Druga, his job of execution finished, sheathed5 his bloody6 sword and turning, stalked away. Thus it was that he did not see the amazing thing that happened in the gloom of the ancient live oaks....
Baena was a serpent, a huge river of strength up to his giant head, and he lived among the mighty7 branches of the oaks. Being a serpent, Baena was far from equal to a human being in his brainpower, but even his dim perception told him that harm had come to his one and only benefactress—and that meant harm to him, too, for Queen Dionaea had always cared for the needs of his stomach. Through her he ate and lived. Without her, he would die. And so, he glided8 rapidly down from the trunk of his favorite tree and emerged into the paths of the garden just as Dionaea's bleeding head rolled out from the base of the steps.
Baena coiled his length protectingly about Dionaea. For an instant he was at a loss, noting her horribly desperate attempts to speak without breath, her mouth opening and closing and her tongue licking snake-like in and out.
Baena realized after a moment that there was no hope for the Queen to go on living. A head must have a body.
Glancing about, Baena saw nothing but the numerous coils of his own body, and after an instant's hesitation9, he took his tail in his mouth up to the tenth joint10 and bit it off! Shrinking along all his length with the terrible necessity that faced him, Baena quickly slapped the bloody stump11 of his tail fast to the bleeding neck of Dionaea and said one of the few magic spells he could remember....
Turning his body slowly until his severed12 nerves told his spine13 that the connections were as accurate as could be expected, Baena waited while the spell slowly took effect. He lay there all night, waiting for his own life's blood to reanimate the mind of Dionaea.
As Dionaea came back to her senses, Baena began to experience the strange phenomena14 of wanting to go two ways at once, and as the phenomena became more and more troublesome, he decided15 that he had better have an understanding with Dionaea once and for all. But what poor male ever won an argument with a woman?
Thus it was that Baena resigned himself to a life of traveling backward, and that was that.
As a snake, he wished only to eat and bask17 in his favorite tree, but as Dionaea, he wanted only one thing—and that with all the fervor18 of hate a sorceress is capable of—a fitting revenge on the man who had visited her execution upon her!
Day and night Dionaea plotted, and in her mind a fitting revenge grew—it would include the lovely Feronia, Druga's beloved.... Carefully she prepared the incantation.
It is here that my story really begins. What has happened, and how it happened is of little consequence to what is to come—except perhaps to introduce you to the characters. It is very simple. Dionaea was a very evil sorceress, and Druga, most heroic of men, had long sought to bring her into his power, and to end her evil days. Armed with the white magic of Feronia, his loved one, who was also a sorceress, but one who worked her charms only for the good of mankind, he had tracked Dionaea to her castle, and there slain19 her. Or he would have, had it not been for Baena, the serpent....
What is past is past. It is best not to think of it. There is much in the past of all of us that would need a long, tiresome20 explanation to a newcomer, and you are newcomers. To explain all of the past to everyone would be an impossible task. You need know only that Druga, champion of mankind, and his lovely Feronia, face now the most awful menace of their lives, and unknowing of it, too, for thinking their arch enemy slain!
Where do all our characters live? In Fantasia, a land far away. A land where wondrous21 things always happen. It is of one of the most wondrous adventures of all that you are about to hear now—let the past lie, cold and dead as it is, and come with me into the present, and into danger!
Who am I? Does it make any difference? If you must know, I am the Red Dwarf22, and I have seen and recorded everything! I was there, and if you can but understand, everything has happened because I was there! If it were not so, how could you be sure what I tell is true? For it is true....
It was evening. As Druga and Feronia sat talking, before retiring, the horror fell upon them.
Feronia's hair fell like a living torrent23 to fondle her gleaming shoulders and toy everywhere with the strangely electric invisible vitality24 of her glowing skin. Her eyes were molten pools, dark and liquid as the waters of the lost caverns25, and the brows above them were mystic lines of beauty left by the touch of a raven26 wing. Her generous mouth was smiling the wondrous lovely magic that was Feronia, red as a new-born rose, dewy and waiting for Druga. Her capable hands were soft with expecting him, and cooler than the moss27 beneath the fern.
Her breasts were as naked as sun-bleached coral, white as a cloud in a summer sky, white as truth, white as her own teeth laughing tantalizingly28 at him.
Quite suddenly, shockingly, her lovely figure became transfused29 with a vile30, interloping energy that struck at Druga's sensitivities with a sickening piercingness, so that he sprang to his feet in fear.
Standing16 there helplessly, Druga watched the evil energy transform the strong, deep breasted beauty of his Feronia, change her devilishly and subtly and gradually before his suffering eyes.
The white magic of her body became transfused with dark, throbbing31 force, and as she strove to rise and act, Druga saw that she could not move her limbs in any way!
Before his eyes her skin turned black as ebony, her eyes became stony32 and fixed33; even the sweet curling of her hair became hard and solid, her whole body became changed to black, hated stone.
As suddenly as the horrible pulsing had come, it went away, leaving Druga that least of all desirable women, one of virtuous34 stone.
So with one stroke Dionaea repaid Druga and Feronia; Druga by the loss of his best beloved, and Feronia by the retention35 of her faculties36 in a body of stone. That Feronia had to sit immovable and watch poor Druga in his grief and loss was particularly excruciating.
Days of horror dragged by.
No matter what he proposed to do upon arising, mid-morning found him reclining before the frozen statue-like body of his beloved, and night would come down at last to hide the black stone of Feronia from his wet eyes.
This existence became at last unbearable37, and he resolved to go out into the world and seek some means of making his days less horrible to him. That Feronia was not dead, and that he might have obtained her release by appealing to some greater power, did not occur to Druga in his grief. Indeed he could never become accustomed to the ways of witches and their overlords, nor to thinking in terms of magic at all. He was a logical person, and no matter what wonders he blundered into and saw with his own eyes, he never quite believed any of it.
It was with a heavy heart that Druga sealed up the doors of Feronia's home and made his sad way to the stable, mounted and rode slowly away.
All night he rode, not choosing his way, but letting the horse do the thinking, and in the warm sun of late morning lay down to sleep where the horse had led him.
As the days passed in heedless wandering, the deep hurt of his loss lessened38, and he began to take note of the road that led ever on and on to he knew not what, except that it beckoned39, as paths and highways alike have a way of doing to the traveler.
As his spirits became lighter40, he began to take stock of the country through which he passed, and to note all the strange and curious things that hovered41 always just outside normal vision. They were not hidden from Druga, who had more than ordinary vision, one of Feronia's witch gifts to him, and many a strange fact of life he picked up from the circumambient apparent emptiness.
It was with this far-seeing sense that Druga now noticed a glowing, golden vibrance spreading an invisible, but terrifically felt glory, all across the northern horizon. He turned the horse's head toward that glory, no more able to avoid the decision than is a moth42 the flame.
What it was that he sensed he did not surely know, but his memory supplied him with vague and haunting clues which he could not quite drag out into the light of reason. It did not stand to reason, but there it was ahead, the lure43 of woman augmented44 by some magic into a glory visible as sunlight, strong as some great whirlpool of energy, drawing him resistlessly on and on.
Many a mile later, Druga came to a point where he could see with his eyes on ahead and into the shining core of that field of golden vibrance.
"One of the universal poles of life!" cried Druga. In his studies Druga had learned that just as the world has a North and South magnetic pole, so does the universe have opposite poles of life-magnetic-energy. One of these is female, and inducts in all life a female nature; the other is male and inducts in all life a male nature, just as the North and South pole induct in all iron and in kindred matter a North and South magnetic pole.
"It is no wonder it draws me, it is the force which makes all life attractive to all other life...."
Druga knew that there was no use his trying to resist the attraction any more than a compass could resist pointing north. So he rode onward45 into the glory, musing46 that it was strange this universal pole of infinite space should, in its drifting, have crossed his own path upon this planet.
As he neared the center of the increasing ecstasy47, Druga's mind and body became cleaned of all desires but one, and that was to reach the exact center and there remain. Along with others, his affection for Feronia was burned away, leaving him helpless in the grip of this emotion greater by far than any other.
Glory, golden ecstatic glory, poured through him in a titanic48 flood, and nearer and nearer he came to the shining central core of the mighty field of universal energy.
As he came at last to clear vision of the core, he saw floating there a vast, circular disk of golden hue49, and upon the disk a tremendous mansion50. Beneath the disk was only the shining golden air, and it came to Druga that this mansion must be a singularly pleasant place to live. He cast about for some means of lifting himself across the space of nothingness that separated the dull earth and the shining plane of the disk. So near to the delightful51 power that drew, and yet so impossible to get nearer because of the nothingness between him and the disk, Druga at last rode on beneath and on to the very center of the shining darkness beneath the great disk.
Now he was truly at the pole and dynamic source of female magnetic attraction! Shaking in every fibre with the blasting force of the terrific center of this universal power, Druga stood, a moth caught up in a whirlpool too great to understand or withstand; and he would have died there after a time, unable to move from the spot.
But overhead the great disk suddenly showed a light, a beam of ruby52 red that laddered down to him through the golden murk of energy, and above that beam of ruby light he made out a shining form that beckoned to him. Trying to answer the invitation, Druga put out a hand to the red beacon53 and found it solid to his touch, a rod of crystal, thick as a man's body and with hand-holds and foot-steps hewn into it. He got off the horse and ascended54 the weird55 ladder toward the shining being who beckoned.
A woman divinely tall and with hair like ripened56 wheat, modelled of hammered sunlight, her glowing flesh surcharged with the infinite female energies of the Universal Pole, met him at the topmost step of the ladder.
He stepped out into the halls of the mansion by her side, unable to speak with the ecstasy that poured from her. For such was the nature of that disk, that it concentrated the magnetic flow of the Pole field so that it emanated57 solely58 from the body of this woman.
She drew a robe of the purest blue about her glowing body, to insulate and screen off the terrific irresistible59 force. His mind speculated constantly and intriguingly60 on what would happen to him if she should desire him and cast off this protective robe?
So thinking, Druga walked beside her vital beauty, noting the deep lagoons61 of her eyes upon him, curious, blue as the sea, shaded by long lashes62 of dusky amber63 shielding from him some deep wisdom that she must keep from him just yet. Try as he might he could not plumb64 the swirling65 depths within her mind. Reach as he would he could find there nothing to read but pictured vastnesses of strange beauty and violent passions strongly withheld66, nooks and crannies of mysterious, unreadable thought far beyond his understanding to interpret. His senses turned away from the inner mysterious glory of her mind, and his eyes came to rest on her lips, crimson arches riper than tropic flowers, moist as with desire, wide and capable and smiling upon him with a woman's will to captivate twinkling all along the crimson outline of her smile. Behind her lips her teeth gleamed, almost avid67, parted in a hunger that he did not then care to understand. Her breasts were ripe and full, beneath the blue, shielding robe, her waist a column of cunningly tapered68 ivory rounding into hips69 and thighs70 of masterful curves, moving with mysterious woman magic beneath the vaguely71 transparent72 shimmer73 of her robe.
Druga stared into the blue lagoons of her eyes, and at last asked what was closest to his heart.
"Who and what are you, who lives here at the summit of female attraction in all the universe?"
"In ancient times, many were the men who were alive enough to sense this pole and come questing to me as the moth to the flame. But in these times, who are you to sense the mighty energy of the Universal Pole and be drawn74 here to me?"
"I am Druga, and I am sad and bereft75, and I wander seeking death as much as life. If the name tells you anything, you are welcome to the information. I am no immortal76. Are you then one of those who do not die?"
"I have been called by many names in the past, but men sometimes remember me as Aurora77. Others have called me Eos."
"A fool is easily convinced, immortal Eos. But though I have not lived long, I have learned that appearances are deceiving and not to be trusted. How do I know that I am not out of my mind, and this place and yourself but delusions78?"
"You are in a state, aren't you? You must tell me all about it; there will be plenty of time. For there is no way for a man to leave here of his own will."
"What became of all those visitors you tell me came here in the old time?"
Eos laughed loudly, a clear ringing laugh.
"Perhaps you had better worry about that, Druga! What do you suppose could have happened to them?"
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1
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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3
abracadabra
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| n.咒语，胡言乱语 | |
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4
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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sheathed
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| adj.雕塑像下半身包在鞘中的；覆盖的；铠装的；装鞘了的v.将（刀、剑等）插入鞘( sheathe的过去式和过去分词 )；包，覆盖 | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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8
glided
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| v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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11
stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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12
severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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15
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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bask
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| vt.取暖，晒太阳，沐浴于 | |
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fervor
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| n.热诚；热心；炽热 | |
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slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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21
wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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dwarf
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| n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小 | |
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torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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raven
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| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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tantalizingly
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| adv.…得令人着急，…到令人着急的程度 | |
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transfused
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| v.输（血或别的液体）( transfuse的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；使…被灌输或传达 | |
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30
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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retention
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| n.保留，保持，保持力，记忆力 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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lessened
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| 减少的，减弱的 | |
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beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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40
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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41
hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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moth
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| n.蛾，蛀虫 | |
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43
lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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44
Augmented
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| adj.增音的 动词augment的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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45
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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46
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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47
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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48
titanic
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| adj.巨人的，庞大的，强大的 | |
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49
hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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50
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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51
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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52
ruby
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| n.红宝石，红宝石色 | |
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53
beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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54
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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56
ripened
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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57
emanated
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| v.从…处传出，传出( emanate的过去式和过去分词 )；产生，表现，显示 | |
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58
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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60
intriguingly
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61
lagoons
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| n.污水池( lagoon的名词复数 )；潟湖；（大湖或江河附近的）小而浅的淡水湖；温泉形成的池塘 | |
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62
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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63
amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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64
plumb
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| adv.精确地，完全地；v.了解意义，测水深 | |
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65
swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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66
withheld
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| withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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67
avid
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| adj.热心的；贪婪的；渴望的；劲头十足的 | |
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68
tapered
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| adj. 锥形的，尖削的，楔形的，渐缩的，斜的 动词taper的过去式和过去分词 | |
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69
hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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70
thighs
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| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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71
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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72
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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73
shimmer
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| v./n.发微光，发闪光；微光 | |
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74
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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75
bereft
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| adj.被剥夺的 | |
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76
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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77
aurora
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| n.极光 | |
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78
delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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