Firman the Brave and the Queen of Penesthelia 3

Atop the mountain

Firman the Brave stood beside Asil his horse and looked up the cliffs and slopes that led to the peak of the highest mountain, and wondered how he would climb there. All around him were barrel trees, tall and slender and dark, and he felt as if he were the first man ever to stand there since the ships first arrived. The squirrel sat on his shoulder and the dog sat at his feet and the child stood by his side and held his hand, and the place was lonely indeed.

But then he perceived, not with his eyes but rather with his heart, that among the barrel trees sat a figure that was not an ancient man nor yet a young woman nor yet a strong youth, but had faces like all of these, and the figure he perceived with his heart said in his heart, “What would you do here, Firman the Brave?”

And he said, “To win the heart of the Queen of Penesthelia, I must find a house that has no roof and a room that has no door and a bed that has no color and a treasure that has no key, and the treasure and the bed and the door and the room and the house I must bring to the lovely and wise Queen of Penesthelia as the first impossible thing to make her my bride. And I am told that these things are in these mountains.”

And the figure of three faces in his heart’s eye said “Verily it is true,” and it pointed to the peak and said, “Go you to the top, and find.”

“There is no air there for a man such as I,” Firman the Brave said, “and I have brought nothing to make air with me.”

“Yet shall I go,” said the squirrel, and it leaped from his shoulder and ran from rock and from cliff to cliff and higher and higher, until it was lost to view.

Now, the squirrel found it hard going, but it climbed without fear, and the air grew thin and the sky grew dark and the sun grew fierce, and it reached the top of the highest mountain in the Montara Sierpento. At the top of the mountain, there was a flying beast of many eyes and many feathers, and when the squirrel arrived, the beast sprang from the highest peak and, with its vast wings, drifted away in the almost airless sky. And left on the stones was a nest like a house with no roof and a yellow egg like a room with no door. The squirrel took up the nest and the egg and descended the mountain and guard the nest and the egg to Firman the Brave.

Firman the Brave picked up the egg and looked at it, and the figure of three faces smiled and in his heart told Firman that he should go.

“But what was the beast that laid the egg?” said Firman. “For there is no such anywhere on Iphigenia.”

“This only tells what you know,” the voice in his heart’s ear said, and it was gone.

Firman the Brave rode on Asil across the land of war into the land of Penesthelia, and he rode with the squirrel on his shoulder and the child at his back and the dog at his stirrup and the nest in his lap. He appeared before the Queen of Penesthelia, and her beauty broke his heart. He gave her the nest, and from the nest she took the egg, and she struck it once on a vessel of jade for the egg had no door. It opened and in a smooth clear silk bed that had no color lay the treasure that had no key, and it unwound itself and stood on many golden legs, and it had many feathers and many eyes, and climbed on the shoulder of the Queen of Penesthelia, and no man had ever seen such anywhere on Iphigenia.

And that was the first task.

The Queen of Penesthelia smiled on Firman the Brave but then looked sad. She said to him, “You must go to the uttermost isle in the uttermost west, and between the wave and the shore, you must dig a well, and in the well, you will find a chest, and in the chest, you will find a mirror that has no side nor back nor front, and on the wave, you must find a purse of black silk and put the mirror therein and bring it to me, that I may see my face in it. And this is the second of the seven tasks.”