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Writer's pictureLinda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
Sep 300 min read

Excerpted Inspiration #147


[Ransom is on Mars (Malacandra), talking to Hyoi, one of the sentient otter-like animals, the hrossa, who live there. Hyoi speaks of the hrossa’s natural enemy, the hnakra, a fearsome sea creature. Maleldil is their name for Jesus. Hnau is the word for a rational being. Oyarsa is the governing spirit of the planet.] “And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back – if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?” “All the same,” said Ransom, unconsciously nettled on behalf of his own world, “Maleldil has let in the hnakra.” “Oh, but that is so different. I long to kill this hnakra as the hnakra longs to kill me. I hope that my ship will be first and I first in my ship with my straight spear when the black jaws snap. And if he kills me, my people will mourn and my brothers will desire still more to kill him. But they will not wish that there were no hnéraki; nor do I. How can I make you understand, when you do not understand the poets? The hnakra is our enemy, but he is also our beloved. We feel in our hearts his joy as he looks down from the mountain of water in the north where he was born; we leap with him when he jumps the falls; and when winter comes, and the lake smokes higher than our heads, it is with his eyes that we see it, and know that his roaming time has come. We hang images of him in our houses, and the sign of all the hrossa is a hnakra. In him the spirit of the valley lives; and our young play at being hnéraki as soon as they can splash in the shallows.” “And then he kills them?” “Not often them. The hrossa would be bent hrossa if they let him get so near. Long before he had come down so far we should have sought him out. No, Hmān, it is not a few deaths roving the world around him that make a hnau miserable. It is a bent hnau that would blacken the world. And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes. I will tell you a day in my life that has shaped me; such a day as comes only once, like love, or serving Oyarsa in Meldilorn. Then I was young, not much more than a cub, when I went far, far up the handramit to the land where the stars shine at midday and even water is cold. A great waterfall I climbed. I stood on the shore of Balki the pool, which is the place of most awe in all worlds. The walls of it go up for ever and ever and huge and holy images are cut in them, the work of old times. There is the fall called Mountain of Water. Because I have stood there alone, Maleldil and I, for even Oyarsa sent me no word, my heart has been higher, my song deeper, all my days. But do you think it would have been so unless I had known that in Balki hnéraki dwelled? There I drank life because death was in the pool. That was the best of drinks save one.” “What one?” asked Ransom. “Death itself in the day I drink it and go to Maleldil.” -C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (1938), pp. 75-77

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