Preview

I, John Carter, had laid my head down in one of the more comfortable beds of the First Born city we had taken to sack, but sleep was eluding me. For months now, my love, Dejah Thoris had been separated from me. Issus, false god of the Black Martians, had condemned her with two others to a room in the Temple of the Sun, a heinous prison which constantly rotated so that only one cell was open on any given day. There was a cell for each day of the Martian year, and no cell would be exposed once lost until its day had come again. Thus did six hundred and eighty-seven merciless Barsoomian days separate me from my love.

But yet more distance separated our souls. Fair Thuvia, Princess of Ptarth, had been enslaved by the First Born for many a year. I had freed her in my quest for Dejah Thoris, and in doing so inadvertently won her heart, though mine belonged only and ever to my bride. Yet, in decency and delicacy, there were none who I could ask to accompany Dejah in her time of sorrow, even though there be none I would wish such a cruel isolation upon.

Were it only her with my wife, I could draw succor from their companionship, for nowhere on Mars are there two more alike in virtue and gentleness. Yet there was also Phaidor, daughter of the cur Matai Shang, leader of the White Martians. And from that Thern among Therns, I feared the blood ran true, for though she had evinced horror at her people’s cruelty and love for me to rival my own for the beautiful Dejah Thoris, in the end, jealousy had overwhelmed her. Seeing the love between myself and Dejah, she had gone mad with rage, and sought to plunge her dagger into Dejah’s heart even as I watched in the last moments before that day’s prison was sealed from me by a wall of time. Only Thuvia, who loved me without selfishness or meanness, had been there to spare the lovely Dejah Thoris from her assassin. But the outcome I had not seen.

And so, perhaps the vale of life and death itself further separated me from the Princess of Helium, and a year’s hateful wait would only bring me the body of my beloved, not the soul I had grown to cherish.

I told myself that a night’s sleep would bring me that much closer to our reunion and give me all the more energy to find a way to end her imprisonment before the allotted time, but I could not end my body’s tension. I felt as restless as any man on either of the two worlds I had trod.

And yet, slowly, lying in my careful stillness as I attempted to compel sleep, I found myself growing distinct from my body. I did not feel tired, nor even comfortable, but as the feeling progress and strengthened, I found myself stepping free of my material body.

I was reminded of how I had similarly shaken off my terrestrial body long ago on Jasoom, called Earth by its own inhabitants, and for a moment, I feared being drawn back to human civilization, as had happened when I’d endeavored to save the life-sustaining atmosphere factory of Mars. But, thankfully, I did not feel compelled or drawn to Earth as I had in my past celestial travels. In this odd projection, I was free and unencumbered.

I knew what I must do. As light as a leaf upon the breeze, I focused all my mind’s energies on the Temple of the Sun, and so I was drawn there, through walls and over vast distances, until I was in the central court. It had taken but a moment! In my spiritual essence, I will perceived the temple as it was in waking—a golden spire wrought in the most fantastic designs, set with an array of gemstones both known to Earth and exclusive to Mars, which in their millions gave the Temple of the Sun a beauty to match the horror of its interior and function.

I sank into the transparent marble which paved the ground, and blindly swam through that subterranean rock until I came upon a room. Alas, it was empty, not that of Dejah Thoris. But I persisted, and passing through the wall, soon I was able to find the next room in the sequence. Persisting in this manner, I searched until I had found that august space and lo, I saw my queen, the loveliness of Dejah Thoris herself!

What’s more, I found that with my mental abilities, I could peer into the thoughts of Dejah. So I found that Thuvia had been successful in saving her life from the envies of Phaidor. I saw the many hours of tense conversation in which the two Red Martians had finally convinced the White that it would be meaningless to kill Dejah, for that would only make it impossible for me to choose Phaidor over Dejah, as she truly wished.

And so, an uneasy peace had formed between the three women. Fortified with the food that my allies had been able to throw into their prison to last them the year, they now waited for their release. And already, my determination to save them was redoubled.

But I also saw that Dejah was sharing a bed with Thuvia. I would dismiss that as being the sisterly affection that I had known would spring up between two such good hearts, but Phaidor too slumbered beside them. Anxious to know how this strange arrangement had come about, I probed into their minds, drawing the experience of all three together to relive it as an artist might use different brushes to paint a single picture. In doing so, I could see the past as clearly as I see my pen and paper before me now!

I will tell you the truth of what I saw, but first, I must describe the three women so that my relay might be perceived accurately by the reader.

Dejah Thoris, of course, you well know. Her beauty has captivated both my worlds, in her personage on Barsoom and even in my inelegant prose on Earth. Many have been the artists who sought to imagine her likeness, but no scribble or mess of paint can replicate the Princess of Helium. She is red-skinned, as all her people are, the tint of her much like a fair-skinned woman of Earth might look were the setting desert sun to shine upon her in all its burning fury. She wore almost nothing, as nothing could improve upon the perfection of her buxom curves or her tall and athletic form. And so, I can only assume the few baubles she wears are there to distract from her beauty rather than enhance it. There are ornaments to cover her nipples on her otherwise unencumbered breasts, sandals whose straps rise to her knees, rings and bracelets that ensconce her arms from fingertip to shoulder, her crown and a few bands in her voluminous hair, a neckpiece, and a loincloth that is so thin as to be pointless in terms of modesty. But on Barsoom, as on Earth, I do not pretend to find function in the wearings of women.

Thuvia too is a Red Martian, but of a paler strip than her Helium brethren. Her people tattoo their skin palely in wide swaths, which to my earthly eye makes her look like a fair-skinned woman with red tattoos. She is younger than Dejah Thoris, who was four hundred of my years when I first met her, but no less a woman for it. Merely inexperienced where Dejah has the confidence and fullest personality of any Southern belle. And, though I hesitate to describe it as ‘lacking,’ Thuvia does not have Dejah’s voluptuousness in overflowing bust and wide hips, though that is not to diminish her own considerable beauty in the least. Rather, Thuvia’s body is sylphlike, with the kind of delicacy that calls upon the height of a man’s gentleness, and correspondingly the desire to exercise that gentleness with her. Her hair was also red, the differing shade to that of her skin giving a hint of intrigue to her very obvious beauty. As I have described Dejah’s dress, so too does Thuvia clothe (or not clothe) herself, with allowance for minor variance in custom between the peoples of Helium and Ptarth. 

Of Phaidor, I would be remiss not to be truthful. For all I have described her impetuousness and the rage of which she is capable, I must equally be forthcoming of her great beauty. A White Martian, she is pale in the extreme—even her hair is the whitest stripe of blonde imaginable. She is tall and lean, with an imperious look near ever-present on a face I must possess is perfectly lovely. Frequently her narrow face, slitted eyes, and Roman nose would look with disdain on one of the many things which, in the time I knew her, failed to meet her imperials standards. It is a shame that she was so generous in her scorn, for were she not so aloof—if she possessed more of the good heart and cheer with which my own Dejah Thoris has cultivated in herself—she would be a beauty for the ages. Yet, I must allow there is an appeal to her unkind and intensive mien, though it hardly is a wifely demeanor. I can only ascribe to her the beauty with which men might regard a polar landscape, while still knowing it unfit for habitation. A collar ran around her neck with an expanse of silk falling from it; this covered her breasts, pulled taut by a cord that attached to either side of the ‘handkerchief’ and went around her back. Another layer of silk was affixed over her pubis, held in place with cords that ran around her hips.

And now, removing myself from the narration as so often my dear nephew Edgar has, I will try to relate this strange quirk of Barsoomian custom.