The Day Boy and the Night Girl

                        by George MacDonald



Contents:

       I.  Watho
      II.  Aurora
     III.  Vesper
      IV.  Photogen
       V.  Nycteris
      VI.  How Photogen Grew
     VII.  How Nycteris Grew
    VIII.  The Lamp
      IX.  Out
       X.  The Great Lamp
      XI.  The Sunset
     XII.  The Garden
    XIII.  Something Quite New
     XIV.  The Sun
      XV.  The Coward Hero
     XVI.  The Evil Nurse
    XVII.  Watho's Wolf
   XVIII.  Refuge
     XIX.  The Werewolf
      XX.  All Is Well.





I.  Watho


THERE was once a witch who desired to know everything.  But the
wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall
when she comes to it.  Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf
in her mind.  She cared for nothing in itself only for knowing it.
She was not naturally cruel, but the wolf had made her cruel.

She was tall and graceful, with a white skin, red hair, and black eyes,
which had a red fire in them.  She was straight and strong, but now
and then would fall bent together, shudder, and sit for a moment
with her head turned over her shoulder, as if the wolf had got out
of her mind onto her back.



II.  Aurora


THIS witch got two ladies to visit her.  One of them belonged to
the court, and her husband had been sent on a far and difficult
embassy.  The other was a young widow whose husband had lately died,
and who had since lost her sight.  Watho lodged them in different
parts of her castle, and they did not know of each other's existence.

The castle stood on the side of a hill sloping gently down into a
narrow valley, in which was a river with a pebbly channel and a
continual song.  The garden went down to the bank of the river,
enclosed by high walls, which crossed the river and there stopped.
Each wall had a double row of battlements, and between the rows
was a narrow walk.

In the topmost story of the castle the Lady Aurora occupied a
spacious apartment of several large rooms looking southward.
The windows projected oriel-wise over the garden below, and there was
a splendid view from them both up and down and across the river.
The opposite side of the valley was steep, but not very high.
Far away snowpeaks were visible.  These rooms Aurora seldom left,
but their airy spaces, the brilliant landscape and sky, the
plentiful sunlight, the musical instruments, books, pictures,
curiosities, with the company of Watho, who made herself charming,
precluded all dullness.  She had venison and feathered game to eat,
milk and pale sunny sparkling wine to drink.

She had hair of the yellow gold, waved and rippled; her skin was fair,
not white like Watho's, and her eyes were of the blue of the heavens
when bluest; her features were delicate but strong, her mouth large
and finely curved, and haunted with smiles.



III.  Vesper


BEHIND the castle the hill rose abruptly; the northeastern tower,
indeed, was in contact with the rock and communicated with the
interior of it.  For in the rock was a series of chambers,
known only to Watho and the one servant whom she trusted, called Falca.
Some former owner had constructed these chambers after the tomb of an
Egyptian king, and probably with the same design, for in the center
of one of them stood what could only be a sarcophagus, but that
and others were walled off.  The sides and roofs of them were carved
in low relief, and curiously painted.  Here the witch lodged
the blind lady, whose name was Vesper.  Her eyes were black,
with long black lashes; her skin had a look of darkened silver,
but was of purest tint and grain; her hair was black and fine
and straight flowing; her features were exquisitely formed,
and if less beautiful yet more lovely from sadness; she always
looked as if she wanted to lie down and not rise again.
She did not know she was lodged in a tomb, though now and then
she wondered she never touched a window.  There were many couches,
covered with richest silk, and soft as her own cheek, for her to
lie upon; and the carpets were so thick, she might have cast
herself down anywhere--as befitted a tomb.  The place was dry
and warm, and cunningly pierced for air, so that it was always fresh,
and lacked only sunlight.  There the witch fed her upon milk,
and wine dark as a carbuncle, and pomegranates, and purple grapes,
and birds that dwell in marshy piaces; and she played to her
mournful tunes, and caused wailful violins to attend her,
and told her sad tales, thus holding her ever in an atmosphere
of sweet sorrow.



IV.  Photogen


WATHO at length had her desire, for witches often get what they want;
a splendid boy was born to the fair Aurora.  Just as the sun rose,
he opened his eyes.  Watho carried him immediately to a distant part
of the castle, and persuaded the mother that he never cried but once,
dying the moment he was born.  Overcome with grief, Aurora left
the castle as soon as she was able, and Watho never invited her again.

And now the witch's care was that the child should not know darkness.
Persistently she trained him until at last he never slept during
the day and never woke during the night.  She never let him see
anything black, and even kept all dull colors out of his way.
Never, if she could help it, would she let a shadow fall upon him,
watching against shadows as if they had been live things that would
hurt him.  All day he basked in the full splendor of the sun,
in the same large rooms his mother had occupied.  Watho used him
to the sun, until he could bear more of it than any dark-blooded
African.  In the hottest of every day, she stripped him and laid him
in it, that he might ripen like a peach; and the boy rejoiced in it,
and would resist being dressed again.  She brought all her knowledge
to bear on making his muscles strong and elastic and swiftly
responsive--that his soul, she said laughingly, might sit
in every fiber, be all in every part, and awake the moment of call.
His hair was of the red gold, but his eyes grew darker as he grew,
until they were as black as Vesper's.  He was the merriest of
creatures, always laughing, always loving, for a moment raging,
then laughing afresh.  Watho called him Photogen.



V.  Nycteris


FIVE or six months after the birth of Photogen, the dark lady
also gave birth to a baby: in the windowless tomb of a blind mother,
in the dead of night, under the feeble rays of a lamp in an
alabaster globe, a girl came into the darkness with a wail.
And just as she was born for the first time, Vesper was born
for the second, and passed into a world as unknown to her as this was
to her child--who would have to be born yet again before she
could see her mother.

Watho called her Nycteris, and she grew as like Vesper as
possible--in all but one particular.  She had the same dark skin,
dark eyelashes and brows, dark hair, and gentle sad look; but she had
just the eyes of Aurora, the mother of Photogen, and if they grew
darker as she grew older, it was only a darker blue. Watho,
with the help of Falca, took the greatest possible care of her--
in every way consistent with her plans, that is--the main point
in which was that she should never see any light but what came
from the lamp.  Hence her optic nerves, and indeed her whole apparatus
for seeing, grew both larger and more sensitive; her eyes, indeed,
stopped short only of being too large.  Under her dark hair
and forehead and eyebrows, they looked like two breaks in a
cloudy night-sky, through which peeped the heaven where the stars
and no clouds live.  She was a sadly dainty little creature.
No one in the world except those two was aware of the being
of the little bat.  Watho trained her to sleep during the day
and wake during the night.  She taught her music, in which she
was herself a proficient, and taught her scarcely anything else.



VI.  How Photogen Grew


THE hollow in which the castle of Watho lay was a cleft in a
plain rather than a valley among hills, for at the top of its
steep sides, both north and south, was a tableland, large and wide.
It was covered with rich grass and flowers, with here and there
a wood, the outlying colony of a great forest.  These grassy plains
were the finest hunting grounds in the world.  Great herds of
small but fierce cattle, with humps and shaggy manes, roved
about them, also antelopes and gnus, and the tiny roedeer,
while the woods were swarming with wild creatures.  The tables
of the castle were mainly supplied from them.  The chief of
Watho's huntsmen was a fine fellow, and when Photogen began
to outgrow the training she could give him, she handed him over
to Fargu.  He with a will set about teaching him all he knew.
He got him pony after pony, larger and larger as he grew, every one
less manageable than that which had preceded it, and advanced him
from pony to horse, and from horse to horse, until he was equal
to anything in that kind which the country produced.  In similar
fashion he trained him to the use of bow and arrow, substituting
every three months a stronger bow and longer arrows; and soon
he became, even on horseback, a wonderful archer.  He was
but fourteen when he killed his first bull, causing jubilation
among the huntsmen, and indeed, through all the castle, for there
too he was the favorite.  Every day, almost as soon as the sun
was up, he went out hunting, and would in general be out nearly
the whole of the day.  But Watho had laid upon Fargu just one
commandment, namely, that Photogen should on no account,
whatever the plea, be out until sundown, or so near it as to
wake in him the desire of seeing what was going to happen;
and this commandment Fargu was anxiously careful not to break;
for although he would not have trembled had a whole herd
of bulls come down upon him, charging at full speed across
the level, and not an arrow left in his quiver, he was more than
afraid of his mistress.  When she looked at him in a certain way,
he felt, he said, as if his heart turned to ashes in his breast,
and what ran in his veins was no longer blood, but milk and water.
So that, ere long, as Photogen grew older, Fargu began to tremble,
for he found it steadily growing harder to restrain him.  So full
of life was he, as Fargu said to his mistress, much to her content,
that he was more like a live thunderbolt than a human being.
He did not know what fear was, and that not because he did not
know danger; for he had had a severe laceration from the razor-like
tusk of a boar--whose spine, however, he had severed with one blow
of his hunting knife, before Fargu could reach him with defense.
When he would spur his horse into the midst of a herd of bulls,
carrying only his bow and his short sword, or shoot an arrow
into a herd, and go after it as if to reclaim it for a runaway
shaft, arriving in time to follow it with a spear thrust before
the wounded animal knew which way to charge, Fargu thought
with terror how it would be when he came to know the temptation
of the huddle-spot leopards, and the knife-clawed lynxes,
with which the forest was haunted.  For the boy had been
so steeped in the sun, from childhood so saturated with his
influence, that he looked upon every danger from a sovereign
height of courage.  When, therefore, he was approaching his
sixteenth year, Fargu ventured to beg Watho that she would lay
her commands upon the youth himself, and release him from
responsibility for him.  One might as soon hold a tawny-maned
lion as Photogen, he said.  Watho called the youth, and in the
presence of Fargu laid her command upon him never to be out
when the rim of the sun should touch the horizon, accompanying
the prohibition with hints of consequences, none the less awful
than they were obscure.  Photogen listened respectfully, but,
knowing neither the taste of fear nor the temptation of the night,
her words were but sounds to him.



VII.  How Nycteris Grew


THE little education she intended nycteris to have, Watho gave her
by word of mouth.  Not meaning she should have light enough
to read by, to leave other reasons unmentioned, she never put
a book in her hands.  Nycteris, however, saw so much better than
Watho imagined that the light she gave her was quite sufficient,
and she managed to coax Falca into teaching her the letters,
after which she taught herself to read, and Falca now and then
brought her a child's book.  But her chief pleasure was in
her instrument.  Her very fingers loved it and would wander
about its keys like feeding sheep.  She was not unhappy.
She knew nothing of the world except the tomb in which she dwelt,
and had some pleasure in everything she did.  But she desired,
nevertheless, something more or different.  She did not know
what it was, and the nearest she could come to expressing it
to herself was--that she wanted more room.  Watho and Falca
would go from her beyond the shine of the lamp, and come again;
therefore surely there must be more room somewhere.  As often
as she was left alone, she would fall to poring over the colored
bas-reliefs on the walls. These were intended to represent
various of the powers of Nature under allegorical similitudes,
and as nothing can be made that does not belong to the general
scheme, she could not fail at least to imagine a flicker
of relationship between some of them, and thus a shadow of
the reality of things found its way to her.

There was one thing, however, which moved and taught her more
than all the rest--the lamp, namely, that hung from the ceiling,
which she always saw alight, though she never saw the flame,
only the slight condensation towards the center of the alabaster
globe.  And besides the operation of the light itself after
its kind, the indefiniteness of the globe, and the softness
of the light, giving her the feeling as if her eyes could
go in and into its whiteness, were somehow also associated
with the idea of space and room.  She would sit for an
hour together gazing up at the lamp, and her heart would
swell as she gazed.  She would wonder what had hurt her
when she found her face wet with tears, and then would wonder
how she could have been hurt without knowing it.  She never
looked thus at the lamp except when she was alone.



VIII.  The Lamp


WATHO, having given orders, took it for granted they were obeyed,
and that Falca was all night long with Nycteris, whose day it was.
But Falca could not get into the habit of sleeping through the day,
and would often leave her alone half the night.  Then it seemed
to Nycteris that the white lamp was watching over her.  As it
was never permitted to go out--while she was awake at least--
Nycteris, except by shutting her eyes, knew less about darkness
than she did about light.  Also, the lamp being fixed high overhead,
and in the center of everything, she did not know much about
shadows either.  The few there were fell almost entirely on
the floor, or kept like mice about the foot of the walls.

Once, when she was thus alone, there came the noise of a far-off
rumbling: she had never before heard a sound of which she did not
know the origin, and here therefore was a new sign of something
beyond these chambers.  Then came a trembling, then a shaking;
the lamp dropped from the ceiling to the floor with a great crash,
and she felt as if both her eyes were hard shut and both her hands
over them.  She concluded that it was the darkness that had
made the rumbling and the shaking, and rushing into the room,
had thrown down the lamp.  She sat trembling.  The noise and the
shaking ceased, but the light did not return.  The darkness had
eaten it up!

Her lamp gone, the desire at once awoke to get out of her prison.
She scarcely knew what _out_ meant; out of one room into another,
where there was not even a dividing door, only an open arch,
was all she knew of the world.  But suddenly she remembered
that she had heard Falca speak of the lamp _going out:_
this must be what she had meant?  And if the lamp had gone out,
where had it gone?  Surely where Falca went, and like her
it would come again.  But she could not wait.  The desire
to go out grew irresistible.  She must follow her beautiful lamp!
She must find it!  She must see what it was about!

Now, there was a curtain covering a recess in the wall, where
some of her toys and gymnastic things were kept; and from behind
that curtain Watho and Falca always appeared, and behind it they
vanished.  How they came out of solid wall, she had not an idea,
all up to the wall was open space, and all beyond it seemed wall;
but clearly the first and only thing she could do was to feel
her way behind the curtain.  It was so dark that a cat could
not have caught the largest of mice.  Nycteris could see better
than any cat, but now her great eyes were not of the smallest
use to her.  As she went she trod upon a piece of the broken lamp.
She had never worn shoes or stockings, and the fragment, though,
being of soft alabaster, it did not cut, yet hurt her foot.
She did not know what it was, but as it had not been there
before the darkness came, she suspected that it had to do with
the lamp.  She kneeled therefore, and searched with her hands,
and bringing two large pieces together, recognized the shape
of the lamp.  Therefore it flashed upon her that the lamp was dead,
that this brokenness was the death of which she had read without
understanding, that the darkness had killed the lamp.  What then
could Falca have meant when she spoke of the lamp _going out?_
There was the lamp--dead indeed, and so changed that she would
never have taken it for a lamp but for the shape!  No, it was not
the lamp anymore now it was dead, for all that made it a lamp
was gone, namely, the bright shining of it.  Then it must be
the shine, the light, that had gone out!  That must be what Falca
meant--and it must be somewhere in the other place in the wall.
She started afresh after it, and groped her way to the curtain.

Now, she had never in her life tried to get out, and did not
know how; but instinctively she began to move her hands about
over one of the walls behind the curtain, half expecting them
to go into it, as she supposed Watho and Falca did.  But the wall
repelled her with inexorable hardness, and she turned to the one
opposite.  In so doing, she set her foot upon an ivory die,
and as it met sharply the same spot the broken alabaster had
already hurt, she fell forward with her outstretched hands
against the wall.  Something gave way, and she tumbled out of
the cavern.



IX.  Out


BUT alas! out was very much like in, for the same enemy,
the darkness, was here also.  The next moment, however,
came a great gladness--a firefly, which had wandered in
from the garden.  She saw the tiny spark in the distance.
With slow pulsing ebb and throb of light, it came pushing
itself through the air, drawing nearer and nearer, with that
motion which more resembles swimming than flying, and the light
seemed the source of its own motion.

"My lamp! my lamp!" cried Nycteris.  "It is the shiningness
of my lamp, which the cruel darkness drove out.  My good lamp
has been waiting for me here all the time!  It knew I would
come after it, and waited to take me with it."

She followed the firefly, which, like herself, was seeking
the way out.  If it did not know the way, it was yet light;
and, because all light is one, any light may serve to guide
to more light.  If she was mistaken in thinking it the spirit
of her lamp, it was of the same spirit as her lamp and had wings.
The gold-green jet-boat, driven by light, went throbbing before her
through a long narrow passage.  Suddenly it rose higher, and the
same moment Nycteris fell upon an ascending stair.  She had never
seen a stair before, and found going up a curious sensation.
Just as she reached what seemed the top, the firefly ceased
to shine, and so disappeared.  She was in utter darkness once more.
But when we are following the light, even its extinction is a guide.
If the firefly had gone on shining, Nycteris would have seen
the stair turn and would have gone up to Watho's bedroom; whereas
now, feeling straight before her, she came to a latched door,
which after a good deal of trying she managed to open--and stood
in a maze of wondering perplexity, awe, and delight.  What was it?
Was it outside of her, or something taking place in her head?
Before her was a very long and very narrow passage, broken up
she could not tell how, and spreading out above and on all sides
to an infinite height and breadth and distance--as if space
itself were growing out of a trough.  It was brighter than her
rooms had ever been--brighter than if six alabaster lamps had
been burning in them.  There was a quantity of strange streaking
and mottling about it, very different from the shapes on her walls.
She was in a dream of pleasant perplexity, of delightful bewilderment.
She could not tell whether she was upon her feet or drifting about
like the firefly, driven by the pulses of an inward bliss.  But she
knew little as yet of her inheritance. Unconsciously, she took
one step forward from the threshold, and the girl who had been
from her very birth a troglodyte stood in the ravishing glory
of a southern night, lit by a perfect moon--not the moon of our
northern clime, but a moon like silver glowing in a furnace--
a moon one could see to be a globe--not far off, a mere flat disk
on the face of the blue, but hanging down halfway, and looking
as if one could see all around it by a mere bending of the neck.

"It is my lamp," she said, and stood dumb with parted lips.
She looked and felt as if she had been standing there in silent
ecstasy from the beginning.

"No, it is not my lamp," she said after a while; "it is the
mother of all the lamps."

And with that she fell on her knees and spread out her hands to
the moon.  She could not in the least have told what was in her mind,
but the action was in reality just a begging of the moon to be
what she was--that precise incredible splendor hung in the far-off
roof, that very glory essential to the being of poor girls born
and bred in caverns.  It was a resurrection--nay, a birth itself,
to Nycteris.  What the vast blue sky, studded with tiny sparks
like the heads of diamond nails, could be; what the moon,
looking so absolutely content with light--why, she knew less
about them than you and I! but the greatest of astronomers
might envy the rapture of such a first impression at the age
of sixteen.  Immeasurably imperfect it was, but false the impression
could not be, for she saw with the eyes made for seeing, and saw
indeed what many men are too wise to see.

As she knelt, something softly flapped her, embraced her,
stroked her, fondled her.  She rose to her feet but saw nothing,
did not know what it was.  It was likest a woman's breath.
For she knew nothing of the air even, had never breathed the still,
newborn freshness of the world.  Her breath had come to her only
through long passages and spirals in the rock.  Still less
did she know of the air alive with motion--of that thrice-blessed
thing, the wind of a summer night.  It was like a spiritual wine,
filling her whole being with an intoxication of purest joy.
To breathe was a perfect existence.  It seemed to her the light
itself she drew into her lungs.  Possessed by the power of the
gorgeous night, she seemed at one and the same moment annihilated
and glorified.

She was in the open passage or gallery that ran around the top
of the garden walls, between the cleft battlements, but she did
not once look down to see what lay beneath.  Her soul was drawn
to the vault above her with its lamp and its endless room.
At last she burst into tears, and her heart was relieved,
as the night itself is relieved by its lightning and rain.

And now she grew thoughtful.  She must hoard this splendor!
What a little ignorance her jailers had made of her!  Life was
a mighty bliss, and they had scraped hers to the bare bone!
They must not know that she knew.  She must hide her knowledge--
hide it even from her own eyes, keeping it close in her bosom,
content to know that she had it, even when she could not brood
on its presence, feasting her eyes with its glory.  She turned
from the vision, therefore, with a sigh of utter bliss, and with
soft quiet steps and groping hands stole back into the darkness
of the rock.  What was darkness or the laziness of Time's feet
to one who had seen what she had that night seen?  She was lifted
above all weariness--above all wrong.

When Falca entered, she uttered a cry of terror.  But Nycteris
called to her not to be afraid, and told her how there had come
a rumbling and shaking, and the lamp had fallen.  Then Falca went
and told her mistress, and within an hour a new globe hung in
the place of the old one.  Nycteris thought it did not look so
bright and clear as the former, but she made no lamentation over
the change; she was far too rich to heed it.  For now, prisoner
as she knew herself, her heart was full of glory and gladness;
at times she had to hold herself from jumping up, and going
dancing and singing about the room.  When she slept, instead
of dull dreams, she had splendid visions.  There were times,
it is true, when she became restless, and impatient to look
upon her riches, but then she would reason with herself, saying,
"What does it matter if I sit here for ages with my poor pale lamp,
when out there a lamp is burning at which ten thousand little lamps
are glowing with wonder?"

She never doubted she had looked upon the day and the sun, of which
she had read; and always when she read of the day and the sun,
she had the night and the moon in her mind; and when she read of the
night and the moon, she thought only of the cave and the lamp that
hung there.



X.  The Great Lamp


IT was some time before she had a second opportunity of going out,
for Falca since the fall of the lamp had been a little more careful,
and seldom left her for long.  But one night, having a little
headache, Nycteris lay down upon her bed, and was lying with
her eyes closed, when she heard Falca come to her, and felt
she was bending over her.  Disinclined to talk, she did not open
her eyes, and lay quite still.  Satisfied that she was asleep,
Falca left her, moving so softly that her very caution made
Nycteris open her eyes and look after her--just in time to see
her vanish--through a picture, as it seemed, that hung on the
wall a long way from the usual place of issue.  She jumped up,
her headache forgotten, and ran in the opposite direction;
got out, groped her way to the stair, climbed, and reached
the top of the wall.--Alas! the great room was not so light
as the little one she had left!  Why?--Sorrow of sorrows!
the great lamp was gone!  Had its globe fallen? and its lovely
light gone out upon great wings, a resplendent firefly,
oaring itself through a yet grander and lovelier room?
She looked down to see if it lay anywhere broken to pieces
on the carpet below; but she could not even see the carpet.
But surely nothing very dreadful could have happened--
no rumbling or shaking; for there were all the little lamps
shining brighter than before, not one of them looking as if
any unusual matter had befallen.  What if each of those little
lamps was growing into a big lamp, and after being a big lamp
for a while, had to go out and grow a bigger lamp still--out there,
beyond this _out?_ --Ah! here was the living thing that could not
be seen, come to her again--bigger tonight! with such loving kisses,
and such liquid strokings of her cheeks and forehead, gently tossing
her hair, and delicately toying with it!  But it ceased, and all
was still.  Had it gone out?  What would happen next?  Perhaps
the little lamps had not to grow great lamps, but to fall one by
one and go out first?--With that came from below a sweet scent,
then another, and another.  Ah, how delicious!  Perhaps they were
all coming to her only on their way out after the great lamp!--
Then came the music of the river, which she had been too absorbed
in the sky to note the first time.  What was it?  Alas! alas!
another sweet living thing on its way out.  They were all marching
slowly out in long lovely file, one after the other, each taking
its leave of her as it passed!  It must be so: here were more
and more sweet sounds, following and fading!  The whole of the
_Out_ was going out again; it was all going after the great
lovely lamp!  She would be left the only creature in the solitary
day!  Was there nobody to hang up a new lamp for the old one,
and keep the creatures from going.--She crept back to her rock
very sad.  She tried to comfort herself by saying that anyhow
there would be room out there; but as she said it she shuddered
at the thought of _empty_ room.

When next she succeeded un getting out, a half-moon hung in the east:
a new lamp had come, she thought, and all would be well.

It would be endless to describe the phases of feeling through
which Nycteris passed, more numerous and delicate than those
of a thousand changing moons.  A fresh bliss bloomed in her soul
with every varying aspect of infinite nature.  Ere long she began
to suspect that the new moon was the old moon, gone out and come
in again like herself; also that, unlike herself, it wasted and
grew again; that it was indeed a live thing, subject like herself
to caverns, and keepers, and solitudes, escaping and shining
when it could.  Was it a prison like hers it was shut in?
and did it grow dark when the lamp left it?  Where could be
the way into it?--With that, first she began to look below,
as well as above and around her; and then first noted the tops
of the trees between her and the floor.  There were palms
with their red-fingered hands full of fruit; eucalyptus trees
crowded with little boxes of powder puffs; oleanders with their
half-caste roses; and orange trees with their clouds of young
silver stars and their aged balls of gold.  Her eyes could see
colors invisible to ours in the moonlight, and all these she
could distinguish well, though at first she took them for the
shapes and colors of the carpet of the great room.  She longed
to get down among them, now she saw they were real creatures,
but she did not know how.  She went along the whole length
of the wall to the end that crossed the river, but found no way
of going down.  Above the river she stopped to gaze with awe
upon the rushing water.  She knew nothing of water but from
what she drank and what she bathed in; and as the moon shone
on the dark, swift stream, singing lustily as it flowed,
she did not doubt the river was alive, a swift rushing serpent
of life, going--out?--whither?  And then she wondered if what
was brought into her rooms had been killed that she might drink it,
and have her bath in it.

Once when she stepped out upon the wall, it was into the midst
of a fierce wind.  The trees were all roaring.  Great clouds were
rushing along the skies and tumbling over the little lamps:
the great lamp had not come yet.  All was in tumult.  The wind
seized her garments and hair and shook them as if it would tear
them from her.  What could she have done to make the gentle
creature so angry?  Or was this another creature altogether--
of the same kind, but hugely bigger, and of a very different
temper and behavior?  But the whole place was angry!  Or was it
that the creatures dwelling in it, the wind, and the trees,
and the clouds, and the river, had all quarreled, each with
all the rest?  Would the whole come to confusion and disorder?
But as she gazed wondering and disquieted, the moon, larger
than ever she had seen her, came lifting herself above the horizon
to look, broad and red, as if she, too, were swollen with anger
that she had been roused from her rest by their noise,
and compelled to hurry up to see what her children were about,
thus rioting in her absence, lest they should rack the whole
frame of things. And as she rose, the loud wind grew quieter
and scolded less fiercely, the trees grew stiller and moaned
with a lower complaint, and the clouds hunted and hurled themselves
less wildly across the sky.  And as if she were pleased that her
children obeyed her very presence, the moon grew smaller as she
ascended the heavenly stair; her puffed cheeks sank, her
complexion grew clearer, and a sweet smile spread over her
countenance, as peacefully she rose and rose.  But there was
treason and rebellion in her court; for ere she reached the top
of her great stairs, the clouds had assembled, forgetting their
late wars, and very still they were as they laid their heads
together and conspired.  Then combining, and lying silently in
wait until she came near, they threw themselves upon her and
swallowed her up.  Down from the roof came spots of wet, faster
and faster, and they wetted the cheeks of Nycteris; and what
could they be but the tears of the moon, crying because her
children were smothering her?  Nycteris wept too and, not knowing
what to think, stole back in dismay to her room.

The next time, she came out in fear and trembling.  There was the
moon still! away in the west--poor, indeed, and old, and looking
dreadfully worn, as if all the wild beasts in the sky had been
gnawing at her--but there she was, alive still, and able to shine!



XI.  The Sunset.


KNOWING nothing of darkness, or stars, or moon, Photogen spent
his days in hunting.  On a great white horse he swept over the
grassy plains, glorying in the sun, fighting the wind, and
killing the buffaloes.

One morning, when he happened to be on the ground a little
earlier than usual, and before his attendants, he caught sight
of an animal unknown to him, stealing from a hollow into which
the sunrays had not yet reached.  Like a swift shadow it sped
over the grass, slinking southward to the forest.  He gave chase,
noted the body of a buffalo it had half eaten, and pursued it
the harder.  But with great leaps and bounds the creature shot
farther and farther ahead of him, and vanished.  Turning
therefore defeated, he met Fargu, who had been following him as
fast as his horse could carry him.

"What animal was that, Fargu?" he asked.  "How he did run!"

Fargu answered he might be a leopard, but he rather thought from
his pace and look that he was a young lion.

"What a coward he must be!" said Photogen.

"Don't be too sure of that," rejoined Fargu.

"He is one of the creatures the sun makes umcomfortable.  As soon
as the sun is down, he will be brave enough."

He had scarcely said it, when he repented; nor did he regret it
the less when he found that Photogen made no reply.  But alas!
said was said.

"Then," said Photogen to himself, "that contemptible beast is
one of the terrors of sundown, of which Madame Watho spoke!"

He hunted all day, but not with his usual spirit.  He did not
ride so hard, and did not kill one buffalo.  Fargu to his dismay
observed also that he took every pretext for moving farther
south, nearer to the forest.  But all at once, the sun now
sinking in the west, he seemed to change his mind, for he turned
his horse's head and rode home so fast that the rest could not
keep him in sight.  When they arrived, they found his horse in
the stable and concluded that he had gone into the castle.
But he had in truth set out again by the back of it.  Crossing
the river a good way up the valley, he reascended to the ground
they had left, and just before sunset reached the skirts of
the forest.

The level orb shone straight in between the bare stems, and
saying to himself he could not fail to find the beast, he rushed
into the wood.  But even as he entered, he turned and looked to
the west.  The rim of the red was touching the horizon, all
jagged with broken hills.  "Now," said Photogen, "we shall see";
but he said it in the face of a darkness he had not proved.
The moment the sun began to sink among the spikes and saw edges,
with a kind of sudden flap at his heart a fear inexplicable laid
hold of the youth; and as he had never felt anything of the kind
before, the very fear itself terrified him.  As the sun sank, it
rose like the shadow of the world and grew deeper and darker.
He could not even think what it might be, so utterly did it
enfeeble him.  When the last flaming scimitar edge of the sun
went out like a lamp, his horror seemed to blossom into very
madness.  Like the closing lids of an eye--for there was no
twilight, and this night no moon--the terror and the darkness
rushed together, and he knew them for one.  He was no longer the
man he had known, or rather thought himself.  The courage he had
had was in no sense his own--he had only had courage, not been
courageous; it had left him, and he could scarcely stand--
certainly not stand straight, for not one of his joints
could he make stiff or keep from trembling.  He was but a spark
of the sun, in himself nothing.

The beast was behind him--stealing upon him!  He turned.  All was
dark in the wood, but to his fancy the darkness here and there
broke into pairs of green eyes, and he had not the power even to
raise his bow hand from his side.  In the strength of despair he
strove to rouse courage enough--not to fight--that he did not even
desire--but to run.  Courage to flee home was all he could ever
imagine, and it would not come.  But what he had not was
ignominiously given him.  A cry in the wood, half a screech, half
a growl, sent him running like a boar-wounded cur.  It was not
even himself that ran, it was the fear that had come alive in
his legs; he did not know that they moved.  But as he ran he grew
able to run--gained courage at least to be a coward.  The stars
gave a little light.  Over the grass he sped, and nothing
followed him.  "How fallen, how changed," from the youth who had
climbed the hill as the sun went down!  A mere contempt to
himself, the self that contemned was a coward with the self it
contemned!  There lay the shapeless black of a buffalo, humped
upon the grass.  He made a wide circuit and swept on like a
shadow driven in the wind.  For the wind had arisen, and added to
his terror: it blew from behind him.  He reached the brow of the
valley and shot down the steep descent like a falling star.
Instantly the whole upper country behind him arose and pursued
him!  The wind came howling after him, filled with screams,
shrieks, yells, roars, laughter, and chattering, as if all the
animals of the forest were careering with it.  In his ears was a
trampling rush, the thunder of the hoofs of the cattle, in
career from every quarter of the wide plains to the brow of the
hill above him.  He fled straight for the castle, scarcely with
breath enough to pant.

As he reached the bottom of the valley, the moon peered up over
its edge.  He had never seen the moon before--except in the
daytime, when he had taken her for a thin bright cloud.  She was
a fresh terror to him--so ghostly! so ghastly! so gruesome!--
so knowing as she looked over the top of her garden wall upon the
world outside!  That was the night itself! the darkness alive--
and after him! the horror of horrors coming down the sky to curdle
his blood and turn his brain to a cinder!  He gave a sob and made
straight for the river, where it ran between the two walls, at
the bottom of the garden.  He plunged in, struggled through,
clambered up the bank, and fell senseless on the grass.



XII.  The Garden


ALTHOUGH Nycteris took care not to stay out long at a time, and
used every precaution, she could hardly have escaped discovery
so long had it not been that the strange attacks to which Watho
was subject had been more frequent of late, and had at last
settled into an illness which kept her to her bed.  But whether
from an excess of caution or from suspicion, Falca, having now
to be much with her mistress both day and night, took it at
length into her head to fasten the door as often as she went by
her usual place of exit, so that one night, when Nycteris
pushed, she found, to her surprise and dismay, that the wall
pushed her again, and would not let her through; nor with all
her searching could she discover wherein lay the cause of the
change.  Then first she felt the pressure of her prison walls,
and turning, half in despair, groped her way to the picture
where she had once seen Falca disappear.  There she soon found
the spot by pressing upon which the wall yielded.  It let her
through into a sort of cellar, where was a glimmer of light from
a sky whose blue was paled by the moon.  From the cellar she got
into a long passage, into which the moon was shining, and came
to a door.  She managed to open it, and to her great joy found
herself in _the other place_, not on the top of the wall, however,
but in the garden she had longed to enter.  Noiseless as a fluffy
moth she flitted away into the covert of the trees and shrubs,
her bare feet welcomed by the softest of carpets, which, by the
very touch, her feet knew to be alive, whence it came that it
was so sweet and friendly to them.  A soft little wind was out
among the trees, running now here, now there, like a child that
had got its will.  She went dancing over the grass, looking
behind her at her shadow as she went.  At first she had taken it
for a little black creature that made game of her, but when she
perceived that it was only where she kept the moon away, and
that every tree, however great and grand a creature, had also
one of these strange attendants, she soon learned not to mind
it, and by and by it became the source of as much amusement to
her as to any kitten its tail.  It was long before she was quite
at home with the trees, however.  At one time they seemed to
disapprove of her; at another not even to know she was there,
and to be altogether taken up with their own business.  Suddenly,
as she went from one to another of them, looking up with awe at
the murmuring mystery of their branches and leaves, she spied
one a little way off, which was very different from all the
rest.  It was white, and dark, and sparkling, and spread like a
palm--a small slender palm, without much head; and it grew very
fast, and sang as it grew.  But it never grew any bigger, for
just as fast as she could see it growing, it kept falling to
pieces.  When she got close to it, she discovered that it was a
water tree--made of just such water as she washed with--only it
was alive of course, like the river--a different sort of water
from that, doubtless, seeing the one crept swiftly along the
floor, and the other shot straight up, and fell, and swallowed
itself, and rose again.  She put her feet into the marble basin,
which was the flowerpot in which it grew.  It was full of real
water, living and cool--so nice, for the night was hot!

But the flowers! ah, the flowers! she was friends with them from
the very first.  What wonderful creatures they were!--and so kind
and beautiful--always sending out such colors and such scents--red
scent, and white scent, and yellow scent--for the other
creatures!  The one that was invisible and everywhere took such a
quantity of their scents, and carried it away! yet they did not
seem to mind.  It was their talk, to show they were alive, and
not painted like those on the walls of her rooms, and on the
carpets.

She wandered along down the garden, until she reached the river.
Unable then to get any further--for she was a little afraid, and
justly, of the swift watery serpent--she dropped on the grassy
bank, dipped her feet in the water, and felt it running and
pushing against them.  For a long time she sat thus, and her
bliss seemed complete, as she gazed at the river and watched the
broken picture of the great lamp overhead, moving up one side of
the roof, to go down the other.



XIII.  Something Quite New


A beautiful moth brushed across the great blue eyes of Nycteris.
She sprang to her feet to follow it--not in the spirit of the
hunter, but of the lover.  Her heart--like every heart, if only
its fallen sides were cleared away--was an inexhaustible fountain
of love: she loved everything she saw.  But as she followed the
moth, she caught sight of something lying on the bank of the
river, and not yet having learned to be afraid of anything, ran
straight to see what it was.  Reaching it, she stood amazed.
Another girl like herself!  But what a strange-looking girl!--
so curiously dressed too!--and not able to move!  Was she dead?
Filled suddenly with pity, she sat down, lifted Photogen's head,
laid it on her lap, and began stroking his face.  Her warm hands
brought him to himself.  He opened his black eyes, out of which
had gone all the fire, and looked up with a strange sound of
fear, half moan, half gasp.  But when he saw her face, he drew a
deep breath and lay motionless--gazing at her: those blue marvels
above him, like a better sky, seemed to side with courage and
assuage his terror.  At length, in a trembling, awed voice, and a
half whisper, he said, "Who are you?"

"I am Nycteris," she answered

"You are a creature of the darkness, and love the night," he
said, his fear beginning to move again.

"I may be a creature of the darkness," she replied.  "I hardly
know what you mean.  But I do not love the night.  I love the
day--with all my heart; and I sleep all the night long."

"How can that be?" said Photogen, rising on his elbow, but
dropping his head on her lap again the moment he saw the moon;
"--how can it be," he repeated, "when I see your eyes there--
wide awake?"

She only smiled and stroked him, for she did not understand him,
and thought he did not know what he was saying.

"Was it a dream then?" resumed Photogen, rubbing his eyes.  But
with that his memory came clear, and he shuddered and cried,
"Oh, horrible! horrible! to be turned all at once into a coward!
a shameful, contemptible, disgraceful coward! I am ashamed--
ashamed--and so frightened!  It is all so frightful!"

"What is so frightful?" asked Nycteris, with a smile like that
of a mother to her child waked from a bad dream.

"All, all," he answered; "all this darkness and the roaring."

"My dear," said Nycteris, "there is no roaring.  How sensitive
you must be!  What you hear is only the walking of the water, and
the running about of the sweetest of all the creatures.  She is
invisible, and I call her Everywhere, for she goes through all
the other creatures, and comforts them.  Now she is amusing
herself, and them too, with shaking them and kissing them, and
blowing in their faces.  Listen: do you call that roaring?  You
should hear her when she is rather angry though!  I don't know
why, but she is sometimes, and then she does roar a little."

"It is so horribly dark!" said Photogen, who, listening while
she spoke, had satisfied himself that there was no roaring.

"Dark!" she echoed.  "You should be in my room when an earthquake
has killed my lamp.  I do not understand.  How _can_ you call this
dark?  Let me see: yes, you have eyes, and big ones, bigger than
Madame Watho's or Falca's not so big as mine, I fancy--only I
never saw mine.  But then--oh, yes!--I know now what is the matter!
You can't see with them, because they are so black.  Darkness
can't see, of course.  Never mind: I will be your eyes, and teach
you to see.  Look here--at these lovely white things in the grass,
with red sharp points all folded together into one.  Oh, I love
them so!  I could sit looking at them all day, the darlings!"

Photogen looked close at the flowers, and thought he had seen
something like them before, but could not make them out.  As
Nycteris had never seen an open daisy, so had he never seen a
closed one.

Thus instinctively Nycteris tried to turn him away from his
fear; and the beautiful creature's strange lovely talk helped
not a little to make him forget it.

"You call it dark!" she said again, as if she could not get rid
of the absurdity of the idea; "why, I could count every blade of
the green hair--I suppose it is what the books call grass--within
two yards of me!  And just look at the great lamp!  It is brighter
than usual today, and I can't think why you should be frightened,
or call it dark!"

As she spoke, she went on stroking his cheeks and hair, and
trying to comfort him.  But oh how miserable he was! and how
plainly he looked it! He was on the point of saying that her
great lamp was dreadful to him, looking like a witch, walking in
the sleep of death; but he was not so ignorant as Nycteris, and
knew even in the moonlight that she was a woman, though he had
never seen one so young or so lovely before; and while she
comforted his fear, her presence made him the more ashamed of it.
Besides, not knowing her nature, he might annoy her, and make
her leave him to his misery.  He lay still therefore, hardly
daring to move: all the little life he had seemed to come from
her, and if he were to move, she might move: and if she were to
leave him, he must weep like a child.

"How did you come here?" asked Nycteris, taking his face between
her hands.

"Down the hill," he answered.

"Where do you sleep?" she asked.

He signed in the direction of the house.  She gave a little laugh
of delight.

"When you have learned not to be frightened, you will always be
wanting to come out with me," she said.

She thought with herself she would ask her presently, when she
had come to herself a little, how she had made her escape, for
she must, of course, like herself, have got out of a cave, in
which Watho and Falca had been keeping her.

"Look at the lovely colors," she went on, pointing to a rose
bush, on which Photogen could not see a single flower.  "They are
far more beautiful--are they not?--than any of the colors upon
your walls.  And then they are alive, and smell so sweet!"

He wished she would not make him keep opening his eyes to look
at things he could not see; and every other moment would start
and grasp tight hold of her, as some fresh pang of terror shot
into him.

"Come, come, dear!" said Nycteris, "you must not go on this way.
You must be a brave girl, and--"

"A girl!" shouted Photogen, and started to his feet in wrath.
"If you were a man, I should kill you."

"A man?" repeated Nycteris.  "What is that?  How could I be that?
We are both girls--are we not?"

"No, I am not a girl," he answered; "--although," he added,
changing his tone, and casting himself on the ground at her
feet, "I have given you too good reason to call me one."

"Oh, I see!" returned Nycteris.  "No, of course!--you can't be a
girl: girls are not afraid--without reason.  I understand now: it
is because you are not a girl that you are so frightened."

Photogen twisted and writhed upon the grass.

"No, it is not," he said sulkily; "it is this horrible darkness
that creeps into me, goes all through me, into the very marrow
of my bones--that is what makes me behave like a girl.  If only
the sun would rise!"

"The sun! what is it?" cried Nycteris, now in her turn conceiving
a vague fear.

Then Photogen broke into a rhapsody, in which he vainly sought
to forget his.

"It is the soul, the life, the heart, the glory of the
universe," he said.  "The worlds dance like motes in his beams.
The heart of man is strong and brave in his light, and when it
departs his courage gows from him--goes with the sun, and he
becomes such as you see me now."

"Then that is not the sun?" said Nycteris, thoughtfully,
pointing up to the moon.

"That!" cried Photogen, with utter scorn.  "I know nothing about
_that_, except that it is ugly and horrible.  At best it can be
only the ghost of a dead sun.  Yes, that is it!  That is what
makes it look so frightful."

"No," said Nycteris, after a long, thoughtful pause; "you must
be wrong there.  I think the sun is the ghost of a dead moon, and
that is how he is so much more splendid as you say.--Is there,
then, another big room, where the sun lives in the roof?"

"I do not know what you mean," replied Photogen.  "But you mean
to be kind, I know, though you should not call a poor fellow in
the dark a girl.  If you will let me lie here, with my head in
your lap, I should like to sleep.  Will you watch me, and take
care of me?"

"Yes, that I will," answered Nycteris, forgetting all her own
danger.

So Photogen fell asleep



XIV.  The Sun


HERE Nycteris sat, and there the youth lay all night long, in
the heart of the great cone-shadow of the earth, like two
pharaohs in one pyramid.  Photogen slept, and slept; and Nycteris
sat motionless lest she should wake him, and so betray him to
his fear.

The moon rode high in the blue eternity; it was a very triumph
of glorious night; the river ran babble-murmuring in deep soft
syllables; the fountain kept rushing moonward, and blossoming
momently to a great silvery flower, whose petals were forever
falling like snow, but with a continuous musical clash, into the
bed of its exhaustion beneath; the wind woke, took a run among
the trees, went to sleep, and woke again; the daisies slept on
their feet at hers, but she did not know they slept; the roses
might well seem awake, for their scent filled the air, but in
truth they slept also, and the odor was that of their dreams;
the oranges hung like gold lamps in the trees, and their silvery
flowers were the souls of their yet unembodied children; the
scent of the acacia blooms filled the air like the very odor of
the moon herself.

At last, unused to the living air, and weary with sitting so
still and so long, Nycteris grew drowsy.  The air began to grow
cool.  It was getting near the time when she too was accustomed
to sleep.  She closed her eyes just a moment, and nodded--opened
them suddenly wide, for she had promised to watch.

In that moment a change had come.  The moon had got round and was
fronting her from the west, and she saw that her face was altered,
that she had grown pale, as if she too were wan with fear, and
from her lofty place espied a coming terror.  The light seemed
to be dissolving out of her; she was dying--she was going out!
And yet everything around looked strangely clear--clearer than
ever she had seen anything before; how could the lamp be shedding
more light when she herself had less?  Ah, that was just it!
See how faint she looked!  It was because the light was forsaking
her, and spreading itself over the room, that she grew so thin
and pale!  She was giving up everything!  She was melting away
from the roof like a bit of sugar in water.

Nycteris was fast growing afraid, and sought refuge with the
face upon her lap.  How beautiful the creature was!--what to call
it she could not think, for it had been angry when she called it
what Watho called her.  And, wonder upon wonders! now, even in
the cold change that was passing upon the great room, the color
as of a red rose was rising in the wan cheek.  What beautiful
yellow hair it was that spread over her lap!  What great huge
breaths the creature took!  And what were those curious things it
carried?  She had seen them on her walls, she was sure.

Thus she talked to herself while the lamp grew paler and paler,
and everything kept growing yet clearer.  What could it mean?  The
lamp was dying--going out into the other place of which the
creature in her lap had spoken, to be a sun!  But why were the
things growing clearer before it was yet a sun?  That was the
point.  Was it her growing into a sun that did it?  Yes! yes! it
was coming death!  She knew it, for it was coming upon her also!
She felt it coming!  What was she about to grow into?  Something
beautiful, like the creature in her lap?  It might be! Anyhow, it
must be death; for all her strength was going out of her, while
all around her was growing so light she could not bear it!  She
must be blind soon!  Would she be blind or dead first?

For the sun was rushing up behind her.  Photogen woke, lifted his
head from her lap, and sprang to his feet.  His face was one
radiant smile.  His heart was full of daring--that of the hunter
who will creep into the tiger's den.  Nycteris gave a cry,
covered her face with her hands, and pressed her eyelids close.
Then blindly she stretched out her arms to Photogen, crying,
"Oh, I am so frightened!  What is this?  It must be death!  I don't
wish to die yet.  I love this room and the old lamp.  I do not
want the other place.  This is terrible.  I want to hide.  I want
to get into the sweet, soft, dark hands of all the other creatures.
Ah me! ah me!"

"What is the matter with you, girl?" said Photogen, with the
arrogance of all male creatures until they have been taught by
the other kind.  He stood looking down upon her over his bow,
of which he was examining the string.  "There is no fear of
anything now, child!  It is day.  The sun is all but up.
Look! he will be above the brow of yon hill in one moment more!
Good-bye.  Thank you for my night's lodging.  I'm off.  Don't be
a goose.  If ever I can do anything for you--and all that,
you know!"

"Don't leave me; oh, don't leave me!" cried Nycteris.  "I am
dying!  I am dying!  I can't move.  The light sucks all the
strength out of me.  And oh, I am so frightened!"

But already Photogen had splashed through the river, holding
high his bow that it might not get wet.  He rushed across the
level and strained up the opposing hill.  Hearing no answer,
Nycteris removed her hands.  Photogen had reached the top, and
the same moment the sun rays alighted upon him; the glory of the
king of day crowded blazing upon the golden-haired youth.
Radiant as Apollo, he stood in mighty strength, a flashing shape
in the midst of flame.  He fitted a glowing arrow to a gleaming
bow.  The arrow parted with a keen musical twang of the
bowstring, and Photogen, darting after it, vanished with a
shout.  Up shot Apollo himself, and from his quiver scattered
astonishment and exultation.  But the brain of poor Nycteris was
pierced through and through.  She fell down in utter darkness.
All around her was a flaming furnace.  In despair and feebleness
and agony, she crept back, feeling her way with doubt and
difficulty and enforced persistence to her cell.  When at last
the friendly darkness of her chamber folded her about with its
cooling and consoling arms, she threw herself on her bed and
fell fast asleep.  And there she slept on, one alive in a tomb,
while Photogen, above in the sun-glory, pursued the buffaloes on
the lofty plain, thinking not once of her where she lay dark and
forsaken, whose presence had been his refuge, her eyes and her
hands his guardians through the night.  He was in his glory and
his pride; and the darkness and its disgrace had vanished for
a time.



XV.  The Coward Hero


But no sooner had the sun reached the noonstead, than Photogen
began to remember the past night in the shadow of that which was
at hand, and to remember it with shame.  He had proved himself--
and not to himself only, but to a girl as well--a coward!--
one bold in the daylight, while there was nothing to fear,
but trembling like any slave when the night arrived.  There was,
there must be, something unfair in it!  A spell had been cast
upon him!  He had eaten, he had drunk something that did not
agree with courage!  In any case he had been taken unprepared!
How was he to know what the going down of the sun would be like?
It was no wonder he should have been surprised into terror,
seeing it was what it was--in its very nature so terrible!
Also, one could not see where danger might be coming from!
You might be torn in pieces, carried off, or swallowed up,
without even seeing where to strike a blow!  Every possible
excuse he caught at, eager as a self-lover to lighten his
self-contempt.  That day he astonished the huntsmen--terrified
them with his reckless daring--all to prove to himself he was
no coward.  But nothing eased his shame.  One thing only had
hope in it--the resolve to encounter the dark in solemn earnest,
now that he knew something of what it was.  It was nobler to
meet a recognized danger than to rush contemptuously into what
seemed nothing--nobler still to encounter a nameless horror.
He could conquer fear and wipe out disgrace together.  For a
marksman and swordsman like him, he said, one with his strength
and courage, there was but danger.  Defeat there was not.
He knew the darkness now, and when it came he would meet it
as fearless and cool as now he felt himself.  And again he said,
"We shall see!"

He stood under the boughs of a great beech as the sun was going
down, far away over the jagged hills: before it was half down,
he was trembling like one of the leaves behind him in the first
sigh of the night wind.  The moment the last of the glowing disk
vanished, he bounded away in terror to gain the valley, and his
fear grew as he ran.  Down the side of the hill, an abject
creature, he went bounding and rolling and running; fell rather
than plunged into the river, and came to himself, as before,
lying on the grassy bank in the garden.

But when he opened his eyes, there were no girl-eyes looking
down into his; there were only the stars in the waste of the
sunless Night--the awful all-enemy he had again dared, but could
not encounter.  Perhaps the girl was not yet come out of the water!
He would try to sleep, for he dared not move, and perhaps when
he woke he would find his head on her lap, and the beautiful
dark face, with its deep blue eyes, bending over him. But when
he woke he found his head on the grass, and although he sprang
up with all his courage, such as it was, restored, he did not
set out for the chase with such an _‚lan_ as the day before;
and, despite the sun-glory in his heart and veins, his hunting
was this day less eager; he ate little, and from the first was
thoughtful even to sadness.  A second time he was defeated and
disgraced!  Was his courage nothing more than the play of the
sunlight on his brain?  Was he a mere ball tossed between the
light and the dark?  Then what a poor contemptible creature he
was!  But a third chance lay before him.  If he failed the third
time, he dared not foreshadow what he must then think of himself!
It was bad enough now--but then!

Alas! it went no better.  The moment the sun was down, he fled
as if from a legion of devils.

Seven times in all, he tried to face the coming night in the
strength of the past day, and seven times he failed--failed with
such increase of failure, with such a growing sense of ignominy,
overwhelming at length all the sunny hours and joining night
to night, that, what with misery, self-accusation, and loss of
confidence, his daylight courage too began to fade, and at length,
from exhaustion, from getting wet, and then lying out of doors
all night, and night after night--worst of all, from the consuming
of the deathly fear, and the shame of shame, his sleep forsook him,
and on the seventh morning, instead of going to the hunt,
he crawled into the castle and went to bed.  The grand health,
over which the witch had taken such pains, had yielded, and in
an hour or two he was moaning and crying out in delirium.



XVI.  An Evil Nurse


WATHO was herself ill, as I have said, and was the worse
tempered; and besides, it is a peculiarity of witches that
what works in others to sympathy works in them to repulsion.
Also, Watho had a poor, helpless, rudimentary spleen of a
conscience left, just enough to make her uncomfortable,
and therefore more wicked.  So, when she heard that Photogen
was ill, she was angry.  Ill, indeed! after all she had done
to saturate him with the life of the system, with the solar
might itself?  He was a wretched failure, the boy!  And because
he was _her_ failure, she was annoyed with him, began to dislike
him, grew to hate him.  She looked on him as a painter might
upon a picture, or a poet upon a poem, which he had only succeeded
in getting into an irrecoverable mess.  In the hearts of witches,
love and hate lie close together, and often tumble over each other.
And whether it was that her failure with Photogen foiled also
her plans in regard to Nycteris, or that her illness made her
yet more of a devil's wife, certainly Watho now got sick of
the girl too, and hated to know her about the castle.

She was not too ill, however, to go to poor Photogen's room
and torment him.  She told him she hated him like a serpent,
and hissed like one as she said it, looking very sharp in the
nose and chin, and flat in the forehead.  Photogen thought she
meant to kill him, and hardly ventured to take anything
brought him. She ordered every ray of light to be shut out
of his room; but by means of this he got a little used to
the darkness.  She would take one of his arrows, and now tickle
him with the feather end of it, now prick him with the point
till the blood ran down.  What she meant finally I cannot tell,
but she brought Photogen speedily to the determination
of making his escape from the castle: what he should do then
he would think afterwards.  Who could tell but he might find
his mother somewhere beyond the forest!  If it were not for the
broad patches of darkness that divided day from day, he would
fear nothing!

But now, as he lay helpless in the dark, ever and anon would
come dawning through it the face of the lovely creature who on
that first awful night nursed him so sweetly: was he never to
see her again?  If she was, as he had concluded, the nymph of the
river, why had she not reappeared?  She might have taught him not
to fear the night, for plainly she had no fear of it herself!
But then, when the day came, she did seem frightened--why was
that, seeing there was nothing to be afraid of then?  Perhaps one
so much at home in the darkness was correspondingly afraid of
the light!  Then his selfish joy at the rising of the sun,
blinding him to her condition, had made him behave to her, in
ill return for her kindness, as cruelly as Watho behaved to him!
How sweet and dear and lovely she was!  If there were wild beasts
that came out only at night, and were afraid of the light, why
should there not be girls too, made the same way--who could not
endure the light, as he could not bear the darkness?  If only he
could find her again!  Ah, how differently he would behave to
her!  But alas! perhaps the sun had killed her--melted her--
burned her up--dried her up--that was it, if she was a nymph
of the river!



XVII.  Watho's Wolf


FROM that dreadful morning Nycteris had never got to be herself
again.  The sudden light had been almost death to her: and now
she lay in the dark with the memory of a terrific sharpness--
a something she dared scarcely recall, lest the very thought of
it should sting her beyond endurance.  But this was as nothing
to the pain which the recollection of the rudeness of the shining
creature whom she had nursed through his fear caused her; for
the moment his suffering passed over to her, and he was free,
the first use he made of his returning strength had been to
scorn her!  She wondered and wondered; it was all beyond her
comprehension.

Before long, Watho was plotting evil against her.  The witch was
like a sick child weary of his toy: she would pull her to pieces
and see how she liked it.  She would set her in the sun and see
her die, like a jelly from the salt ocean cast out on a hot
rock.  It would be a sight to soothe her wolf-pain.  One day,
therefore, a little before noon, while Nycteris was in her
deepest sleep, she had a darkened litter brought to the door,
and in that she made two of her men carry her to the plain above.
There they took her out, laid her on the grass, and left her.

Watho watched it all from the top of her high tower, through her
telescope; and scarcely was Nycteris left, when she saw her sit
up, and the same moment cast herself down again with her face to
the ground.

"She'll have a sunstroke," said Watho, "and that'll be the end
of her."

Presently, tormented by a fly, a huge-humped buffalo, with great
shaggy mane, came galloping along, straight for where she lay.
At the sight of the thing on the grass, he started, swerved
yards aside, stopped dead, and then came slowly up, looking
malicious.  Nycteris lay quite still and never even saw the
animal.

"Now she'll be trodden to death!" said Watho.  "That's the way
those creatures do."

When the buffalo reached her, he sniffed at her all over and
went away; then came back and sniffed again: then all at once
went off as if a demon had him by the tail.

Next came a gnu, a more dangerous animal still, and did much the
same; then a gaunt wild boar.  But no creature hurt her, and
Watho was angry with the whole creation.

At length, in the shade of her hair, the blue eyes of Nycteris
began to come to themselves a little, and the first thing they
saw was a comfort.  I have told already how she knew the night
daisies, each a sharp-pointed little cone with a red tip; and
once she had parted the rays of one of them, with trembling
fingers, for she was afraid she was dreadfully rude, and perhaps
was hurting it; but she did want, she said to herself, to see
what secret it carried so carefully hidden; and she found its
golden heart.  But now, right under her eyes, inside the veil of
her hair, in the sweet twilight of whose blackness she could see
it perfectly, stood a daisy with its red tip opened wide into a
carmine ring, displaying its heart of gold on a platter of
silver.  She did not at first recognize it as one of those cones
come awake, but a moment's notice revealed what it was.  Who then
could have been so cruel to the lovely little creature as to
force it open like that, and spread it heart-bare to the
terrible death-lamp?  Whoever it was, it must be the same that
had thrown her out there to be burned to death in its fire.  But
she had her hair, and could hang her head, and make a small
sweet night of her own about her!  She tried to bend the daisy
down and away from the sun, and to make its petals hang about it
like her hair, but she could not.  Alas! it was burned and dead
already!  She did not know that it could not yield to her gentle
force because it was drinking life, with all the eageress of life,
from what she called the death-lamp.  Oh, how the lamp burned her!

But she went on thinking--she did not know how; and by and by
began to reflect that, as there was no roof to the room except
that in which the great fire went rolling about, the little
Red-tip must have seen the lamp a thousand times, and must know
it quite well! and it had not killed it! Nay, thinking about
farther, she began to ask the question whether this, in which
she now saw it, might not be its more perfect condition.  For not
only now did the whole seem perfect, as indeed it did before,
but every part showed its own individual perfection as well,
which perfection made it capable of combining with the rest into
the higher perfection of a whole.  The flower was a lamp itself!
The golden heart was the light, and the silver border was the
alabaster globe, skillfully broken, and spread wide to let out
the glory.  Yes: the radiant shape was plainly its perfection!
If, then, it was the lamp which had opened it into that shape,
the lamp could not be unfriendly to it, but must be of its own
kind, seeing it made it perfect!  And again, when she thought of
it, there was clearly no little resemblance between them.  What
if the flower then was the little great-grandchild of the lamp
and he was loving it all the time?  And what if the lamp did not
mean to hurt her, only could not help it?  The red tips looked as
if the flower had some time or other been hurt: what if the lamp
was making the best it could of her--opening her out somehow like
the flower?  She would bear it patiently, and see.  But how coarse
the color of the grass was!  Perhaps, however, her eyes not being
made for the bright lamp, she did not see them as they were!
Then she remembered how different were the eyes of the creature
that was not a girl and was afraid of the darkness!  Ah, if the
darkness would only come again, all arms, friendly and soft
everywhere about her!  She would wait and wait, and bear, and be
patient.

She lay so still that Watho did not doubt she had fainted.  She
was pretty sure she would be dead before the night came to
revive her.



XVIII.  Refuge


FIXING her telescope on the motionless form, that she might see
it at once when the morning came, Watho went down from the tower
to Photogen's room.  He was much better by this time, and before
she left him, he had resolved to leave the castle that very
night.  The darkness was terrible indeed, but Watho was worse
than even the darkness, and he could not escape in the day.  As
soon, therefore, as the house seemed still, he tightened his
belt, hung to it his hunting knife, put a flask of wine and some
bread in his pocket, and took his bow and arrows.  He got from
the house and made his way at once up to the plain.  But what
with his illness, the terrors of the night, and his dread of the
wild beasts, when he got to the level he could not walk a step
further, and sat down, thinking it better to die than to live.
In spite of his fears, however, sleep contrived to overcome him,
and he fell at full length on the soft grass.

He had not slept long when he woke with such a strange sense of
comfort and security that he thought the dawn at last must have
arrived.  But it was dark night about him.  And the sky--no,
it was not the sky, but the blue eyes of his naiad looking down
upon him!  Once more he lay with his head in her lap, and all
was well, for plainly the girl feared the darkness as little as
he the day.

"Thank you," he said.  "You are like live armor to my heart; you
keep the fear off me.  I have been very ill since then.  Did you
come up out of the river when you saw me cross?"

"I don't live in the water," she answered.  "I live under the
pale lamp, and I die under the bright one."

"Ah, yes!  I understand now," he returned.  "I would not have
behaved as I did last time if I had understood; but I thought
you were mocking me; and I am so made that I cannot help being
frightened at the darkness.  I beg your pardon for leaving you as
I did, for, as I say, I did not understand.  Now I believe you
were really frightened.  Were you not?"

"I was, indeed," answered Nycteris, "and shall be again.  But why
you should be, I cannot in the least understand.  You must know
how gentle and sweet the darkness is, how kind and friendly, how
soft and velvety!  It holds you to its bosom and loves you.  A
little while ago, I lay faint and dying under your hot lamp.--
What is it you call it?"

"The sun," murmured Photogen.  "How I wish he would make haste!"

"Ah! do not wish that.  Do not, for my sake, hurry him.  I can
take care of you from the darkness, but I have no one to take
care of me from the light.--As I was telling you, I lay dying
in the sun.  All at once I drew a deep breath.  A cool wind came
and ran over my face.  I looked up.  The torture was gone, for
the death-lamp itself was gone.  I hope he does not die and grow
brighter yet.  My terrible headache was all gone, and my sight
was come back.  I felt as if I were new made.  But I did not get
up at once, for I was tired still.  The grass grew cool about me
and turned soft in color.  Something wet came upon it, and it was
now so pleasant to my feet that I rose and ran about.  And when I
had been running about a long time, all at once I found you lying,
just as I had been Iying a little while before.  So I sat down
beside you to take care of you, till your life--and my death--
should come again."

"How good you are, you beautiful creature!--Why, you forgave me
before ever I asked you!" cried Photogen.

Thus they fell a-talking, and he told her what he knew of his
history, and she told him what she knew of hers, and they agreed
they must get away from Watho as far as ever they could.

"And we must set out at once," said Nycteris.

"The moment the morning comes," returned Photogen.

"We must not wait for the morning," said Nycteris, "for then I
shall not be able to move, and what would you do the next night?
Besides, Watho sees best in the daytime.  Indeed, you must come
now, Photogen.--You must."

"I cannot; I dare not," said Photogen.  "I cannot move.  If I but
lift my head from your lap, the very sickness of terror seizes
me."

"I shall be with you," said Nycteris, soothingly.  "I will take
care of you till your dreadful sun comes, and then you may leave
me, and go away as fast as you can.  Only please put me in a dark
place first, if there is one to be found."

"I will never leave you again, Nycteris," cried Photogen.  "Only
wait till the sun comes, and brings me back my strength, and we
will go together, and never, never part anymore."

"No, no," persisted Nycteris; "we must go now.  And you must
learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you
will always be only half brave.  I have begun already--not to
fight your sun, but to try to get at peace with him, and
understand what he really is, and what he means with me--whether
to hurt me or to make the best of me.  You must do the same with
my darkness."

"But you don't know what mad animals there are away there
towards the south," said Photogen.  "They have huge green eyes,
and they would eat you up like a bit of celery, you beautiful
creature!"

"Come, come! you must," said Nycteris, "or I shall have to
pretend to leave you, to make you come.  I have seen the green
eyes you speak of, and I will take care of you from them."

"You!  How can you do that?  If it were day now, I could take care
of you from the worst of them.  But as it is, I can't even see
them for this abominable darkness.  I could not see your lovely
eyes but for the light that is in them; that lets me see straight
into heaven through them.  They are windows into the very heaven
beyond the sky.  I believe they are the very place where the stars
are made."

"You come then, or I shall shut them," said Nycteris, "and you
shan't see them anymore till you are good.  Come.  If you can't
see the wild beasts, I can."

"You can! and you ask me to come!" cried Photogen.

"Yes," answered Nycteris.  "And more than that, I see them long
before they can see me, so that I am able to take care of you."

"But how?" persisted Photogen.  "You can't shoot with bow and
arrow, or stab with a hunting knife."

"No, but I can keep out of the way of them all.  Why, just when I
found you, I was having a game with two or three of them at once.
I see, and scent them too, long before they are near me--
long before they can see or scent me."

"You don't see or scent any now, do you?" said Photogen uneasily,
rising on his elbow.

"No--none at present.  I will look," replied Nycteris, and sprang
to her feet.

"Oh, oh! do not leave me--not for a moment," cried Photogen,
straining his eyes to keep her face in sight through the darkness.

"Be quiet, or they will hear you," she returned.  "The wind is
from the south, and they cannot scent us.  I have found out all
about that.  Ever since the dear dark came, I have been amusing
myself with them, getting every now and then just into the edge
of the wind, and letting one have a sniff of me."

"Oh, horrible!" cried Photogen.  "I hope you will not insist on
doing so anymore.  What was the consequence?"

"Always, the very instant, he turned with dashing eyes, and
bounded towards me--only he could not see me, you must remember.
But my eyes being so much better than his, I could see him
perfectly well, and would run away around him until I scented
him, and then I knew he could not find me anyhow.  If the wind
were to turn, and run the other way now, there might be a whole
army of them down upon us, leaving no room to keep out of their
way.  You had better come."

She took him by the hand.  He yielded and rose, and she led him
away.  But his steps were feeble, and as the night went on, he
seemed more and more ready to sink.

"Oh dear! I am so tired! and so frightened!" he would say.

"Lean on me," Nycteris would return, putting her arm around him,
or patting his cheek.  "Take a few steps more.  Every step away
from the castle is clear gain.  Lean harder on me.  I am quite
strong and well now."

So they went on.  The piercing night-eyes of Nycteris descried
not a few pairs of green ones gleaming like holes in the darkness,
and many a round she made to keep far out of their way; but she
never said to Photogen she saw them.  Carefully she kept him off
the uneven places, and on the softest and smoothest of the grass,
talking to him gently all the way as they went--of the lovely
flowers and the stars--how comfortable the flowers looked,
down in their green beds, and how happy the stars up in their
blue beds!

When the morning began to come, he began to grow better, but was
dreadfully tired with walking instead of sleeping, especially
after being so long ill.  Nycteris too, what with supporting him,
what with growing fear of the light which was beginning to ooze
out of the east, was very tired.  At length, both equally
exhausted, neither was able to help the other.  As if by consent
they stopped.  Embracing each the other, they stood in the midst
of the wide grassy land, neither of them able to move a step,
each supported only by the leaning weakness of the other, each
ready to fall if the other should move.  But while the one grew
weaker still, the other had begun to grow stronger.  When the
tide of the night began to ebb, the tide of the day began to
flow; and now the sun was rushing to the horizon, borne upon its
foaming billows.  And ever as he came, Photogen revived.  At last
the sun shot up into the air, like a bird from the hand of the
Father of Lights.  Nycteris gave a cry of pain and hid her face
in her hands.

"Oh me!" she sighed; "I am so frightened! The terrible light
stings so!"

But the same instant, through her blindness, she heard Photogen
give a low exultant laugh, and the next felt herself caught up;
she who all night long had tended and protected him like a child
was now in his arms, borne along like a baby, with her head
lying on his shoulder.  But she was the greater, for suffering
more, she feared nothing.



XIX.  The Werewolf


AT the very moment when Photogen caught up Nycteris, the telescope
of Watho was angrily sweeping the tableland.  She swung it
from her in rage and, running to her room, shut herself up.
There she anointed herself from top to toe with a certain ointment;
shook down her long red hair, and tied it around her waist;
then began to dance, whirling around and around faster and faster,
growing angrier and angrier, until she was foaming at the mouth
with fury.  When Falca went looking for her, she could not find
her anywhere.

As the sun rose, the wind slowly changed and went around, until
it blew straight from the north.  Photogen and Nycteris were
drawing near the edge of the forest, Photogen still carrying
Nycteris, when she moved a little on his shoulder uneasily and
murmured in his ear.

"I smell a wild beast--that way, the way the wind is coming."

Photogen turned back towards the castle, and saw a dark speck on
the plain.  As he looked, it grew larger: it was coming across
the grass with the speed of the wind.  It came nearer and nearer.
It looked long and low, but that might be because it was running
at a great stretch.  He set Nycteris down under a tree, in the
black shadow of its bole, strung his bow, and picked out his
heaviest, longest, sharpest arrow.  Just as he set the notch
on the string, he saw that the creature was a tremendous wolf,
rushing straight at him.  He loosened his knife in its sheath,
drew another arrow halfway from the quiver, lest the first
should fail, and took his aim-at a good distance, to leave time
for a second chance.  He shot.  The arrow rose, flew straight,
descended, struck the beast, and started again into the air,
doubled like a letter V.  Quickly Photogen snatched the other,
shot, cast his bow from him, and drew his knife.  But the arrow
was in the brute's chest, up to the feather; it tumbled heels
over head with a great thud of its back on the earth, gave a
groan, made a struggle or two, and lay stretched out motionless.

"I've killed it, Nycteris," cried Photogen.  "It is a great
red wolf."

"Oh, thank you!" answered Nycteris feebly from behind the tree.
"I was sure you would.  I was not a bit afraid."

Photogen went up to the wolf.  It _was_ a monster!  But he was
vexed that his first arrow had behaved so badly, and was the less
willing to lose the one that had done him such good service:
with a long and a strong pull, he drew it from the brute's chest.
Could he believe his eyes?  There lay--no wolf, but Watho,
with her hair tied around her waist!  The foolish witch had made
herself invulnerable, as she supposed, but had forgotten that,
to torment Photogen therewith, she had handled one of his
arrows.  He ran back to Nycteris and told her.

She shuddered and wept, and would not look.



XX.  All Is Well


THERE was now no occasion to fly a step farther.  Neither of them
feared anyone but Watho.  They left her there and went back.  A
great cloud came over the sun, and rain began to fall heavily,
and Nycteris was much refreshed, grew able to see a little,
and with Photogen's help walked gently over the cool wet grass.

They had not gone far before they met Fargu and the other huntsmen.
Photogen told them he had killed a great red wolf, and it was
Madame Watho.  The huntsmen looked grave, but gladness shone through.

"Then," said Fargu, "I will go and bury my mistress."

But when they reached the place, they found she was already
buried--in the maws of sundry birds and beasts which had made
their breakfast of her.

Then Fargu, overtaking them, would, very wisely, have Photogen
go to the king and tell him the whole story.  But Photogen,
yet wiser than Fargu, would not set out until he had married
Nycteris; "for then," he said, "the king himself can't part us;
and if ever two people couldn't do the one without the other,
those two are Nycteris and I.  She has got to teach me to be a
brave man in the dark, and I have got to look after her until
she can bear the heat of the sun, and he helps her to see,
instead of blinding her."

They were married that very day.  And the next day they went
together to the king and told him the whole story.  But whom
should they find at the court but the father and mother of
Photogen, both in high favor with the king and queen.  Aurora
nearly died with joy, and told them all how Watho had lied and
made her believe her child was dead.

No one knew anything of the father or mother of Nycteris; but
when Aurora saw in the lovely girl her own azure eyes shining
through night and its clouds, it made her think strange things,
and wonder how even the wicked themselves may be a link to join
together the good.  Through Watho, the mothers, who had never
seen each other, had changed eyes in their children.

The king gave them the castle and lands of Watho, and there they
lived and taught each other for many years that were not long.
But hardly had one of them passed, before Nycteris had come to
love the day best, because it was the clothing and crown of
Photogen, and she saw that the day was greater than the night,
and the sun more lordly than the moon; and Photogen had come to
love the night best, because it was the mother and home of
Nycteris.

"But who knows," Nycteris would say to Photogen, "that when we
go out, we shall not go into a day as much greater than your day
as your day is greater than my night?"

[End of "The Day Boy and the Night Girl", by George MacDonald].