Tales of Wonder

by Lord Dunsany

  The Long Porter's Tale

  There are things that are known only to the long porter of Tong TongTarrup as he sits and mumbles memories to himself in the littlebastion gateway.

  He remembers the war there was in the halls of the gnomes; and how thefairies came for the opals once, which Tong Tong Tarrup has; and theway that the giants went through the fields below, he watching fromhis gateway: he remembers quests that are even yet a wonder to thegods. Who dwells in those frozen houses on the high bare brink of theworld not even he has told me, and he is held to be garrulous. Amongthe elves, the only living things ever seen moving at that awfulaltitude where they quarry turquoise on Earth's highest crag, his nameis a byword for loquacity wherewith they mock the talkative.

  His favourite story if you offer him bash--the drug of which he isfondest, and for which he will give his service in war to the elvesagainst the goblins, or vice-versa if the goblins bring him more--hisfavourite story, when bodily soothed by the drug and mentally fiercelyexcited, tells of a quest undertaken ever so long ago for nothing moremarketable than an old woman's song.

  Picture him telling it. An old man, lean and bearded, and almostmonstrously long, that lolled in a city's gateway on a crag perhapsten miles high; the houses for the most part facing eastward, lit bythe sun and moon and the constellations we know, but one house on thepinnacle looking over the edge of the world and lit by the glimmer ofthose unearthly spaces where one long evening wears away the stars: mylittle offering of bash; a long forefinger that nipped it at once on astained and greedy thumb--all these are in the foreground of thepicture. In the background, the mystery of those silent houses and ofnot knowing who their denizens were, or what service they had at thehands of the long porter and what payment he had in return, andwhether he was mortal.

  Picture him in the gateway of this incredible town, having swallowedmy bash in silence, stretch his great length, lean back, and begin tospeak.

  It seems that one clear morning a hundred years ago, a visitor to TongTong Tarrup was climbing up from the world. He had already passedabove the snow and had set his foot on a step of the earthwardstairway that goes down from Tong Tong Tarrup on to the rocks, whenthe long porter saw him. And so painfully did he climb those easysteps that the grizzled man on watch had long to wonder whether or notthe stranger brought him bash, the drug that gives a meaning to thestars and seems to explain the twilight. And in the end there was nota scrap of bash, and the stranger had nothing better to offer thatgrizzled man than his mere story only.

  It seems that the stranger's name was Gerald Jones, and he alwayslived in London; but once as a child he had been on a Northern moor.It was so long ago that he did not remember how, only somehow or otherhe walked alone on the moor, and all the ling was in flower. There wasnothing in sight but ling and heather and bracken, except, far offnear the sunset, on indistinct hills, there were little vague patchesthat looked like the fields of men. With evening a mist crept up andhid the hills, and still he went walking on over the moor. And then hecame to the valley, a tiny valley in the midst of the moor, whosesides were incredibly steep. He lay down and looked at it through theroots of the ling. And a long, long way below him, in a garden by acottage, with hollyhocks all round her that were taller than herself,there sat an old woman on a wooden chair, singing in the evening. Andthe man had taken a fancy to the song and remembered it after inLondon, and whenever it came to his mind it made him think ofevenings--the kind you don't get in London--and he heard a soft windgoing idly over the moor and the bumble-bees in a hurry, and forgotthe noise of the traffic. And always, whenever he heard men speak ofTime, he grudged to Time most this song. Once afterwards he went tothat Northern moor again and found the tiny valley, but there was noold woman in the garden, and no one was singing a song. And eitherregret for the song that the old woman had sung, on a summer eveningtwenty years away and daily receding, troubled his mind, or else thewearisome work that he did in London, for he worked for a great firmthat was perfectly useless; and he grew old early, as men do incities. And at last, when melancholy brought only regret and theuselessness of his work gained round him with age, he decided toconsult a magician. So to a magician he went and told him histroubles, and particularly he told him how he had heard the song. "Andnow," he said, "it is nowhere in the world."

  "Of course it is not in the world," the magician said, "but over theEdge of the World you may easily find it." And he told the man that hewas suffering from flux of time and recommended a day at the Edge ofthe World. Jones asked what part of the Edge of the World he should goto, and the magician had heard Tong Tong Tarrup well spoken of; so hepaid him, as is usual, in opals, and started at once on the journey.The ways to that town are winding; he took the ticket at VictoriaStation that they only give if they know you: he went past Bleth: hewent along the Hills of Neol-Hungar and came to the Gap of Poy. Allthese are in that part of the world that pertains to the fields weknow; but beyond the Gap of Poy on those ordinary plains, that soclosely resemble Sussex, one first meets the unlikely. A line ofcommon grey hills, the Hills of Sneg, may be seen at the edge of theplain from the Gap of Poy; it is there that the incredible begins,infrequently at first, but happening more and more as you go up thehills. For instance, descending once into Poy Plains, the first thingthat I saw was an ordinary shepherd watching a flock of ordinarysheep. I looked at them for some time and nothing happened, when,without a word, one of the sheep walked up to the shepherd andborrowed his pipe and smoked it--an incident that struck me asunlikely; but in the Hills of Sneg I met an honest politician. Overthese plains went Jones and over the Hills of Sneg, meeting at firstunlikely things, and then incredible things, till he came to the longslope beyond the hills that leads up to the Edge of the World, andwhere, as all guidebooks tell, anything may happen. You might at thefoot of this slope see here and there things that could conceivablyoccur in the fields we know; but soon these disappeared, and thetraveller saw nothing but fabulous beasts, browsing on flowers asastounding as themselves, and rocks so distorted that their shapes hadclearly a meaning, being too startling to be accidental. Even thetrees were shockingly unfamiliar, they had so much to say, and theyleant over to one another whenever they spoke and struck grotesqueattitudes and leered. Jones saw two fir-trees fighting. The effect ofthese scenes on his nerves was very severe; still he climbed on, andwas much cheered at last by the sight of a primrose, the only familiarthing he had seen for hours, but it whistled and skipped away. He sawthe unicorns in their secret valley. Then night in a sinister wayslipped over the sky, and there shone not only the stars, but lesserand greater moons, and he heard dragons rattling in the dark.

  With dawn there appeared above him among its amazing crags the town ofTong Tong Tarrup, with the light on its frozen stairs, a tiny clusterof houses far up in the sky. He was on the steep mountain now: greatmists were leaving it slowly, and revealing, as they trailed away,more and more astonishing things. Before the mist had all gone heheard quite near him, on what he had thought was bare mountain, thesound of a heavy galloping on turf. He had come to the plateau of thecentaurs. And all at once he saw them in the mist: there they were,the children of fable, five enormous centaurs. Had he paused onaccount of any astonishment he had not come so far: he strode on overthe plateau, and came quite near to the centaurs. It is never thecentaurs' wont to notice men; they pawed the ground and shouted to oneanother in Greek, but they said no word to him. Nevertheless theyturned and stared at him when he left them, and when he had crossedthe plateau and still went on, all five of them cantered after to theedge of their green land; for above the high green plateau of thecentaurs is nothing but naked mountains, and the last green thing thatis seen by the mountaineer as he travels to Tong Tong Tarrup is thegrass that the centaurs trample. He came into the snow fields that themountain wears like a cape, its head being bare above it, and stillclimbed on. The centaurs watched him with increasing wonder.

  Not even fabulous beasts were near him now, nor strange demoniactrees--nothing but snow and
the clean bare crag above it on which wasTong Tong Tarrup. All day he climbed and evening found him above thesnow-line; and soon he came to the stairway cut in the rock and insight of that grizzled man, the long porter of Tong Tong Tarrup,sitting mumbling amazing memories to himself and expecting in vainfrom the stranger a gift of bash.

  It seems that as soon as the stranger arrived at the bastion gateway,tired though he was, he demanded lodgings at once that commanded agood view of the Edge of the World. But the long porter, that grizzledman, disappointed of his bash, demanded the stranger's story to add tohis memories before he would show him the way. And this is the story,if the long porter has told me the truth and if his memory is stillwhat it was. And when the story was told, the grizzled man arose, and,dangling his musical keys, went up through door after door and by manystairs and led the stranger to the top-most house, the highest roof inthe world, and in its parlour showed him the parlour window. There thetired stranger sat down in a chair and gazed out of the window sheerover the Edge of the World. The window was shut, and in its glitteringpanes the twilight of the World's Edge blazed and danced, partly likeglow-worms' lamps and partly like the sea; it went by rippling, fullof wonderful moons. But the traveller did not look at the wonderfulmoons. For from the abyss there grew with their roots in farconstellations a row of hollyhocks, and amongst them a small greengarden quivered and trembled as scenes tremble in water; higher up,ling in bloom was floating upon the twilight, more and more floated uptill all the twilight was purple; the little green garden low down washung in the midst of it. And the garden down below, and the ling allround it, seemed all to be trembling and drifting on a song. For thetwilight was full of a song that sang and rang along the edges of theWorld, and the green garden and the ling seemed to flicker and ripplewith it as the song rose and fell, and an old woman was singing itdown in the garden. A bumble-bee sailed across from over the Edge ofthe World. And the song that was lapping there against the coasts ofthe World, and to which the stars were dancing, was the same that hehad heard the old woman sing long since down in the valley in themidst of the Northern moor.

  But that grizzled man, the long porter, would not let the strangerstay, because he brought him no bash, and impatiently he shoulderedhim away, himself not troubling to glance through the World'soutermost window, for the lands that Time afflicts and the spaces thatTime knows not are all one to that grizzled man, and the bash that heeats more profoundly astounds his mind than anything man can show himeither in the World we know or over the Edge. And, bitterlyprotesting, the traveller went back and down again to the World.

  . . . . .

  Accustomed as I am to the incredible from knowing the Edge of theWorld, the story presents difficulties to me. Yet it may be that thedevastation wrought by Time is merely local, and that outside thescope of his destruction old songs are still being sung by those thatwe deem dead. I try to hope so. And yet the more I investigate thestory that the long porter told me in the town of Tong Tong Tarrup themore plausible the alternative theory appears--that that grizzled manis a liar.