“Tell you what.” He continued, “Make you a deal. You get the little lady to wrap up her lovely flesh, milk glands and all, in her royal robes as she’d like, and I promise I can get her to tell her story, clear as clear and no more interruptions. What do you say? Send that dog there to get her robe.”

He pointed at the Doberman Pincer.

3. Of the Love of the Ages

O Nature, whose living breath inspires the world, and from whose gentle breath the twining ivy and clustering grape, the ripening roundess of the peach and plum beneath the branch, the dew-bright meadows in the dawnlight arise and praise the wind and cloud, the dark raincloud and the white cumulus where hawk and sparrow sail in circles, and sun and moon in golden light and silver grace the world, breathe into me now such song as will entrance all ears inclined, and with sweet soothing, as the luxurious honeycomb adrip with gold, assuage the sorrows of the soul.

Gather and hear, O lovers, for delight in song and hearing song engenders more delight, and I must tell my tale! Let it be birthed with slight travail.

Of myself, let me be Oenoe Psthinshayura-Ah of Crocus, Clover, and Forsythia, all intimately entwined, and I sing for your delight and mine, and do all I do for you. If you would have me otherwise, then cajole and tempt me, and I will yield as the clinging grapevine, full and ripe, yields when trained to recline the twining contours acquiescent along the firm and sturdy branch.

Of the origins of the Tombs, not I, nor any Chanter of my race, knows nor cares nor can be brought to care. Before yesterday was another yesterday, and to count beyond is grief.

To ask if the Tombs preserved knowledge for us from other yesterdays, or hindered our changes and progresses into far tomorrows, is a question no Nymph answers. What passes into the world is here, what was passes away is gone, and none can number or name the passage, for it grants no joy to count.

The Tombs are in the ground and the sun and moon are in the sky, and thus it was yesterday and a yesterday before that, and to say or to suppose the more, that is perpetually beyond my lore.

Who knows who gave birth to the cosmos? How could any Mother be, or where could she stand? If there were none to see how all was born, or from whom, then there is none to say. Why speak dull words when love-words await the yielding lip? Why tarry, when the lingering afternoon with gilded beam horizontal foreshadows an end of day?

Many have rumored that the Tombs are forbidden to the Nymphs. This is a telling told for the delight of dreamy falsehood, and I do not naysay what pleases, for are not all lovers’ promises sweet and all untrue? But I say it is not so, and, as you love me, you will gaze into my gaze and so believe.

We do not use the Tombs, for when we are marred or wounded, the Mothers will remake us, and with fumes of Nepenthe and wine of Lethe spun with poppies sponge all memory of pain away. We do not yearn for tomorrow, for where is it? You cannot close your fingers on the hair of the wind. The wind passes by and passes again, and caresses you, and you laugh only if you do not try to close your fingers. What is not within reach, it is folly to grasp, not when there are lovers to embrace, and much that concerns us now and here.

The Judge of Ages, we know him to be true, for our hearts would melt if the tale of his long-enduring love proved false. Truth is what is fair and comely to believe: if others say they hold another way to know the truth than this, well, this is too a telling told for their delight, and I do not naysay what pleases.

The Judge of Ages loves us, and he sends aloft at Jubilee those who need our crafts and arts to cure them, and those who are overborne by sorrows of past things which can never come again, whose sorrows we erase, all traces, from their nervous system, and blood, molecules and glands.

Ours is the time of joy, the promised time that all the sad yesterdays waited so long to meet.

4. Of the One-Fighters, and the Choosers to Be Slain

Rumor says no Nymphs descend into the Tombs, and that is as true as lovers’ promises, for it is sweetly said. The Mothers knew that discontentment would arise, even in our gardens and glades, and among the silken pavilions and self-woven tents covered with petals brought by songbirds, which we never pitch two nights in one same place.

Into the Tombs we place in slumber those whom pleasures will not please. They are not suited for our age, but must await another. From time to time there comes among us a young man and stalwart, who wishes not for kisses, but to see the tomorrow after tomorrow, when the Terror of the Stars shall fall on us, the End of Days of Liberty, when mankind shall be leashed and serve the Hyades in Taurus, and eat in those days from their hands, as here on Earth hound and cat and rat and hawk and hart serve us, and eat from our hands.

Such men are called Einheriar or “One Alone Who Fights,” for they are lonely and leave all the sweet kisses of the Nymphs—for is not our whole race willing to be his bride? But he renounces love, and seeks death in the cold future.

Also there are born at times when the genetic coding fails, and some throwback to older, wilder days, women who also have the warlike spirit, though this comes much more rarely. It is part of their duty, those most unhappy of women, to walk the gardens and babbling brooksides of our peaceful, sleepy world, and find young men who would prefer a painful death to a pleasant life. For this reason we call them Valkyrie, which means “They Choose to Be Slain.”

And as these Shieldmaidens march, their dainty feet all shod with steel, heavy spears tipped with stings of rays in slim hand, they kick the small pink cherry blossoms from their path, and scowl with their beautiful eyes when our scented zephyrs blow or songbirds trill, and when they hear the murmur of mandolins and lutes, the war-girls blow their lusty trumpets, and call the revelers and dancers all to leave their dance, and march!

And so the Nymphs gaze in wonder and astonishment at the armored maidens, and cower at the power of the high and shining battle songs the warrior-maidens sing, and we hide beneath the myrtle groves, dovelike hearts a-patter! But when the golden-armed iron-shod maidens pass, we Nymphs must laugh, drink Nepenthe, and forget them.

Woe to the Nymph who does not moisten her lip at the cup of oblivion!

5. Of the Last of the Chimerae, and the First of the Nymphs

Why, you ask, O why, does the Judge of Ages love the Nymphs? It is said he loved the Mother of our race, for she was his bride.

There is a race of primordial beings, called the Hermetic Order, who are necromancers that restore to life the dead Machine which first brought evil into the world. The Machine is called Exarchel, after its maker, but the poets name it the Ferox and Black Lace Weaver, because, like the spider of the same name, it paralyzes and consumes its own mother: for we, the human race, Earth herself, we give rise to the posthuman, the postnatural, the supplanter.

Machines have souls as men do, but which do not die as men die. Machine-souls are kept alive in little magnetic matrices, or held in photoelectronic crystals, or in rings, or in lanterns. And it is forbidden to restore them. There once was a man of the stars, was a necromancer of machines, a Mechanecromancer, and he was the first to do the forbidden deed.

His name was Sarmento i Illa d’Or, and he was an Hermeticist, a knower of secret things. To him we owe great honor, for he is the Father of our race.

Great as he was, he serves a greater. The sultan of the Machines was the Ghost of a man who once ruled all the Earth, a great emperor named Ximen, called the Master of the World. Ximen dwells on the dark side of the Moon, and we see his handprint there, even to the day, for it is a sign of vengeance and vendetta against the Judge of Ages.