Pamina, clutching her pearl, was very pale.
"Reverend father, if the last of the Ordeals, the Ordeal of Fire, starts by dumping us into the crater of a volcano, or something like that, I intend to go no further with the Ordeals. And you may tell Sarastro so for me."
The guide laughed. After a moment, so did the priestess. "You need not worry about that," he said. "The last of the Ordeals, like the first, is metaphorical; it is only in symbol that you need face the fire. Come now, my brother and my sister; rest and refresh yourselves, for tomorrow you must face the Changing Lands. And when you are done with that Ordeal, I doubt not, you will feel it would have been the lesser trial to be faced with the fire of that volcano you fear."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“The essence of an Ordeal" the guide said, I is that it invariably takes place in a wasteland. The Ordeal of Earth required you to face yourselves within reasonably familiar surroundings, while the later Ordeals placed you in unfamiliar and frightening circumstances. The Ordeal of Fire takes place within the ultimate wasteland of the Changing Lands. You cannot possibly return unchanged', you can only hope that the change will not be for the worse."
Tamino supposed it was something to have been reassured that they would not have to pass through literal fire. What frightened him most was that, while the magic flute was secured by a strip of linen to his belt, his bow and arrows had been returned to him and he had also been given a sword in a scabbard. Pamina had been given a small sharp dagger.
"May I ask a question, Holy Father?" Pamina asked. She had noticed that, of all the priests who wore different colored woven cords at their waists, he alone wore one of each of the four colors, brown and green and blue and the final strand of red.
"Certainly you may ask," he said serenely. "I cannot promise to answer if the question is not a proper one, but you may always ask."
"Why is it that, while we were thrust into the Ordeals of Air and Water completely unprepared, we are here given instructions?"
The guide smiled.
"That I may answer," he said. "You were thrust into them unprepared, because this is the nature of Air and Water. Life may seem perfectly certain and assured, and without the slightest warning, you will be thrust into a situation where your whole system of life, physical, spiritual, and moral, takes a turn so unexpected that you could not possibly foresee it. It is easy to adhere to ethical principles when all is going well, or when you have a chance to work out what is expected of you. If Monostatos, for instance, had been told that he was being tested specifically for the ability to restrain his lust, I have not the slightest doubt that he would have behaved to you as correctly as Sarastro himself. But we made him think that the essence of the test was otherwise; although we had admonished him, of course, that he must demonstrate his own best self at all times. Thus tested, given the opportunity to choose, you know his choice."
It would be a long time, Pamina supposed, before she could think of Monostatos without shivering revulsion.
Tamino took her hand. After she had carried him clutched to her breast, although as a bird of prey, and after they had both been borne naked through the waters by the innocent sensuality of the dolphins, it would be a foolish hypocrisy to pretend to the priest that they had no awareness of one another. The test of Earth had never been that he should not desire Pamina, only that he should prove himself in command of that desire until the proper time.
"I do not understand any of the Ordeals we have passed," he said, "but I do not suppose I am allowed to ask for an explanation."
"That is certainly your right, since you have passed the Ordeals in question," said the guide. Why did Tam-ino have the faint, but definite impression that he too was relieved to delay a little? "In the Ordeal of Air, you both discovered your own hidden qualities. Under the Sign of the Eagle, Pamina realized her own powers. And you, Tamino, found within yourself the willingness to be helped by someone you have always considered weaker than yourself. Where strength would not serve, you accepted that you could not always be in command or in control."
"And the Ordeal of Water?" Pamina asked. "I told myself at the time that it could not possibly matter in a testing of our spiritual abilities to know whether or not we could swim. Was it only a test of resourcefulness, or the ability to survive adversity, then?"
"Not quite," the guide answered. "The major test was whether you could restrain yourselves from the temptation to make use of the Halflings for your own personal purposes."
"Then it seems to me that we failed," Tamino said. "For they told us that they had no means of restraining us, and might as well help us willingly, since we could command their help if they did not give it willingly."
"It is permissible to negotiate or bargain," the guide said, "but even knowing that you were in a position of power, you bargained with a care for their dignity as human beings; you did not command them as slaves or humiliate them. When you let the flute pass out of your hands, rather than allow them to think you commanded where you should beg their assistance, Tamino, you triumphed."
Pamina hung her head. "I wanted him to use the flute to command," she said almost inaudibly. "I was so afraid—"
"But you allowed him to make that decision," the guide said. "You are the daughter of the Starqueen, Pamina; it was always within the bounds of possibility that you would snatch the flute from his hands and yourself make the forbidden command."
"Then there must have been a time," said Pamina sorrowfully, "when even my mother resisted that temptation—"
But as she had half expected, the guide remained silent, shaking his head mournfully. She wondered if he had known and perhaps loved her mother as well. She would never know.
"To be tried in the Fire of the Changing Lands," the guide said, "it is enough to know that, as you have done in the previous tests, you must remain your best self at all times. And now I may delay you no longer."
He struck his hands together, and the temple vanished from sight.
They were standing together in a barren wasteland, their hands still clasped. Low rustling bushes surrounded them; high overhead the sun blazed with the blinding light of noonday. On the distant horizon, it seemed that ruins rose, ancient walls and pillars, but Tamino could not be sure whether or not it was a mirage.
Turning slowly, Pamina discovered in another quarter of the horizon the shadow of a city which might have been her mother's citadel; but she was not sure. The sand was hot even through the sandals she was wearing. She had never been here before; but she was sure that, as the guide had told them, they were in the Changing Lands. She had never ventured into them before. Her mother had forbidden it, and until she had been taken to Sarastro's palace it had never entered her mind that anyone would venture to disobey her mother's will.
"Well," she said to Tamino, with a little wavering smile, "no matter what he says, I still think it's better than being dumped into real fire."
Tamino was grateful that she could make a joke about it. For that matter, he too was grateful that the Ordeal of Fire did not begin, as Air and Water had begun, with a literal confrontation with the element in question.
He was not a coward—or at least until he had entered upon the Ordeals he had never thought himself one—but for him, at least, it was easier to know what to do when he was not struggling for his life. He supposed it was easier for everyone.
Nevertheless, under the blazing of the fierce sun, he realized that there was a literal, as well as a metaphorical, element to the Ordeal of Fire. In his original journey from his father's kingdom, he had dared the desert sun for a little too long and had been sunburned and half blinded in consequence. He said, "I'm just as well pleased it's not the real thing, but this sun is fire enough for me." He tore a strip from the edge of his robe and fastened it loosely over his head as a makeshift cowl to shade his eyes and offer some protection from the heat.
"That's not a bad idea. I should have thought of it." Pamina followed suit swiftly, looking out at him from under the
hood. "This time, when there's no immediate danger, perhaps we can stop and think what we're being tested for. I knew it didn't matter whether we could swim, or for that matter whether we could climb down from cliffs. And I was right about that. Now he tells us what the truth is, that we discovered hidden qualities within ourselves—"
"You did," Tamino interrupted. "According to the guide I simply learned to let you take command when necessary." He managed a weak smile. "I was taught it was the business of a prince to look after all his subjects and always to take command. Perhaps it was only a test of my pride—"
Pamina said in a low voice, "I am more frightened of that than of anything else, Tamino. The test of pride. You know that the Starqueen—my mother—once passed all these Ordeals, the first and the last woman to do so. And look what has become of her? I am her daughter. I do not want to gain power, or to take command, if I must become like her, and end like that. And already I am far too much like her; Tamino, in the Ordeal of Water, I would have used the flute, or forced you to use it, to command the Dolphin-folk. I do not think I am fit for this Ordeal, Tamino."
"I do not think the priests would have let you undertake it if you were not fit, Pamina. It is their business to know such things."
"But they make mistakes. They must have made a mistake with my mother. Because she was heiress to the Kingdom of Night, hereditary Starqueen—so they must have certified her fit, and look what has happened?" Pamina lowered her eyes so he could not see, but Tamino thought there were tears on her face. "I believed in her. There must have been a time when my father believed in her. Must I be like her, Tamino? Do I have to be like that?"
"I cannot imagine that you ever could be."
Tamino wished, harder than he had ever wished anything in the world, that he could take her in his arms and comfort her. But something in him sensed that this was a very real part of her own Ordeal, to overcome this fear. And this she must face alone; if he tried to comfort or reassure her, she might never fully face whatever terrors arose in her. He had feared her, in the bird-form, almost as much as he feared her mother. If they were to be married, somehow he too would have to overcome that fear; he could not, or did not want to, imagine living in constant dread of her powers of sorcery.
He found himself wondering how Sarastro himself had managed to overcome that fear.
At last he said in a low voice, "Perhaps Sarastro loved your mother so much that he could not bear to refuse her anything. I love you too, Pamina. Perhaps that is part of the purpose of this Ordeal, for both of us, to help each other know when we may legitimately use power and when we should not. At the beginning of this, the priest said to us that each of us had strengths and weaknesses which would complement those of the other. I kept you from using the flute to command the Sea-halflings, and that turned out to be the right thing, so together we did what was right. Also, you dissuaded me from trying to climb down, and that was right too, so each of us kept the other from a dangerous and possibly fatal mistake. I am sure your mother and Sarastro could have done this for each other but for some reason they did not. We do not even know whether they were allowed to face the Ordeals together. But you and I are together, Pamina. Together we can make those decisions, and avoid disaster."
"I am sure you are right," she said, but she was almost crying. "But Sarastro loved my mother, too, and he did not manage to keep her from becoming— becoming what she is. What good is it, then, to love?"
"Sarastro loved your mother," Tamino said, wishing that he even dared to take her hand in his, "but we are not sure that your mother loved Sarastro. Judging how she spoke to me of him—and comparing it with the way Sarastro speaks of her—somehow I do not think she loved him, certainly not as much as he loved her." He thought, but did not say, that he did not believe the Starqueen loved anybody, or was capable of loving at all.
But it seemed to him that Pamina heard the unspoken words, that perhaps she would always know what he was thinking, and this was frightening to him too. He did not want to fear her; he wanted to love her. He wanted nothing to come before his love for her.
But now when he saw her wilting in the fierce heat, he realized that care for her, the need to protect her, would always come before anything else, certainly before his fear. He could not imagine anyone attempting to protect the Starqueen or the Starqueen allowing herself to be protected. Had there ever been a time when even she had been a vulnerable woman, as Pamina was now?
"We should try to find some shade," he said. "Even if this is a trial by fire, I doubt that we would be any good to the priesthood if we were broiled alive. Just as the Water Ordeal was not a test of whether we could swim, I am sure this is not a test of our ability to endure sunstroke."
She smiled faintly. "I would like nothing better than some shade," she said, "but where will we find it?"
He looked at the low line of trees on the horizon. "There must be shade somewhere. Certainly under those trees, if we could reach them. That is, if they are not a mirage. In any case there seems nowhere else worth trying to go. Shall we try and reach them, then?"
"That seems reasonable to me," Pamina agreed, and they set off in that direction.
It seemed that they walked for a long time, but as Tamino had half expected, the trees came no nearer. Pamina was pale and gasping with the heat; even more than shade, they needed water. And then he remembered the miraculous date palm that had appeared to him in his own need.
"We are in the Changing Lands," he said, "perhaps the test here is to see whether we can change them in a suitable way to our needs."
"It seems to me," Pamina argued, "that this would be something like using the magic flute to compel obedience from the dolphins—forbidden."
Tamino thought that over very carefully as he wiped sweat from his forehead. He said at last, "I can't believe it is so. We do not even know whether the Changing Lands are really like this, or whether we only see them this way. They were like this, a barren desert, when I first came into them. But as I traveled through them, they altered constantly, and I do not know which of the appearances is real, and which is an illusion to test us." He told her about the date palm, and about the antelope that had become, first a gazelle, then a squirrel.
"And I have wondered, since I began the Ordeals, did it change? Or was it a squirrel all along, and only showed itself to me as other animals for some reason of its own, or some law of the Changing Lands that we do not know?" Talking made his throat dry; but it was easier to bear that, than to bear the burden of all these thoughts unshared.
"I don't know the answer to your question," Pamina said, "but here at least is shade. We were looking in the wrong direction, that is all."
Tamino turned to see the bush, with its thick, dark green, spiny blades, so unlike ordinary leaves outside the desert. He would have sworn it had not been there a few minutes ago, but what else did he expect in the Changing Lands? Was it there, or an illusion? Did it matter? Would an illusion of shade protect them from the real sun? Together, parting its leaves, they crawled gratefully into the shelter of the thick, succulent blades.
Under the bush it was dark by contrast, and cool. Pamina lay back on the dry ground, wiping her face with the ample sleeves of her robe. He thought, Already she is weary and exhausted, and the Ordeal has barely begun.
She saw his eyes on her, and smiled faintly, sitting up.
"Look," she said, "we are not even alone here." She pointed to the sand.
A handful of little lizards, not more than a hand-span long, some of them no thicker than his thumb, scurried round and round the sand, climbed on the small rocks, fought, pounced on almost-invisible sand beetles, copulated, climbing unexpectedly atop one another for a moment or two, then falling off and scurrying again around the business of living; pouncing on sand beetles, fighting, crawling atop the nearest female for quick and unpremeditated sex, and starting all over again.
Pamina murmured, "They are like the dog-halflings. Or Monostatos."
"They are like many pe
ople I know in my father's kingdom, Pamina. I think perhaps most people are like that, outside the temple."
She said, and it occurred to him that she was very pale. "I hope not. That would be terrible, to live like that. That is the way my mother wants the Halflings to live. I think Sarastro wants them to be something more. To teach them what they are capable of. I hate to be disloyal to my mother. But"—he saw her stop and moisten her lips with her tongue—"I am afraid I think Sarastro is right, and so in any case my mother would have—would have cast me off."
They were very close under the bush, and Tamino did what he had been wanting to do since first he saw her; he reached out his arms and pulled Pamina into them, holding her close to him. He did not honestly think he meant any more, at that moment, than to comfort her, to take away that awful desolation in her eyes.
But then it occurred to him that perhaps the time was right. Perhaps it was the right time to confirm to her that they would always be together, that they would make all decisions together, strengthened and comforted by their mutual love. And what better way to seal that love? She came willingly into his arms, and upturned her mouth to his for their first kiss.
For the first moment Pamina had been a little frightened; the memory of Monostatos's rough hands on her had created a reflex quiver when Tamino touched her, but as she felt the softness of his mouth, the slight roughness of his cheek so different from hers, she relaxed. This was right, this was nothing forced on her against her will. Tamino was even a little tentative, evidently afraid to press her further than she wished. She pressed herself close to him, opening her lips almost wildly to his kiss. And for a few moments, in that long-delayed bliss, they almost forgot where they were, or why, or what was threatening them both.
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