Under the Green Star

It could be; it could well be. The last sight I had of her was as she flew off into the night, mounted upon the back of a fresh zaiph. Far could she have flown before the foresters of the Secret City could have mounted up and flown off in her pursuit. And in the ink-black night, in the moonless dark of the world of the giant trees, it would have been a mighty task to have found her, once she was flown.

Yes! she could have escaped! She could have lived to find her way to freedom! She might be living at this hour …

Will I ever know?

Will we live and die worlds apart, never knowing the ending of the story?

Will anyone ever know?

It will be a time yet before my flesh and my spirit are strong enough to make their weird voyage of the soul across space between the stars a second time. Will I voyage forth again to the World of the Green Star?

I do not think so.

For how could I return to take my place beside the woman I love? The Lord Chong is dead. His body was cut down by the knife of a traitor. And from that second death his body will not rise, as from the first. And how could I return to claim the love of Niamh as—another man?

It is that which restrains me.

It would be torment unendurable to return to the World of the Green Star a bodiless spirit—to look upon events in which I could not partake—to gaze upon the unattainable loveliness of the Goddess-Queen whose lips I could never kiss, whose slim, vibrant body my arms could not hold.

And yet … would that torture be any worse than the torment I suffer now, the torment of not knowing?

In truth, the Gods have played an ironic jest upon me. I died; I live again; and I must live on, and never know the ending of my own story!

The old Persian poet must have dreamed of my strange and terrible predicament, as he strolled there in the moonlit gardens of his beloved Naishapur so many centuries ago.

For as, musing, I read on in that old book of verses, I came at length to yet another quatrain he set down in golden Persia long ago: another verse that weirdly echoes the irony of my peculiar doom: another verse strangely meaningful to me alone of all men who have ever trod the dust of this Earth or read the pages of this book of song.