His face went pale. He jerked his head away from her and said, in a voice whose very low evenness terrified her worse than the touch of violence, "Someday I shall make you regret those words, Pamina." He turned on his heel and strode out of the chamber.
Left alone, terrified, the girl let herself fall into a chair. She covered her face with her hands, and sobbed. Oh, for the safety of her mother's house, where nothing like this could ever have happened, where such as Monostatos knew their place, and Halflings were not so presumptuous!
Her mother, in the strength of her wisdom, might choose such consorts for her amusements as she would; she could do no wrong. Pamina knew well that Disa, at least, and probably her other sisters as well, chose male Halflings as lovers now and again, and her mother, if she did not precisely approve, at least forbore to interfere. But she had warned Pamina against doing the same, in words the girl could not mistake, telling her that when the time was ripe she would have a consort worthy of her.
Her mother would never have given her to Monostatos. But here in Sarastro's realm, where she could not trust anything or anyone—that would be exactly the kind of thing the debased priesthood of Sarastro might consider suitable.
But Sarastro was her father—or so Monostatos had said, and would he dare to tell a lie that she could uncover by asking a single straightforward question?
Yet here among the priest-kings of Atlas-Alamesios—so her sketchy knowledge of this realm went—she had heard that women had no power to choose their consorts, but that their husbands were allowed power over them. This, she had once guessed, was one reason for the enmity between the Starqueen and Sarastro, that he did not accept the great truth, that the Queen of the Night was Lady and Mistress of all the lands. And now she was in the power of this corrupt and wicked man who dared to deny the powers of the Starqueen and to assert dominion even over the Starqueen's daughter. Yes, she could even believe that Sarastro might attempt to give her over to the Son of the Serpent in marriage!
She dared not take that risk; dared not remain here. This time, Monostatos had stopped with a single kiss, and even as inexperienced as Pamina was, she could tell that it was a kiss, not of passion, but of conquest, even of contempt. But if he was firmly resolved to have her— Pamina's skin crawled, feeling that if Monostatos touched her again her very flesh would crawl off her bones. She did not know why she felt such revulsion; it was simply a fact, a reaction she could not control.
She had heard her sisters talking of their lovers, heard them compare the strength of a bull-halfling with ordinary men, had seen presumptuous Halflings punished. Never in her wildest dreams had it occurred to her that anyone, human or Halfling, would touch the daughter of the Starqueen against her will. Now, thinking of the old rivalries between Sarastro and the Starqueen, she wondered if Sarastro had brought her here to humble her. Pamina resolved that she would die first.
"Go," she said suddenly to the dog-halfling who served her, cast a swift look at the plate containing her abandoned meal, and said, "Bring me—bring me another cup of wine, and some of those little cakes."
The Halfling woman, evidently delighted to be asked spontaneously for something, hurried away. Pamina went quickly to the clothespress in the corner of the chamber and drew on her old cloak. Sarastro's minions had furnished the room with an elaborate wardrobe of silken garments of all kinds, but Pamina disdainfully refused to touch them. Now she pulled the cloak over her head and stepped out of the garden window, hurrying down the path toward the distant gates.
As she hastened through the line of cypress trees, her heart beating fast, she actually believed she might succeed in slipping away unobserved. It was high noon and the priests, she knew, would be in the temple for the celebrations.
Abruptly Monostatos, surrounded by a half dozen Halfling servants, stepped out of the concealment of the trees.
"I thought you would," he observed with satisfaction. "Take the princess back to her rooms."
Pamina struggled wildly as they seized her, with an agonizing sense that this had happened before, that this was simply a repetition of her kidnapping, that it was destined to be repeated over and over again, that it was some terrifying trap of her destiny, to be seized and flung back into her imprisonment.
"You had better come with dignity," Monostatos said quietly. "If you do not, I will license them to treat you with force, and if you do not yield to them I will drag you with my own hands."
Pamina sank down, weeping, on the path. She hardly knew when they lifted her and carried her back to the suite of rooms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEN Pamina came to her senses again, she I was lying on the silken couch in the suite of Vw rooms placed at her disposal by Sarastro, and at the side of the couch stood Monostatos.
"Pamina, you have displeased me," he said, "and you have displeased Sarastro, since it was by his will that you were confined to these rooms. Will you give us your pledge not to attempt escape again? Or will you force us to restrain you physically, with bonds? It would be a distressing sight—a princess in chains!"
His face looked pale, stern, unbending. It frightened her more than any grimace, any menace or threat. Would he really dare? Looking at that pallid face, Pamina decided that he would.
Nevertheless, she refused to beg or plead with him. Nor would she give a parole to Sarastro. Even if he was actually her father, and this was not just another of Monostatos's abominable lies.
"I will certainly not promise you anything of the sort," she said, staring up at him angrily. "I am the daughter of the Starqueen, and I have nothing to do with Sarastro, or with you. I do not admit that you, or he, have any right to imprison me, and if I can escape I shall certainly do so."
"Pamina, you will force me—you will force us to put you in chains!"
"Don't you dare to say it is I who will force you, or your master either," she retorted, at white heat. "If you do such a thing, you will do it out of your own wickedness, rather than because of anything I have done."
"You will force me to it," he repeated, and his colorless eyes, curiously flat, stared down at her without blinking.
Suddenly as her eyes were held by his she realized what he was doing, he was trying to frighten her, as he did with the Halflings, to intimidate her so that she could neither look away nor move without his consent. Furiously, she sprang up and faced him.
"Get out of my sight! Don't come into my presence again! If Sarastro wants something of me, tell him to come himself instead of sending you! If my mother could not trust you to be faithful to her, what makes Sarastro think he can trust you to be faithful to him!”
For a moment, then, she thought she really had goaded him too far, that this time he would strike her. Time seemed to stop, to freeze around her, she could see the draperies softly moving in the wind from the open window, see a Halfling—an unfamiliar bird-half-ling—who had just come through the door of the room, her cloak where someone had hung it on a peg, the faint flicker of Monostatos's eyelashes in his otherwise unmoving face. Then he said, in a sibilant whisper, "You will truly push me too far, Pamina, believe me," and spun round on his heel as if to stride out of the room. He came face to face with the bird-halfling; for a moment they stood face to face, the bird-creature hypnotized by Monostatos's eyes. Then Monostatos roared, "Get out of here!" The bird-man uttered a smothered screech and fled in the opposite direction.
"Yes!" Pamina shouted after him. "Go frighten Half-lings with your yelling, frighten them into fits—it's all you are good for, you are big and brave against those who cannot fight back, are you not? Now make haste to run to your master, you vile toady and apostate, go lick Sarastro's boots and beg his leave to put a helpless prisoner in chains!"
But when he had gone, her bravery deserted her and she fell sobbing on the couch again. Perhaps for once Monostatos had told the truth, and Sarastro had indeed given leave for her to be chained and imprisoned this way. Even the company of one of the Halflings would have been a comfort, but the dog-wo
man who had been sent to wait on her had fled, too, before Monostatos's wrath, and she felt very frightened and very much alone.
"My lady—Princess Pamina—?" said a hesitant, musical voice behind her, and Pamina raised her head.
"Yes?" she asked without much interest, then blinked. It was the Halfling who had come face to face with Monostatos and run away. "Aren't you afraid?" she asked. "He is likely to come back any minute; he said he would put me in chains."
"Then all the more reason we had better get out of here at once, Princess Pamina, before he does come back," said the bird-halfling. "I have come here from the Starqueen to rescue you."
"Mother! You did remember!" cried Pamina, and this time she wanted to cry again, but for joy. She had not really believed her mother would abandon her to Sarastro's devices—or had she? But now she was certain. Though surely this funny little fellow was an unlikely messenger for the Starqueen.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"Papageno."
She found herself wondering if he knew Papagena, who had served her faithfully for so many years. This was no time to ask him, of course. Then she hesitated; Sarastro's house was filled with strange creatures, presumptuous Halflings, tricksters and liars like Monos-tatos. She picked up her cloak, looking at him fearfully.
"How do I know that you are not one of Sarastro's evil spirits come to delude me?" she asked.
"There's nothing wrong with my spirit at all," he said valiantly. His eyes, wide and dark, met hers, and twinkled, and Pamina could not believe that there was any harm in him. "Let's go," he said, and led her out, not through the door but the window. Swiftly they crossed the garden; then Papageno reached for her and roughly pulled her down into a depression of dry grass. She was about to cry out in protest—had she been mistaken in him, was he about to attack her?—but he chirped and pointed.
"Look!"
Monostatos, with a file of slaves, was hurrying into her chambers; some of them bore ropes and chains. Pamina gasped; he put his hand gently over her lips to silence her, but the touch was gentle, almost deferential.
Monostatos had found the rooms empty. She heard the terrified whining of the dog-woman, Monostatos shouting in rage. Pamina and the bird-man crouched closer together; after a time the slaves scattered from the front of the building, fanning out in all directions.
"But they're not likely to look so close, here in the garden," Papageno said. "They'll expect us birds to fly away. So we wait here till it gets a little darker, then we start out and look for the prince."
"The prince? What prince?" Then, suspiciously again, "Not Prince Monostatos—that's what's he's calling himself these days."
Papageno's eyes were rounder than ever. "Him? Oh, no, Princess. That's right, I didn't mention the prince, did I, and I should have told you about him the very first thing. After all, it's his job to rescue you, but we got separated. He went up toward the front gates and I came round this way, and you see, I was the lucky one. No, this prince is very young, and very good-looking, and the Starqueen was very taken with him, I must say, she gave him a magic mirror with your picture in it. And the minute he looked in it, he fell in love with you right away!"
"What a romantic notion." Pamina laughed, but secretly she was pleased. A handsome young prince, who was in love with her, and with her mother's consent ... she felt enormous curiosity about him.
"What is his name? What does he look like? Is he kind and well-spoken? You said he saw my picture— did he think I was pretty?" Pamina stopped her flow of questions with an effort. Papageno was looking at her with great sadness.
"What's the matter, Papageno?"
He sighed. "For the princess there is a prince, just as for every king there is a queen. But for Papageno there is no Papagena. I once heard of a girl by that name, and I wondered if she was like me, but no one would tell me anything about her."
"Poor Papageno, are you lonely?" At first it had sounded comical to her, and her question had been almost careless. But the seriousness of his glance made her ashamed of her own flippancy.
"Very lonely," he said in a quiet voice. "There is no one at all like me, and it seems that I am fated to live alone forever. I spend my days catching birds, all alone, beautiful feathered birds to make robes for the Starqueen. I have harmed no one, yet I am mocked and laughed at by everyone."
Now Pamina knew who he was; she had heard her sisters speak of him. But, she thought, and was momentarily shocked, any of her sisters could have told him about Papagena! Why had they never done so? It would have cost them little effort and it would have made him so happy.
Pamina felt suddenly very confused. Everything in her childhood told her that this man was only a Half-ling, no more than an animal, to be used for her convenience without worrying about his feelings. Of course Disa or Zeshi or Kamala would not have bothered to tell him anything about Papagena, why should they? They were the daughters of the Starqueen, why should they concern themselves with a little Halfling's happiness? How they would laugh—why, she herself had been close to laughing—at the thought of a Halfling pining away for love! How absurd and how presumptuous, just what she would expect to find here in the abode of Sarastro—but this was a messenger from her own mother. Pamina felt dreadfully confused. Her own sisters would not rescue her—but this Halfling, who had no reason to be grateful to her family or to the Starqueen, had come to try and do so.
"Never mind, Papageno," she said gently, and touched his warm bony small fingers. "Someday we will find you a Papagena, I promise you that."
The girl and the Halfling lay side by side in a grassy depression, silently waiting for the sun to set.
Meanwhile, Tamino, who had lost sight of Papageno soon after the Messengers had led them through a set of front gates which could have been those of the Imperial Palace itself, was wandering in darkness so thick that he could not see a hand's span before his face. He shouted once, aloud, for Papageno, but the echoing of his own voice reverberated as if he were locked inside a vault, and he could see nothing. The sound of his own voice actually intimidated him.
He was silent, fumbling his way through the darkness. Where had Papageno gone, and how had they lost one another? For a moment he considered taking out the magical flute again to resummon the Messengers. But they had given him, he considered, such help as had been ordained; surely they would have known that he was lost and separated from his traveling companion. Again it occurred to him that this might well be one of the mysterious Ordeals of which he had been told so little. If so, he must somehow surmount it. When he had been genuinely in danger from the dragon, help had been at hand. He must simply trust that someone or something was watching over him.
Slowly the darkness began to lift. Tamino, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the twilight gloom, made out that he was within a great, overvaulted space; dim, pale looming shapes rose in the distance. His feet made soft noises as if he were walking on stone or even metal as he groped his way forward.
As he moved forward, a pale light, like an approaching sunrise, began to glow in what he supposed was the east. By the time he approached the nearer of the great looming shapes, he could see that it was an imposing facade: a great doorway leading between two great pillars, one black and the other white. Over the door, in a script Tamino could barely read, was written
Enlightenment
I could use a little of that, in this darkness, Tamino thought, advanced toward the door and raised his hand to knock.
Immediately a great chorus—or was it only a single voice, reverberating as the echo of his own voice had done—rocked the vaulted space like thunder:
"Stand back! It is death to seek here unworthily!"
Involuntarily, Tamino recoiled, as if fearing that to touch the door would blast him with a thunderbolt.
Just the same, he thought, it wouldn't have hurt anything for the unseen voices to enlighten him a little bit about why he had been led here, if they were only going to turn him away again so rudely. Anyhow, he h
ad been told that the point of undergoing the Ordeals was to attain Enlightenment.
What now? He stood for a moment surveying the facade from which he had been warned away. If it was death to seek here unworthily, how did he become worthy?
After a time, as the light grew somewhat in intensity, he looked around and saw the outlines of the other two buildings. He went slowly toward the second. Over its pediment was written the word:
Wisdom
If he couldn't have Enlightenment, Tamino thought, this would be the next best thing. There was a great knocker; he stepped forward, a little gingerly, and was about to grasp it.
"Stand back! You are not yet worthy!" thundered the invisible voices.
Tamino stopped in his tracks. Nevertheless, he thought, it was something of an improvement. This time the voices had said nothing about death. All the same, he was not a bit better off. He was still lost and alone, with nobody to help him.
Well, there was still a third door. Although, considering how uncooperative the people in this neighborhood seemed to be about answering their doors, perhaps it would be a waste of time to try knocking.
He approached the third door, which was considerably smaller and less pretentious than the others. Above the entrance, in the growing light, he could just barely make out the word:
Truth
If he could not have either Enlightenment or Wisdom, Tamino thought, Truth might be a fair substitute. Hesitantly he put out his hand and knocked.
Silence. More silence. Tamino wondered if it had been somehow symbolic; nobody home in the abode of Truth, as a sign that truth was hard to find!
Then he began to hear a little scraping sound, not unlike the rustle of mice behind the door. At least they had not angrily warned him away. He waited. The light was growing now; but if it was sunrise, certainly the sun would now be above the horizon; and there was something about the light that did not quite look like the sun.
At last the great handle began to lift from inside, and slowly, slowly, the door began to open. Finally it stood just wide enough to admit him, and paused as if waiting for him to come through.
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