The Best of C. L. Moore

by C. L. Moore

  He stood for an instant transfixed, motionless, glowing with that bath of crimson light. Then I saw the crimson begin to shine through him, so that the shadows of his bones stood out upon the skin. And then fire shot up, wreathing from his eyes and mouth and nostrils. He was a lantern of flesh for that fire of the burning spirit. But he was a lantern that is consumed by the flame it carries. . .

  When the color became too bright for the eyes to bear it, I tried to turn away. I could not. The pain in my chest was too great. I thought of the Shaughnessy in that moment, who knew, too, what pain in the

  chest was like. I think that was the first moment when it came to me that, like the Shaughnessy, I too was going to die.

  Before my eyes, the captain burned in the fire of his daemon, burned and burned, his living eyes looking out at me through the crimson glory, and the laughter of the daemon very sweet above the sound of the whining flame. I could not watch and I could not turn away.

  But at last the whine began to die. Then the laughter roared out in one great peal of triumph, and the beautiful crimson color, so dreadfully more crimson than blood, flared in a great burst of light that turned to blackness against my eyeballs.

  When I could see again, the captain’s body lay flat upon the sand. I know death when I see it. He was not burned at all. He looked as any dead man looks, flat and silent. It was his soul I had watched burning, not his body.

  The daemon had gone back again to its own place. I knew that, for I could feel my aloneness on the island.

  The Others had gone too. The presence of that fiery daemon was more, in the end, than their power could endure. Perhaps they shun an evil soul more fearfully than a good one, knowing themselves nothing of good and evil, but fearing what they do not understand.

  You know, padre, what came after. The men from the Dancing Martha took their captain away next morning. They were frightened of the island. They looked for that which had killed him, but they did not look far, and I hid in the empty forest until they went away.

  I do not remember their going. There was a burning in my chest, and this blood I breathe out ran from time to time, as it does now. I do not like the sight of it. Blood is a beautiful color, but it reminds

  me of too much that was beautiful also, and much redder. .

  Then you came, padre. I do not know how long thereafter. I know the Shaughnessy’s people brought you with their ship, to find him or his grave. You know now. And I am glad you came. It is good to have a man like you beside me at this time. I wish I had a daemon of my own, to grow very bright and vanish when I die, but that is not for o Bobo and I am used to that kind of loneliness.

  I would not live, you see, now that the ninfas are gone. To be with them was good, and we comforted one another in our loneliness but, padre, I will tell you this much. It was a chilly comfort we gave each other, at the best. I am a man, though bobo, and I know. They are ninfas, and will never guess how warm and wonderful it must be to

  own a soul. I would not tell them if I could. I was sorry for the ninfas, padre. They are, you see, immortal.

  As for me, I will forget loneliness in a little while. I will forget everything. I would not want to be a ninfa and live forever.

  There is one behind you, padre. It is very bright. It watches me across your shoulder, and its eyes are wise and sad. No, daemon, this is no time for sadness. Be sorry for the ninfas, daemon, and for men like him who burned upon this beach. But not for me. I am well content.

  I will go now.

  * * *

  Fruit of Knowledge

  It was the first Sabbath. Down the open glades of Eden a breeze stirred softly. Nothing else in sight moved except a small winged head that fluttered, yawning, across the glade and vanished among leaves that drew back to receive it. The air quivered behind it like a wake left in water of incomparable clarity. From far away and far above a faint drift of singing echoed, “Hosannah . . - hosannah . . - hosannah—” The seraphim were singing about the Throne.

  A pool at the edge of the glade gave back light and color like a great, dim jewel. It gave back reflections, too. The woman who bent over it had just discovered that. She was leaning above the water until her cloudy dark hair almost dipped into the surface. There was a curious shadow all about her, like a thin garment which did not quite conceal how lovely she was, and though no breeze stirred just now, that shadow garment moved uneasily upon her and her hair lifted a little as if upon a breeze that did not blow.

  She was so quiet that a passing cherub-head paused above the water to look, too, hanging like a hummingbird motionless over its own reflection in the pool.

  “Pretty!” approved the cherub in a small, piping voice. “New here, aren’t you?”

  The woman looked up with a slow smile, putting back the veil of her hair.

  “Yes, I am,” she answered softly. Her voice did not sound quite sure of itself. She had never spoken aloud before until this moment.

  “You’ll like the Garden,” said the cherub in a slightly patronizing tone, giving his rainbow wings a shake. “Anything I can do for you? I’m not busy just now. Be glad to show you around.”

  “Thank you,” smiled the woman, her voice sounding a little more confident. “I’ll find my way.”

  The cherub shrugged his colored wings. “Just as you say. By the way, I suppose they warned you about the Tree?”

  The woman glanced up at him rather quickly, her shadowy eyes narrowing.

  “The Tree? Is there danger?”

  “Oh, no. You mustn’t touch it, that’s all. It’s the one in the middle of the Garden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—you can’t miss it. I saw the Man looking at it yesterday for quite a while. That reminds me, have you met the Man?”

  The woman bent her head so that the hair swung forward to veil her face. From behind it, in a voice that sounded as if she might be smiling, she said:

  “He’s waiting for me now.”

  “Oh?” said the cherub, impressed. “Well, you’ll find him over by the orange grove east of the Tree. He’s resting. It’s the Day of Rest, you know.” The cherub tilted an intimate eyebrow heavenward and added: “He’s resting, too. Hear the singing? He made the Man only yesterday, right out of this very earth you’re standing on. We were all watching. It was wonderful— Afterward, He called the man Adam, and then Adam named the animals— By the way, what’s your name?”

  The woman smiled down at her own veiled reflection in the water. After a moment— “Lilith,” she said.

  The cherub stared, his eyes widening into two blue circles of surprise. He was speechless for an instant. Then he pursed his pink mouth to whistle softly.

  “Why,” he stammered, “you . . . you’re the Queen of Air and Darkness!”

  Smiling up at him from the corners of her eyes, the woman nodded. The cherub stared at her big-eyed for a moment longer, too overcome for speech. Then, suddenly, he beat his rainbow pinions together and darted off through the trees without another word, the translucent air rippling in a lazy, half-visible wake behind him. Lilith looked after him with a shadowy smile on her face. He was going to warn Adam. The smile deepened. Let him.

  Lilith turned for one last glance into the mirror of the pool at the strange new shape she had just put on. It was the newest thing in creation—not even God knew about it. And rather surprisingly, she thought she was going to like it. She did not feel nearly as stifled and heavy as she had expected to feel, and there was something distinctly pleasant in the softness of the breeze pouring caressingly about her body, the fragrance of springtime sweet in her nostrils, the grass under

  her bare feet. The Garden was beautiful with a beauty she had not realized until she saw it through human eyes. Everything she saw through them, indeed, was curiously different now. Here in this flesh all her faculties seemed refocused, as if she, who had always seen with such crystal clarity, now looked through rainbows at everything she saw. But it was a pleasant refocusing. She wished she had longer to enjoy her tenancy i
n this five-sensed flesh she shared with Adam.

  But she had very little time. She glanced up toward the bright, unchanging glory above the trees as if she could pierce the floor of heaven and see God resting on the unimaginable splendor of the Throne while the seraphim chanted in long, shining rows about him. At any moment he might stir and lean forward over Eden, looking down. Lilith instinctively shrugged her shadowy garment closer about her. If he did not look too closely, he might not pierce that shadow. But if he did— A little thrill of excitement, like forked lightning, went through the strange new flesh she wore. She liked danger.

  She bent over the pool for one last look at herself, and the pool was a great, dim eye looking back at her, almost sentient, almost aware of her. This was a living Garden. The translucent air quivered with a rhythmic pulsing through the trees; the ground was resilient under her feet; vines drew back to let her pass beneath them. Lilith, turning away through the swimming air after the cherub, puzzled a little as she walked through the parting trees. The relation was very close between flesh and earth—perhaps her body was so responsive to the beauty of the Garden because it aped so closely flesh that had been a part of the Garden yesterday. And if even she felt that kinship, what must Adam feel, who was himself earth only yesterday?

  The Garden was like a vast, half-sentient entity all around her, pulsing subtly with the pulse of the lucent air. Had God drawn from this immense and throbbing fecundity all the life which peopled Eden? Was Adam merely an extension of it, a focus and intensification of the same life which pulsed through the Garden? Creation was too new; she could only guess.

  She thought, too, of the Tree of Knowledge as she walked smoothly through the trees. That Tree, tempting and forbidden. Why? Was God testing Man somehow? Was Man then, not quite finished, after all? Was there any flaw in Eden? Suddenly she knew that there must be. Her very presence here was proof of it, for she, above all others, had no right to intrude into this magical closed sphere which was God’s greatest work. Yet here she walked through the heart of it, and not even God knew, yet— Lilith slanted a smile up through the leaves toward the choruses of

  the seraphim whose singing swelled and sank and swelled again, unutterably sweet high above the trees. The animals watched her pass with wide, bewildered eyes, somehow not quite at ease, although no such thing as fear had yet stirred through the Garden. Lilith glanced at them curiously as she passed. They were pretty things. She liked Eden.

  Presently a swooning fragrance came drifting to her through the trees, almost too sweet to enjoy, and she heard a small voice piping excitedly: “Lilith . . . Air and Darkness— He won’t like it! Michael ought to know—”

  Lilith smiled and stepped clear of the trees into the full, soft glow of Eden’s sun. It did not touch the shadow that dimly veiled the pale contours of this newest shape in Eden. Once or twice that intangible breeze lifted her hair in a great, dim cloud about her, though no leaves moved. She stood quiet, staring across the glade, and as she stared she felt the first small tremor of distrust in this new flesh she wore.

  For on a grassy bank in the sunlight, under the blossoming orange trees, lay Adam. And the trees and the flowers of Eden had seemed beautiful to the eyes of this body Lilith wore, and the breezes and the perfumes had delighted it—but here was flawless perfection newly shaped out of the warm red earth of Eden into the image of its Maker, and the sight of him frightened Lilith because it pleased her so. She did not trust a beauty that brought her to a standstill under the trees, not quite certain why she had stopped.

  He sprawled in long-limbed magnificence on the grass, laughing up at the cherub with his curly yellow head thrown back. Every line of him and every motion had a splendid male beauty as perfect as Omnipotence could make it. Though he wore no clothing he was no more naked than she, for there was a curious glow all about him, a garment of subtle glory that clothed him as if with an all-enveloping halo.

  The cherub danced excitedly up and down in the air above him, shrilling:

  “She shouldn’t be here! You know she shouldn’t! She’s evil, that’s what she is! God won’t like it! She—” Then above Adam’s head he caught Lilith’s eye, gulped a time or two, piped one last admonishing, “Better watch out!” and fluttered away among the leaves, looking back over one wing as he flew.

  Adam’s gaze followed the cherub’s. The laughter faded from his face and he got up slowly, the long, smooth muscles sliding beautifully under his garment of subtle glory as he moved. He was utter perfection in everything he did, flawless, new-made at the hands of Cod. He came toward her slowly, a shining wonder on his face.

  Lilith stared at him distrustfully. The other glories of the Garden had pleased her abstractly, in a way that left her mistress of herself. But here was something she did not understand at all. The eternal Lilith looked out, bewildered, through the eyes of a body that found something strange and wonderful in Adam. She laid a hand on the upper part of that body which rose and fell with her breathing, and felt something beating strongly beneath the smooth, curved surface of the stuff called flesh.

  Adam came toward her slowly. They met in the middle of the glade, and for a long moment neither spoke. Then Adam said in a marveling voice, resonant and deep:

  “You. . . you’re just as I knew you’d be— I knew you’d be somewhere, if I could only find you. ‘Where were you hiding?”

  With an effort Lilith mastered this odd, swimming warmth in her which she did not understand. After all, he was nothing but a certain limited awareness housed in newly shaped flesh, and it made no real difference at all what shape that flesh wore. Her business was too dangerous for her to linger here admiring him because by some accident he was pleasing to the eyes of her newly acquired body. She made her voice like honey in her throat and looked up at him under her lashes, crooning:

  “I wasn’t here at all, until you thought of me.”

  “Until I—” Adam’s golden brows met.

  “God made you in His image,” said Lilith, fluttering the lashes. “There’s so much of God in you still—didn’t you know you could create, too, if you desired strongly enough?”

  She remembered that deep need of his pulsing out and out in great, demanding waves from the Garden, and how it had seemed a call addressed to her alone. She had delighted as she yielded to it, deliberately subordinating her will to the will of the unseen caller in the Garden. She had let it draw her down out of the swimming void, let it mold flesh around her in the shape it chose, until all her being was incased in the strange, soft, yielding substance which was proving so treacherously responsive to the things she was encountering in Eden.

  Adam shook his curly head uncomprehendingly. “You weren’t here. I couldn’t find you,” he repeated, as if he had not heard her. “I watched all day among the animals, and they were all in twos but Man. I knew you must be somewhere. I knew just how you’d look. I

  thought I’d call you Eve when I found you—Eve, the Mother of All Living. Do you like it?”

  “It’s a good name,” murmured Lilith, coming nearer to him, “but not for me. I’m Lilith, who came out of the dark because you needed me.” She smiled a heady smile at him, and the shadowy garment drew thin across her shoulders as she lifted her arms. Adam seemed a little uncertain about what to do with his own arms as she clasped her hands behind his neck and tiptoed a little, lifting her face.

  “Lilith?” he echoed in a bemused voice. “I like the sound. What does it mean?”

  “Never mind,” she crooned in her sweetest voice. “I came because you wanted me.” And then, in a murmur: “Bend your head, Adam. I want to show you something—”

  It was the first kiss in Eden. ‘When it was over, Lilith opened her eyes and looked up at Adam aghast, so deeply moved by the pleasantness of that kiss that she could scarcely remember the purpose that had prompted it. Adam blinked dizzily down at her. He had found what to do with his arms. He stammered, still in that bemused voice:

  “Thank God, you did come! I wish He
could have sent you sooner. We—”

  Lilith recovered herself enough to murmur gently: “Don’t you understand, dear? God didn’t send me. It was you, yourself, waiting and wanting me, that let me take shape out of. . . never mind. . . and come to you in the body you pictured for me, because I knew what wonderful things we could accomplish here in Eden, together. You’re God’s own image, and you have greater powers than you know, Adam.” The tremendous idea that had come to her in the ether when she first heard his soundless call glowed in her voice. “There’s no limit to what we could do here, together! Greater things than even God ever dreamed—”

  “You’re so pretty,” interrupted Adam, smiling down at her with his disarming, empty smile. “I’m so glad you came—”

  Lilith let the rest of her eagerness run out in a long sigh. It was no use trying to talk to him now. He was too new. Powerful with a godlike power, yes, but unaware of it—unaware even of himself as an individual being. He had not tasted the Fruit of Knowledge and his innocence was as flawless as his beauty. Nothing was in his mind, or could be, that God had not put there at his shaping from the warm earth of Eden.

  And perhaps it was best, after all. Adam was too close to godhood to see eye to eye with her in all she might want to do. If he never tasted knowledge, then he would ask no questions—and so he must never touch the Tree.

  The Tree— It reminded her that Eden was still a testing ground, not a finished creation. She thought she knew now what the flaw in man had been which made it possible for Lilith, of all the creatures of ether, to stand here at the very focus of all the power and beauty and innocence in Eden. Lilith, who was evil incarnate and knew it very well. God had made Adam incomplete, and not, perhaps, realized the flaw. And out of Adam’s need Adam himself had created woman— who was not complete either. Lilith realized it suddenly, and began to understand the depth of her reaction to this magnificent creature who still held her in his arms.