When at last they had to pause for breath and pull a little apart, Tamino said, almost in a whisper, "I cannot decide, Pamina, whether this is the final temptation, the final test of my resolution—"
"If so, it is a test for me too, Tamino," she said, looking up at him. "Only in the Ordeal of Earth was this forbidden to us. I have heard—not much, I have been kept away from such things—but I have heard people speak of love as a fire. Perhaps the test here is to know if we are courageous enough to accept it."
It was an incredible temptation to take her into his arms again and forget the Ordeals, forget everything but the slender strength of her body against his. Yet he demurred.
"I can't believe this could be a part of the Ordeals." He felt tender laughter bubbling up from some deep wellspring inside himself. "They told us it would be so dangerous we would in the end feel it would have been simpler to be cast into the fire. Danger—here, from you, my beloved? I cannot believe it."
"Ah, yes, there is danger," Pamina whispered, throwing her head back and pulling his head down to kiss her again. "I want to burn up in your fire."
"And I in yours," he murmured back, holding his mouth close to the delicate scroll of her small ear. "And yet—remember how the priests watched and knew every word we had spoken in the far depths of the ocean, or on the cliffs? They will be watching here too."
"Let them watch, and envy us," Pamina said, pulling him to her. "I am not ashamed. Are you?"
Was he? He wondered. It was not the custom of his country to conduct such affairs in the open air, certainly not where other eyes were watching. He started to say, / would feel like one of your dog-halflings, and stopped himself. She was already a shy girl, shamefast; now when she had overcome that shyness and was ready to fling herself into his arms, was he to spoil her perfect happiness in this coming together?
With shaking fingers he began to untie the braided cord about her tunic. Papageno, who had refused the further Ordeals, probably had enjoyed this moment with his Papagena long ago, yet he and Pamina had denied themselves. Why, and for how long? She smiled, mimicking his movements with playful deliberation as her fingers skillfully unknotted the colored braid of the fastening.
Then he coughed and gasped. From nowhere a whirlwind, suddenly blazing across them, blasted through the shelter of the tree, stinging dust in his eyes, in his mouth. Pamina gasped, choked, turned her face swiftly away from the fury of the attacking wind. Tam-ino, tasting dust, feeling it sting his eyes, coughed and tried without success to spit sand from his mouth. The broad leaves of the succulent bush were ripped away one by one; the bush dwindled till it was no more than a small spiky plant half as high as his knee.
He had forgotten. They were in the Changing Lands.
Pamina was still hunched over, fighting the slashing sand from her eyes. She choked, scrubbing sand from her face with her sleeve. "Look, it made itself into a tiny plant to protect itself against the wind. Was it ever really a big bush at all?"
"I don't know, but whether it was or not, I wish it would come back," he said. Then he remembered the flute, still tied at his waist.
'This is a weapon of Air. It worked before," he said, and hunched himself over so that he could get at the mouthpiece without sand between his teeth. Where had it all come from? He could not even see the sun!
He began to play, trying to catch his breath between grit-laden gusts of thick air. He felt Pamina's hands, catching at him. He could not see her now for the sand, even if he dared open his eyes without imminent danger of being blinded. He could not put his arm round her; both hands were on the flute, and it seemed to him that he had to make that choice a great deal oftener than he liked. He hoped someday he could pay enough concentrated attention to her to induce her to forgive him for it.
He played. As he had expected—that wind had been no natural wind—almost from the first notes of the flute, the sandstorm began to die away. It had, he thought grimly, been no accident that it came when it did. His instinct had been right after all. He wanted more privacy for their bridal couch, and so, he was sure, would Pamina.
The wind died. In the Changing Lands it was abnormally still. The bush was gone, even in its shrunken form; only a few of the little lizards still scurried in their unending round on the rocks, fighting, pouncing on beetles, copulating, fighting.
Pamina released him. He could see her now, though her eyes were red and swollen from the grit, and he supposed his own were no better. She retied the cord of her tunic, looking up at him with shy laughter.
"You wondered if this was the right time. I think we were given our answer, and just at the moment. Imagine if it had come five minutes later!"
Her mirth was infectious, making him laugh, even through his dry and strained throat, at the picture of that wind striking them when they were naked, wholly defenseless, absorbed only in each other.
"The desert was bad enough," he said at last, "but the desert after a sandstorm? I will be afraid to do anything, I think, for fear of making it worse!"
Pamina said, with a skeptical look round the bleak wasteland that surrounded them, "I do not see how any change could be other than an improvement. If these are the Changing Lands, I wish I knew how to make them change!"
"Perhaps that is what we are required to do?" Tam-ino surmised. "If not to change them, to make them show their true substance, show themselves as they really are?"
Pamina sank to the ground. It looked to Tamino as if she were too weary to stand.
"I am tired of worrying about the purpose of this test or what we are supposed to do," she said in utter exhaustion. For a moment she had really believed she had found the purpose of the Ordeal of Fire, that it was to determine if she and Tamino had the courage to claim one another in the face of the Changing Lands. Could they change even love? She was terrified to find out.
"Maybe the flute could make them change." "But the flute is the magical weapon of Air— M "And it is through the means of Air that we communicate with all the elements," she said, and then remembered what the priest had told them. In the element of Air she had discovered hidden powers; in the element of Water, Tamino had learned that he could not (need not?) be always in command. As Tamino had conquered these Ordeals, so too had she, and she had untapped powers over the element of Water.
At her gesture of command, Tamino obediently lifted the flute to his lips and began softly to play. With the aid of the soft air of melody, Pamina began to think about the element of Water: hostile and angry, filling their mouths with salt spray, submerging and drowning them; healing and warm then. How she wished she could lie submerged in it, washing grit from her mouth and sand from her body, secret water, stealing through the land, even beneath a desert such as this, hidden far below the sandy wasteland, gushing forth from the
rock Then it was time and she knew, and she quickly
bent and slapped the rock.
"Water!" she commanded, in a voice she had never heard, feeling her throat ache with the word of Power. It gushed up and struck her in the face. She bent and drank and drank, laughing and crying with relief. She splashed it in her sore eyes, stepped back a moment so Tamino could do the same, dampened the cowl of her robe as the spring spread into a little pool in the rock. Tamino drank and laved his gritty cheeks, rinsed sand from his teeth. They looked into each other's eyes, laughing in delight.
And then, as he stood close to her, about to bend forward—she sensed it—to kiss her again, this time not sensually but for pure delight and pride in the sor-cerous powers that had again delivered them from peril, she saw his eyes change, grow cold. He dropped his hands from her shoulders, stepped back and quickly notched his bow. He drew it to full tension, gesturing her behind him.
She whirled about to see what menace was there, and gasped aloud. Monostatos stood there, his face drawn into a mask of implacable hatred, unflinching before Tamino's drawn bow.
"Do you think I am afraid of that toy?"
"Make but a single move," said Tamino, "and
you shall know whether or not you have reason to fear it."
His lips curved just a little in a faint mocking smile.
"I am son to the Great Dragon," he said. "Do you think because Sarastro cast me out I have no sorcery at my command? Now you are in my realm, Prince of the West, not I in yours, and I say to you: "Go! Get hence!"
He did not move his hands. He made no move at all. But thunder lanced from the clear sky; Pamina felt herself flung into darkness, and Tamino was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tamino was gone. Pamina was I fighting in the dark against an invisible enemy. Monostatos? No, Monostatos was human, Halfling at least, and this thing she fought was no way as human as that; it enfolded her with suffocating wings, leathery in texture; talons raked her face, and the creature's breath was nauseating, some dreadful stench of carrion and sewer.
Blindly, Pamina snatched at the dagger the priests had given her. They had known, then, that in this Ordeal they would face physical dangers as well. Once she had asked her father if Monostatos had been one of the trials she must face, and he had told her, no. But Monostatos had sent her into this darkness, and she thrust with her dagger as if she were fighting Monostatos himself.
How did she know that she was not? How did she know that he did not, like herself, have the power to transform himself into some alien and frightening shape? She slashed, and the thing screeched hideously, a sound that racked her ears. If only she could see it; but the leathery wings enfolded her face so completely that even if there had been light she could not have seen. Suffocating, coughing at the thing's foul breath, Pamina tried to stab into the body of the creature, but this time her dagger went through it as if there had been nothing there.
A talon raked the arm with the dagger and she felt it draw blood. She had never been seriously hurt before, and the pain almost paralyzed her. Almost worse than the pain was horror, the thought of that dreadful beak ripping at her eyes and ravaging them. She fought in a nightmare frenzy, as if every terror of her life was attacking her there, filth and suffocation and soft obscene touches in the dark, and again and again, as she thrust with the dagger, it seemed that the dagger went through it as if nothing was there. Yet the pain of talons and ripping beak, stabbing at her again and again, was very real.
In the Ordeal of Air we could have fallen to our deaths, or in that of Water we could have drowned, before we ever knew the real nature of the Ordeal. Yet the physical danger had nothing to do with the true testing. What was the real test here? Pamina's mind struggled as fiercely as her body fought the terrible thing that was tearing at her in the dark.
Nothing was real now but pain and horror and the nightmare of the obscene thing she fought in the darkness. Her dagger arm was beginning to tire, and the arm she held before her face to ward off the creature's assault was lacerated with many cuts and scratches. She backed away, felt her heel catch in something she could not see, and fell, losing the dagger as she sprawled headlong, and knew in a moment that it was upon her.
Think, Pamina, she admonished herself frantically. There must be something you can do. Think what you are supposed to do or this thing will kill you before ever you know the true nature of this ordeal!
She supposed she was supposed to use her newly discovered powers of sorcery against it. But how did she know that Monostatos, too, did not have the power to change himself into some unknown and incomprehensible shape? Once again, how did she know this was not Monostatos himself, terribly transfigured?
Whether Monostatos or another nightmare shape out of her innermost terrors, somehow she must conquer it. It was stabbing at her head now as she rolled herself into a little ball of terror to keep her eyes away, and without even the dagger, she still must free herself from its attack.
Tamino! Where was he, why had he forsaken her? Or was he, too, fighting some dreadful adversary alone? Frantically, Pamina sought to call upon the new powers she had discovered within herself. In the darkness, she rolled away from its beak, pulled herself swiftly to her feet, and as she had cried out for water beneath the bush, she cried out, "Light! Fire!"
Light exploded across her eyes like the glare of the sun. From somewhere she felt herself grasping the light, flinging it at the thing she could see clearly now in all its horror, grasping talons, stabbing brutal beak dripping with her own blood. The clotted fire struck it, blazing up like a torch. There was a horrible scream and the thing fluttered to the desert sand, ashes dropping as it fell. Then there was only a little stain of ash on the barren sand, and Pamina was alone in the desert.
And she fell like the bird, crumpling to the sand, between horror and relief.
She lay there for some time, numbed by the terror and its cessation. Finally, she raised her head and began to assess the damage. The sleeve of her tunic was in shreds and her arms stung with multiple scratches; there was a long, painful, blood-streaked gash on her cheek where the thing had come close to striking at her eye. She remembered how her dagger had gone through it as if there was nothing there. How could anything so insubstantial leave such material wounds?
She decided none of the wounds was serious. The one sleeve was so badly torn that she finally ripped it away; it had been hanging by a few threads, dirty and so clotted with her blood that she could not even use it to bandage up the other cuts. She wiped her face with the other sleeve and wished she could find a spring to bathe her hurts.
Where was Tamino? Was he, too, fighting some deadly battle against the dangers of the Changing Lands, alone, separated not by the priests but by Monostatos's wiles? How could they get on with the Ordeal of Fire, if that apostate from both worlds, that evil wretch, was allowed to interfere?
Or, in spite of what her father had said, was this simply a further testing? She could see now, even though her father told her that the lust of Monostatos had not been intended as one of her trials, that it had been a very real part of her testing, to face him and refuse to submit to him. It had strengthened her resolve.
In the previous Ordeals, she and Tamino had been together, and the priests, this time, had sent them out together. She blinked away fierce tears of regret when she remembered; only a little while ago—though she had no idea how long it had really been—she and Tamino had been lying together in the shelter of the bush. He had touched her, she had untied the cord about his waist—
And then had come the sandstorm, and the beginning of the real trials. It had not, then, been intended that they should consummate their love, not yet. Would that time ever come? Pamina did not know, now, if she even wanted it to come. There had been so many trials, so many tests. Would there ever be an end to them?
"Paulina," said a soft, beloved voice, "I've come to take you home, my darling."
She raised her eyes, and her mother stood before her.
Not now, the majesty and rage and terrible beauty of the Starqueen. This was the mother she remembered from her childhood, a little woman really, not as tall as Pamina herself, clad in a robe of soft gray silk that enwrapped her like a cloud. She wore no jewelry, not even the silver lamen of the moon coiled into the strands of the dark hair on her brows. Not even the tiny star at her throat, peeping out from the gray robe. The dark hair was silvered now, and Pamina saw lines of pain, as well as the first wrinkles of age, in her mother's face.
Her mother put out her hand tenderly to touch the long, still bloody slashes on Pamina's forearm and face.
"My poor darling," she whispered, and folded Pamina in her arms. "What has he done to you, that dreadful, evil man? Why have you let Sarastro torture you this way?" With her head on her mother's shoulder, held close in her arms, Pamina let herself give way to a great, shuddering fit of sobbing, like a child, and her mother held her close, as she had never done in Pamina's real childhood.
"There, there, my child, my little love, it's over, I won't let him hurt you anymore."
All her life she had longed to be held like this, comforted, cherished. Now at last her mother came to her, holding out all the comf
ort for which she had so longed, and it was too late. With pain like the claws of the creature tearing at her heart, Pamina drew herself free of her mother's arms.
The Starqueen drew her fingers gently along the scratches on the abused arms, and the blood ceased to ooze from the wounds. The pain was gone, too. She touched the ugly wound beneath the eye, and it was soothed.
"I've come to take you home out of this terrible desert, my treasure. Remember, you are all I have, you are my heir, one day you will be Starqueen. Did you really think I would abandon you to Sarastro's sorcery? But it's all over now. Come, love, take my hand, and in a moment we will be in our own city again. Now you are no longer a child, but a woman to rule at my side." She held out her hand to Pamina, but Pamina hung back, hesitant, staring at her mother's extended hand. It was smooth, unwrinkled, quite unlike the gray weary-worn face; the hand not of the quiet little woman, her aging mother whom she had begun to pity, but the hand—she felt it, with a shudder that went right through her—of the Starqueen.
"Come, come," said her mother, with a touch of impatience. "Take my hand, child, or I cannot transport you from this desert. Don't you want to go home, my treasure, my darling?"
To go home—Pamina felt that never in her life had she wanted anything so much. But had it ever been home to her? Had any of it ever been more real than this image of her mother, the image which tugged at all her childhood memories—and was no more real than any of them? She had longed for these endearments; and when they came they were hollow, meaningless, she could sense and hear in her mother's voice that they were only tools to manipulate her into doing the Starqueen's will.
She said, hearing the trembling in her own voice, "You told me that you would disown me, never again call me daughter, unless I came to you with the blood of my father on my hands."
"I was angry, Pamina. Have you never known anger? Now that you are a woman do you not understand the power of rage?" She looked directly into Pamina's face, and again, seeing the pitiful lines of age and mourning in that face, Pamina was moved to tenderness; but she struggled against it, knowing that the Starqueen would use this, too, as a weapon against her.
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