Then Donander broke away a bough from the tree called Laerath, saying meanwhile the proper word of power. Sitting beside the fifth river of Ydalir, he cut strips of bark from this bough, with the green-handled knife which Vanadis had given him, and he cast these strips about at random. He found it perfectly true that those scraps of bark which touched the water became fish, those which he flung into the air became birds, and those which fell upon the ground became animals and men.
He almost instantly, indeed, had enough creatures to populate a world, but no world, of course, for them to animate and diversify. So Donander destroyed these creatures, and placed one of the lighter weirds upon the beetle Karu. That huge good-tempered insect fell at once to shaping a ball of mud, and to carving it with mountains and plains and valleys. Then Karu burrowed his way into the center of this ball of mud: and from the hole into which Karu had entered came all kinds of living beings needful for the animating and diversifying of a world; and these began to breed and to kill one another and to build their appropriate lairs, in nests and dens and cities.
This so excited another beetle, named Khypera, that he behaved in a fashion not at all convenient to record; but many living creatures were at once brought forth by his remarkable conduct, and plants and creeping things and men and women, too, came out of the moisture which Khypera let fall.
That was the second demiurgy of Donander Veratyr. Then with a golden egg Donander made another world: and from the entrails of a spider he drew another; from the carrion of a dead cow he made a fifth world; and with the aid of a raven Donander made yet one more. Thereafter he went on, in turn attempting each method that any Ans had ever practiced.
These sports amused Donander for a long while and yet another while. And Vanadis, apart from her natural pleasure in the augmented vigor he got from so much open-air exercise, bright Vanadis smiled at his playing, in the way of any wife who finds her husband occupied upon the whole less reprehensibly than you would expect of the creature. And the sons of Sidvrar also were used, as yet, to smile not unfriendlily when they passed where Donander was busy with his toys. Even the sisters of Vanadis only said that really of all things, and that of course they had expected it from the very first.
Sidvrar Vafudir, the Weaver and Constrainer, said nothing whatever. . . . So everybody was content for a long while and yet another while.
And throughout both these whiles Donander was pottering with his worlds, keeping them bright with thunderbolts and volcanic eruptions, diligently cleansing them of parasites with one or another pestilence, scouring them with whirlwinds, and perpetually washing them with cloud-bursts and deluges. His toys had constantly such loving care to keep them in perfect condition. Meanwhile, his skill increased abreast with his indulgence in demiurgy, and Donander thought of little else. He needed now no aid from ravens and beetles. He had but, he found, to desire a world, and at once his desire took form: its light was divided from its darkness, the waters gathered into one place, the dry land appeared and pullulated with living creatures, all in one dexterous complacent moment of self-admiration.
His earlier made stars and comets and suns and asteroids Donander Veratyr began destroying one by one, half vexedly, half in real amusement at the archaic, bungling methods he had outgrown. In their places he would set spinning, and glittering, and popping, quite other planetary systems which, for the moment in any event, appeared to him remarkably adroit craftsmanship. And everywhere upon the worlds which he had made, and had not yet annihilated, men worshiped Donander Veratyr: and in his pleasant home at Reginlief, high over Lserath and every other heaven and paradise, Donander worshiped the god of the fathers and of all the reputable neighbors of Donander of Evre; and in such pagan surroundings as Heaven out of Heaven’s wisdom had selected for him, awaited the second coming of Manuel and the holy Morrow of Judgment.
Chapter LXIII. Economics of Sidvrar
Then of a sudden gleaming Sidvrar Vafudir, the Weaver and Constrainer, came with his wolves frisking about him. He came with his broad-brimmed hat pulled down about his eyes decisively. He came thus to his daughter, blue-robed Vanadis, and he stated that, while patience was a virtue, there was such a thing as overdoing it, no matter how little he himself might care for the talking of idle busybodies, because, howsoever long she might argue, and always had done from childhood, being in this and in many other undesirable respects precisely like her mother, even so, no sensible Ans could ever deny her husband’s conduct was ridiculous: and that, said Sidvrar Vafudir, was all there was to it.
“Do not bluster so, my heart,” replied Vanadis, “about the facts of nature. All husbands are ridiculous. Who should be surer of this than I, who have had six husbands, unless it be you, who as goat and titmouse and birch-tree have been the husband of six hundred?”
“That is all very well,” said Sidvrar, “in addition to not being what we were discussing. This Donander of yours is now one of the AEnseis, he is an Ans of mature standing, and it is not right for him to be making worlds. That is what we were discussing.”
“Yet what divine hands anywhere,” asked Vanadis, “are clean of demiurgy?”
“That is not what we were discussing, either. When you brats of mine were children you had your toys, and you played with and you smashed your toys. Nobody denies that, because you all did, from Ronn to Aduna, and even little Koshchei used to be having his fling at such nonsense. Now do you look at the very fine and sober fellow he is, with all his pranks behind him, and do you ask Koshchei what he thinks of that husband of yours! But instead, you prefer to wander away from what we were discussing, because you know as well as I do that for children to be playing at such games is natural enough, besides keeping the young out of grave mischief, now and then. Though, to be sure, nothing does that very long nor very often, as I tell you plainly, my Vanadis, for do you look, too, as a most grievous example, at the wasteful and untidy way you destroy your husbands!”
“Donander Veratyr I shall not ever destroy,” replied Vanadis, smiling, “because of the loving human heart and the maddening human ways he has brought out of his Poictesme, and for two other reasons.”
“Then it is I who will put an end, if not to him, at least to his nonsense. For this Donander of yours is still playing with stars and planets, and setting off his comets, and exploding his suns, and that is not becoming.”
“Well, well, do you, who are the Father and Master of All, have your own will with him, so far as you can get it,” Vanadis returned, still with that rather reminiscent smile. She had now lived for a great while with this sixth husband of hers, who had a human heart in him and human ways.
Chapter LXIV. Through The Oval Window
Sidvrar went then from Vanadis to Donander. But the Constrainer found there was no instant manner of constraining Donander Veratyr into a conviction that Donander of Evre had died long ago, and had become an Ans. People, Donander stated, did not do such things; when people died they went either to heaven or to helclass="underline" and further reasoning with Donander seemed to accomplish no good whatever. For Donander, as a loyal son of the Church, now shrugged pityingly at the heathen nonsense talked by his father-in-law. He stroked the heads of Sidvrar’s attendant wolves, he listened to the Weaver and Constrainer with an indulgence more properly reserved for the feeble-minded; and he said, a little relishingly, that Messire Sidvrar would be wiser on the holy Morrow of Judgment.
Then Sidvrar Vafudir became Sidvrar Yggr, the Meditating and Terrible. Then Sidvrar fell about such magicking as he had not needed to use since he first entered into the eternal yew-vales of Ydalir. Then, in a word, Sidvrar unclosed the oval window in Reginlief that opened upon space and time and upon the frozen cinders which once had been worlds and suns and stars, and which their various creators had annihilated, as one by one the AEnseis had put away their childhood and its playing.