The world below
part of the ocean where there was much depth and great darkness. There I
found a pressure which came upon me so that I could not release myself.
I was held there very long, with a horror which you may have some power
to imagine.
“When the time came at which our nation assembles, and my absence was
noticed, the Leader whose body we are now seeking, and who is like
myself in the love of strange and difficult ways, though of a much
higher capacity to traverse them successfully, undertook to search for
me, and knowing the direction which I had been seen to go, she at last
discovered and released me, by methods which would be beyond your
comprehension, if I should attempt to tell them. In doing this she
risked her own life, and lost so much of her vitality that she rested
afterwards for many years till her strength returned, and did not even
take part in the Councils of the Seven.
“Now, when I wished to gain my own way, I looked for every argument that
would support me, and I recalled this to my Leader’s mind, as a reason
why I should go, if someone must be risked to seek her. Then, as we sat
here, the horror of that place came back to me, and in a moment I was
asleep and within it. But it has left me now, and, I hope, for ever....
“It is in my mind that there will be fighting when that stone moves, and
that I am pledged to help you.”
She picked up one of the short javelins from the floor, and balanced it
thoughtfully on an outstretched finger. When she had turned it over, and
looked at it carefully for some time, she threw it against the wall,
watching its flight very closely. It turned once in the air, failed in
its balance, and struck the wall with a slanting feeble stroke.
Unperturbed, she collected six others, and threw them one by one, so
quickly that the next was in the air before the first had fallen. Of
these the two last struck the wall at the same spot, and with the full
force of the throw.
“I think I can play that game if they should ask it,” she laughed in her
mind, and collected others to her hand.
“Could you hit the same spot twice in succession?” I asked.
“Surely,” she answered, “even you could not forget so quickly. But I
myself forget that your body is not as mine. I understand that yours may
do your will with exactness on one occasion, and on the next, though you
have the same will, and it be equally capable, it may fail entirely. All
the games of which you told me, in which your body is used, are based on
this quality. But with us it is different. I know now that I can hit any
spot at which I can aim, and as often as I attempt it. I will show you
with these.”
She picked up two of the javelins, and sent the first against the
farther wall--but the second did not follow it. At the moment her hand
was lifted, the stone beside us disappeared from sight, leaving a
yard-wide gap, and as swift as thought itself her javelin was flung into
the open pit beneath us.
An outburst of whistling screams told us that it had carried no welcome
message, but the next second we had our own troubles to deal with. Back
into its place the stone shot upward, and with such force that certain
things which had been placed upon it were thrown to the roof and fell
scattering upon us. Four of them there were--four eight-foot lengths of
living, writhing rope--but to me, at least, they seemed forty.
I suppose that my companion, of cooler mind, and of quicker hands also,
made no such error.
I know that while I was struggling with one that had caught my leg and
was thrusting upward for a more deadly grip, her mind reached mine with
the quiet quickness of thought and buoyant gaiety of spirit that
physical danger always waked within her. I had a feeling that the idea
that she should be threatened by hostile violence always came to her as
an absurdity, to be met with laughter.
“We must watch the stone. Put your foot on its end. Jump to the left, or
the other one will get you.” So she called to me, while she ripped one
which had fallen round her own waist with a javelin point till it loosed
her and fell squirming, and as it did so she flung the javelin, not at
the next of them, though it was round her feet already, nor at the gap
which showed again where the stone had left it, but at the lizard-forms,
that were now twittering with excitement above us.
It struck one of them fairly on the outstretched head, and down it came,
a bright yellow snake-like form, turning head-under-heels as it came--or
under tail, to be literal--and falling in the open gap, at which there
rose a chorus of such consternation from the unseen Killers beneath us,
that it was evident that to them a lizard must be a very dreaded or a
very sacred thing.
“Two each,” she laughed, as she caught the still restless portions of
the living cords on an arrow’s point, and threw them back into the gap
beneath us. “Did you notice that they became almost harmless after I had
struck one of the lizards, and the others bolted? I believe it was their
minds that guided them to attack us. It was to reach them, if the need
came, that I first tried the javelins, but I dare not tell you, nor let
the thought make growth in my own mind, lest they should know it. I fear
them, but I do not fear the Killers at all.” And just then the Killers
came.
I think the falling of the lizard must have produced a confusion that
delayed their attack, but that this was succeeded by such a tide of fury
as swept away the natural cowardice that underlay their ferocity, and
caused them to forget the caution with which they had approached us
previously.
They came leaping upward, with their hands on the edge of the gap, and
the first fell back with a javelin in the throat, and a second I knocked
back with a sidesweep of the axe, and from the third I sliced off the
sucker at its root, and stopped his whistling. But the crowd pushed up,
and flung him sprawling outward.
They had no cords--perhaps they thought them useless after the way we
returned the four they sent us; perhaps they would have been too
dangerous to themselves in that crowded rush--and they had little time
or space to use their javelins before the axe was on them. I struck, and
struck, with steady sweeping strokes, at the pushing crowd that rose
against me, the tough skins denting to the blade, and bursting as they
felt the pressure behind them.
And always, if they rose too fast, or one should dodge my stroke, a
javelin found it, from where my comrade had stepped back to the wall to
reach them down as she needed them. Once I thought I had failed, as the
pressure spued up two or three at once, too quickly for the axe to take
them, but her mind reached me serenely. “Keep the others down--and leave
these to me,” and was vaguely conscious that she was avoiding their
weapons with a cool celerity, while her own bore them her message that
their hours were over.
And then amid an up-rush of damaged bodies which he was using for his
own protection I saw the red-brown malignant head of one of the archers,
and struck with all my strength a straight-down cleaving blow, and was
conscious that the attack had collapsed before me, and the gap was
empty.
With a sudden dizziness I looked on the shambles that now surrounded the
opening. I have told something of the outward repulsiveness of the
Killers, with their worm-pink skins that were both tough and slimy, but
of the interiors of these foul bodies I cannot write. An axe-stroke has
no reticence.
I thought it was from that nauseous sight that a sudden faintness
threatened, and I struggled against it, stepping back, and leaning on
the axe, and turning to my companion for her to snare my triumph.
She stood very still, her eyes bright and watchful, her mind beginning
to question her for the thing she had done--which was, no doubt, outside
the experience not only of herself, but of all her kind--but her will
meeting it confidently. Then she looked at me, and her thought changed.
I made an effort to reassure her that I was uninjured, and was aware
that I was falling.
I don’t think I was unconscious for long, and I believe that she neither
helped nor hindered, but watched quietly beside a phenomenon which was
beyond her experience.
When my senses returned, she was alert and near, and her mind was quick
to reach me.
“You can rest while you will. I think your last stroke was enough to
still them. You made it work that time!” She always spoke of my body
thus, as something separate from myself, as we might praise a friend who
carved well with a blunted chisel. “I am sorry that I failed you. The
Killer rose on your farther side, and I could not reach it till it had
made its throw. I have much yet to learn of the ways of fighting--do you
not understand me? Did you not know that your body was broken
again?--does it tell you nothing?--look under your right arm.”
I looked, and understood. The excitement of the fight, in which my life
had literally depended upon the speed and force with which I could
strike, and recover, and strike again, and then the utter exhaustion
that had followed, and now the dizzy weakness that possessed me--each in
turn had left me unaware that a javelin had found its mark. Thrown
straight upward, and probably with no great force, in the pushing crowd
that gave scant space for free movement, it had struck me in the armpit
as the axe was lifted--no depth of wound, but one that bled very freely.
It was evident that I must rest for a time at least, and so I lay there,
while she sat beside me and watched the empty gap before us, conquering
once again the repugnance she felt at touching my body, so that the
smooth furred fingers should close the wound, and the soft palm should
give its strength to heal me.
“I am ashamed,” I thought, “that I should be so incapable from so slight
a wound. You regard me as a creature of violence, yet I break down at
every conflict, where you come through with a clearer victory. I think I
am more an encumbrance than a help, even in such ways as these.”
She answered, “It was I who failed you. I should have stood nearer, and
it need not have happened. I held them too lightly, and you, who took
the harder part, have been hurt through my folly.”
My mind protested, but as the thought formed I was sleeping.
CHAPTER XXV
THE FORBIDDEN THING
There have been those, from the Egyptian civilisation to our own times,
who have believed a dream to be in the nature of an occult visitation,
from which future events can be foretold or avoided. But even they would
admit that a dream must be remembered on waking if it is to be of any
utility, and that is just where so few dreams are entirely satisfactory.
When I waked I recollected vividly that I had dreamed of the making of a
fire a short distance outside the door, which had stood open while I
made it. I had built up a pile of wood, which I had cut from the javelin
shafts, and set the burning-glass in their midst, and I had sat and
watched the smoke of the heated wood curl upward, till a blaze showed
faintly in the sunlight.
So far I remembered clearly, and I supposed that the incident when the
arrow had struck the glass might have brought it into my dreaming mind,
but I knew that the dream went further, and was of a very exciting
character. I had a feeling that it was very urgent that I should recall
it, but I tried in vain to do so.
I was on the point of telling my trouble to my companion, but the
feeling that it might only increase her contempt or pity for the
internal anarchy in which I existed, deterred me. Had I done so she
would have given me a convincing reason why no fire should be attempted,
and our adventure must have had a widely different sequel.