by Dawn Raffel
Daphne, like so many nymphs, was pursued by an unwanted suitor. In flight from besotted Apollo, Daphne cried for help, and her father the river god obliged her by turning her into a laurel tree.
And so it came to pass that Daphne grew weary of being a tree. For centuries, Daphne had been grateful for her wooden status, and had even come to quietly enjoy Apollo’s visits, during which he swore abiding adoration. But while Daphne was immortal, she was not ageless. As the millennia passed and Daphne’s rings grew thick, annoyance bloomed. She sighed in the wind and she moaned to the birds and the stars, many of whom had also been nymphs back in the day. Now well past middle age, Daphne was irritated by small boys scrambling up her limbs and dogs urinating on her trunk and men denuding her branches for wreaths with which to laud themselves. Young lovers carved her bark, selfishly scarring her flesh with their impermanent affections. Sticky creatures tapped her sap, and witchy old women stripped her leaves to boil them for unguents.
Her friends the elms were dead.
As for Apollo, he hadn’t been seen in a very long time. Some claimed he’d risen heavenward and fallen, but this was speculation. Cupid, whose gold and leaden shafts of malice had created Daphne’s problem in the first place—striking Apollo with obsessive desire and Daphne with aversion—was said to be hobbled by gout.
With every passing season, Daphne’s roots grew deeper, as did her despair. She longed once more to wander the woodlands in search of delight. Daphne was lonely. “O, Father, alas! O, Apollo, alas! O, even vengeful Cupid, alas, alas!” she cried. “Why have you forsaken me?”
The birds tried to soothe her. “Flutter off!” she snapped.
Finally, Philomel sang to her a secret, her beak to a knot: “First you must unearth yourself, uproot yourself, and this done, your body and your face will be restored.” The nightingale was swift and small and cunning, and had mastered the theft of forbidden information.
Yet Daphne wailed anew, for how was she to wrench herself from whence she had been planted? Her limbs creaked, truly, and sorrow and rage did not enable her release. “Oh, Philomel, alas!” she cried but Philomel had flitted off.
The rains came and went. The earth did not release her.
The flowers bent their heads and the willow trees wept.
The Pleaides, pale sisters—those nymphs turned to stars—endeavored to assist, but they were stranded in the heavens with arthritic Orion in halfhearted pursuit.
The river god slept.
Daphne trembled.
The sun was relentless.
“Diana!” cried Daphne at night to the moon. “Take pity on me! For, Cupid aside, was it not your own twin whose desire begat my undoing? And had he not taunted Cupid to begin with, would Cupid have struck?”
“Speak not ill of my brother,” answered the moon, revealing her face.
And yet she considered Daphne’s point.
At last and at length, in the fullness of time, the moon waxed merciful. She lighted the waters. She riled the tides. She fired up the river god, old as he was: “Awaken yourself! Raise high the waters! Devour the shores!” And so the rivers rose. And so the winds rose. And so the seas rose, flooding the woodlands, eroding the hills to the cries of wolves, felling mortal tress. The wind and the water, the sore earth itself unbound the laurel’s roots.
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Tendril by tendril, she rose in the night. When the storm had stilled and the cold wind slept, with no soul to witness, she lifted herself. The moon had retreated. The Pleaides shone brightly for once that night to guide her way. Orion, old hunter bereft of desire, did not even notice their newfound glow. *
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On strange new legs, by the light of the stars, she went down to the river and lay there to sleep.
At dawn she viewed her visage, reflected in water, and shrank back in shock. Philomel had lied to her!
Woman though she was, her beauty was gone.
Her body was sacked.
Age had rendered Daphne demographically irrelevant. No hot-blooded god would chase her again.
And so Daphne rose.
And so Daphne wandered.
And so Daphne walks through the world as she will, to lands far and near, to towns here and there, taking her time, changing her name, talking to birds, not looking over a brittle shoulder. Here she swipes sugar, stuffing her pockets. There she sings, off-key, aloud. She squints and she spits. Some claim to have seen her feeding the pigeons, hugging the trees, scolding the dogs, saluting the moon, crooning to stars, wading the rivers on bunioned feet, plucking an apple with ravaged hands, licking the juice, laughing quite madly, snapping a child’s arrow in half.
*Footnote: In the morning, a number of citizens swore that the hole in the earth where the great tree stood was the work of thieves; others declared it the act of a single God.
[This story was solicited for a collection of new myths edited by Kate Bernheimer, forthcoming Penguin 2013]