Lucina in the Underworld--a True Solstice Story (sort of true)
People who read my
turkey tail/tale on FAR last month asked me to write another story.
So here goes.
Once upon a time in a golden city at the edge of a golden desert surrounded
by towering snowy mountains there lived a husband and wife in a luxurious
mansion on a bluff overlooking the great Western Sea. The husband was a
world-renowned folk singer named Offenbach. The wife, Lucina Cecelia Solis,
was the demigoddess in charge of the shining Magic Lantern that crossed
the sky every day and shed its sacred light on all the world. Thanks to
the unremitting (and usually unremitted) work of the Harpy who lived next
door and published a news sheet called
l’Opinion Publique, Lucy and Offenbach were seen by one and all as
the happiest, swingingest, most glamorous couple there ever was. What no
one knew, however, was that this red-carpet pair actually loathed each
other. Offenbach, who had once participated in a yacht race across an unknown
sea, now just loafed around the house all day playing his guitar while
Lucy tried to keep up with her work, which was tending the Sleeping Gods
and the rites and mysteries associated with the seasons and the whirling
of the planet.
It was a very cold day. “How many roads must the Hare hop down,” Offenbach
began singing, “before they call him an archetype or a prototype or an
iconic figure or a metaphor or a magical animal that’s a symbol of the
zeitgeist?”
“Offalbach,” his wife said, “it’s the middle of winter! Don’t be singing
about the March Hare.” She was answering fan mail and didn’t want to listen
to his dumb songs. “Offalbach, you’re so stupid! I hate you!”
He tried again. “Puff, the magic reindeer—” At this, she threw her pen
at him. It struck his guitar and left a huge ink stain on it. “Whoa,” he
protested. “I am a Poet-Philosopher. I am a Popular Oracle. I am Divinely
Inspired and my music has been known to charm wild animals and cause stones
to dance. I write the songs that make the whole folk sing. Hey! Give a
listen to this.” And he began strumming again. “Hello, Sunshine, my old
friend, gotta look at you again like a bridge over frozen water, gotta
row that boat ashore, hallelujah, C is for Cookie—”
“Well, you can’t charm me,” she yelled. “And I hate your stupid songs,
too!”
And that’s how it went with them. Thanks to the Harpy next door, they
were rich and famous, so they occasionally tried to be nice to each other,
especially in their public appearances at the solstice and equinox festivals
held in famous amphitheaters. Away from the spotlight, however, they led
almost entirely separate lives. Offenbach was, in fact, serially dallying
with the enthusiastic [a word that means “filled with god”] members of
his worldwide fan club and Lucy was carrying on with an Irish cowboy.
And that’s how it went until this cold morning when Lucy went outside
to tend to the Magic Lantern in the sky. But look! It had disappeared!
Although the earth was mysteriously aglow, there was no light in the sky.
Where had the Light of the World gone?
Lucy knew what to do, of course. This happened every year. She had to
fetch the Magic Lantern and put it back up before the land and the people
all froze over. She’d been doing this task ever since she was young and
her mother, a Goddess of the Sun, had run off to Hyperborea with some hero
or other. Although she hated to admit it, Lucy knew that Offenbach’s music
helped keep the Magic Lantern shining, so she turned to her husband and
said, “Offalbach, the Magic Lantern’s fallen into the Western Ocean again.
It’s our duty to fetch it back up. Let’s go.”
With a put-upon sigh, the Poet-Philosopher-Oracle picked up his battered
guitar and set off with his wife down the stairs to the beach at the edge
of the Western Ocean. “I have a song to sing, oh, take me down by the river,
I’ve been hot and I’ve been cold, oh, and I’ve got a friend, oh—”
“Oh, Offalbach, can’t you ever shut up?” They were on the beach now, and
she led him to the Great Stone Door that opened into the Underworld, in
the anteroom of which her Irish cowboy boyfriend kept his sacred red cattle.
But she had no time today to speak to the cowboy. She and Offenbach had
to fetch the Magic Lantern and set it back up in the sky. They kept walking
and were soon standing before the three famous doors. Door #1 led to the
zoo where the King of the Sleeping Gods kept his menagerie of strange beasts.
Door #2 led to the limitless treasuries of the God Who Reigned Below the
Earth. And Door #3 led—where? Every time anyone opened the third door,
it seemed to open on somewhere else. One year it had opened onto a long
hall lighted by torches held by arms mounted on the walls. Another time
they had found themselves facing a brightly colored world filled with little
blue people dancing along a yellow brick road. Another year they had stumbled
into a boring existential dinner party, and some years back, they’d come
upon a fellow wearing horn-rimmed glasses and doing acrobatic tricks on
a clock hanging on the side of a building, while somewhere below him another
shabby little fellow was twisting through the gears of a great machine.
They had often watched a prince and a princess pass the challenges of fire
and water with the assistance of a magic flute and glorious music, and
just last year, they’d witnessed the slaughter of a dozen French students
standing on a barricade and singing in chorus and waving flags. What would
they find today? One never knew, did one.
Lucy opened the door. There they were, all the Sleeping Gods, except today
they were wide awake and dancing, and as they danced, they pulled Lucy
and Offenbach into the dance. After thirty-two bars of vigorous waltz music,
the King of the Gods took Lucy aside and told her where the Magic Lantern
was hiding this year, though as usual he had no idea why it was hiding
in the Underworld or how it had gotten there. Lucy immediately went into
the next room and picked up the Magic Lantern. Then she danced back through
the Wide-Awake Gods and Goddesses, who were now doing a lively French Can-Can.
Blowing a kiss at her Irish cowboy, she went back to the beach, drew a
labyrinth in the sand and walked the winding path. In the center, she turned
toward the east and set the Magic Lantern back up in the sky, where it
winked at her and went back to its customary business of shining upon the
all the lands.
And the folksinger? He was trapped by the members of a symphony orchestra
who cut off his head and hurled it into the sea. The head was still singing
as it floated away. “Hang down your head, sad husband, hang down your head
and cry….”
Happy Solstice! And now you know What Really Happens.
P.S. I thought up this nonsense while I was watching
Orfée aux enfers by Jacques Offenbach, Hector Crémieux,
and Ludovic Halévy, an operetta in which the gods are asleep until Jupiter
drags them down to the underworld to party while he turns himself into
a fly and seduces Eurydice, who was previously fooling around with Pluto
disguised as a shepherd. This operetta introduced the famous can-can music,
which is actually called an “infernal gallop.”
