food, Leif! You can never eat mortal food again.”
I looked at Evalie, and at the wine and amber beauty of her. Well, I could believe Evalie had been brought up on something more than mortal food.
I studied the plain for the hundredth time. The slope on which stood the squat towers was an immense semi-circle, the ends of whose arcs met the black cliffs. It must enclose, I thought, some twenty square miles. Beyond the thomed vines were the brakes of the giant fern; beyond them, on the other side of the river, I could glimpse the great trees. If there were forests on this side, I could not tell. Nor what else there might be of living things. There was something to be guarded against, certainly, else why the fortification, the defences?
Whatever else it might be, this guarded land of the golden pygmies was a small Paradise, with its stands of grain, its orchards, its vines and berries and its green fields.
I thought over what Evalie had told us of herself, carefully and slowly tuning down the trilling syllables of the little people into vocables we could understand. It waa an ancient tongue she spoke — one whose roots struck far deeper down in the soil of Time than any I knew, unless it were the archaic Uighur itself. Minute by minute I found myself mastering it with ever greater ease, but not so rapidly as Jim. He had even essayed a few trills, to the pygmies’ delight. More than that, however, they had understood him. Each of us could follow Evalie’s thought better than she could ours.
Whence had the Little People come into the Shadowed-land? And where had they learned that ancient tongue? I asked myself that, and answered that as well ask how it came that the Sumerians, whose great city the Bible calls Ur of the Chaldees, spoke a Mongolian language. They, too, were a dwarfish race, masters of strange sorceries, students of the stars. And no man knows whence they came into Mesopotamia with their science full-blown. Asia is the Ancient Mother, and to how many races she has given birth and watched blown away in dust none can say.
The transformation of the tongue into the bird-like speech of the Little People, I thought I understood. Obviously, the smaller the throat, the higher are the sounds produced. Unless by some freak, one never hears a child with a bass voice. The tallest of the Little People was no bigger than a six-year-old child. They could not, perforce, sound the gutturals and deeper tones; so they had to substitute other sounds. The natural thing, when you cannot strike a note in a lower octave, is to strike that same note in a higher. And so they had, and in time this had developed into the overlying pattern of trills and pipings, beneath which, however, the essential structure persisted.
She remembered, Evalie had told us, a great stone house. She thought she remembered a great water. She remembered a land of trees which had become “white and cold”. There had been a man and a woman . . . then there was only the man . . . and it was all like mist. All she truly remembered was the Little People . . . she had forgotten there had ever been anything else . . . until we had come. She remembered when she had been no bigger than the Little People . . . and how frightened she was when she began to be bigger than they. The Little People, the Rrrllya — it is the closest I can come to the trill — loved her; they did as she told them to do. They had fed and clothed and taught her, especially the mother of Sri, whose life I had saved from the Death Flower. Taught her what? She looked at us oddly, and only repeated —“taught me”. Sometimes she danced with the Little People and sometimes she danced for them — again the oddly secretive, half-amused glance. That was all. How long ago had she been as small as the Little People? She did not know — long and long ago. Who had named her Evalie? She did not know.
I studied her, covertly. There was not one thing about her to give a clue to her race. Foundling, I knew, she must have been, the vague man and woman her father and mother. But what had they been — of what country? No more than could her lips, did her eyes or hair, colouring or body hint at answer.
She was more changeling than I. A changeling of the mirage! Nurtured on food from Goblin Market!
I wondered whether she would change back again into everyday woman if I carried her out of the Shadowed-land.
I felt the ring touch my breast with the touch of ice.
Carry her away! There was Khalk’ru to meet first — and the Witch-woman!
The green twilight deepened; great fire-flies began to flash lanterns of pale topaz through the flowering trees; a little breeze stole over the fern brakes, laden with the fragrances of the far forest. Evalie sighed.
“You will not leave me, Tsantawu?”
If he heard her, he did not answer. She turned to me.
“You will not leave me — Leif?”
“No!” I said . . . and seemed to hear the drums of Khalk’ru beating down the lilting tambours of the Little People like far-away mocking laughter.
The green twilight had deepened into darkness, a luminous darkness, as though a full moon were shining behind a cloud-veiled sky. The golden pygmies had stilled their lilting drums; they were passing into their cliff lairs. From the distant towers came the tap-tap-tap of the drums of the guards, whispering to each other across the thorn-covered slopes. The fire-flies’ lights were like the lanterns of a goblin watch; great moths floated by on luminous silvery wings, like elfin planes.
“Evalie,” Jim spoke. “The Yunwi Tsundsi — the Little People — how long have they dwelt here?”
“Always, Tsantawu — or so they say.”
“And those others — the red-haired women?”
We had asked her of those women before, and she had not answered, had tranquilly ignored the matter, but now she replied without hesitation.
“They are of the Ayjir — it was Lur the Sorceress who wore the wolfskin. She rules the Ayjir with Yodin the High Priest and Tibur–Tibur the Laugher, Tibur the Smith. He is not so tall as you, Leif, but he is broader of shoulder and girth, and he is strong — strong! I will tell you of the Ayjir. Before it was as though a hand were clasped over my lips — or was it my heart? But now the hand is gone.
“The Little People say the Ayjir came riding here long and long and long ago. Then the Rrrllya held the land on each side of the river. There were many of the Ayjir — and many. Far more than now, many men and women where now are mainly women and few men. They came as though in haste from far away, or so the little people say their fathers told them. They were led by a — by a — I have no word! It has a name, but that name I will not speak — no, not even within me! Yet it has a shape . . . I have seen it on the banners that float from the towers of Karak . . . and it is on the breasts of Lur and Tibur when they . . .”
She shivered and was silent. A silver-winged moth dropped upon her hand, lifting and dropping its shining wings; gently she raised it to her lips, wafted it away.
“All this the Rrrllya — whom you call the Little People — did not then know. The Ayjir rested. They began to build Karak, and to cut within the cliff their temple to — to what had led them here. They built quickly at first, as though they feared pursuit; but when none came, they built more slowly. They would have made my little ones their servants, their slaves. The Rrrllya would not have it so. There was war. The Little Ones lay in wait around Karak, and when the Ayjir came forth, they killed them; for the Little Ones know all the — the life of the plants, and so they know how to make their spears and arrows slay at once those whom they only touch. And so, many of the Ayjir died.
“At last a truce was made, and not because the Little People were being beaten, for they were not. But for another reason. The Ayjir were cunning; they laid traps for the little ones, and
