A Voyage to Arcturus, David Lindsay [guided reading books TXT] 📗

make me want to find out something more about him.⁠ ⁠… It would be ridiculous to go on to other riddles before I have solved these.”

A voice called out to him from behind, and, turning around, he saw a human figure hastening toward him from some distance down the ravine. It looked more like a man than a woman. He was rather tall, but nimble, and was clothed in a dark, frocklike garment that reached from the neck to below the knees. Around his head was rolled a turban. Maskull waited for him, and when he was nearer went a little way to meet him.

Then he experienced another surprise, for this person, although clearly a human being, was neither man nor woman, nor anything between the two, but was unmistakably of a third positive sex, which was remarkable to behold and difficult to understand. In order to translate into words the sexual impression produced in Maskull’s mind by the stranger’s physical aspect, it is necessary to coin a new pronoun, for none in earthly use would be applicable. Instead of “he,” “she,” or “it,” therefore “ae” will be used.

He found himself incapable of grasping at first why the bodily peculiarities of this being should strike him as springing from sex, and not from race, and yet there was no doubt about the fact itself. Body, face, and eyes were absolutely neither male nor female, but something quite different. Just as one can distinguish a man from a woman at the first glance by some indefinable difference of expression and atmospheres altogether apart from the contour of the figure, so the stranger was separated in appearance from both. As with men and women, the whole person expressed a latent sensuality, which gave body and face alike their peculiar character.⁠ ⁠… Maskull decided that it was love⁠—but what love⁠—love for whom? it was neither the shame-carrying passion of a male, nor the deep-rooted instinct of a female to obey her destiny. It was as real and irresistible as these, but quite different.

As he continued staring into those strange, archaic eyes, he had an intuitive feeling that her lover was no other than Shaping himself. It came to him that the design of this love was not the continuance of the race but the immortality on Earth of the individual. No children were produced by the act; the lover aerself was the eternal child. Further, ae sought like a man, but received like a woman. All these things were dimly and confusedly expressed by this extraordinary being, who seemed to have dropped out of another age, when creation was different.

Of all the weird personalities Maskull had so far met in Tormance, this one struck him as infinitely the most foreign⁠—that is, the farthest removed from him in spiritual structure. If they were to live together for a hundred years, they could never be companions.

Maskull pulled himself out of his trancelike meditations and, viewing the newcomer in greater detail, tried with his understanding to account for the marvellous things told him by his intuitions. Ae possessed broad shoulders and big bones, and was without female breasts, and so far ae resembled a man. But the bones were so flat and angular that aer flesh presented something of the character of a crystal, having plane surfaces in place of curves. The body looked as if it had not been ground down by the sea of ages into smooth and rounded regularity but had sprung together in angles and facets as the result of a single, sudden idea. The face too was broken and irregular. With his racial prejudices, Maskull found little beauty in it, yet beauty there was, though neither of a masculine nor of a feminine type, for it had the three essentials of beauty: character, intelligence, and repose. The skin was copper-coloured and strangely luminous, as if lighted from within. The face was beardless, but the hair of the head was as long as a woman’s, and, dressed in a single plait, fell down behind as far as the ankles. Ae possessed only two eyes. That part of the turban which went across the forehead protruded so far in front that it evidently concealed some organ.

Maskull found it impossible to compute aer age. The frame appeared active, vigorous, and healthy, the skin was clear and glowing; the eyes were powerful and alert⁠—ae might well be in early youth. Nevertheless, the longer Maskull gazed, the more an impression of unbelievable ancientness came upon him⁠—aer real youth seemed as far away as the view observed through a reversed telescope.

At last he addressed the stranger, though it was just as if he were conversing with a dream. “To what sex do you belong?” he asked.

The voice in which the reply came was neither manly nor womanly, but was oddly suggestive of a mystical forest horn, heard from a great distance.

“Nowadays there are men and women, but in the olden times the world was peopled by phaens. I think I am the only survivor of all those beings who were then passing through Faceny’s mind.”

“Faceny?”

“Who is now miscalled Shaping or Crystalman. The superficial names invented by a race of superficial creatures.”

“What’s your own name?”

“Leehallfae.”

“What?”

“Leehallfae. And yours is Maskull. I read in your mind that you have just come through some wonderful adventures. You seem to possess extraordinary luck. If it lasts long enough, perhaps I can make use of it.”

“Do you think that my luck exists for your benefit?⁠ ⁠… But never mind that now. It is your sex that interests me. How do you satisfy your desires?”

Leehallfae pointed to the concealed organ on aer brow. “With that I gather life from the streams that flow in all the hundred Matterplay valleys. The streams spring direct from Faceny. My whole life has been spent trying to find Faceny himself. I’ve hunted so long that if I were to state the number of years you would believe I lied.”

Maskull looked at the phaen slowly. “In Ifdawn I