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Updated: June 16, 2025
And still as when it had reared on high beat through it the wild, triumphant, questing pulse. Still rang out Norhala's chanting. The trees parted and fell upon each side of us as though we were some monster of the sea and they the waves we cleft. The rift enclosed us. Lower we dropped; were not more than fifty feet above its floor. The Thing upon which we rode was a torrent roaring through it.
He dropped the listless palms, faced the woman, tall figure tense, drawn with mingled rage and anguish. "What have you done to her?" he whispered in Norhala's own tongue. Her serene gaze took him in, undisturbed by his anger save for the faintest shadow of wonder, of perplexity. "Done?" she repeated, slowly. "I have stilled all that was troubled within her have lifted her above sorrow.
They were wide, unseeing, dream filled. Upon her face the calm and stillness, which were mirrored reflections of Norhala's unearthly tranquillity, had deepened. "Brother." The sweet voice seemed far away, drifting out of untroubled space, an echo of Norhala's golden chimings "Brother, there is nothing wrong with me. Indeed all is well with me brother."
They were the footprints of the Thing that carried us. The wind streamed and whistled. A flock of the willow warblers arose, sworled about us with manifold beating of little frightened wings. Norhala's face softened, her eyes smiled. "Go foolish little ones," she cried, and waved her arms. They flew away, scolding.
Then out of her white throat, through her red lips pelted a tempest of staccato buglings. Under them what was left of the Thing leaped, tore on. Norhala's flaming hair crackled and streamed; about her body of milk and pearl about Ruth's creamy skin a radiant nimbus began to glow. In the distance I saw a sapphire spark; knew it for Norhala's home.
"Norhala!" we shouted; and again and again again "Norhala!" Before our cries could have reached her the cubes swerved; came to a halt beneath us. Through the hundred feet of space between I caught the brilliancy of the weird constellations in Norhala's great eyes saw with a vague but no less dire foreboding that on her face dwelt a terrifying, a blasting wrath.
Within them were what we could carry of souvenirs from Norhala's home a suit of lacquered armor, a pair of cloaks and sandals, the jeweled combs. Ruth and Drake at the side of the pony, Ventnor and I leading, we set forth toward the Pit. "We'll probably have to come back, Walter," he said. "I don't believe the place is passable." I pointed we were then just over the threshold of the elfin globe.
Weeping, she passed through the curtainings, going we knew to Norhala's chamber. It was a strange thing indeed that she had said, I thought, watching her go. That the garden of the world would be far less poisonous blossoming with those Things of wedded crystal and metal and magnetic fires than fertile as now with us of flesh and blood and bone.
In Norhala's face as she watched it go was a dismay, a poignant uncertainty, that held in it something indescribably pitiful. "I am afraid!" I heard her whisper. She tightened her grasp upon dreaming Ruth; motioned us to go within. We passed, silently; behind us she came, followed by three of the great globes, by a pair of her tetrahedrons. Beside a pile of the silken stuffs she halted.
Within it a half-dozen little white goats nuzzled around her and Dick. She was milking one of them. Reassured, I drew back into the chamber, knelt over Ventnor. His condition was unchanged. My gaze fell upon the pool that had been Norhala's bath. Longingly I looked at it; then satisfying myself that the milking process was not finished, slipped off my clothes and splashed about.
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