24 On Mispec Moor
Gerald, after they had dined, persuaded Maya of the Fair Breasts to permit him to rest over for supper also, now that his journeying was virtually complete. For beyond the home of the wise woman upon Mispec Moor the way lay unimpeded to the ambiguous lowlands of Antan, where Queen Freydis and her consort the Master Philologist ruled in, it was said, a very old, red-pillared palace which had once belonged to still another queen, named Suskind.
But, as to this Antan, Gerald could not, even now, learn anything quite definite, because of all the gods and myths who had passed down into Antan none ever returned. It thus stayed, as yet, regrettably dubious whether these glorious beings now all lived together in unimaginable splendor, as Gerald had gathered at Caer Omn; or whether, as ran the gloomier report which prevailed in Lytreia, they had each been destroyed by the Master Philologist.
In any case, from Mispec Moor you clearly saw Antan. Thus, there remained for Gerald hardly more than an hour’s ride, and perhaps a morning’s spirited work, in order to complete his predestined conquest of his appointed kingdom. Gerald therefore rested until to-morrow, with this not over-hospitable hostess,—who viewed him with such uncalled-for suspicion that (as he found toward midnight) the woman had actually bolted the door to her room, out of a foolish notion that he might be trying to enter this immovable door, from which he was, instead, with entire dignity tiptoeing away. He rested so as to be in his very best fettle when he approached, to-morrow, the climax of his superb achievements.
Meanwhile he questioned Maya of the Fair Breasts as to his future kingdom; and she told him it was a poorly thought-of place. Nobody ever went there, Maya said, except such trash as poets and threadbare myths and over-inquisitive persons and such celestial riffraff as had lost their station in human esteem and their priests and their temples, said Maya, nodding her head rather gravely. That curious crown of hers sparkled cheerily with every movement of her head, for she sat at the window in a patch of sunlight, about her darning. And as to what became of such worthless people, Maya continued, after they reached Antan, that, certainly, was a question of no importance—
“Yes, but what is the general opinion hereabouts, among the sorcerers and enchanters of Turoine?”
“Our opinion is that the matter is not worth bothering about.”
“Yes, but what do you think—?”
Maya looked up from her darning, in mild but candid surprise. “You really do ask the silliest questions! For one, I do not think at all about those outcast tramps and vagabonds except to see that they steal nothing as they go by.”
So then Gerald questioned her about Freydis.
“I have heard of the woman,” said Maya, rather absent-mindedly, as she went on with the darning upon which stayed fixed her actual attention,—“of course: but nothing to her credit. They report, for example, that she has a mirror—”
“I, too, have heard continually of that mirror, but never of exactly what she does with it.”
“For that matter, Gerald, I also have a mirror, if that is all which is needed. Everybody has a mirror. In fact, I have a number of mirrors.”
“I know. I have noticed them everywhere about the cottage. But all your mirrors, dear lady, are rose-colored.”
—To which Maya replied irrelevantly, and without looking up from her darning: “But did you not know from the first that I was a wise woman? In any case, it is said that Queen Freydis holds her mirror up to nature, and that she does not scruple to hold this mirror up to her disreputable visitors, too. For they really are, you know. It is all very well being a god while it lasts. Only, it never does. And then where are you? Why, exactly! That is why the overlords of Turoine have always seemed to me more business-like. And there is no flaw in it, people say,”—now, though, as Gerald deduced, Maya was talking about the Mirror of the Hidden Children,—“no distortion of any kind, no flattering in it, and no kindly exaggeration. It is not in anything like my more sensible rose-colored mirrors. And nobody could of course be expected to approve of such a mirror.”
“Nevertheless, if there indeed be any such mirror, I mean to face it, when to-morrow I enter into my kingdom, and liberate the great words of the Master Philologist, and restore the Dirghic mythology, for in that mythology, I must tell you, I am a god with four aspects.”
“What nonsense you do talk!” said Maya, comfortably, as she slipped the darning-egg into another stocking.
Then Gerald confided in her. Then Gerald told Maya of how he, howsoever unmeritorious, was heir to all the unimaginable wonders which harbored yonder. He told her that he and none other was Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones. He told her of everything that had happened in his triumphant expedition, thus far. He told her of somewhat more than had happened, for under Gerald’s expansive handling of the rather beautiful idea of his own invincibility the tale became an epic. And Gerald told her, too, of how he intended to rule in the goal of all the gods. He briefly indicated his summer and winter palaces, the probable personnel of his harem, the deities who would serve in his immediate household, and, in a general way, the worlds which he would create: and he promised to remember Maya, liberally, after he had come into his kingdom.
And Maya all this while went on darning placidly. She admitted that men—
“But, as I was telling you, I am a god,—a god with no less than four aspects.”
That did not really matter, Maya considered. The gods, as near as she had been able to judge those scatter-brained ne’er-do-wells that went tramping by, were just the same, and, if anything, more so. It was simply incredible, she continued, how little wear there was in a stocking nowadays. She then admitted that male persons did have these notions, even about such unlikely places as Antan. And Gerald would, in any event, be finding out for himself all about Antan to-morrow, because if he for one solitary instant thought she was going to have him hanging about her cottage forever—!
“Come now, my dear, but hospitality is a very famous virtue: and, besides, you owe it to me that you are now the handsomest woman in these parts.”
“But that, Gerald,—even if it were the truth, of course, for you need not think you are fooling me, you scamp,—that is just why people will be imagining things if you continue to stay here.”
“Then let us take good care not to be suspected unjustly, because that would be unfair to everybody—”
“Oh, get along with you! and do you pick up every one of those stockings, too, now you have scattered them all over the floor. And really, you red-headed pest, I am not joking, either. That horse of yours—”
“Ah, yes, that horse of mine! I admit that to the discerning eyes of a woman it is not the handsomest beast in the world. And I suppose you are about to point out that this horse is unworthy of me, and that I ought to dispose of it, in one way or another—”
“But whatever nonsense are you talking, now! It is an extremely handsome horse. There is some sort of prophecy about it, too, is there not? So you would be even more foolish than you seem to be, to part with that horse.”
“Well, to be sure, there may be something in what you say.”
“—And what I was attempting to tell you is that, if you will simply permit me to talk for one minute without interrupting—”
“Hereafter I remain as quiet, my dear, as a belch in polite society; and you may go on.”
“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.