43.Prayer and the Lizard Maids
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THE unexpectedness of it all, alike of Saraïde’s assault and of the astonishing discovery that you could fall for hundreds after hundreds of feet, full upon your head, without getting even a bruise, a little bewildered Kerin when he first sat up at the bottom of the dry well. He shouted cheerily, “Wife, wife, I am not hurt a bit!” because the fact seemed so remarkably fortunate and so unaccountable.
But at once large stones began to fall everywhere about him, as though Saraïde upon hearing his voice had begun desperately to heave these stones into the well. Kerin thought this an inordinate manner of spurring him onward in the quest of knowledge and truth, because the habitual impetuosity of Saraïde, when thus expressed with cobblestones, would infallibly have been his death had he not sought shelter in the opening he very luckily found to the southwest side. There was really no understanding these women who married you, Kerin reflected, as after crawling for a while upon hands and feet, he came to a yet larger opening, in which he could stand erect.
But this passage led Kerin presently to an underground lake, which filled all that part of the cavern, so that he could venture no farther. Instead, he sat down upon the borders of these gloomy and endless looking waters. He could see these waters because of the many ignes fatui, such as are called corpse candles, which flickered and danced above the dark lake’s surface everywhere.
Kerin in such dismal circumstances began to pray. He loyally gave precedence to his own faith, and said, first, all the prayers of his church that he could remember. He addressed such saints as seemed appropriate, and when, after the liveliest representation of Kerin’s plight, sixteen of them had failed, in any visible way to intervene, then Kerin tried the Angels, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, and Archangels.
Yet later, when no response whatever was vouchsafed by any member of this celestial hierarchy, Kerin inferred that he had, no doubt, in falling so far, descended into heretical regions and into the nefarious control of unchristian deities. So he now prayed to all the accursed gods of the heathen that he could remember as being most potent in dark places. He prayed to Aïdoneus the Laughterless, the Much-Receiving, the People-Collecting, the Invincible and the Hateful; to the implacable Kerês, those most dreadful cave-dwellers who are nourished by the blood of slainwarriors; to the gloom-roaming Erinnyes, to the Gray-Maids, to the Snatchers, and, most fervently, to Korê, that hidden and very lovely sable-vested Virgin to whom belonged, men said, all the dim underworld.
But nothing happened.
Then Kerin tried new targets for his praying. He addressed himself to Susanoö, that emperor of darkness who was used to beget children by chewing up a sword and spitting out the pieces; to Ekchuah, the Old Black One, who at least chewed nothing with his one tooth; to the red Maruts, patched together from the bits of a shattered divine embryo; to Onniont, the great, horned, brown and yellow serpent, whose lair might well be hereabouts; to Tethra, yet another master of underground places; to Apep also, and to Set, and to Uhat, the Chief of Scorpions; to Camazotz, the Ruler of Bats; to Fenris, the wolf who waited somewhere in a cave very like this cave, against the oncoming time when Fenris will overthrow and devour God the All-Mighty Father; and to Sraosha, who has charge of all worlds during the night season.
And still nothing happened: and Kerin could see only endless looking waters and, above them, those monotonously dancing corpse candles.
Kerin nevertheless well knew, as a loyal son of the Church, the efficacy of prayer; and he now began, in consequence, to pray to the corpse candles, because these might, he reflected, rank as deities in this peculiarlydepressing place. And his comfort was considerable when, after an ave or two, some of these drifting lights came flitting toward him; but his surprise was greater when he saw that each of the ignes fatui was a living creature like a tiny phosphorescent maiden in everything except that each had the head of a lizard.
“What is your nature?” Kerin asked, “and what are you doing in this cold dark place?”
“Should we answer either of those questions,” one of the small monsters said, in a shrill little voice, as though a cricket were talking, “it would be the worse for you.”
“Then, by all means, do not answer! Instead, do you tell me if knowledge and truth are to be found hereabouts, for it is of them that I go in search.”
“How should we know? It was not in pursuit of these luxuries that we came hither, very unwillingly.”
“Then, how does one get out of this place?”
Now they all twittered together, and they flitted around Kerin with small squeakings. “One does not get out of this place.”
Kerin did not cry pettishly, as Saraïde would have done, “Good Lord!” Instead, he said, “Dear me!”
“Nor have we any wish to leave this place,” said the small lizard-women. “These waters hold us here with the dark loveliness of doom; we have fallen into an abiding hatred of these waters; we may not leave them because of our fear. It is not possible for any manto imagine the cruelty of these waters. Therefore we dance above them; and all the while that we dance we think about warmth and food instead of about these waters.”
“And have you no food here nor any warmth, not even brimstone? For I remember that, up yonder in Poictesme, our priests were used to threaten—”
“We do not bother about priests any longer. But a sort of god provides our appointed food.”
“Come, come now, that is much better. For, as I was just saying to my wife, supper is a matter of vital importance, after a rather hard day of it— But who is this sort of god?”
“We do not know. We only know that he has nineteen names.”
“My very dear little ladies,” said Kerin, “your information appears so limited, and your brightness so entirely physical, that I now hesitate to ask if you know for what reason somebody is sounding that far-off gong which I can hear?”
“That gong means, sir, that our appointed food is ready.”
“Alas, my friends, but it is quite unbearable,” declared Kerin, “that food should be upon that side of the dark water, and I, who have had rather a hard day of it, should be upon this side!”
“No, no!” they reassured him, “it is not unbearable, for we do not mind it in the least.”
Then the squeaking little creatures all went away from Kerin, flitting and skimming and twinkling over broad waters which seemed repellently cold and very dreadfully deep. Nevertheless, Kerin, in his desperation,—now that no god answered his prayer, and even the ignes fatui had deserted him, and only a great hungering remained with Kerin in the darkness,—Kerin now arose and went as a diver speeds into those most unfriendly looking waters.
The result was surprising and rather painful: for, as Kerin thus discovered, these waters were not more than two feet in depth. He stood up, a bit sheepishly, dripping wet, and rubbing his head. Then Kerin waded onward in a broad shallow puddle about which there was no conceivable need to bother any god.
Kerin thus came without any hindrance to dry land, and to a place where the shining concourse of lizard-women had already begun to nibble and tug and gulp. But Kerin, after having perceived the nature of their appointed food, and after having shivered, walked on beyond this place, toward the light he detected a little above him.
“For supper,” he observed, “is a matter of vital importance; and it really is necessary to draw the line somewhere.”