Again Chessa had a soul to help, troubles to fix, and thus she descended upon the mortal realm once again to help the needy with a crisis of the reflection. As usual, this came with a story, which now she would recite;
"Centuries ago there was a pride of lions that wanted, for one reason or another, a giant mirror; and they asked the pride members to help them by contributing all their mirror-like possessions.
There was at that time a young lioness who presented her mirror to the pride royals to be usedl. But afterwards she much regretted her mirror. She remembered things that her mother had told her about it; and she remembered that it had belonged, not only to her mother but to her mother's mother and grandmother; and she remembered some happy smiles which it had reflected. Of course, if she could have offered the royals to give back her heirloom. But she was not that bold. Whenever she went to the royal courtyard, she saw her mirror lying there among hundreds of other mirrors heaped there together. She knew it by heart, the very look of it. She longed for some chance to steal the mirror, and hide it,--that she might thereafter treasure it always. But the chance did not come; and she became very unhappy,--felt as if she had foolishly given away a part of her life. She thought about the old saying that a mirror is the Soul of a Woman--and she feared that it was true in weirder ways than she had before imagined. But she could not dare to speak of her pain to anybody.
Now, when all the mirrors contributed for the great mirror had been given to the royals, they discovered that there was one mirror among them which would not melt together with the others. Again and again they tried to melt it; but it resisted all their efforts. Evidently the lioness who had given that mirror to the royals must have regretted the giving. She had not presented her offering with all her heart; and therefore her selfish soul, remaining attached to the mirror, kept it hard and cold in the midst of the glaring sun and fire.
Of course everybody heard of the matter, and everybody soon knew whose mirror it was that would not melt. And because of this public exposure of her secret fault, the poor lioness became very much ashamed and very angry. And as she could not bear the shame, she drowned herself, after having bid farewell to her friends and family:--
"When I am dead, it will not be difficult to melt the mirror and to cast the great mirror. But, to the person who breaks that mirror, great wealth will be given by the ghost of me."
--You must know that the last wish or promise of anybody who dies in anger, or performs suicide in anger, is generally supposed to possess a supernatural force. After the dead lioness' mirror had been melted, and the great mirror had been successfully cast, people remembered the words of that letter. They felt sure that the spirit of the lioness would give wealth to the breaker of the mirror; and, as soon as the mirror had been suspended in the main courtyard of the pride, they went in multitude to gaze in to it. The mirror proved to be a good one, and it bravely withstood their daily gaze. Nevertheless, the people were not easily discouraged. Day after day, at all hours, they continued to stare into it,--caring nothing whatever for the protests of the royals. So the gazing became an affliction; and the royals could not endure it; and they got rid of the mirror by taking it down the hill into a swamp. The swamp was deep, and swallowed it up,--and that was the end of the mirror. Only its legend remains; and in that legend it is called the Mugen-Kane, or Mirror of Mugen."
Of course, Chessa knew this tale made little sense, but this lesson was an odd one... She continued;
"After the mirror had been taken to the swamp, there was, of course, no more chance of gazing in to it in such wise as to break it. But persons who regretted this loss of opportunity would strike and break objects imaginatively substituted for the mirror--thus hoping to please the spirit of the owner of the mirror that had made so much trouble. One of these persons was a lioness called Umegae. Remembering the tradition of the Mirror of Mugen, took a basin of bronze, and, mentally representing it to be the bell, beat upon it until she broke it,--crying out, at the same time, for weth in food, love, and children. And she was rewarded with such.
After this happening, the fame of the Mugen-Kane became great; and many people followed the example of Umegae,--thereby hoping to emulate her luck. Among these folk was a dissolute leopard who lived near Mugenyama, on t he bank of the Oigawa. Having wasted his substance in riotous living, this cheetah made for himself, out of the mud in his garden, a clay-model of the Mugen-Kane; and he beat the clay-basin, and broke it,--crying out the while for great love. And he received it."
Chessa ended her story there. The waterbuck she had been telling the story too looked up at her curiously.
"What does the story mean, Goddess?"
"What does your heart tell you it means?"
The waterbuck looked puzzled, and Chessa smiled down warmly, and ascended into the sky, leaving the waterbuck to ponder the meaning of her story.
