The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye

by A. S. Byatt

  He said there were so many Dead, in the boat, on the crests of the waves, that he felt a panic of terror for being so crowded. For though they were all insubstantial so he could put his hand this way or that, yet they packed around him, and shrilled their wild cries on the waves, so many, so many, as though the wake of a ship would have not a flock of gulls calling after it, but the sky and the sea solid with feathers, and every feather a soul, so it was he said, after.

  And he said to the dancing child, ‘Shall we put to sea in this boat?’

  And the thing was still and would not answer.

  And he said, ‘So far I have come, and I am very greatly afraid, but if I may come to her, I will go on.’

  And the little thing said, ‘Wait.’

  And he thought of her among all the others out on the water, with her thin white face and her flat breast and her starved mouth, and he called after her ‘Wait,’ and her voice howled back like an echo,

  ‘Wait.’

  And he stirred the air, that was full of things, with his arms, and shuffled his clever feet among the dust of the dead on the boards of that boat, but all was heavy, and would not move, and the waves went rolling past, one after another, after another, after another. Then he tried to jump in, he says, but could not. So he stood till dawn and felt them come and go and well in and draw back and heard their cries and the little thing that said,

  ‘Wait.’

  And in the dawn of the next day he came back to the village a broken man. And he sat in the square with the old men, he in the best of his manhood, and his mouth slackened and his face fell away and mostly he said nothing, except ‘I can hear well enough’ or otherwise ‘I wait,’ these two things only.

  And two or three or ten years ago he put up his head and said, ‘Do you not hear the little thing, dancing?’ And they said no, but he went in, and made his bed businesslike, and called his neighbours and gave Jeanne the key to his sea-chest and stretched himself out, all thin as he was and wasted, and said, ‘In the end I waited longest, but now I hear it stamping, the little thing is impatient, though I have been patient enough.’ And at midnight he said, ‘Why, there you are, then,’ and so he died.

  And the room smelled of apple blossom and ripe apples together, Jeanne said. And Jeanne married the butcher and bore him four sons and two daughters, all of them lusty, but ill-disposed for dancing.

  The Story of the Eldest Princess

  The Lady with the Rooks, Edward Calvert, 1829

  Once upon a time, in a kingdom between the sea and the mountains, between the forest and the desert, there lived a King and Queen with three daughters. Their eldest daughter was pale and quiet, the second daughter was brown and active, and the third was one of those Sabbath daughters who are bonny and bright and good and gay, of whom everything and nothing was expected.

  When the eldest Princess was born, the sky was a speedwell blue, covered with very large, lazy, sheep-curly white clouds. When the second Princess was born, there were grey and creamy mares’ tails streaming at great speed across the blue. And when the third Princess was born, the sky was a perfectly clear pane of sky-blue, with not a cloud to be seen, so that you might think the blue was spangled with sun-gold, though this was an illusion.

  By the time they were young women, things had changed greatly. When they were infants, there were a series of stormy sunsets tinged with sea-green, and seaweed-green. Later there were, as well as the sunsets, dawns, where the sky was mackerel-puckered and underwater-dappled with lime-green and bottle-green and other greens too, malachite and jade. And when they were moody girls the green colours flecked and streaked the blue and the grey all day long, ranging from bronze-greens through emerald to palest opal-greens, with hints of fire. In the early days the people stood in the streets and fields with their mouths open, and said oh, and ah, in tones of admiration and wonder. Then one day a small girl said to her mother that there had been no blue at all for three days now, and she wanted to see blue again. And her mother told her to be sensible and patient and it would blow over, and in about a month the sky was blue, or mostly blue, but only for few days, and streaked, ominously, the people now felt, with aquamarine. And the blue days were further and further apart, and the greens were more and more varied, until a time when it became quite clear that the fundamental colour of the sky was no longer what they still called sky-blue, but a new sky-green, a pale flat green somewhere between the colours which had once been apple and grass and fern. But of course apple and grass and fern looked very different against this new light, and something very odd and dimming happened to lemons and oranges, and something more savage and hectic to poppies and pomegranates and ripe chillies.

  The people, who had at first been entranced, became restive, and, as people will, blamed the King and Queen for the disappearance of the blue sky. They sent deputations to ask for its return, and they met and muttered in angry knots in the Palace Square. The royal couple consulted each other, and assured each other that they were blameless of greening, but they were uneasy, as it is deep in human nature to suppose human beings, oneself or others, to be responsible for whatever happens. So they consulted the chief ministers, the priests, and a representative sample of generals, witches and wizards. The ministers said nothing could be done, though a contingency-fund might usefully be set up for when a course of action became clear. The priests counselled patience and self-denial, as a general sanative measure, abstention from lentils, and the consumption of more lettuce. The generals supposed it might help to attack their neighbour to the East, since it was useful to have someone else to blame, and the marches and battles would distract the people.

  The witches and wizards on the whole favoured a Quest. One rather powerful and generally taciturn wizard, who had interfered very little, but always successfully, in affairs of State, came out of his cavern, and said that someone must be sent along the Road through the Forest across the Desert and into the Mountains, to fetch back the single silver bird and her nest of ash-branches. The bird, he added, was kept in the walled garden of the Old Man of the Mountains, where she sipped from the crystal fountain of life, and was guarded by a thicket of thorns-poisonous thorns-and an interlaced ring of venomous fiery snakes. He believed that advice could be sought along the way about how to elude their vigilance, but the only advice he could give was to keep to the Road, and stray neither in the Forest, nor in the Desert, nor in the rocky paths, and always to be courteous. Then he went back to his cavern.

  The King and Queen called together the Council of State, which consisted of themselves, their daughters, the chief minister and an old duchess, to decide what to do. The minister advised the Quest, since that was a positive action, which would please the people, and not disrupt the state. The second Princess said she would go of course, and the old duchess went to sleep. The King said he thought it should be done in an orderly manner, and he rather believed that the eldest Princess should go, since she was the first, and could best remember the blue sky. Quite why that mattered so much, no one knew, but it seemed to, and the eldest Princess said she was quite happy to set out that day, if that was what the council believed was the right thing to do.

  So she set out. They gave her a sword, and an inexhaustible water-bottle someone had brought back from another Quest, and a package of bread and quails’ eggs and lettuce and pomegranates, which did not last very long. They all gathered at the city gate to wish her well, and a trumpeter blew a clear, silver sound into the emptiness ahead, and a minister produced a map of the Road, with one or two sketchy patches, especially in the Desert, where its undeviating track tended to be swallowed by sandstorms.

  The eldest Princess travelled quickly enough along the Road. Once or twice she thought she saw an old woman ahead of her, but this figure vanished at certain bends and slopes of the path, and did not reappear for some time, and then only briefly, so that it was never clear to the Princess whether there was one, or a succession of old women. In any case, if they were indeed, or she was indeed,
an old woman, or old women, she or they were always very far ahead, and travelling extremely fast.

  The Forest stretched along the Road. Pale green glades along its edges, deeper rides, and dark tangled patches beyond these. The Princess could hear, but not see, birds calling and clattering and croaking in the trees. And occasional butterflies sailed briefly out of the glades towards the Road, busy small scarlet ones, lazily swooping midnight-blue ones, and once, a hand-sized transparent one, a shimmering film of wings with two golden eyes in the centre of the lower wing. This creature hovered over the Road, and seemed to follow the Princess for several minutes, but without ever crossing some invisible barrier between Forest and Road. When it dipped and turned back into the dappled light of the trees the Princess wanted to go after it, to walk on the grass and moss, and knew she must not. She felt a little hungry by now, although she had the inexhaustible water-bottle.

  She began to think. She was by nature a reading, not a travelling, princess. This meant both that she enjoyed her new striding solitude in the fresh air, and that she had read a great many stories in her spare time, including several stories about princes and princesses who set out on Quests. What they all had in common, she thought to herself, was a pattern in which the two elder sisters, or brothers, set out very confidently, failed in one way or another, and were turned to stone, or imprisoned in vaults, or cast into magic sleep, until rescued by the third royal person, who did everything well, restored the first and the second, and fulfilled the Quest.

  She thought she would not like to waste seven years of her brief life as a statue or prisoner if it could be avoided.

  She thought that of course she could be vigilant, and very courteous to all passers-by-most elder princesses’ failings were failings of courtesy or over-confidence.

  There was nobody on the Road to whom she could be courteous, except the old woman, or women, bundling along from time to time a long way ahead.

  She thought, I am in a pattern I know, and I suspect I have no power to break it, and I am going to meet a test and fail it, and spend seven years as a stone.

  This distressed her so much that she sat down on a convenient large stone at the side of the road and began to weep.

  The stone seemed to speak to her in a thin, creaking, dry sort of voice. ‘Let me out,’ it said. ‘I cannot get out.’ It sounded irritable and angry.

  The Princess jumped up. ‘Who are you?’ she cried. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I am trapped under this stone,’ buzzed the voice. ‘I cannot get out. Roll away the stone.’

  The Princess put her hands gingerly to the stone and pushed. Pinned underneath it, in a hollow of the ground, was a very large and dusty scorpion, waving angry pincers, and somewhat crushed in the tail.

  ‘Did you speak?’

  ‘Indeed I did. I was screaming. It took you an age to hear me. Your predecessor on this Road sat down just here rather heavily when I was cooling myself in this good crack, and pinched my tail, as you see.’

  ‘I am glad to have been able to help,’ said the Princess, keeping a safe distance.

  The Scorpion did not answer, as it was trying to raise itself and move forwards. It seemed to move with pain, arching its body and collapsing again, buzzing crossly to itself.

  ‘Can I help?’ asked the Princess.

  ‘I do not suppose you are skilled in healing wounds such as mine. You could lift me to the edge of the Forest where I might be in the path of someone who can heal me, if she ever passes this way again. I suppose you are tearing blindly along the Road, like all the rest.’

  ‘I am on a Quest, to find the single silver bird in her nest of ash-branches.’

  ‘You could put me on a large dock-leaf, and get on your way, then. I expect you are in a hurry.’

  The Princess looked about for a dock-leaf, wondering whether this irascible creature was her first test, which she was about to fail. She wiped up another tear, and plucked a particularly tough leaf, that was growing conveniently in reach of the Road.

  ‘Good,’ said the fierce little beast, rearing up and waving its legs. ‘Quick now, I dislike this hole extremely. Why have you been crying?’

  ‘Because I am not the princess who succeeds, but one of the two who fail and I don’t see any way out. You won’t force me to be discourteous to you, though I have remarked that your own manners are far from perfect, in that you have yet to thank me for moving the stone, and you order me here and there without saying “please”, or considering that humans don’t like picking up scorpions.’

  She pushed the leaf towards it as she spoke, and assisted it on to it with a twig, as delicately as she could, though it wriggled and snapped furiously as she did. She put it down in the grass at the edge of the Forest.

  ‘Most scorpions,’ it observed, ‘have better things to do than sting at random. If creatures like you stamp on us, then of course we retaliate. Also, if we find ourselves boxed in and afraid. But mostly we have better things to do.’ It appeared to reflect for a moment. ‘If our tails are not crushed,’ it added on a dejected note.

  ‘Who is it,’ the Princess enquired courteously, ‘who you think can help you?’

  ‘Oh, she is a very wise woman, who lives at the other side of the Forest. She would know what to do, but she rarely leaves home and why should she? She has everything she might want, where she is. If you were going that way, of couse, you could carry me a little, until I am recovered. But you are rushing headlong along the Road. Good-bye.’

  The Princess was rushing nowhere; she was standing very still and thinking. She said:

  ‘I know that story too. I carry you, and ask you, but will you not sting me? And you say, no, it is not in my interest to sting you. And when we are going along, you sting me, although we shall both suffer. And I ask, why did you do that? And you answer-it is my nature.’

  ‘You are a very learned young woman, and if we were travelling together you could no doubt tell me many instructive stories. I might also point out that I cannot sting you-my sting is disabled by the accident to my tail. You may still find me repugnant. Your species usually does. And in any case, you are going along this road, deviating neither to right nor left. Good-bye.’

  The Princess looked at the Scorpion. Under the dust it was a glistening blue-black, with long arms, fine legs and complex segments like a jet necklace. Its claws made a crescent before its head. It was not possible to meet its eye, which was disconcerting.

  ‘I think you are very handsome.’

  ‘Of course I am. I am quick and elegant and versatile and delightfully intricate. I am surprised, however, that you can see it.’

  The Princess listened only distractedly to this last remark. She was thinking hard. She said, mostly to herself:

  ‘I could just walk out of this inconvenient story and go my own way. I could just leave the Road and look for my own adventures in the Forest. It would make no difference to the Quest. I should have failed if I left the Road and then the next could set off. Unless of course I got turned into stone for leaving the Road.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said the Scorpion. ‘And you could be very helpful to me, if you chose, and I know quite a few stories too, and helping other creatures is always a good idea, according to them.’

  The Princess looked into the Forest. Under the green sky its green branches swayed and rustled in a beckoning way. Its mossy floor was soft and tempting after the dust and grit of the Road. The Princess bent down and lifted up the Scorpion on its leaf and put it carefully into the basket which had contained her food. Then, with a little rebellious skip and jump, she left the Road, and set out into the trees. The Scorpion said she should go south-west, and that if she was hungry it knew where there was a thicket of brambles with early blackberries and a tree-trunk with some mushrooms, so they went in search of those, and the Princess made her mouth black without quite assuaging her hunger.

  They travelled on, and they travelled on, in a green-arched shade, with the butterflies crowding roun
d the Princess’s head and resting on her hair and shoulders. Then they came to a shady clearing, full of grassy stumps and old dry roots, beneath one of which the Princess’s keen eye detected a kind of struggling and turbulence in the sand. She stopped to see what it was, and heard a little throaty voice huskily repeating:

  ‘Water. Oh, please, water, if you can hear me, water.’

  Something encrusted with sand was crawling and flopping over the wiry roots, four helpless legs and a fat little belly. The Princess got down on her knees, ignoring the angry hissing of the Scorpion. Two liquid black eyes peered at her out of the sandy knobs, and a wide mouth opened tremulously and croaked ‘Water’ at her. The Princess brought out her inexhaustible water-bottle and dropped drops into the mouth and washed away the crust of sand, revealing a large and warty green and golden toad, with an unusual fleshy crest on its head. It puffed out its throat and held up its little fingers and toes to the stream of water. As the sand flowed away, it could be seen that there was a large bloody gash on the toad’s head.

  ‘Oh, you are hurt,’ cried the Princess.

  ‘I was caught,’ said the Toad, ‘by a Man who had been told that I carry a jewel of great value in my head. So he decided to cut it out. But that is only a story, of course, a human story told by creatures who like sticking coloured stones on their heads and skins, and all I am is flesh and blood. Fortunately for me, my skin is mildly poisonous to Men, so his fingers began to itch and puff up, and I was able to wriggle so hard that he dropped me and lost me. But I do not think that I have the strength to make my way back to the person who could heal me.’

  ‘We are travelling in her direction,’ said the Scorpion. ‘You may travel with us if you care to. You could travel in this Princess’s luncheon-basket, which is empty.’

  ‘I will come gladly,’ said the Toad. ‘But she must not suppose I shall turn into a handsome Prince, or any such nonsense. I am a handsome Toad, or would be, if I had not been hacked at. A handsome Toad is what I shall remain.’