Nyve took care at first to carry out her duties—the care of her possessions—while Hertha was asleep. Every golden morning, she and her companions came to find her. They plunged into the cool lake. Hertha found herself a young barbarian among the gently daughters of Nirvanir, tender children docile to every caprice. She surpassed them in strength, often in skill and always is determination. Nyve loved seeing Nevea extend herself freely in their games. There was so little to fear on Drymea that she gave no thought to any eventual protection. But the old anxiety subsisted in Hertha, and her knife rested in her belt. Her calm energy anticipated some peril, according to the law of our race, which has always known fear.
They lay down afterwards among the flowers, beneath the slow rise of the golden sun; the Drymeans were content to mask themselves with their long loose tresses. The veiled Hertha talked. Nyve’s whys were often as naïve and terrible as those of children; she never tired of listening to Hertha, who often had to admit her ignorance, or that of her humankind. The important difference between Earth and Drymea on which she remained silent—the sexes—did not help to clarify her descriptions.
In her turn, she occasionally interrogated Nyve regarding her edifices. Responsible at 16, with no one but the Queen above her—and what limit had Nacrsya’s authority?
If the Queen rules Nirvanir, the Queen is ruled by custom, the daughter of years and of the proof of good and evil, protected from the arbitrariness of individual will. Everyone, high and low, has her duty, and no one can or would think of avoiding it. From the Realm to the inhabitants of an edifice, beneath a power absolute in appearance, a host of more or less powerful organizations is regulated and administered outside of dead letters or leaden bureaucracy. The centuries have polished all the mechanisms—and the power of Nacrysa the Prudent is no dismal despotism.
Every day, however, questionnaires arrived for Hertha, blank pages with brief signs. Drymean writing, entirely ideographic, requires a long apprenticeship before being fluently employed; admittedly, it is understood in all the realms, even though the languages differ.
It was the difficulty of answering that gave Hertha the idea of decomposing the language of Nirvanir into a few dozen sounds, with the help of Greena, the most literate of her companions; it seemed marvelous to all of them. How had they not thought of it before?
On the 23rd day, the unusually bright morning gave rise to the desire for an excursion to the coast, above the palace. All the young women departed, in the fresh wind, over the soft fine sand, the Drymeans as tender and joyful little girls, devoid of suspicion or mistrust, around the tall virgin, daughter of a tumultuous world.
They arrived at a near-island projecting into the waves; it was terminated by a beach, scarcely uncovered by the tide. Nyve’s eyes had quickly discovered blue or emerald sea-shells, and they went on to the sand. Hertha followed them. When they were on the beach, the little princess forgot her dignity, to go into the glaucous water. Suddenly, Hertha saw her totter. Nyve’s gaze remained fixed, her hands clenched in fear.
Ten meters in front of her a huge grey mass loomed up out of the waves: then a dull and greased skin shone, and two yellow eyes, staring and ferocious, settled on her fright.
“The terror of the sea!” Nyve murmured. Then the daughter of Earth rose up in front of her; she seized the wrist of the royal child and cried: “Save yourself! I’ll take care of it!”
Nyve obeyed.
Clenching her teeth, Hertha pulled the knife from her belt. In the blink of a eye, Nyve was out of reach. At least the Princess with the soft eyes would live.
Then, all the ferocity of the rude Earth rose up again in Hertha’s soul. It was necessary not to die, but to vanquish. With eyes of steel and an expression in which every line signified: “Fight!” she looked at her knife: the terrible instrument of throat-cutters; six inches of thick sharp blade, double-edged, with a metal guard to protect the hand.
She waited, weapon in hand, to strike—if necessary—upwards. The monster was in no hurry. It hauled itself aloft, ponderously, on two massive fins. From its somber maw to its bifurcated tail it measured 12 feet. It drew nearer, sure of victory. With a rapid glance, Hertha examined the ground. An unexpected pebble might cost her life. The beast seemed to be heavy as well as strong, and that was her one chance of salvation. To the attack!
While the monster considered her, stupidly and slowly, Hertha strode forward. Out of range of the gaping jaws, her armed fist struck at the ferocious eye. With one bound, she avoided the riposte. The beast pivoted, howling. Then the mortal contest began.
Hertha observed that the monster was trying to drive her into the water, where it would triumph. She avoided its charge, and found herself on solid ground again. The creature reared up in front of her, but, inconvenienced by its wound, it was wounded twice more, without result.
Plowing through the sand, howling, it attacked again. She avoided it, counting on its loss of blood. Once gripped by those terrible jaws, it would all be over for her. It was necessary to wait, and only attack with a sure thrust.
Suddenly, the powerful creature stopped. It perceived the virgins in the distance; that prey seemed more tempting than the ungraspable creature with the painful sting. Roaring, the monster advanced straight toward them, but Hertha bounded on to its slippery back. She held on with her knees and left arm; her knife drove into the dense throat all the way to the hilt. All her strength went into her arm, and she felt the dark flesh opening wide beneath the blade.
A gush of blood sprang forth. She let go and threw herself backwards. The wounded beast reared up, almost upright, while muted howls emerged from its throat. It fell back.
Hertha waited, wanting to strike the other eye. As she drew nearer, on the alert, the heavy mass collapsed, and she felt that she was safe. Standing up, she put her bloody knife back into her belt. In the sea breeze, her tunic flapped like a flag; her loose hair undulated around her. The joy of triumph swelled her breast.
An incarnation of victory, uplifted by the battle and giant strength, she went back to the palace with a firm stride, with Nyve breathless in her arms. The princess’s heart was beating next to hers, and the child with the soft eyes murmured: “You saved me, Nevea. You risked your life for mine; it belongs to you.”
The Queen soon arrived. How tenderly she took Nyve to her heart! What a soft gleam shone on the face that knew how to command! The Drymeans do not kiss as we do; their foreheads touch, or their eyes meet. Nacrysa looked at Nyve for a moment longer, her heart too heavy for her to speak. Then she turned to Hertha. “I cannot reward you as you deserve! What strength and courage you have, Nevea!”
“Queen,” Hertha replied, “I had to save Nyve; you had entrusted her to me.”
“Your eyes did not deceive me,” said the Queen, very softly, “but Nevea, you have surpassed my expectations.”
After this alarm, the peaceful days resumed. It is human to become attached to those that one has saved from harm or death, and Hertha perceived that in herself. She understood, in Nyve’s soft eyes, that she could set aside her mask without fear—the mask that it is necessary to wear on Earth against everyone. She would be able to love her forever. Summer would come, the Queen would emerge within the princess, the years would pass, and Hertha would be able to serve her.
“Twenty-seven realms form the central continent of Drymea,” Greena told her. “Many sea-girt places remain in the great wilderness of the Realm of the Sands, which are uninhabited, with neither water nor plants, but arid mountains and sun-burned plains.”
“Don’t forget,” Helya added, “The ten realms of Lisfer in the East, a country of rocks and woods. Its inhabitant work metals, dig in the ground and trade across the deep ocean with Tremelha, the last realm of the continent. Already, Tremelha is many days’ journey away. She we see it?”
“And do you know your world’s poles?” Hertha asked.
They all replied: “It’s the Ocean. No one goes beyond the misty isles of the North. Of what lies beyond
the Southern Sands, we know nothing. Drymea is so large! It’s better to discover one’s happiness than desert oceans.”
O Christopher Columbus! thought the Terrestrial woman—but she smiled and kept silent.
The realms were evoked, with their sonorous or harmonious names, their immense rivers, their vibrant capitals in the plains, sentinels of the river-banks, their multiple populations, from Rovenar in the North to Manharvar in the South: two million souls, in total.
“Two hundred years ago,” Nyve said, “the Terror of the Sea was unknown on our shores. No one before you has vanquished the monster. Where do these creatures come from, which want to do harm to us, the innocent?”
“I can answer that,” said Hertha. “What seems rare to you is the rule on our terrible world. Life multiplies there so rapidly that only pitiless destruction can balance it. Nature on our Earth, ‘red in tooth and claw,’ destroys an immense surplus of existences in every generation, which can find no place in life. The contest between beings and death is constant on the Earth. Here, I understand, it is not the same. Life increases more gradually, death does not scythe it down as rapidly. In your humankind, two hordes do not hurl themselves after the same booty. Ferocious beasts do not hunt defenseless flocks. The rule of our Earth is a war of all against all. Governments, sure that the hosts of the living will respond to their call, ignore the suffering and death of peoples. There will always be survivors, our despots think. But it seems to me that on Drymea, everything looks around with eyes that are open to life. The highest value, among you, is humanity, the greatest wealth, a healthy mind in a healthy body. Your law, signed by the name of the Goddess, rules and commands your Queens. But does not the advent of new existences depend on you? Your nature has determined that since the origin of Drymea and its humankind. So, respect life as a gift of your Goddess, not as wealth that belongs to you.”
She did not add: On Earth, tyrants and generals sacrifice human material judged inexhaustible at their leisure. They say, with a smile, in confrontation with a field covered with the dead: a few nights will repair all that. The universal struggle, daughter of life without measure, prepares a humankind hardened to all massacres, and especially to carrying them out. And women suffer; that is their lot!
Ought one, however, to judge the Earth as innocent as Drymea? The latter planet without winter, created beneath its suns, went its own way, vaster and better endowed. But Hertha knew that its evolution, even in a spiritual sense, was not ours. She had run aground, alive, in a world that she should never have reached even beyond death. Somewhere, everything would become clear. But where?
IV. Through the Realm
The silver sun had just risen. Nyve, her hands folded around her knees, was sitting on one of the marble steps with Hertha beside her. The placid hour moved on in its transparent flight. Then, Nyve abruptly raised her brunette head and her soft eyes.
“Nevea, you who are never mistaken, answer me without evasion. Now, I like you best of all my companions. That is not only for your strange beauty, nor your invincible strength, which saved me, nor for your boundless knowledge, not for all the marvels you have brought us. Why is it?”
Hertha replied: “The answer is to be found in our hearts, Nyve. There are spiritual laws, like the laws governing matter, on my world as here. Souls of the same realm recognize one another quickly.”
“It is visible in your eyes that you cannot be mistaken or wrong,” said Nyve, “but they’re full of mysterious depths—and sometimes, also, so terrible that I’d be afraid if they were not Nevea’s. But I know that I can rest in peace upon your heart and reveal all my thoughts to you. For you cannot feel the pain and joy of others, as we do.” She was making allusion to the psychic or collective sense of the Drymeans, which Hertha was beginning to discover.
The daughter of Earth reviewed the past. Already, in Kartha, women overwhelmed by pain as well as soldiers with black hearts, hardened by 20 years of mercenary war, had said to her: “In you we trust!” The president of Kartha, the ascetic Herrer, a man who knew no forgiveness, also put his trust in her words and thoughts. Few people possess the rare gift of inspiring faith in others, and deservedly so. Hertha was worthy of it. “In truth,” Nyve murmured, “it would be pleasant to abandon myself to your rule, for you are only able to want good. I sense more in you than you know yourself. In Nirvanir we’re skilled in divining the souls of others. A little more every day, my realm is yours, Nevea, because you love me a little more.”
“Nyve,” said Hertha, smiling as she looked at her, “it is written: the words of sages are worth no more that the three little words that a child who loves will say to me.”
Oriah was shining in the silvery sky, and Nynfa was rising over the vast sea. Nyve took a sparkling necklace from her belt and passed it around Hertha’s neck.
“It’s my birthday today, a realm-wide celebration. Accept this unnecessary gift to your beauty, to please me!”
Helgar’s daughter looked into her Princess’s soft eyes, full of the tranquil innocence that knows nothing of evil; then she thought that she herself, whose rude race tamed men and the waves, had brought from her previous life, and from the black wine of books, a powerful, monstrous, inhuman and glacial science. Her name, Hertha, recalled the old Earth-Mother of the tribes of old. She shivered at the terrible heritage that was dormant in her blood. Her former friends had also inherited it: Marre-le-Rouge, the somber Helen Ers, even the pure and handsome Hersen who was known as Helmeted Love. That was the law of our Earth!
“Nyve,” she said, “you make me think of what we call the Garden of Eden, when the first of the women of Earth knew nothing of unhappiness. Our race soon learned the merciless lesson. Yours is better, Nyve.”
“But you,” said the Drymean, “are better than your race and me. For one can see well when one loves, and I know more about you than you do, Nevea.”
Days went by. They left the Summer Palace. According to the law of the realm, a princess has to spend half the year traveling through the State that she will inherit. She thus becomes familiar with women and places personally, not through others, and there is a human relationship between the future queen and her subjects; no high wall devoid of echoes is raised at birth between she who commands and they who obey. The Princess arrives, sees and departs according to her whim; ceremony is banned during the journey.
Hertha told Nyve a tale of Haroun-al-Raschid, altering it somewhat.
“All is not evil in your world,” said Nyve. “Besides, it has given birth to its most beautiful flower in you, and I forgive it because of Nevea.”
The Queen had awarded Hertha titles equal to the greatest in the realm, and the white costume of virgins of the royal blood, with the golden girdle and the silver sun.
Drymea has not yet invented railways. Its paved roads only know human footsteps—but a marvelous network of canals and rivers covers the entire central continent, incessantly furrowed by boats.
Nirvanir reappeared before the Dragonfly. Hertha’s life continued, placidly, but her cold beauty became animated and radiant with a new glow; an idea and an affection has arisen within her life. She read it in the dark eyes of the Queen.
“Nevea,” said Nacrysa, “it was a happy day when you came to Nirvanir. Firstly, you have saved Nyve’s life. Then, in your works, my sages have found a thousand benefits. You have revealed to us marvelous secrets enclosed within the books of your world. You are certainly a messenger of the Goddess, and I thank her. Every year shall celebrated your coming. I know your merit, and congratulate you on your work!”
A grave joy filled Hertha’s heart; she wanted to be such a dazzling presence in her adoptive realm as to be worthy of living there.
Then the Royal Palace and the city disappeared over the horizon. Again Hertha remembered her former life, indomitable and distended with pride, joyous in the glaucous waves or when she exerted her will, not wanting, in her pride, to be mistaken, to lower herself or to fear. But Nirvanir slowly took possession of her
. Now, she almost feared her empire over the Princess with the soft eyes, for the innocent child abandoned herself blindly to her affection for her, forgetting that Nevea was not of her race. Hertha sensed powerful spiritual forces around her. Drymea, which knew no more of desire or sensuality than men knew of profound friendship. And Hertha suspected that she might break Nyve with a word—but she felt sure of herself when that tender head rested on her shoulder and her own eyes were mirrored in hers: Drymea’s kiss.
All Drymean machines employ water, air and the suns. Fresh water circulates everywhere, like blood in a human body. It measures time, purifies edifices, imparts motion to public and domestic machinery. The music also makes primary use of wind and water; they go a long way in its melodious empire. The arts seem capable of unlimited development, every beautiful work expanding in a few years over the entire planet, whether it is a harmonious movement of the living or a new edifice.
One of the causes of the slower material progress on Drymea, Hertha thought, must be the pity people feel or one another. Everything is paid for in blood on Earth, the mastery of the waves or great edifices. One ends up calculating the average number of deaths for a construction of such a value; the human material enters into the calculation of depreciation. But here, the Queen feels pity for her people. Time and matter are expended to spare the living. Machines are made for human beings, not humans for machines, themselves slaves of the economic struggle to which we all submit even as we detest it—the law of Earth!
How is it, too, that one our world, antiquity was familiar with the wheel and flowing water, the Middle Ages with the canal, the wind, the beginnings of the force of matter in the service of humans, but that nothing was ever attempted to alleviate the pain of peoples? Here on Drymea, they know nothing of steam, explosives, railways, electricity…they are still in the era of St. Louis! And yet, their science supports their labor.
There was slavery on Earth, serfdom, economic exploitation in all its forms. The dominant sentiment of States was scorn for humankind and hated of the poor. What good did it do to lessen their pan? The living replaced the dead without the masters having to do anything. The just and the sage—who listened to them? But bloodlust dominated the heart of the male with strong arms, and the best responded to a call to arms with secret joy: the mark of the beast!
The World Above The World Page 28
