VII

 

 

 

TAMURELLO SELDOM APPEARED IN HIS NATURAL SEMBLANCE, preferring an exotic guise for a variety of reasons, not the least of the which was sheer caprice.

Today, stepping out on a balcony above the octagonal garden court at Faroli, he was a frail and ascetic youth, somewhat languid, pale as new milk, with a coriolus of orange-red hair, the strands so fine and luminous as to be invisible. A thin nose, thin lips and blazing blue eyes suggested spiritual exaltation, as Tamurello intended.

Tamurello came slowly down a curving sweep of black glass steps to the courtyard. At the foot of the staircase he halted, then came slowly forward and finally, turning his head, chose to take notice of Melancthe, who stood to the side in the shade of a flowering mimosa tree.

The boy-man approached Melancthe, and it was she who seemed the more earthy and dank. She watched him with a still face; his ethereal but definite masculinity was a posture with which she could feel no possible sympathy.

Tamurello, halting, looked her up and down, then raised an indolent finger and turned away. “Come.”

Melancthe followed him into a parlor and seated herself stiffly at the center of a sofa. From her point of view, Tamurello’s guises were little more than clues to his mood. This boy-man puzzled rather than annoyed Melancthe. On the whole she cared not a pin as to how he showed himself, and now she put Tamurello’s peculiar guise and its possible significance to the side of her mind. Other affairs were more important.

Tamurello again looked her up and down. “You seem none the worse for wear.”

“Your tasks have been fulfilled.”

“Even over-fulfilled! Ha hum, be it so! Now it seems that in my turn I must address myself to your concerns.

“As I recall, you are troubled because you cannot mesh yourself comfortably into the ways of the world. This is a legitimate source of dissatisfaction. You therefore want me to make changes in the world or, failing this, in you.” The boy-man’s lips curved in a thin smile, and Melancthe thought that never before had Tamurello affected so acrid a guise.

Melancthe said, simply: “You told me that my mind works at discord to the minds of other persons.”

“So I did. Notably with persons of the masculine gender. This is Desmëi’s attempted revenge upon the cosmos, and particularly that segment with external genital organs. What a joke! It is only such innocents as poor Shimrod who must bear the brunt of Desmëi’s rage.”

“In that case, remove her curse from my soul.”

The boy-man studied Melancthe with grave attention. He said at last: “I fear that you crave the impossible.”

“But you assured me—”

The boy-man held up his hand. “In all candour, I lack the skill, nor could Murgen himself do better.”

Melancthe’s beautiful mouth drooped at the corners. “Is not your magic useful in such a case?”

The orange-haired boy-man spoke with vivacity: “It is all very well to ordain tasks by magic, but some intelligent or skillful agency must ultimately do the specified work. In such remedial work as this no entity, be it man, sandestin, halfling, demon, or other creature of controllable power, understands all the intricacies. Therefore, it cannot be done on the instant.”

“Still, this was your undertaking.”

“I stated that I would do my best and so I shall. Listen and I will describe your problems. Attend me carefully; the subject is dense.”

“I am listening.”

“Each mind is a composite of several phases in superimposition. The first is aware, and is consciousness. The others are no less active but work for the most part in obscurity and away from the light of knowledgeable attention.

“Each phase uses its own tools. The first, or overt, phase of the mind purports to use the faculties of logic, curiosity, the differentiation of aptness from absurdity, with a corollary known as ‘humour’, and a certain projective kind of sympathy, known as ‘justice’.

“The second and third and other phases are concerned with emotions, reflexes, and work of the body.

“Your first phase would seem to be deficient. The second phase, the agent of emotional interpretations, with great travail and inconvenience tries to fulfill this function. Here would seem to be the nature of your debility. The remedy is to strengthen the first phase, by a regimen of usage and training.”

Melancthe frowned in puzzlement. “How would I train?”

“Two methods suggest themselves. I can alter your guise to that of an infant and introduce you into a noble family where you can learn by ordinary processes.”

“Would I retain my memory?”

“That is at your option.”

Melancthe pursed her lips. “I do not want to be an infant.”

“Then you must apply yourself to learning, in the fashion of a student: through books and study and discipline, and so you will learn to think with logic, rather than to brood in terms of emotion.”

Melancthe muttered: “It would seem a horror of tedium. To study, to pore over books, to think, to intellectualize—these are the habits I derided in Shimrod.”

The boy-man surveyed her with no great interest. “Make your decision.”

“If I were forced to study from books, I would learn nothing and go mad in the bargain. Can you not collect a sufficiency of wisdom and experience and humour and sympathy into a node and imprint it upon the empty place in my brain?”

“No!” The boy-man responded so sharply that Melancthe wondered if he told all the truth he knew. “Make your decision!”

“I will return to Ys, and consider.”

Tamurello instantly spoke a set of syllables, as if he had been waiting for nothing more. Melancthe was whirled aloft and carried high through clouds and dazzling sunlight. She glimpsed the ocean and the horizon and then felt the soft sand of the beach under her feet.

Melancthe dropped to sit in the warm sand, with arms clasped around her knees. To the south the armies of King Aillas had departed; the beach lay empty all the way to the estuary. She watched the play of the waves. Surging and churning, the surf advanced upon her in a gush of white foam and a sad sweet sound, then flowed back to the sea.

Melancthe sat an hour, then, rising to her feet, she shook the sand from her clothes and entered her quiet villa.