Till We Have Faces

Orual tells us that we are coming to the part of the story on which her charge against the gods chiefly rests, so she will try to write as truthfully as she can.

After Psyche’s startling announcement, the two sisters stand apart from each other like enemies, fixed “in a terrible watchfulness” (55). Orual is full of misgiving and tries to get Psyche to leave the valley. Psyche is convinced that Orual can see the palace, which enrages her sister. Orual shakes Psyche but she pushes her off with surprising strength; Orual had always been the strong one.

Eventually, Psyche realizes that Orual is telling the truth and that for her, the palace “is not there at all” (55). She is full of remorse, and Orual is full of grief. Psyche’s belief almost convinces her to believe too, but she is overwhelmed by horror. She and Psyche live in different worlds now; the gods have stolen her sister from her again. The sisters embrace, and Psyche recalls her husband’s warning that this meeting might not turn out as she’d hoped. For Orual, Psyche’s husband is now her enemy, and Orual demands to see him. However, Psyche reveals that even she hasn’t seen him; he only comes to her in darkness and has forbidden her to look upon him. This horrifies Orual, and she asks how Psyche can know who or what visits her in the darkness. But Psyche insists she knows her husband, and Orual is disgusted by the flush of pleasure that passes across Psyche’s face.

Orual begs Psyche to return with her to the world of mortals, but she refuses, saying that as a wife, she will obey her husband, not her sister: Orual can visit her in the valley. 

Orual learns then how “one can hate those one loves” (59). She tries to drag Psyche away, but Psyche is too strong now. Psyche tells Orual she has to leave before sunset but begs her to come again soon. Orual says that she will, if the King allows it and Psyche tells her that the King won’t trouble her in the coming weeks. Orual crosses the river and calls for Bardia. 

Orual rejoins Bardia, and they make camp for the night. For warmth, they sleep back to back, and Orual tells us that because of her ugliness, men, unless they hate her, “soon give up thinking of [her] as a woman at all” (62).

Orual can’t sleep, and she walks to the river for some water. Looking across it, she sees a palace, just as Psyche had described. Orual wants to cross the river and beg forgiveness, but, before she can, the palace vanishes. She asks her reader—who she imagines to be Greek—to judge whether that moment “when I either saw or thought I saw the House—does it tell against the gods or against me?” (63). However, whether she saw something or not, she insists that “there’s divine mockery in it” (63).

Bardia is awake when Orual returns to camp, but she doesn’t tell him what she saw. In fact, until writing it down for this book, she has never revealed what she saw that night to anyone. On the way home, however, Orual decides to tell Bardia about what passed between her and Psyche and asks him whether he thinks Psyche is mad. Bardia is reluctant to answer her though; he doesn’t like to meddle with the gods. Orual persists, however, and asks him what kind of husband hides his face from his wife. Bardia replies: “I should say it was one whose face and form would give her little pleasure if she saw them” (64), such as the Brute. Orual thinks he is probably right and feels drained by the whole experience.

For the rest of the journey home, Orual ponders what she should do. She considers killing Psyche, to save her from the Brute but, her love for her sister makes her reluctant to do so. Furthermore, she acknowledges to herself that Psyche is happy, “ten times happier, there in the Mountain, than you could ever make her” (65). In the end though, Orual cannot leave her sister be; she is determined that “Psyche should not…make sport for a demon” (65).

When they reach the edge of the city, Bardia tells her to slip off the horse and make her way into the palace in secret, so the King won’t discover where they have been.