If you meddle with his coffin, the wrath of the Judge of Ages will come forth from underearth like burning rock and brimstone from a volcano, and he will call to his knights with these words: “Arise! Arise and slay! For they dare wake me when before the time appointed for my bride to return in triumph from the stars.” The knights will thaw and waken from their coffins, and don their arms and armor, and cry out, “Let no man wake him, He Who Waits, lest his wrath awake!” And their voices and trumpet will be so great, that the earth will quake and resound with the cry: and these are the last words trespassers hear.
But these things do not concern the Nymphs, for we live only in today, and the things of yesterday are not our things, but belong to Chimerae and Witches, and the things of tomorrow are not our things, but belong to the Einheriar and Valkyrie, who will battle bravely, and bravely will fall and die, for the Hyades cannot be overcome.
But I do not naysay them their vain deaths to come, for pleasure is whatever pleases, and if this pleases them, may they rejoice in it!
O Nature, whose living breath inspires the world, we bless and thank you for your inspiration! And if my tale has pleased you, O my lovers, return to me that pleasure with the kiss of thanksgiving, and the caresses of delight: and let us quaff the wine of oblivion together, that this tale, and all other tales and pleasures, shall be fresh as springtide dew, shining and child-new, on some yonder and tomorrow-thither night!
6. Questions
Oenoe was in a kneeling position, her hands on her thighs, her hips over her heels, her back slightly arched and her shoulders slightly back, her head high and erect. Atop her head, creating an illusion of height, was an upright comb of tortoiseshell holding up a veil of lacy fibers and molecular-assembly webs, which hooded her head, fell down her shoulders, and flowed down to her left and right, so that the shining green fabric was spread in a half circle all about her. The garment did nothing to cover her prodigious breasts, but neither the Blue Men nor the dog things, nor the Nymph herself, seemed to find this in anyway distracting or uncouth.
When she began her tale, and spoke her herself, the flowers growing in her mantilla were purple crocuses with stamen of gold, forsythia as fulvous as gold and fretted as airy filigree, with clovers greener than the emerald and sweetly scented.
But as she spoke on, and told about the Nymphs who left their age to become soldiers or Shieldmaidens for the Judge of Ages, the petals dropped to the grass around her, and a new generation, like a slow blush, spread from her slender shoulders downward and out toward her hem, like a ripple in a pool but moving too languidly to see: tansy round as the sun, and zinnia splendid as an emperor’s robe, red roses and white roses growing with thorny stems crossed like fencer’s foils, milfoil white as snow, and vivid Indian cress with orange petals freaked with bloodred.
The flowers fell and grew anew, this time in somber hues. She spoke of the downfall of the Chimerae. Now flourished ice plants with leaves slimmer than white needles, hemlock whose puffs were sickly green, and the folded cloak rustled and brought forth Saint-John’s-wort, and amaranth like purple lace, nightshade, monkshood, and the curling reddish petals of the chiranthodendron that looked like claws of blood. A smell of pine needles came from her.
Menelaus, while she spoke and while he spoke her words to the Blue Men, as if annoyed or lost in thought, would pick up flower petals or leaves that the mantilla of the Nymph was shedding and idly toss them, drifting, floating, back across the little pond to her. Her hand, as if in a dream, would catch each tossed bloom and either put it to her left side, or to her right.
When she finished her tale, a coronet of Cape Jessamine that had formed from the veils of her brow she shook free with a laugh, and the flowers dropped white petals down her dusky locks, to rest upon her hands and thighs and knees, and the grasses where she knelt.
The two Blue Men, sitting cross-legged, neither moved nor fidgeted no more than statues would have. They showed no change in expression during the recitation: Mentor Ull was sleepily reptilian and Preceptor Illiance was eerily serene.
A silence that crawled minute after minute, slow as worms, passed once Oenoe was done speaking, and she pouted, and rolled her eyes, and tossed her hair, so that flowers and thistledown flew up from her mantilla, and she flung herself on her side, hips like the billow of a never-cresting wave, flowing toward her pointed toes; and she rested her cheek on her shoulder, and stared sullenly at the grass blades, which she plucked up with small and angry gestures of her red fingernails.
Menelaus put his fingers in the pond and dashed the water into his own face, since the heat of the chamber made him sweat, and he was unwilling to open his heavy metallic robes. He turned his head and said in High Iatric, “I think you offended her. I am not sure, but I think you were supposed to applaud.”
Illiance said, “I do not know this custom. How do the Naturalists applaud?”
“Hell if I know. Masturbate and throw semen? Something like that.”
Illiance gave him a look of surprise. “Do you denounce? It seems you have little regard for the Naturalist Oenoe! She has said nothing to offend, and her life is depicted as one of admirable unfussiness.”
“Well, I like her more than I like you gentlemen, if that gives you a basis of comparison. I never knew Nymphs to meddle where they oughtn’t, or dig up danger better left buried.”
Preceptor Illiance turned to Ull and said in Intertextual, “I note an undue similarity. The wording of the admonition not to wake the Judge of Ages was the same in this as in the prior account, even thought Soorm scion Asvid postdates Oenoe Psthinshayura-Ah by seven hundred twenty years. Neither era was known for its literacy. I am humbled to admit that the diffusion theory is weakened by this: it is almost as if there were a Judge and he did speak those words.”
Mentor Ull nodded sourly. “The persistence of that degree of specific cultural memories across the watershed of linguistic and psychological differences bears examination.”
Mentor Ull raised a blue finger. As before, his right hand was hidden in a cast, wrapped to his midriff beneath his long coat, and one sleeve dangled free. “I detect a paradox in her testament. Ask her if she can happen to adduce clarity.”
Menelaus said, “What’s your question?”
Ull asked, “How is it she recalls the several things she herself says the members of the Order of Nature are prone by custom to forget? Example: she says when Valkyrie pass by, Naturalists obscure the memories, but in order to say so, she must remember such events.”
Menelaus translated the question.
Oenoe said, “My race is dedicated to perfect happiness, but such perfection is hard to achieve! I have varied from the customary wisdom, and so I am here, and I am very unhappy. If my people were not dead and forgotten, lo, these countless yesterdays of time, I myself could pass into song as an example. Pity my folly!”
And when she closed her eyes, her face, now as solemn and dignified as that of a Queen of Egypt, showed the trail of two tears, clear as crystal, inching down her fair and blushing cheeks.
The Blue Man sat silently for a long minute, and then two, while Menelaus drummed his fingers against his knee. Eventually, he squinted at Illiance. “Hey, sleepyhead! You are making her upset again.”
“How so?” asked Illiance, his tone one of remote wonder.
“She is waiting for you to ask her what she means.”
Illiance touched the grass and touched the crown of his bald head, and then spoke to Oenoe in a halting, careful sentence of her language. “It would give me pleasure if your words would kiss my ears with knowledge, my beloved.”