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  Cupid

  A Tale of Love and Desire

  Julius Lester

  * * *

  Harcourt, Inc. • Orlando Austin New York San Diego Toronto London

  * * *

  Copyright © 2007 by Julius Lester

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any

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  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online

  at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,

  Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lester, Julius.

  Cupid: a tale of love and desire/Julius Lester,

  p. cm.

  Summary: A retelling of the classic tale in which Cupid, the god of love, falls in love with

  the beautiful mortal, Psyche.

  [1. Cupid (Roman deity)—Fiction. 2. Psyche (Greek deity)—Fiction. 3. Mythology,

  Classical—Fiction. 4. Love—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.L5629Cup 2007

  [Fic]—dc22 2006001946

  ISBN-13: 978-0-15-202056-9 ISBN-10: 0-15-202056-X

  Text set in Minion

  Designed by Lauren Rille

  First edition

  H G F E D C B A

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  For Milan,

  who daily shows me the beauty of love

  Introducing Psyche

  A long time ago, when Time was still winding its watch and Sun was trying to figure out which way was east and which was west, there was a king and queen. I don't know what country they were king and queen of. That information was not in the story when it came down to me. Sometimes, stories don't understand; what may not be important to them is very important to us.

  Now, I'm sure there are people who can tell this particular story without having a name for the kingdom this king and queen ruled. Jupiter bless them. I guess I'm not that good of a storyteller, because I need a name for the kingdom. I asked the story if it would mind my giving the place a name. It didn't see any harm in it, so I am going to call it the Kingdom-by-the-Great-Blue-Sea.

  The story also does not have names for the king and queen. I know they had names, but nobody would say to them, "What's up, Chuck?" or say, "Looky here, Liz," if those happened to be their names. I am in agreement with the story this time. If nobody could use their names, there is no need to have them in the story. As for what the king and queen called each other, they were probably like any other married couple and he called her "Honey" and "Sweetheart," and she called him "Good Lips" and things like that, which we don't need to pursue any further.

  The king and queen had three daughters. I know what you are thinking: the daughters didn't have names, either. That is partly true. Two of the girls were name-naked. I'm not even into the story yet and already we have four people that the Internal Revenue Service could not send a letter to.

  Well, the daughters need names. The story is content to call them the "elder sister" and the "younger sister." That is not good enough for me. The two sisters have to have names. I was thinking about having a contest to pick their names, but the story would probably get tired of waiting for all the votes to be counted, catch a bus, and go to somebody else to get told and that person would not tell the story the way it should be told, which is how I am going to tell it. So, I'll name them myself. I'll call one Thomasina, after a girl I had a lot of lust for in high school who wasn't lusting after me (bet she's sorry now), and I'll call the other one Calla. I have no idea if there is such a name, but it sounds like it belongs in the story.

  Thomasina and Calla were the two older girls and they were very beautiful. Both had long, pale yellow hair that came down to their waists. They would get up early every morning and sit in chairs on the balcony outside their room, and two serving girls would brush the morning sunlight into their hair. They would have been the most beautiful young women in the land if not for someone else—their younger sister.

  Her name was Psyche, which is pronounced sigh-key, and it means "soul." It also means "butterfly." Maybe that's what the soul is like—fragile, colorful, and beautiful like a butterfly, and maybe Psyche was so beautiful because people could see her soul in her face.

  I tried to write something that would give you an idea of how beautiful she was, but the letters of the alphabet got so confused and jumbled up trying to arrange themselves into words to describe someone for whom there were no words, they ended up crying in frustration. I hate trying to make words out of letters that have been crying and are so wet they can't stay on the page. Later on in the story, after the letters dry off, I'll try again to arrange them into enough words so you'll have some idea of what Psyche looked like. For now, you'll just have to believe me when I say she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

  The people of the kingdom said Psyche had to be a goddess because she was even more beautiful than Venus, the goddess of love, who until now had been the most beautiful woman in creation.

  The news of Psyche's beauty spread all over the world. Soon, people came to see Psyche from everywhere—Rome, Rumania; Lagos, Latvia; Moscow, Mississippi; Green Bay, Ghana; Paris, Poland; and Zurich, Zimbabwe.

  Every day around the time people's shadows snuck beneath their feet to get out of the sun, the tall wooden doors to the palace grounds swung open, and Psyche came out to take her daily walk. Men, women, children, and all the creatures stopped what they were doing to look at her. Birds flying by would see Psyche, stop flapping their wings, and fall to the ground. Ants would be toting crumbs which, to them, were as big as China. They could not see anything of Psyche except a sixteenth of an inch of her big toenail, but that was enough for them to be so overcome by her beauty that they dropped their crumbs and just stared.

  Psyche walked along the road that led from the palace to the outskirts of the largest village, which wasn't far, and then she walked back and the palace doors would close behind her. But, for the rest of the day, not much got done in the kingdom because everybody and every creature was thinking about Psyche. Cows didn't make milk; sheep didn't grow wool; hens forgot to lay eggs. The butcher didn't slaughter animals; the baker's bread and cakes burned in the oven; and the candlestick-maker was in too much of a daze to dip his wicks in tallow.

  Well, this was not good for the economy. The economy went into a recession, then a depression, and finally, went into a cul-de-sac, which is different from a paper sack and a gunnysack and a sad sack as well as a sack on the quarterback.

  The king had to do something or the economy was going to collapse. He thought the matter over and decided that if Psyche went for a walk only one afternoon each month, the economy would be all right.

  "I don't appreciate your deciding what I can do and when I can do it," Psyche told her father.

  "The economy is more important than your happiness," the king replied.

  That tells you right there what kind of king he was! Who in his right mind would make the economy more important than a person's well-being? But he was the king, and what he said was the way things had to be.

  He must have been asleep the day in kinging school when the teacher talked about the law of supply and demand. When the supply of something diminishes and the demand for it goes up, it is going to cost more. The king was about to pay a very high price, because the demand to see Psyche was about to destroy the kingdom.

  The birds and the insects carried word
of the king's decree to the farthest ends of the four directions, which happened to be ten thousand miles on the other side of next week. Everybody and everything went into a panic because nobody knew anymore what day or time Psyche would take her walk. There was only one way anybody could be sure of seeing her. People in other kingdoms started calling in sick to work. I know they didn't have telephones back in those days. When I say they called in sick, I mean they stuck their heads out the door of their houses and yelled, "I got the flu in my eyetooth and can't come to work!" Then they moved to the Kingdom-by-the-Great-Blue-Sea so they could be there whenever Psyche took her walk.

  Before long the kingdom was overrun with all kinds of people who did not speak the language, did not know the customs, and, furthermore, did not care. All they wanted was to see Psyche. So many people moved to the kingdom, a lot of stress was put on the infrastructure, which is another way of saying that there weren't enough bathrooms and toilet paper for everybody. The king solved that problem in a hurry, though exactly how is not in the story. But I can tell you this much: Shondie the shovel-maker and Tyrone the toilet-paper-maker became very wealthy men in a short period of time.

  But, even after the infrastructure got its infra restructured, the king and queen still had a problem. And that was Psyche.

  Psyche's Beauty

  Besides being so beautiful, Psyche was also very intelligent, unlike her sisters who thought about nothing except what clothes to put on. Psyche, however, thought about the important things, like Who am I? and What is the meaning of my life? Every morning when she looked in the mirror, she wondered: "What is beauty? What do others see that makes them think I am beautiful?"

  She would stare at her image in the mirror and try to see herself as others did. Unlike her sisters, Psyche's hair was dark and gleaming because each night before going to bed she stood on the balcony outside her room and brushed nightshine into her hair until it was radiant with blackness. Sun was as entranced by her beauty as were people, and when she came outside, if only to walk in the palace garden, he stroked her skin with his softest light until she was the color of sand.

  Looking at herself in the mirror, she wondered: "Does my beauty reside in my heart-shaped face, large eyes, and full lips? What makes one person a joy to look at while another is not, and still another's face leaves people's hearts neither gladdened nor repulsed?"

  Eventually, she would sigh and move away from the mirror, her questions unanswered. She did not understand what beauty was, but she knew this: being beautiful made her lonely. Noblemen came to the palace and courted Thomasina and Calla, and before long, both were married and moved away to nearby kingdoms.

  But no young men came for Psyche. When the king had banquets in the Great Hall of the palace, he would seat Psyche between single men of the best families, but in the presence of her beauty, the young men's tongues were as heavy as mountains. Yet, with the other young women present at those banquets, words flowed from those same tongues like melodies from the throats of birds in the spring.

  One day Psyche asked her parents, "What is it that makes me beautiful? And what is beauty?"

  They were not sure how to answer either the question or the look of concern on their daughter's face, nor the anguish in her voice.

  The king laughed nervously. "Those are questions for my philosopher. I'll send him to you tomorrow. He will tell you more about beauty than you want to know."

  "No, Father. I'm asking you and Mother."

  It was now the queen's turn to give a nervous laugh. "Don't concern yourself with questions that have no answers. Be glad you are not ugly."

  The king saw tears come into Psyche's eyes and realized that he and the queen were not taking Psyche seriously enough.

  "Is it that you want to know what others see when they look at you?" he asked quietly.

  Psyche nodded, grateful that perhaps he understood.

  The king thought for a long while, then said, "There was an orchid that used to grow in the mountains. It was very rare and its beauty was unlike that of any flower ever seen. My grandfather took me to the copse where it grew, because this orchid was found no other place in the world. I could not have been more than seven years old, yet I still remember it as if it were only this morning. A few months after he showed me the orchid, the gods sent terrible storms off the Great Blue Sea. The salt water from the sea blew far inland and destroyed many trees and plants. The following spring, my grandfather and I returned to the copse where the orchid grew. Alas, the storm had filled the ground with salt and the orchid could not grow. However, each spring I go back to that place and look for it. It is gone, but the memory of the orchid's beauty has stayed with me all these years. I cannot tell you what it was about the orchid that made it so beautiful. It may have been its colors, its shape. Or it may have been the combination of the two, which created something more than the two did separately. I can only tell you that seeing the orchid made me feel wonderful, made me feel that my life, even at age seven, was greater than everything I knew and everything I would know. The memory of that orchid continues to expand my life beyond the limitations of my body and my mind." He smiled. "So it is with your beauty, my darling girl. It is a gift to all those who have the privilege of seeing it. People look at you and they feel better."

  But Psyche was not so easily mollified. "I suppose it's nice that my beauty is a gift to others, but that does not answer my question. What is that beauty to me? That is what I want to know."

  "You are an ungrateful child!" her mother rebuked her. "Every female in the kingdom would do anything to have your beauty."

  "There are days I wish I could give it to them," Psyche responded sadly. "Let one of them live with this loneliness."

  And the king and queen and their youngest daughter lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.

  Venus

  All the gods and goddesses lived on Olympus, which was pretty much like Earth. It had mountains, valleys, streams, forests, but no deserts. The major difference was that Earth existed under the sky. Olympus was behind the sky. I'm not exactly sure where that is, but I know it's north of here but south of there.

  I would take you on a tour and show you all the different palaces where the gods and goddesses lived, but the story says we don't have time for that. One of the hard things about being a storyteller is that stories can be impatient. When it's their time to be told, they get real mean if they think you're taking too long with the telling. So we had better hurry to the outskirts of Olympus to the palace of Venus, the goddess of love.

  Venus lived away from the other deities because she didn't want them knowing all of her business. Even though she was married to Vulcan, the god of metalwork, she did not have much talent for monogamy. How could she? She was the goddess of love, and love was what she was faithful to. If her husband did not understand that, he should not have married her. Of course, I can hear you saying that if Venus knew that about herself, she should have stayed single. I would try and explain it to you, but the story just told me I was about to get off on a tangent, and it does not have time for that. I agree. The surest way to get a headache is trying to understand the doings of the gods and goddesses. So let's move on, because I don't need a headache.

  Venus's palace was made from the soft, rosy colors of sunset and the glowing ivory white of moonlight. It was large because it had to accommodate all the spirits that came there. The first floor was reserved for Venus and her son, Cupid. They lived in their own wings, at opposite ends of the palace. The second floor was set aside for the spirits of people whose hearts had been broken in love; the third floor was for the spirits of those who had not loved wisely. (My spirit was there more than once to recuperate from letting my eyes take my heart where it did not belong.) The fourth floor was the most crowded. It was for the spirits of the lonely.

  Venus did not have much to do except make regular visits to her temples on Earth. (A temple was like a church, except there was no organ or gospel choir.) People would bring her offerings
and she would listen to their love problems. How much and how closely Venus listened depended on what you brought her, and Venus did not like anything cheap. But caviar, champagne, or anything made of cashmere always got you her undivided attention.

  However, of late, Venus had not seen any caviar, champagne, or cashmere. People had stopped coming to her temples, and she did not know why. On this particular afternoon, the goddess was going to learn the reason.

  She was lying on a chaise lounge on the front porch of her palace, getting a massage. Every week Venus set aside six days to be pampered. She would get a massage from Oizys, the goddess of pain, then sit in the hot tub and drink champagne and eat strawberries. After that she would get her nails and hair done. Then her fashion stylist would bring in a rack of the latest gowns from Oscar de la Olympus, and Venus would try on each one. Being pampered was exhausting, so she would take a nap and wake up in time for dinner, which that evening was going to be steak Diane sauteed in ambrosia and grapes, with rice and peas smothered with nectar. On the seventh day of every week, Venus rested from being pampered and went to her temples to receive gifts and the adulation of the people. At least that was how it used to be.

  On this particular day, Venus had started to doze off beneath the skillful hands of Oizys, when the goddess of pain said, under her breath, "I wonder what's going on down there."

  Of all the deities, Oizys was the most ignored. There were no temples dedicated to her honor. There weren't even any stories about her like there were about Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, and Venus, among others. But because the deities avoided Oizys, except when they wanted a hard massage, she had plenty of time to see who was doing what to whom and why. She knew more about the doings on Olympus than any of them, including Mercury, who did nothing but carry messages and gossip all over everywhere. So when Oizys said, as if speaking to herself, "I wonder what's going on down there," she knew what was going on down there. She also knew the information would cause Venus great pain. But if it were not for pain, neither deities nor mortals would ever grow up.