dance progressed her lips came together, pursed with anxiety, and she tried unsuccessfully to draw back.
In the beginning, the dead prophet’s eyes bulged out of their sockets, bloated by the pain that he had suffered, and the bloodied stump of his tongue was visible inside his mouth; but as the dance went on the eyes softened into an expression of adoration and the mouth relaxed into a curiously ironic yet loving smile.
When she leapt high into the air with her slender arms thrown wide, Salome was like a creature in flight: a lamia with frail wings, or some delicate dragon’s child. As she tumbled and soared, she stirred the fires of Hell in the hearts of those who watched; she made them willing slaves of her unleashed passion.
At first, only poor dead John danced with her, but as the dance became wilder and more insistent she drew Herod from his throne and Herodias from her lesser seat, and they moved as though to join her in the paces of a tarantella, partners to one another as John the Prophet was partner to Salome.
Herod and Herodias now opened their mouths again, as though to cry out the gladness of their ecstasy, but their tongues were unkindly ripped out of their mouths and hurled—writhing like earthworms cut by a spade—to the ground.
Then the King and his former mistress reached out to one another, as if to embrace in the heat of passion, but their clothes caught fire and the skin came away from their flesh, as if it were no more than a kind of clothing itself, and the flesh melted from their bones.
Still they danced. Even when there was nothing left of either of them beneath the neck but a wrack of bone and sinew they danced on, avid with excitement, fervent with the furious ecstasy of Salome’s magic.
Meanwhile, Salome drew the head of John the Prophet tenderly to her breast and cradled it there, protectively. She continued to dance, but her arms were no longer flung wide and she slowed in her paces for a little while.
The severed head seemed to melt into her breast and become part of her; it was lost amid the shimmer of tiny sequins. Then the dance grew wild again, and wilder and wilder....
In the end, all three of the dancers came together, in a riotous tangle of bleached bones and many-colored scales, and vanished into a whirlwind from beyond the world, which carried them away.
* * * *
All the people who had watched the dance were freed from the spell that had been put upon them.
The commoners went swiftly away, to spread the news of the miracle they had witnessed. They were convinced that Herod, Herodias and Salome had all been carried away to Hell, but that John the Prophet was in Heaven.
Herod’s brothers in blood fell to fighting among themselves to determine who might take his place, and eventually settled the matter. The Magician King who came after the one who had been taken was every bit as cunning and cruel as his predecessor had been, and there was no perceptible change in the condition of the kingdom.
In time, the new king’s wife bore him a daughter, whom he loved very dearly. The careful disposal of her favors helped him to extend his power over his brothers in blood.
In time, another prophet came to the kingdom, to preach to any who would condescend to hear him. This prophet, inspired by the glorious example of his predecessor, told his hearers to be humble and virtuous, to love one another, and to wait with patience for their reward in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The new king was suitably grateful for this gift of circumstance. The new prophet was eventually crucified.
* * * *
Meanwhile, in Hell, Salome danced.
While the daughter of Herod danced, in her peculiarly demonic fashion, before the courtly host of Hell, she delighted all those who watched her. She excited them almost beyond endurance with the magic of her art. Her silky skin was covered now with a million crystal shards, which glistened beneath the fiery sky like the scales of many-colored serpents. Whenever she leapt up, with her lovely arms thrown wide in rapture, she was like a creature in flight: a lamia with frail wings, or a delicate dragon’s child.
When Salome the enchantress danced in Hell, she stirred the fires that breathed life in the hearts of all those who watched; she made them willing slaves of her passion. But one and one alone was privileged to dance with her, and share the burning heat of her inmost soul, and that was John the Prophet.
Once, and once only, Salome asked her lover whether he would rather have enjoyed the cool pastures of Heaven, from which he had been excluded by his love for her.
“Only the meek and virtuous and pure in heart,” he told her then, “could ever believe that the flames of passion are naught but pain and punishment. Those who know the ecstasy of true enchantment could not possibly endure eternity, were they not perpetually bathed by such fire as ours.”
O FOR A FIERY GLOOM AND THEE
La Belle Dame Sans Merci was kin to Jack-a-lantern: a whim o’ the wisp alloyed from light and shadow, air and dew. Such contradictory beings cannot long endure; their warring elements long for separation and their fated dissolutions are rarely quiet, never without pain. How should such a being look upon a man, save with wild, wild eyes?
La Belle Dame Sans Merci could not stroll upon the mead like any earthbound being, for her footfall was far too light, but she had the precious power of touch, which earthbound beings take overmuch for granted. She could not be seen by the light of noon, but when she did appear—bathed by the baleful moon’s unholiness—there was magic in her image.
Salome the enchantress knew how to dance, and stir the fire of Hell in the hearts of those who watched, but La Belle Dame Sans Merci knew how to lie as still as still could be, and ignite the fire of Purgatory by sight alone.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci was a daughter of the faery folk, but it is not given to the faery folk to know their fathers and their mothers as humans do. It is easy for faery folk to believe that they owe their conception to the fall of the dew from their father the Sky: from the dew which never reaches mother earth but drifts upon the air as wayward mist. That, at least, is the story they tell one another; but what it might mean to them, no merely human being could ever understand. Humans are cursed by the twin burdens of belief and unbelief, but the faery folk are no more capable of faith than of mass; they have the gift of touch without the leaden heaviness of solidity, and they have the gift of imagination without the parsimonious degradations of accuracy.
The earliest adventures of La Belle Dame Sans Merci were not concerned with warriors or princes, but with men unfit for oral or written record, mere passers-by on the rough-hewn roads of myth and history. She always felt, however, that she was made for the Royal Hunt and for the defiance of chivalry. She always felt that she was made to tempt the very best of the children of the Iron Age, to draw the users of arms and armor from the terrible path of progress. Because she had no human need to transmute her feelings into beliefs, she had no human need to ask why she was made that way—or whether she was made at all—so she followed the force of her impulse with all blithe innocence, her eyes as wide as they were wild.
* * * *
Like the rough-hewn roads of myth and history, the many roads of England were not at this time wont to run straight. The Romans had come but the Romans had gone again; their legacy remained only in a few long marching-paths, and it was more than possible that the few would become fewer as time went by and Rome became but a memory.
Made for men a-foot and horses poorly shod, the older roads of England wound around slopes and thickets, ponds and streams, always avoiding places of ill-repute, always preferring the gentle gradient and the comfortable footfall. In poor light such pathways become mazy and treacherous and there is no cause for astonishment in the fact that far more travelers set out in those days than ever arrived at their destinations.
These older ways were the roads that the faery folk loved—not so much for their actual use, but rather as a means of design and definition: a map of the world whose interstices could provide their home and habitat. The faery folk had hated Rome, and they hated echoes of Rome with equal fervor. They hated arms and armor because arms and armor were the