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they had a son. But he was never really happy. He missed Prokris and his old life.
    Prokris was so ashamed of her willingness to be false to her husband that she couldn’t bear to stay where people would mock her. She ran away to the island of Crete, where she met the famous King Minos. He lived in a palace where a great maze hid a monstrous half-man, half-bull called the Minotaur. The king fell in love with Prokris and gave her wondrous gifts: a spear that never missed its mark and a hound named Lailaps that never failed to catch his quarry. The goddess Artemis herself, mistress of the hunt, had given the spear and the dog to Minos. (Remember Lailaps and the spear; they’re in another story I want to tell you.)
    After a while, Prokris grew worried that Minos’s wife, who was a powerful priestess as well as being the queen, would become jealous and kill her. So she disguised herself as a boy and, calling herself Pterelas, escaped back to Athens, taking the hound and the spear with her.
    Meanwhile, Kephalos had never forgotten Prokris. After a few years, he left Eos (who had apparently forgotten her promise to make him immortal) and spent all his time hunting, roaming aimlessly from place to place. He missed his wife more and more every day and regretted that he had ever tempted her with the golden crown. In his wanderings, he met up with a boy named Pterelas and they became hunting companions. Kephalos never suspected that the handsome boy was really his beloved wife, and she was too ashamed to reveal her true identity to him.
    One day, Kephalos said to the boy, “It’s no wonder you’re such a successful hunter. Your spear and dog are unbeatable. What would you take for them?”
    Prokris said they weren’t for sale, which only made Kephalos more eager to buy them. Finally, she said, “There’s only one thing I’d trade them for.”
    “What’s that?” Kephalos asked.
    “Love,” she said, and bursting into tears, she told him that she was his wife.
    Kephalos was overjoyed to have Prokris back. Each forgave the other, and together they spent many days hunting with the enchanted spear and hound. (Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Oh, I hope that Eurydice forgives me as easily!) But after a while, Artemis noticed Kephalos and Prokris going after game in the woods, and it irritated her to know that mortals were passing around her precious gifts. Minos had given Lailaps and the spear to Prokris, and then Prokris had offered them to Kephalos—all for something as unimportant as human love.
    One night, the goddess decided to punish the two for failing to respect her and her gifts, and she entered Prokris’s dreams.
    “Where do you think your husband goes every morning when he leaves the house before daylight?” she asked the sleeping Prokris. “Do you really think he’s hunting? Nobody loves hunting that much! No, he’s still in love with Eos, and he meets her when she arrives on the earth to bring the dawn. That’s why he gets up so early.”
    “I don’t believe you,” Prokris said, but she felt uneasy, just as Kephalos had when Eos had told him his wife would be unfaithful.
Was
her husband really hunting each morning? Why did he leave the house in time to greet the dawn? Why not wait until daylight?
    The goddess laughed. “See for yourself,” she said.
    When Prokris awoke, her heart was pounding. As she lay still, worrying about what the goddess had said and wondering if it was true, she felt Kephalos rise. She couldn’t stand not knowing where he was going, so once he was out the door, she got up, too. She put on a dark cloak so she’d be hard to see in the dim early-morning light, and followed him.
    Kephalos had no idea that Prokris was even awake, much less trailing him through the woods. He moved quietly in the semi-darkness, the magic spear in his hand, the magic hound by his side. He hoped to spot one of the animals that are active at dawn—a deer, perhaps.
    Suddenly, something brushed against a