The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  “Nor do They Get from their Playing any Joy.”

Chapter XX. We Regard Other Wanderers

  THE gods provide for him that holds to his faith,” said Horvendile, with a slow smiling. “These jealous and rather pig-headed Heavenly Ones have very smoothly rounded off our playing with this tall, over-faithful fool: and so the saga of King Alfgar, after all, ends neatly enough.”

  But Ettarre did not smile. “This man was better and more fine than we are. I would that I could weep for this brave outcast king of men whose folly was more noble than is our long playing. . . . Dear Horvendile, and why may you give me no human heart?”

  The eternal artist looked very sadly toward her who was the pulse of all his dreams’ desire, in the while that she waited there beyond the blackened and ruined body of King Alfgar. “And why may you give me no happiness, Ettarre, such as—in this tall fool’s one moment,—we gave to him?”

  Thereafter Horvendile parted from the witch-woman, but not for long. For all happiness must end with death, and all that which is human must die. But Horvendile and his Ettarre, who are not either happy nor quite human, may not, their legend tells us, ever die, nor have they yet parted from each other for the last time.

  And yet, this legend tells us also, they must live in eternal severance, in that it stays his doom that he only of her lovers may not hope to win Ettarre. In recompense, he may not ever wholly lose her, as must all they who approach too near to the witch-woman lose her eternally, along with all else which they have.

  Some say this Horvendile is that same Madoc who first fetched Ettarre from out of the gray Waste Beyond the Moon, to live upon our earth in many bodies. The truth of this report is not certainly known. But it is known that these two pass down the years in a not ever ending severance which is their union. And it is known that in their passing they allure men out of the set ways of life, and so play wildly with the lives of men for their diversion. As they beguiled Alfgar, so have these beguiled a great sad host of other persons upon whom Horvendile and Ettarre have put a summoning for their diversion’s sake, lest these two immortals should think too heavily of their own doom.

  To those men of whom they get their sport they give at worst one moment of contentment. But Horvendile and his Ettarre have only an unfed desire as they pass down the years together; and because of that knowledge which they share, hope does not travel with them, nor do they get from their playing any joy. For each of these tricked lovers knows that each is but an empty shining, and that, thus, each follows after the derisive shadow of a love which the long years have not made real.

explicit

THE COLOPHON CALLED: “Hail and Farewell, Ettarre!”

  “Finis adest rerum.”

Chapter I. Which Disposes of The Witch-Woman

  YOU have heard the cry of aging and maimed poets to the witch-woman as they took their last leave of her. And for one, I find it not unnatural that I here tend to repeat the gist of their observations now that with the ending of King Alfgar’s saga I also take my last leave of The Witch-Woman, which was to have been a book.

  It is now a volume which, in its complete form, must remain in John Charteris’ library of unwritten books. When I most recently visited Fair-haven The Witch-Woman stood in very excellent company, between Milton’s King Arthur and Frances Newman’s History of Sophistication: and the general appearance of The Witch-Woman then so favorably impressed me that I was at pains to copy out and to preserve at least its Table of Contents.

  The Witch-Woman, as I thus found, was to have contained ten fairly lengthy episodes entitled, in their planned order: The Music from Behind the Moon; The Thirty-first of February; The Furry Thing That Sang; The Lean Hands of Volmar; The Holy Man Who Washed; The Little Miracle of St. Lesbia; The White Robe; The Evasions of Ron; The Child Out of Fire; and The Way of Ecben.