Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (51 page)

The Moon stood low in the western sky, with her pale hair around
her, looking for him. “Well,” she said, “you were gone a whole night. Is the
garden fair?”

The moth told her that it was. He described the manner of it, the
plants and fruits, the lights and fragrances, and the animals which inhabited
it.

The Moon was envious. “I wish I might see this also,” she said.

The
Moon sat in her twilight pavilion under the western horizon, thinking about how
she might trick the Sun.

Their quarrel was many thousands of years old. They had forgotten
what they had quarreled over, but neither would unbend to the other.

At length she made a plan. “I shall not traverse the sky tonight,
but leave the earth in darkness. Wrapped in a black mantle I will go into the
east. The moth found a way into the garden, and so will I. Is the Moon less
wise than a moth?”

When the Sun rode west in his blaze of glory, the Moon had moved
her pavilion into the east. When the final torches of the Sun’s procession
vanished, the stars came out with mirrors and bells. They called to the Moon to
join them, but the Moon had other business. She wrapped herself in her black
mantle and stepped down the night until she came against a vast encircling
wall. Higher than heaven it seemed, without beginning or end.

The Moon searched awhile, and then she stood awhile in thought.
“Perhaps it is not so after all,” said the Moon. “I am no wiser than the moth.
Indeed, I am less wise.”

After a time, she heard the sound of water. Turning from the great
wall she found a range of hills, and there a cave. She passed into the cave and
in it was a stream bed and a stream flowing away under the ground.

The Moon spoke to the stream in its own language.

“Where are you going?” asked the Moon.

“Into the Sun’s garden, where all is gold and glad.”

“May I go with you?”

“It is forbidden,” said the stream.

“Why?”

“You are the Moon, with whom he has had words.”

“No,” said the Moon, “you are mistaken. I am only the light of
seven silver cities quenched by a cloud far away.” When she denied herself, the
Moon felt a pang, but she was resolute.

The stream believed her. It permitted her to lie down upon it and
bore her with it under the ground, and under a mighty wall, into the garden.

Here the stream bed was laid with shining jacinth and jasper. The
Moon rose from the water, and looked about. So she walked through the garden,
its high places and its hollows. She touched the golden fruit on the trees and
it rang like gongs, she beheld the fiery beasts playing on the lawns. She was
filled with jealousy and admiration. As she walked, the flowers in the grass
turned silver. She was reflected in three pools, to the east, the west, and the
south of the garden.

Eventually the night began to fade. The Moon went to the stream
which constantly entered the garden.

“No,” said the stream. “I brought you but I will not return you
hence.”

“Alas,” said the Moon.

She hurried to the wall, seeking a way out as she had sought a way
in. She grew anxious, for the first torches were alight in the eastern sky.
Finally she perceived the little eyelet by which the moth had escaped the
garden. The Moon waned, making herself slender as an awl. But when she lay down
to pass through the eyelet, she discovered the web of a spider had been spun
there, all golden with the Sun-strength of the garden—and the Moon could not
break it.

The Moon was angry and afraid. In the east she saw the burning
incenses and firecrackers of the Sun’s procession. Resuming her usual form and
size, the Moon ran to a vast tree hung with foliage. Into this she climbed, and
hid herself under the leaves.

Then the Sun came over the horizon. He rode a tiger of cinnabar.
Scarves of yellow and rose unfolded from the beams that danced in his
following; the banners were loud as the noise of trumpets.

As he passed, he looked down into his garden. His light was so
colossal it blinded even him. He did not see the drifts of silver in the grass,
or the paleness smoldering there under the boughs of a tall tree. He reflected
his glory into the three pools where the Moon had been reflected, and rode on,
well pleased.

When
the Sun was gone, the Moon tried many things to get out of the garden. She
called her half brothers, the lunar winds, but they would only shake the trees,
and when the golden fruit fell, they sported with it—they were very young. And
she called the nightbirds that worshiped her as a goddess, the nightingale who
has bells in her throat, and the owl with his glimmering temple windows for
eyes. But the birds, though they had somehow got through the wall, were half
asleep and could find no egress suitable for the Moon, and they chirruped and
whirred and mourned and yawned, and stared, and were sent away abashed. It was
now almost night again, and the sky moonless.

Some upstart star
, thought the Moon,
will
take my honors. She will strain herself to shine more brightly, and say she is
the Moon, and the earth will forget me.
Then the Moon wept, and her tears
made pearls about the trees, which slowly turned to rubies in the sunset.

Presently there came a sound that caused the Moon’s tears to dry
in horror. It was the note of a great key turning in a large lock somewhere in
the wall. Then a solar wind rushed through the garden, twanging the blades of
the grass and ruffling the fur of the fierce beasts there. It was the Sun’s
messenger, and the Sun himself came close behind, blazing in a mantle of dark
red.

“Ah, how beautiful my garden is,” declared the Sun possessively,
“more beautiful than ever before. But what is this?” he added, as his own
radiance lit the ruby-pearls upon the grass. “Come now,” said the Sun, parting
the branches of the tree, “who is hiding there?”

“It is I,” whispered the Moon.

“Is it you? Who are you?”

The Moon started.
He does not remember me
, she thought.
Well,
it has been an eon or two since we met. And he has always dazzled himself.
And wrapping her own mantle closely about her, she descended and stood before
the Sun, very timidly.

“I am,” said the Moon, “an especially brilliant star. So brilliant
the Moon was envious, and she sent me from her court. I came here by mischance,
and could not find a way out again. Will you let me from your garden?”

“Stay,” said the Sun. “You are very fair. I can see quite easily
how the Moon, that pallid hag, would be jealous.”

“Can you indeed?” said the Moon, and she seethed in her mantle.
“Nevertheless I have duties to perform in the nocturnal sky.”

“Stay with me only this one night,” said the Sun, winningly.
“Then, when I myself must leave to light the sky, you may go before me. I have
long had a scheme to choose of all the stars one of the loveliest, who should
then be my herald in the east. Perhaps I shall choose you.”

“How generous you are, how you flatter me,” said the Moon. And she
hid her looks, which might have splintered glass, in her mantle.

But the Sun vowed he would not let her go until morning, so the
Moon stayed with him, perforce, and pretended to be dazzled by him also, and it
came to be that she was. For as they strolled through the marvelous garden, he
showed her the most fragrant of its flowers, and the best of its fruits he
plucked for her. And his hands, which guided her, were warm. When they were
weary, they reclined upon the blissful turf, and the Sun dallied with the Moon,
and the Moon said to herself,
Since I make out I am a mere star, I must
permit this
. And the Sun charmed her, despite the old resentments. She
softened to him. So much so indeed, that when the torches and trumpets of his
eager retinue drew near to call him forth to dawn, the Moon was rather
regretful. Yet, as he was departing, she waxed vexed again. So she snatched
surreptitiously a throbbing stone from a waterfall and a burning flower from
the grass. And at the last she cut off by stealth a lock from the Sun’s flaming
mane, with a little silver knife, as he embraced her in farewell.

Then the Sun let her out of his garden, and away the Moon fled up
the sky, all in disarray, her mantle slipping from her white shoulders and her
hair fluttering about her. She ran across heaven and did not stop until she
reached her pavilion, and here she fell down in a faint of grievance, pleasure,
and shame.

The
Moon brooded. She became thin, less luminous, more pale. She thought,
I will
pay him out, for his fine garden, for my humiliation. That he thought me a star
only, and dallied with me. But most of all because I permitted it.

Then the Moon took the flower and the stone from the Sun’s garden,
and the lock of hair from the Sun’s own mane, and she made magic. When she was
done, she wove a robe for herself, and this robe shone so wonderfully, the
stars who had come to her pavilion to visit her shrank back in surprise.

Now
let him think
me
a
star,
thought the Moon, and she rose up the sky blindingly.

So fair and so glorious she shone that night that in the lands of
men, the poets who had written
harsh bitter Moon
crossed
out the line and wrote instead
0 Moon of man’s delight!
And
those who wrote
old
cold silver witch
changed it to
warm golden girl.
Truly, warm and
bright as gold, the very sun of night, she was. Only the secret lovers did not
bless her that evening, or thieves, who formerly had made her offerings.

But
the Sun saw too, where he had his own red pavilion in the west. And mounting
the black tiger he used for night-time excursions, he rode furiously westward
to follow her progress, and all the way he heard her praises.
It
was she all this while in my garden
,
he thought, in
anger.
She I plucked fruit for, and pretended to think pretty. And she
has stolen from me essentials of my light, and boasts to men and gods that it
is only her own glaze that adorns her. Well, let her rule the sky, then. Till
I
have
justice, they may manage as they can without me.

And going back into his garden, the Sun slammed the gate.

When the procession of morning called upon him, the Sun sent them
away alone, and it was a vague dreary dawn that day, and for many days after.
But the Sun, in his garden, learned something to his advantage.

Now
in those far-off times, the gods were young. They took an interest in all things.
And when mankind began to complain at their altars that the Sun no longer
smiled on the earth, and that therefore everlasting winter and barrenness
overtook them, the gods heeded.

They sent to the Sun and asked him what he meant by his absence.
The Sun replied that he had fallen sick, let the Moon oversee the day as well
as the night, for she burned so magnificently, surely it would be no bother to
her. (The Moon, when she heard this, blanched, and even her finery could not
disguise it.) The gods sent again to the Sun, and summoned him into the upper
tiers of the sky, where they looked down on him: He had come muffled in a storm
cloud.

“It is this way,” said the Sun. “Someone entered my garden and
stole from me a part of my essence, the soul of my light. I am weakened and
dismayed. Correct the matter, and I will resume my office.”

“Who stole from you?” inquired the gods. (Even then, they would
tend to speak in concert.)

“I do not know,” said the Sun, “but I guess.” And he told how he
had found one in the garden who assured him she was a star, and he had been
attentive to her, but next the Moon had appeared in glory, while he sickened.

Then the gods sent for the Moon. She came, veiled in mist, and
trembling much.

“Did you enter the Sun’s garden?”

“I?” said the Moon, astounded to be asked.

“Did you steal from the Sun?”

“I?” said the Moon.

“What proof,” said the gods to the Sun, “do you have that ever she
entered the garden? For if she denies both things and is found guilty of one,
then guilty she must be of the other also.”

Then the Sun grinned and the Moon shuddered.

“Only come with me there,” said the Sun, “and you will see.”

So the gods descended into the garden of the Sun, and walked about
there, and the earth echoed at each footfall of theirs among the great-leaved
trees and by the gleaming waters.

Night entered presently, and in the dark all glowed most
entertainingly, and to the water’s edges came the orange beasts to drink, while
the topaz fishes leapt. Then through the glades by the waters rang female
voices, and next there advanced dancingly three lovely young feminine forms.
They were white as the ashes of lilies, and their long pale hair hung around
them; they wore garlands of yellow flowers, and amber necklaces and anklets,
and these were all their clothing.