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They passed some trees and plants, the leaves of which were all curled up, as if in sleep. Maskull pointed them out to his companion. "How is it the sunshine doesn't open them?" "Branchspell is a second night to them. Their day is Alppain." "How long will it be before that sun rises?" "Some time yet." "Shall I live to see it, do you think?" "Do you want to?"
"We have a long way to go," said Tydomin. "Relate some of these legends, Spadevil." The snow had ceased, the day brightened, Branchspell reappeared like a phantom sun, but bitter blasts of wind still swept over the plain. "In those days," said Spadevil, "there existed in Ifdawn a mountain island separated by wide spaces from the land around it.
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.
He drank at the river, washed himself, and lay down on the bank to sleep. By this time, so far had his idea progressed, that he cared nothing for the possible dangers of the night he confided in his star. Branchspell set, the day faded, night with its terrible weight came on, and through it all Maskull slept. Long before midnight, however, he was awakened by a crimson glow in the sky.
No sooner was the staff raised than the aerial vessel quietly detached itself from the rock to which it had been drawn, and passed slowly forward in the direction of the mountains. Branchspell sank below the horizon. The gathering mist blotted out everything outside a radius of a few miles. The air grew cool and fresh. Soon the rock masses ceased on the great, rising plain.
Branchspell, radiantly shining at last, but on the point of sinking, filled the cloudy sky with violent, lurid colors, some of the combinations of which were new to Maskull. The circle of the horizon was so gigantic, that had he been suddenly carried back to Earth, he would by comparison have fancied himself to be moving beneath the dome of some little, closed-in cathedral.
We shall see. Perhaps Crystalman will make one more attempt on you. There is still time for one more." "Now I don't understand you." "You think you are thoroughly disillusioned, don't you? Well, that may prove to be the last and strongest illusion of all." The conversation ceased. They reached the foot of the landslip an hour later. Branchspell was steadily mounting the cloudless sky.
"This we call the 'magn," she said, indicating her tentacle. "By means of it what we love already we love more, and what we don't love at all we begin to love." "A godlike organ!" "It is the one we guard most jealously," said Joiwind. The shade of the trees afforded a timely screen from the now almost insufferable rays of Branchspell, which was climbing steadily upward to the zenith.
The gigantic, white, withering Branchspell, the awful, body-changing Alppain, the beautiful, deadly, treacherous sea, the dark and eerie Swaylone's Island, the spirit-crushing forest out of which he had just escaped to all these mighty powers, surrounding him on every side, what resources had he, a feeble, ignorant traveller to oppose, from a tiny planet on the other side of space, to avoid being utterly destroyed?... Then he smiled to himself.
"There are two sets of three primary colours here," said Corpang, "but as one of the colours blue is identical in both sets, altogether there are five primary colours." "Why two sets?" "Produced by the two suns. Branchspell produces blue, yellow, and red; Alppain, ulfire, blue, and jale." "It's remarkable that explanation has never occurred to me before."
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