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"They all find their way here to die. They come from Matterplay. There they live to an incredible age. Partly on that account, and partly because of their spontaneous origin, they regard themselves as the favoured children of Faceny. But when they come here to find him, they die at once." "I think this one is the last of the race. But whom do I speak to?" "I am Corpang.
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.
"Is there no such thing as pure Thire-matter?" "Thire cannot exist without Amfuse, and Amfuse cannot exist without Faceny." Maskull thought this over for some minutes. "That must be so," he said at last. "Without life there can be no love, and without love there can be no religious feeling."
"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.
The phaen belonged, body and soul, to the outside, visible world to Faceny. This underworld is not Faceny's world, but Thire's, and Faceny's creatures cannot breathe its atmosphere. As this applies not only to whole bodies, but even to the last particles of bodies, the phaen has dissolved into Nothingness." "But don't you and I belong to the outside world too?" "We belong to all three worlds."
"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.
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?"
Leehallfae pressed a hand to aer heart. "The stream leaves us, but what makes the stream what it is continues with us. Faceny is there." "But surely you don't expect to see him in person? Why are you shaking?" "Perhaps it will be too much for me after all." "Why? How is it affecting you?"
"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.
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.
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