Eos sat beside Feronia and watched the great, writhing two-headed
Dionaea, and waited. After a time the flowing golden bands of
Life-energy entered, focusing subtly all about her, so that she seemed
to Dionaea truly to be the Mother of All, and the greatest of All
Goddesses anywhere.
At the entrance of the golden energy Eos smiled with relief, for now she
had a power that she had not thought to use against Diana before. For to
Eos this aversion to all men of the Goddess Diana spelled out the
message of her weakness, and this energy of the life pole was going to
pierce that weakness.
Day dragged after day, and the weird scene there in the banquet hall of
the stone men of the past became to Druga a tense place of waiting for
his own demise and change into a similar relic to decorate this hall of
death. For Eos would not tell him what she planned for fear he would
give her away in the tense moments that were to come when Diana at last
rejoined her Dionaea in their strange dual existence.
The inducted energies of the female pole had a most disturbing effect
upon the mingled male and female of the Amphis-Baena.
Baena, driven half mad by the increased female qualities of the head of
Dionaea, made inadvertent love to her, caressing her face with his long
forked tongue, and combing at her tangled hair with his fangs, always
Baena was distraught with her attraction. This attention drove the woman
near frantic, strained as she was in her unnatural condition, and she
could not afford to anger the beast whose body she had been grafted
upon. For even a serpent has been known to swallow its tail, and Dionaea
had no desire to know if Baena could do that trick.
Eos, sitting quietly and watching the bound serpent, smiled at this
continual by-play, and offered to release Dionaea for revealing her
knowledge of Diana, so that some chink in her armor might be found. Not
that Eos now needed any such thing, but she was kind-hearted, and wanted
Baena at least on her side. For she could see into the dual life and
thought of the two-headed monster, and knew that if Baena chose to set
his will against Diana when she was within the body and mind of
Dionaea--it would help her in what she planned.
"Baena," Eos at last said, "if you can find a way to help me against
this unnatural mistress of your mistress, I will repay you by giving you
anything you may ask of me."
Baena looked at Dionaea's head with the reptilian love-light glowing
frustrate in his great green-and-gold eyes.
"If you will promise to give me what is in my mind that I desire, why
then when the time comes I will see what I can do. I am weary of being
the tail when I was meant to be the head, and if I had it to do over,
this unnatural and self-willed appendage would remain in her proper
place."
Now Eos knew that Baena could not help desiring Dionaea as a mate, for
she seemed most reptilian in the strange snake-growth that had come over
her, and knowingly she nodded at Baena, so that he knew that she knew
what he wanted, but Dionaea did not know, for it never occurred to her.
To Eos, what the future might bring to Dionaea as the mate of a snake
seemed a proper revenge for what she had done in aiding Diana, and for
other cruelties of which Druga had told her. She planned accordingly.
* * * * *
Came that day which was the time appointed by Diana Triformis for her
visit to Dionaea. Much as she detested the need for entering the male
body of Baena to interview Dionaea, still Dionaea had been a valuable
ally, and Diana did intend in time to release her and give her again a
human body.
To this end she had made some inquiries as to how this might be done.
For in truth the method of doing so had evaded her mind in the
excitement and rage of finding what had happened, and in the task of the
spell she had created to turn Feronia into a stone image. For Diana knew
that what Baena had accomplished she could accomplish, certainly, and
the shame of forgetting how it might be done before the wise Baena's
critical eyes made her neglect to mention her intentions to either of
the two heads of the snake.
As the swirl of ethereal force that was Diana's traveling form settled
within the golden-moted atmosphere of the great chamber of the
disk-mansion, Eos stood up, and dropped from her body her insulating
blue robe of shimmering magic, so that her supercharged beauty shone
everywhere in blinding, awful attraction.
Druga, who had been sitting disconsolately talking to himself, rose to
his feet like an automaton and walked toward that more than mortal
beauty, his eyes blinded and his senses wholly submerged in ecstasy at
the sight of the glory of Eos unveiled. As he reached the Goddess he put
out his arms like a sleepwalker to take her to him, but she avoided him,
seizing him by a wrist and turning him about, hissing in his ear,
imperatively:
"Now prove to me that you are truly a mighty man of his word, with
courage and strength, and in spite of this body of mine go out of this
chamber and wait till I call without once letting your attention turn
toward me or noting anything that goes on, else are we both lost!"
Like a man weighted down with lead on his feet, Druga strove to obey
her, moving inch by slow inch away from that vast flood of energetic
attraction.
Eos watched him move slowly away from her, every muscle standing out on
his body and his neck corded with effort to keep his head turned away,
and a vast admiration for him rose in her throat and choked her. It
seemed to her that the statue of Feronia moved and that the stone face
changed, suffused for an instant with admiration also.
* * * * *
The swirling purple cloud of Diana's entrance moved nearer to Dionaea,
for in the hyper-space of her travelling, the points and dimensions of
this world were much alike, and she did not realize that Dionaea was not
in her palace at Armora. Settling about the two-headed creature lashed
fast to the pillars of the chamber, she moved herself within the snake
body and came to rest within the body of Baena, the snake.
Looking out of the dual heads of Dionaea and Baena now, Diana Triformis,
who was no stranger to dual and triple existence even in the same body,
saw with those four eyes the naked body of Eos, reflecting, emanating,
giving off in vast floods the focused energies of the Pole of Female
Life-energy, and those four eyes fastened hypnotized upon that glory,
female beyond any other life in all space.
Eos moved closer and closer to the bound snake, murmuring soft words:
"Oh, Diana, wonderful one, long have I desired you, for I know your
secret, that you are not female as your body seems, but male. So I have
decided to have you for myself, for I am weary of men, and want only the
boy Diana himself for my love, forever. Come to me, Diana, and dwell
with me here at the pole of love, and never leave me. Can you not see
that the enmity that has sprung up between us is the result of
misunderstood love!"
Now Baena, seeing his opportunity, thrust his own male personality to
the fore, trying to sway the intricate balance of sexes in the weird
self of Diana--and with his mind and his eyes upon Eos, made himself to
desire that infinite female attraction, which was not hard, so as to add
that much weight to the attraction which even a God might not resist
unless, as Druga had done, he turned his back upon it.
Diana could _not_ turn her back, and the whole sudden surprise of
finding herself not in the palace in Armora, but here in the halls of
her erstwhile enemy, Eos of the Dawn-light, made her natural male
attributes become dominant so that she desired Eos mightily.
Trapped thus by the circumstances, the lashed serpent body of Baena
which insisted upon gazing steadily at the vast and overwhelming beauty
of the unveiled body of Eos, and by the ignorance of Dionaea as to what
was going on, by her own masculine nature into desiring this essence of
all female attraction, Diana gazed upon Eos while the energies sent by
Eos' skill coursed in greater and greater ecstacy through her.
* * * * *
So it was that Diana fell in love with Eos, as Eos desired, and with the
Gods, love is an overmastering passion that may not be resisted.
Now Eos and the trapped spirit of Diana conversed together, and at the
subtle words of Eos and the overmastering attraction, Diana swirled out
of the body of Baena and settled engrossed about the glowing glory that
was Eos. Inward she was drawn, and mated there in mysterious communion
with the Goddess.
"If you but had a strong male body, Diana, we could live here forever in
love and ecstasy. Why not return one of the stone men of the past into
flesh again, become a man instead of half-woman as in the past--and so
learn anew to live and love differently and gloriously...."
Such were Eos' words, made potent by the golden glowing energies within
her, swaying the bemused Diana to her will. And Diana, with Eos' hands,
went to the wall cabinets and set out certain magical apparatus, brewing
an antidote for the stony seizure she had sent to Eos' lovers in the
past. This liquid she poured over the male of stone that Eos selected,
and even as the stone man stirred and quickened into life again, her
ethereal self whirled out of Eos and settled into the reanimated flesh
of the man.
When he arose to his feet and spoke, it was Diana herself who spoke and
not the man who had loved Eos long ago. What this desecration of her
past love meant to Eos we shall not know, for she hid it beneath
languishing glances and subtle swayings of her body, drawing Diana to
her, wrapping her arms about the reanimated being, and walking with the
new male Diana out of the room and so to her own chambers.
* * * * *
Druga, as Eos had foreseen, had been unable to contain his curiosity as
to what was going on, and had at last peered from the hallway where he
waited, just in time to see the purple swirl that was Diana settle into
and seem to reanimate the ancient long-dead stone image.
The emotions natural to a man rose in him. He was not sure just what he
was seeing, but jealousy rose in him like a flame, and his passion so
steadfastly controlled and so rewarded by the fickle Eos made this
jealousy into a terrible, red rage against her who had withheld herself
from him only to give herself to her worst enemy in the form of a man.
Druga, overcome with this jealous rage, strode out into the banquet hall
of dead men, took from the side of one of the dead men a great war-axe
of bronze, and hefting it in his hand as if it were a trembling feather
plume, strode after the two figures like the wrath of God.
As Eos reclined sensuously upon her couch in her sleeping chamber, and
Diana in the man's body stretched beside her, bending back Eos' head and
planting there a burning kiss, Druga entered, and standing over the pair
like an outraged husband, shouted in a voice he was unable to make
articulate.
"Of all contemptible females, you two are the most...."
So saying, and mouthing his disgust with a tongue that frothed with
rage, Druga seized the reanimated man with one hand by the shoulder and
flung him half across the room, whirling up the axe to send it through
him from curly head to gold-bossed sword belt.
Eos cried out in feigned fear and anguish, for she had expected this
development, and it was but one phase of the weapon-array she planned to
overcome the powers of Diana. For she knew Druga, and that he would be
able to act in no other way if he observed what was going on.
* * * * *
But the body of the man was equipped with a sword of antique but sturdy
length, and Diana had time to sweep this formidable weapon from its
scabbard and turn aside the down plummeting axe, so that it struck a
great shower of sparks from the strange golden metal of the floor.
Druga, his rage unabated, only swung the axe aloft again, parrying
Diana's thrust with the haft of it, and then as she ducked his next
blow, the great side of the weapon struck her alongside the head;
stretching her senseless upon the floor.
Eos, on her feet, had not expected Druga so quickly to knock the goddess
unconscious, and indeed the purple mist of her hyper-space body was
already rising from the unconscious form on the floor as Eos threw
herself to the wall where a switch hung open, and with her face a glory
of triumph, thrust the great handle upward into place.
As the switch closed, a tiny black vortice spun suddenly into being in
the center of the room, and within the black swirl was a tiny golden
center. Swiftly the black vortice grew until Eos and Druga were pressed
against the wall to avoid the clutch of the power of the whirlpool. The
purple mist that was Diana was swept along as a whirlpool draws a straw,
faster and faster, and a great scream came out of the blackness. Within,
the center of the golden core seemed to give a triumphant laugh as the
purple mingled there.
For a time Eos and Druga watched the swirling gold and purple sentience
mingling and struggling at the center, and as the golden core shone
stronger and stronger and at last overcame the purple swirling entity
that was Diana, Eos pulled the switch again open, and the black vortice
of space-force lessened and finally disappeared.
That intense whirlpool of black energy had taken Diana back with it into
the terrible current of space. Diana would live--but only as a mote of
defeated consciousness whirled along forever into the depths of space by
forces too great to fight.
The man on the floor raised his head, sat up, rubbed the great lump left
there by the flat of Druga's axe--and his eyes met the flaming
attraction of Eos' eyes. With a bound he was at her side, gathering her
up into his arms, crooning brokenly.
"How long I sat and watched your grief and envied the other men who came
for their brief spell of life in Paradise before the black witchcraft of
your enemy made them into stone. How long I pitied you, poor Eos! How
many centuries have passed, and now a miracle! I am alive, and have you
once again! No other ever shall take you from me...."
Druga picked up the axe that lay disregarded on the floor.
"That may be what you wish, stranger, and though you are no enemy, if it
is Eos you desire, you shall have her only over my dead body! Arm
yourself, and prepare to die!"
The stranger eyed Druga scornfully. With a sudden gliding motion, he had
passed from Eos' arms and seized the sword from the floor, was driving
with it for Druga's throat. Druga got the axe in the way of the sword,
but an axe, whatever antiquarians may say, was never the best tool
against a smart swordsman; and this man knew his way with the weapon.
He drove Druga to the wall with swift darting movements of the blade,
and Druga had no time to swing the unwieldy axe, but had to keep
parrying the thrusts with the axe-haft, holding it between his hands
like a quarterstaff. In moments his life blood would have been spilled
on the floor had not Eos cried out:
"Hold, you brawling idiots, I am for neither of you! What do you think I
have gone through all this for, to have you two whom I love kill each
other? Now put up the weapons before I loose my own natural lightning
and send you both into that doom you can only guess at!"
* * * * *
Druga peered at Eos, startled, and the reanimated statue pressed the
blade to his throat, but Eos struck it up with her hand as he turned to
peer at her too, and then Eos opened both her eyes quite wide upon them
so that a weakness came upon them both, sending them to their knees in
strange thralldom to the energies within her. So leaving them, Eos
walked out of the chamber and to the great hall.
After a time, when their reeling senses returned, the two men followed
the foot-steps that still sparkled where she had stepped, like
flickering motes of golden dust outlining her prints upon the
floor--followed the steps like men out of their wits, half staggering.
As they entered the hall, Eos was repeating the procedure so recently
gone through by Diana, preparing a great cauldron of the fluid she had
used to bring life again to the stone bodies. They leaned weakly against
the wall, watching her as she poured the boiling, steaming liquid over
one after another of the statues. The first figure so bathed was the
body of Feronia.
She came out of the stony trance like a fury, blazing one indignant
glance toward Eos, then turned the torrents of her wrath upon Druga.
"You philandering booby! I made you what you are and you repay me by
running off from me in my greatest need and taking up with this--this--"
"She released you from your stony prison, Feronia!" Druga said hastily,
fearing she would anger Eos with whatever word she thought of to
describe her rival--and Feronia was clever enough to avoid saying what
she was about to say, but went on with her abuse of Druga.
"Never mind what or who she is, it is you that has shown yourself the
ingrate, for she owed me nothing. You couldn't go to Mors, Daughter of
the Night, and get this thing properly taken care of at once, knowing
she was friendly to me, no! You had to wander off on your old grey
horse, never thinking of Mors, and get yourself wrapped up with the
first woman that you come to, and wind your affections all around the
planet in pursuit of her. You couldn't even remember me for one little
month! You--you--oh, Druga!"
With which outburst her voice broke, and weeping and saying his name
over and over Feronia went into his arms and wept there on his breast
for a long time. And after her tears were stopped Druga knew that
Feronia would never mention the affair again.
Druga held the dear form of his loved one close and let her weep,
stroking the raven black hair, within him the soft well of affection for
her filling and filling with all the memories of her dear, mad,
competent, unpredictable, tyrannical ways. Over the curling sweep of her
dear hair he watched Eos reviving one by one the dead loves of her past,
and thought to himself that at least with Feronia he did not have all
those rivals to contend with. The slight line across his throat where
Eos' magic had stopped the sword of one rival from letting out his life
reminded him too that with Eos as she was now, there would be no day
pass that some of these warriors would not try to get rid of some of the
rest. Druga decided that after all, Feronia loved him alone, while with
Eos there was no knowing what rivals he would have.
Now Eos got a great snake out of the forest, a female, cunningly marked
with little emerald markings, and striped with many colors, most
venomous and snake-charming in its appearance.
This snake she quickly separated from its head, and placed upon its
cunning female body the head of Dionaea, doing all that was needful
successfully to incorporate the two into one life.
Baena's tail, which caused him great pain at the separation, she healed
by applying a salve, assuring him that he would in time grow a new tail
to take the place of the old, as is the way with snakes the world over.
* * * * *
When Dionaea awoke and found herself with a female snake's body, and
Baena mooning over her like a lovesick coil of ship's hawser, she let
out strings of oaths such as no ship's hawser had heard since the
beginning of time. All of which seemed strikingly snake-charming to
Baena, who only kissed Dionaea lovingly with his pointed tongue and
assured her she would get used to him or he would devour her and seek a
new mate elsewhere. With which assurance Dionaea ceased to curse and
began to fawn upon Baena, saying:
"Why, how can you think it is your noble self I object to, Baena? It is
just that I did not expect this development! I have grown so used to you
that there is really very little difference, after all."
So conversing, the now lowly Dionaea and the now lordly Baena glided
from the chamber and made their way down the ruby ladder of strange
crystal, and out into the world. For it is only so that a male can leave
the pole of the universal life force of the female principle, in the
company of a female good enough to keep his mind from obeying the
influence of the magnetic field.
Feronia, watching the scene, decided it was time for bed, and mentally
taking Druga by the ear, led him out and down the ruby ladder and across
the rainbow bridge of fragile glass into her own halls.
"Eos will handle her difficulties much the better without our presence,
Druga. Besides we must get to bed, for in the morning there will be much
work to attend to...."
"What you have in mind?"
"Well, first we have to practice the magical performance we have just
watched Eos go through, so that if we ever need it we too can release a
figure from that stony curse of petrifaction. It is a most uncomfortable
state. Then we have to return to Eos' disk palace and from her get
certain information, such as the whirlpool she used to suck up the
strength of Diana and cast it out into a current of force flowing
through hyper-space--for we might need it sometime in the future."
"Which I devoutly pray you will not manage," murmured Druga, yawning. "I
am too tired to even think about such a thing tonight."
With which words Druga stretched himself across the bed and straightway
began to snore, and Feronia, who had expected a warmer welcome home than
_that_, looked at him exasperated beyond measure. But then she
insinuated her own witch's perceptions into his mind, looked over the
somewhat shriveled memories of her that remained to him, and resolved to
recreate his love entire before she strained it again with her
impatience.
Outside, the great glowing magnetic field of female attraction pulsed
and glowed and reached its strange streamers across the sky. The disk
with its ancient, quaint, pillared and beautiful mansion, trembled in
the current of the energy flow of the pole of life. In Feronia's hall a
dark, small witch bent to her knees and prayed a prayer, with tears
streaking her too-determined face, that this great sleeping man of hers
would return his heart where it belonged.