When Taee and I found ourselves alone on the broad road that lay between
the city and the chasm through which I had descended into this region
beneath the light of the stars and sun, I said under my breath, “Child
and friend, there is a look in your father’s face which appals me. I
feel as if, in its awful tranquillity, I gazed upon death.”
Taee did not immediately reply. He seemed agitated, and as if debating
with himself by what words to soften some unwelcome intelligence. At
last he said, “None of the Vril-ya fear death: do you?”
“The dread of death is implanted in the breasts of the race to which I
belong. We can conquer it at the call of duty, of honour, of love. We
can die for a truth, for a native land, for those who are dearer to us
than ourselves. But if death do really threaten me now and here, where
are such counteractions to the natural instinct which invests with awe
and terror the contemplation of severance between soul and body?”
Taee looked surprised, but there was great tenderness in his voice as
he replied, “I will tell my father what you say. I will entreat him to
spare your life.”
“He has, then, already decreed to destroy it?”
“‘Tis my sister’s fault or folly,” said Taee, with some petulance.
“But she spoke this morning to my father; and, after she had spoken,
he summoned me, as a chief among the children who are commissioned to
destroy such lives as threaten the community, and he said to me, ‘Take
thy vril staff, and seek the stranger who has made himself dear to thee.
Be his end painless and prompt.’”
“And,” I faltered, recoiling from the child--“and it is, then, for my
murder that thus treacherously thou hast invited me forth? No, I cannot
believe it. I cannot think thee guilty of such a crime.”
“It is no crime to slay those who threaten the good of the community; it
would be a crime to slay the smallest insect that cannot harm us.”
“If you mean that I threaten the good of the community because your
sister honours me with the sort of preference which a child may feel for
a strange plaything, it is not necessary to kill me. Let me return to
the people I have left, and by the chasm through which I descended. With
a slight help from you I might do so now. You, by the aid of your wings,
could fasten to the rocky ledge within the chasm the cord that you
found, and have no doubt preserved. Do but that; assist me but to the
spot from which I alighted, and I vanish from your world for ever, and
as surely as if I were among the dead.”
“The chasm through which you descended! Look round; we stand now on the
very place where it yawned. What see you? Only solid rock. The chasm was
closed, by the orders of Aph-Lin, as soon as communication between him
and yourself was established in your trance, and he learned from
your own lips the nature of the world from which you came. Do you not
remember when Zee bade me not question you as to yourself or your
race? On quitting you that day, Aph-Lin accosted me, and said, ‘No path
between the stranger’s home and ours should be left unclosed, or the
sorrow and evil of his home may descend to ours. Take with thee the
children of thy band, smite the sides of the cavern with your vril
staves till the fall of their fragments fills up every chink through
which a gleam of our lamps could force its way.’”
As the child spoke, I stared aghast at the blind rocks before me. Huge
and irregular, the granite masses, showing by charred discolouration
where they had been shattered, rose from footing to roof-top; not a
cranny!
“All hope, then, is gone,” I murmured, sinking down on the craggy
wayside, “and I shall nevermore see the sun.” I covered my face with my
hands, and prayed to Him whose presence I had so often forgotten when
the heavens had declared His handiwork. I felt His presence in the
depths of the nether earth, and amidst the world of the grave. I looked
up, taking comfort and courage from my prayers, and, gazing with a quiet
smile into the face of the child, said, “Now, if thou must slay me,
strike.”
Taee shook his head gently. “Nay,” he said, “my father’s request is not
so formally made as to leave me no choice. I will speak with him, and
may prevail to save thee. Strange that thou shouldst have that fear of
death which we thought was only the instinct of the inferior creatures,
to whom the convictions of another life has not been vouchsafed.
With us, not an infant knows such a fear. Tell me, my dear Tish,”
he continued after a little pause, “would it reconcile thee more to
departure from this form of life to that form which lies on the other
side of the moment called ‘death,’ did I share thy journey? If so, I
will ask my father whether it be allowable for me to go with thee. I am
one of our generation destined to emigrate, when of age for it, to some
regions unknown within this world. I would just as soon emigrate now to
regions unknown, in another world. The All-Good is no less there than
here. Where is he not?”
“Child,” said I, seeing by Taee’s countenance that he spoke in serious
earnest, “it is crime in thee to slay me; it were a crime not less in
me to say, ‘Slay thyself.’ The All-Good chooses His own time to give us
life, and his own time to take it away. Let us go back. If, on speaking
with thy father, he decides on my death, give me the longest warning in
thy power, so that I may pass the interval in self-preparation.”