A Rose-Red City

Author’s Note

Can Achilles truly be Alan Gillis? WE HAVE only his word that the Oracle said so. If it is true, then why does he only know a few words of English and how did he get to Arcady?

A friend of mine has assured me that she spoke fluent Arabic as a child, but lost the ability through disuse. As an adult she knows no Arabic at all, so it does seem that a language can be forgotten.

The geography problem is tougher. A straight line from Crete around 2000 BC to western North America around 2000 AD does not go anywhere near central Greece in the classical period— as may be easily seen by plotting the points on four-dimensional graph paper. However, the principle authorities on migrating unicorns all insist that they normally fly a great circle route, not a straight line. Thus a pit stop in Arcady could be possible, and we should not discard Killer’s statement on grounds of geography, either.

Personally, I would not argue with Killer if he claimed to be the three princesses of Serendip.

Father Julius was correct in stating that unicorns were a symbol of Christ in the early church. They were demoted from this position around the thirteenth century, but that would have been after his time.

It was my own idea to make Asterios a demon. To the Greeks he was the perfectly normal offspring of a woman and a bull, but he did live in the Labyrinth and he did eat human flesh. How he managed this with bovine teeth was never explained, but probably it was easier than digesting hay in a human stomach.

The— real-world— palace at Knossos, as it has been excavated, covered several acres and may have been as high as five stories. It must have been very impressive and vastly bigger than anything existing in Greece at that time. The legend of the Labyrinth and the Minotaur may possibly have started when some Greek tourist lost his way in the great edifice, turned a corner, and came face to face with a priest wearing a ceremonial bull mask. It must have scared, in Killer’s phrase, the everlasting piss out of him, because the myth has been around for at least four thousand years.

Asterios’ mother— the lady who liked bulls— was Pasiphae, the wife of King Minos. Ariadne, who helped Theseus kill the Minotaur, was a daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, and therefore Asterios’ half-sister. They were an odd family.

The land of eternal youth has had so many names that I was at a loss to know which to use. I finally coined yet another— Mera— as an abbreviation of chimera. In typical Meran fashion, the dictionaries I have consulted do not quite agree on chimera’s meanings, but it seems to have three.

1— In Greek mythology, a fire-breathing monster, part lion, part goat, and part snake. We always get back to Killer, don’t we?

2— A fanciful and unbelievable mixture of things. No comment, I’ll leave that one to the critics.

3— A mirage, and unattainable fancy. Pity! But Jerry said that Mera is always just out of sight. I, for one, intend to go on looking. See you here.

D.D.