Of the five of them, Sisyphus took the buddy-system least seriously. A giant and a bodybuilder in a luxury garden didn’t need much looking after. He got shooed away from the fruit bowl by a finicky oil painter. The little groves in the back were just a few trees thick, just enough for the forest-rave look, though there was only one drummer on duty with a few guys standing around waiting for girls to show up. Story of my life, he thought. That’s what made it nice traveling in a group.
Then the vineyard caught his eye.
As he came up to the edge of it, it revealed a shallow valley, an amphitheater that could’ve sat 100 people. Fanned out from the stage were long trellises, not built but grown from the ground, smooth without so much as a straight line or an angle. Nearly every seat was in reach of the vines strung between the trees like power lines. Hanging tantalizingly low were full bunches of grapes as pristine as beach glass, like ornaments that looked too good to eat, but too good not to try.
Sisyphus couldn’t help but brush his fingers along a vine as he came down the steps. It seemed to hum with a life of its own. His eyes followed them to center stage, where a harp had been grown, buds of fresh leaves bursting along its length. A druid in a gossamer pink-and-white gown waved her fingertips along its chords, as whimsical as one moves their hands in the water to feel their weightlessness. From the way she crinkled her eyes shut, she seemed as stirred by it as he was. Dozens of the well-to-do had taken seats in the carpet-thick grass, and some in chairs rooted to their spots. But all the cushy ballroom-style seats were taken. The harp already felt like ripples in a pond teasing up against his chest. The hum from the vines went right down to the roots, tingling at his toes like the gentlest static shock. Even his sigh was buzzing.
A few rows ahead and to the side, a balding man with a combover called over to him:
“Hey, new guy! Lemme know when you recognize the song.”
Sis looked over. The man had swaddled himself in a squishy robe so long that he looked as big as Argos from the waist down. Then his beard sat up without him, revealing the tumbling auburn curls of the woman huddled over him, her neck and blinking eyelashes slowly drifting back from some dream state.
“Iiii got nothin,” Sis readily admitted. “What’s she playin’?”
The man would’ve bolted upright all the way if not for the partner weighing him down. He was struck with melodramatic shock. “Oh m– it’s from Oedipus Rox.”
“Oedipus Rex? The play got a theme song?”
The man feigned bewilderment again. “--from Oedipus Rox. The Musical! Where’ve you been the last few years, under a rock?”
Sisyphus lurched halfway out of his seat. “They made it a musical? What kinda maniac would fight for the rights to–”
“Theeese kinds of maniacs!” the woman interjected, her head rolling back deliriously.
Sis tried to change course from revulsion to admiration. Hey, a star is a star, even if they’re a star of…this. “You? You guys are playwrights! A-ha-haaa, that is awesome! You guys have one of the coolest jobs.”
“Mmmmmhm,” the couple said in unison, leaning back into each other. The woman took over. “It must not’ve come to your town yet. This song’s an acoustic cover of ‘Robbin’ the Cradle.’ It’s what his wife-slash-mother sings about being married to her son.”
“And we’ve gone big!” the man added. “I’ve heard covers of our songs at weddings, family reunions… weddings that turned out to be family reunions!”
Yep, Sisyphus realized, behind an increasingly sheepish grin. They stuck close to the source material.
“The incest community is going wild about it,” the woman raved, pushing halfway back off of him just so she could talk with her hands. “I mean there’s lots of minority groups we could’ve written about, but …this one just felt close to home for us!”
That’s when Sisyphus noticed the age gap. This woman may’ve been caked in makeup, but she looked old enough to be this guy’s… mother.
“We’re having a special,” the man added scandalously, as if more scandal might spice it up. “Make out with a parent and get in free!”
“That’s for adults only,” she hurried to add, making the situation maybe ten percent better. “Incest? Okay! Paedophilia? Not okay!”
“Honeyyy, we don’t know what he’s into,” the man murmured to her, as if trying very late-in-the-game not to offend their new friend.
If Sis wore a collar, or even a shirt (other than his usual open-chested cape), he’d be pulling it open for air. They seemed too into it to just drop it, so he rushed to redirect the subject a bit.
“Sooo, uh, how’d you get the rights to it? I mean, isn’t King Oedipus still living? Has he seen it?”
“Boy, he hasn’t seen anything in years!” she cackled, pretending to gouge out her eyes. Yeahhhh, she went there.
“It was a bit daring of us, releasing it before his death, yes,” the man explained. “But we’re close enough to Dionysus to get legal immunity for it. You could get away with murder with this guy, as long as you’re not killing one of his!” Sisyphus couldn’t tell if that was exaggerated.
“I’d like to be on this guy’s Nice List,” Sisyphus remarked. Not that he wanted to murder anyone particular. But not getting murdered was a nice touch. But what he really wanted to pitch… was a musical about himself:
“So the copyright - what would you think about a musical on the life of… a real edgy character? Got the mind of a rogue on the bod of a barbarian? I’m talkin’ a guy who goes toe-to-toe with the gods. The kind of trickster that the bad boys think of themselves like when they’re talking about dropping out of school, ya feel me?”
The couple’s mouths had shrunk to a tenth their size. He spoke first: “Weeee don’t wanna touch anything that makes the gods look bad,” he finished with the dryest of chuckles. “Bad for business.”
“Yeah, kids these days are so quick to blame the gods for everything,” she complained, her voice suddenly wry with judgment. “If they just made their own offerings like we had to, maybe they would’ve gotten that lucky break. But nooo, they just have to throw out tradition! Throwin’ out the cupid with the bathwater! Well maybe if they’d just listened to their parents–”
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Somewhere beneath the robes, her fingernails had dug into her lover’s chest. He’d noticed; she hadn’t.
Sisyphus found his body already wrenching him away from the conversation, leaving him to rush in with an excuse. “Hey, sorry, gotta run, uhhh, needa find the loo, great to meet you, thank youuu!” His steps pulled him almost jogging away…
…right into the first open lounge chair.
The dryad passing by seemed to know he was headed there before he did. She acknowledged him with a look almost like she’d been expecting him, and turned just enough to look like she’d already been walking his way anyway. A fine mesh of mint and herb leaves each curved like scales down her figure, as if hesitant to break away from her figure.
Sisyphus followed her curves with his eyes so much that his head tilted to keep up. Everything from the tumbling dark-brown hair, to the slope of her chin to her neck to her shoulders, her waist, her hips, her calves, even the pattern of her steps, all seemed to flow like she had been drawn in a single stroke. Sisyphus felt his gait slow as if he were treading through water.
“O-oh, you go ahead,” he found himself offering her the seat, suddenly sure she deserved it more.
“I’m all right,” she reassured him, with the kind of exhaled voice that made all her words part of the same soft current of breath. “You look like you’ve been on the move a lot there, mister.”
“Yeah,” he said contentedly, as he stretched himself into the easiest of easy chairs. He watched her over the back of the seat, until she propped her head up on one elbow to look down upon him. Her curls almost reached his ribs. Sisyphus found himself sucking in his breath out of reverence.
“Can’t imagine what it’s like for you people, living out on the road,” she seemed to flatter him, except that she seemed to mean what she said. “All those packed dirt trails and cobblestones. Baked clay, welded metal… it all sounds so hard, so… dry, and harsh, and… unforgiving.” She twirled her wavy locks absent-mindedly, leaving the end bobbing just above him like a lure.
“...you’re not wrong,” he forced the words dryly out of his chest. “Why do you think I wanted to be here?”
“You can relaxxxx,” she coaxed him, drawing out the word in a long hush as if letting out steam from a kettle. “You seem so, so restlesssss. Whatever you were in a hurry for, it must’ve been to get to somewherrrre like… thissss.” At some point, a succulent bunch of grapes had ended up in her hand, tumbling over and between her fingers. It was a cluster of translucent yellowish-green, like dozens of full moons rising together. Without even picking it off the vine, she lowered it to just beyond his lips.
He hadn’t been hand-fed since he’d taken his first steps. But she had chosen him. Somehow, he must have deserved to be so tended to. He reached up and plucked the first grape from the rest with his teeth. As soon as they’d grazed its surface, his mouth trickled with pinot blanc wine. It left his eyes flickering between crushing shut with indulgence and wide with disbelief.
Her laugh was the most natural thing to hear - like she was happy for him. Teasing, maybe, but not a trace of judgment.
Some part of him felt he couldn’t just receive this flattery. He had to say or do something. This setting sounded like the golden opportunity to flirt, for his own sake or for hers.
“...you…come here often?” That was the best he could do? Where was his usual bag of tricks?
She may have heard it several times a week for years, but if she had, she wasn’t saying so. “I live here,” she explained. She curled a wrist out to wave to the palace, far vaster than either of them could take in from here.
“So, this is like a job for you, right? Doting on the guests?” That would take some of the magic out of it, but at least it wouldn’t feel too good to be true.
“Mmmmm, more like we have an agreement,” she said softly, as if contractual details had no place in this space.
“Oh - room and board kinda deal. But you’ve gotta get paid something, right?”
“I’ve never been that into…money, you know?”
“I mean, I’ve said that sometimes, when I didn’t have it - but then I came here. I bet drunk people be droppin’ trinkets worth a week’s wages in this all-star hotel.”
“Yeah, but…I’ve never known what I’d do with them, you know? I have everything that I need. It’s like, this is the life I’ve been given, and so, this is home.”
Sisyphus might’ve read into that more, if it weren’t for the next grape in his mouth. He tried not to smack on it or talk with his mouth full, feeling her eyes on him like no one else existed.
He ate in silence for a minute. He looked into her eyes like she could see into his heart, and liked what she found anyway. But again and again, he found the need to break away from it. After decades of chasing chances to feel seen, now part of his couldn’t bear it.
“Why do you do it?” he couldn’t help but ask her.
Her brow remained soft, as she left a glazed stare into the middle distance.
“...it feels…nice, making people happy,” she found the words. “Happier than I ever could have made myself.”
“...I… I guess…” Sisyphus conceded, unsure if he could feel the same. He popped off another grape to keep from dwelling on that difference between them.
“It’s like…taking care of yourself, sounds lonely,” she reflected, bringing the bunch closer to him. “Most people who come here, they’ve created these lonely lives. They could be talking from dawn til dusk, but they’re just fighting to get what they want, or get what they need. They’re alone in their minds. Seeing someone get a glimpse of what it’s like to be loved on… it’s like watching something be born.”
With that, Sisyphus lost himself in her eyes, until nothing else existed.
Whatever minutes had drifted by, whatever words were spoken or just imagined, all of it seemed like an echo of those last few things she’d said. In his lifetime, and after it, he had wrestled a god and now lived with two sort-of gods; yet none of it had felt like a religious experience such as this.
“There you are.”
Sisyphus felt his heart lurch as Argos’ voice grasped at him from the present. The giant made his way to the dryad’s side, body turned inward as if to take up less of her presence.
“Thank you for caring for him,” Argos said to her. “This is more than he deserves.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” she challenged him gently. “Plenty of people deserve more than they get. I can’t say many people deserve it taken away.”
Argos shrank back, for her standing her ground, for speaking philosophy, and for making a point he had somehow never heard of before. Sisyphus propped himself up, wary of losing what he had.
“Then who cares for you?” he enquired.
Sisyphus looked back to her just in time to see her swallow. She breathed out a laugh, dimples piercing her cheeks. Her eyes danced across her new suitor, surprised but mostly amused to see so much of him looking her back.
Gingerly, Argos lifted her hand and its grape bunch with just two of his fingers’ support. Sisyphus watched its trail to dangle above her head, as she laid herself acoss the back ridge of the lounge chair, an indulgent little chuckle coaxed out from her palate. As her hair hair toppled down, the tips stopped at just grazing Sisyphus’ pecs, sending his heart hammering enough to visibly tremble his chest hair. Argos scrunched most of his eyes affectionately, as if he had just met a kindred spirit in her. He lowered the grapes to her, swinging pendulously close to her lips until–
“Back off! She’s mine!” Sisyphus found himself practically barking the words. He’d pushed himself away from them and to his feet, as if needing to face them from a safe distance. Argos had been a friend for months, but now he was getting in the way of what Sisyphus had wanted far more than a friend.
The dryad appeared taken aback, not afraid so much as disappointed. She propped herself halfway up as of deciding whether to leave. But Argos rumbled deep in his chest, and held out an open hand, as if guarding the two of them and the table as a sacred space.
“A dryad belongs to no one. She simply…belongs.”
“Mmmmmm,” she agreed, easing herself into the empty seat. Argos leaned over the back rest, and fed her from there.
Sisyphus grabbed at his cloak in fistfuls and pulled it around himself, and stormed off over the hills. Right then and there, he took Date Scholar off his resume.
