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Updated: May 3, 2025
Anina pulled at him and said something, but he did not hear her. He only knew that they had been discovered, and that most of their enemies in the Water City were crowded together in this one room at hand. And he had the light-ray the only one in the city. A sudden madness possessed him. He tore away from Anina and, climbing up the steps of the stairway, leaped into the room above.
There'd be a row, and we don't want any noise. Besides, there's always this confounded daylight here. If we tied them up somebody might see us when we got outside. How do we get them out of that house without any rumpus, and down to that boat? That's what I don't see." "I do that," said Anina suddenly. She had spoken in English, and we looked at her in amazement.
The girl's eyes widened, but she did as he directed, and the platform, making a broad, sweeping turn, headed back toward the Twilight Country shore. "Anina, how far is it to Tao's city from where we landed?" "The Lone City? A day, going fast." "But they won't go fast, will they? Some of them are pretty badly hurt." "Two days for them," the girl agreed.
The girls seemed exhausted from their long struggle against the storm, and I was glad for them when we finally landed. This was the place, they said, where Mercer and Anina had set Tao's men free, and where the two were standing when the girls had left with the platform. I looked about, and saw on the beach the pieces of cut cord with which the men had been bound.
For a while the shore remained that same palm-lined, half-inundated marshland. Then gradually it began to change, and we came upon a broad beach of white sand. We landed here, and found the girls with the platform waiting for us. Miela took Anina and one or two of the older girls aside, and gave them last instructions. "What do I do just dump them on the other shore?" Mercer asked me.
Farther back a small, steep flight of steps led up through a rectangular opening to the building above. Most of the light in this lower room came down through this opening; and now, as Mercer stood quiet looking about him, he could hear plainly the voices of men in the room above. Anina was beside him. "They're up there," he whispered, pointing.
Mercer and I, with Anina and Miela, traveled as before through the air on the two platforms with the girls. We crossed the Narrow Sea without incident and entered the river. Several hours up, the river narrowed and entered a rocky gorge, four or five hundred feet wide and a thousand feet deep, with almost perpendicular sides. Along one of these ran the Lone City trail.
Miela turned back to us from her consultation with Lua. "In the mountains, high up and far beyond the Valley of the Sun," she said, "lies a secret place known only to our women. Our mother says that she and I and Anina can spread the news among our virgins to gather there to-morrow at the time of sleep.
Beyond the doorway, through which the bow of the boat projected, there was complete darkness. "Lower room," Anina whispered back. "Store things in there. And boat landing, too." "Let's go in and see." Mercer started toward the bow of the boat. Six feet or more of it was inside the doorway. He made his way carefully into the bow, and found himself inside the basement of the house.
Anina followed me, standing timidly by my side, with her big, curious eyes looking up into my face. "You're a sweet, dear little sister," I said, "and I am going to love you very much." I put my arm about her shoulders, and she smiled as though she understood me, yielding to my embrace with the ready friendship of a child.
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