Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4

by Tanith Lee

  “Master, I see it is a parable, but nevertheless, some men, being allowed to strike another unchecked, will make a habit of striking there. Is that not also an interruption?”

  “Life is a series of blows, in any case,” said the priest, “birth and death being the greatest of these, but between them, many of lesser sort. And is it possible to return or mend every smack of fate and life? Sit down beneath the storm, for if you shout at it, it will not hear you.”

  “Now by the gods,” said the velvet rider, “tell me how to get wisdom.”

  “Leave your mansion and your wealth. Wander the world. Accept only what is given, but where you are able, give away again all you have.”

  The rider’s face fell to his silken boots.

  “Must I do this? Is there no other method?”

  “There are many. They will take you longer. It is hard to run when your feet are tied to a palace gate; it is hard to see through windows of emerald and silver. You put difficulties in your path. That is all.”

  And then the sky turned the color of the worn fig leaves, a smoky shadow-shade, and the men who had sought Dathanja, one and all, exclaimed in fear. Even the bullocks lowed and snorted, and the elephants squealed. After which, the silence came again, three times more leaden than before.

  The elephant’s rider drew from his belt a pale emerald set in silver, and gazing through it at the sky, he announced: “The face of the sun has turned black, though all about it streams his bright hair.”

  It was the first eclipse of the flat earth, or the first eclipse of the sun by the moon which had been seen since the ages of chaos. (For chaos had been brushed, and brushed in turn the world, and changed it. Things would never be quite as they had been. Nature took strides, she raced.)

  “It is the rage of heaven,” quavered certain of the sick who had been healed, and now felt guilty for being comfortable after years of anguish.

  “It is this priest’s abstruse teaching, which has upset those gods who control the sky’s disks. In a moment they may throw stars at him. Let us run away!”

  But others plucked at Dathanja’s sleeve, where he sat serenely, and the child-girl leaned on him without any sign of alarm. Dathanja said, “The moon has come between us and the sun. In a minute or so the moon will take her way onward, and this phenomenon will cease.”

  The child looked into his face with her blue, blue eyes. “Tell a story to us,” said she softly, “why the moon should approach the sun.”

  Dathanja motioned all the nervous and frightened ones to sit down again. He spoke a phrase that brought a vast calm upon them, there in the darkness with the hair of the sun streaming from a black hole in the sky. Even the beasts lay down, and even the river smoothed itself.

  4 The Story of the Sun and the Moon

  LONG, LONG ago, and longer ago than that . . .

  . . . the Sun had a garden in the east. But he had had words with the Moon, and would not let her into the garden. There came a dusk when she could bear her curiosity no more. The Moon summoned one of the wide-winged moths that fly by night. “Go you into the garden,” she said, “and see of what sort it is. Return and tell me.”

  So the night-flying moth flew down the miles of heaven and over the back of the earth, into the east. Presently he came to a high wall, higher than the sky it seemed. Upward again he flew, but the wall appeared to meet and become one with the darkness. Around and around he flew, but the wall was a vast circle, without beginning or end. At last the moth grew weary and fell to the ground under the wall. Here he found a tiny eyelet. Folding close his wings, he crept through this little space, and emerged into the garden.

  How beautiful it was. The lawns were many-tiered and with the nap of velvet, and more velvety even than these were the rock shelves and steps over which rivulets trickled. It was the Sun’s garden, and so even by night, the rock was warm, and the air of the garden was warm, and scented with a hundred fragrances. The shrubs grew tall as trees. The trees were like mighty spires, and the perfume of their wood and their moisture nearly drowned the moth, so he must rest on an amber stone which glowed. Everywhere about such stones lay scattered, and each glowed. It was the Sun’s garden, and all bright and fulvous things were there. The trees were crowded by golden fruit which shone like lamps; fireflies played above the pools, where creatures with orange pelts and fiery eyes stole down to drink. A fish leapt: It was a topaz.

  Eventually the night began to fade. The moth remembered who had sent him on her errand. He returned to the wall, and after much searching, he found the eyelet and made his way out.

  The Moon stood low in the western sky, with her pale hair around her, looking for him. “Well,” she said, “you were gone a whole night. Is the garden fair?”

  The moth told her that it was. He described the manner of it, the plants and fruits, the lights and fragrances, and the animals which inhabited it.

  The Moon was envious. “I wish I might see this also,” she said.

  The Moon sat in her twilight pavilion under the western horizon, thinking about how she might trick the Sun.

  Their quarrel was many thousands of years old. They had forgotten what they had quarreled over, but neither would unbend to the other.

  At length she made a plan. “I shall not traverse the sky tonight, but leave the earth in darkness. Wrapped in a black mantle I will go into the east. The moth found a way into the garden, and so will I. Is the Moon less wise than a moth?”

  When the Sun rode west in his blaze of glory, the Moon had moved her pavilion into the east. When the final torches of the Sun’s procession vanished, the stars came out with mirrors and bells. They called to the Moon to join them, but the Moon had other business. She wrapped herself in her black mantle and stepped down the night until she came against a vast encircling wall. Higher than heaven it seemed, without beginning or end.

  The Moon searched awhile, and then she stood awhile in thought. “Perhaps it is not so after all,” said the Moon. “I am no wiser than the moth. Indeed, I am less wise.”

  After a time, she heard the sound of water. Turning from the great wall she found a range of hills, and there a cave. She passed into the cave and in it was a stream bed and a stream flowing away under the ground.

  The Moon spoke to the stream in its own language.

  “Where are you going?” asked the Moon.

  “Into the Sun’s garden, where all is gold and glad.”

  “May I go with you?”

  “It is forbidden,” said the stream.

  “Why?”

  “You are the Moon, with whom he has had words.”

  “No,” said the Moon, “you are mistaken. I am only the light of seven silver cities quenched by a cloud far away.” When she denied herself, the Moon felt a pang, but she was resolute.

  The stream believed her. It permitted her to lie down upon it and bore her with it under the ground, and under a mighty wall, into the garden.

  Here the stream bed was laid with shining jacinth and jasper. The Moon rose from the water, and looked about. So she walked through the garden, its high places and its hollows. She touched the golden fruit on the trees and it rang like gongs, she beheld the fiery beasts playing on the lawns. She was filled with jealousy and admiration. As she walked, the flowers in the grass turned silver. She was reflected in three pools, to the east, the west, and the south of the garden.

  Eventually the night began to fade. The Moon went to the stream which constantly entered the garden.

  “No,” said the stream. “I brought you but I will not return you hence.”

  “Alas,” said the Moon.

  She hurried to the wall, seeking a way out as she had sought a way in. She grew anxious, for the first torches were alight in the eastern sky. Finally she perceived the little eyelet by which the moth had escaped the garden. The Moon waned, making herself slender as an awl. But when she lay down to pass through the eyelet, she discovered the web of a spider had been spun there, all golden with the Sun-strength of the
garden—and the Moon could not break it.

  The Moon was angry and afraid. In the east she saw the burning incenses and firecrackers of the Sun’s procession. Resuming her usual form and size, the Moon ran to a vast tree hung with foliage. Into this she climbed, and hid herself under the leaves.

  Then the Sun came over the horizon. He rode a tiger of cinnabar. Scarves of yellow and rose unfolded from the beams that danced in his following; the banners were loud as the noise of trumpets.

  As he passed, he looked down into his garden. His light was so colossal it blinded even him. He did not see the drifts of silver in the grass, or the paleness smoldering there under the boughs of a tall tree. He reflected his glory into the three pools where the Moon had been reflected, and rode on, well pleased.

  When the Sun was gone, the Moon tried many things to get out of the garden. She called her half brothers, the lunar winds, but they would only shake the trees, and when the golden fruit fell, they sported with it—they were very young. And she called the nightbirds that worshiped her as a goddess, the nightingale who has bells in her throat, and the owl with his glimmering temple windows for eyes. But the birds, though they had somehow got through the wall, were half asleep and could find no egress suitable for the Moon, and they chirruped and whirred and mourned and yawned, and stared, and were sent away abashed. It was now almost night again, and the sky moonless.

  Some upstart star, thought the Moon, will take my honors. She will strain herself to shine more brightly, and say she is the Moon, and the earth will forget me. Then the Moon wept, and her tears made pearls about the trees, which slowly turned to rubies in the sunset.

  Presently there came a sound that caused the Moon’s tears to dry in horror. It was the note of a great key turning in a large lock somewhere in the wall. Then a solar wind rushed through the garden, twanging the blades of the grass and ruffling the fur of the fierce beasts there. It was the Sun’s messenger, and the Sun himself came close behind, blazing in a mantle of dark red.

  “Ah, how beautiful my garden is,” declared the Sun possessively, “more beautiful than ever before. But what is this?” he added, as his own radiance lit the ruby-pearls upon the grass. “Come now,” said the Sun, parting the branches of the tree, “who is hiding there?”

  “It is I,” whispered the Moon.

  “Is it you? Who are you?”

  The Moon started. He does not remember me, she thought. Well, it has been an eon or two since we met. And he has always dazzled himself. And wrapping her own mantle closely about her, she descended and stood before the Sun, very timidly.

  “I am,” said the Moon, “an especially brilliant star. So brilliant the Moon was envious, and she sent me from her court. I came here by mischance, and could not find a way out again. Will you let me from your garden?”

  “Stay,” said the Sun. “You are very fair. I can see quite easily how the Moon, that pallid hag, would be jealous.”

  “Can you indeed?” said the Moon, and she seethed in her mantle. “Nevertheless I have duties to perform in the nocturnal sky.”

  “Stay with me only this one night,” said the Sun, winningly. “Then, when I myself must leave to light the sky, you may go before me. I have long had a scheme to choose of all the stars one of the loveliest, who should then be my herald in the east. Perhaps I shall choose you.”

  “How generous you are, how you flatter me,” said the Moon. And she hid her looks, which might have splintered glass, in her mantle.

  But the Sun vowed he would not let her go until morning, so the Moon stayed with him, perforce, and pretended to be dazzled by him also, and it came to be that she was. For as they strolled through the marvelous garden, he showed her the most fragrant of its flowers, and the best of its fruits he plucked for her. And his hands, which guided her, were warm. When they were weary, they reclined upon the blissful turf, and the Sun dallied with the Moon, and the Moon said to herself, Since I make out I am a mere star, I must permit this. And the Sun charmed her, despite the old resentments. She softened to him. So much so indeed, that when the torches and trumpets of his eager retinue drew near to call him forth to dawn, the Moon was rather regretful. Yet, as he was departing, she waxed vexed again. So she snatched surreptitiously a throbbing stone from a waterfall and a burning flower from the grass. And at the last she cut off by stealth a lock from the Sun’s flaming mane, with a little silver knife, as he embraced her in farewell.

  Then the Sun let her out of his garden, and away the Moon fled up the sky, all in disarray, her mantle slipping from her white shoulders and her hair fluttering about her. She ran across heaven and did not stop until she reached her pavilion, and here she fell down in a faint of grievance, pleasure, and shame.

  The Moon brooded. She became thin, less luminous, more pale. She thought, I will pay him out, for his fine garden, for my humiliation. That he thought me a star only, and dallied with me. But most of all because I permitted it.

  Then the Moon took the flower and the stone from the Sun’s garden, and the lock of hair from the Sun’s own mane, and she made magic. When she was done, she wove a robe for herself, and this robe shone so wonderfully, the stars who had come to her pavilion to visit her shrank back in surprise.

  Now let him think me a star, thought the Moon, and she rose up the sky blindingly.

  So fair and so glorious she shone that night that in the lands of men, the poets who had written harsh bitter Moon crossed out the line and wrote instead 0 Moon of man’s delight! And those who wrote old cold silver witch changed it to warm golden girl. Truly, warm and bright as gold, the very sun of night, she was. Only the secret lovers did not bless her that evening, or thieves, who formerly had made her offerings.

  But the Sun saw too, where he had his own red pavilion in the west. And mounting the black tiger he used for night-time excursions, he rode furiously westward to follow her progress, and all the way he heard her praises. It was she all this while in my garden, he thought, in anger. She I plucked fruit for, and pretended to think pretty. And she has stolen from me essentials of my light, and boasts to men and gods that it is only her own glaze that adorns her. Well, let her rule the sky, then. Till I have justice, they may manage as they can without me.

  And going back into his garden, the Sun slammed the gate.

  When the procession of morning called upon him, the Sun sent them away alone, and it was a vague dreary dawn that day, and for many days after. But the Sun, in his garden, learned something to his advantage.

  Now in those far-off times, the gods were young. They took an interest in all things. And when mankind began to complain at their altars that the Sun no longer smiled on the earth, and that therefore everlasting winter and barrenness overtook them, the gods heeded.

  They sent to the Sun and asked him what he meant by his absence. The Sun replied that he had fallen sick, let the Moon oversee the day as well as the night, for she burned so magnificently, surely it would be no bother to her. (The Moon, when she heard this, blanched, and even her finery could not disguise it.) The gods sent again to the Sun, and summoned him into the upper tiers of the sky, where they looked down on him: He had come muffled in a storm cloud.

  “It is this way,” said the Sun. “Someone entered my garden and stole from me a part of my essence, the soul of my light. I am weakened and dismayed. Correct the matter, and I will resume my office.”

  “Who stole from you?” inquired the gods. (Even then, they would tend to speak in concert.)

  “I do not know,” said the Sun, “but I guess.” And he told how he had found one in the garden who assured him she was a star, and he had been attentive to her, but next the Moon had appeared in glory, while he sickened.

  Then the gods sent for the Moon. She came, veiled in mist, and trembling much.

  “Did you enter the Sun’s garden?”

  “I?” said the Moon, astounded to be asked.

  “Did you steal from the Sun?”

  “I?” said the Moon.

  “What pr
oof,” said the gods to the Sun, “do you have that ever she entered the garden? For if she denies both things and is found guilty of one, then guilty she must be of the other also.”

  Then the Sun grinned and the Moon shuddered.

  “Only come with me there,” said the Sun, “and you will see.”

  So the gods descended into the garden of the Sun, and walked about there, and the earth echoed at each footfall of theirs among the great-leaved trees and by the gleaming waters.

  Night entered presently, and in the dark all glowed most entertainingly, and to the water’s edges came the orange beasts to drink, while the topaz fishes leapt. Then through the glades by the waters rang female voices, and next there advanced dancingly three lovely young feminine forms. They were white as the ashes of lilies, and their long pale hair hung around them; they wore garlands of yellow flowers, and amber necklaces and anklets, and these were all their clothing.

  “As I lay here in my illness,” said the Sun, “I saw these three rise up from the pools of my garden and run about here, and when I spoke to them they came to me lovingly and respectfully, showing no fear, and calling me their father. “

  “Who then is their mother?” asked the gods.

  “You must ask them,” said the Sun virtuously.

  The gods did so. And running happily to the Moon, the three called her “Mother” at once.

  And the Moon blushed red as a sunrise.

  For it had been this way. She had reflected in the three pools of the garden, east, west, south, and the powers of the garden, which could imbue even a spider’s web, had retained that reflection, and imbued it, and later the Sun reflected there too. . . . And later still there had been some dalliance, which had brought all symbolically together.