Rewilding Paris
Part VI of Confessions of a Romantic Animist
A continuation of my series of Paris pieces for Confessions of a Romantic Animist.
The mountain stream knows his body as well as a lover. At least he would assume the silken slip and delighted caress of the current tracing the sinews of his long legs and muscled arms might be like the physical fluency between lovers.
Paris sighs. Not that he really knows. Although all Paris thinks of is love, the closest he has come to it is in his dreams.
Dreams of a woman with golden-red skin and chestnut hair waving down her back almost to her feet, supple and polished as if she had been fashioned from hammered bronze. He can see her lips always hovering on the edge of an unspoken word, the lower fuller than the top giving her an exaggerated pout. Her wide eyes are the frosted blue of juniper berries. And with the dream always comes a scent. Peonies. Like those that flower in early spring around the lower girth of Mount Ida.
“Where are you?” he whispers now, unable to hear his own voice over the babble of the stream, the papery rustle of leaves played by a late day breeze.
Above Paris the sun has sunk below the tree line; the blue-sky purples as if below its pellucid skin starry capillaries are flooding with wine.
It was a long day taking the cows out to the furthest pasture, helping to process the first summer grain harvest with the local boys, and then helping his father Agelaus repair a crumbling boundary wall. The stream kneads the sore muscles of his shoulders as he relaxes back in the shallows, fitting himself between two large, submerged stones.
His eyes flutter shut, and he sees another pair of eyes blinking at him, glossy and dark. He feels fur against his cheek, remembers the soft nuzzle of some giant being, the soil-dark warm of her body sheltering him.
Mother, Paris thinks. Although Agelaus says his mother died in childbirth, Paris has memories of being suckled and held, protected and nourished - but not by a human woman. No, he remembers her on all fours, furred and glossy-obsidian, scent like a lightning-strike, wet nose pressed to his forehead.
He remembers her as an animal.
“Look there! Him!” a bright, high voice dances across the water like a skipped stone. Paris sits up abruptly, shaking out his wet hair, peering around for its source.
“He’s quite pretty, isn’t he?”
The voice, lower than the first, belongs to a tall blonde girl wearing a simple linen sheath that hangs from her muscular shoulders like a sail from a mast. She is standing downstream, ankle-deep in the water, flanked by two other girls – one buxom and red-headed, a smirk across her heart-shaped face, the other slender and dark-skinned with eyes as shrewd and green as the first narcissus leaves slipping from snowmelt in early spring.
They are too beautiful, too obviously refined, to be village girls. Paris has never seen them before. The green-eyed beauty is wearing gold cuffs up her arms. The redhead wears a long strand of pink pearls over her sheath.
They are wealthy and confident. Daughters of Troy, he thinks. They must be wandering outside the city to celebrate the spring beauty.
He rises, suddenly embarrassed that all he is wearing is his loincloth, running a hand through his disordered curls. “Forgive me, I did not mean to interrupt your bathing.”
“And he’s polite, too.” The blonde woman smiles, sapphire blue eyes glinting with approval. “Are you the son of Agelaus?”
“Yes….” Paris is confused. How do they know his father. “Did he send you? Does he need me?”
“Come here…” The redhead crooks a finger, giggling. “Let us get a better look at you.”
As if he had been hooked like a fish, Paris feels himself walking forward, the stream’s current pushing against his calves. He reaches them quickly. The blonde woman walks to his side, and he surprised to find her taller than him. He’s the tallest boy for miles, easily a head taller than his own father, so it’s strange to find this beautiful woman forces him to look up.
“Come share our picnic? We walked through your father’s pasture, and he was kind enough to point us toward this stream to bathe.”
Spread out on the opposite shore are baskets and long bolt of red cloth. He follows the girls across the water and sits with them, watching as they pull out a wineskin, apricots, a jar of honey, honeycomb, grapes, and a loaf of dark-brown bread speckled with seeds. They have brought wooden cups they fill with the yellow wine and soon they are all drunk with laughter and honey and the small moments of contact where they brush limbs, passing along the small lump of hard cheese and a silver knife, reaching for the wineskin that never seems to empty. Paris lets the redhead feed him a piece of bread dripping honey, entranced by her long golden eyelashes and soft, creamy arms. He’s so entranced he doesn’t seem to notice that dusk stretches and stretches, and the shadows have paused.
The dark-skinned girl produces a peacock feather from one of the baskets and begins to tease Paris, tracing his face with it, tickling his nose until he sneezes, giggling when he attempts to pluck it from her grasp.
“Tell us Paris. Which of us is the most beautiful?” the blonde girl asks suddenly, her voice throaty and sleepy. She’s pressing her cup to her lips, her blue eyes hooded as she gazes at Paris.
Paris is young. But he is not stupid. He looks between the girls and knows that there is no choosing. It would be like comparing the fluted-elegance of lilies to the foaming reds of the many-petaled roses. The blonde is statuesque and elegant. The dark-skinned, green-eyed woman is sleek and sensual as a river given female form. The redhead reminds him of the peonies he so loves….indulgent, petal after profligate petal.
“I’ll not answer that. I’d prefer to keep my head…” he laughs, pointing at the long knife the riverine girl is using to slice up an apple. She flicks it at him playfully.
The girls exchange knowing glances.
“Alright…” the blonde leans back on her arms, chin tucked into her neck. “Let’s think of another game then.”
“Are you sure?” the redhead purrs, accepting a slice of apple. “Do we really need more games when we have such delightful company?”
“Yes.” The dark-skinned girl sits up straight, using one hand to arrange the crescent apple slices into a circle. Then, slowly, she picks up one and offers it to Paris. “Paris, I will offer you the chance to rule the world. To be a king of all lands.”
He frowns, confused by this statement.
The blonde plucks up another apple slice and holds it out on her palm. “A king is a symbol. Wouldn’t you rather be the most powerful and skilled warrior? A true hero remembered for generations? You would win every battle and strike fear into the hearts of all your enemies.”
Unlike her friends, the redhead is not smiling. She looks faintly concerned. She studies Paris hard, red lips pressed together in a line. After a long pause, she finally reaches and picks up an apple slice, pinching it between her fingers and holding it up against the periwinkle sky.
“Paris. I offer you the heart and love of the most beautiful woman in the world.”
He sees her suddenly. The dream girl. Her smiling eyes and curious mouth.
He doesn’t think. He reaches out and grabs the redhead’s apple slice.
“Love. I choose love.”
Francios Xavier Fabre
~~
It is many years later, an ocean away, that Paris remembers this moment as he descends from the ship into the busy port of Gytheio.
He never saw the girls again. And he never found the dream-girl. But so much has happened since then. Revelations of his noble birth, claimed by King Priam as a prince of Troy.
Is it terrible that he misses those simple days in the fields, those long crepuscular swims in the mountain streams, drunk on pollen and sunlight?
He is following the envoy sent by Menelaus through the crush of bodies when he hears a bell-like laugh and glances over his shoulder and comes to a surprised stop.
There, years later and completely unaged, is the redheaded girl. Now she is dressed in deep red robes and her hair is caught up in a golden net atop her head.
“Paris!” she smiles and reaches into the folds of her robes, pulling out a golden-skinned apple. “Are you ready?”
Before he can respond she twirls away, disappearing between two merchants and their horses.
But later that night, arriving at the feast King Menelaus is hosting in his honor, Paris finally understands.
“Love. I choose love…” he murmurs as he watches the king’s wife enter the great hall.
Her chestnut curls wave around her face, her lips pout. But this time the word arrives, and he finally hears her voice: the whisper of a stream cutting through a mountain, a nightingale transcribing starlight with its song.
“It is an honor to meet a son of Troy….” She dips her head, the smell of peonies reaching down the table to where Paris is seated.
“Helen.” Menelaus speaks through a mouthful of meat, gesturing over his shoulder. “My wife.”
Not for long, Paris thinks, and he sends up a prayer to the redheaded girl with her golden apple. I choose her. I choose love.
This is the sixth installment in my ongoing series Confessions of a Romantic Animist.
I want to reclaim romance as a celebration that includes the entire earth. I want to throw another party. A love party. And I want to invite you along.
I’m going to take the same approach to love stories as I took to myths of the masculine in The Flowering Wand. I will reroot, rewild, and retell classical love stories within an ecological framework. I’m also going to write about my fascination with contemporary romance, animal courtship rituals, and fantasy. I have questions about how romance is a powerful tool in combatting and dismantling empire and I’m going to think and write through them in real time in conversation with you.
Most of the essays in this series will be offered for free. I want to think and love and dance with you. But alongside this series on courtship, ecology, fantasy, and eros, I’m also going to offer reading lists and excerpts for of my upcoming fantasy series: one inspired by Joan of Arc and the other a queer retelling of Tristan & Isolde for my paid subscribers as well as occasional personal essays on romance.
Oy! More, please!
sublime