Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (50 page)

In the house Tavrosharak might be heard saying to the silvered
glass: “Do you not agree that it is impossible to live in such squalor, or to
bring the intellect to bear upon deeds of occult science, when there is this
constant raucous hubbub under the window?”

Then Dathanja laughed, and the child, and they walked together up
the bank toward the tree, where today only the slim gilt figure of Ebriel was
waiting—who, at their approach, opened his wings and drifted like a daffodil
hawk into the sky.

“How golden he is,” said Soveh. “Is he our enemy, or a friend?

“I do not know,” said Dathanja. “Nor, I think, does he, now.”

“There is a white O behind his head. Is it a cloud that is so
round and burns so coldly?”

Dathanja paused and looked at the orb of light in the sky, across
which the Malukhim had now flown. At last Dathanja said, “That is the moon,
which has risen by day, and follows the sun over the sky.”

(Now, it is said that such a thing had never happened before, that
the moon of the flat earth dawned only after the sun had gone down. Or, if ever
it had happened, it had been in the chaotic primitive ages, before reason
ordered the world.)

In another moment, however, the white orb disappeared inside a
true cloud, and meanwhile some wagons and carts drawn by bullocks began to come
along the river shore, filled by those who sought Dathanja, and behind these,
riders on blue elephants. The day’s work had begun.

But the day was dark, and most silent. So soundless it was that
the speech the healer had with his patients, and the debates he had with those
who wished to be tutored by him, seemed the only attest to life for miles. And
then again, from time to time, clear as a clarion, you could hear Tavrosharak
upbraiding a solitary cricket for the din it made in the vine under his window.

“Healer,” said one of the debaters seated on the ground before
Dathanja, “this is a curious day. How thick the panes of it.”

“The atmosphere,” said another, “is charged as if with lightning.
Some event is due. Should we fear? Should we entreat the gods for clemency?”

“Why should you entreat them?” said Dathanja.

“Because perhaps our sins have made them angry.”

“Sin,” said Dathanja, “does not anger the gods. It is we who anger
ourselves by what we do amiss. When you do wrong, ask forgiveness of yourself,
for it is yourself you have harmed far worse than any other man, and that in
proportion to your crime.”

“Say then,” said one of the debaters, “I kill my own brother.
Surely that is a worse sin against him than against myself?”

“Not in the least,” said Dathanja. “For, though your sin in
wrenching from him his selected life is very great, he will have another life.
While you have sullied for yourself that life which is your own, as if you had
taken up mud and slime and rubbed them into your garments, and you must live on
in that muck until conclusion and rebirth. Nor will you be free of the stain
even then, till you have toiled and striven to cleanse it.”

“Ah, Master,” said the man, “by these words we know, as we have
been led to believe, that you are without any sin.”

“I am the most sinful among you,” said Dathanja. “My soul is thick
with the filth of foolish terrible evils.”

Those who heard this gasped and protested. Finally one who had
come riding there in silk and velvet on an elephant said to Dathanja, “How
then, priest, do you dare to invoke healing, or to offer solutions to those
events which perturb us?”

“He,” said Dathanja, “that drinks from the poisoned well and dies
there, do they not leave his skull on a post to warn other travelers from the
water? Or, if he survives, will he not know, best of all men, which wells to
avoid, and better than those who have never tasted the poison, nor swallowed it
down?”

“Do you say then that all men
must
first do evil that they may learn how to do good?”

“There is no ‘must,’” answered Dathanja. “I say only that, in most
cases, this is how it will fall out. And as with individual men and women, so
with mankind itself. Until at last the cruel and selfish stages of infancy and
adolescence are finished with, and the peoples of the world—which may not then
be any world we should recognize, for the date is far off—these peoples shall
be, all of them, grown to adult estate, in heart, spirit, and mind. In which
time, which shall doubtless be time’s end, there will be no villainy done, no
ambition vaunted, no struggling one with another. Nor will it grow from
innocence or ignorance, that era of compassion and mildness, but from an
enduring knowledge gained by example and experience. And then, in that ultimate
time, before the last of the suns sets and the last of the stars goes out, and
the endless adventure of existence removes itself to some other finer course,
then the gentle, the good, and the knowing, they and they alone, those that we
shall come to be, shall inherit the earth, before the earth is no more.”

A profound quiet now lay upon the slope above the river, under the
tree. It had kept its leaves, the wild fig, though they were worn thin.

“Yet,” said the rider of the elephant, “you, a sinner, you have
said, say all this too, and are weightless as those leaves over our heads. How
can you walk upright, how can you speak so blithely, if your deeds are as you
say?”

“Once,” said Dathanja, “there was a merchant, who owed money to
many other merchants in the town. He kept mighty ledgers, and pored over them
day and night. So intent was he upon how much he owed, and so carefully did he
groan over the accounts, that his trade was ruined. He was near to becoming not
only a debtor, but an impoverished debtor. There came one to him then, and said
to him, ‘Throw away your books, and go out into the town and earn your gold,
for you are talented and will soon be rich again.’ ‘But,’ said the merchant,
‘how am I to remember to whom I owe these debts, unless I keep note of them?’
‘Do only this,’ said his adviser, kindly. ‘If you see any that lack, or if any
apply to you for funds, where you have it, give it them. In that way those in
need you will sustain, and those you owe you cannot help but repay.’ And so the
merchant burned the ledgers and forgot them, but going out he earned much gold,
made himself the debtor of everyman, and did great service for all. And lightly
did he walk, that man, having so simplified his life.”

“But for sure,” cried the elephant’s velvet rider, “there are some
bad men abroad, and to do good turns to them would be idiocy.”

“Yet,” said Dathanja, “if you would punish them, then you must
keep note of their names and carry the long list with you, always taking it out
and consulting it, wherever you go.”

“But if I do kindnesses to a wicked man, he will make a fool of
me. He will grind me like grain between the millstones.”

“Does he,” said Dathanja, “make more of a fool of you by supposing
you a fool than you make of yourself by wasting your time and effort in the
constant striving to return ill for ill? A hungry man who finds a fruit tree
may eat some of the fruit. It is perhaps sour, or perhaps deliciously sweet.
Either way, the matter is soon discovered and the man may go on with his
journey. Conversely, he may halt under the tree for an hour with his stomach
crying to him for food, deciding if it is worth biting at the fruit, since it
may not be to his liking. Each has his own life, and came to this place to live
it. The easier his dealings with other men, the more time is left for his own
pursuits. Now suppose,” said the priest, “you sat here by the water, where you
had come to think or dream, or contemplate the world, or to sleep. And a man
came to you and struck you in the face. What then?”

“Why, I would jump up and clap him back, twice as hard as he had
struck at
me.”

“And thereupon he would strike you most hardly yet, and you would
strike him more hardly, and so on, until one had maimed or killed the other.
And say you are the victor and he lies prone, then you must fly justice or the
revenge of his family. Or you must gain a way to recompense them. And all this
while you have been fighting, planning, or flying, you have spent your energy
that you had meant to use on your own account. Now, when the man struck you, if
you had only said to him, ‘Strike me again for good measure, I have no quarrel
with
you,’
perhaps he would have struck you, or perhaps not, but the affair
would have been finished with, and you at liberty to go on as you wished.”

“Master, I see it is a parable, but nevertheless, some men, being
allowed to strike another unchecked, will make a habit of striking there. Is
that not also an interruption?”

“Life is a series of blows, in any case,” said the priest, “birth
and death being the greatest of these, but between them, many of lesser sort.
And is it possible to return or mend every smack of fate and life? Sit down
beneath the storm, for if you shout at it, it will not hear you.”

“Now by the gods,” said the velvet rider, “tell me how to get
wisdom.”

“Leave your mansion and your wealth. Wander the world. Accept only
what is given, but where you are able, give away again all you have.”

The rider’s face fell to his silken boots.

“Must
I
do this? Is there no other method?”

“There are many. They will take you longer. It is hard to run when
your feet are tied to a palace gate; it is hard to see through windows of
emerald and silver. You put difficulties in your path. That is all.”

And then the sky turned the color of the worn fig leaves, a smoky
shadow-shade, and the men who had sought Dathanja, one and all, exclaimed in
fear. Even the bullocks lowed and snorted, and the elephants squealed. After
which, the silence came again, three times more leaden than before.

The elephant’s rider drew from his belt a pale emerald set in
silver, and gazing through it at the sky, he announced: “The face of the sun
has turned black, though all about it streams his bright hair.”

It was the first eclipse of the flat earth, or the first eclipse
of the sun by the moon which had been seen since the ages of chaos. (For chaos
had been brushed, and brushed in turn the world, and changed it. Things would
never be quite as they had been. Nature took strides, she raced.)

“It is the rage of heaven,” quavered certain of the sick who had been
healed, and now felt guilty for being comfortable after years of anguish.

“It is this priest’s abstruse teaching, which has upset those gods
who control the sky’s disks. In a moment they may throw stars at him. Let us
run away!”

But others plucked at Dathanja’s sleeve, where he sat serenely,
and the child-girl leaned on him without any sign of alarm. Dathanja said, “The
moon has come between us and the sun. In a minute or so the moon will take her
way onward, and this phenomenon will cease.”

The child looked into his face with her blue, blue eyes. “Tell a
story to us,” said she softly, “why the moon should approach the sun.”

Dathanja motioned all the nervous and frightened ones to sit down
again. He spoke a phrase that brought a vast calm upon them, there in the
darkness with the hair of the sun streaming from a black hole in the sky. Even
the beasts lay down, and even the river smoothed itself.

4 The Story of the Sun and the Moon

LONG,
LONG ago, and longer ago than that . . .

. . . the Sun had a garden in the east. But he had
had words with the Moon, and would not let her into the garden. There came a
dusk when she could bear her curiosity no more. The Moon summoned one of the
wide-winged moths that fly by night. “Go you into the garden,” she said, “and
see of what sort it is. Return and tell me.”

So the night-flying moth flew down the miles of heaven and over
the back of the earth, into the east. Presently he came to a high wall, higher
than the sky it seemed. Upward again he flew, but the wall appeared to meet and
become one with the darkness. Around and around he flew, but the wall was a
vast circle, without beginning or end. At last the moth grew weary and fell to
the ground under the wall. Here he found a tiny eyelet. Folding close his
wings, he crept through this little space, and emerged into the garden.

How beautiful it was. The lawns were many-tiered and with the nap
of velvet, and more velvety even than these were the rock shelves and steps
over which rivulets trickled. It was the Sun’s garden, and so even by night,
the rock was warm, and the air of the garden was warm, and scented with a
hundred fragrances. The shrubs grew tall as trees. The trees were like mighty
spires, and the perfume of their wood and their moisture nearly drowned the moth,
so he must rest on an amber stone which glowed. Everywhere about such stones
lay scattered, and each glowed. It was the Sun’s garden, and all bright and
fulvous things were there. The trees were crowded by golden fruit which shone
like lamps; fireflies played above the pools, where creatures with orange pelts
and fiery eyes stole down to drink. A fish leapt: It was a topaz.

Eventually the night began to fade. The moth remembered who had
sent him on her errand. He returned to the wall, and after much searching, he
found the eyelet and made his way out.