Short Stories: Poems
The Island Enchantress
Far to the South of the lands of the first enchanters, on a forest-shrouded island in the Adriatic sea, lived the sorceress Circe. Her companions were tame bears and wolves and swine that had once been sailors. Ever malignant, she had lured them ashore by the magic of her singing and transformed them with spells.
Sailors were not her only victims. Another was a charming nymph named Scylla, whose habit it was to bathe at the edge of the island. She attracted the sorceress's attention because of her shepherd lover, whom Circe found desirable.
Circe, therefore, walked alone one night among tall pines to the place where Scylla bathed in the mornings. She poised herself on a rock and raised high a crystal bowl she bore. Into the sea she poured a liquid, green as emerald. She watched a moment while the spell-strengthened bubbles danced away and dissolved. Then, well satisfied, she disappeared.
At dawn, the sweet-voiced nymph came singing to the shore. She stepped into the water, admiring the pearly tones it gave her ankles. The colors deepened to green as Scylla stepped farther in, and the tide pulled at her. Then, to her horror, she saw in the swirling water a green and writhing mass, which crept slowly up her thighs and drew her down.
Under the waves, Scylla changed. When her head reappeared, it was hideous, split and fanged and slavering. The voice that came from it was a bestial howl. Thus transformed, Scylla became a terror to sailors of that sea. As for Circe, she lived long on her pine-covered island, although whether she enjoyed the favors of Scylla's shepherd no one knows, for the tale does not tell what became of him.
In ways both physical and behavioral, the hare was a natural ally of witches:
Hares are
swift and agile, able to stand on their hind legs like a person, prone
to gathering in parliament-like groups, orgiastically mad in the spring,
wantonly destructive of crops and possessed of a most un-beastlike cry. Some
witches traveled in the shape of hares; others had hare familiars - demonic
servants in disguise.
Given the association of hares with witchcraft and magic, it is not surprising that superstition surrounded them. It was said, for example, that the sight of a hare running down a village street presaged fire and that the appearance of a white hare in a mine would be followed by a fatal accident. A hare who crossed a person's path would bring bad luck. And the very word "hare" could not be mentioned at sea, so great was the fear of the animal's power. Curiously enough, possession of a hare's-foot brought luck. This belief arose not from the hare's traffic with witches but from much more ancient associations: The hare is notably prolific creature, and its foot was long a sexual symbol.
