Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

They left the oak and the almond tree and passed along the lane of cypress trees to the villa. She still held his hand, did not let it go until they were in a room of darkly gleaming wooden walls, faint and musky with the scent of the beeswax polish. Arranged upon the walls were tapestries of Draco and the Gryphons, rich in crimson and scarlet and purple and gold. She sat upon a couch and he, upon her gesture, knelt beside it on the soft, dyed fleece.

“Now we’re alone,” she said, placing her cool fingers against his cheek. “I’m not going to speak to you from one rank to another, but as mystagogue to mystagogue. I’d like to speak to you without speech… ‘ by the unspoken secrets of the mystic chests, the winged chariots of the dragon-ministers, the bridal descent of Proserpine, the torch-lit wanderings to find the daughter, and all the other mysteries that the shrine of Attic Eleusis shrouds in secret.’”

“Yes…”

So low was her voice now that she seemed almost to speak without speech. “I am a mother, too,” she said. “I, too, have a daughter, and, like Ceres, I don’t know now where my daughter is. Ceres learned from Helios, the bright, undying, unconquered sun. I would learn from the mirror, round as the sun. And even if I, too, must search the dark halls of Hell, torch-lit or in utter blackness for my daughter then let Hell itself be harrowed.”

“You don’t know the problems involved,” he said. “If the speculum can be made at all, it might well take a year to make it. And I have not the year to spare. The task which brought me here today is one which must engage me tomorrow, and for many tomorrows after tomorrow, and there are other works of labor, too, which have been too long delayed. They call to me insistently. I cannot, ma’am, I cannot, I cannot, not even for the sake of the common and holy bond between us.… Not even for the Mystery.”

He said, “Though much I wish I could.”

There was no trace now of the confusion and despair that had come with his previous refusal. The violet eyes were calm, and then they seemed to glow in the dim light with another and deeper emotion. She said, almost in a whisper, “There are other Mysteries besides that one. Have you been at…” She spoke a name, and she spoke another, and then she spoke a third.

“Yes,” he said, his own voice now but a whisper. “Yes… yes.” He was aware, and aware that she was aware, that his answer was assent as well as affirmation. He put his arms around her, and his lips on her lips.

After a moment she said, her words now not even a whisper, but a breath, “Then come, my bridegroom, and let us celebrate the wedding.”

Dim as the room was, it seemed to grow suffused with light, light which turned to color: the pink of a dawn which never was on land, the rose of a sunset which never was on sea. The colors began to ripple slowly… slowly… in measured, steady change, around and around, in a circle of change and a cycle of constancy. Cornelia lay beside him, he knew that with a joyous knowledge so much greater than anything he had ever known before. Cornelia lay in his arms. Yet, and he was aware of no confusion, no discrepancy, Cornelia sat somewhat before and above him on a sort of throne, naked and in profile, grave, sweet, serene, solemn and beautiful. Her nipples and breasts were like those of a woman who had never borne a child. Light rose-colored waves broke slowly and softly into spray and beat upon the base of her throne and the globes of the Two Earths revolved beneath her bare and outstretched arm. He saw her and he knew her as the Queen of all the World. All remained the same, everything simultaneously changed. He saw her as a maiden of the green north forests, with her hair in plaits, and with the archaic smile upon her lips. She played high strange entrancing music for him on curious instruments. He saw her young and he saw her old, he saw her as a woman and he saw her as a man. And he loved her as all of them. In every speech and language he read the words, Everything is Cornelia and forever , and, Always more… Always more… Always more … Every touch and every motion was joy, was joy, joy, joy, everything was joy…

As a great wind shakes the fruit upon the tree, ripe and rich and sweet; as the wind seizes hold of the field of grain, making the full ears tremble and await the harvest; as the wind, strong and tumultuous, drives the ship ahead of it straight as an arrow toward the harbor…

And then, even as the fire blazed up fiercely upon the hearth, it vanished. And there was nothing but the cold and the darkness.

Vergil cried out in shock and pain and anguish.

“Where is it?” he cried. “Witch! Sorceress! Give it back to me!”

Cornelia said nothing. He could not move. He watched her as she briefly opened the palms of her hands, and instantly closed them again, with an almost involuntary smile of triumph. The swift glimpse showed him the tiniest naked simulacrum of himself, pale as new ivory, passive as pallid; then, even in that short shaveling of a second, even that ghost of color faded from it. Tiny, translucent, a mere shape, a shadow, a fraction…

“Give it back to me!” He lunged forward. He fell back, as she pressed her palms together, fell back with a scream of anguish, lay, sprawled inertly, upon her naked flesh; and she moved from him, contemptuously, unseeingly, with her naked legs, and he fell from the couch onto the floor. She cast one long and level and totally impassive look upon him. Then she was gone. And Tullio was there.

“Get up,” he said. “Get up, Vergil Magus, and dress. And then go from here and into your house and begin the work of making the magic mirror, the virgin speculum. You are still as much magus as ever — ”

“You are wrong,” he said, dully. “And it wasn’t necessary…”

“Even though you are no longer as much man as ever — If I am wrong, if you are not as much magus as ever, being no longer a full man, then this is your problem and none of ours. If there are things of science and of sorcery now beyond you, then let this be a goad to your flesh not to slacken in the task we have set for you. Do not think, though, to persuade me, that this task is one of them. I know better.”

“What do you call this which she took and which now I have and hold? Not the ka , and not the ba and not the — it does not matter. I have the thing and so I do not need the name. It is one of your souls, that is enough. Without it you are only part of a man. You will never be complete without it. You will never know the flesh of women more without it. Do my work, and I return it to you. Refuse — fail — I destroy it. Tarry — I punish it. Dally —

“But,” he said, regarding him without passion and with utter certitude, “I do not think that you will dally.

“No, no, my Magus. I do not think that you will dally.”

THE STREET OF the Horse-Jewelers lay in the older quarter of Naples, but was wider than many of the streets there. This may have been the reason it harbored the trade it was named after — those wanting the ornaments of which no horse or mule or ass in Naples was ever seen entirely devoid: necklaces of great blue beads to ward off Evil Eye; emblematics of brass polished to a high shine (crescents, stars, hands-of-the-Fay, horns-of-Asmodeus, sunbursts, and scores of others); woolen and even silken pompoms and tassels in a dozen dazzling colors; and those curious objects set to ride like tiny castles or attenuated towers between the animals shoulders; to say nothing of bells in all sizes and shapes and tones, and even drops of amber for the mounts of the moneyed — those having business in the street called The Horse-Jewelers required space for their mounts, their teams and wagons when they had any.