The Book of Wonder

by Lord Dunsany

  HOW ONE CAME, AS WAS FORETOLD, TO THE CITY OF NEVER

  The child that played about the terraces and gardens in sight of theSurrey hills never knew that it was he that should come to theUltimate City, never knew that he should see the Under Pits, thebarbicans and the holy minarets of the mightiest city known. I thinkof him now as a child with a little red watering-can going about thegardens on a summer's day that lit the warm south country, hisimagination delighted with all tales of quite little adventures, andall the while there was reserved for him that feat at which menwonder.

  Looking in other directions, away from the Surrey hills, through allhis infancy he saw that precipice that, wall above wall and mountainabove mountain, stands at the edge of the World, and in perpetualtwilight alone with the Moon and the Sun holds up the inconceivableCity of Never. To tread its streets he was destined; prophecy knew it.He had the magic halter, and a worn old rope it was; an old wayfaringwoman had given it to him: it had the power to hold any animal whoserace had never known captivity, such as the unicorn, the hippogriffPegasus, dragons and wyverns; but with a lion, giraffe, camel orhorse it was useless.

  How often we have seen that City of Never, that marvel of the Nations!Not when it is night in the World, and we can see no further than thestars; not when the sun is shining where we dwell, dazzling our eyes;but when the sun has set on some stormy days, all at once repentant atevening, and those glittering cliffs reveal themselves which we almosttake to be clouds, and it is twilight with us as it is for ever withthem, then on their gleaming summits we see those golden domes thatoverpeer the edges of the World and seem to dance with dignity andcalm in that gentle light of evening that is Wonder's native haunt.Then does the City of Never, unvisited and afar, look long at hersister the World.

  It had been prophecied that he should come there. They knew it whenthe pebbles were being made and before the isles of coral were givenunto the sea. And thus the prophecy came unto fulfilment and passedinto history, and so at length to Oblivion, out of which I drag it asit goes floating by, into which I shall one day tumble. Thehippogriffs dance before dawn in the upper air; long before sunriseflashes upon our lawns they go to glitter in light that has not yetcome to the World, and as the dawn works up from the ragged hills andthe stars feel it they go slanting earthwards, till sunlight touchesthe tops of the tallest trees, and the hippogriffs alight with arattle of quills and fold their wings and gallop and gambol away tillthey come to some prosperous, wealthy, detestable town, and they leapat once from the fields and soar away from the sight of it, pursued bythe horrible smoke of it until they come again to the pure blue air.

  He whom prophecy had named from of old to come to the City of Never,went down one midnight with his magic halter to a lake-side where thehippogriffs alighted at dawn, for the turf was soft there and theycould gallop far before they came to a town, and there he waitedhidden near their hoofmarks. And the stars paled a little and grewindistinct; but there was no other sign as yet of the dawn, when thereappeared far up in the deeps of the night two little saffron specks,then four and five: it was the hippogriffs dancing and twirling aroundin the sun. Another flock joined them, there were twelve of them now;they danced there, flashing their colours back to the sun, theydescended in wide curves slowly; trees down on earth revealed againstthe sky, jet-black each delicate twig; a star disappeared from acluster, now another; and dawn came on like music, like a new song.Ducks shot by to the lake from still dark fields of corn, far voicesuttered, a colour grew upon water, and still the hippogriffs gloriedin the light, revelling up in the sky; but when pigeons stirred on thebranches and the first small bird was abroad, and little coots fromthe rushes ventured to peer about, then there came down on a suddenwith a thunder of feathers the hippogriffs, and, as they landed fromtheir celestial heights all bathed with the day's first sunlight, theman whose destiny it was as from of old to come to the City of Never,sprang up and caught the last with the magic halter. It plunged, butcould not escape it, for the hippogriffs are of the uncaptured races,and magic has power over the magical, so the man mounted it, and itsoared again for the heights whence it had come, as a wounded beastgoes home. But when they came to the heights that venturous rider sawhuge and fair to the left of him the destined City of Never, and hebeheld the towers of Lel and Lek, Neerib and Akathooma, and the cliffsof Toldenarba a-glistening in the twilight like an alabaster statue ofthe Evening. Towards them he wrenched the halter, towards Toldenarbaand the Under Pits; the wings of the hippogriff roared as the halterturned him. Of the Under Pits who shall tell? Their mystery is secret.It is held by some that they are the sources of night, and thatdarkness pours from them at evening upon the world; while others hintthat knowledge of these might undo our civilization.

  There watched him ceaselessly from the Under Pits those eyes whose dutyit is; from further within and deeper, the bats that dwell there arosewhen they saw the surprise in the eyes; the sentinels on the bulwarksbeheld that stream of bats and lifted up their spears as it were forwar. Nevertheless when they perceived that that war for which theywatched was not now come upon them, they lowered their spears andsuffered him to enter, and he passed whirring through the earthwardgateway. Even so he came, as foretold, to the City of Never perched uponToldenarba, and saw late twilight on those pinnacles that know no otherlight. All the domes were of copper, but the spires on their summitswere gold. Little steps of onyx ran all this way and that. With cobbledagates were its streets a glory. Through small square panes ofrose-quartz the citizens looked from their houses. To them as theylooked abroad the World far-off seemed happy. Clad though that city wasin one robe always, in twilight, yet was its beauty worthy of even solovely a wonder: city and twilight were both peerless but for eachother. Built of a stone unknown in the world we tread were its bastions,quarried we know not where, but called by the gnomes _abyx_, it soflashed back to the twilight its glories, colour for colour, that nonecan say of them where their boundary is, and which the eternal twilight,and which the City of Never; they are the twin-born children, thefairest daughters of Wonder. Time had been there, but not to workdestruction; he had turned to a fair, pale green the domes that weremade of copper, the rest he had left untouched, even he, the destroyerof cities, by what bribe I know not averted. Nevertheless they oftenwept in Never for change and passing away, mourning catastrophes inother worlds, and they built temples sometimes to ruined stars that hadfallen flaming down from the Milky Way, giving them worship still whenby us long since forgotten. Other temples they have--who knows to whatdivinities?

  And he that was destined alone of men to come to the City of Never waswell content to behold it as he trotted down its agate street, withthe wings of his hippogriff furled, seeing at either side of himmarvel on marvel of which even China is ignorant. Then as he nearedthe city's further rampart by which no inhabitant stirred, and lookedin a direction to which no houses faced with any rose-pink windows, hesuddenly saw far-off, dwarfing the mountains, an even greater city.Whether that city was built upon the twilight or whether it rose fromthe coasts of some other world he did not know. He saw it dominate theCity of Never, and strove to reach it; but at this unmeasured home ofunknown colossi the hippogriff shied frantically, and neither themagic halter nor anything that he did could make the monster face it.At last, from the City of Never's lonely outskirts where noinhabitants walked, the rider turned slowly earthward. He knew now whyall the windows faced this way--the denizens of the twilight gazed atthe world and not at a greater than them. Then from the last step ofthe earthward stairway, like lead past the Under Pits and down theglittering face of Toldenarba, down from the overshadowed glories ofthe gold-tipped City of Never and out of perpetual twilight, swoopedthe man on his winged monster: the wind that slept at the time leapedup like a dog at their onrush, it uttered a cry and ran past them.Down on the World it was morning; night was roaming away with hiscloak trailed behind him, white mists turned over and over as he went,the orb was grey but it glittered, lights blinked surprisingly inearly windows, forth
over wet, dim fields went cows from their houses:even in this hour touched the fields again the feet of the hippogriff.And the moment that the man dismounted and took off his magic halterthe hippogriff flew slanting away with a whirr, going back to someairy dancing-place of his people.

  And he that surmounted glittering Toldenarba and came alone of men tothe City of Never has his name and his fame among nations; but he andthe people of that twilit city well know two things unguessed by othermen, they that there is another city fairer than theirs, and he--adeed unaccomplished.