Till We Have Faces

A few days later is the rite of the year’s birth, a major religious festival in Glome, and Orual must spend most of the day in the House of Ungit. She considers all the things that people give to Ungit—semen, silver, and women—with nothing given in return. Gazing at the stone of Ungit, she sees the shape of a face in the sacrificial blood that has pooled there.

Orual turns to Arnom, the Priest and asks him who Ungit is. She realizes that he has learned a way of talking about the gods from the Fox and wonders why things can’t be more straightforward. She contemplates the devotion of the people of Glome and is amazed at the joy and comfort they find in Ungit.

Later, Orual is asleep when a voice tells her to get up. It is her father, and she follows him to the Pillar Room where she is afraid he will ask for his mirror, which she has given to Redival. Instead, he hands her some tools and they set about digging up the floor in the middle of the room. Underneath is a deep black hole, like a well. The King seizes her hand and tells her to jump in. She struggles but can’t escape, and they jump in together.

They find themselves in another, smaller Pillar Room, made of raw earth. Again, the King hands her some tools, and they dig until they have made another hole and jump through.

The next Pillar Room is darker and made of living rock. It begins to shrink around them, and Orual tries to cry out but she can’t. The King asks her, “Who is Ungit?” (130) and leads her across the floor to where his mirror hangs in its usual place. Orual is terrified and tells us that her “my face was the face of Ungit as I had seen it that day in her house” (130). The King asks again who Ungit is and Orual replies, “I am Ungit” (130). She finds herself back in her chamber, with the knowledge that she has had a vision, not a dream.

Orual is horrified: she does not want to be Ungit and tries to kill herself with a sword, but she can no longer lift its weight. When the palace is asleep she slips out, her bare face her disguise and walks to the river to drown herself. She has tied her ankles together when another voice, the voice of a god, tells her not to. She obeys and returns home. 

Orual considers the god’s command that she must “Die before you die” (131), wondering how such a thing is possible. She recalls the Greek philosopher Socrates, for whom death is wisdom, by which he meant the death of our passions and desires and vain opinions. Orual resolves to try to live according to this edict in an attempt to change her soul from the ugliness of Ungit into a fair one, but she finds it impossible. She wonders why the gods don’t help her and laments her lack of beauty, both in her body and her soul.

Soon afterwards, she has another vision, in which she is standing on the bank of a river. Across the river, a herd of golden rams is grazing, and she thinks that if she can take some of their fleece, she will have beauty. She wades across the river where she finds herself trampled by the excited herd. When she manages to stand, she sees another young woman in the pasture, picking bits of golden fleece from the hedge that borders it.

Orual despairs “of ever ceasing to be Ungit” (134); her only comfort is that she knows she loved Psyche truly. She goes into the garden to indulge this thought and walks straight into another vision. This time, she is not Ungit but Ungit’s slave, trying to earn her freedom. She is walking across burning sands carrying an empty bowl, and she knows she must fill it with water from the river of the deadlands and return it to Ungit. Overwhelmed by the difficulties facing her, she gives up. An eagle of the gods appears and asks her name: Orual, she replies. He tells her that she is not the person he has been sent to help and asks her what she carries. Looking down, Orual finds that the bowl has been transformed into her book. She tells him that it is her complaint against the gods.

Hearing this, the eagle rises and cries out: “She’s come at last. Here is the woman who has a complaint against the gods” (135). Then “dark things like men” (135) emerge from the mountain and take her deep within it, to a court where her case is to be heard. A light appears, revealing a great assembly of the dead, including the King, the Fox, and Batta. There is also a judge, completely veiled in black, who orders that Orual is stripped naked. He then tells her: “Read your complaint” (136).

Orual realizes that her book has changed but feels compelled to read it out. It tells a very different story, in which Orual’s main complaint is that the gods are beautiful and that no mortal can compete with them. She cannot bear that the gods took Psyche’s love away: “She was mine” (137).

The judge tells her to stop, and she realizes that she has been reading the book over and over again. He then asks if she has been answered and Orual replies that she has. 

Orual tells us that the “complaint was the answer” (138).Only in speaking it out loud did Orual understand the true nature of her grievance of the gods.

Orual hears her father offering to punish her, but the Fox jumps in to take the blame for her. Orual wants to contradict him, but the judge reminds them that Orual is not on trial, the gods are. Orual is released, and she throws herself down into the crowd of specters in an attempt to kill herself, but the Fox catches her. She is surprised to find that he is solid and warm. He tells her that he was wrong about the gods and asks for her forgiveness.

Orual tells him that she is the one in need of forgiveness. She knew he longed to return to Greece once he was free and that he only stayed in Glome for her sake; she should have sent him away.

The Fox has been charged with bringing her before the true judges: the gods. Orual knows that she cannot hope for mercy, and the Fox tells her not to expect justice either.

He leads her to a cave whose mouth is covered with vines through which a summery light shines. The walls of the cave are painted with stories that come alive, including a woman tying her ankles together beside a river bank. To Orual’s surprise she is not the woman in the painting: it is Psyche. Orual calls out for her not to do it.

In the next painting, Psyche is trying to figure out how to collect the golden fleece of the gods’ rams when the animals are distracted by an intruder, and she is able to gather it from the hedge.

In the next picture, Orual and Psyche are both walking across burning sands, though Orual is only a shadow. The Fox confirms that the images are true and tells her that Psyche could only manage to complete these tasks because someone else—Orual—“bore nearly all the anguish” (141).

The images of Psyche’s final task show her entering the deadlands to retrieve a casket of beauty for Ungit. She is not allowed to speak. She meets people from Glome who implore her to be their goddess but walks on. She also passes the Fox, begging her to stop this madness and Orual, with her left arm bleeding. This last figure makes Psyche weep but she continues on her way.

Voices from outside the cave announce Psyche’s return from the land of the dead, and the Fox leads Orual out to meet her. Next thing, Orual is kissing Psyche’s feet and apologizing profusely. Psyche lifts her up, saying Maia, “I have not given you the casket” (143). Face to face with Psyche, Orual can tell that her sister truly is a goddess. Then voices announce: “the god comes to judge Orual” (143).

At the sight of the god, Orual’s love for him exceeds her love for anyone else. Bowing before him, she sees two Psyche’s reflected in a pool; Orual is beautiful too. The god speaks to Orual then, telling her, “You are also Psyche” (144).

With those words, Orual finds herself back in the palace gardens. She tells us that that was four days ago and that she is dying; she can hear Arnom and her women weeping.

A brief post-script, written by Arnom, “Priest of Aphrodite” (144), verifies that this book is the work of Queen Orual of Glome and beseeches anyone travelling to Greece to take it with them there.