The Queen of Penesthelia and Firman the Brave 4
Beyond the farthest islands.
Firman the Brave took ship at Penesthelia and sailed south until he reached the Isles. He came to first Eosporada and then Patagyra, he came to next Kandiers and to Cycladice. He sailed with his horse, and the child and the dog and the squirrel, and the red sails carried him from island to island beyond the Cycladices and the Antilliades into places beyond that had yet no names and beyond them into the deeps of the Great Thalassa where no man had ever sailed since the earliest days of Settlement.
The ship came in time to a shore of a wide, dark island where no men lived, and the sailors said that this was the shore of the Uttermost Isle in the West where no man had ever walked. They waded ashore where the water was shallow and wide, and the waves came, and the waves went, and Firman the Brave knew this lonely place was where the Queen of Penesthelia had sent him.
“Between the wave and the shore,” he said, “I must dig a well, and in the well, I will find a chest, and in the chest, I 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 the Queen, that she might see her face in it. And this is the second of the seven tasks.”
He took his dagger and dug in the sands between the wave and the shore, but no matter how he dug there, the sand fell in the hole, and the wave followed after. No well could he make.
“There is no means to make a well here,” Firman the Brave said, despair in his heart, “and no man could make a well in wet sand and water.”
“Yet shall I dig,” said the dog, and it ran into the surf and dug so fast with its white paws and so deep and so skillfully that the waves recoiled and the sand stood firm, and the dog dug the well seven times seven spans deep, and came out of it faithfully again, as all dogs will.
Firman the Brave descended the steps around the wall of the well and probed with his dagger in the floor, and found a chest that was a great closed shell of three parts as the Iphigenian shellfish are. With his dagger, he sprang it open, and on its purple tongue, he found a great Pearl that was mirrored, and he could see his face in it from every way, and the mirror had neither side nor back nor front, and Firman climbed out of the well again, and the sand and the sea fell into it and made an end of it.
“Now, where shall I find a purse of black silk to put it in?” he said.
The child she pointed into the wave and the breakers and ran through them, and from the foam she plucked a black mermaid’s purse, and Firman the Brave put the mirrored pearl within it.
He boarded the ship with all of them, and the prow was turned into the east, and under the red sails, they sailed for the lands of the rising sun and came to the Antilliades and the Eosporaedes and the shore, in time, of Penesthelia.
He appeared before the Queen, who had the golden beast of many legs and many feathers on her shoulder, and her beauty broke his heart anew. He gave her the purse, and from the purse, she took the pearl of the mirror, and she looked into it and made it more lovely by far for having reflected her face even once. Then she placed it into the fillet she had in her hair and sat upon her throne, and she was the fairest that ever there was in Penesthelia.
And that was the second task.
The Queen of Penesthelia smiled on Firman the Brave but then looked sad. She said to him, “You must go to the uttermost valley in the uttermost east, and at the feet of the mountains that have no other side you must find the deepest cañon, and in the cañon, you will find a cave, and in the cave there is a stone, and beneath the stone there is a little man all of gold, and him you will bring back to me. And this is the third of the seven tasks.”
“That sounds like no challenge,” said Firman the Brave,
“This only tells what you know,” the Queen of Penesthelia said, and she left his company.