Wonder Stories by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey (good books to read for young adults .txt) 📖

to destroy mortals with their sharp teeth. Wait until twilight, when you will find their woolly gold sticking to the bushes and the trunks of the trees."

The compassion of the river god helped Psyche to do as Venus had commanded her and she returned to the temple in the evening with her arms full of golden fleece.

Still Venus was not satisfied.

"I have a third task for you," she told the weary Psyche. "Take this box to the realm of Pluto and give it to Proserpine saying to her, 'My mistress, Venus, desires you to send her a little of your beauty, for in tending her son whom Psyche burned she has lost some of her own.' And make all possible haste, for I must use it before I appear next in the circle of the gods on Mount Olympus."

Psyche felt that now her destruction was surely at hand. It was a dangerous road that led to the dark, underground kingdom of Pluto and there were deadly dangers on the way. But Psyche was finding a new courage with each of the difficulties that she had to encounter, and she set out with the box. She passed safely by Cerberus, Pluto's three headed watch dog. She prevailed upon Charon, the ferryman, to take her across the black river and wait for her while she begged Proserpine to fill the box. Then she started back to the light again.

All would have gone well with Psyche if she had not grown curious. That was why her road to the dwelling place of the gods was so long and difficult. Psyche was always mixing up a little bit of earth with her good intentions. Having come so far successfully with her dangerous task, she wanted to open the box.

"I would take only the least bit of this beauty from Venus," Psyche thought, "to make myself more fair for Cupid if I ever behold him again."

So she carefully opened the box, but there was nothing in it of beauty at all. It was a potion that caused Psyche to fall beside the road in a sleep which seemed to have no waking. She did not stir, or breathe, or remember.

It was there that love, in the form of Cupid found Psyche. He was healed of his wound, and he could not bear her absence any longer. He flew through a crack in the window of the palace of Venus and made his way to earth and straight to the spot where Psyche lay. He gathered the deadly sleep from her body and put it fast inside the box again. Then he touched her lightly with one of his arrows and she woke.

"Again you have almost perished because of your curiosity," he said as Psyche reached up her arms to him "but perform exactly this task which my mother asked of you and I will attend to the rest."

Then Cupid, as swift as a bird flies, returned to Mount Olympus and pleaded with Jupiter for a welcome for Psyche. Jupiter consented at last to have this daughter of earth admitted to the family of the gods and Mercury was sent to bring her and offer her the cup of ambrosial nectar that would make her one of the immortals.

It is said that at the moment when Psyche completed her tasks and took her departure for Mount Olympus a winged creature, the butterfly, that had never been seen before on earth, arose from a garden and flew on golden wings up toward the sun. So it was thought that the story of Psyche was the story of the butterfly who bursts its gray house of the cocoon and rises, with a new beauty and the power of wings, toward the sky. And the Greeks had still another name for Psyche whom neither her troubles or the sleep of Pluto could keep from the abode of the gods when Love pleaded for her. They spoke of her as the Soul.

HOW MELAMPOS FED THE SERPENT.

There was a hollow oak tree in front of the house of Melampos in Greece and inside it was a nest of serpents.

Melampos was a farmer, skilful in raising fruits and grains and full of love for everything that lived out of doors. He would not so much as crush an ant hurrying home to its hill with a grain of sand, and although he did not particularly like snakes he saw no harm in these that had made themselves a home in a tree that no one wanted.

"They will do us no hurt unless we disturb them," Melampos told his servants. "Let them alone and perhaps, when the weather is warmer, they will take their way off to the neighboring marsh."

But Melampos' servants were not so sure as he of the harmlessness of the serpents.

"Our master is growing old and child like," they said to each other. "The next time he drives to the city with a load of grain we will get rid of the nest of vipers."

So that was what they did. In Melampos' absence they fired the nest of the serpents with a torch and burned it up completely, as they thought. But when Melampos returned that afternoon and sat down under his arbor to rest and eat his supper of bread and grapes, he saw a pair of bright black eyes peering up at him from the grass. Then he spied a round green head raised above a long green body. It was one of the young serpents that had not been hurt when the nest was burned and had come to the master of the place for protection.

Melampos looked cautiously around to see that no one was watching him.

"If any of the servants see me, they will think me out of my senses," he said to himself, "but I am sorry for this little creature and would befriend it." Then, seeing that he was quite unobserved, Melampos broke off a piece of his bread and threw the crumbs to the young serpent. It devoured them to the last one and then glided off so silently that it left no trail except a long line of gently moving grasses.

The next day the serpent came and the next, always hungry and always lifting its little head and looking at Melampos in its odd, bright way. One day as Melampos broke his bread as usual to share it with the serpent, he heard a voice speaking to him.

"The gods have been watching your kindness, Melampos," it said, "and have rewarded you in the way you will like best. They have given you the power of understanding the tongues of the wild."

Melampos looked all about him, but there was not another mortal within sight. Then his eyes caught those of the serpent and he suddenly realized that it had been its voice which he had heard. That was the beginning of strange experiences for Melampos upon whom the gods had conferred so wonderful a gift.

The serpent never returned after that day, but that very same evening a tree toad spoke to Melampos.

"Water your olive trees well around the roots, Melampos," it said, "for there is a season of drought approaching."

That was an excellent warning, because the farmer had a grove of young trees that needed very tender care. Melampos sprayed the trees and soaked the roots and felt very thankful to the tree toad for its advice.

After a few days of dry weather Melampos was on his way to the city when a grasshopper spoke to him from the side of the road.

"Turn back, Melampos, and gather your sheaves of wheat into your storehouse," the grasshopper said, "for Jupiter is about to send a thunderbolt down to the earth."

That was exactly what happened. Melampos had just time to reach his grain field and order his men to put the ripe sheaves safely under cover when the sky grew black and the thunder rolled along the mountain tops. A high wind blew and the rain was heavy, but Melampos had saved his harvest.

All outdoors talked to Melampos after that, and it was very pleasant indeed, for he had no boys and girls of his own to keep him company. If he sat down to rest on a bank of moss in the forest, he was at once surrounded by friends. A little wild bee would light on a branch in front of him and tell him where he might find its sweet comb dripping with honey nearby. A butterfly would poise on his rough, soil stained hand and tell him where he would be able to see a bed of yellow daffodils beside a brook. Or a bird in a nearby bush would sing to him of the gay doings of Pan and the dryads and tell him the road to take to their haunts farther and deeper in the woods.

Melampos had never had such a good time in his life. He was an excellent husbandman and managed to make his farm pay well every year, but he cared very much more for this friendship of outdoors than he did for the hoards of food each harvest gave him. And, more and more, he came to stay in the woods and fields, holding conversation with the insects and the wild animals.

One harvest season Melampos was returning from the market with a large purse of gold pieces that had just been paid him for the sale of his summer wheat. He was taking his way through a deserted path of the forest where he hoped he might hear the echo, at least, of the merry pipes of Pan. He had not a thought or care in the world when, in an instant, he was laid low on the ground from a blow on his head, his gold was snatched away from him, and he was bound so tightly that he could not move. Melampos had been set upon by a band of robbers who threw him over the back of a horse and made off with him into the recesses of the forest.

It was not that peaceful, sylvan grove of the forest that Pan and his friends inhabited, but a dark, gloomy part where it was so still that even the sound of a twig falling to the ground seemed as loud as the splintering of an arrow, and no one ever passed by. The robbers put Melampos in an underground passage of a prison-like fortress which they had built for themselves. From beam to floor the fortress was built all of oak planks so old and thick and so completely covered with ivy on the outside that it looked like part of the forest itself.

Melampos had only a slit in the wall for a window, and he never saw his captors save when they tossed him some dried crusts once a day. He could hear them, though, counting their stolen coin and rattling it about. Then he heard the sound of clinking armor and the occasional clashing of swords.

"They are planning to kill me," he thought.

He looked longingly at the narrow chink in his prison wall, hardly large enough to let a sunbeam through.

"If I could but beckon to a wood pigeon and tell it my plight, I should be able to send a message to my friends by it," he sighed, "or I could ask the woodpecker who can bore through wood to try and widen my window so that I might escape."

Just then Melampos heard a rustling sound in the heavy beam of the ceiling of the room where he was imprisoned and then a small voice spoke to him.

"We could teach you better than any other creatures how to escape," it said. "For years this forest has belonged to us,