Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

by C.S. Lewis

One of the other girls tittered, and I think that was the first time I clearly understood that I am ugly.

I learned that I had nothing to fear from her. She was at first more afraid of me; after that, very loving in her timid way, and more like a sister than a stepmother.

The flames swayed and guttered terribly, for all doors must be open; the shutting of a door might shut up the mother’s womb.

came running with the flagon and the royal cup, slipped in the blood, reeled, and dropped both.

But the Priest was not in the least afraid of the King.

When the blackness passed and I could see again, he was shaking the Fox by his throat.

‘Why, yes. (Child, child, don’t cry so.) Have I not told you often that to depart from life of a man’s own will when there’s good reason is one of the things that are according to nature? We are to look on life as—’

‘That’s my disgrace. The body is shaking. I needn’t let it shake the god within me. Have I not already carried this body too long if it makes such a fool of me at the end? But we are wasting time.’

I had an idea I would face the King; though whether I meant to beseech him or curse him or kill him I hardly knew.

A thing that had often irked me had now been our salvation.

he could pare the Yes to the very quick and sweeten the No till it went down like wine.

Nevertheless, because I had (a little) loved the Queen, I went to see Psyche that very evening as soon as the Fox had set my mind at rest. And so, in one hour, I passed out of the worst anguish I had yet suffered into the beginning of all my joys.

‘Now by all the gods,’ he whispered, ‘old fool that I am, I could almost believe that there really is divine blood in your family. Helen herself, new-hatched, must have looked so.’

I lost more sleep looking on Psyche for the joy of it than in any other way.

Fox, and Psyche, and I—alone together.

As the Fox delighted to say, she was ‘according to nature’; what every woman, or even every thing, ought to have been and meant to be,

Indeed, when you looked at her you believed, for a moment, that they had not missed it. She made beauty all round her. When she trod on mud, the mud was beautiful; when she ran in the rain, the rain was silver. When she picked up a toad—she had the strangest and, I thought, unchanciest love for all manner of brutes—the toad became beautiful.

I wanted her to be a slave so that I could set her free and make her rich.

‘Babai!’ said the Fox. ‘It is your words that are ill omened. The Divine Nature is not like that. It has no envy.’ But whatever he said, I knew it is not good to talk that way about Ungit.

And you, goblin daughter, do what you’re good for,

Name of Ungit! if you with that face can’t frighten the men away, it’s a wonder.’

One day Redival hit her. Then I hardly knew myself again till I found that I was astride of Redival, she on the ground with her face a lather of blood, and my hands about her throat. It was the Fox who pulled me off and, in the end, some kind of peace was made between us.

Thus all the comfort we three had had was destroyed when Redival joined us. And after that, little by little, one by one, came the first knocks of the hammer that finally destroyed us all.

‘It’s not true,’ said Psyche. ‘All that happened was that a woman with child asked me to kiss her.’ ‘Ah, but why?’ said Redival. ‘Because—because she said her baby would be beautiful if I did.’

‘Daughter, it doesn’t matter a straw,’ said the Fox. ‘The Divine Nature is without jealousy. Those gods—the sort of gods you are always thinking about—are all folly and lies of poets. We have discussed this a hundred times.’

for she, too, had our father’s hot blood, though her angers were all the sort that come from love.

‘It is possible,’ said the Fox. ‘It might be in accordance with nature that some hands can heal. Who knows?’

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.

At her worst, there was no look of death upon her face. It was as if he dared not come near her.

‘Oh, make your mind easy, sister,’ said Redival. ‘It’s not me they worship, you know: I’m not the goddess. The men are as likely to look at you as at me, now they’ve seen Istra.’

For she neither accepted the rebuke like a child nor defended herself like a child, but looked at me with a grave quietness, almost as if she were older than I. It gave me a pang at the heart.

‘Do?’ said I. ‘You healed them, and blessed them, and took their filthy disease upon yourself. And these are their thanks.

You look just like our father when you say those things.

Though the words You look just like our father, and from her, had hurt me with a wound that sometimes aches still, I let go my anger and yielded.

‘Bulls and rams and goats will not win Ungit’s favour while the land is impure,’ said the Priest. ‘I have served Ungit these fifty—no, sixty-three—years, and I have learned one thing for certain. Her anger never comes upon us without cause, and it never ceases without expiation.

For we all knew (and you may hold it for certain) that there will be no mending of all our ills till the land is purged. Ungit will be avenged. It’s not a bull or a ram that will quiet her now.’ ‘You mean she wants Man?’ said the King.

‘That is not enough, King. And you know it. We must find the Accursed.

This is not to be a common sacrifice. We must make the Great Offering.

The victim is led up the Mountain to the Holy Tree, and bound to the Tree and left.

And now it is to be the best person in the whole land—the perfect victim—married to the god as a reward. Ask him which he means. It can’t be both.’

Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood. Why should the Accursed not be both the best and the worst?’

‘Drive it in, King, swift or slow, if it pleases you. It will make no difference. Be sure the Great Offering will be made whether I am dead or living. I am here in the strength of Ungit.

The room was full of spirits, and the horror of holiness.

thought that he had seen the arrow pointed at Psyche all along, had been afraid for her, fighting for her. He had not thought of her at all, nor of any of us. Yet I am credibly told that he was a brave enough man in a fight.

a name I never used before. I believe he was glad of the diversion. He tried to kick me away, and when I still clung to his feet, rolling over and over, bruised in face and breast, he rose, gathered me up by my shoulders, and flung me from him with all his power.

But afterwards his wife murdered him, and his son murdered the wife, and Those Below drove the son mad.’

‘It’s better so, dear,’ whispered the Fox to me in Greek. ‘Better for her and for us.’

‘But, Master, I’d lose not only my throne but my life to save the Princess,

You’ll tell me next that the best way to cure a man’s headache is to cut off his head.’

It’s only sense that one should die for many. It happens in every battle.’