John Powys - Atlantis

And then he remembered what he’d been taught about the Strophades or Isles of the Turning-Point, and how it was there that Themis compelled the fierce sons of the North Wind, brandishing their sharp swords to turn from their pursuit of these fatal females who had no weapon but their own snatching nails! And so this foul crack in the image of the goddess of Order was the gratitude of these infernal Harpies!

Well, well, well. He decided that it might be wiser not to tell his mother about this crack in the image of Themis, nor to ask her what he had better do about this little heap of finger-nails. “Cover them up with Babba’s dung! Tis would say”, he thought; and then he thought: “No! I won ’ t be the one to tell mother. Those bloody nails give me the shivers!”

He did his best, as he left that desecrated image and made his way up the grassy slope towards the temple, to recover his self-esteem by remembering his mother’s words about his being “so introspective”. “Neither Daddy nor Agelaos,” he told himself, “would have the cleverness to feel things like this as I feel them.”

He was still nearly half a mile from the top of the slope where the first buildings began when he saw the two insects, so well known to him in the palace-porch, flying slowly towards him engaged in some absorbing argument between themselves. Yes, he was sure he knew them both. One was that pitifully nervous and weak-looking brown moth with fluttering wings. The other was that extremely self-centred house-fly with a calm collected manner, a black head and staring eyes.

And now if it were possible for him to enter into conversation with them, or at least into some sort of intelligent communication with them, he would gather all sorts of hints as to what this Orphic Priest, who called himself Enorches, was doing, and have something important to take back to his mother quite apart from those horrible finger-nails, concerning which he had decided to remain silent.

Yes, he was pretty sure he knew both these insects; but of course it was possible that the house-fly, with those transparent prismatic wings upon which it was always cleaning its rapidly moving feet, had two or three, or even four or five, brothers and sisters. It was also possible, though less likely, that the brown-winged, anxiously obsessed, sacrificially dedicated moth had a twin-sister who resembled her so closely in the eyes of gods and men that only a caterpillar could distinguish the one from the other.

Indeed if it were not for some multiple-footed, velvet-muffled relative, to whose cocoon-piercing, chrysalis-searching eyes no pair of winged creatures were exactly alike, how easily might the brown moth have been a nameless unidentified nomad, flitting over the earth’s surface until she fell by her own propensity for self-sacrifice into some worse fate than becoming the obedient servant of the Priest of Orpheus.

Such a born Ambassador was Nisos that he had hardly caught sight of the two insects fluttering through the air towards him, so submerged in their metaphysical argument that they had no attention left for what they were doing or where they were going, than he stretched out his hands palms downward towards them and addressed them with his fondest and politest social salutation, a salutation that was only a little less respectful than the one he used, in his imagination, for kings and queens, and also, it must be admitted, for members however young of the ancient houses of the Naubolides of Aulion.

Having thus saluted them the youthful diplomatist uttered a deep sigh and ejaculated the gnomic syllables, “What a shame!” The subtle implication of this sympathetic groan was indeed, though few would have had the sensitivity to catch it, that the ignorant, vulgar, illiterate, brutal retainers of the Priest of Orpheus had clearly refused to allow the sophisticated homage of such noble insects to enter the inmost shrine, in spite of the fact that all the world owes honey to honey-bees, silk to silk-worms, pearls to oysters, and Tyrian dye to the lovely sea-shell, Porphura.

Seeing that he had succeeded in interrupting their dispute and that they were hesitating and flying in circles and hovering round his outstretched hands, the boy withdrew one arm, moved the other with a mute solicitation, and drawing in his breath with an instinctive movement of his whole frame that was in itself a crafty-imitation of a sub-human gesture, he made a peculiar humming sound between his palate and the back of his tongue.

All these things were done, all these signs were made, purely on the inspiration of the moment; but seeing them still hesitate and feeling in his open mouth and widened nostrils the morbid smell of the incense-heavy sacristy-dust they carried on their wings, he suddenly lifted the back of his hand to his mouth, licked it with his tongue, and stretched it forth again.

Ah! He was indeed a clever plenipotentiary. He had done it! Both the insects settled on the back of his hand which the moth desperately caressed with her wings and the house-fly began hurriedly to use as an ash-can for the dirt he scraped, first by the aid of one gauzy wing and then of another, from his exploring feet. Here indeed was the Ambassador’s opportunity! He must convince himself that he had come from the kitchen of his mother Pandea, the wife of Krateros Naubolides, straight to this sacred half-mile of well-watered grass.

He must let that ominous crack in the image of Themis be blotted from his mind and that bloody heap of super-human claws vanish like an obscure dream. Here upon the back of his hand were two living creatures, each of them endowed with wings, who had come straight from this temple, borne forth upon a dusty wafture of incense-bearing smoke.

But how, in the name of Tartaros, was he to obtain from them the information he required? How on earth could he cross the gulf between his human consciousness and their insect-consciousness? How was he to enter into conversation with this brown moth and this house-fly now that he had persuaded them to settle upon the back of his hand? Nisos Naubolides never forgot to the end of his mortal days this crucial moment. He drew his arm a little inwards towards his ribs and hung his head, staring helplessly at the back of his hand where from the knuckle of his longest finger, which she evidently felt to be a wisely chosen observation-post, the brown moth was explaining to the black fly, who was cleaning his shoes on the knuckle of Nisos’ finger, just how it was that with such unusual words and gestures the Priest of Orpheus had bidden her show her friend off the premises and see to it that he never returned.

What, in the name of their universal mother the earth, was he to do to break down this cruel wall of difference between his human senses and those of these two creatures?

And then suddenly, to the born diplomatist, the inspiration came! Of course there was only one thing to do, and that was the thing indicated by every vibratory law of tellurian politeness. He must pray to Pallas Athene!

No sooner had he decided upon this line of action which was obviously the most proper, the most natural, the most pious line for a diplomatic ambassador to a great goddess’s temple to adopt, than he lifted up in his heart an intensely concentrated prayer to Athene, imploring her to reveal to him how to exchange thoughts and experiences with this moth and this fly.

It was soon clear to him that the goddess had heard him and had taken measures without delay to give him an answer to his prayer. Well must she know the limits of her power and not only its limits. She also must know the evil effect, so often precisely contrary to the desired effect, of manifesting her power in her own person. So to enlighten him as to the way moths and flies received and remembered their impressions she evidently brought it about that her most understanding worshipper in the vicinity should at this critical moment be descending that grassy slope.