Jaspre removed her gown of icy satin, her undergarments and her shoes. Unaware that nakedness meant shame and vulnerability, she went to the Circle naked, and naked she lay down in it, her hands and her feet extended to conform with four points of the five-point Star, her head conforming with the fifth, and her hair like pale golden snow frayed out about her everywhere.
The scents of the smokes made Jaspre drowsy and sad. Her heart beat in her very womb, and she lay listening to it.
The woman said to her out of a blue fire-cloud in the air:
"You have brought many offerings to the Lord Angemal. Do you fear to give him of your blood?"
"No," said Jaspre.
She did not know what she had said. Yet her soul knew and beat its wings within her, attempting, like the caged bird it was, to fly.
How beautiful she was. The woman, bending above her with the silver knife, comprehended without human lust this beauty. After all, had she not trained it, complimented it, nourished it, setting all things to inspire the enchantment of physical perfection? A child of golden light.
"Fix your thoughts," the woman said, "upon him. Do you consent to be his?"
Jaspre breathed. "I do."
She felt a flicker of pain. It did not trouble her, she rejoiced in it. Her pain, too, she would render him. Was it sufficient? She almost entreated to be hurt again.
The dream began subtly, first with a vague awareness, then with a still certainty, of where she was, and the reason and the logic of it.
Far down under the house, beneath the very surface of the ground, the insularium was a cellar. Only the telescope craned, and that merely by the means of a stone funnel and twisted lenses, upward into the sky. Now, however, some portion of the chamber, that magian centre at which Jaspre lay—the pivot of the Star—had become the head of a mighty tower.
The tower was stone. She could visualize it quite clearly, the roofed cup of its spire, which contained her, the perilous swooping descent of its sides. Slowly, Jaspre rose. She looked about. The room in the head of the tower was small, and, of course, pentagonal. In each of the five sides, a long window lacking glass framed an uncanny vaporous darkness, without form and void—indeed, as the first darkness of all, the dark of Chaos, had been described in the parchments of the Judaians.
Yet Jaspre was not afraid of the void darkness, nor of the height of the tower. She went to the window before her, toward which formerly her own skull had pointed, and looked out of it.
The scentless, moistureless yet somber mists, disturbed a little, seemingly by human warmth, swirled and floated. Nothing else was visible before her, and so she turned her eyes to gaze downward.
The spire plummeted below her, it seemed, forever. She grasped at once, as if she had always been cognizant of the fact, that the sub-earth cellar of the insularium could be also the top of a tower because such a place thrust on, by sorcerous means, keep into the core of the world, to those nether regions, those buried caverns that had been named Hell, or Hades, or Tellus Occultus in explanatory, analogous legend. It seemed to fall miles below her, growing ever more slender as it fell, becoming eventually nothing larger or stronger than a needle, and on this the upper masonry balanced, and she within it, so she seemed to experience all at once a gentle swaying in the cup of the tower, rhythmic as that of a pendulum, mild as that of a flower stalk in a breeze. And still she was not afraid, either to sense this motion, or to stare downward into the formless abyss.
There were carvings in the sides of the tower, the magic symbols from the chamber as it had been, the zodiac, the Crown, the Sword, the Chalice—she knew such seals must hold the spire safely.
And then she became aware of the little fluttering at her left wrist. She looked, and a scarlet butterfly flew away from her, away down the length of the tower, and then another, another, an unraveling scarf of butterflies like winged blood. Jaspre watched them descend, and as she leaned there, strands of her unbound hair came streaming over her shoulder and spilled away also, unfurling like a shining ribbon, down, down, down with the red ribbons of the butterflies, down, down into the dark below.
Jaspre was filled by wonder, but not by perplexity or questioning. The butterflies, which were born from her wrist, seemed spontaneous and natural. The way her hair trickled now from its fount, pouring over her, pouring down, a golden river, a silken robe, growing long and longer—as it had done in her life, but never so swiftly—this appeared also fitting, and right.
And then her very eyes, her very sight and spirit seemed to be freed of her body, and she herself, invisible, a thing of air, flowed down the tower.
She had no fear. She was exalted, glad.
Darkness before her, stone beside her, the falling of scarlet and gold. At length, she saw an ending to every descent: The base of the tower.
It was a doorless block of granite, high as the walls of the house had been. And cut in the stone in letters taller than Jaspre, when she had been in her body, the words nox invictus.
The butterflies played around these letters, blooming like garnets in the dullness. The golden hair touched them, and so the ground, and poured no more, a trembling fountain that ran away into a thread above, and thus into nothing. Up there, in that fresh, inverted abyss, Jaspre's body leaned from its window, no longer to be seen.
About the base of the tower, a plain of smooth and empty rock glided away and away, also into an inchoate nothingness that was its only horizon.
Jaspre knew only gladness. Incorporeal and weightless as the winged creatures in their dance, she danced with them. Caught in a spiral of heatless laval fire, she beheld another thing, and paused transfixed.
On the horizon of nothingness, many days' journey as it seemed from the tower, a flicker of blue luster had evolved. And, in a few seconds, drew nearer. And in a few seconds more, much nearer.
As the light began to swell, Jaspre saw that it was not light at all, but the essence of the dark given clarity, unlight, more sumptuous, more lambent than any luminence of the world's.
From the brilliancy, bringing it like great wings folded about him, a figure presently came.
He was like some picture from one of her books, animate, and imbued with all the qualities of life, and with some other thing which was not life at all, but more, perhaps, than life. He rode a horse blacker than the blackest material the earth was capable of, blacker than ebony, sable or jet. But its mane and tail were of an iridescent blueness, and it was accoutered in a blue and silver hail of sparkling stuffs, bells, gems. He, too, was garbed in the same black blackness as the flesh of the horse, as if he had stepped from some A vernal lake and its waters clung to him, becoming satin, and metal. His hair was the blackest thing of all. His face—but as he came closer, he turned his head. Some shadow then, the curling curtain of the hair, hid all his features from her. She did not need to see them. She knew they were the features of the statue in the insularium.
He had ridden now to the spot where the fountain of hair came down. The horse stopped at once. And he, the god-demon she was to call Angemal, stretched out one hand gloved in silvery mail and with one huge ring upon it, a fiery ring of an apricot color, the stone which was her name. He touched the golden rope of her hair with his fingers. And immediately Jaspre saw, without amazement, the hair twisted and refashioned itself. It became a ladder of silk—
She heard him laugh, then, a low sound, scarcely audible, musical as song and colder than frozen iron. Then he was gone. It was not that he vanished. He was; he was not.
Jaspre felt a desolation and an agony, as if her psychic fibers tore and frayed at their insubstantial roots. Her spiritual sight went out, and in that fading, she glimpsed the butterflies raining like blood on the plain, while above her the golden hair was burning, shriveling, blowing away; black butterflies where there had been red. Even her soul, witnessing this, seemed to shrivel also, and to die.
Jaspre opened her eyes. She lay on the floor of the insularium. The chandelier smoldered, the color of thunder, most of its candles ext
inguished, and the woman bent close. For the only time in all their acquaintance, Jaspre beheld a glaze of ghostly excitement on my lady's face, but it was almost instantly spent, or hidden.
"And what did you see?"
"I saw—a tower." Jaspre faltered. She was weak, and dazzled by the feeble light. Her left wrist, bound tightly with cloth, hurt her.
"Yes. A tower. What else?"
Jaspre's eyes closed of themselves. The woman leaned nearer and she whispered, "Speak, or I shall be angry. What else?"'
"I saw—red butterflies, and my hair falling to the rock like a shower of gold. I never knew my hair would shine and blaze. . . . Oh, my lady, I am so weary."
"Speak. Or I shall strike you."
Jaspre's eyes opened wide. She was shocked and afraid. Never before had she been threatened—there had been no need.
"I—" Jaspre sought for words, found them, "I left my body and drifted down the tower to the plain beneath. There a man came, all in black, riding a black horse."
"And was it he?"
"I think that it was. But he turned aside. And when he touched the rope of hair, it became a silken ladder, and he laughed. Then my hair burnt and charred, and he was gone."
Jaspre, barely conscious that she did so, raised her hands, the left with pain and stiffness, and discovered her hair and that it was not charred, but whole, lying in a long swath all about her. Though it was not so long as it had been when she dreamed of it, and maybe not so golden.
The woman had gone away from her. In the darkest corner of the room she sat, rigid, silent. And then she said, "You have lain there enough. Dress. Go to your apartment." And her voice was like a frost.
Jaspre rose. Her sight clouded. She took up her clothes.
"Have I displeased you, my lady?"
"It is your master you have displeased, the princely lord Angemal. For he did not find you acceptable, it seems."
Jaspre wept as she clad herself in the gleaming garments which no longer gleamed.
"Why?" she murmured. "What have I done?"
"I do not know. You were reared to please him. A child of light consenting to the shadow. It should have delighted him, master of ironies that he is. But the emblem of the vision is blatant. He rejected you, and therefore the way into the world whereby he might have manifested."
Jaspre wept soundlessly, her heart, her spirit, breaking.
"Go," hissed the woman.
Jaspre ran soundlessly away.
After a while, the woman came to her feet. She returned across the chamber and regarded the opened Pentacle, the bowl of blood.
"Do you deny me still?" she asked. "Or do you only make a test of me? You shall have more. You shall have all of her, as I vowed, the supreme gift, the willing sacrifice of a human life. She will die for you with ecstasy and joy, in all her beauty, virgin, innocent, and wise. As I have caused her to be, a matchless unplucked flower set down upon your altar. Have I not devoted the sum of my energies to your service? You know I hunger for the power that only you can deliver. You know. But you will bargain, as in the days of the First Earth. Yes, you shall have more, much more."
3
The moon rose late upon the walled garden. It hollowed the sky above to a milky blueness, and touched the formal walks below with dainty traceries like lace, and in the wilder grottoes found out the pale limbs of nymphs and the mirrors of water. Passing the sundial, making of it a moon-dial, the moon let fall a long veil onto a lawn hedged by the briers of a savage shrubbery, and so found Jaspre, too. She sat upon the ground. Her hands, which had been dishes for her tears, now lay as if slain in her lap. Her eyes were dry, her heart a desert.
Her flight had brought her here, close to the outer wall, and she had glimpsed above it those claws of the blasted trees which were all she had ever seen of the outer world. A waste, wilderness must lie beyond the wall. And now, her life was such a wilderness. She could not mourn. She could no longer weep. Not grasping the essence of annihilation, she wished only to cease, to be no more, as if sunk in some profound sleep devoid of wakening.
It was unnecessary for her to search about herself. Even when the moon blushed through the garden, there was, for Jaspre's desolation, nothing to gaze on. And then some dormant nerve, rousing in spite of her, caused her to glance, to see the lawn, the dense shrubbery, and seated between the two, the still shape that was neither plant nor statue.
Jaspre's hands revived and sprang together. She started up, young enough to experience terror even in her misery. But the shape ascended with her, steeped in moonlight. So she saw—not image, not dream—but an actual man, and scarcely seven paces away. His unknown features were handsome, even in the mezzotint of the moon, though drained by the moon as if seen through a fine gauze. His hair looked dark, his eyes brilliant. His clothes were quite alien to her, being classically functional—the wear of a woodsman or a hunter from one of her painted books.
She said nothing. Her sheer innocence did not provide for her the ready suspicion and the outcry of another. Yet she feared, feared till he spoke. And then his voice lulled her by its gentleness, by the curious words he offered.
"Sweet girl, your hair, which is like the sun by day, becomes the moon by night."
"How do you know me?" Jaspre asked, wonder easing her anxiety as anxiety had eased her despair.
"I do not know you. The witch's house is avoided. But once, I came through the wood and heard melody and singing. It was not she. A creeper robes the wall. I climbed it. I saw you. I see you now. But know you I do not."
Jaspre turned a little way, toward the distant house from which the wide length of the garden separated her. It was an intuitive response, to evade him. And yet it was the house she now wished to evade, and all remembered and familiar things, tainted by her failure, the harsh and hating phrases of the woman this man named "the witch." She had flown here, and could not fly back into such dismal shelter. Entrapped, she shuddered. She had been kept from her own kind. She guessed this was a crime—to converse with a man. She had been offered to a god. Who had refused her. A fresh dawn of pain broke on her, a fresh river of tears.
"Why do you weep?" the man murmured. He had drawn closer, and though she had turned from him, she did not move away. "Do you fear me so very greatly?"
"No," she said. Her tears were once more ceaseless.
"Is it then that hag who mistreats you?"
"I am worthless," said Jaspre. "I desire only to die."
"You are lovely," he said. "You must live."
"I was born for one purpose, and cannot hope for it."
"What strange purpose can that have been?"
Her tongue could not render all his titles, yet: "A lord," she sobbed, snared by the unique and final easement of confession, confiding. "A prince of a prince—and he does not want me. I am vile to him."
"He told you this?"
"My lady told me it was so."
His voice was already murmuring at her ear, and now his arm slid around her. In her grief and wretchedness she leaned against him, aware this was some further sin, yet unable to deny herself the comfort of it.
"Silver maiden," he said, and held her so she might rest, "say I am a prince. Will you take me as your lord instead?"
But Jaspre, truthful in her naïveté, answered quietly,
"You are not a prince."
"Yes," he said, and laughed. His laugh was like warm music, and she recalled that other laughter in her dream, so terrible, so cold, and the destructive icy flame that leapt from it. "These are merely the clothes I wander in. Trust me, I have finery, I have horses flowered in metal and jewels. I have a kingdom, and rule there."
"No," she said, but she laid her head against his shoulder.
He smiled. His lips found her hair, her forehead, eyelids, lashes, and her tears ended.
"Will you take me, then, for myself alone?"
"Take you for yourself?" she whispered.
"As love, as lord. Your prince, if no other's, gorgeous Jaspre?"
&nb
sp; "How do you know my name?"
"I heard her call you, the hag in the house."
Jaspre raised her eyes. She beheld him again, more sufficiently now. Remotely, the darkness of his hair calmed her, a reminiscence. And it seemed to her that, although he was not the statue, nor a god, yet he was more wonderful than the phantom she had been given to, his eyes like stars, his face like an angel's—and though she had been allowed her life that she should serve one alone, and that the demon prince Angemal, yet it came to her all at once that to love him had been her error. Then the man who stood with her, holding her in his strong arms, warming and soothing her with his nearness and his own human beauty, kissed her mouth. The kiss was like no other touch, no other sensation ever before felt or looked for. It seemed to her indeed she slept and had passed thereby into some other world. Or that, for the very first, she had awakened.
From the depths of this extraordinary state, as if beneath water, she heard him say, "You are imprisoned here. Come with me, I will release you from your jail."
Metaphysically she struggled then, with everything, and with herself. And was brought at last to say: "No. I may not leave this place."
"Yes. You may, you shall."
Jaspre hung her head, the comprehension of the wrong she did now awesome, almost pleasing, yet dreadful and to be dreaded.
And in that moment flame burst like lightning from the far-off shadow of the house. A lamp had been kindled in Jaspre's apartment.
"She searches for you," he said. "Go in to her. Tomorrow, at moonrise, return to this spot. You will find me here."
"No, I shall not return."
"It is a charm I set on you."
"No. No."
"I will draw you back to me. You shall see. By a chain of stars."
"No."
A footstep clacked upon a path.
His arms let her free, and Jaspre moved toward the footstep like a clockwork thing. Deception was new to her, a sword which cut her hands. She did not look back, but beyond the clouded shrubbery, beyond a hedge, a walk, a tree with the moon like a white fruit in its branches, his voice stole once again to her ear, a moth of sound, no more, that replied only: Yes.
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