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Chapter 16 - Leehallfae
At midnight, when Teargeld was in the south, throwing his shadow
straight toward the sea and making everything nearly as bright as
day, he saw a great tree floating in the water, not far out. It was
thirty feet out of the water, upright, and alive, and its roots must
have been enormously deep and wide. It was drifting along the coast,
through the heavy seas. Maskull eyed it incuriously for a few
minutes. Then it dawned on him that it might be a good thing to
investigate its nature. Without stopping to weigh the danger, he
immediately swam out, caught hold of the lowest branch, and swung
himself up.
He looked aloft and saw that the main stem was thick to the very top,
terminating in a knob that somewhat resembled a human head. He made
his way toward this knob, through the multitude of boughs, which were
covered with tough, slippery, marine leaves, like seaweed. Arriving
at the crown, he found that it actually was a sort of head. for there
were membranes like rudimentary eyes all the way around it, denoting
some form of low intelligence.
At that moment the tree touched bottom, though some way from the
shore, and began to bump heavily. To steady himself, Maskull put his
hand out, and, in doing so, accidentally covered some of the
membranes. The tree sheered off the land, as if by an act of will.
When it was steady again, Maskull removed his hand; they at once
drifted back to shore. He thought a bit, and then started
experimenting with the eyelike membranes. It was as he had guessed -
these eyes were stimulated by the light of the moon, and whichever
way the light came from, the tree would travel.
A rather defiant smile crossed Maskull's face as it struck him that
it might be possible to navigate this huge plant-animal as far as
Matterplay. He lost no time in putting the conception into
execution. Tearing off some of the long, tough leaves, he bound up
all the membranes except the ones that faced the north. The tree
instantly left the island, and definitely put out to sea. It
travelled due north. It was not moving at more than a mile an hour,
however, while Matterplay was possibly forty miles distant.
The great spout waves fell against the trunk with mighty thuds; the
breaking seas hissed through the lower branches - Maskull rested high
and dry, but was more than a little apprehensive about their slow
rate of progress. Presently he sighted a current racing along toward
the north-west, and that put another idea into his head. He began to
juggle with the membranes again, and before long had succeeded in
piloting his tree into the fast-running stream. As soon as they were
fairly in its rapids. he blinded the crown entirely, and
thenceforward the current acted in the double capacity of road and
steed.
Maskull made himself secure among the branches and slept for the
remainder of the night.
When his eyes opened again, the island was out of sight. Teargeld
was setting in the western sea. The sky in the east was bright with
the colours of the approaching day. The air was cool and fresh; the
light over the sea was beautiful, gleaming, and mysterious. Land -
probably Matterplay - lay ahead, a long, dark line of low cliffs,
perhaps a mile away. The current no longer ran toward the shore, but
began to skirt the coast without drawing any closer to it. As soon
as Maskull realised the fact, he manoeuvred the tree out of its
channel and started drifting it inshore. The eastern sky blazed up
suddenly with violent dyes, and the outer rim of Branchspell lifted
itself above the sea. The moon had already sunk.
The shore loomed nearer and nearer. In physical character it was
like Swaylone's Island - the same wide sands, small cliffs, and
rounded, insignificant hills inland, without vegetation. In the
early-morning sunlight, however, it looked romantic. Maskull,
hollow-eyed and morose, cared nothing for all that, but the moment
the tree grounded, clambered swiftly down through the branches and
dropped into the sea. By the time he had swam ashore, the white,
stupendous sun was high above the horizon.
He walked along the sands toward the east for a considerable
distance, without having any special intention in his mind. He
thought he would go on until he came to some creek or valley, and
then turn up it. The sun's rays were cheering, and began to relieve
him of his oppressive night weight. After strolling along the beach
for about a mile, he was stopped by a broad stream that flowed into
the sea out of a kind of natural gateway in the line of cliffs. Its
water was of a beautiful, limpid green, all filled with bubbles. So
ice-cold, aerated, and enticing did it look that he flung himself
face downward on the ground and took a prolonged draught. When he
got up again his eyes started to play pranks - they became
alternately blurted and clear.... It may have been pure imagination,
but he fancied that Digrung was moving inside him.
He followed the bank of the stream through the gap in the cliffs, and
then for the first time saw the real Matterplay. A valley appeared,
like a jewel enveloped by naked rock. All the hill country was bare
and lifeless, but this valley lying in the heart of it was extremely
fertile; he had never seen such fertility. It wound up among the
hills, and all that he was looking at was its broad lower end. The
floor of the valley was about half a mile wide; the stream that ran
down its middle was nearly a hundred feet across, but was exceedingly
shallow - in most places not more than a few inches deep. The sides
of the valley were about seventy feet high, but very sloping; they
were clothed from top to bottom with little, bright-leaved trees -
not of varied tints of one colour, like Earth trees, but of widely
diverse colours, most of which were brilliant and positive.
The floor itself was like a magician's garden. Densely interwoven
trees, shrubs, and parasitical climbers fought everywhere for
possession of it. The forms were strange and grotesque, and each one
seemed different; the colours of leaf, flower, sexual organs, and
stem were equally peculiar - all the different combinations of the
five primary colours of Tormance seemed to be represented, and the
result, for Maskull was a sort of eye chaos. So rank was the
vegetation that he could not fight his way through it; he was obliged
to take to the riverbed. The contact of the water created an odd
tingling sensation throughout his body, like a mild electric shock.
There were no birds, but a few extraordinary - looking winged
reptiles of small size kept crossing the valley from hill to hill.
Swarms of flying insects clustered around him, threatening mischief,
but in the end it turned out that his blood was disagreeable to them.
for he was not bitten once. Repulsive crawling creatures resembling
centipedes, scorpions, snakes, and so forth were in myriads on the
banks of the stream, but they also made no attempt to use their
weapons on his bare legs and feet, as he passed through them into the
water.... Presently however, he was confronted in midstream by a
hideous monster, of the size of a pony, but resembling in shape - if
it resembled anything - a sea crustacean; and then he came to a halt.
They stared at one another, the beast with wicked eyes, Maskull with
cool and wary ones. While he was staring, a singular thing happened
to him.
His eyes blurred again. But when in a minute or two this blurring
passed away and he saw clearly once more, his vision had changed in
character. He was looking right through the animal's body and could
distinguish all its interior parts. The outer crust, however, and
all the hard tissues were misty and semi-transparent; through them a
luminous network of blood-red veins and arteries stood out in
startling distinctness. The hard parts faded away to nothingness,
and the blood system alone was left. Not even the fleshy ducts
remained. The naked blood alone was visible, flowing this way and
that like a fiery, liquid skeleton, in the shape of the monster.
Then this blood began to change too. Instead of a continuous liquid
stream, Maskull perceived that it was composed of a million
individual points. The red colour had been an illusion caused by the
rapid motion of the points; he now saw clearly that they resembled
minute suns in their scintillating brightness. They seemed like a
double drift of stars, streaming through space. One drift was
travelling toward a fixed point in the centre, while the other was
moving away from it. He recognised the former as the veins of the
beast, the latter as the arteries, and the fixed point as the heart.
While he was still looking, lost in amazement, the starry network
went out suddenly like an extinguished flame. Where the crustacean
had stood, there was nothing. Yet through this "nothing' he could
not see the landscape. Something was standing there that intercepted
the light, though it possessed neither shape, colour, nor substance.
And now the object, which could no longer be perceived by vision,
began to be felt by emotion. A delightful, springlike sense of
rising sap, of quickening pulses of love, adventure, mystery, beauty,
femininity - took possession of his being, and, strangely enough, he
identified it with the monster. Why that invisible brute should
cause him to feel young, sexual, and audacious, he did not ask
himself, for he was fully occupied with the effect. But it was as if
flesh, bones, and blood had been discarded, and he were face to face
with naked Life itself, which slowly passed into his own body.
The sensations died away. there was a brief interval, and then the
streaming, starlike skeleton rose up again out of space. It changed
to the red-blood system. The hard parts of the body reappeared, with
more and more distinctness, and at the same time the network of blood
grew fainter. Presently the interior parts were entirely concealed
by the crust - the creature stood opposite Maskull in its old
formidable ugliness, hard, painted, and concrete.
Disliking something about him, the crustacean turned aside and
stumbled awkwardly away on its six legs, with laborious and repulsive
movements, toward the other bank of the stream.
Maskull's apathy left him after this adventure. He became uneasy and
thoughtful. He imagined that he was beginning to see things through
Digrung's eyes, and that there were strange troubles immediately
ahead. The next time his eyes started to blur, he fought it down
with his will, and nothing happened.
The valley ascended with many windings toward the hills. It narrowed
considerably, and the wooded slopes on either side grew steeper and
higher. The stream shrunk to about twenty feet across, but it was
deeper - it was alive with motion, music, and bubbles. The electric
sensations caused by its water became more pronounced, almost
disagreeably so; but there was nowhere else to walk. With its
deafening confusion of sounds from the multitude of living creatures,
the little valley resembled a vast conversation hall of Nature. The
life was still more prolific than before; every square foot of space
was a tangle of struggling wills, both animal and vegetable. For a
naturalist it would have been paradise, for no two shapes were alike,
and all were fantastic, with individual character.
It looked as if life forms were being coined so fast by Nature that
there was not physical room for all. Nevertheless it was not as on
Earth, where a hundred seeds are scattered in order that one may be
sown. Here the young forms seemed to survive, while, to find
accommodation for them, the old ones perished; everywhere he looked
they were withering and dying, without any ostensible cause - they
were simply being killed by new life.
Other creatures sported so wildly, in front of his very eyes, that
they became of different "kingdoms" altogether. For example, a fruit
was lying on the ground, of the size and shape of a lemon, but with a
tougher skin. He picked it up, intending to eat the contained pulp;
but inside it was a fully formed young tree, just on the point of
bursting its shell. Maskull threw it away upstream. It floated back
toward him; by the time he was even with it, its downward motion had
stopped and it was swimming against the current. He fished it out
and discovered that it had sprouted six rudimentary legs.
Maskull sang no paeans of praise in honour of the gloriously
overcrowded valley. On the contrary, he felt deeply cynical and
depressed. He thought that the unseen power - whether it was called
Nature, Life, Will, or God - that was so frantic to rush forward and
occupy this small, vulgar, contemptible world, could not possess very
high aims and was not worth much. How this sordid struggle for an
hour or two of physical existence could ever be regarded as a deeply
earnest and important business was beyond his comprehension The
atmosphere choked him, he longed for air and space. Thrusting his
way through to the side of the ravine, he began to climb the
overhanging cliff, swinging his way up from tree to tree.
When he arrived at the top, Branchspell beat down on him with such
brutal, white intensity that he saw that there was no staying there.
He looked around, to ascertain what part of the country he had come
to. He had travelled about ten miles from the sea, as the crow
flies. The bare, undulating wolds sloped straight down toward it;
the water glittered in the distance; and on the horizon he was just
able to make out Swaylone's Island. Looking north, the land
continued sloping upward as far as he could see. Over the crest -
that is to say, some miles away - a line of black, fantastic-shaped
rocks of quite another character showed themselves; this was probably
Threal. Behind these again, against the sky, perhaps fifty or even a
hundred miles off, were the peaks of Lichstorm, most of them covered
with greenish snow that glittered in the sunlight.
They were stupendously high and of weird contours. Most of them were
conical to the top, but from the top, great masses of mountain
balanced themselves at what looked like impossible angles -
overhanging without apparent support. A land like that promised
something new, he thought: extraordinary inhabitants. The idea took
shape in his mind to go there, and to travel as swiftly as possible,
it might even be feasible to get there before sunset . It was less
the mountains themselves that attracted him than the country which
lay beyond - the prospect of setting eyes on the blue sun, which he
judged to be the wonder of wonders in Tormance.
The direct route was over the hills, but that was out of the
question, because of the killing heat and the absence of shade. He
guessed, however, that the valley would not take him far out of his
way, and decided to keep to that for the time being, much as he hated
and feared it. Into the hotbed of life, therefore, he once more
swung himself.
Once down, he continued to follow the windings of the valley for
several miles through sunlight and shadow. The path became
increasingly difficult. The cliffs closed in on either side until
they were less than a hundred yards apart, while the bed of the
ravine was blocked by boulders, great and small, so that the little
stream, which was now diminished to the proportions of a brook, had
to come down where and how it could. The forms of life grew
stranger. Pure plants and pure animals disappeared by degrees, and
their place was filled by singular creatures that seemed to partake
of both characters. They had limbs, faces, will, and intelligence,
but they remained for the greater part of their time rooted in the
ground by preference, and they fed only on soil and air. Maskull saw
no sexual organs and failed to understand how the young came into
existence.
Then he witnessed an astonishing sight. A large and fully developed
plant-animal appeared suddenly in front of him, out of empty space.
He could not believe his eyes, but stared at the creature for a long
time in amazement. It went on calmly moving and burrowing before
him, as thought it had been there all its life. Giving up the
puzzle, Maskull resumed his striding from rock to rock up the gorge,
and then, quietly and without warning, the same phenomenon occurred
again. No longer could he doubt than he was seeing miracles - that
Nature was precipitating its shapes into the world without making use
of the medium of parentage.. .. No solution of the problem presented
itself.
The brook too had altered in character. A trembling radiance came up
from its green water, like some imprisoned force escaping into the
air. He had not walked in it for some time; now he did so, to test
its quality. He felt new life entering his body, from his feet
upward; it resembled a slowly moving cordial, rather than mere heat.
The sensation was quite new in his experience, yet he knew by
instinct what it was. The energy emitted by the brook was ascending
his body neither as friend nor foe but simply because it happened to
be the direct road to its objective elsewhere. But, although it had
no hostile intentions, it was likely to prove a rough traveller - he
was clearly conscious that its passage through his body threatened to
bring about some physical transformation, unless he could do
something to prevent it. Leaping quickly out of the water, he leaned
against a rock, tightened his muscles, and braced himself against the
impending charge. At that very moment the blurring again attacked
his sight, and, while he was guarding against that, his forehead
sprouted out into a galaxy of new eyes. He put his hand up and
counted six, in addition to his old ones.
The danger was past and Maskull laughed, congratulating himself on
having got off so easily. Then he wondered what the new organs were
for - whether they were a good or a bad thing. He had not taken a
dozen steps up the ravine before he found out. Just as he was in the
act of jumping down from the top of a boulder, his vision altered and
he came to an automatic standstill. He was perceiving two worlds
simultaneously. With his own eyes he saw the gorge as before, with
its rocks, brook, plant - animals, sunshine, and shadows. But with
his acquired eyes he saw differently. All the details of the valley
were visible, but the light seemed turned down, and everything
appeared faint, hard, and uncoloured. The sun was obscured by masses
of cloud which filled the whole sky. This vapour was in violent and
almost living motion. It was thick in extension, but thin in
texture; some parts, however, were far denser than others, as the
particles were crushed together or swept apart by the motion. The
green sparks from the brook, when closely watched, could be
distinguished individually, each one wavering up toward the clouds,
but the moment they got within them a fearful struggle seemed to
begin. The spark endeavoured to escape through to the upper air,
while the clouds concentrated around it whichever way it darted,
trying to create so dense a prison that further movement would be
impossible. As far as Maskull could detect, most of the sparks
succeeded eventually in finding their way out after frantic efforts;
but one that he was looking at was caught, and what happened was
this. A complete ring of cloud surrounded it, and, in spite of its
furious leaps and flashes in all directions - as if it were a live,
savage creature caught in a net - nowhere could it find an opening,
but it dragged the enveloping cloud stuff with it, wherever it went.
The vapours continued to thicken around it, until they resembled the
black, heavy, compressed sky masses seen before a bad thunderstorm.
Then the green spark, which was still visible in the interior, ceased
its efforts, and remained for a time quite quiescent. The cloud
shape went on consolidating itself, and became nearly spherical; as
it grew heavier and stiller, it started slowly to descend toward the
valley floor. When it was directly opposite Maskull, with its lower
end only a few feet off the ground, its motion stopped altogether and
there was a complete pause for at least two minutes. Suddenly, like
a stab of forked lightning, the great cloud shot together, became
small, indented, and coloured, and as a plant-animal started walking
around on legs and rooting up the ground in search of food. The
concluding stage of the phenomenon he witnessed with his normal
eyesight. It showed him the creature's appearing miraculously out of
nowhere.
Maskull was shaken. His cynicism dropped from him and gave place to
curiosity and awe. "That was exactly like the birth of a thought,"
he said to himself, "but who was the thinker? Some great Living Mind
is at work in this spot. He has intelligence, for all his shapes are
different, and he has character, for all belong to the same general
type.. .. If I'm not wrong, and if it's the force called Shaping or
Crystalman, I've seen enough to make me want to find out something
more about him.... It would be ridiculous to go on to other riddles
before I have solved these."
A voice called out to him from behind, and, turning around, he saw a
human figure hastening toward him from some distance down the ravine.
It looked more like a man than a woman. He was rather tall, but
nimble, and was clothed in a dark, frocklike garment that reached
from the neck to below the knees. Around his head was rolled a
turban. Maskull waited for him, and when he was nearer went a little
way to meet him.
Then he experienced another surprise, for this person, although
clearly a human being, was neither man nor woman, nor anything
between the two, but was unmistakably of a third positive sex, which
was remarkable to behold and difficult to understand. In order to
translate into words the sexual impression produced in Maskull's mind
by the stranger's physical aspect, it is necessary to coin a new
pronoun, for none in earthly use would be applicable. Instead of
"he," "she," or "it," therefore "ae" will be used.
He found himself incapable of grasping at first why the bodily
peculiarities of this being should strike him as springing from sex,
and not from race, and yet there was no doubt about the fact itself.
Body, face, and eyes were absolutely neither male nor female, but
something quite different. Just as one can distinguish a man from a
woman at the first glance by some indefinable difference of
expression and atmospheres altogether apart from the contour of the
figure, so the stranger was separated in appearance from both. As
with men and women, the whole person expressed a latent sensuality,
which. gave body and face alike their peculiar character.... Maskull
decided that it was love - but what love - love for whom? it was
neither the shame-carrying passion of a male, nor the deep-rooted
instinct of a female to obey her destiny. It was as real and
irresistible as these, but quite different.
As he continued staring into those strange, archaic eyes, he had an
intuitive feeling that aer lover was no other than Shaping himself.
it came to him that the design of this love was not the continuance
of the race but the immortality on earth of the individual. No
children were produced by the act; the lover aerself was the eternal
child. Further, ae sought like a man, but received like a woman.
All these things were dimly and confusedly expressed by this
extraordinary being, who seemed to have dropped out of another age,
when creation was different.
Of all the weird personalities Maskull had so far met in Tormance,
this one struck him as. infinitely the most foreign - that is, the
farthest removed from him in spiritual structure. If they were to
live together for a hundred years, they could never be companions.
Maskull pulled himself out of his trancelike meditations and, viewing
the newcomer in greater detail, tried with his understanding to
account for the marvellous things told him by his intuitions. Ae
possessed broad shoulders and big bones, and was without female
breasts, and so far ae resembled a man. But the bones were so flat
and angular that aer flesh presented something of the character of a
crystal, having plane surfaces in place of curves. The body looked
as if it had not been ground down by the sea of ages into smooth and
rounded regularity but had sprung together in angles and facets as
the result of a single, sudden idea. The face too was broken and
irregular. With his racial prejudices, Maskull found little beauty
in it, yet beauty there was, though neither of a masculine nor of a
feminine type, for it had the three essentials of beauty: character,
intelligence, and repose. The skin was copper-coloured and strangely
luminous, as if lighted from within. The face was beardless, but the
hair of the head was as long as a woman's, and, dressed in a single
plait, fell down behind as far as the ankles. Ae possessed only two
eyes. That part of the turban which went across the forehead
protruded so far in front that it evidently concealed some organ.
Maskull found it impossible to compute aer age. The frame appeared
active, vigorous, and healthy, the skin was clear and glowing; the
eyes were powerful and alert - ae might well be in early youth.
Nevertheless, the longer Maskull gazed, the more an impression of
unbelievable ancientness came upon him - aer real youth seemed as far
away as the view observed through a reversed telescope.
At last he addressed the stranger, though it was just as if he were
conversing with a dream. "To what sex do you belong?" he asked.
The, voice in which the reply came was neither manly nor womanly, but
was oddly suggestive of a mystical forest horn, heard from a great
distance.
"Nowadays there are men and women, but in the olden times the world
was peopled by 'phaens.' I think I am the only survivor of all those
beings who were then passing through Faceny's mind."
"Faceny?"
"Who is now miscalled Shaping or Crystalman. The superficial names
invented by a race of superficial creatures."
"What's your own name?"
"Leehallfae."
"What?"
"Leehallfae. And yours is Maskull. I read in your mind that you have
just come through some wonderful adventures. You seem to possess
extraordinary luck. If it lasts long enough, perhaps I can make use
of it."
"Do you think that my luck exists for your benefit? ... But never
mind that now. It is your sex that interests me. How do you satisfy
your desires?"
Leehallfae pointed to the concealed organ on aer brow. "With that I
gather life from the streams that flow in all the hundred Matterplay
valleys. The streams spring direct from Faceny. My whole life has
been spent trying to find Faceny himself. I've hunted so long that
if I were to state the number of years you would believe I lied."
Maskull looked at the phaen slowly. "In Ifdawn I met someone else
from Matterplay - a young man called Digrung. I absorbed him."
"You can't be telling me this out of vanity."
"It was a fearful crime. What will come of it?
Leehallfae gave a curious, wrinkled smile. "In Matterplay he will
stir inside you, for he smells the air. Already you have his
eyes.... I knew him.... Take care of yourself, or something more
startling may happen. Keep out of the water."
"This seems. to me a terrible valley, in which anything may happen."
"Don't torment yourself about Digrung. The valleys belong by right
to the phaens - the men here are interlopers. It is a good work to
remove them."
Maskull continued thoughtful. "I say no more, but I see I will have
to be cautious. What did you mean about my helping you with my
luck?"
"Your luck is fast weakening, but it may still be strong enough to
serve me. Together we will search for Threal."
"Search for Threal - why, is it so hard to find?"
"I have told you that my whole life has been spent in the quest."
"You said Faceny, Leehallfae."
The phaen gazed at him with queer, ancient eyes, and smiled again.
"This stream, Maskull, like every other life stream in Matterplay,
has its source in Faceny. But as all these streams issue out from
Threal, it is in Threal that we must look for Faceny."
"But what's to prevent your finding Threal? Surely it's a well-known
country?"
"It lies underground. Its communications with the upper world are
few, and where they are, no one that I have ever spoken to knows. I
have scoured the valleys and the hills. I have been to the very gates
of Lichstorm. I am old, so that your aged men would appear newborn
infants beside me, but I am as far from Threal as when I was a green
youth, dwelling among a throng of fellow phaens."
"Then, if my luck is good, yours is very bad.... But when you have
found Faceny, what do you gain?"
Leehallfae looked at him in silence. The smile faded from aer face,
and its place was taken by such a look of unearthly pain and sorrow
that Maskull had no need to press his question. Ae was consumed by
the grief and yearning of a lover eternally separated from the loved
one, the scents and traces of whose person were always present. This
passion stamped her features at that moment with a wild, stern,
spiritual beauty, far transcending any beauty of woman or man.
But the expression vanished suddenly, and then the abrupt contrast
showed Maskull the real Leehallfae. Aer sensuality was solitary, but
vulgar - it was like the heroism of a lonely nature, pursuing animal
aims with untiring persistence.
He looked at the phaen askance, and drummed his fingers against his
thigh. "Well, we will go together. We may find something, and in
any case I shan't be sorry to converse with such a singular
individual as yourself."
"But I should warn you, Maskull. You and I are of different
creations. A phaen's body contains the whole of life, a man's body
contains only the half of life - the other half is in woman. Faceny
may be too strong a draught for your body to endure.... Do you not
feel this?"
"I am dull with my different feelings. I must take what precautions
I can, and chance the rest." He bent down, and, taking hold of the
phaen's thin and ragged robe, tore off a broad strip, which he
proceeded to swathe in folds around his forehead. "I'm not forgetting
your advice, Leehallfae. I would not like to start the walk as
Maskull and finish it as Digrung."
The phaen gave a twisted grin, and they began to move upstream. The
road was difficult. They had to stride from boulder to boulder, and
found it warm work. Occasionally a worse obstacle presented itself,
which they could surmount only by climbing. There was no more
conversation for a long time. Maskull, as far as possible, adopted
his companion's counsel to avoid the water, but here and there he was
forced to set foot in it. The second or third time he did so, he
felt a sudden agony in his arm, where it had been wounded by Krag.
His eyes grew joyful; his fears vanished; and he began deliberately
to tread the stream.
Leehallfae stroked aer chin and watched him with screwed-up eyes,
trying to comprehend what had happened. "Is your luck speaking to
you, Maskull, or what is the matter?"
"Listen. You are a being of antique experience, and ought to know,
if anyone does. What is Muspel?"
The phaen's face was blank. "I don't know the name."
"It is another world of some sort."
"That cannot be. There is only this one world - Faceny's."
Maskull came up to aer, linked arms, and began to talk. "I'm glad I
fell in with you, Leehallfae, for this valley and everything
connected with it need a lot of explaining. For example, in this
spot there are hardly any organic forms left - why have they all
disappeared? You call this brook a 'life stream,' yet the nearer its
source we get, the less life it produces. A mile or two lower down
we had those spontaneous plant-animals appearing out of nowhere,
while right down by the sea, plants and animals were tumbling over
one another. Now, if all this is connected in some mysterious way or
other with your Faceny, it seems to me he must have a most
paradoxical nature. His essence doesn't start creating shapes until
it has become thoroughly weakened and watered.... But perhaps both of
us are talking nonsense."
Leehallfae shook aer head. "Everything hangs together. The stream
is life, and it is throwing off sparks of life all the time. When
these sparks are caught and imprisoned by matter, they become living
shapes. The nearer the stream is to its source, the more terrible
and vigorous is its life. You'll see for yourself when we reach the
head of the valley that there are no living shapes there at all.
That means that there is no kind of matter touch enough to capture
and hold the terrible sparks that are to be found there. Lower down
the stream, most of the sparks are vigorous enough to escape to the
upper air, but some are. held when they are a little way up, and
these burst suddenly into shapes. I myself am of this nature. Lower
down still, toward the sea, the stream has lost a great part of its
vital power and the sparks are lazy and sluggish. They spread out,
rather than rise into the air. There is hardly any kind of matter,
however delicate, that is incapable of capturing these feeble sparks,
and they are captured in multitudes - that accounts for the
innumerable living shapes you see there. But not only that - the
sparks are passed from one body to another by way of generation, and
can never hope to cease being so until they are worn out by decay.
Lowest of all, you have the Sinking Sea itself. There the degenerate
and enfeebled life of the Matterplay streams has for its body the
whole sea. So weak is it's power that it can't succeed in creating
any shapes at all but you can see its ceaseless, futile attempts to
do so, in those spouts."
"So the slow development of men and women is due to the feebleness of
the life germ in their case?"
"Exactly. It can't attain all its desires at once. And now you can
see how immeasurably superior are the phaens, who spring
spontaneously from the more electric and vigorous sparks."
"But where does the matter come from that imprisons these sparks?"
"When life dies, it becomes matter. Matter itself dies, but its
place is constantly taken by new matter."
"But if life comes from Faceny, how can it die at all?"
"Life is the thoughts of Faceny, and once these thoughts have left
his brain they are nothing - mere dying embers."
"This is a cheerless philosophy," said Maskull. "But who is Faceny
himself, then, and why does he think at all?"
Leehallfae gave another wrinkled smile. "That I'll explain too.
Faceny is of this nature. He faces Nothingness in all directions.
He has no back and no sides, but is all face; and this face is his
shape. It must necessarily be so, for nothing else can exist between
him and Nothingness. His face is all eyes, for he eternally
contemplates Nothingness. He draws his inspirations from it; in no
other way could he feel himself. For the same reason, phaens and
even men love to be in empty places and vast solitudes, for each one
is a little Faceny."
"That rings true," said Maskull.
"Thoughts flow perpetually from Faceny's face backward. Since his
face is on all sides, however, they flow into his interior. A
draught of thought thus continuously flows from Nothingness to the
inside of Faceny, which is the world. The thoughts become shapes,
and people the world. This outer world, therefore, which is lying
all around us, is not outside at all, as it happens, but inside. The
visible universe is like a gigantic stomach, and the real outside of
the world we shall never see."
Maskull pondered deeply for a while.
"Leehallfae, I fail to see what you personally have to hope for,
since you are nothing more than a discarded, dying thought."
"Have you never loved a woman?" asked the phaen, regarding him
fixedly.
"Perhaps I have."
"When you loved, did you have no high moments?"
"That's asking the same question in other words."
"In those moments you were approaching Faceny. If you could have
drawn nearer still, would you not have done so?"
"I would, regardless of the consequences."
"Even if you personally had nothing to hope for?"
"But I would have that to hope for."
Leehallfae walked on in silence.
"A man is the half of Life," ae broke out suddenly. "A woman is the
other half of life, but a phaen is the whole of life. Moreover, when
life becomes split into halves, something else has dropped out of it
- something that belongs only to the whole. Between your love and
mine there is no comparison. If even your sluggish blood is drawn to
Faceny, without stopping to ask what will come of it, how do you
suppose it is with me?"
"I don't question the genuineness of your passion," replied Maskull,
"but it's a pity you can't see your way to carry it forward into the
next world."
Leehallfae gave a distorted grin, expressing heaven knows what
emotion. "Men think what they like, but phaens are so made that they
can see the world only as it really is."
That ended the conversation.
The sun was high in the sky, and they appeared to be approaching the
head of the ravine. Its walls had still further closed in and,
except at those moments when Branchspell was directly behind them,
they strode along all the time in deep shade; but still it was
disagreeably hot and relaxing. All life had ceased. A beautiful,
fantastic spectacle was presented by the cliff faces, the rocky
ground, and the boulders that choked the entire width of the gorge.
They were a snow-white crystalline limestone, heavily scored by veins
of bright, gleaming blue. The rivulet was no longer green, but a
clear, transparent crystal. Its noise was musical, and altogether it
looked most romantic and charming, but Leehallfae seemed to find
something else in it - aer features grew more and more set and
tortured.
About half an hour after all the other life forms had vanished,
another plant-animal was precipitated out of space, in front of their
eyes. It was as tall as Maskull himself, and had a brilliant and
vigorous appearance, as befitted a creature just out of Nature's
mint. It started to walk about; but hardly had it done so when it
burst silently asunder. Nothing remained of it - the whole body
disappeared instantaneously into the same invisible mist from which
it had sprung.
"That bears out what you said," commented Maskull, turning rather
pale.
"Yes," answered Leehallfae, "we have now come to the region of
terrible life."
"Then, since you're right in this, I must believe all that you've
been telling me."
As he uttered the words, they were just turning a bend of the ravine.
There now loomed up straight ahead a perpendicular cliff about three
hundred feet in height, composed of white, marbled rock. It was the
head of the valley, and beyond it they could not proceed.
"In return for my wisdom," said the phaen, "you will now lend me your
luck."
They walked up to the base of the cliff, and Maskull looked at it
reflectively. It was possible to climb it, but the ascent would be
difficult. The now tiny brook issued from a hole in the rock only a
few feet up. Apart from its musical running, not a sound was to be
beard. The floor of the gorge was in shadow, but about halfway up
the precipice the sun was shining.
"What do you want me to do?" demanded Maskull. "Everything is now in
your hands, and I have no suggestions to make. Now it's your luck
that must help us.
Maskull continued gazing up a little while longer. "We had better
wait till the afternoon, Leehallfae. I'll probably have to climb to
the top, but it's too hot at present - and besides, I'm tired. I'll
snatch a few hours' sleep. After that, we'll see."
Leehallfae seemed annoyed, but raised no opposition.
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