The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858

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Now it happened well for Queen Lura's lovely daughter, that on her
birth-month was written the gracious name of Maya, for it seemed
well to fit her grace and delicacy, while but few in that country
knew its sad Oriental depth, or that it had any meaning at all.

It was all one flush of dawn upon Sunrise Hills, when the
maids-of-honor, in curls and white frocks, began to strew the great
Hall of Amethyst with geranium leaves, and arrange light tripods of
gold for the fairies, who were that day gathered from all
Larrierepensee to see and gift the new princess. The Queen had
written notes to them on spicy magnolia-petals, and now the
head-nurse and the grand-equerry wheeled her couch of state into the
Hall of Amethyst, that she might receive the tender wishes of the
good fairies, while yet the sweet languor of her motherhood kept her
from the fresh wind and bright dew out of doors.

The couch of state was fashioned like a great rose of crimson velvet;
only where there should have been the gold anthers of the flower lay
the lovely Queen, wrapped in a mantle of canary-birds' down, and
nested on one arm slept the Child of the Kingdom, Maya. Presently a
cloud of honey-bees swept through the wide windows, and settling
upon the ceiling began a murmurous song, when, one by one, the
flower-fairies entered, and flitting to their tripods, each garlanded
with her own blossom, awaited the coming of their Head,--the Fairy
Cordis.

As the Queen perceived their delay, a sudden pang crossed her pale
and tranquil brow.

"Ah!" said she, to the nurse-in-chief, Mrs. Lita, "my poor baby, Maya!
What have I done? I have neglected to ask the Fairy Anima, and now
she will come in anger, and give my child an evil gift, unless
Cordis hastens!"

"Do not fear, Madam!" said Mrs. Lita, "your nerves are weak,--take a
little cordial."

So she gave the Queen a red glass full of honeybell whiskey; but she
called it a fine name, like Rose-dew, or Tears-of-Flax, and then
Queen Lura drank it down nicely;--so much depends on names, even in
Larrierepensee!

But as Mrs. Lita set away the glass, the bees upon the ceiling began
to buzz in a most angry manner, and rally about the queen-bee; the
south-wind cried round the palace corner; and a strange light, like
the sun shining when it rains, threw a lurid glow over the graceful
fairy forms. Then the door of the hall flung open, and a beautiful,
wrathful shape crossed the threshold;--it was the Fairy Anima. Where
she gathered the gauzes that made her rainbow vest, or the
water-diamonds that gemmed her night-black hair, or the sun-fringed
cloud of purple that was her robe, no fay or mortal knew; but they
knew well the power of her presence, and grew pale at her anger.

With swift feet she neared the couch of state, but her steps
lingered as she saw within those crimson leaves the delicate,
fear-pale face of the Queen, and her sleeping child.

"Always rose-folded!" she murmured, "and I tread the winds abroad! A
fair bud, and I am but a stately stem! You were foolish and frail,
Queen Lura, that you sent me no word of your harvest-time; now I
come angry. Show me the child!"

Mrs. Lita, with awed steps, drew near, and lifted the baby in her
arms, and the child's soft hazel eyes looked with grave innocence at
Anima. Truly, the Princess was a lovely piece of nature: her hair,
like fine silk, fell in dark, yet gilded tresses from her snow-white
brow; her eyes were thoughtless, tender, serene; her lips red as the
heart of a peach; her skin so fair that it seemed stained with
violets where the blue veins crept lovingly beneath; and her dimpled
cheeks were flushed with sleep like the sunset sky.

Anima looked at the baby.--"Ah! too much, too much!" said she.
"Queen Lura, a butterfly can eat honey only; let us have a higher
life for the Princess of Larrierepensee. Maya, I give thee for a
birth-gift another crown. Receive the Spark!"

Queen Lura shrieked; but Anima stretching out her wand, a snake of
black diamonds, with a blood-red head, touched the child's eyes, and
from the serpent's rapid tongue a spark of fire darted into either
eye, and sunk deeper and deeper,--for two tears flowed above, and
hung on Maya's silky lashes, as she looked with a preternatural
expression of reproach at the Fairy.

Now all was confusion. Queen Lura tried to faint,--she knew it was
proper,--and the grand-equerry rang all the palace bells in a row.
Anima gave no glance at the little Princess, who still sat upright
in Mrs. Lita's petrified arms, but went proudly from the hall alone.

The flower-fairies dropped their wands with one sonorous clang upon
the floor, and with bitter sighs and wringing hands flitted one
after another to the portal, bewailing, as they went, their wasted
gifts and powers.

"Why should I give her beauty?" cried the Fairy Rose; "all eyes will
be dazzled with the Spark; who will know on what form it shines?"

So the red rose dropped and died.

"Why should I bring her innocence?" said the Fairy Lily; "the Spark
will burn all evil from her, thought and deed!"

Then the white lily dropped and died.

"Is there any use to her in grace?" wept the Fairy Eglantine;
"the Spark will melt away all mortal grossness, till she is light
and graceful as the clouds above."

And the eglantine wreaths dropped and died.

"She will never want humility," said the Fairy Violet; "for she will
find too soon that the Spark is a curse as well as a crown!"

So the violet dropped and died.

Then the Sun-dew denied her pity; the blue Forget-me not, constancy;
the Iris, pride; the Butter-cup, gold; the Passion-flower, love; the
Amaranth, hope: all because the Spark should gift her with every one
of these, and burn the gift in deeply. So they all dropped and died;
and she could never know the flowers of life,--only its fires.

But in the end of all this flight came a ray of consolation, like
the star that heralds dawn, springing upward on the skirt of night's
blackest hour. The raging bees that had swarmed upon the golden
chandelier returned to the ceiling and their song; the scattered
flowers revived and scented the air: for the Fairy Cordis came,--too
late, but welcome; her face bright with flushes of vivid, but
uncertain rose,--her deep gray eyes brimming with motherhood, a
sister's fondness, and the ardor of a child. The tenderest
garden-spider-webs made her a robe, full of little common blue-eyed
flowers, and in her gold-brown hair rested a light circle of such
blooms as beguile the winter days of the poor and the desolate, and
put forth their sweetest buds by the garret window, or the bedside
of a sick man.

Mrs. Lita nearly dropped the baby, in her great relief of mind; but
Cordis caught it, and looked at its brilliant face with tears.

"Ah, Head of the Fairies, help me!" murmured Queen Lura, extending
her arms toward Cordis; for she had kept one eye open wide enough to
see what would happen while she fainted away.

"All I can, I will," said the kindly fairy, speaking in the same key
that a lark sings in. So she sat down upon a white velvet mushroom
and fell to thinking, while Maya, the Princess, looked at her from
the rose where she lay, and the Queen, having pushed her down robe
safely out of the way, leaned her head on her hand, and very
properly cried as much as six tears.

Soon, like a sunbeam, Cordis looked up. "I can give the Princess a
counter-charm, Queen Lura," said she,--"but it is not sure. Look you!
she will have a lonely life,--for the Spark burns, as well as shines,
and the only way to mend that matter is to give the fire better fuel
than herself. For some long years yet, she must keep herself in
peace and the shade; but when she is a woman, and the Spark can no
more be hidden,--since to be a woman is to have power and pain,--
then let her veil herself, and with a staff and scrip go abroad into
the world, for her time is come. Now in this kingdom of
Larrierepensee there stand many houses, all empty, but swept and
garnished, and a fire laid ready on the hearth for the hand of the
Coming to kindle. But sometimes, nay, often, this fire is a cheat:
for there be men who carve the semblance of it in stone, and are so
content to have the chill for the blaze all their lives; and on some
hearths the logs are green wood, set up before their time; and on
some they are but ashes, for the fire has burned and died, and left
the ghostly shape of boughs behind; and sometimes, again, they are
but icicles clothed in bark, to save the shame of the possessor. But
there are some hearths laid with dry and goodly timber; and if the
Princess Maya does not fail, but chooses a real and honest heap of
wood, and kindles it from the Spark within her, then will she have a
most perfect life; for the fire that consumes her shall leave its
evil work, and make the light and warmth of a household, and rescue
her forever from the accursed crown of the Spark. But I grieve to
tell you, yet one of my name cannot lie--if the Princess mistake the
false for the true, if she flashes her fire upon stone, or ice, or
embers, either the Spark will recoil and burn her to ashes, or it
will die where she placed it and turn her to stone, or--worst fate
of all, yet likeliest to befall the tenderest and best--it will
reenter her at her lips, and turn her whole nature to the bitterness
of gall, so that neither food shall refresh her, sleep rest her,
water quench her thirst, nor fire warm her body. Is it worth the
trial? or shall she live and burn slowly to her death, with the
unquenchable fire of the Spark?"

"Ah! let her, at the least, try for that perfect life," said Queen
Lura.

Then the Fairy Cordis drew from her delicate finger a ring of
twisted gold, in which was set an opal wrought into the shape of a
heart, and in it palpitated, like throbbing blood, one scarlet flash
of flame.

"Let her keep this always on her hand," said Cordis. "It will serve
to test the truth of the fire she strives to kindle; for if it be
not true wood, this heart will grow cold, the throb cease, the glow
become dim. The talisman may, will, save her, unless in the madness
of joy she forget to ask its aid, or the Spark flashing upon its
surface seems to create anew the fire within, and thus deceives her."

So the Fairy put the ring upon Queen Lura's hand, and kissed Maya's
fair brow, already shaded with sleep. The bees upon the ceiling
followed her, dropping honey as they went; the maids-of-honor
wheeled away the couch of state; the castle-maids swept up the fading
leaves and blossoms, drew the tulip-tree curtains down, fastened the
great door with a sandal-wood bar, sprinkled the corridors with
rosewater; and by moonrise, when the nightingales sung loud from the
laurel thickets, all the country slept,--even Maya; but the Spark
burned bright, and she dreamed.

So the night came on, and many another night, and many a new day,--
till Maya, grown a girl, looked onward to the life before her with
strange foreboding, for still the Spark burned.

Hitherto it had been but a glad light on all things, except men and
women; for into their souls the Spark looked too far, and Maya's
open brow was shadowed deeply and often with sorrows not her own,
and her heart ached many a day for pains she could not or dared not
relieve; but if she were left alone, the illumination of the Spark
filled everything about her with glory. The sky's rapturous blue,
the vivid tints of grass and leaves, the dismaying splendor of
blood-red roses, the milky strawberry-flower, the brilliant
whiteness of the lily, the turquoise eyes of water-plants,--all
these gave her a pleasure intense as pain; and the songs of the winds,
the love-whispers of June midnights, the gathering roar of autumn
tempests, the rattle of thunder, the breathless and lurid pause
before a tropic storm,--all these the Spark enhanced and vivified;
till, seeing how blest in herself and the company of Nature the
Child of the Kingdom grew, Queen Lura deliberated silently and long
whether she should return the gift of the Fairy Cordis, and let Maya
live so tranquil and ignorant forever, or whether she should awaken
her from her dreams, and set her on her way through the world.

But now the Princess Maya began to grow pale and listless. Her eyes
shone brighter than ever, but she was consumed with a feverish
longing to see new and strange things. On her knees, and weeping,
she implored her mother to release her from the court routine, and
let her wander in the woods and watch the village children play.

So Queen Lura, having now another little daughter, named Maddala,
who was just like all other children, and a great comfort to her
mother, was the more inclined to grant Maya's prayer. She therefore
told Maya all that was before her, and having put upon her tiny
finger the fairy-ring, bade the tiring-woman take off her velvet robe,
and the gold circlet in her hair, and clothe her in a russet suit of
serge, with a gray kirtle and hood. King Joconde was gone to the wars.
Queen Lura cried a little, the Princess Maddala laughed, and Maya
went out alone,--not lonely, for the Spark burned high and clear,
and showed all the legends written on the world everywhere, and Maya
read them as she went.

Out on the wide plain she passed many little houses; but through all
their low casements the red gleam of a fire shone, and on the
door-steps clustered happy children, or a peasant bride with warm
blushes on her cheek sat spinning, or a young mother with pensive
eyes lulled her baby to its twilight sleep and sheltered it with
still prayers.

One of these kindly cottages harbored Maya for the night; and then
her way at dawn lay through a vast forest, where the dim tree-trunks
stretched far away till they grew undefined as a gray cloud, and
only here and there the sunshine strewed its elf-gold on ferns and
mosses, feathery and soft as strange plumage and costly velvet.
Sometimes a little brook with bubbling laughter crept across her
path and slid over the black rocks, gurgling and dimpling in the
shadow or sparkling in the sun, while fish, red and gold-speckled,
swam noiseless as dreams, and darting water-spiders, poised a moment
on the surface, cast a glittering diamond reflection on the yellow
sand beneath.

The way grew long, and Maya weary. The new leaves of opalescent tint
shed odors of faint and passionate sweetness; the birds sang
love-songs that smote the sense like a caress; a warm wind yearned
and complained in the pine boughs far above her; yet her heart grew
heavy, and her eyes dim; she was sick for home;--not for the palace
and the court; not for her mother and Maddala; but for home;--she
knew her exile, and wept to return.

That night, and for many nights, she slept in the forest; and when
at length she came out upon the plain beyond, she was pale and wan,
her dark eyes drooped, her slender figure was bowed and languid, and
only the mark upon her brow, where the coronet had fretted its
whiteness, betrayed that Maya was a princess born.

And now dwellings began to dot the country: brown cottages, with
clinging vines; villas, aerial and cloud-tinted, with pointed roofs
and capricious windows; huts, in which some poor wretch from his bed
of straw looked out upon the wasteful luxury of his neighbor, and,
loathing his bitter crust and turbid water, saw feasts spread in the
open air, where tropic fruits and beaded wine mocked his feverish
thirst; and palaces of stainless marble, rising tower upon tower, and
turret over turret, like the pearly heaps of cloud before a storm,
while the wind swept from their gilded lattices bursts of festal
music, the chorus that receives a bride, or the triumphal notes of a
warrior's return.

All these Maya passed by, for no door was open, and no fireless
hearth revealed; but before night dropped her starry veil, she had
travelled to a mansion whose door was set wide, and, within, a cold
hearth was piled with boughs of oak and beech. The opal upon Maya's
finger grew dim, but she moved toward the unlit wood, and at her
approach the false pretence betrayed itself; the ice glared before
her, and chilled her to the soul, as its shroud of bark fell off.
She fled over the threshold, and the house-spirit laughed with
bitter mirth; but the Spark was safe.

Now came thronging streets, and many an open portal wooed Maya, but
wooed in vain. Once, upon the steps of a quaint and picturesque
cottage stood an artist, with eyes that flashed heaven's own azure,
and lit his waving curls with a gleam of gold. His pleading look
tempted the Child of the Kingdom with potent affinities of land and
likeness; his fair cottage called her from wall and casement, with
the spiritual eyes of ideal faces looking down upon her, forever
changeless and forever pure; but when, from purest pity, kindness,
and beauty-love, she would have drawn near the hearth, a sigh like
the passing of a soul shivered by her, and before its breath the
shapely embers fell to dust, the hearth beneath was heaped with ashes,
and with tearful lids Maya turned away, and the house-spirit, weeping,
closed the door behind her.

Long days and nights passed ere she essayed again; and then, weary
and faint with home-woe, she lingered on the steps of a lofty house
whose carved door was swung open, whose jasper hearthstone was
heaped with goodly logs, and beside it, on the soft flower-strewn
skin of a panther, slept a youth beautiful as Adonis, and in his
sleep ever murmuring, "Mother!" Maya's heart yearned with a kindred
pang. She, too, was orphaned in her soul, and she would gladly have
lit the fire upon this lonely hearth, and companioned the solitude
of the sleeper; but, alas! the boughs still wore their summer garland,
and from each severed end slow tears of dryad-life distilled
honeyedly upon the stone beneath. Of such withes and saplings comes
no living fire! Maya, smiling, set a kiss upon the boy-sleeper's brow,
but the Spark lay quiet, and the house-spirit flung a blooming
cherry-bough after its departing guest.

The year was now wellnigh run. The Princess Maya despaired of home.
The earth seemed a harsh stepmother, and its children rather stones
than clay. A vague sense of some fearful barrier between herself and
her kind haunted the woman's soul within her, and the unquenchable
flames of the Spark seemed to girdle her with a defence that drove
away even friendly ingress. Night and day she wept, oppressed with
loneliness. She knew not how to speak the tongues of men, though
well she understood their significance. Only little children mated
rightly with her divine infancy; only the mute glories of nature
satisfied for a moment her brooding soul. The celestial impulses
within her beat their wings in futile longing for freedom, and with
inexpressible anguish she uttered her griefs aloud, or sung them to
such plaintive strains that all who heard wept in sympathy. Yet she
had no home.

After many days she came upon a broad, champaign, fertile land, where,
on a gentle knoll, among budding orchards, and fields green with
winter grains, stood a low, wide-eaved house, with gay parterres and
clipped hedges around it, all ordered with artistic harmony, while
over chimney and cornice crept wreaths of glossy ivy, every deep
green leaf veined with streaks of light, and its graceful sprays
clasping and clinging wherever they touched the chiselled stone
beneath. Upon the lawn opened a broad, low door, and the southern sun
streamed inward, showing the carved panels of the fireplace and its
red hearth, where heavy boughs of wood and splinters from the heart
of the pine lay ready for the hand of the Coming to kindle. Upon the
threshold, plucking out the dead leaves of the ivy, stood one from
whose face strength, and beauty, and guile that the guileless knew
not, shone sunlike upon Maya; and as she faltered and paused, he
spoke a welcome to her in her own language, and held toward her the
clasping hand of help. A thrill of mad joy cleft the heart of the
Princess, a glow of incarnate summer dyed with rose her cheek and lip,
the Spark blazed through her brimming eyes, weariness vanished.
"Home! home!" sung her rapt lips; and in the delirious ecstasy of
the hour she pressed toward the hearth, laid down her scrip and
staff upon the heaped wood, flung herself on the red stone, and,
heedless of the opal talisman, flashed outward from her joyful eyes
the Spark,--the Crown, the Curse! So a forked tongue of lightning
speeds from its rain-fringed cloud, and cleaves the oak to its centre;
so the blaze of a meteor rushes through mid-heaven, and--is gone!
The Spark lit, quivered, sunk, and flashed again; but the wood lay
unlighted beneath it. Maya gasped for breath, and with the long
respiration the Spark returned, lit upon her lips, seared them like
a hot iron, and entered into her heart,--the blighting canker of her
fate, a bitterness in flesh and spirit forevermore.

Writhing with anguish and contempt, she turned away from the wrought
stone whose semblance had beguiled her to her mortal loss; and as
she passed from the step, another hand lit a consuming blaze beneath
her staff and scrip, sending a sword of flame after her to the
threshold, and the house-spirit shrieked aloud, "Only stones
together strike fire, Maya!"--while from the casement above looked
forth two faces, false and fair, with eyes of azure ice, and
disdainful smiles, and bound together by a curling serpent, that
ringed itself in portentous symbol about their waists.

With star-like eyes, proud lips, and erect head, Maya went out. Her
laugh rang loud; her song soared in wild and mocking cadence to the
stars; her rigid brow wore scorn like a coronal of flame; and with a
scathed nature she trod the streets of the city, mixed with its
wondering crowds, made the Spark a blaze and a marvel in all lands,--
but hid the opal in her bosom; for its scarlet spot of life-blood
had dropped away, and the jewel was broken across.

So the wide world heard of Maya, the Child of the Kingdom, and from
land to land men carried the stinging arrows of her wit, or
signalled the beacon-fires of her scorn, while seas and shores
unknown echoed her mad and rapt music, or answered the veiled agony
that derided itself with choruses of laughter, from every mystic
whisper of the wave, or roar of falling headlands.

And then she fled away, lest, in the turbulent whirl of life, the
Curse should craze, and not slay her. For sleep had vanished with
wordless moans and frighted aspect from her pillow,--or if it dared,
standing afar off, to cast its pallid shadow there, still there was
neither rest nor refreshing in the troubled spell. Nor could the
thirst that consumed her quench itself with red wine or crystal water,
translucent grapes or the crimson fruits that summer kisses into
sweetness with her heats; forever longing, and forever unsated, it
parched her lips and burnt her gasping mouth, but there was no
draught to allay it. And even so food failed of its office. Kindly
hands brought to her, whose queenliness asserted itself to their
souls with an innocent loftiness, careless of pomp or insignia, all
delicate dates and exquisite viands; but neither the keen and
stimulating odors of savory meat, the crisp whiteness of freshest
bread, nor the slow-dropping gold of honeycomb could tempt her to eat.
The simplest peasant's fare, in measure too scanty for a linnet,
sustained her life; but the Curse lit even upon her food, and those
lips of fire burned all things in their touch to tasteless ashes.

So she fled away; for the forest was cool and lonely, and even as
she learned the lies and treacheries of men, so she longed to leave
them behind her and die in bitterness less bitter for its solitude.
But Maya fled not from herself: the winds wailed like the crying of
despair in her harp-voiced pines; the shining oak-leaves rustled
hisses upon her unstrung ear; the timid forest-creatures, who own no
rule but patient love and caresses, hid from her defiant step and
dazzling eye; and when she knew herself in no wise healed by the
ministries of Nature, in the very apathy of desperation she flung
herself by the clear fountain that had already fallen upon her lips
and cooled them with bitter water, and hiding her head under the
broad, fresh leaves of a calla that bent its marble cups above her
knitted brow and loosened hair, she lay in deathlike trance, till the
Fairy Anima swept her feet with fringed garments, and cast the
serpent wand writhing and glittering upon her breast.

"Wake, Maya!" said the organ-tones of the Spark-Bringer; and Maya
awoke.

"So! the Spark galls thee?" resumed those deep, bitter-sweet tones;
and for answer the Princess Maya held toward her, with accusing eyes,
the broken, bloodless opal.

"Cordis's folly!" retorted Anima. "Thou hadst done best without it,
Maya; the Spark abides no other fate but shining. Yet there is a
little hope for thee. Wilt thou die of the bitter fire, or wilt thou
turn beggar-maid? The sleep that charity lends to its couch shall
rest thee; the draught a child brings shall slake thy thirst; the
food pity offers shall strengthen and renew. But these are not the
gifts a Princess receives; she who gathers them must veil the Crown,
shroud the Spark, conceal the Curse, and in torn robes, with bare
and bleeding feet, beg the crumbs of life from door to door. Wilt
thou take up this trade?"

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