Мир Звезд

When the woman's copper pot turned into a frog, she did not believe her eyes.

But there it lurked on her hearth, croaking and burping at her, a great coppery amphibean in which, plainly, it would be no use trying to simmer the broth. So then she came to believe -- not her eyes -- but the sense of injustice and frustration that swept over her. Had she ever had any luck? No. Therefore, small wonder even the one prize of her home should be ruined.

And "Out with you!" screamed she, taking a broom to it. "Out, you pot-frog!"

And she chased it from the house into the village street.

Save for this incident, it was a quiet evening. In the west, the sky still burned and smoked a little, but on the hilltops the stars stood in small groups, as if awaiting someone.

The frog capered off up the street. "Perhaps I dreamed it." But on glancing over her shoulder, she saw the hearthstone was empty. "Then again, can I have offended the gods?" She had come to the conclusion that either the gods hated her especially, or, since she deemed herself unworthy of such attention, they were asleep. Married in her fifteenth year, her first husband had perished a month after, mauled by a lion in the hills. Her son, born dead, had in some way injured her and left her barren, and thus, when she wed again a man she did not like so well, he cast her off after three years as a wastrel of his seed. The last of her kindred, an aunt, had taken her in. Presently the aunt fell sick. At her death, the two-roomed house became the property of the niece. But she herself was by then in middle life, has lost her looks, and besides was reckoned unfavorable, under some curse. For nothing she did or had ever prospered -- even her cows died, and the herbs in her garden were sour. The men of the village shunned her, and the women, who would sometimes give her the time of day, still called her Unluck and pulled their children aside at her advent, lest her passing shadow infect them.

On the hills, a couple of herders' fires had blossomed. (Unluck observed them for a moment; once young herdsmen had admired her.) She turned back to her house, to search out the other battered pot which spoilt her taste of the food.

She was scouring it when the second thing happened. The second thing was heralded by a faint noise, like the sounding of one string on a harp, and when she raised her head at it, she saw a flower had sprung among the stones around the hearth. Perhaps a seed had lodged there and the fire now quickened it, yet how swiftly. It was a lotus, and even as she watched, the petals unfolded to form a goblet of the thinnest flower-skin, through which the firelight shone as if through alabaster.

The third event followed instantly on the second.

Unluck heard barks and angry rumblings in the street. 

She got up at once and went to her door. "That pot-frog has caused some annoyance. They will suspect it is mine, accuse my of witchcraft and fine me." (Something similar had already taken place a year before, when someone's goat, having eaten an apple stolen from Unluck, had given three days of bad milk.)

However, on looking out of the door again, Unluck perceived she was not the author of this disturbance.

Several of the villagers were standing on the street. Lamplight from windows and doorways showed two figures set aside by the well, under the cinnamon tree.

"Yes, they will be beggars," said Unluck to herself. The village pushed all itinerants off, unless they could prove their worth. "How young they are, a young man and a girl. So slender she is, and so weary -- look how she leans on him and he supports her." And then Unluck felt an inner qualm of pain and envy and other less translatable things. So I might have leaned, had life been other. But who is there for my tiredness now? But she put the quavering from her, pushed it down. She thought, If I go after them when they are clear of the village, I suppose no one need know what I give them. I can spare a loaf, and a handful of dates, and the curds -- I must warn them the gift may be unlucky, but in the past when I did this, I do not reckon I worked much harm.

So then Unluck went back into her house again and started to busy herself assembling the food. While she was doing it, the altercation in the street finished, and the dogs felt their masters' feet and prudently grew reticent until presently it was easy for the woman to hear a soft scratch upon her open door, and in that way she heard it.

She had something of a shock then. For there under her lintel stood the two beggars. And they were not a youth and a maiden, but an old, old man, thin and bowed as a winter branch, and she that leaned on him, she seemed older even than he, by a century or more.

A spasm of pity clenched Unluck's heart. She took up the bundle of food, and some other items besides, and went forward.

"Here, take these provisions. They say I am cursed, so it may be best to speak a blessing before you eat. But I think to have my unlucky bread will do you more good than to go luckily without."

Then the old man smiled at her. The smile seemed to smite out of his ragged cloak, his ragged face, and hit her a great blow so she nearly reeled. And as this went on, the ancient crone he held against him, she opened her eyes.

And oh, her eyes, her eyes. They were the sky at spring and noon, and summer midnight, they were the seas that were kingdoms, they were sapphires and the sapphire flowers of vines and mountains, and the color of mountains also at a vast distance, and the whole earth as the bird in flight might see it -- so blue, so blue they were, they put out the light.

"Madam," said the woman, "lord --"

"Let us come in," said he. "The village shall not punish you for it."

"Fly blowings on the village, and may it be damned. Are they so stupid? Yes, and I always guessed as much, the clods. Enter and be welcome. I have nothing worthy of you, but since you are here perhaps it will do." And she stepped smartly aside, kneeled down on the floor and bowed her head.

The elderly couple passed into the room. With them came a muted, pleasing scent, such as would not generally be associated with antique and starving bodies...

When Unluck looked again, they had seated themselves on her wide chair before the hearth. They were so gnarled and slight, so crumpled in, both fitted there.

Then Unluck approached on her knees and offered them milk and honey, and began to set the food on a low table.

"How tiresome that must be for the knees," said the old man. "Would you not prefer to stand up?"

"I know you do not ask me to kneel," said Unluck, "nor am I fawning. But I take solace in it."

When the table was ready she brought it close and added to the array a crock of beer.

"There is no harm can come to you through my paltry curse," she said.

The old woman spoke.

"But we require nothing. Only I -- to rest, and that you have given me."

Her voice was frail.

Unluck stared at her and for the first time seemed puzzled. The eyes, the manner of Unluck asked: How can it be that you need anything, being what you are?

"Do not be afraid," said the old woman. "I am near death."

Unluck gasped. She blurted: "But can the gods die?"

Then the old woman gave a frail laugh.

"I am not a god. No, I am a mortal, as you are. And as with you, death will be nothing to me. For you and I, our kind, have souls, and so live forever."

Unluck gaped at her. Then dropped her gaze. This one existence of Unluck's had been sufficiently unhappy she had lost all hope, and perhaps all wish, for everlasting life.

Then the old man spoke again.

"My companion has been a priestess many years, aloof on a mountain. But she has an uncle -- older I may say than she is -- and he came to visit her, to bring her certain news. And so she undertook this last journey."

"I am a mortal," the old woman repeated in a sleepy whisper, like a child's. "It is fitting that I die where mortals are." And then she directed her wonderful blue look upon Unluck again. "I am called Atmeh."

"Lady -- I have no name but what they call me. Unluck. I beg you, do not you use that name for me."

"I shall not," said Atmeh. She closed her eyes. She seemed peaceful, leaning on the old man, who held her so supportingly, so strongly, in his own fragility.

"No, we will call her Frog," said he. "For she has lost her best cooking pot."

And then Unluck -- or Frog -- burst into mirth.

"Why, lord -- was that your doing?"

"Mine," said he modestly. "Some call me Oloru. But I have another name. It is the other name makes frogs of pots."

"Well," said Unluck-or-Frog, "since it was your making, it is welcome, and the frog shall be welcome, if he cares to return."

And then it came about quite suddenly that there was no more restraint and no more suspicion of gods in that room. There was respect and concord. And the food was eaten, and the beer hastened between the old man and the hostess, and it had a taste of superior grapes, and in the same way the plates were never empty and the jars stayed full. And the fire did not need attention, or the lamp, which gave enough light for nine. And once or twice, when she glanced about, Unluck or Frog seemed to see a rare polish and gleam on her possessions and that there were more of them than she recalled having, and she felt such a weightlessness in herself and such a sparkle that finally she said, "It comes to my mind that once I was known by the name Flaxen. For I had in my girlhood the prettiest hair."

"Flaxen, my heart," said old Oloru, "pass the beer-crock."

But later yet, the lamp and the fire grew rosy and russet, and from the warm safe stillness of the house, Flaxen heard a nightingale singing in the very thatch of her roof. The beauty of it let tears into her eyes, but no pain put its claws into her heart.

From his cloak, Oloru drew a kind of lyre, a botched and creaky implement, on which he began to thread music of gold and silver. The nightingale, enchanted, alighted on the sill of a window to serenade the lyre.

Then the nightingale flew into the house. A plain little brown dab, it perched upon the wooden chair, and chimed and chirred and rang, and filled the room with bells and stars.

"Long, long ago," said old Oloru, "when the gods were half awake and made things, they fashioned many animals and other creatures. Last of all they made a bird so exquisitely beautiful that the other birds, the peacocks and canaries, the ibises and swans and doves, went into a pet from jealousy. (For the gods' inventions are notorious by their errors.) Everywhere this bird was shunned or set on. It came to hide by day and to live by night, alone. After a while the moon, however, spied the outcast, and cried, "Oh, how fair you are!" "Hush," implored the bird. "Do not betray me. I wish you would burn my splendour up with your cold white rays." "That is not possible," replied the moon. "Beauty can never be destroyed, merely transposed." And in that moment all the painted feathers vanished from the bird, he was drab and small upon his bough. But when he opened his beak to thank the moon, out burst a spill of melody at which the earth caught her breath. And does so yet."

And when the fire was red as a king's scarlet, the nightingale slept upon the chair's back, and the moon did come in person to the window. Then Oloru sang softly this, to the ancient priestess, and Flaxen heard it.

My love, my constant moon, within your light
I see that changeable other scale the height
Of sky, and know we shall be long-lost to her sight
In those far futures of the moonlit night.

And then the old woman murmured, "Beloved, that is not true of you. Do not forget, this is just a foolish form you took, to complement my own. It is not true of you."

"Of all things, beloved. And maybe even of the moon. Passing over the mirror of some lake, she may one night look for her own self in vain."

But after a few minutes, Atmeh said, so very low Flaxen scarcely made out the words, "It will be soon. Let us be going. I must not darken this kind house."

Then Flaxen resolutely said, "Lady, if it is a fact your final hour is on you, do you think I would turn you out upon the hill to die?"

Through the rose and scarlet, the sapphire distances of those eyes were casting their last look on a mortal face.

"I know you would not. But one will come to meet me on the road. He must not enter here, believe me."

And at these words, Flaxen felt coldness creep all over her. Without knowing why, she acquiesced.

The old man got to his feet. He leaned and lifted the old woman in his arms. You could not make out how he could do it, nor with such ease. But her little skull in its worn hood rested on his shoulder, her worn webby hair lay over his breast, and bending his head he kissed her. And then he looked back at Flaxen with a wicked fox's grin.

"I sense a madness in you, Flax-Hair. A madness to see what is to be seen. Follow us, then. But for your own sanity's sake -- since the baskets overflow -- do not come near."

And in that way they went from her house, and along the silent village street. Not a single lamp shone there. Above, the herders' fires were out, and overhead the stars and the moon masked themselves.

Flaxen Unluck stood hesitating in her door. But then even her compassion grew skittish, for this night was like no other. And keeping back as he had told her, still she followed the old man with the old woman in his arms.


After about a mile, the goat-track came on to the brow of a hill and up against a tree. Here a figure stepped from the night. He, too, was garbed like a beggar, in odd yellowish tatters apparent even in darkness. His head had been shaved and he leant on a rotting stick.

"Greetings, un-relative," said he to the old man. "Is that my un-niece you bear? It is time then."

"Be wary," said the old man, "one patters behind me who has had such a life she will spit in your eye, should she fathom your name."

"But you have been busy since at your games, you two. Come morning, I imagine she will praise me instead."

And this bizarre exchange concluded, they went on together, and over the hill and down into a black hollow beneath. Here they stopped, and Flaxen, alert to old Oloru's warning, lay along the rise to watch from afar.

Shortly her skin was clammy, she was agitated and became afraid, although she could discover no reason. Then, as if broken by an earthquake, the ground itself, there in the hollow, was flung open like a colossal door.

Out from the dark into the dark came a night-black man clad in a moon-white robe.

Flaxen hid her face in the turf. If she had supposed the gods ever listened, she would have prayed. For she knew exactly who stood now not seventy paces from her. It was King Death.

Nothing was to be heard, save for the wind which blew sometimes over the hill. The company in the hollow did not speak, or else some wall had come between their voices and her mind. Curiosity forced Flaxen to look again.

And, as she did so, the moon also uncovered her face to see.

It was Death who held her now, that frail stick of a mortal old woman. He held her, and she had put one arm about his neck, as if in love and certainly in utter trust. To her lips he held a cup. It was of bone. She drank from it.

Flaxen gazed. The strangest picture filled her brain, so vivid that for a moment it blotted out the uncanny tableau. She saw a young man lying on this same hillside. A lion had mauled him as he guarded the flocks. The villagers were calling for him over the slopes, but he, in his agony, did not hear. Then there leaned above him a man, a man who was Death, and the husband of Flaxen caught at Death's mantle. Death said, "It is sure, you cannot live long enough to see her again." And then he lifted the dying man and gave him a sip from a cup of bone, and the agony left her husband's face. He said, wistfully, "Why, you have given me a drink of the beer she brews. How can this --?" But then he sank back as if he slept. And so the villagers found him, sleeping in death, alone on the hill.

"Death the comforter," said Flaxen.

"And unkind Fate," said the shaven beggar in yellow who had come up on her and now stood at her side.

Flaxen glanced at him, and then back into the hollow. The moonlight once more was fading. There was a glimpse of a sleeping girl couched on a veil of midnight hair. A young man, all gold in the silver light, sat by her in silence. Death was gone. The earth was shut. And then the moon closed itself again away.

"I will see you to your door," said the beggar in yellow. "You know you know me, though we have never met. But do not spit on me. Tomorrow you will become my most fervent disciple."

Thus they walked back together to the village, the beggar-king, Fate, and Flaxen. She barely noted him. She felt all empty, not as if she had been robbed of anything, but rather as if she had been rinsed clean. If you had asked her who she was, she would have been hard put to it to say. And reaching her house, she only knew it because a nightingale was sleeping on the chair anda lotus grew in the hearth.

Fate, having seen her in, sauntered off up the street. Reaching the cinnamon tree, he dissolved, and was gone.

Flaxen lay down on her bed. She dreamed of an old woman who died and became young. Perhaps an hour before sunrise, she also dreamed that a chariot thundered over the sky above her roof. A man clad all in black and black-eyed as the dark, cracked a diamond whip above blue dragons. Something told her, even in her dream, it was not sensible to stare at him, and so she turned her face into her pillow. For all that, she heard the daggers on the chariot-wheels mincing the air to bits.

**

The dawn promised fine, and Flaxen opened first her window to emit the visiting nightingale, and next her door to see how the world went.

Then she sat in her doorway to comb her jasmine-pale tresses. Only fifteen years of age, and having property -- the well-appointed house of a deceased aunt -- and being besides a virgin and something of a beauty, Flaxen did not object to the admiring eyes and polite words of the young men wending up to the pasture, or coming down to turn from the hills.

She was popular and thought lucky, was Flaxen. Nothing she did ever went awry. Her cows were proud and full of cream, her herb garden put the rest to shame.

Basking there in the sunshine, not a member of that village knew that every memory has been changed in the night, or that Flaxen had herself been changed entirely. Yesterday was only yesterday, and last night nothing much had happened.

This morning, though, there was to be an event. Up the village street bounced a huge fat frog.

"Fate defend me," cried Flaxen, giggling, for she knew Fate would.

But nevertheless the coppery frog bounced right on and past her and plumped itself splat on her hearthstone. Where, in the blink of an eye, it altered to a round copper pot.

Flaxen clapped her hands with pleasure. But not surprise. Life had been so good to her that a domestic miracle of this nature was only to be expected.