"It's too hard," said the Big Boy. "I don't know what
'Zodiac' means." "I will hunt up the words for you in the
dictionary," said the Little Girl. And when they came to the
next story the Boy took pleasure in doing his own hunting in
the dictionary.


Though thou love her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dim the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know
When half Gods go
The gods arrive.--Emerson.

Thousands of years ago, when men were greater than they are to-day,
the Children of the Zodiac lived in the world. There were six Children
of the Zodiac--the Ram, the Bull, the Lion, the Twins, and the Girl;
and they were afraid of the Six Houses which belonged to the Scorpion,
the Balance, the Crab, the Fishes, the Goat, and the Waterman. Even
when they first stepped down upon the earth and knew that they were
immortal Gods, they carried this fear with them; and the fear grew as
they became better acquainted with mankind and heard stories of the
Six Houses. Men treated the Children as Gods and came to them with
prayers and long stories of wrong, while the Children of the Zodiac
listened and could not understand.

A mother would fling herself before the feet of the Twins, or the
Bull, crying: "My husband was at work in the fields and the Archer
shot him and he died; and my son will also be killed by the Archer.
Help me!" The Bull would lower his huge head and answer: "What is that
to me?" Or the Twins would smile and continue their play, for they
could not understand why the water ran out of people's eyes. At other
times a man and a woman would come to Leo or the Girl crying: "We two
are newly married and we are very happy. Take these flowers." As they
threw the flowers they would make mysterious sounds to show that they
were happy, and Leo and the Girl wondered even more than the Twins why
people shouted "Ha! ha! ha!" for no cause.

This continued for thousands of years by human reckoning, till on a
day, Leo met the Girl walking across the hills and saw that she had
changed entirely since he had last seen her. The Girl, looking at Leo,
saw that he too had changed altogether. Then they decided that it
would be well never to separate again, in case even more startling
changes should occur when the one was not at hand to help the other.
Leo kissed the Girl and all Earth felt that kiss, and the Girl sat
down on a hill and the water ran out of her eyes; and this had never
happened before in the memory of the Children of the Zodiac.

As they sat together a man and a woman came by, and the man said to
the woman:

"What is the use of wasting flowers on those dull Gods. They will
never understand, darling."

The Girl jumped up and put her arms around the woman, crying, "I
understand. Give me the flowers and I will give you a kiss."

Leo said beneath his breath to the man: "What was the new name that I
heard you give to your woman just now?"

The man answered, "Darling, of course."

"Why, of course," said Leo; "and if of course, what does it mean?"

"It means 'very dear,' and you have only to look at your wife to see
why."

"I see," said Leo; "you are quite right;" and when the man and the
woman had gone on he called the Girl "darling wife"; and the Girl wept
again from sheer happiness.

"I think," she said at last, wiping her eyes, "I think that we two
have neglected men and women too much. What did you do with the
sacrifices they made to you, Leo?"

"I let them burn," said Leo. "I could not eat them. What did you do
with the flowers?"

"I let them wither. I could not wear them, I had so many of my own,"
said the Girl, "and now I am sorry."

"There is nothing to grieve for," said Leo; "we belong to each other."

As they were talking the years of men's life slipped by unnoticed, and
presently the man and the woman came back, both white-headed, the man
carrying the woman.

"We have come to the end of things," said the man quietly. "This that
was my wife----"

"As I am Leo's wife," said the Girl quickly, her eyes staring.

"---- was my wife, has been killed by one of your Houses." The man set
down his burden, and laughed.

"Which House?" said Leo angrily, for he hated all the Houses equally.

"You are Gods, you should know," said the man. "We have lived together
and loved one another, and I have left a good farm for my son: what
have I to complain of except that I still live?"

As he was bending over his wife's body there came a whistling through
the air, and he started and tried to run away, crying, "It is the
arrow of the Archer. Let me live a little longer--only a little
longer!" The arrow struck him and he died. Leo looked at the Girl, and
she looked at him, and both were puzzled.

"He wished to die," said Leo. "He said that he wished to die, and
when Death came he tried to run away. He is a coward."

"No, he is not," said the Girl; "I think I feel what he felt. Leo, we
must learn more about this for their sakes."

"For their sakes," said Leo, very loudly.

"Because we are never going to die," said the Girl and Leo together,
still more loudly.

"Now sit you still here, darling wife," said Leo, "while I go to the
Houses whom we hate, and learn how to make these men and women live as
we do."

"And love as we do?" said the Girl.

"I do not think they need to be taught that," said Leo, and he strode
away very angry, with his lion-skin swinging from his shoulder, till
he came to the House where the Scorpion lives in the darkness,
brandishing his tail over his back.

"Why do you trouble the children of men?" said Leo, with his heart
between his teeth.

"Are you so sure that I trouble the children of men alone?" said the
Scorpion. "Speak to your brother the Bull, and see what he says."

"I come on behalf of the children of men," said Leo. "I have learned
to love as they do, and I wish them to live as I--as we--do."

"Your wish was granted long ago. Speak to the Bull. He is under my
special care," said the Scorpion.

Leo dropped back to the earth again, and saw the great star
Aldebaran, that is set in the forehead of the Bull, blazing very near
to the earth. When he came up to it he saw that his brother, the Bull,
yoked to a countryman's plough, was toiling through a wet rice-field
with his head bent down, and the sweat streaming from his flanks. The
countryman was urging him forward with a goad.

"Gore that insolent to death," cried Leo, "and for the sake of our
family honour come out of the mire."

"I cannot," said the Bull, "the Scorpion has told me that some day, of
which I cannot be sure, he will sting me where my neck is set on my
shoulders, and that I shall die bellowing."

"What has that to do with this disgraceful exhibition?" said Leo,
standing on the dyke that bounded the wet field.

"Everything. This man could not plough without my help. He thinks that
I am a stray bullock."

"But he is a mud-crusted cottar with matted hair," insisted Leo. "We
are not meant for his use."

"You may not be; I am. I cannot tell when the Scorpion may choose to
sting me to death--perhaps before I have turned this furrow." The Bull
flung his bulk into the yoke, and the plough tore through the wet
ground behind him, and the countryman goaded him till his flanks were
red.

"Do you like this?" Leo called down the dripping furrows.

"No," said the Bull over his shoulder as he lifted his hind legs from
the clinging mud and cleared his nostrils.

Leo left him scornfully and passed to another country, where he found
his brother the Ram in the centre of a crowd of country people who
were hanging wreaths round his neck and feeding him on freshly plucked
green corn.

"This is terrible," said Leo. "Break up that crowd and come away, my
brother. Their hands are spoiling your fleece."

"I cannot," said the Ram. "The Archer told me that on some day of
which I had no knowledge, he would send a dart through me, and that I
should die in very great pain."

"What has that to do with this?" said Leo, but he did not speak as
confidently as before.

"Everything in the world," said the Ram. "These people never saw a
perfect sheep before. They think that I am a stray, and they will
carry me from place to place as a model to all their flocks."

"But they are greasy shepherds, we are not intended to amuse them,"
said Leo.

"You may not be; I am," said the Ram. "I cannot tell when the Archer
may choose to send his arrow at me--perhaps before the people a mile
down the road have seen me." The Ram lowered his head that a yokel
newly arrived might throw a wreath of wild garlic-leaves over it, and
waited patiently while the farmers tugged his fleece.

"Do you like this?" cried Leo over the shoulders of the crowd.

"No," said the Ram, as the dust of the trampling feet made him sneeze,
and he snuffed at the fodder piled before him.

Leo turned back, intending to retrace his steps to the Houses, but as
he was passing down a street he saw two small children, very dusty,
rolling outside a cottage door, and playing with a cat. They were the
Twins.

"What are you doing here?" said Leo, indignant.

"Playing," said the Twins calmly.

"Cannot you play on the banks of the Milky Way?" said Leo.

"We did," said they, "till the Fishes swam down and told us that some
day they would come for us and not hurt us at all and carry us away.
So now we are playing at being babies down here. The people like it."

"Do you like it?" said Leo.

"No," said the Twins, "but there are no cats in the Milky Way," and
they pulled the cat's tail thoughtfully. A woman came out of the
doorway and stood behind them, and Leo saw in her face a look that he
had sometimes seen in the Girl's.

"She thinks that we are foundlings," said the Twins, and they trotted
indoors to the evening meal.

Then Leo hurried as swiftly as possible to all the Houses one after
another; for he could not understand the new trouble that had come to
his brethren. He spoke to the Archer, and the Archer assured him that
so far as that House was concerned Leo had nothing to fear. The
Waterman, the Fishes, and the Goat, gave the same answer. They knew
nothing of Leo, and cared less. They were the Houses, and they were
busied in killing men.

At last he came to that very dark House where Cancer the Crab lies so
still that you might think he was asleep if you did not see the
ceaseless play and winnowing motion of the feathery branches round his
mouth. That movement never ceases. It is like the eating of a
smothered fire into rotten timber in that it is noiseless and without
haste.

Leo stood in front of the Crab, and the half darkness allowed him a
glimpse of that vast blue-black back, and the motionless eyes. Now and
again he thought that he heard some one sobbing, but the noise was
very faint.

"Why do you trouble the children of men?" said Leo. There was no
answer, and against his will Leo cried, "Why do you trouble us? What
have we done that you should trouble us?"

This time Cancer replied, "What do I know or care? You were born into
my House, and at the appointed time I shall come for you."

"When is the appointed time?" said Leo, stepping back from the
restless movement of the mouth.

"When the full moon fails to call the full tide," said the Crab, "I
shall come for the one. When the other has taken the earth by the
shoulders, I shall take that other by the throat."

Leo lifted his hand to the apple of his throat, moistened his lips,
and recovering himself, said:

"Must I be afraid for two, then?"

"For two," said the Crab, "and as many more as may come after."

"My brother, the Bull, had a better fate," said Leo, sullenly. "He is
alone."

A hand covered his mouth before he could finish the sentence, and he
found the Girl in his arms. Woman-like, she had not stayed where Leo
had left her, but had hastened off at once to know the worst, and
passing all the other Houses, had come straight to Cancer.

"That is foolish," said the Girl whispering. "I have been waiting in
the dark for long and long before you came. Then I was afraid. But
now----" She put her head down on his shoulder and sighed a sigh of
contentment.

"I am afraid now," said Leo.

"That is on my account," said the Girl. "I know it is, because I am
afraid for your sake. Let us go, husband."

They went out of the darkness together and came back to the Earth,
Leo very silent, and the Girl striving to cheer him. "My brother's
fate is the better one," Leo would repeat from time to time, and at
last he said: "Let us each go our own way and live alone till we die.
We were born into the House of Cancer, and he will come for us."

"I know; I know. But where shall I go? And where will you sleep in the
evening? But let us try. I will stay here. Do you go on."

Leo took six steps forward very slowly, and three long steps backward
very quickly, and the third step set him again at the Girl's side.
This time it was she who was begging him to go away and leave her, and
he was forced to comfort her all through the night. That night decided
them both never to leave each other for an instant, and when they had
come to this decision they looked back at the darkness of the House of
Cancer high above their heads, and with their arms round each other's
necks laughed, "Ha! ha! ha!" exactly as the children of men laughed.
And that was the first time in their lives that they had ever laughed.

Next morning they returned to their proper home and saw the flowers
and the sacrifices that had been laid before their doors by the
villagers of the hills. Leo stamped down the fire with his heel and
the Girl flung the flower-wreaths out of sight, shuddering as she did
so. When the villagers re-returned, as of custom, to see what had
become of their offerings, they found neither roses nor burned flesh
on the altars, but only a man and a woman, with frightened white faces
sitting hand in hand on the altar-steps.

"Are you not Virgo?" said a woman to the Girl. "I sent you flowers
yesterday."

"Little sister," said the Girl, flushing to her forehead, "do not send
any more flowers, for I am only a woman like yourself." The man and
the woman went away doubtfully.

"Now, what shall we do?" said Leo.

"We must try to be cheerful, I think," said the Girl. "We know the
very worst that can happen to us, but we do not know the best that
love can bring us. We have a great deal to be glad of."

"The certainty of death?" said Leo.

"All the children of men have that certainty also; yet they laughed
long before we ever knew how to laugh. We must learn to laugh, Leo. We
have laughed once, already."

People who consider themselves Gods, as the Children of the Zodiac
did, find it hard to laugh, because the Immortals know nothing worth
laughter or tears. Leo rose up with a very heavy heart, and he and the
girl together went to and fro among men; their new fear of death
behind them. First they laughed at a naked baby attempting to thrust
its fat toes into its foolish pink mouth; next they laughed at a
kitten chasing her own tail; and then they laughed at a boy trying to
steal a kiss from a girl, and getting his ears boxed. Lastly, they
laughed because the wind blew in their faces as they ran down a
hill-side together, and broke panting and breathless into a knot of
villagers at the bottom. The villagers laughed, too, at their flying
clothes and wind-reddened faces; and in the evening gave them food and
invited them to a dance on the grass, where everybody laughed through
the mere joy of being able to dance.

That night Leo jumped up from the Girl's side crying: "Every one of
those people we met just now will die----"

"So shall we," said the Girl sleepily. "Lie down again, dear." Leo
could not see that her face was wet with tears.

But Leo was up and far across the fields, driven forward by the fear
of death for himself and for the Girl, who was dearer to him than
himself. Presently he came across the Bull drowsing in the moonlight
after a hard day's work, and looking through half-shut eyes at the
beautiful straight furrows that he