The travellers marched slowly, keeping sharp watch, their cudgels ready
in their hands. Behind them, paled by the moonlight, shook the fiery
silver of the Salemn[=a]gar. With this at their backs and that North
Pole, M[=o][=o]t, in huge congealment, a little to their left, they made
their way at an angle across the open snow, and approached the tangled
thickets. Here they walked more closely together, with heads aslant and
tails in air, like little old men, like pedlars, blinking and spying,
wishing beyond measure they were sitting in comfort around their
watch-fire. The farther they zigzagged betwixt the thorns, the more
doubtful grew the way. For the thorn-trees rise all so equal in height
and thickness they often with their tops shut out the stars, and there
was nothing by which the travellers could mark what way they went.
Still they pressed on, their hairy faces to the night-wind, which Ghibba
had observed before starting was drifting from the north. They shuffled
crisply over the snow, coughing softly, and gurring in their throats,
winding in and out between the trees, and casting lean, gigantic shadows
across the open spaces. For so dazzling bright the moon gleamed, she
almost put out the smoky flare of their torches. But it gave the Mulgars
more courage to march encompassed with their own light. Their packs were
heavy, the thickets sloped continually upward. But the poison-thorns
curl backward beneath the drooping hood of their leaves by night--in the
hours, that is, when, it is said, they distil their poison--so the
travellers were no longer fretted by their stings. Thus, then, they
gradually advanced till M[=o][=o]t was left behind them, and out of the
grey night rose Mulgarmeerez, mightiest of Arakkaboa's peaks, whose
snows have known no Mulgar footprints since the world began.
Only the whish of the travellers' feet on the snow was to be heard, when
suddenly all with one accord stopped dead, as if a voice had cried,
"Halt!"
Their torches faintly crackled, their smoke rising in four straight
pillars towards the stars. And they heard, as if everywhere around them
in the air, clear yet marvellously small voices singing with a thin and
pining sound like glass. It floated near, this tiny, multitudinous
music--so near that the travellers drew back their face with wide-open
eyes. Then it seemed out of the infinite distance to come, echoing
across the moonlit spars that towered above their heads.
And Ghibba said softly, jerking up his bundle and peering around him
from beneath his eye-bandage: "Courage, my kinsmen! it is the
danger-song of Tishnar we hear, who loves the fearless."
At this one of the Men of the Mountains thrust up his pointed chin, and
said, wagging his head: "Why do we march like this at night,
Mulla-moona? These are not our mountain-passes. Let us camp here while
we are still alive, and burn a great watch-fire till morning."
"You have faggots, Cousin of a Skeeto," said Ghibba. "Kindle a fire for
yourself, and catch us up at daybreak."
The Mountain-men laughed wheezily, for now the singing had died away. On
they pushed again. But now the thorn-trees gathered yet closer together,
so that the Mulgars could no longer walk in company, but had to straggle
up by ones or twos as best they could. Still up and up they clambered,
laying hold of the thick tufts of leaves sticky with poison to drag
themselves forward. Many times they had to pause to recover their
breath, and Nod turned giddy to look down on the moon-dappled forest
through which they had so heavily ascended. Thus they continued, until,
quite without warning, Thumb, who was leading, broke out into one loud,
hard, short bark of fear, for he suddenly found himself standing beneath
contorted branches on the verge of another and wider plateau of snow. He
stood motionless, leaning heavily on his cudgel, the knuckles of his
other hand resting in the snow, his breath caught back, and his head
stooping forward between his shoulders, staring on and on between
astonishment and fear.
[Illustration: FOR THERE ... STOOD AS IF FROZEN IN THE MOONLIGHT
THE MONSTROUS SILVER-HAIRED MEERMUTS OF MULGARMEEREZ, GUARDING
THE ENCHANTED ORCHARDS OF TISHNAR.]
For there, all along the opposite ridge, as it were on the margin of an
enormous platter, stood as if frozen in the moonlight the monstrous
silver-haired Meermuts of Mulgarmeerez, guarding the enchanted orchards
of Tishnar. Thumb stood in deep shadow, for instantly, at sight of these
shapes, as one by one the travellers came straggling up together, they
quenched their hissing torches in the snow. No sign made the Meermuts
that they had seen the little quaking band of lean and ragged Mulgars.
But even a squirrel cracking a nut could have been heard across these
windless and icy altitudes. And even now it seemed that bark of fear
went echoing from spur to spur. The wretched Mulgars could only stand
and gaze in helpless confusion at the phantoms, whose eyes shone
dismally in the moon beneath their silver hair and great purple caps.
The Meermuts stood, as it were, for a living rampart all down the
untrodden snow towards the great Pit of Mulgarmeerez till lost in the
faint grey mists of the mountains.
"What's to be done now, Prince of Ladder-makers?" said Thumb presently.
"Are we not weary of wandering? There's room for us all in those great
shadowy bellies."
"Itthiluthi thoth 'Meermut' onnoth anoot oonoothi," lisped one of the
Moona-mulgars--that is to say, in their own language, "But maybe these
Meermuts gnaw before swallowing."
As for Ghibba, he feigned that his eyes were too weak and sore, and
peered in vain beneath his bandages. "Tell me what's to be seen,
Mulla-mulgar," he said. "Why do we linger? The frost's in my toes. Up
with fresh torches and go forward."
Thumb grunted, but made no answer. Then Ghibba drew softly back into the
deeper shadow, and the rest of the Mulgars, who by now were all come
up, stood whispering, some in perplexity, not knowing what to do; some
itching and sniffing to go forward, and one or two for turning back. One
Moona-mulgar, indeed, mewing like a cat in his extreme fear, when he had
heard Thumb's sudden bark, had turned lean shanks and hairy arms and
fled down by the way they had come. Fainter and fainter had grown the
sounds of snapping twigs, until all again was silent.
"What wonder our father Seelem stumbled as he ran?" muttered Nod to
Thumb.
But Ghibba stood thinking, the skin of his forehead twitching up and
down, as is the habit of nearly all Mulgars, high and low. "This is our
riddle, O Mulla-mulgars," he said: "If we turn back and climb slowly
upward, so as to creep round in hiding from these giant Meermuts, we
shall only come at last to batter our heads against the walls of
M[=o][=o]t. And M[=o][=o]t I know of old: there the Gunga-moonas make
their huddles. And the other way, under the moon, there juts a precipice
five thousand Mulgars deep, through which, so the old news goes, creeps
slowlier than moss Tishnar's never-melting Obea of ice. Here, then, is
our answer, Princes: The valleys must be yet many long days' journey.
Either, then, we go straight forward beneath the feet of Tishnar's
Orchard-meermuts, like forest-mice that gambol among a Mutti of
Ephelantoes, or else, like shivering Jack-Alls, we go back, to live out
the rest of this littlest of lives itching, but having nowhere to
scratch. What thinks the Mulgar Eengenares?"
And at that Nod remembered what the watchman had said, when they were
talking together by the eagles' watch-fires. He touched Thumb, speaking
softly in Mulgar-royal. "Thumb, my brother, what of the Wonderstone?
what of the Wonderstone? Shall we tell this Moona-mulgar of that?"
Thumb laughed sulkily. "Seelem kept all his wits for you, Jugguba," he
answered; "rub and see!"
So Nod spread open his pocket-flap and fetched out the Wonderstone,
wrapped in its wisp of wool and the stained leaf of paper from Battle's
little book. He held it out in his brown, hairless palm to Ghibba
beneath the thorn. "What think you of that, Mulla-moona?" he said. And
even Ghibba's dim eyes could discern its milk-pale shining. They talked
long together in the shadow of the thorns, while the rest of the skinny
travellers sat silent beside their bundles, coughing and blinking as
they mumbled their mouldy cheese-rind.
Ghibba said that, as Nod was a Nizza-neela, they should venture out
alone together. "I am nothing but a skin of bones--nothing to pick," he
said, "and all but sand-blind, and therefore could not see to be
afraid."
"No, no, no, Mulla-moona," Thumb grunted stubbornly. "If mischief came
to my brother, how could I live on, listening to the chittering of his
mother's Meermut asking me, 'Where is Nod?' Stay here and guard my
brother, Thimbulla, who is too sick and weak to go with us; and if we
neither of us return before morning, deal kindly with him, Mulla-moona,
and have our thanks till you too are come to be a shadow."
So at last it was agreed between them. And Thumb and Nod returned
together to the edge of the wood and peered out once more towards the
phantom-guarded orchards. Nod waited no longer. He wetted his thumb once
more, and rubbed thrice, droning or crooning, and stamping nimbly in the
snow, till suddenly Thumb sprang back clean into the midst of a
thorn-tree in his dismay.
"Ubbe nimba sul ugglourint!" he cried hollowly. For the child stood
there in the snow, shining as if his fur were on fire with silver light.
About his head a wreath of moon-coloured buds like frost-flowers was
set. His shoulders were hung with a robe like spider-silk falling behind
him to his glistening heels. But it was Nod's shrill small laughter that
came out of the shining.
"Follow, oh follow, brother," he said. "I am Fulby, I am Oomgar's
M'keeso; it is a dream; it is a night-shadow; it is Nod Meermut; it is
fires of Tishnar. Hide in my blaze, Thumb Mulgar. And see these Noomas
cringe!"
Thumb grunted, beat once on his chest like a Gunga, and they stepped
boldly out together, first Nod, then black Thumb, into the wide
splendour of the waste. And the Men of the Mountains watched them from
between the spiky branches, with eyes round as the Minimuls', and mouths
ajar, showing in their hair their catlike teeth.
Out into the open snow that borders for leagues the trees of Tishnar's
orchard stepped Nod, with his Wonderstone. And, as he moved along, the
frost-parched flakes burned with the rainbow. But if the phantoms of
Mulgarmeerez were not blind, they were surely dumb. They made no sign
that they perceived this blazing pigmy advancing against them. Nod's
light heels fell so fast Thumb could scarcely keep pace with him. He
came on grunting and coughing, plying his thick cudgel, his great dark
eyes fixed stubbornly upon the snow. And lo and behold! when next Nod
lifted his face he saw only moonlight shining upon the smooth trunks of
trees, which in the higher branches were stooping with coloured fruit.
He laughed aloud. "See, Thumb," he said, "my magic burns. M'keeso
chatters. These Tishnar Meermuts are nought but trunks of trees!"
But Thumb stared in more dismal terror still, for he saw plainly now
their huge and shadowy clubs, their necklets of gold and ivory, and the
hideous, purple-capped faces of the ghouls gloating down on him. "Press
on, Ummanodda; your eyes burn magic, and trees to you are sudden death
to me." His hair stood out in a grisly mantle around him, for sheer fear
and horror of these gigantic faces as they passed. But Nod edged lightly
through, like mantling swan or peacock, seeing only Tishnar's lovely
orchards. No snow lay here in these enchanted glades, but the grass was
powdered with pure white flowers that caught the flame of him in their
beauty as he passed. The strange small voices the travellers had heard
on the hillside seemed haunting the laden boughs of the orchard. But to
Thumb all was darkness, and frozen snow, spiked thorn-trees, a-roost
with evil birds, and the horror of the motionless phantoms behind him.
He seemed ever and again to hear their stride between the twigs, and to
feel a terrific thumb and finger closing over his matted scalp.
In a little while the path the two Mulgars thridded led out from under
the boughs, and they found themselves at the foot of the great peak they
had all night been approaching. And Nod saw fountains springing in foam
amid the flowery grasses, and all about them were trees laden with
fruit, and the music of instruments and distant voices. But not on these
near things was his mind set, but on the secret paths of Mulgarmeerez,
winding down from the crested peak above.
"O brother, my brother! Tishnar is walking on the hills," he said. But
Thumb, though he rubbed his eyes, could see nothing but the towering and
desolate scaurs of ice and snow and a kind of snow-choked ridge girdling
the abrupt mountain-side. But Nod came to a stand, half crouching,
amazed, and watched, as it seemed to him, the Middens of Tishnar riding
more beautiful than daybreak in the moonlight of her hills. And he heard
a clear voice within him cry: "Have no fear, Nizza-neela, Mulla-mulgar
jugguba Ummanodda, neddipogo, Eengenares; feast and be merry. Tishnar
watches over the brave." And he told Thumb what the voice had said to
him.
And Thumb grew angry, for he was tired out of his courage. "Have it as
you will," he said. "It is easy to fear nothing and to see what is not
here when you meddle with magic, and shine like a fish out of water. But
as for me, I go back to my brother Thimble, and to my friends, the Men
of the Mountains." And he stumped sullenly off, crouching low over his
cudgel.
Then Nod said softly: "Wonderstone, Wonderstone! call back my brother
and open his eyes." Instantly Thumb stopped and stood upright. Thorn and
snow, blain and ache and bruise, were gone. He saw the meadows alight
with starry flowers, the fountains and the fruit. And he smelled the
smoke of nard and soltziphal burning in the cressets of the servants of
Tishnar. Nod laughed silently, and said: "Bring, too, O Wonderstone, my
brother Thimbulla on his litter, and the Prince Ghibba and his kinsfolk
to feast with me."
For there, in the midst between the fountains, was a long low table
spread with flowers and strange fruits and nuts, and lit with clear,
pear-shaped flames floating in the air like that of the Wonderstone, but
of the colours of ivory and emerald and amethyst; with nineteen platters
of silver and nineteen goblets of gold. And presently they heard in the
distance the grasshopper voices of the Hill-mulgars, as they came
stubbling along with Thimble's litter in their midst, carrying their
heavy faggots and bottles and bundles, their pink eyes blinking, their
knees trembling, not knowing whether to be joyful or afraid.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]