Piers Anthony: Chthon

Perhaps, he thought, the beauty of that focus could be appreciated only because it came after struggle.

One thing continued to dull his appreciation of his destiny: the lingering image of the nymph of the wood. He could not be entirely complacent while that mystery remained. As he worked in the field, sweating in the hot sun to remove the encroaching weed-plants (he thought of them as krell, though they were hardly dangerous) from the valuable hvee, the broken song ran through his mind, insistent, tantalizing. Where had she come from? What had been her purpose? What could she have wanted with a small boy?

Gradually, age dimmed the memory. Only the central core of dissatisfaction remained, keeping him ever so slightly off-balance, making him wonder whether the life he contemplated as a farmer of hvee was actually the very best available. Yet—what else could there be?

He was a young man of fourteen, transplanting infant hvee near the edge of the property, when the distant melody came a second time. His hands shook. Had she—had she returned at last to the glade?

He set his plants aside and followed the magic sound, now eager, now holding back. Excitement pounded in him as he circled the disused deep well within the forest. Was there really a nymph? Did she summon him?

He arrived at the glade, which was almost unchanged from his memory of seven years. She was there! She was there, sitting and singing, her quick fingers rippling over the little instrument—an offworld, six-stringed lute lovely beyond belief. The ancient image in his mind faded before the new reality. The forest, the glade, the very air about her was beautiful.

He stood at the edge, absorbing her presence. It seemed only a moment since he had stood this way before; the intervening time a lonely dream—a moment and an eternity. She had not changed— he was the one who had aged seven years. And what he saw now was not what he had seen as the child of seven.

She wore a light green dress, translucent in the spot of sunlight, laced up the front in a bodice unused on Hvee. Her face was pale and fair, framed by the luster of hair which flowed deep red and deep black in fascinating alliance. There was a gentle fullness in her figure, not voluptuous, not slim. Her aspect represented a juxtaposition of opposites that Aton had never consciously realized he was searching for. Fire and water, so often at war, here merged into exquisite focus like the crossing scales of the vernier.

He stood entranced, forgetting time and self in the delight of that study.

She spied him, as before, and put aside her song. “Aton, Aton, come to me.”

She knew him! He stood before the lovely woman, embarrassed, flushed by the first ungainly surges of manhood. She was man’s desire, and in her presence he felt great and crude, conscious of the earth on his hands and the sweat on his shirt. He could not stay; he could not leave.

“Fourteen,” she said, putting her magic into that word. “Fourteen. Already you are taller than I.” She stood, unfolding as a flower, to show that it was true.

“And you are wearing my hvee,” she said, reaching up to take it from his hair. It nested in her hand, its green blossom hardly darker than her dress. “Will you give it to me now, Aton?”

Speechless, he gawked at her, unable to comprehend the offer. “Ah, it is too soon, too soon,” she said. “I will not take it from you now, Aton. Not yet.” She noted his curling, empty hands. “Where is your book, Aton?”

“I was in the field—”

“Yes, oh, yes,” she said, twirling the hvee. “You are twice seven and you are a farmer now. But do you remember—”

“William Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’?” he blurted, immediately shocked by his own loudness.

She caught his hand in hers, squeezing it. “Never forget, Aton, what a wonderful thing it is to be a child. There is that immortal bit of light in you, a ray of that sun for which you are named. You must cherish that ember, and never let it die, no matter how you grow.”

“Yes,” he said, unable to say more.

She held the hvee to her cheek. “Tell me, tell me again, Aton—am I not beautiful?”

He gazed into the black and green depths of her eyes and was lost. “Yes,” he said. “The forest fire, and the still water. You drown me in fire—”

Her laugh was the echo of candlelight and thicket streams. “Am I then so devastating?”

You compelling creature, he thought. You play with me, and I am helpless.

She reached her arms around him, standing close to replace the hvee in his hair. The light perfume of her body intoxicated his senses. She was timeless; she was perfection. “You have found no woman to compare to me,” she said.

Protest was useless; even her vanity was rapture. No mortal woman could rival the splendor of her person.

“You must not forget me,” she said. “I shall kiss you again.”

Aton stood, hands rigid at his sides, feet rooted, half afraid that if he moved a muscle he would topple. The woman of the forest placed those cool fingers on his elbows, the gentle pressure evoking a responsive tingle from tight shoulders to clenched fists. She raised her sweet lips to his, holding him in ecstasy. The kiss: and desire and chagrin suffused his mind.

Gossamers pinioned his body. Only his voice found volition: “But tomorrow you will be gone,” he heard it say.

She dismissed him. “Go, go now. When you find me again, you will be ready.”

“But I don’t even know your name.”

She waved him away, and his clumsy feet turned him around and marched him from the glade.

What had occupied Aton’s idling imagination up to this point now became more urgent. His attitude changed. Interested in the distaff sex only in a speculative way, until awakened by the forest nymph, he now contemplated a program of self-education that went somewhat beyond that provided by his tutor. He planted hvee in a preoccupied manner—the plants flourishing even so—and pondered ways and means.

He waited impatiently for dusk, then pounded along the old trail leading to the farm of Eighty-One. The wild plants had grown up thickly, obscuring the way and reminding him of the infrequency of his visits to this place, now. How long had it been since he’d laughed and fought with the dissimilar twins, Jay and Jervis? Since he’d let young Jill tag along, recipient of masculine unfairness? The childish games had fallen off and the barriers of status had grown, though he told himself that such things made no difference to him . And wasn’t he coming, at this time of problem and dissatisfaction, to talk it out and make plans with his friends? The twins were more worldly than he. Man-talk would get it out of his system, make the strangeness go, set his confusions to rest. The old companionship would dissipate the nameless unrest he felt.

The house of Eighty-One rose out of the darkness; thin squares of light edged the closed shutters. Aton skirted the steaming hog pen, his passage eliciting the usual incurious porcine grunts. The warm animal smell brought a sympathetic wrinkle of the nostrils, though he had long since ceased to find it objectionable. He came up to the rear of the house and tapped the twins’ window with the measured signal of old.

There was no response. He poked a finger behind the loose shutter and pried it open, peering in as far as his angle of vision permitted. The room was empty.

He banged the wall in futile anger. Where were they? How could they be gone when he wanted to talk? Knowing himself to be unreasonable and a trifle snobbish, he grew angrier yet. He knew that there were other things in the boys’ lives beside himself, particularly since it had been months since his last visit, but the proof of it was irritating. What was he to do?