John Powys - Atlantis

The lovely little moth hurried to retort to this in an ironic assumption of pitiful weakness and naive innocence that not only made the fly feel a complete fool but removed from his proud heart every drop of that sweet metheglin of male superiority with which he had been intoxicating himself as he pictured their flight home together side by side in the “Wolf-Light” of the early dawn.

“Oh I know, I know,” cried the brown moth, “how lazy and luxurious it is of me to think of flying in the dark. But O it’s so nice, though I know it’s naughty of me to enjoy such a thing, to feel the great big strong black night holding me up on every side and whispering to me all the time: ‘Lean on me and you’ll be absolutely safe! Spread out your beautiful wings under me and you’ll see how soon you’ll learn to swim with me, ride with me, float with me, yes! you darling little moth, till I fill every nerve beneath your skin, and every pore in your skin, and every cavity in your lovely and trembling form with my calm and cool support!’

“Thus whispers the black night; and nobody can ever know,” continued the subtle and teasing moth, “all that the darkness of night means to me!”

The fly gave such a jerk of metaphysical excitement at this speech that the club’s consciousness of a shock in the “life-crack” of his honeysuckle-twisted or ivy-twisted bosom very nearly disturbed the whole piloting of their cortège.

“Why then, O most lovely and bewitching of self-deceivers, do you always try so desperately to burn yourself to death in any flame of light?”

The beautiful moth’s answer to this piece of logic had, however, to be postponed; for it was at that very second that they arrived at the end of the wood. There, before them, lay the salt waves with their islands and ships and rocky reefs and wide-stretching curving bays. And there, beyond all these, in far-away, vision-fulfilling, story-ending, mystery-resolving, resting-places for the imagination, the eyes of those three human beings were led further and yet further, to the vast horizons of the encircling sea.

And the great Club of Herakles ceased its rudder-like quiverings as impelled by an irresistible impulse Odysseus lifted the great weapon high above his head and shook it in the air as if he, a man among men, were taking it on himself to challenge that golden sun-path which, originating behind him, was now flowing across the darkening waters!

Yes! and to challenge the divine ether itself he lifted it up, the ether under which the sea-spaces before him extended beyond the ships, beyond the islands, beyond the main-land, beyond those far-away Asiatic mountains, on the Eastern verge of the world, where from the image of Niobe, the mother of mankind, fell no longer that ceaseless torrent of tears, and finally to challenge the very trident of Poseidon himself as he strove to dominate the multitudinous waves.

The two men, the now one-winged horse, the Heraklean club, the two insects, and our young friend Nisos, they were all silent; they were all gazing in front of them. What they saw as they gazed was the ruin of a building so colossal in its pre-historic enormity that the first impression Nisos had of it was that it ought to have sunk down by its own weight thousands of years ago to the very centre of the earth.

But what else did the boy see that made him even forget, as he looked, Eione’s danger from the shaggy lasciviousness of the Goat-foot from Arcadia? He distinctly saw, erect on a huge flat stone under a cyclopean arch, the figure of a young girl, a young girl of about the same age as Eione, though she may have been a little taller, and it seemed to him as if, with an outstretched arm, that figure was waving to him; not to the others, but to him — to him alone.

“But you don’t answer my question, Pontopereia. Why do you keep climbing the tower and looking inland like that? You’re not up to some game with any of these farm-boys round here, are you? I’ve always told you I wouldn’t stand for that sort of thing; so you’d better not begin it.

“I don’t mean that you’re not to climb the tower, child; so you needn’t put on that sulky look. I know you like looking out over the bay and counting the sails and watching for foreign ships. I like doing that myself. Yes I’m always ready to play our old game of pretending we’re waiting for the King of the Blameless Ethiopians; and that when his ship shows itself it will have a black sail, so that we shall know it.

“No, no! You’re not to slip off like that without a word! You’re much too fond of doing that; and I’ve noticed it’s grown on you as a regular habit these Spring days. Of course I know all young girls get Spring-Fever. I used to get it myself. In fact, old as I am, I do still. The wily old Earth-Mother herself must have had it, or something uncommonly like it, when she left her daughter alone with those daffodil-pickers, a proper temptation for the King of Hades. Daffodil-pickers! She had to swallow a few Pomegranate-seeds before she learnt how close lie the borders of Heaven and Hell!

“But you weren’t looking seaward, or counting ships, or pretending to be waiting for a black sail. You were staring at those fir-trees and at all those half-bare oaks and at that open clearing on the top of the ridge, where on fine days we can see the Rock of the Nymph of Dryops.

“Have you got into that crazy head of yours that just because I let Eione take you up there when this Moon was young you’ll see that same chit of a dairy-wench waiting for you in the same place now this Moon is old?

“O yes! and another thing, Pontopereia, while I’ve got you to myself; for I don’t know what Zenios would do if he heard of this little new game of yours. Don’t you ever again — yes, you may well steal into the shadow of that Bust of Kadmos! — but you must listen to me now, though I can see how white your cheeks have gone and how those clumsy great legs of yours are shivering and shaking! — Don’t you ever again, my girl, go into Zenios’ underground treasury! I expect you’ve so often heard me laugh at the old fool about his pride and his miserliness and about all that nonsense of his being the rightful heir to the throne of Thebes, that you’ve begun to fancy you can play any of your wild-girl games upon the old stick-in-the-mud.

“But I can assure you, my fine girl, that though you may be a prophet’s daughter, and though you may even have prophetic visions of your own, there’s one thing you can’t do, and that is meddle with Zenios’ treasure-shelves! Why, my dear crazy child, if he found me — yes, me , my very, very self! — fumbling and fidgetting, and flopping, and flouncing from shelf to shelf in that treasury of his there’d be a rumpus that would bring Omphos, Kissos, and Sykos up from the fields!

“And do you think he’d put up with a child like you flibbertigibbetting down there? I don’t like to try even to think of what he might do — yes! do to you and do to me too for not looking after you better! — for I’ve seen him in these furious moods, which is something you, my good child, have never seen, and I can assure you if you had seen him in one of them you’d never again take that silver key from its hook in his bedroom, never again go down those steps to that door.”

It was clear that Pontopereia would be obedient. But it was absolutely certain also that had the inscrutable Atropos met the eyes of this lovely guardian of a clumsy girl at this particular second the woman’s exultation over her victory would have sunk to the vanishing point.

“Where is Zenios? Is he coming home to supper?” enquired Pontopereia when she had recovered herself.

“O yes,” replied Okyrhöe, glancing at the reflection of them both in the big polished shield hanging on the wall over their heads, the shield which Zenios always swore had belonged to Kadmos himself, “he’ll be back all right for supper. In fact he’s got to meet that funny old man Moros, your friend Eione’s father or grandfather. I forget which it is! But he’s a quaint old fellow; and he certainly knows how to flatter. Zenios thinks highly of him since he’s ready to listen without end to endless talk about the great House of Kadmos, whence it came, and whither—”