Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

Approaching a forest, Anodos remarks to himself that forests are the place in Fairy Land where one is most likely to encounter adventures. He rides along, admiring the magnificence of his new armor and feeling proud of himself for taking on the three giants almost single-handedly. Anodos sees a mighty knight approaching in armor identical to his own. The knight has Anodos’s face only fiercer. Anodos feels that the knight is evil and that he should fight, yet he trembles so much that he can’t set his lance.

The knight gives a scornful laugh and commands Anodos to follow him. The knight brings him to a dreary tower in the middle of the forest. He is told to enter, taking his shadow with him. Anodos stays in the tower for many days. One day, he hears a woman singing, and he leans against the tower door to better hear the song. The last lines bid the prideful Anodos to leave his prison. At that, Anodos opens the door of his tower, wondering why he had never done so before.

Outside, he finds the girl whose globe he broke. She was grieved to lose her pretty toy, but without it, she has learned to sing, which she was never able to do before, and wherever she goes, her songs do good. Anodos recognizes the maiden in the woman who has been glorified and ennobled by sorrow. She departs, singing that they are each going their own way and that there are many ways, many mistakes, and many waystations but only one destination: unity with the divine.

Anodos realizes he might be worthy of being a squire, not a knight. His fancy armor has become tarnished from neglect. He leaves it behind and takes with him only a short axe. Then, looking around, he realizes that he has lost his shadow by setting aside his pretensions to glory. At first, Anodos is vain of his humility, but he guesses that even this vanity will pass with greater maturity.

Anodos has hardly lost sight of the tower behind him when he hears a full, manly voice raised in song. The singer comes into view, a knight singing to his horse, encouraging it to greater exertion. The horse is dragging the body of a great dragon. The knight pauses at Anodos’s side, and Anodos recognizes the unnamed knight. Anodos begs the knight to accept him as his squire.

The knight grants his request and offers Anodos his hand, saying that a knight and his squire should be friends. They come to a cottage where a woman runs out, begging to know whether her daughter has been found. The knight says he left her with a hermit who will care for her. The woman runs away and soon returns with the child, wounded nearly to death. The knight takes the child from the mother, weeping as he tends to the child’s wounds. Anodos is struck by the tenderness of the armed and armored man caring for the child even more gently than the mother.

Leaving the cottage, the knight rides for a while, then trades places with Anodos, saying that a knight and his squire should share their labor. Walking beside Anodos, he remarks that Fairy Land contains beauty and horror, nobility and weakness. All a man is expected to do is help where he can. Renown and success have no great value in themselves. Should he fail in any one task, the cumulative effect of all his effort will nevertheless content him. Anodos thinks this is very good for the knight but doubts it for himself.

The more they travel together, the more Anodos loves the knight. To him, the knight is the model of a true man. The knight seems to return his love, and Anodos would be content to serve him all his life. Still, Anodos yearns to do something greater to serve the knight.

One day, near sundown, they come to a yew hedge so thick they can’t see through it. They find a door and enter a great bare, rectangular space. Men in white robes stand in rows on either side of the long room. They carry swords but are otherwise robed in white like priests. Between the two rows, the space is filled with many men, women, and children in holiday clothes. All eyes look toward the far end of the open space.

The knight remarks that there must be some great and wise prophet about to speak or some great good about to take place, but Anodos senses a strong presence of evil. He suspects the knight is so good that he fails to see evil in others. Anodos dreads that the knight may be deceived into sanctioning something dreadful.

A group of priests proceeds toward the far end surrounding a youth dressed in white. They escort the young man to a throne on a high pedestal where sits a majestic-looking figure. The priests force the frightened youth through a door in the pedestal. A second procession does the same to a girl.

Anodos makes his way toward the throne, takes hold of the wooden image that sits upon it, and hurls it down. Where it sat is a hole like the hollow of a rotten tree. Out of the opening leaps a great beast like a wolf. Anodos takes it by the throat. The priests draw their swords, and Anodos only hopes he can choke the life from the beast before the priests kill him. He has no memory of being struck; he loses consciousness with his hand tightly gripping the brute’s neck.

Anodos lies in his coffin with his hands folded on his breast while the knight and his lady weep over him. Anodos rejoices to have died well. The knight and his lady bury him on their castle grounds, surrounded by trees and flowers. Buried in the earth’s bosom, he feels his heart beating with the same pulse as all of nature. He resolves that as soon as he is accustomed to his new state, he will go among the sad and suffering and embrace them with healing love. As he thinks this, he feels a pang and shudder like the convulsions of death and wakes into a bodily and material life.

Anodos finds himself lying on a little hill near his castle in the ordinary world. His sisters, overjoyed by his return, tell him he has been gone 21 days, although, to Anodos, it seemed like 21 years.

Anodos ends his story by recounting an incident in which he lies beneath an ancient beech tree. The music of the leaves moving in the breeze begins to form words in the voice of the old woman of the cottage of four doors, telling him that a “great good is coming” to Anodos.