"Aw, Thad, I don't have any beloved."

"You may not have loved anyone at lunch, but even now, down the path or standing at the fountain, may be someone who's weak with love for you. You'll learn that love comes only to the unaware; those who search the streets for it awake cold and lonely. But don't you want to hear how your spear pierced the heart that loved you?"

Ken stretched out beside Thad and, looking up at him, relaxed in the knowledge that they were about to enter their own special world. With the sun behind his head, Thad's hair became a shimmering crown.

"Back in the days when men could find their gods walking among them, Cyparissus, loved by Apollo, was a young prince who had given his heart to an enchanted stag. Its antlers were of burnished gold, strung with pearls, and a silver crown and jeweled collar proclaimed its royal birth. All through the summer of their love, Cyparissus would lead the stag to the sweetest pastures, dressing its antlers with wreaths of violets and daisies, and sometimes mounting it with reins of purple silk.

"While his heart ignored the yearing glances of all who saw him, Cyparissus was in the first flush of his manhood, and his body sought release in the dangers of the hunt. Often, when the stag sought the coolness of a wooded spring to escape the noonday sun, Cyparissus would seize his spear and seek a foe to test his strength and drain his energy before roaming the Carthaean meadows with his beloved in the mist of evening. One day, after circling far from home on the spoor of a wild boar, Cyparissus sensed a movement in the leaves before him, carelessly thrust his spear at the life within, and gave a shout of triumph as the blood spurted forth to greet him. But when he parted the branches to claim his victim, tears mingled with the blood upon his thighs, for there was the dying stag, the pearls of its collar gleaming like rubies in the flow of life from

its wound.

"Not even Apollo could temper the grief of Cyparissus, whose only wish was to cry forever in remembrance of his love, and we are told that as the tears drained the manhood from his limbs, his slender body coarsened, and the hair that tumbled over his forehead began to grow upward in thick green waves. He became the cypress, eternal companion of grief and mourning."

Ken wet his lips, "I suppose the moral is the familiar one that each man kills the thing he loves."

"Not exactly. You see, Cyparissus didn't purposely kill the stag. It was the careless thrust of his spear, the vicious need to assert his strength, that caused its death: qualities he never would have exposed to his beloved but which, nevertheless, thrust through his heart."

"But, Thad . . ." Ken could not express the sadness he felt at the tale's end, and Thad's hand mussed his hair to break the spell.

"I didn't mean to banish your smile for the afternoon. Come on, display your pearls, O Stag of Carthaea!"

Ken laughed. "I though I was Cyparissus. Now I'm the Stag."

"Now, you're getting close to the moral of the story. Each of us is both lover and beloved in one, and cannot be one without the other, or kill . . ." Thad paused, and Ken looked up, alarmed. Thad's melodious voice never faltered when discoursing. But he was smiling down at him, a little sadly, Ken thought.

Thad rose and stretched. "That's enough moralizing for a summer afternoon. Shall we see who's on guard at the newsstand, the Walrus or the Mouse?"

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