Something About Eve

    THE seven wives conducted Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and the Preserver, to the Temple of the Mirror. It was the old wife who now lifted from the mirror a blue veil embroidered with tiny fig-leaves worked in gold thread. You saw then that this mirror was splotched and clouded and mildewed. It reflected sallowly a distorted and rather speckled Gerald: it glistened with an unwholesome iridescence.

    Thereafter Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, when he had announced his various titles, with such due ceremony as befits an exchange of amenities between divine powers, moistened his finger-tip with one drop of water from the Churning of the Ocean. Upon the sacred Mirror of Caer Omn he drew with his fingertip the triangle of the male and of the female principle, so that the one interpenetrated the other: and he invoked Monachiel, Ruach, Achides, and Degaliel. Then there was never a more inconsequent rejoicing witnessed anywhere than was made by the seven wives of Glaum of the Haunting Eyes, now that the sacred mirror was altered, for these seven ungrateful scatter-brained women were now singing a sort of hymn in honor of the charitableness and the vigorous procreative powers of the sun.

    “But what under the sun has the sun,” said Gerald, a little flustered, “to do with the not inconsiderable favor which I have conferred upon this country? And do you think such anatomical details as you are singing about quite the proper theme for an opera?”

    They replied: “Sir, it is obvious that you are a sun god, of the clan of Far-darting Helios and Freyr the Fond Wooer and the Elder Horus and Marduk of the Bright Glance, all of whom have ridden this way as they passed down toward Antan. Sir, it is clear that the Lord of the Third Truth, also, is a god whose mission it is to awaken warmth and humidity and a renewal of life in all that he touches.”

    “But,” Gerald said, “but with my finger!”

    “—Just as,” they concluded,” you have done to this mirror. Therefore, sir, we are praising your charitableness and your vigorous procreative powers.”

    “Ah, now I comprehend you! Still, let us, in these public choral odes, let us adhere strictly to the charitableness! Those other solar traits I would describe as far better adapted to chamber music, in some duet form. Meanwhile, since this somewhat un-American hymn is intended as a personal tribute, I accept your really very personal arithmetic in the proper spirit, dear ladies, as a pious exaggeration. For of course, just as you say, it does seem fairly obvious I am a sun god.”

    Yet Gerald, after all, was now more deeply interested in that huge mirror than in anything else. He saw that the mirror which they worshipped in the land of Dersam was not in any way dreadful. If only the mirror of Freydis was like this, then every inheritance which awaited him in his appointed kingdom might well be pleasant enough.

    For now the Mirror of Caer Omn shone with a golden clear glowing, and in its depths he viewed with lively admiration a throng of strange and lovely beings such as he had not known in Lichfield.

12. Confusions of the Golden Travel