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The next morning King Aristides was alarmed to be told by a servant that his youngest daughter seemed to have turned her bedroom into some kind of piggery. He and Queen Damaris had been worried enough already that, unlike her sisters Calanthe and Zona who had allied themselves to rich landowners, Psyche had stubbornly refused to marry. The news that she was now consorting with pigs made up his mind. He travelled to the oracle of Apollo to find out what the girl’s future might be.

After the correct sacrifices and prayers had been offered up, the Sibyl made this answer. ‘Garland your child with flowers and carry her to a high place. Lay her on a rock. The one that will come to take her for its bride is the most dangerous being of earth, sky or water. All the gods of Olympus fear its power. So it is ordained, so it must be. Fail in this and the creature will lay waste all your kingdom and discord and despair shall come in its train. You, Aristides, will be called the destroyer of your people’s happiness.’

Ten days later a strange procession wound its way out of the town. Carried high on a litter, festooned with flowers and dressed in the purest white, sat a gloomy but resigned Psyche. She had been told of the oracle’s pronouncement and had accepted it. Her so-called beauty had always been a source of irritation to her. She hated the fuss and stir it caused, how oddly it made people behave in her presence and how freakish and set apart it made her feel. She had planned never to marry, but if she had to then a rapacious beast would be no worse than a tedious fawning prince with mooncalf eyes. The agony of its attentions would at least be over quickly.

With piteous wails of grief and sorrow the crowd laboured up the mountainside until they came to the great basalt rock on which Psyche was to be laid for sacrifice. Her mother Damaris howled, shrieked and sobbed. King Aristides patted her hand and wished himself elsewhere. Calanthe and Zona, their dull, elderly but rich husbands at their sides, each tried their best to conceal the deep satisfaction they felt at the knowledge that they were soon to be the unchallenged fairest in the land.

As she was bound to the rock Psyche closed her eyes and breathed deeply, waiting for everyone to have done with indulging in their lamentations and shows of grief. Soon all suffering and pain would be over.

Singing hymns to Apollo the crowd wound its way down the hill, leaving Psyche alone on the rock. The sun shone down upon her. Larks called in the blue sky. She had pictured boiling clouds, shrieking winds, lashing rain and dreadful thunder as accompaniments to her violation and death, not this glorious idyll of late-spring sunshine and rippling birdsong.

Who or what could this creature be? If her father had reported the oracle correctly then even the high Olympians feared it. But she had heard of no such terrible monster in all the legends and rumours of legends on which she had been raised. Not even Typhon or Echidna had the power to alarm the mighty gods.

Suddenly a warm breath of wind ruffled her white ceremonial robes. The breath became a gust that pushed a cushion of air between her and the cold basalt on which she lay. To her great surprise Psyche felt herself being lifted up. The wind seemed to be an almost solid thing – it supported her, holding her fast and carrying her up into the air.

The Enchanted Castle

Psyche was flying high above the ground, safe in the strong but gentle arms of ZEPHYRUS, the West Wind.

‘This cannot be the beast we are all meant to fear,’ she thought to herself. ‘This wind must be the beast’s messenger and herald. He is taking me to my doom. Well, at least it’s a comfortable way to travel.’

She looked down on the city in which she had grown up. How small and neat and trim everything looked. So unlike the overgrown, ill-smelling and ramshackle township she knew and hated. Zephyrus gained speed and height and soon they were swooping over hills and along valleys, soaring over the blue ocean and flashing past islands, until they were in a country she did not recognize. It was fertile and densely wooded, and as they made a gradual descent she saw, set in a clearing, a magnificent palace, cornered by round towers and crowned with turrets. Gently and easily Psyche was lowered, until she landed with a gliding step on the flowered grass in front of a pair of golden gates. With a fizz and a sigh the wind flew away and she found herself alone. She heard no growls, roars or rapacious snarls, only a distant music floating from the palace’s interior. As she made her tentative approach the gates swung open.

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