by Anthology
"Three, they are," Aura answered. "I saw them before--in the street below--Targo's men."
Evidently the three men had been watching the house from which they had come and had followed them from there. If they were Targo's men, as seemed very probable, the Very Young Man could not understand why they had not already attacked him. Perhaps they intended to as soon as he and Aura had reached a more secluded part of the city. They must know he had the drugs, and to gain possession of those certainly was what they were striving for. The Very Young Man realized he must take no chances; to lose the drugs would be fatal to them all.
"Are we near the edge of the city?" he asked.
"Yes, very near."
"Then we shall get large here. If we make a run for it we will be in the country before we are big enough to attract too much attention. Understand, Aura?"
"I understand."
"We mustn't stir up the city if we can help it; with giants running around, the people would get worked up to a frenzy. You could see that with Lylda this afternoon. Not that you can blame them altogether, but we want to get Loto back before we start anything here in Arite." He took the pellets out as he spoke, and they each touched one of them to the tip of their tongues.
"Now, then, come on--not too fast, we want to keep going," said the Very Young Man, taking the girl by the hand again.
As they started off, running slowly down the street, the Very Young Man looked back. The three men were running after them--not fast, seeming content merely to keep their distance. The Very Young Man laughed. "Wait till they see us get big. Fine chance they've got."
Aura, her lithe, young body in perfect condition, ran lightly and easily as a fawn. She made a pretty picture as she ran, with her long, black hair streaming out behind her, and the short silk tunic flapping about her lean, round thighs. She still held the Very Young Man by the hand, running just in advance of him, guiding him through the streets, which in this part of the city were more broken up and irregular.
They had not gone more than a hundred yards when the pavement began to move unsteadily under them, as the deck of a plunging ship feels to one who runs its length, and the houses they were swiftly passing began visibly to decrease in size. The Very Young Man felt the girl falter in her stride. He dropped her hand and slipped his arm about her waist, holding her other hand against it. She smiled up into his eyes, and thus they ran on, side by side.
A few moments more and they were in the open country, running on a road that wound through the hills, between cultivated fields dotted here and there with houses. The landscape dwindled beneath them steadily, until they seemed to be running along a narrow, curving path, bordered by little patches of different-colored ground, like a checkerboard. The houses they passed now hardly reached as high as their knees. Sometimes peasants stood in the doorways of these houses watching them in terror. Occasionally they passed a farmer ploughing his field, who stopped his work, stricken dumb, and stared at them as they went swiftly by.
When they were well out into the country, perhaps a quarter of the way to Orlog--for to beings so huge as they the distance was not great--the Very Young Man slowed down to a walk.
"How far have we gone?" he asked.
Aura stopped abruptly and looked around her. They seemed now to be at the bottom of a huge, circular, shallow bowl. In every direction from where they stood the land curved upward towards the rim of the bowl that was the horizon--a line, not sharp and well defined, but dim and hazy, melting away into the blackness of the star-studded sky. Behind them, hardly more than a mile away, according to their present stature--they had stopped growing entirely now--lay the city of Arite. They could see completely across it and out into the country beyond.
The lake, with whose shore they had been running parallel, was much closer to them. Ahead, up near the rim of the horizon, lay a black smudge. Aura pointed. "Orlog is there," she said. "You see it?"
To the Very Young Man suddenly came the realization that already he was facing the problem of how to get into Orlog unheralded. If they remained in their present size they could easily walk there in an hour or less. But long before that they would be seen and recognized.
The Very Young Man feared for Loto's safety if he allowed that to happen. He seemed to be able to make out the city of Orlog now. It was smaller than Arite, and lay partially behind a hill, with most of its houses strung along the lake shore. If only they were not so tall they could not be seen so readily. But if they became smaller it would take them much longer to get there. And eventually they would have to become normal Oroid size, or even smaller, in order to get into the city unnoticed. The Very Young Man thought of the lake. Perhaps that would be the best way.
"Can you swim?" he asked. And Aura, with her ready smile, answered that she could. "If we are in the water," she added, seeming to have followed his thoughts, "they would not see us. I can swim very far--can you?"
The Very Young Man nodded.
"If we could get near to Orlog in the water," he said, "we might get a boat. And then when we were small, we could sail up. They wouldn't see us then."
"There are many boats," answered the girl in agreement. "Look!"
There were, indeed, on the lake, within sight of them now, several boats. "We must get the one nearest Orlog," the Very Young Man said. "Or else it will beat us in and carry the news."
In a few minutes more they were at the lake shore. The Very Young Man wore, underneath his robe, a close-fitting knitted garment very much like a bathing-suit. He took off his robe now, and rolling it up, tied it across his back with the cord he had worn around his waist. Aura's tunic was too short to impede her swimming and when the Very Young Man was ready, they waded out into the water together. They found the lake no deeper than to Aura's shoulders, but as it was easier to swim than to wade, they began swimming--away from shore towards the farthest boat that evidently was headed for Orlog.
The Very Young Man thought with satisfaction that, with only their heads visible, huge as they would appear, they could probably reach this boat without being seen by any one in Orlog. The boat was perhaps a quarter of a mile from them--a tiny little toy vessel, it seemed, that they never would have seen except for its sail.
They came up to it rapidly, for they were swimming very much faster than it could sail, passing close to one of the others and nearly swamping it by the waves they made. As they neared the boat they were pursuing--it was different from any the Very Young Man had seen so far, a single, canoe-shaped hull, with out-riders on both sides--they could see it held but a single occupant, a man who sat in its stern--a figure about as long as one of the Very Young Man's fingers.
The Very Young Man and Aura were swimming side by side, now. The water was perfect in temperature--neither too hot nor too cold; they had not been swimming fast, and were not winded.
"We've got him, what'll we do with him," the Very Young Man wanted to know in dismay, as the thought occurred to him. He might have been more puzzled at how to take the drug to make them smaller while they were swimming, but Aura's answer solved both problems.
"There is an island," she said flinging an arm up out of the water. "We can push the boat to it, and him we can leave there. Is that not the thing to do?"
"You bet your life," the Very Young Man agreed, enthusiastically. "That's just the thing to do."
As they came within reach of the boat the Very Young Man stopped swimming and found that the water was not much deeper than his waist. The man in the boat appeared now about to throw himself into the lake from fright.
"Tell him, Aura," the Very Young Man said. "We won't hurt him."
Wading through the water, they pushed the boat with its terrified occupant carefully in front of them towards the island, which was not more than two or three hundred yards away. The Very Young Man found this rather slow work; becoming impatient, he seized the boat in his hand, pinning the man against its seat with his forefinger so he would not fall out. Then raising the boat out of the water over his head
he waded forward much more rapidly.
The island, which they reached in a few moments more, was circular in shape, and about fifty feet in diameter. It had a beach entirely around it; a hill perhaps ten feet high rose near its center, and at one end it was heavily wooded. There were no houses to be seen.
The Very Young Man set the boat back on the water, and they pushed it up on the beach. When it grounded the tiny man leaped out and ran swiftly along the sand. The Very Young Man and Aura laughed heartily as they stood ankle-deep in the water beside the boat, watching him. For nearly five minutes he ran; then suddenly he ducked inland and disappeared in the woods.
When they were left alone they lost no time in becoming normal Oroid size. The boat now appeared about twenty-five feet long--a narrow, canoe-shaped hull hollowed out of a tree-trunk. They climbed into it, and with a long pole they found lying in its bottom, the Very Young Man shoved it off the beach.
CHAPTER XXX
WORD MUSIC
The boat had a mast stepped near the bow, and a triangular cloth sail. The Very Young Man sat in the stern, steering with a short, broad-bladed paddle; Aura lay on a pile of rushes in the bottom of the boat, looking up at him.
For about half a mile the Very Young Man sailed along parallel with the beach, looking for the man they had marooned. He was nowhere in sight, and they finally headed out into the lake towards Orlog, which they could just see dimly on the further shore.
The breeze was fresh, and they made good time. The boat steered easily, and the Very Young Man, reclining on one elbow, with Aura at his feet, felt at peace with himself and with the world. Again he thought this girl the prettiest he had ever seen. There was something, too, of a spiritual quality in the delicate smallness of her features--a sweetness of expression in her quick, understanding smile, and an honest clearness in her steady gaze that somehow he seemed never to have seen in a girl's face before.
He felt again, now that he had time to think more of her, that same old diffidence that had come to him before when they were alone in the storeroom of her home. That she did not share this feeling was obvious from the frankness and ease of her manner.
For some time after leaving the island neither spoke. The Very Young Man felt the girl's eyes fixed almost constantly upon him--a calm gaze that held in it a great curiosity and wonderment. He steered steadily onward towards Orlog. There was, for the moment, nothing to discuss concerning their adventure, and he wondered what he should say to this girl who stared at him so frankly. Then he met her eyes, and again she smiled with that perfect sense of comradeship he had so seldom felt with women of his own race.
"You're very beautiful," said the Very Young Man abruptly.
The girl's eyes widened a little, but she did not drop her lashes. "I want to be beautiful; if you think it is so, I am very glad."
"I do. I think you're the prettiest girl I ever saw." He blurted out the words impetuously. He was very earnest, very sincere, and very young.
A trace of coquetry came into the girl's manner. "Prettier than the girls of your world? Are they not pretty?"
"Oh, yes--of course; but----"
"What?" she asked when he paused.
The Very Young Man considered a moment. "You're--you're different," he said finally. She waited. "You--you don't know how to flirt, for one thing."
The girl turned her head away and looked at him a little sidewise through lowered lashes.
"How do you know that?" she asked demurely; and the Very Young Man admitted to himself with a shock of surprise that he certainly was totally wrong in that deduction at least.
"Tell me of the girls in your world," she went on after a moment's silence. "My sister's husband many times he has told me of the wonderful things up there in that great land. But more I would like to hear."
He told her, with an eloquence and enthusiasm born of youth, about his own life and those of his people. She questioned eagerly and with an intelligence that surprised him, for she knew far more of the subject than he realized.
"These girls of your country," she interrupted him once. "They, too, are very beautiful; they wear fine clothes--I know--my brother he has told me."
"Yes," said the Very Young Man.
"And are they very learned--very clever--do they work and govern, like the men?"
"Some are very learned. And they are beginning to govern, like the men; but not so much as you do here."
The girl's forehead wrinkled. "My brother he once told me," she said slowly, "that in your world many women are bad. Is that so?"
"Some are, of course. And some men think that most are. But I don't; I think women are splendid."
"If that is so, then better I can understand what I have heard," the girl answered thoughtfully. "If Oroid women were as I have heard my brother talk of some of yours, this world of ours would soon be full of evil."
"You are different," the Very Young Man said quickly. "You--and Lylda."
"The women here, they have kept the evil out of life," the girl went on. "It is their duty--their responsibility to their race. Your good women--they have not always governed as we have. Why is that?"
"I do not know," the Very Young Man admitted. "Except because the men would not let them."
"Why not, if they are just as learned as the men?" The girl was smiling--a little roguish, twisted smile.
"There are very clever girls," the Very Young Man went on hastily; he found himself a little on the defensive, and he did not know just why. "They are able to do things in the world. But--many men do not like them."
Aura was smiling openly now, and her eyes twinkled with mischief. "Perhaps it is the men are jealous. Could that not be so?"
The Very Young Man did not answer, and the girl went on more seriously. "The women of my race, they are very just. Perhaps you know that, Jack. Often has my brother told us of his own great world and of its problems. And the many things he has told us--Lylda and I--we have often wondered. For every question has its other side, and we cannot judge--from him alone."
The Very Young Man, surprised at the turn their conversation had taken, and confused a little by this calm logic from a girl--particularly from so young and pretty a girl--was at a loss how to go on.
"You cannot understand, Aura," he finally said seriously. "Women may be all kinds; some are bad--some are good. Down here I know it is not that way. Sometimes when a girl is smart she thinks she is smarter than any living man. You would not like that sort of girl would you?"
"My brother never said it just that way," she answered with equal seriousness. "No, that would be bad--very bad. In our land women are only different from men. They know they are not better or worse--only different."
The Very Young Man was thinking of a girl he once knew. "I hate clever girls," he blurted out.
Aura's eyes were teasing him again. "I am so sorry," she said sadly.
The Very Young Man looked his surprise. "Why are you sorry?"
"My sister, she once told me I was clever. My brother said it, too, and I believed them."
The Very Young Man flushed.
"You're different," he repeated.
"How--different?" She was looking at him sidewise again.
"I don't know; I've been trying to think--but you are. And I don't hate you--I like you--very, very much."
"I like you, too," she answered frankly, and the Very Young Man thought of Loto as she said it. He was leaning down towards her, and their hands met for an instant.
The Very Young Man had spread his robe out to dry when he first got into the boat, and now he put it on while Aura steered. Then he sat beside her on the seat, taking the paddle again.
"Do you go often to the theater?" she asked after a time.
"Oh, yes, often."
"Nothing like that do we have here," she added, a little wistfully. "Only once, when we played a game in the field beyond my brother's home. Lylda was the queen and I her lady. And do you go to the opera, too? My brother he has told me of the opera. How wonderful m
ust that be! So beautiful--more beautiful even it must be than Lylda's music. But never shall it be for me." She smiled sadly: "Never shall I be able to hear it."
An eager contradiction sprang to the Very Young Man's lips, but the girl shook her head quietly.
For several minutes they did not speak. The wind behind them blew the girl's long hair forward over her shoulders. A lock of it fell upon the Very Young Man's hand as it lay on the seat between them, and unseen he twisted it about his fingers. The wind against his neck felt warm and pleasant; the murmur of the water flowing past sounded low and sweet and soothing. Overhead the stars hung very big and bright. It was like sailing on a perfect night in his own world. He was very conscious of the girl's nearness now--conscious of the clinging softness of her hair about his fingers. And all at once he found himself softly quoting some half-forgotten lines: