The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  As he went on, with his pouch of meat beating against his side, he heard a feeble yip of hunger from behind. And turning around then to the sound of a familiar voice, he saw a bony wolf, trailing sadly. Odjigh felt pity for those whose skulls he had split. Wolf stuck out his steaming tongue, and his eyes were red.

  So the slayer continued on his way with his animal companions, subterranean Badger to his left, and Lynx, who sees all on earth, to his right, and Wolf, with hunger in his gut, behind.

  They came to the middle of the interior sea, indistinguishable from the continent save for the vast green of its ice. And there Odjigh, the slayer of wolves, sat upon a block of ice and placed before him the stone calumet. And before each of his living companions, he placed a block of ice, which he carved with the angle of his ax into the shape of the holy censer where one breathes smoke. Into the four calumets he packed the aromatic herbs; then he struck one firestone against another, and the herbs caught fire, and four thin columns of smoke rose toward the sky.

  Yet the gray spire that rose before Badger drifted to the West; and the one that rose before Lynx curved to the East, and the one that rose before Wolf arced to the South. But the gray whorl from Odjigh’s own calumet rose to the North.

  The wolf slayer resumed his path. And, looking to his left, he grew sad: for Badger, who sees beneath the earth, drifted off to the West, and looking to his right, he lamented Lynx, who sees all on earth, and who fled to the East. He thought then of how these two animal companions were judicious and wise, each in the domain assigned him.

  Nevertheless he walked on boldly, having behind him the red-eyed, hungry wolf, for whom he felt pity.

  The mass of frigid clouds situated to the North seemed to touch the heavens. The winter grew crueler still. Odjigh’s feet began to bleed, cut by the ice, and his blood froze into black scabs. But he went on for hours, days, weeks, no doubt, perhaps even months, sucking on a bit of dried meat, throwing scraps to his companion Wolf who followed him.

  Odjigh walked with an indistinct hope. He pitied the world of men, animals, and plants that were dying off, and felt all the stronger for fighting the cause of the cold.

  And finally, his path was blocked by an immense barrier of ice that enclosed the sky’s somber dome, like a mountain range with invisible peaks. The great icicles that plunged into the ocean’s solid sheet were of a limpid green; but they grew muddled in their accumulation; and as they mounted, they appeared an opaque blue, much like the color of the sky on the fairer days of time past: for they were composed of fresh water and snow.

  Odjigh seized his ax of green jade, and carved steps into the escarpment. And so he climbed slowly to a prodigal height, where it seemed to him his head was enveloped in clouds and the ground had disappeared. And on the ledge just below him, Wolf sat and waited assuredly.

  When he believed he was at the crest, he saw that it was constituted by a sparkling, vertical blue wall, and that one could not pass beyond it. But he looked behind him, and he saw the famished, living beast. His pity for the animate world gave him strength.

  He sank his jade ax into the blue wall, and dug into the ice. Sparks of many colors flew around him. He dug for hours. His limbs were jaundiced and wrinkled by the cold. His pouch of meat had long since withered. He had chewed the aromatic herb of the calumet to trick his hunger, and, suddenly mistrustful of the Higher Powers, threw his calumet into the depths along with the two firestones.

  He dug. He heard a dry grinding noise, and cried out: for he knew this sound originated from the blade of his jade ax, which the excessive cold was going to break. So he lifted it up and, with no other means of warming it, sank it powerfully into his right thigh. The green ax was stained with hot blood. And, once again, Odjigh dug into the blue wall. Wolf, sitting behind him, howled as he lapped at the red drops raining down.

  And suddenly, the smooth wall burst. There was a tremendous gust of heat, as if the hot seasons had been building up on the other side at the barrier of the sky. The breach widened, and the mighty wind enveloped Odjigh. He heard the rustling of little spring shoots and felt summer’s blaze. In the great current that carried him away, it seemed to him that the seasons were returning to the world, to save general life from its icy death. The current swept in the white rays of the sun, and warm rains, and caressing breezes, and clouds heavy with fecundity. And in this hot gust of life, the black clouds piled up and begat fire.

  There was a great streak of fire and a crack of thunder, and the dazzling line struck Odjigh in the heart like a red gladius. He fell against the smooth wall, his back turned to the world, toward which the seasons were rushing back in the river of the storm, and the hungry wolf, timidly climbing upon him, setting his paws upon his shoulders, began to gnaw at the nape of his neck.

  The Terrestrial Fire

  Marcel Schwob

  Translated by Kit Schluter

  TO PAUL CLAUDEL

  THE FINAL THRUST of faith that had swept the world was unable to save it. New prophets had arisen in vain. The mysteries of the will were expounded to no end; it was no longer a question of controlling it, but rather its quantity seemed simply to diminish. The energy of all living things dissipated. It had been gathered in one supreme effort toward a future religion, and the effort had failed. All withdrew into a very gentle selfishness. Every passion was tolerated. The world was as if in a hot lull. Vices bred there with the frenzy of great, poisonous plants. Immorality, become the very law of things, with the god Chance of Life; science obscured by mystical superstition; the Tartuffery of the heart, which the senses serve as tentacles; the seasons, once distinct, now mixed together in a series of rainy days that incubated the storm; nothing precise, nor traditional, but a disarray of old-fashioned things, and the reign of the vague.

  It was at that point when, through an electric night, the omen of devastation appeared to fall from the sky. A heretofore unseen tempest blew on high, engendered by the Earth’s corruption. The colds and warmths, the brightnesses of the sun and snows, the rains and the confused beams of light, had birthed forces of destruction that broke out without warning.

  For an extraordinary cascade of aeroliths became visible and the night was scored by dazzling lines; the stars blazed like torches, and the clouds were heralds of fire, and the moon a red brazier hurling varicolored projectiles. All things were infused with a pale light that limned the last hovels, and the glare of which, however softened, caused tremendous pain. Then the night that had opened, again withdrew. From every volcano columns of ash blew into the sky like volutes of black basalt, the pillars of a supraterrestrial world. A rain of dark dust fell backward and a cloud emanated from the Earth, which covered the Earth.

  And so passed the night, and the dawn was invisible. A gigantic wash of deep red coursed through the sky’s embers from east to west. The atmosphere became fiery, and the air was pocked with black dots that clung to everything.

  The crowds lay prostrate on the ground, not knowing where to flee. The bells of the churches, convents, and monasteries chimed uncertainly, as if struck by supernatural clappers. There were, from time to time, detonations in the forts, where siege cannons fired rounds of powder in an attempt to clear the air. Then, as the red globe touched the west and a day had slipped past, the general silence set in. No one had any strength left to pray, nor to beg.

  And as the incandescent mass sank below the black horizon, the entire western sky burst into flames, and a sheet of fire retreated along the bygone route of the sun.

  There was an exodus before the celestial and terrestrial fires. Two poor little bodies slid along a low window and ran wildly. Despite the maculations from the rancid air, her hair was very blond, her eyes limpid; he, golden-skinned, with a bright curtain of locks, where peculiar glints bore violet light. They knew nothing, neither one nor the other; they were hardly beyond the confines of childhood and, as neighbors, felt the affection of a brother and sister.r />
  And so, holding each other’s hand, they walked down the black streets, where the roofs and chimneys appeared rubbed with a sinister light, through the men laid out and the splayed, twitching horses, then on to the outer walls, the dispeopled suburbs, moving to the east, away from the flames.

  They were stopped by a river that suddenly blocked their way, whose water coursed rapidly.

  But there was a bark on the riverbank: they pushed it off and threw themselves in, letting it go with the flood.

  The keel of the bark was seized by the current, its sides by the hurricane, and it shot off like a stone from the sling.

  It was a very old fishing bark, browned and polished from use, with paddle-worn oarlocks and gunwales shiny from the passage of nets, like a primitive and honest tool of this perishing civilization.

  They lay themselves down deep inside, still holding each other’s hand and trembling before the unknown.

  And the quick rowboat led them out to a mysterious sea, as they fled below the hot, swirling tempest.

  * * *

  —

  They awoke upon a desolate ocean. Their boat was surrounded by mounds of pale algae, where the sea foam had deposited its dry slime, where iridescent creatures and pink starfish putrefied. The small waves buoyed up the white bellies of dead fish.

  Half the sky was veiled by the growth of the fire, which crept sensibly forth and ate away at the other half’s ashen fringe.

  The sea appeared dead to them, like everything else. For its breath was pestilent and its clarity was streaked with veins of blue and deep green. Nevertheless the boat glided over its surface with unrelenting speed.

  The western horizon held bluish flickers.

  She dipped her hand in the water, and immediately withdrew it: the waves were already hot. A dreadful seething was perhaps going to cause the ocean to quake.

  To the south, they saw the white clouds with pink aigrettes, and were uncertain if this was ignited gas.

  The general silence and the growing fire transfixed them in a stupor: they preferred the great scream that had accompanied them, like the echo of a wheeze totalized in the wind.

  The far reaches of the sea, where the dome of ash, still half dark, had come to plunge, were opened by a gash of light. A livid blue portion of circle there seemed to promise entrance to a new world.

  “Ah! Look!” she said.

  The wispy steam floating behind them on the ocean had just lit up with the selfsame glow as the pale and trembling sky: it was the sea aflame.

  Why this universal destruction? Their heads, pounding from the overhot air, were filled with this multiplying question. They did not know. They were unaware of faults. Life embraced them; suddenly, they were living more quickly; adolescence seized them amid the burning of the world.

  And in this ancient bark, in this first instrument of life here below, they were such a young Adam and such a little Eve: the lone survivors of this terrestrial Hell.

  The sky was a dome of fire. Nothing remained on the horizon but a single distant blue point, over which the eyelid of fire was poised to close. They were already in the grip of a roaring sea.

  She stood and undressed. Naked, their pale and willowy limbs were illuminated by the universal glow. They took each other’s hands and kissed.

  “Let’s fall in love,” she said.

  Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was a Bengali poet, composer, and writer known for transforming Bengali literature. Separating himself from the traditional Sanskrit, Tagore also helped introduce Indian culture to the Western world and vice versa. And thanks to the profound appreciation of his book Gitanjali, translated as Song Offerings (1910), in 1913 Tagore became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He wrote several volumes of short stories, including Gora (1910), The Home and the World (1916), and Crosscurrents (1929). His most magnificent stories examine the lives of the meek and unassuming as well as the sometimes difficult realities of their lives. Tagore also wrote more than two thousand songs and hundreds of poems, many of which cannot be translated. “The Kingdom of Cards” is a story about bureaucracy and absurdity. In 1933, Tagore wrote a play based on this story that has been produced numerous times since his death.

  The Kingdom of Cards

  Rabindranath Tagore

  I

  ONCE UPON A TIME there was a lonely island in a distant sea where lived the Kings and Queens, the Aces and the Knaves, in the Kingdom of Cards. The Tens and Nines, with the Twos and Threes, and all the other members, had long ago settled there also. But these were not twice-born people, like the famous Court Cards.

  The Ace, the King, and the Knave were the three highest castes. The fourth caste was made up of a mixture of the lower Cards. The Twos and Threes were lowest of all. These inferior Cards were never allowed to sit in the same row with the great Court Cards.

  Wonderful indeed were the regulations and rules of that island kingdom. The particular rank of each individual had been settled from time immemorial. Everyone had his own appointed work, and never did anything else. An unseen hand appeared to be directing them wherever they went,—according to the Rules.

  No one in the Kingdom of Cards had any occasion to think: no one had any need to come to any decision: no one was ever required to debate any new subject. The citizens all moved along in a listless groove without speech. When they fell, they made no noise. They lay down on their backs, and gazed upward at the sky with each prim feature firmly fixed for ever.

  There was a remarkable stillness in the Kingdom of Cards. Satisfaction and contentment were complete in all their rounded wholeness. There was never any uproar or violence. There was never any excitement or enthusiasm.

  The great ocean, crooning its lullaby with one unceasing melody, lapped the island to sleep with a thousand soft touches of its wave’s white hands. The vast sky, like the outspread azure wings of the brooding mother-bird, nestled the island round with its downy plume. For on the distant horizon a deep blue line betokened another shore. But no sound of quarrel or strife could reach the Island of Cards, to break its calm repose.

  II

  In that far-off foreign land across the sea, there lived a young Prince whose mother was a sorrowing queen. This queen had fallen from favor, and was living with her only son on the seashore. The Prince passed his childhood alone and forlorn, sitting by his forlorn mother, weaving the net of his big desires. He longed to go in search of the Flying Horse, the Jewel in the Cobra’s hood, the Rose of Heaven, the Magic Roads, or to find where the Princess Beauty was sleeping in the Ogre’s castle over the thirteen rivers and across the seven seas.

  From the Son of the Merchant at school the young Prince learned the stories of foreign kingdoms. From the Son of the Kotwal he learned the adventures of the Two Genii of the Lamp. And when the rain came beating down, and the clouds covered the sky, he would sit on the threshold facing the sea, and say to his sorrowing mother: “Tell me, mother, a story of some very far-off land.”

  And his mother would tell him an endless tale she had heard in her childhood of a wonderful country beyond the sea where dwelled the Princess Beauty. And the heart of the young Prince would become sick with longing, as he sat on the threshold, looking out on the ocean, listening to his mother’s wonderful story, while the rain outside came beating down and the gray clouds covered the sky.

  One day the Son of the Merchant came to the Prince, and said boldly: “Comrade, my studies are over. I am now setting out on my travels to seek my fortunes on the sea. I have come to bid you good-bye.”

  The Prince said: “I will go with you.”

  And the Son of Kotwal said also: “Comrades, trusty and true, you will not leave me behind. I also will be your companion.”

  Then the young Prince said to his sorrowing mother: “Mother, I am now setting out on my travels to seek my fortune. When I com
e back once more, I shall surely have found some way to remove all your sorrow.”

  So the Three Companions set out on their travels together. In the harbor were anchored the twelve ships of the merchant, and the Three Companions got on board. The south wind was blowing, and the twelve ships sailed away, as fast as the desires that rose in the Prince’s breast.

  At the Conch Shell Island they filled one ship with conchs. At the Sandal Wood Island they filled a second ship with sandalwood, and at the Coral Island they filled a third ship with coral.

  Four years passed away, and they filled four more ships, one with ivory, one with musk, one with cloves, and one with nutmegs.

  But when these ships were all loaded a terrible tempest arose. The ships were all of them sunk, with their cloves and nutmeg, and musk and ivory, and coral and sandalwood and conchs. But the ship with the Three Companions struck on an island reef, buried them safe ashore, and itself broke in pieces.

  This was the famous Island of Cards, where lived the Ace and King and Queen and Knave, with the Nines and Tens and all the other Members—according to the Rules.

  III

  Up till now there had been nothing to disturb that island stillness. No new thing had ever happened. No discussion had ever been held.

  And then, of a sudden, the Three Companions appeared, thrown up by the sea,—and the Great Debate began. There were three main points of dispute.

  First, to what caste should these unclassed strangers belong? Should they rank with the Court Cards? Or were they merely lower-caste people, to be ranked with the Nines and Tens? No precedent could be quoted to decide this weighty question.

  Secondly, what was their clan? Had they the fairer hue and bright complexion of the Hearts, or was theirs the darker complexion of the Clubs? Over this question there were interminable disputes. The whole marriage system of the island, with its intricate regulations, would depend on its nice adjustment.