Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

by C.S. Lewis

‘I trust to beget a prince one of these days and I have a mind to see him brought up in all the wisdom of your people. Meanwhile practise on them.’ (He pointed at us children.) ‘If a man can teach a girl, he can teach anything.’ Then, just before he sent us away, he said, ‘Especially the elder. See if you can make her wise; it’s about all she’ll ever be good for.’

‘Are not all men of one blood, Master?’ said the Fox.

eastern wood which was said to have such virtue that four of every five children begotten in such a bed would be male.

No neighbouring houses of divine blood (and ours cannot lawfully marry into any other) would take his daughters or give him theirs.

You know how it is when you shed few tears or none, but there is a weight and pressure of weeping through your whole head.

You are of divine blood and doubtless fear nothing. But the people will fear. Their fear will be so great that not even I will be able to hold them. They will burn your palace about your ears.

you could see from his face that he cared no more for the insult than a great dog cares for a puppy making believe to fight him.

And how would it be better if I had lived? I suppose I should have been given to some king in the end—perhaps such another as our father. And there you can see again how little difference there is between dying and being married.

Weakness, and work, are two comforts the gods have not taken from us. I’d not write it (it might move them to take these also away) except that they must know it already. I was too weak now to feel much grief or anger. These days, before my strength came back, were almost happy.

some other discontents such as are never far to seek in any land—had

And in truth (as I now see) I had the wish to put off my journey as long as I could. Not for any peril or labour it might cost; but because I could see nothing in the whole world for me to do once it was accomplished. As long as this act lay before me, there was, as it were, some barrier between me and the dead desert which the rest of my life must be.

work and weakness are comforters. But sweat is the kindest creature of the three—far better than philosophy, as a cure for ill thoughts.

You see him at his worst with women and priests and politic men. The truth is, he’s half afraid of them.’

The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us big before they prick us.

Don’t you think a dream would feel shy if it were seen walking about in the waking world?

Can a Greek understand the horror of that thought? Years after, I dreamed, again and again, that I was in some well-known place—most often the Pillar Room—and everything I saw was different from what I touched. I would lay my hand on the table and feel warm hair instead of smooth wood, and the corner of the table would shoot out a hot, wet tongue and lick me. And I knew, by the mere taste of them that all those dreams came from that moment when I believed I was looking at Psyche’s palace and did not see it. For the horror was the same: a sickening discord, a rasping together of two worlds, like the two bits of a broken bone.

If they had an honest intention to guide us, why is their guidance not plain?

And in that tenderness I even asked myself why I should save her from the Brute, or warn her against the Brute, or meddle with the matter at all. ‘She is happy,’ said my heart. ‘Whether it’s madness or a god or a monster, or whatever it is, she is happy. You have seen that for yourself. She is ten times happier, there in the Mountain, than you could ever make her. Leave her alone. Don’t spoil it. Don’t mar what you’ve learnt you can’t make.’

For any daughter of our house to mix, even in lawful marriage, with those who have not (at least by one grandparent) divine descent, is an utter abomination.

This is where men, even the trustiest, fail us. Their heart is never so wholly given to any matter but that some trifle of a meal, or a drink, or a sleep, or a joke, or a girl, may come in between them and it, and then (even if you are a queen) you’ll get no more good out of them till they’ve had their way.

You are alone, Orual. Whatever is to be done, you must devise and do it. No help will come. All gods and mortals have drawn away from you. You must guess the riddle. Not a word will come to you until you have guessed wrong and they all come crowding back to accuse and mock and punish you for it.’

Oh, Lady, Lady, it’s a thousand pities they didn’t make you a man.’ (He spoke it as kindly and heartily as could be; as if a man dashed a gallon of cold water in your broth and never doubted you’d like it all the better.)

But I was wrong to weep and beg and try to force you by your love. Love is not a thing to be so used.’

Yet I have often noticed since how much less stir nearly everyone’s death makes than you might expect. Men better loved and more worth loving than my father go down making only a small eddy.

Any fight was a free show for them; and a fight of a woman with a man better still because an oddity—as those who can’t tell one tune from another will crowd to hear the harp if a man plays it with his toes.

The one sin the gods never forgive us is that of being born women.

A love like that can grow to be nine-tenths hatred and still call itself love.