The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography. C. S. Lewis
face, the face so calm that it escaped insipidity by the very concentration of its mildness, the face that was like the sudden coldness and stillness of a church when we enter it from a hot street—that made her a Madonna. The alert, inner silence which looked out from those eyes overawed him; yet at any moment she might laugh like a child, or run like Artemis or dance like a Mænad. All this against the golden sky which looked as if it were only an arm’s length above her head. The beasts raced forward to greet her, and as they rushed through the feathery vegetation they startled from it masses of the frogs, so that it looked as if huge drops of vividly coloured dew were being tossed in the air. She turned as they approached her and welcomed them, and once again the picture was half like many earthly scenes but in its total effect unlike them all. It was not really like a woman making much of a horse, nor yet a child playing with a puppy. There was in her face an authority, in her caresses a condescension, which by taking seriously the inferiority of her adorers made them somehow less inferior—raised them from the status of pets to that of slaves. As Ransom reached her she stooped and whispered something in the ear of the yellow creature, and then, addressing the dragon, bleated to it almost in its own voice. Both of them, having received their congé, darted back into the woods.
“The beasts in your world seem almost rational,” said Ransom.
“We make them older every day,” she answered. “Is not that what it means to be a beast?”
But Ransom clung to her use of the word we.
“That is what I have come to speak to you about,” he said. “Maleldil has sent me to your world for some purpose. Do you know what it is?”
She stood for a moment almost like one listening and then answered “No.”
“Then you must take me to your home and show me to your people.”
“People? I do not know what you are saying.”
“Your kindred—the others of your kind.”
“Do you mean the King?”
“Yes. If you have a King, I had better be brought before him.”
“I cannot do that,” she answered. “I do not know where to find him.”
“To your own home then.”
“What is home?”
“The place where people live together and have their possessions and bring up their children.”
She spread out her hands to indicate all that was in sight. “This is my home,” she said.
“Do you live here alone?” asked Ransom.
“What is alone?”
Ransom tried a fresh start. “Bring me where I shall meet others of our kind.”
“If you mean the King, I have already told you I do not know where he is. When we were young—many days ago—we were leaping from island to island, and when he was on one and I was on another the waves rose and we were driven apart.”
“But can you take me to some other of your kind? The King cannot be the only one.”
“He is the only one. Did you not know?”
“But there must be others of your kind—your brothers and sisters, your kindred, your friends.”
“I do not know what these words mean.”
“Who is this King?” said Ransom in desperation.
“He is himself, he is the King,” said she. “How can one answer such a question?”
“Look here,” said Ransom. “You must have had a mother. Is she alive? Where is she? When did you see her last?”
“I have a mother?” said the Green Lady, looking full at him with eyes of untroubled wonder. “What do you mean? I am the Mother.” And once again there fell upon Ransom the feeling that it was not she, or not she only, who had spoken. No other sound came to his ears, for the sea and the air were still, but a phantom sense of vast choral music was all about him. The awe which her apparently witless replies had been dissipating for the last few minutes returned upon him.
“I do not understand,” he said.
“Nor I,” answered the Lady. “Only my spirit praises Maleldil who comes down from Deep Heaven into this lowness and will make me to be blessed by all the times that are rolling towards us. It is He who is strong and makes me strong and fills empty worlds with good creatures.”
“If you are a mother, where are your children?”
“Not yet,” she answered.
“Who will be their father?”
“The King—who else?”
“But the King—had he no father?”
“He is the Father.”
“You mean,” said Ransom slowly, “that you and he are the only two of your kind in the whole world?”
“Of course.” Then presently her face changed. “Oh, how young I have been,” she said. “I see it now. I had known that there were many creatures in that ancient world of the Hrossa and the Sorns. But I had forgotten that yours also was an older world than ours. I see—there are many of you by now. I had been thinking that of you also there were only two. I thought you were the King and Father of your world. But there are children of children of children by now, and you perhaps are one of these.”
“Yes,” said Ransom.
“Greet your Lady and Mother well from me when you return to your own world,” said the Green Woman. And now for the first time there was a note of deliberate courtesy, even of ceremony, in her speech. Ransom understood. She knew now at last that she was not addressing an equal. She was a queen sending a message to a queen through a commoner, and her manner to him was henceforward more gracious. He found it difficult to make his next answer.
“Our Mother and Lady is dead,” he said.
“What is dead?”
“With us they go away after a time. Maleldil takes the soul out of them and puts it somewhere else—in Deep Heaven, we hope. They call it death.”
“Do not wonder, O Piebald Man, that your world should have been chosen for time’s corner. You live looking out always on heaven itself, and as if this were not enough Maleldil takes you all thither in the end. You are favoured beyond all worlds.”
Ransom shook his head. “No. It is not like that,” he said.
“I wonder,” said the woman, “if you were sent here to teach us death.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “It is not like that. It is horrible. It has a foul smell. Maleldil Himself wept when He saw it.” Both his voice and his facial expression were apparently something new to her. He saw the shock, not of horror, but of utter bewilderment, on her face for one instant and then, without effort, the ocean of her peace swallowed it up as if it had never been, and she asked him what he meant.
“You could never understand, Lady,” he replied. “But in our world not all events are pleasing or welcome. There may be such a thing that you would cut off both your arms and your legs to prevent it happening—and yet it happens: with us.”
“But how can one wish any of those waves not to reach us which Maleldil is rolling towards us?”
Against his better judgment Ransom found himself goaded into argument.
“But even you,” he said, “when you first saw me, I know now you were expecting and hoping that I was the King. When you found I was not, your face changed. Was that event not unwelcome? Did you not wish it to be otherwise?”
“Oh,” said the Lady. She turned aside with her head bowed and her hands clasped in an intensity of thought. She looked up and said,