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Updated: May 4, 2025
"I shall come back, and make amends to you. It's only for a night." Maskull gazed from one to the other in perplexity. "Let me go alone. I would be sorry if anything happened." Gleameil shook her head. "Don't regard this as a woman's caprice," she said. "Even if you hadn't passed this way, I would have heard that music soon. I have a hunger for it." "Haven't you any such feeling, Polecrab?" "No.
"Threal comes next, as you go north. They say it's a land of mystics... I don't know." "Mystics?" "So I'm told.... Still farther north there's Lichstorm." "Now we're going far afield." "There are mountains there and altogether it must be a very dangerous place, especially for a full-blooded man like you. Take care of yourself." "This is rather premature, Polecrab. How do you know I'm going there?"
Maskull gave him a strange look. "How so?" "I don't speak from my own wisdom," said Polecrab, "for I have none; but I have just now recalled what Broodviol once told me, when I was a young man, and he was an old one.
Gleameil laughed, but said nothing. "Now go to sleep," said Polecrab. "When the time comes, I will take you across myself." He lay down again, and closed his eyes. Maskull followed his example; but Gleameil remained sitting erect, with her legs under her. "Who was that other woman, Maskull?" she asked presently. He did not answer, but pretended to sleep.
It was a new sort of intoxication, however, for neither his will not his emotions were excited, but only his intellect and that only in a certain way. After that, the whole process started over again. But there was never a moment when he was not perfectly cool, and master of his senses. When each had drunk twice, Polecrab replugged the hole, and they returned to their bank.
"No, that's impossible," replied Maskull reflectively. "It was Crystalman. And it isn't a question of my suspecting it I know it." "How?" "Because this is Crystalman's world, and Surtur's world is something quite different." "That's queer, then," said Polecrab.
At a convenient height in its trunk a hole had been tapped and plugged. Polecrab removed the plug and put his mouth to the aperture, sucking for quite a long time, like a child at its mother's breast. Maskull, watching him, imagined that he saw his eyes growing brighter. When his own turn came to drink, he found the juice of the tree somewhat like coconut milk in flavour, but intoxicating.
"I'm a fisherman," he said, after a minute or two. "I live by killing, and so does everybody. This life seems to me all wrong. So maybe life of any kind is wrong, and Surtur's world is not life at all, but something else." "Yes, but will death lead me to it, whatever it is?" "Ask the dead," said Polecrab, "and not a living man." Maskull continued.
"I am not to be dissuaded," she replied. He stroked his beard in perplexity. "Is it time to start?" "It wants four hours to sunset, and we shall need all that." Maskull sighed. "I'll go to the mouth of the creek, and wait there for you and the raft. You will wish to make your farewells, Gleameil." He then clasped Polecrab by the hand. "Adieu, fisherman!"
In a minute or two a curious little beast came crawling up to his feet, turning its face and eyes up affectionately, like a dog. It was about two feet long, and somewhat resembled a small seal, but had six legs, ending in strong claws. "Arg, go fish!" said Polecrab hoarsely. The animal immediately tumbled off the bank into the water.
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