The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  From the region of his heart, a tentacle had budded. It was as long as his arm, but thin, like whipcord, and soft and flexible.

  As soon as he thoroughly realised the significance of these new organs, his heart began to pump. Whatever might, or might not, be their use, they proved one thing—that he was in a new world.

  One part of the sky began to get lighter than the rest. Maskull cried out to his companions, but received no response. This frightened him. He went on shouting out, at irregular intervals—equally alarmed at the silence and at the sound of his own voice. Finally, as no answering hail came, he thought it wiser not to make too much noise, and after that he lay quiet, waiting in cold blood for what might happen.

  In a short while he perceived dim shadows around him, but these were not his friends.

  A pale, milky vapour over the ground began to succeed the black night, while in the upper sky rosy tints appeared. On earth, one would have said that day was breaking. The brightness went on imperceptibly increasing for a very long time.

  Maskull then discovered that he was lying on sand. The colour of the sand was scarlet. The obscure shadows he had seen were bushes, with black stems and purple leaves. So far, nothing else was visible.

  The day surged up. It was too misty for direct sunshine, but before long the brilliance of the light was already greater than that of the midday sun on earth. The heat, too, was intense, but Maskull welcomed it—it relieved his pain and diminished his sense of crushing weight. The wind had dropped with the rising of the sun.

  He now tried to get onto his feet, but succeeded only in kneeling. He was unable to see far. The mists had no more than partially dissolved, and all that he could distinguish was a narrow circle of red sand dotted with ten or twenty bushes.

  He felt a soft, cool touch on the back of his neck. He started forward in nervous fright and, in doing so, tumbled over onto the sand. Looking up over his shoulder quickly, he was astounded to see a woman standing beside him.

  She was clothed in a single flowing, pale green garment, rather classically draped. According to earth standards she was not beautiful, for, although her face was otherwise human, she was endowed—or afflicted—with the additional disfiguring organs that Maskull had discovered in himself. She also possessed the heart tentacle. But when he sat up, and their eyes met and remained in sympathetic contact, he seemed to see right into a soul that was the home of love, warmth, kindness, tenderness, and intimacy. Such was the noble familiarity of that gaze, that he thought he knew her. After that, he recognised all the loveliness of her person. She was tall and slight. All her movements were as graceful as music. Her skin was not of a dead, opaque colour, like that of an earth beauty, but was opalescent; its hue was continually changing, with every thought and emotion, but none of these tints was vivid—all were delicate, half-toned, and poetic. She had very long, loosely plaited, flaxen hair. The new organs, as soon as Maskull had familiarised himself with them, imparted something to her face that was unique and striking. He could not quite define it to himself, but subtlety and inwardness seemed added. The organs did not contradict the love of her eyes or the angelic purity of her features, but nevertheless sounded a deeper note—a note that saved her from mere girlishness.

  Her gaze was so friendly and unembarrassed that Maskull felt scarcely any humiliation at sitting at her feet, naked and helpless. She realised his plight, and put into his hands a garment that she had been carrying over her arm. It was similar to the one she was wearing, but of a darker, more masculine colour.

  “Do you think you can put it on by yourself?”

  He was distinctly conscious of these words, yet her voice had not sounded.

  He forced himself up to his feet, and she helped him to master the complications of the drapery.

  “Poor man—how you are suffering!” she said, in the same inaudible language. This time he discovered that the sense of what she said was received by his brain through the organ on his forehead.

  “Where am I? Is this Tormance?” he asked. As he spoke, he staggered.

  She caught him, and helped him to sit down. “Yes. You are with friends.”

  Then she regarded him with a smile, and began speaking aloud, in English. Her voice somehow reminded him of an April day, it was so fresh, nervous, and girlish. “I can now understand your language. It was strange at first. In the future I’ll speak to you with my mouth.”

  “This is extraordinary! What is this organ?” he asked, touching his forehead.

  “It is named the ‘breve.’ By means of it we read one another’s thoughts. Still, speech is better, for then the heart can be read too.”

  He smiled. “They say that speech is given us to deceive others.”

  “One can deceive with thought, too. But I’m thinking of the best, not the worst.”

  “Have you seen my friends?”

  She scrutinised him quietly, before answering. “Did you not come alone?”

  “I came with two other men, in a machine. I must have lost consciousness on arrival, and I haven’t seen them since.”

  “That’s very strange! No, I haven’t seen them. They can’t be here, or we would have known it. My husband and I—”

  “What is your name, and your husband’s name?”

  “Mine is Joiwind—my husband’s is Panawe. We live a very long way from here; still, it came to us both last night that you were lying here insensible. We almost quarrelled about which of us should come to you, but in the end I won.” Here she laughed. “I won, because I am the stronger-hearted of the two; he is the purer in perception.”

  “Thanks, Joiwind!” said Maskull simply.

  The colors chased each other rapidly beneath her skin. “Oh, why do you say that? What pleasure is greater than loving-kindness? I rejoiced at the opportunity….But now we must exchange blood.”

  “What is this?” he demanded, rather puzzled.

  “It must be so. Your blood is far too thick and heavy for our world. Until you have an infusion of mine, you will never get up.”

  Maskull flushed. “I feel like a complete ignoramus here….Won’t it hurt you?”

  “If your blood pains you, I suppose it will pain me. But we will share the pain.”

  “This is a new kind of hospitality to me,” he muttered.

  “Wouldn’t you do the same for me?” asked Joiwind, half smiling, half agitated.

  “I can’t answer for any of my actions in this world. I scarcely know where I am….Why, yes—of course I would, Joiwind.”

  While they were talking it had become full day. The mists had rolled away from the ground, and only the upper atmosphere remained fog-charged. The desert of scarlet sand stretched in all directions, except one, where there was a sort of little oasis—some low hills, clothed sparsely with little purple trees from base to summit. It was about a quarter of a mile distant.

  Joiwind had brought with her a small flint knife. Without any trace of nervousness, she made a careful, deep incision on her upper arm. Maskull expostulated.

  “Really, this part of it is nothing,” she said, laughing. “And if it were—a sacrifice that is no sacrifice—what merit is there in that?…Come now—your arm!”

  The blood was streaming down her arm. It was not red blood, but a milky, opalescent fluid.

  “Not that one!” said Maskull, shrinking. “I have already been cut there.” He submitted the other, and his blood poured forth.

  Joiwind delicately and skilfully placed the mouths of the two wounds together, and then kept her arm pressed tightly against Maskull’s for a long time. He felt a stream of pleasure entering his body through the incision. His old lightness and vigour began to return to him. After about five minutes a duel of kindness started between them; he wanted to remove his arm, and she to continue. At last he had his way, but it was none too soon—she stood there pale and dispirited.

&nbs
p; She looked at him with a more serious expression than before, as if strange depths had opened up before her eyes.

  “What is your name?”

  “Maskull.”

  “Where have you come from, with this awful blood?”

  “From a world called Earth….The blood is clearly unsuitable for this world, Joiwind, but after all, that was only to be expected. I am sorry I let you have your way.”

  “Oh, don’t say that! There was nothing else to be done. We must all help one another. Yet, somehow—forgive me—I feel polluted.”

  “And well you may, for it’s a fearful thing for a girl to accept in her own veins the blood of a strange man from a strange planet. If I had not been so dazed and weak I would never have allowed it.”

  “But I would have insisted. Are we not all brothers and sisters? Why did you come here, Maskull?”

  He was conscious of a slight degree of embarrassment. “Will you think it foolish if I say I hardly know?—I came with those two men. Perhaps I was attracted by curiosity, or perhaps it was the love of adventure.”

  “Perhaps,” said Joiwind. “I wonder…These friends of yours must be terrible men. Why did they come?”

  “That I can tell you. They came to follow Surtur.”

  Her face grew troubled. “I don’t understand it. One of them at least must be a bad man, and yet if he is following Surtur—or Shaping, as he is called here—he can’t be really bad.”

  “What do you know of Surtur?” asked Maskull in astonishment.

  Joiwind remained silent for a time, studying his face. His brain moved restlessly, as though it were being probed from outside. “I see…and yet I don’t see,” she said at last. “It is very difficult….Your God is a dreadful Being—bodyless, unfriendly, invisible. Here we don’t worship a God like that. Tell me, has any man set eyes on your God?”

  “What does all this mean, Joiwind? Why speak of God?”

  “I want to know.”

  “In ancient times, when the earth was young and grand, a few holy men are reputed to have walked and spoken with God, but those days are past.”

  “Our world is still young,” said Joiwind. “Shaping goes among us and converses with us. He is real and active—a friend and lover. Shaping made us, and he loves his work.”

  “Have you met him?” demanded Maskull, hardly believing his ears.

  “No. I have done nothing to deserve it yet. Some day I may have an opportunity to sacrifice myself, and then I may be rewarded by meeting and talking with Shaping.”

  “I have certainly come to another world. But why do you say he is the same as Surtur?”

  “Yes, he is the same. We women call him Shaping, and so do most men, but a few name him Surtur.”

  Maskull bit his nail. “Have you ever heard of Crystalman?”

  “That is Shaping once again. You see, he has many names—which shows how much he occupies our minds. Crystalman is a name of affection.”

  “It’s odd,” said Maskull. “I came here with quite different ideas about Crystalman.”

  Joiwind shook her hair. “In that grove of trees over there stands a desert shrine of his. Let us go and pray there, and then we’ll go on our way to Poolingdred. That is my home. It’s a long way off, and we must get there before Blodsombre.”

  “Now, what is Blodsombre?”

  “For about four hours in the middle of the day Branchspell’s rays are so hot that no one can endure them. We call it Blodsombre.”

  “Is Branchspell another name for Arcturus?”

  Joiwind threw off her seriousness and laughed. “Naturally we don’t take our names from you, Maskull. I don’t think our names are very poetic, but they follow nature.”

  She took his arm affectionately, and directed their walk towards the tree-covered hills. As they went along, the sun broke through the upper mists and a terrible gust of scorching heat, like a blast from a furnace, struck Maskull’s head. He involuntarily looked up, but lowered his eyes again like lightning. All that he saw in that instant was a glaring ball of electric white, three times the apparent diameter of the sun. For a few minutes he was quite blind.

  “My God!” he exclaimed. “If it’s like this in early morning you must be right enough about Blodsombre.” When he had somewhat recovered himself he asked, “How long are the days here, Joiwind?”

  Again he felt his brain being probed.

  “At this time of the year, for every hour’s daylight that you have in summer, we have two.”

  “The heat is terrific—and yet somehow I don’t feel so distressed by it as I would have expected.”

  “I feel it more than usual. It’s not difficult to account for it; you have some of my blood, and I have some of yours.”

  “Yes, every time I realise that, I—Tell me, Joiwind, will my blood alter, if I stay here long enough?—I mean, will it lose its redness and thickness, and become pure and thin and light-coloured, like yours?”

  “Why not? If you live as we live, you will assuredly grow like us.”

  “Do you mean food and drink?”

  “We eat no food, and drink only water.”

  “And on that you manage to sustain life?”

  “Well, Maskull, our water is good water,” replied Joiwind, smiling.

  As soon as he could see again he stared around at the landscape. The enormous scarlet desert extended everywhere to the horizon, excepting where it was broken by the oasis. It was roofed by a cloudless, deep blue, almost violet, sky. The circle of the horizon was far larger than on earth. On the skyline, at right angles to the direction in which they were walking, appeared a chain of mountains, apparently about forty miles distant. One, which was higher than the rest, was shaped like a cup. Maskull would have felt inclined to believe he was travelling in dreamland, but for the intensity of the light, which made everything vividly real.

  Joiwind pointed to the cup-shaped mountain. “That’s Poolingdred.”

  “You didn’t come from there!” he exclaimed, quite startled.

  “Yes, I did indeed. And that is where we have to go to now.”

  “With the single object of finding me?”

  “Why, yes.”

  The colour mounted to his face. “Then you are the bravest and noblest of all girls,” he said quietly, after a pause. “Without exception. Why, this is a journey for an athlete!”

  She pressed his arm, while a score of unpaintable, delicate hues stained her cheeks in rapid transition. “Please don’t say any more about it, Maskull. It makes me feel unpleasant.”

  “Very well. But can we possibly get there before midday?”

  “Oh, yes. And you mustn’t be frightened at the distance. We think nothing of long distances here—we have so much to think about and feel. Time goes all too quickly.”

  During their conversation they had drawn near the base of the hills, which sloped gently, and were not above fifty feet in height. Maskull now began to see strange specimens of vegetable life. What looked like a small patch of purple grass, above five feet square, was moving across the sand in their direction. When it came near enough he perceived that it was not grass; there were no blades, but only purple roots. The roots were revolving, for each small plant in the whole patch, like the spokes of a rimless wheel. They were alternately plunged in the sand, and withdrawn from it, and by this means the plant proceeded forward. Some uncanny, semi-intelligent instinct was keeping all the plants together, moving at one pace, in one direction, like a flock of migrating birds in flight.

  Another remarkable plant was a large, feathery ball, resembling a dandelion fruit, which they encountered sailing through the air. Joiwind caught it with an exceedingly graceful movement of her arm, and showed it to Maskull. It had roots and presumably lived in the air and fed on the chemical constituents of the atmosphere. But what was peculiar about it was its colour. It was an
entirely new colour—not a new shade or combination, but a new primary colour, as vivid as blue, red, or yellow, but quite different. When he inquired, she told him that it was known as “ulfire.” Presently he met with a second new colour. This she designated “jale.” The sense impressions caused in Maskull by these two additional primary colors can only be vaguely hinted at by analogy. Just as blue is delicate and mysterious, yellow clear and unsubtle, and red sanguine and passionate, so he felt ulfire to be wild and painful, and jale dreamlike, feverish, and voluptuous.

  The hills were composed of a rich, dark mould. Small trees, of weird shapes, all differing from each other, but all purple-coloured, covered the slopes and top. Maskull and Joiwind climbed up and through. Some hard fruit, bright blue in colour, of the size of a large apple, and shaped like an egg, was lying in profusion underneath the trees.

  “Is the fruit here poisonous, or why don’t you eat it?” asked Maskull.

  She looked at him tranquilly. “We don’t eat living things. The thought is horrible to us.”

  “I have nothing to say against that, theoretically. But do you really sustain your bodies on water?”

  “Supposing you could find nothing else to live on, Maskull—would you eat other men?”

  “I would not.”

  “Neither will we eat plants and animals, which are our fellow creatures. So nothing is left to us but water, and as one can really live on anything, water does very well.”

  Maskull picked up one of the fruits and handled it curiously. As he did so another of his newly acquired sense organs came into action. He found that the fleshy knobs beneath his ears were in some novel fashion acquainting him with the inward properties of the fruit. He could not only see, feel, and smell it, but could detect its intrinsic nature. This nature was hard, persistent and melancholy.

  Joiwind answered the questions he had not asked.

  “Those organs are called ‘poigns.’ Their use is to enable us to understand and sympathise with all living creatures.”