The Three Mayflies: Queenie, May and Spangle and The Leap-Ladies Ball. Polyandry and the Fool Moon.
High in the roof of the Cuckoo Pint in a light and airy chamber at the very apex of the cowl, scented, seductive and sweet as the calyx of an arum lily, three Mayflies perched on a green outcropping of maiden hair and preened themselves carefully, waiting for the Full Moon.
The place they had chosen for their vigil was so unlike the brutal business end of this carnivorous fly-eater that one might have thought it to be part of quite another plant entirely: perhaps some delicate and expensive love-offering destined for sale by a high class city florist. This was the Cuckoo Pint’s Penthouse. And what went on in the basement far below it was none of their concern, for tonight was the night of the Leap-Ladies Ball.
Earlier that day the three had made their way along with thousands of their sister mayflies up from the murky larval depths of the pond. They had left the ugly skin of their adolescence behind them for ever to float or sink like a forgotten memory beneath the surface of a world to which they would never ever return. Eager debutantes, flexing their new and shapely limbs they had climbed and climbed and climbed, unfurling their gossamer wings and stretching forth their silken bodies as they rose until, on the tips of grasses and the tops of reeds and the ends of twigs, or in the case of Queenie, May and Spangle inside the highest point of the Cuckoo Pint’s cowl they rested.They were getting ready for the biggest challenge of their brief and challenging lives. It was time to find a mate.
-What is that? said Queenie all at once.
She had taken off from her perch to practice one of the standard aerobatic manoeuvres required of mayflies on their wedding night if they are to be assured of any chance of success in the race to find a husband.
-Show me, said May, gliding to her side.
Far below them, as they looped and turned, they spied the sleeping figure of the Gadfly draped over the red berries of the Cuckoo Pint's pistil looking like a late night reveller who has staggered home in the last stages of intoxication and made it no further than the sitting room sofa. He was quite naked, apart from a few tattered strips of gossamer draped around him like a cape. He appeared to the three ladies to be a very robust Mayfly indeed.
-I see said Spangle. -Now that's a strapper! I think we should take a closer look. No point in taking part in all that dangerous rough and tumble over the pond if we can steal a march on the other ladies before the party even begins! We might get to the finishing post before the rest are even out of the stables!
High in the roof of the Cuckoo Pint in a light and airy chamber at the very apex of the cowl, scented, seductive and sweet as the calyx of an arum lily, three Mayflies perched on a green outcropping of maiden hair and preened themselves carefully, waiting for the Full Moon.
The place they had chosen for their vigil was so unlike the brutal business end of this carnivorous fly-eater that one might have thought it to be part of quite another plant entirely: perhaps some delicate and expensive love-offering destined for sale by a high class city florist. This was the Cuckoo Pint’s Penthouse. And what went on in the basement far below it was none of their concern, for tonight was the night of the Leap-Ladies Ball.
Earlier that day the three had made their way along with thousands of their sister mayflies up from the murky larval depths of the pond. They had left the ugly skin of their adolescence behind them for ever to float or sink like a forgotten memory beneath the surface of a world to which they would never ever return. Eager debutantes, flexing their new and shapely limbs they had climbed and climbed and climbed, unfurling their gossamer wings and stretching forth their silken bodies as they rose until, on the tips of grasses and the tops of reeds and the ends of twigs, or in the case of Queenie, May and Spangle inside the highest point of the Cuckoo Pint’s cowl they rested.They were getting ready for the biggest challenge of their brief and challenging lives. It was time to find a mate.
-What is that? said Queenie all at once.
She had taken off from her perch to practice one of the standard aerobatic manoeuvres required of mayflies on their wedding night if they are to be assured of any chance of success in the race to find a husband.
-Show me, said May, gliding to her side.
Far below them, as they looped and turned, they spied the sleeping figure of the Gadfly draped over the red berries of the Cuckoo Pint's pistil looking like a late night reveller who has staggered home in the last stages of intoxication and made it no further than the sitting room sofa. He was quite naked, apart from a few tattered strips of gossamer draped around him like a cape. He appeared to the three ladies to be a very robust Mayfly indeed.
-I see said Spangle. -Now that's a strapper! I think we should take a closer look. No point in taking part in all that dangerous rough and tumble over the pond if we can steal a march on the other ladies before the party even begins! We might get to the finishing post before the rest are even out of the stables!
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Section Missing 28 March 2010
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-Put me down at once, said the Gadfly. This group horseplay is not my thing. And a little closer to the shore line, please! He was feeling sick and light-headed at the same time which was a most disagreeable feeling.
–I think, he thought, -that at any moment I am going to disgrace myself.
–Now! If you don’t mind! At once! PLEASE! There was a note of panic in his voice as the sky began to spin.
-What a spoil sport! said Spangle.
-He’s not what he appears to be at all! said Queenie.
-Hurry! said May, –we are running out of time! The Moon will be up soon! Let’s just go back for another!
And indeed the moon now was beginning to push a glow up along the edge of the sky where it would soon make its appearance, for it was to be a Full Moon tonight, which was of particular significance to the Mayflies.
-Good riddance to bad rubbish! came the spiteful chorus, and with that eighteen hands loosened their grip on the Gadfly and he tumbled through the air and landed flat and ignominiously in the mud of the shore line where he lay for some time counting his bones to be sure they were all still there and wondering if he were dead or drugged or perhaps even mortally sick from something he might recently have ingested, although what he could not imagine, for he had absolutely no memory of anything that might have transpired inside the Cuckoo Pint Hotel. After a while he noticed that the night seemed to have turned very cold, and looking down at himself saw that he seemed to have come to this place without his trousers. With embarrassment he got shakily to his feet and now saw that his trousers were not the only article of apparel that seemed to be absent from him. In fact the breeze around the waterline now told him that he was entirely naked, apart from a few bits and pieces of spider web which seemed to have stuck to various parts of his body. Shadows of memory flitted in and out of his mind, but they were indistinct and incoherent for the most part. He remembered his panic high in the reeds. Images of the Toad Thing flashed through his mind disagreeably and incomprehensibly. He remembered throwing away his armour and a panic stricken flight. But that was all.
The pond spread away to his right and had begun to turn to silver under the rising moon. He seemed to be getting colder and colder. Wrapping his bits and pieces of web around him he began to walk along the shore, although where he was going he had no idea. It was dark under the reeds and the mud squelched beneath his feet. Sounds came from the undergrowth. He began to feel uneasy. Who was he? What was he doing here? He peered about him. There were lumps and bumps and unknown shapes along the shore line. Flotsam, jetsam, things that had floated up and remained. He tried to avoid them, sticking close to the waterline, although it meant getting his feet wet which he loathed. He half remembered things from his former life. They paraded across his imagination as though his life had begun to pass before his eyes, like the life of a drowning thing. He knew he was an aerial being and a creature of the sun; a golden prince arcing brown as a baked muffin through blue summer skies. In the warmth of meadows and scraw covered bogs, through the perfume of heather in the company of honey gathering bees and the better classes of the hoi polloi. What was he doing down here in this gloomy pit of darkness. To his right he could hear gurgling and splashing and a hundred unknown watery night time sounds. He felt unhorsed unnerved and unhappy.
Now suddenly the moon rose and bounced off the water and filled the sky with a pale dreamlike luminescence. He looked up. It pushed into the black velvet of the sky like a creamy hole and made the black blacker and the tips of the reeds silver, frosting them with light. Low over the pool and rising higher specks of light danced and twisted and circled, joining and moving apart, spinning and gyrating in the matrimonial dance. The Mayflies were now out there in their multitudes, dancing for love. He felt strangely left out, although it had been his own choice. He felt somehow physically inadequate. He was after all no great stud. He began to remember. Words were his thing. As a conman, he thought, I have no equal. But really, when it comes down to the fruits of it all, it is rather a lot of effort to keep it up. Perhaps a quiet life might be in order from now on. He had never contemplated this before. But things did not seem to be going too well for him at the moment. More memory came back and with it regret. There did not seem to be the respect their used to be for the scions of royal or at least noble and ancient clans.
It seemed to him the brighter the moon shone the darker his mood, until it resembled the smooth black impenetrable velvet of the sky. Was there nothing but gloom on the night of the full moon? The shadows drained him of life. Of course, there was nothing among the dark reeds that he could not take care of, he thought to himself. But a noble war with buffalo and elephants and the Tyrannosaurus Rex was one thing. Trudging through mud like a foot soldier waiting to be ambushed by some low and snivelling terrorist peon was quite another. What had happened to class? Where had privilege gone? It did not seem fair. The world was supposed have an order, unchanging and noble and as fixed as the celestial bodies. (He remembered that he liked to number himself among the celestial bodies.) But without his armour and his medals and his iridescent cloak and diamond neckerchief he felt what he was: naked.
He wished he had not panicked. He wished he had them back. Clothes make the man. They also make the Gadfly. What on earth was he doing, in these tattered wisps of cobweb? He looked like an abandoned room in a ruined cottage. He remembered more. What was this shadow of his former self? How are fortunes made and then turned upside down! All is Vanity. All is dust and ashes.
At that moment as he trudged along in the moonlight, despondent, depressed, tired and hungry his eyes on the ground, he heard a rushing watery sound which became before he had scarcely had time to notice it a gushing tumult of noise. He raised his head. Out of the water in front of him there arose a giant beast shimmering under the cold moonbeams like a trembling column of ice. It seemed to be dressed in a facsimile of the Gadfly’s own aristocratic armour, a shining blue breastplate sprinkled with medals. And from its brow arose an awful lizard head. And then it smiled. Horror of horrors! The whole throat seemed to unzip in a flash revealing the glittering fangs of a hunting spider polished to the brightness and magnificence of those of the mythical and terrible trumpeting walrus.
The Gadfly’s blood froze in his veins. What was this apparition made both in his own image and in the image of what he feared most in the world? Then it came to him. He was dead! Yes, he knew it! He was dead. This was Hell. This was the Answer to that Great Question. The Gadfly stood trembling in the presence of his Very Own Soul. He was at the Final Judgement, face to face with himself, distorted, gross, ugly, puffed up and spread out in front of him for scrutiny and agonising repentance.
This is what he really was. All at once he saw himself in all his tawdry, lying, mask-like forms. The Big Conman. The Inflated Ego. This was the incarnation of his petty self serving ego. This was the demon god made in his own likeness. This was his Life. He saw himself as others must see him. This was the Fiend he had carried within him all his life, the guiding spirit of all his petty deceptions and self-serving desires.
He screamed and screamed and screamed. He remembered nothing more. Until moments later he recovered consciousness and found him self flying round and round and round in circles high above the reed pool under the full moon. The bog spread out black and silver. And the image of the Toad-Thing, himself, filled his mind with horror and shame and bewilderment. The Toad! he cried. I am the Toad. All along, all along. Toad! Toad! Toad! And he closed his wings and fell through the darkness.
-What a spoil sport! said Spangle.
-He’s not what he appears to be at all! said Queenie.
-Hurry! said May, –we are running out of time! The Moon will be up soon! Let’s just go back for another!
And indeed the moon now was beginning to push a glow up along the edge of the sky where it would soon make its appearance, for it was to be a Full Moon tonight, which was of particular significance to the Mayflies.
-Good riddance to bad rubbish! came the spiteful chorus, and with that eighteen hands loosened their grip on the Gadfly and he tumbled through the air and landed flat and ignominiously in the mud of the shore line where he lay for some time counting his bones to be sure they were all still there and wondering if he were dead or drugged or perhaps even mortally sick from something he might recently have ingested, although what he could not imagine, for he had absolutely no memory of anything that might have transpired inside the Cuckoo Pint Hotel. After a while he noticed that the night seemed to have turned very cold, and looking down at himself saw that he seemed to have come to this place without his trousers. With embarrassment he got shakily to his feet and now saw that his trousers were not the only article of apparel that seemed to be absent from him. In fact the breeze around the waterline now told him that he was entirely naked, apart from a few bits and pieces of spider web which seemed to have stuck to various parts of his body. Shadows of memory flitted in and out of his mind, but they were indistinct and incoherent for the most part. He remembered his panic high in the reeds. Images of the Toad Thing flashed through his mind disagreeably and incomprehensibly. He remembered throwing away his armour and a panic stricken flight. But that was all.
The pond spread away to his right and had begun to turn to silver under the rising moon. He seemed to be getting colder and colder. Wrapping his bits and pieces of web around him he began to walk along the shore, although where he was going he had no idea. It was dark under the reeds and the mud squelched beneath his feet. Sounds came from the undergrowth. He began to feel uneasy. Who was he? What was he doing here? He peered about him. There were lumps and bumps and unknown shapes along the shore line. Flotsam, jetsam, things that had floated up and remained. He tried to avoid them, sticking close to the waterline, although it meant getting his feet wet which he loathed. He half remembered things from his former life. They paraded across his imagination as though his life had begun to pass before his eyes, like the life of a drowning thing. He knew he was an aerial being and a creature of the sun; a golden prince arcing brown as a baked muffin through blue summer skies. In the warmth of meadows and scraw covered bogs, through the perfume of heather in the company of honey gathering bees and the better classes of the hoi polloi. What was he doing down here in this gloomy pit of darkness. To his right he could hear gurgling and splashing and a hundred unknown watery night time sounds. He felt unhorsed unnerved and unhappy.
Now suddenly the moon rose and bounced off the water and filled the sky with a pale dreamlike luminescence. He looked up. It pushed into the black velvet of the sky like a creamy hole and made the black blacker and the tips of the reeds silver, frosting them with light. Low over the pool and rising higher specks of light danced and twisted and circled, joining and moving apart, spinning and gyrating in the matrimonial dance. The Mayflies were now out there in their multitudes, dancing for love. He felt strangely left out, although it had been his own choice. He felt somehow physically inadequate. He was after all no great stud. He began to remember. Words were his thing. As a conman, he thought, I have no equal. But really, when it comes down to the fruits of it all, it is rather a lot of effort to keep it up. Perhaps a quiet life might be in order from now on. He had never contemplated this before. But things did not seem to be going too well for him at the moment. More memory came back and with it regret. There did not seem to be the respect their used to be for the scions of royal or at least noble and ancient clans.
It seemed to him the brighter the moon shone the darker his mood, until it resembled the smooth black impenetrable velvet of the sky. Was there nothing but gloom on the night of the full moon? The shadows drained him of life. Of course, there was nothing among the dark reeds that he could not take care of, he thought to himself. But a noble war with buffalo and elephants and the Tyrannosaurus Rex was one thing. Trudging through mud like a foot soldier waiting to be ambushed by some low and snivelling terrorist peon was quite another. What had happened to class? Where had privilege gone? It did not seem fair. The world was supposed have an order, unchanging and noble and as fixed as the celestial bodies. (He remembered that he liked to number himself among the celestial bodies.) But without his armour and his medals and his iridescent cloak and diamond neckerchief he felt what he was: naked.
He wished he had not panicked. He wished he had them back. Clothes make the man. They also make the Gadfly. What on earth was he doing, in these tattered wisps of cobweb? He looked like an abandoned room in a ruined cottage. He remembered more. What was this shadow of his former self? How are fortunes made and then turned upside down! All is Vanity. All is dust and ashes.
At that moment as he trudged along in the moonlight, despondent, depressed, tired and hungry his eyes on the ground, he heard a rushing watery sound which became before he had scarcely had time to notice it a gushing tumult of noise. He raised his head. Out of the water in front of him there arose a giant beast shimmering under the cold moonbeams like a trembling column of ice. It seemed to be dressed in a facsimile of the Gadfly’s own aristocratic armour, a shining blue breastplate sprinkled with medals. And from its brow arose an awful lizard head. And then it smiled. Horror of horrors! The whole throat seemed to unzip in a flash revealing the glittering fangs of a hunting spider polished to the brightness and magnificence of those of the mythical and terrible trumpeting walrus.
The Gadfly’s blood froze in his veins. What was this apparition made both in his own image and in the image of what he feared most in the world? Then it came to him. He was dead! Yes, he knew it! He was dead. This was Hell. This was the Answer to that Great Question. The Gadfly stood trembling in the presence of his Very Own Soul. He was at the Final Judgement, face to face with himself, distorted, gross, ugly, puffed up and spread out in front of him for scrutiny and agonising repentance.
This is what he really was. All at once he saw himself in all his tawdry, lying, mask-like forms. The Big Conman. The Inflated Ego. This was the incarnation of his petty self serving ego. This was the demon god made in his own likeness. This was his Life. He saw himself as others must see him. This was the Fiend he had carried within him all his life, the guiding spirit of all his petty deceptions and self-serving desires.
He screamed and screamed and screamed. He remembered nothing more. Until moments later he recovered consciousness and found him self flying round and round and round in circles high above the reed pool under the full moon. The bog spread out black and silver. And the image of the Toad-Thing, himself, filled his mind with horror and shame and bewilderment. The Toad! he cried. I am the Toad. All along, all along. Toad! Toad! Toad! And he closed his wings and fell through the darkness.
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