Something About Eve

    “Why, then, I was trying to say that your horse can get you to Antan within an hour. You can find out for yourself all about the place. And I daresay this Queen Freydis, from all I have heard of her, will not have the least objection to your rude way of grabbing and pawing at people and interfering with my housework and generally misconducting yourself. It is the sort of thing she is quite used to. But I do not like it: I feel you would not do it if you really respected me. And I am sorry if anything I have said or done has given you any such wrong notions about me. And if you stuck yourself with that needle it was simply your own fault. And that is all there is to it.”

    Gerald replied: “You are regrettably lacking, my dear, in the confidence and the generosity peculiar to your sex. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of anything more dreadful than your conduct. Nevertheless, I must stay until Wednesday, for otherwise I cannot possibly judge of your magics.”

    “Oh, very well, then!” Maya answered, with unconcealed regretfulness over the fact that she would have to put up with Gerald for yet another day.

25. The God Conforms

    FOR Gerald, upon reflection, had decided it would be really amusing to remain upon Mispec Moor until Wednesday, since only upon Wednesday could Maya show the perfection of her thaumaturgy. Thursday, though, as the wise woman forewarned him candidly, was her cleaning day; and she simply could not be bothering over company with the house all topsy-turvy.

    “And I also warn you well in advance, my darling,” said Gerald, “that the performance must be gratis, since I have no material possessions, save possibly my riding-horse, to barter for the privilege of witnessing your parlor magic.”

    “Why, but what in the world would I be needing with another horse, who already have dozens of them eating their heads off all over the moor? and when in the world, you pest, I became ‘your darling’ I would really like to know!”

    “Now, but have you, indeed? The very first moment I saw you, my dear.”

    “I do wish you would sometimes, just for a change, talk half rationally. And of course it has always been my custom to further the true happiness of the men with whom I was particularly intimate by turning them into domestic animals of one kind or another. Quite a number of them came out horses—”

    “I do not altogether approve of such a custom. Still, women have incalculable fancies: and all men find out sooner or later that it is less trouble to indulge these fancies than to thwart them. At any rate, a god has no concern with these minor sorceries.”

    “Of course not!” Maya agreed. “A scatterbrained, talk-you-to-death, carrot-topped, and generally good-for-nothing god is not concerned with anything except with getting on to that minx Freydis.”

    Gerald waved aside the insinuation. He continued to talk about more immediate matters, and he said:

    “Nevertheless, your story interests me. It would be droll to have a horse like that. So suppose, now, my dear, suppose that I trade my divine steed for one of those unusual horses of yours?”

    “No, Gerald, really I would rather not. For the men that I put my magic upon used once to be fine knights or barons or even kings,—and, for that matter, there were a couple of emperors, though only in a small way,—and I confess to a certain sentiment about them still.”

    Then in a clay chafing-dish Maya of the Fair Breasts burned fig-leaves with benzoin and macis and storax. And she showed Gerald how one might master mercurial things. She displayed to him the small magics which are Wednesday’s. She revealed to him—cursorily, since they had only a morning at their disposal,—the secrets of remunerative mediocrity in the learned professions, in truth-telling, in upholstering, in the removal of mountains into the sea, in the erection of bridges over any unpassable place, in the preparation of rose-colored mirrors, in criticism, in oratory, in jurisprudence, and in the safe interpretation of Holy Writ. As himself a former student of magic, Gerald found these formulae of interest: but, as a god, he, regarded Maya with profound respect, as one who, with no native divine advantages, had yet mastered this quite reputable stock of knowledge and ability.

    Yet the workings of these magics were not apparent until Gerald had put on the spectacles which Maya gave him. He found these glasses so soothing to the eyes that he retained them, just for the remainder of his visit to her cottage.