Something About Eve

    Nor was that all. The wives of Glaum and the Temple of the Mirror and all that was about Gerald began to waver. All the material things about him showed now like paintings on a gauze curtain which was moving and crinkling in a very gentle breeze. The shaping of the six wives became longer and more attenuated: they were shaped like the shadows of women in a fine sunset. These so prettily tinted shadows strained toward the mirror and entered it precisely as you may see smoke drift toward and out of an opened window. Then all the temple followed them collapsingly, as if colored waters were running into a hole. The mirror swallowed all. Caer Omn was gone: the land of Dersam was a ruined land without inhabitants. Afterward the pale glass blinked seven times like summer lightning, and the mirror was not there.

    Gerald stood alone in a cedar-shadowed way. He was weeping quite unaffectedly. His very deepest poetic sensibilities had been touched by the rather beautiful idea that he had loved this woman all his life long, and that now he had lost her forever: but a little way behind Gerald the silver stallion stayed unimmolated, and grazed placidly.

PART FIVE THE BOOK OF LYTREIA

15. At Tenjo’s Court

    “Whether you boil or roast snow, you can have but water of it!”

    GERALD passed on, riding upon the stallion Kalki, down a valley of cedar-trees, into the realm of Tenjo of the Long Nose. This was the land of Lytreia, they told him. But, here too, dejection overbrooded all, and the atmosphere was elegiac, for people everywhere were lamenting that vigor and resiliency and liveliness had gone out of their noses, so that no man in Lytreia was able to sneeze or to employ his nose in any other normal way.

    “Well, now, suppose you take me to this king of yours,” said Gerald, “for it may be I can re-awaken hereabouts all the lost joys of influenza.”

    “And who shall we say to him has come into Lytreia, red-headed and riding upon the back of this huge and sparkling horse with the splendid nose?”

    “You will say to your king that this land is honored by a visit from Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, as he passes toward his appointed kingdom in Antan, riding in very terrible estate upon the back of his famous silver stallion Kalki, a beast which, strictly speaking, has no nose, but only nostrils at the tip of his long, noble head.”

    They also seemed unimpressed. “No god is of terrible estate except the Holy Nose of Lytreia; nor do we concede the existence of any kingdom not his. Nevertheless, you may come with us.”

    “Upon my word,” thought Gerald, “but in these parts the people pay very inadequate homage to us gods and are little better than heretics.”

    But he went with these over-sceptical persons quietly to their King Tenjo.

    And Tenjo received the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones more affably. First, though, the grave, white-bearded King shared with the visiting god a quite excellent dinner, which was handsomely served to them by ten pages in ermine and a seneschal in vermilion silk: not until dinner was over, and the two sat drinking their spiced wine out of gold goblets, would the King talk about his troubles. Then Tenjo complained that his nose was fallen and flabby. It was no longer worshipful. That was in all ways deplorable, said the King, refilling his goblet, inasmuch as his people worshipped a nose, and could respect no male creature who had not a large and high-standing and robust and succulent nose.

    Gerald was a little puzzled, because this seemed to him a queer sort of calamity to be befalling anybody, unless it was caused by the magic of the wu. But Gerald made no comment. He asked only how this sad state of affairs had come about.

    He was told that all the youth and vigor had been taken out of the Holy Nose of Lytreia, and out of Tenjo’s nose, and out of the nose of every man in the kingdom, by the blighting magic of a sorceress who had lately established her residence in the tomb of King Peter the Builder.

    “It is there,” said Tenjo, “the veiled Mirror of the Two Truths is hidden: but not even of that does this sorceress seem afraid.”

    “Nor, for that matter, am I: for I am Lord of the Third Truth. Well, it is fairly evident this woman is a wu.”

    “You may be right. I confess that dreadful possibility had not ever occurred to me—”

    “Only we gods are omniscient, my dear Tenjo,” said Gerald, kindlily. “So there is no need for any mere king to be ashamed of his human blindness.”

    “—Because, as I must tell you, before this minute I had not ever heard of a wu.”

    “You have been lucky. The less one hears of such creatures, the better for everybody. So, how is this woman called?”

    “She is called Evaine,” said Tenjo; “and she is called also the Lady of Peter’s Tomb, now that she has taken possession of it.”