The Devil's Edification

The devil stands proudly before an enchained couple, his bat-like wings spread above their heads. In the comely woman’s ecstatic anticipation, the devil slapped upon both lovers a pair of identical restraints; thus their predicament, which the devil reveals to us with a flourish of his pointed fingers. His cloven hooves stand apart on a dais of pink sand: a fait accompli.

Wandering the quiet forest and humming softly to himself, the devil pleasurably recalls his most recent exploit. Soon, however, his satisfaction is supplanted by disappointment. After all, the devil’s memory is exceptionally poor (even among the gods, for whom the burden of so many centuries is too much to bear). Thus his pleasure must always be refreshed by new exploits in the mortal world.

Not long in his wandering, he hears two mellifluous voices above the din of a cascading stream. The voices, he finds, belong to a pair of maiden poets declaiming their passion for a shepherd boy who the previous spring had spent a frigid night in their barn. No hint of jealousy tinges their verses: the memory of the boy has long been sublimated to such a height that his name provokes a feeling of unattainable and imaginary bliss for them both.

The devil, especially prone to envy, is vexed by their eloquent passion for the boy, as it proves to be a deeper well of inspiration than his own cunning. Eagerly listening from behind an ash tree, he considers appearing in the form of the shepherd boy; but, still intrigued by their verses, he merely transforms into a common barn owl.

As well as being able to change into any form, the devil can inspire envy in the heart of any creature that looks directly into his eyeballs; and so, perched above their heads, he waits for one or the other poet to find the black discs of his eyes in the dappled light of the tree’s upper reaches.

Neither glances in his direction, rapt as they are in decadent verse. Finally, emboldened by impatience, the devil softly howls.

The younger of the two, watching a cloud in the sky, sees the devil’s owl eyes. Yet as sometimes happens with dilettante poets, envy is channeled into an equally perverse adoration. Just so, the young poet is seized by a desire to possess her counterpart.

“Edna,” says the young poet, “your talent is endless; I’d like nothing more than to keep you for myself, and to hear you speak only to me.”

“You’re kind,” Edna says, “but you’d soon be tired of me.”

“No,” says the young poet, “you could say the same lines over and over; it wouldn’t matter. I’d never think about the past or care about the future.”

On the opposite bank of the river, in a ferny glen, the shepherd boy appears. Edna turns to him, catching the glint of his eyes in the scattered light. As the young poet follows Edna’s gaze, her adoration curdles into fear.

“Edna,” says the young poet, “don’t look into the boys eyes.”

“Don’t be silly,” she says. “It’s your eyes I worry about.”

Edna runs into the stream. The young poet, in pursuit, tackles her into the water. Edna resists, but she’s no match for the young poet, who nearly drowns her. The boy, meanwhile, scrapes his shepherd’s crook with a pointed nail. In fact, he can’t remember at all why he disturbed the two poets in the first place.

Emerging victorious with a handful of Edna’s hair, the young poet sees the owl where the boy had stood. In the moment of recognition, the spell is broken.