Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

When daylight comes, Anodos sees a natural staircase circling the perimeter of the well. He descends until the stairs end at a horizontal passage. Proceeding along the horizontal path, he emerges into an underground world with a sky of stone and fantastic rock shapes instead of trees and flowers. The underworld is inhabited by malicious kobolds. One of their number sings in its scrannel (harsh, unmelodious) voice the song Anodos used to bring the Marble Lady to life—all the while mocking Anodos’s feelings in “grotesque” parody. When he is done, the kobold horde lays hold of Anodos and taunts him again, telling him he will never have his Marble Lady; she is destined for “a better man than he.”

Stung by their words, Anodos cries that if the other is a better man, then the better man should have her. As Anodos goes on his way, he sings a little song in which he acknowledges that he will weep to lose his love to another, but he gives her up tenderly, wishing for her happiness and honoring the one who is worthy of her. He then sings that one must not vex the lady or grab her too wildly, lest all the joy of having her be lost.

Harsh laughter greets the end of his song, and an old woman comes forth to meet him. She sneers at him that it’s a pity he doesn’t have a pretty girl to walk with him. Anodos replies that it would depend on who the pretty girl was. At that, the old woman blooms into a resplendently beautiful young woman and begs him to stay with her.

Anodos recoils, and the young woman is “ugly” again. Her shrieking laughter follows him as he goes on his way.

Anodos trudges through the underworld, increasingly sure he will never see his Marble Lady again. He feels proud that he is the one who sang her into life, and he feels a kind of possessiveness. He feels sure her outward beauty is a measure of inward loveliness.

Gradually, the way grows narrower, and Anodos emerges on the shore of a wintry sea. All is bare and gray and dreary. As the sun sinks below the horizon, an icy storm blows in. Exhausted by the bleak landscape, Anodos flings himself into the sea. At once, the water enfolds him like the arms of the beech woman and raises him to the surface.

As Anodos floats, he is nudged by a brightly painted little boat. He scrambles into it, and the little boat sweeps him across a gentle summer sea. When Anodos looks into the water, he sees his whole history contained in the sea from childhood to young manhood, including people he had loved and lost, all still present to him. They forgive him every hurt he has ever dealt them, and he falls asleep in a spell of delight.

The boat brings Anodos to a grassy island where stands a cottage. He finds an old woman cooking over a hearth in the center of the room. Anodos has never seen such an old face, but her voice is young and sweet. He feels like a boy who has come in out of a storm. When she brings him a bowl of food, he lays his head against her and cries from happiness.

Anodos falls asleep and wakes feeling refreshed. He sees that the cottage has four doors—the one by which he entered and one in each of the other three walls. The old lady tells him that if he goes through any of the doors, he should look for a certain sign—which she shows him—to find his way back. Anodos opens the door through which he entered the cottage. Stepping through, Anodos sees his two brothers as they were when they were all children. He plays with them until sundown and forgets all about Fairy Land. That night, he quarrels with one of his brothers. The next morning, his brother goes out alone to swim in the river and drowns. Anodos has a sense that this had all happened before. Running from the house, he sees a curious mark on the barn door and returns to the old woman’s cottage.

Beyond the next door, he sees a beautiful lady who resembles the Marble Lady. The unnamed knight enters. His armor is clean and shining now. The knight asks if the lady still loves the youth whose song twice set her free. She answers that she would never have been able to come to the knight if the boy hadn’t freed her. They both love Anodos for making it possible for them to be together.

With an aching heart, Anodos blesses their union. Finding the mark that shows the way back, he falls, sobbing, at the feet of the old woman. She sings him a song about the value of being the giver of love rather than the receiver.

The third door takes Anodos to a crowded street. There, he sees a girl whose heart he broke shortly before entering Fairy Land when he still believed himself to be a man. Unable to face the girl, he steps into a church. A white-clad figure passes him and lies down atop a tomb, where she turns to stone. On another tomb, he finds the effigy of a knight, and, feeling a ring on the stone figure, he recognizes the knight as one of his ancestors; he is in his family burial vault.

He stumbles back into the cottage, and the old woman sings about resurrection, life after death, and the unity of joy and grief. The old woman begs him not to enter the last door, but he cannot resist and goes through.

The next thing he remembers is lying on the floor with his head in the woman’s lap. She is weeping over him as if he were a dead child. When he fully recovers, she points him to an isthmus joining the island to the mainland and tells him to go out and do something worthwhile.

Leaving the island, he crosses a rocky country until he comes to a tower. Inside live two brothers. They have been making weapons and armor. They tell Anodos he will be their third brother and help them fight three giants plaguing the kingdom.

At the advice of a wise woman (the same whom Anodos met in the cottage of the four doors), the two brothers have apprenticed themselves to an armorer and learned his craft. The old woman also promised to send them a third brother and showed them Anodos in a mirror. She instructed them to teach Anodos everything they learned about arms and armory.

Should they die, each of the two brothers fears leaving behind someone they love. While the brothers help Anodos learn armory, he sings for them, often bringing them to tears with songs that touch on their own particular fears. The more often he sings those songs, the stronger the brothers become and the better able to face their fears.