Till We Have Faces: Part 1: Chapter 21 Summary & Analysis

The Queen first goes to Phars. Because they harvest later there, the party sees everything happening that just finished in Glome. They stay in Trunia’s palace and the Queen notices that Redival (now his wife) has become fat and ugly. Trunia ignores Redival but gets on well with the Queen. His second son, Daaran, will inherit the throne when the Queen dies. She knows she could love him, but she refuses to make herself vulnerable in that way again.

When they leave Phars, they pass through mountains to enter Essur. The Queen and her companions become good friends and enjoy their travels together through the beautiful land. They spend three nights with the King of Essur. Both he and his wife act deferentially to the Queen.

The Queen planned to go home after this, but she hears of a hot spring nearby and decides to visit. It’s an autumn day, and the Queen promises herself that she’ll start resting more when she returns home, and that she will let Bardia rest too. They’ve done enough. The party finds a good camping place near the spring. Sitting alone in the forest, the Queen hears a temple bell. She walks towards the sound and finds a small white temple with Greek columns.

Inside the temple, it’s very quiet, cool, and clean. The altar holds a wooden statue of a woman with a black veil over her face. The Queen likes this much better than the house of Ungit. A priest appears and asks for an offering, which the Queen gives, inquiring as to the name of the goddess. The priest says she is called Istra. This is a common name, so the Queen doesn’t react. The priest of Istra explains that she is a young goddess who used to be a mortal. The Queen pays him to tell the story.

The priest of Istra tells the story as though he has often repeated it, and the Queen realizes that he’s telling the story of her own life and Psyche’s. A goddess was jealous of Istra’s beauty and forced her to be sacrificed on a mountain, and the goddess’s son took her to his palace, where he came to her only in darkness. The priest claims that the god couldn’t show his face because his mother would be angry with him for marrying her enemy, which the Queen thinks is silly.

The Queen is glad she’s only hearing this story now, since she’s not as disturbed by it as she would have been in the past. She asks how the priest of Istra came to hear this story, but he’s confused and says only that it’s the sacred story of the goddess. As he continues telling it, the Queen suddenly becomes angry. He has the story wrong, she says, when he claims that both of the sisters went to visit Istra and saw her palace.

The Queen thinks the gods have mangled her story to spite her. There’s no other way a human would have learned of the palace’s existence. The gods have revealed part of the truth to a mortal, but have hidden the most important part—the fact that they made Orual guess whether or not the palace was real. In the world of the story, the gods present themselves clearly instead of asking humans to figure out what’s true. In that kind of world, Orual would not have blundered. It seems entirely unfair to tell the story as though Orual could see the palace. But she knows that the story will be spread in this form, which makes her doubt the truth of other sacred stories.

The Queen asks the priest of Istra why the sisters wanted to get Istra away from the god if they had seen the palace. He replies that they were jealous of all that she had. In that moment, the Queen decides to write this complaint against the gods. For years she has kept away from the gods, almost believing they didn’t exist. But now she knows the gods are still against her, and they know all and have unending strength. She must write the truth and make a case against them.

The Queen is disgusted that the gods would use such a debasing lie by saying that she was jealous of Psyche. The priest speaks of Istra weeping, and the Queen can almost hear it. He says that Istra wanders and the goddess forces her to complete many seemingly impossible tasks; when she finishes them all, the goddess will let her go, and Istra will become a goddess herself. This corresponds in the temple with the removal of the black veil from her statue.

The Queen asks when Istra’s veil will be removed. The priest of Istra says they do it every spring, but the Queen wants to know whether Istra has become a goddess yet in real life. The priest doesn’t understand, and tells of the rituals for different seasons. The Queen suggests that the sisters in the story might tell a different tale, and he says that jealous people always do.

The Queen leaves the temple to find that the sun has set. She hides her emotions from her companions. The next day, though, she realizes that she can’t be happy until she writes her case against the gods. As they travel back to Glome, she hardly notices what goes on around them. Instead, she remembers every detail of her own story, freeing “Orual” from that place deep inside her. She feels sorrow, but always more indignation. She must write quickly, she thinks, before the gods can stop her. She urges her companions to ride farther each day, and wakes them early in the mornings. She becomes silent, and they wonder what’s wrong.

When the Queen gets home, few issues have arisen in her absence. She hears that Bardia is ill in bed, but Arnom tells her it isn’t serious. She doesn’t fear for him because she knows how his wife fusses over him.

Finally, she writes her book. Now she asks the reader to judge between her and the gods. They gave her only Psyche to love, and then took her away. Furthermore, they forced her to be responsible for Psyche’s fate and wouldn’t reveal what her true situation was. When Orual guessed wrong, the gods punished her through Psyche. On top of this, they started a story in which Orual purposefully hurt Psyche out of jealousy.

The Queen thinks the gods are unfair. They won’t leave humans alone, but they also won’t guide humans plainly. Instead, they give hints that people can never see clearly or understand, which is torture. Thus, gods harm humans more than anything else. The Queen welcomes their response to her accusation, but she thinks they might just punish her. However, if they do this, everyone will know they have no answer.