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Gunnar leaned against him, suddenly weak and shaken. More widening circles of light swept out upon them. Ato's and Maya's troops fell back. Those who had been armed with explosive weapons had died. Odin was almost too weak to lift his sword. From the stairway below came a scrabbling sound, as men pulled the corpses away from the stairs. Nea's Kalis reeled back.
With a surly buzz he swung himself on to a blade that curved above Maya's leaf, and said in a much politer tone, talking down to her out of the sunshine: "You ought to be working. As a bee you certainly ought. But if you want to rest, all right. I'll wait here." "There are plenty of leaves," observed Maya. "All rented," said the blue-bottle.
But the sprite drew himself up, his expression was serious and serene, his eyes shone with confidence. He took Maya's trembling hand and said: "Come. We'll fly together. Your wish shall be granted." And so Maya and the flower-sprite started off together in the bright mid-summer night, flying low over the blossomy meadow.
Though the runners were cautioned to keep their errand secret, it is probable that Joliper suspected that the alarm had gone forth, and he resolved to strike at once; so he summoned his renegades, stole into camp next evening and made toward Maya's wigwam, intending to take her to a place of safety.
He pressed aside a bright petal, Maya entered, and she and the beetle walked beside each other through the narrow chambers with their subdued light and fragrant walls. "What a charming home!" exclaimed Maya, genuinely taken with the place. "The perfume is positively intoxicating." Maya's admiration pleased the beetle. "It takes wisdom to know where to live," he said, and smiled good-naturedly.
At the door of Maya's tent he entreated her to go with him to the white settlements, and on her refusal he broke into angry threats, declaring, in the self-forgetfulness of passion, that he would kill her lover and lead the English against the tribe.
Outnumbered all the way, he had broken Grim Hagen's lines time and again during that awful night. "I think we had better wait behind the barricades and make our last stand upon the balcony," he said. "We can't defend five entrances at the same time." Odin agreed. "Some of Maya's people are unarmed. We still have a few of the Lorens who joined us. They are good fighters.
"I am right," he was thinking, "but if Zeus is aroused in a bad humor, and if, before hearing us, he should take us each by a leg and throw us some three hundred Athenian stadia, it would be very bad. He has some consideration for Apollo, but he would treat me without ceremony, although I am his son too." But Maya's son feared in vain.
"It isn't altogether easy to get along with strangers," she thought. "They don't think the way we do and don't see that we mean no harm." She was depressed and cast a troubled look at the spider with his long legs and soured expression. "Really, someone ought to come and eat you up." Hannibal had evidently mistaken Maya's good nature for weakness.
Behind it Maya's face, outlined in black curls, seemed to peer at him and her pouting lips parted as she smiled. He stared and shook his head. The dream-vision vanished from the screen. Someone had entered the room. It was Nea. Dressed in slacks once more, she slouched over to his chair and drew a hassock up beside it. As she looked at him, Jack Odin saw that her eyes were tired tired tired.
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