Clymene was finished with poetry and music, but she would love her son forever, in silence.

By the grave of Phaeton a third tree stretched its branches, Clymene’s leaves shining in the sun.

Cycnus wandered the shore, his grief so fierce that he, too, could not make a sound. Some say his sorrow moved the naiads to raise a prayer to the immortals to alter his shape. Some say that Cycnus’s mourning alone wrought the profound change from youth to waterfowl.

Gliding in his own reflection, at last a cygnet was all that remained of Phaeton’s cousin, graceful and long-necked, the male swan brilliant white in the afternoon sun. To this day the swan glides in quiet waters, remembering a cousin who had climbed far.