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wild exultant cries.
    He barely noticed as the women lured him, chased him, somehow willed him to follow them out of the square, through the narrow streets of the village. They passed small houses decked with wreaths of ivy and hung with colored lanterns. They were maddening these women, who more boldly now pressed their bodies up against him, holding him for a moment in a hot kiss, before slipping from his arms to lead him stumbling after them farther down the road.
    As they left the town behind, the musicians were gone, and the only music came from the primitive drums and tambourines which the Bacchantes banged wildly in a cacophony of sound ringing out through the solitary hillside. And now they were running, swift as deer, through the moonlit forest. He was with them, his bare feet unfeeling of the stones and sharp twigs on the wood's floor. The women tugged at their clothing, ripping it from their bodies to expose the supple skin of rounded breasts and sleek bellies.
    He was after them, tearing the cloth from their backs, hungry for their warm flesh. A half-naked girl, with a tangle of wheat-colored curls, threw her arms around him and pressed her body against his. Her head fell back, her cheeks flushed, soft lips parted. Erotic longing burned in her dark dilated eyes and revealed itself in the way her rosy nipples stiffened, crying out for his touch, his tongue, to be taken.
    He slid his hand around the exposed flesh of her thighs and felt warm silky wetness under his fingers. He throbbed to be inside her, devour her whole, but with an impish grin she wriggled out of his embrace and darted into the dark forest.
    The other women followed, shamelessly teasing and provoking him, one moment seeming only a breath away, the next farther than he possibly could imagine as his distorted vision played tricks on him. The trees and grass began to glow in the moonlight, and he could smell the deep rich scent of the earth along with the sweat of the Bacchantes as they ran, dancing, skipping and crying out in feral screams of bliss to the nighttime countryside.
    Antony stumbled as he tore across a dried creek bed. He looked up and was overwhelmed by the sight of the heavens. The stars pressed down on him, their shimmering light fragmenting and swimming in a strange dance of their own, his brain intoxicated with their celestial light.
    The low hum of chanting made Antony tear his eyes from the stars. The women had clasped hands in a circle. He was at its center. Slowly the circle began to move as the chanting accelerated.
    The earth was firm and fertile beneath his feet, he felt its strength rising up in him, filling his body with the life force of nature. Everything was spinning, his soul melting away into the darkness of the pines and midnight breeze which carried the taste of the sea to his lips.
    With a surge of explosive light the God entered him. Antony was wild with the power, brimming over with a joy beyond joy. The animation of all living things rushed through his veins, the power of the earth and heavens coursing through him, and again he was running hard, running in a blur of ecstasy, free and untamed as the wind. There were no longer any divisions between himself, or the raving Bacchantes who dashed alongside him, or the earth, or moon filtering through the whispering pines.
    Suddenly he was alive to something else too. Fear mingled with his adrenaline and sent him charging swiftly ahead of the women, sprinting on four legs. Easily, he bounded over the woodland bracken. Dionysus, God of Animals, had joined him with the soul of a deer and left his own body behind somewhere in the forest.
    The cries of the Bacchantes at his heels drove him faster. His heart raced as he darted through the trees as naturally as if he had never lived anywhere other than these woods. He was pure instinct, but he was growing tired. He could not escape the women who rabidly pursued him.
    He reached a grove surrounded by tall pine trees, the crescent