Experimental Film

Yet the boy did not, shaking his head and bowing still further. “No thank you, milady, for I cannot turn myself from my work, and am not fit to look upon such sights—for how is it that I, a poor boy, could count myself the equal of such a personage?”

“You think me fair?”

“I know it, milady.”

“But only by report. Turn now, and see.”

How he yearned to do so! Yet the heat of her was so dreadful, parching his mouth and setting his skin to sizzle, and the light she gave as bright as though the sun itself sat on her shoulder, an ornament for her long white hair—hair which was neither plaited nor tied, but dropped straight down to her feet, so bare and dainty, whose nails were great claws made from brass.

“I cannot, milady,” he answered. And he closed his eyes in fear, though he ploughed on, that he might not have to see the terrible scissors descend.

All at once, however, Lady Midday withdrew her attentions, and her voice became gentle, though no more like a human being’s.

“Because you have been diligent and polite,” she told the boy, “and answered me with the courtesy due my station, I will give you for a gift that so long as the sun’s eye falls upon it, your field will flourish. And I will not bother you again.”

And indeed, after that, she never did.

Further on, a grown man ploughed his field, cursing his lot and the sun’s pitiless stare. He beat his mule hard enough to draw blood, complaining all the while, instead of giving his task the attention it merited. And since the noon hour was not yet done, the sun at its still point above him, there came by Lady Midday in all her awful finery, to ask—

“It is a hard day for ploughing, and you without even a cup of water. Do you not wish for rest and comfort?”

The man raised his eyes from his task and looked at her straight on, haughtily. “What a stupid question!” he replied. “It is hotter than the hobs of Hell out here. Is that water in your hand?”

“It is. May I take it you find me pleasant to look on?”

“Indeed, you are a fine, tall baggage. But how foolish you must be! Can you not see I am dying of thirst? Give me that cup, and quickly!”

“I think not,” Lady Midday told him. “Yet because you have not answered me with the courtesy due my station, I will give you for gift something very different.”

With that, she attained her full height, blazing so bright that the man went blind. Which is why he did not see to duck when she brought her scissors down with a great snip, cutting his head clean off.

“Now go home, if you can,” she said, “and have your wife sew this back on for you. Then wait until your sight returns and do your work with more diligence from now on, living the rest of your life in fear, for there are those in this world far less merciful than I.”

The man made his way home in terror, by long degrees—stumbling wild with his head hugged tight in his arms, unable to see where his feet were taking him—and never more dared to step outside until the sun had fallen. But for the rest of his life he felt Lady Midday’s eye upon him, always fearing to look too far up or too far down to avoid it, lest the stitches rip and his head fall clean off once more.

I’m supposed to be objective here, right? One assumes. That’s certainly what they try to drill into you at journalism school. But the thing is, it’s never made all too much sense to me, this idea of trying to divorce yourself from any hint of personal reaction—keeping stringently to the facts, ma’am, just the facts. Which may be why I drifted into being a film critic in the first place; why shackle yourself to fact checking, on exactly how close to the truth you can parse things, when you can just get paid for voicing your opinion instead?

One way or the other, I knew I’d read “Lady Midday” before. Had to have. Why else would I have kept the book? How else could I have connected the dots? But—

When I think about the stories that have stayed with me throughout my mythocentric life, which shaped me as both consumer and creator, this just wasn’t one that floated automatically to the top. It seemed familiar, yes, but only in a pattern-recognition sort of way—i.e. I recognized sections of it, echoes of other folk-tales and fables, other hard-judging, unreliable supernatural mentor-archetypes: Mother Holle and Mrs. Gertrude, from Germany; Baba Yaga and King Frost, from Russia. The latter, very much.

Are you warm, maiden? Are you warm, or are you cold?

Yes, thank you, King Frost; I am warm, thanks to your munificence. I am not cold, not at all.

Ah, but you shiver. Your lips and hands turn blue. Are you sure you are not cold in truth, pretty maiden?

No, thank you, great king.

The maiden suffers politely, beautifully, deferentially, so King Frost—impressed by her polite lies—gives her a reward. Her shrewish stepsister complains, like any normal human being, and is frozen alive. The young boy gives Lady Midday her proper respect, survives, and prospers. The older farmer mouths off and gets his just desserts.

A familiar idea, except for the trappings. And there was something about it which reminded me of The Golden Bough, James George Frazer’s compendium of pagan lore and tradition. The idea that most fairy godparents were really former gods, small-d deities of place locked to various community-sustaining natural phenomena—the earth, the harvest, the wind that shakes the barley—run through a Christian repurposing machine, reduced to creatures whose malice can be averted through basic cleverness, cold iron, and rote Church cant. For I said my prayers all out in a rush, Henry Treece concludes, at the end of his poem “The Magic Wood,” and found myself safe on my father’s land.

All I can tell you, in the end, is this: the more I studied “Lady Midday” line by line, seeing almost every phrase of it reflected it my memories of Wrob Barney’s Untitled 13, the extent to which it already disturbed me began, at length, to disturb me even more.

Still does.

So: riddle solved, sort of. But what to do with this information?