As soon as he could see again he stared around at the landscape. The enormous scarlet desert extended everywhere to the horizon, excepting where it was broken by the oasis. It was roofed by a cloudless, deep blue, almost violet, sky. The circle of the horizon was far larger than on earth. On the skyline, at right angles to the direction in which they were walking, appeared a chain of mountains, apparently about forty miles distant. One, which was higher than the rest, was shaped like a cup. Maskull would have felt inclined to believe he was travelling in dreamland, but for the intensity of the light, which made everything vividly real.
Joiwind pointed to the cup-shaped mountain. “That’s Poolingdred.”
“You didn’t come from there!” he exclaimed, quite startled.
“Yes, I did indeed. And that is where we have to go to now.”
“With the single object of finding me?”
“Why, yes.”
The colour mounted to his face. “Then you are the bravest and noblest of all girls,” he said quietly, after a pause. “Without exception. Why, this is a journey for an athlete!”
She pressed his arm, while a score of unpaintable, delicate hues stained her cheeks in rapid transition. “Please don’t say any more about it, Maskull. It makes me feel unpleasant.”
“Very well. But can we possibly get there before midday?”
“Oh, yes. And you mustn’t be frightened at the distance. We think nothing of long distances here—we have so much to think about and feel. Time goes all too quickly.”
During their conversation they had drawn near the base of the hills, which sloped gently, and were not above fifty feet in height. Maskull now began to see strange specimens of vegetable life. What looked like a small patch of purple grass, above five feet square, was moving across the sand in their direction. When it came near enough he perceived that it was not grass; there were no blades, but only purple roots. The roots were revolving, for each small plant in the whole patch, like the spokes of a rimless wheel. They were alternately plunged in the sand, and withdrawn from it, and by this means the plant proceeded forward. Some uncanny, semi-intelligent instinct was keeping all the plants together, moving at one pace, in one direction, like a flock of migrating birds in flight.
Another remarkable plant was a large, feathery ball, resembling a dandelion fruit, which they encountered sailing through the air. Joiwind caught it with an exceedingly graceful movement of her arm, and showed it to Maskull. It had roots and presumably lived in the air and fed on the chemical constituents of the atmosphere. But what was peculiar about it was its colour. It was an entirely new colour—not a new shade or combination, but a new primary colour, as vivid as blue, red, or yellow, but quite different. When he inquired, she told him that it was known as “ulfire.” Presently he met with a second new colour. This she designated “jale.” The sense impressions caused in Maskull by these two additional primary colors can only be vaguely hinted at by analogy. Just as blue is delicate and mysterious, yellow clear and unsubtle, and red sanguine and passionate, so he felt ulfire to be wild and painful, and jale dreamlike, feverish, and voluptuous.
The hills were composed of a rich, dark mould. Small trees, of weird shapes, all differing from each other, but all purple-coloured, covered the slopes and top. Maskull and Joiwind climbed up and through. Some hard fruit, bright blue in colour, of the size of a large apple, and shaped like an egg, was lying in profusion underneath the trees.
“Is the fruit here poisonous, or why don’t you eat it?” asked Maskull.
She looked at him tranquilly. “We don’t eat living things. The thought is horrible to us.”
“I have nothing to say against that, theoretically. But do you really sustain your bodies on water?”
“Supposing you could find nothing else to live on, Maskull—would you eat other men?”
“I would not.”
“Neither will we eat plants and animals, which are our fellow creatures. So nothing is left to us but water, and as one can really live on anything, water does very well.”
Maskull picked up one of the fruits and handled it curiously. As he did so another of his newly acquired sense organs came into action. He found that the fleshy knobs beneath his ears were in some novel fashion acquainting him with the inward properties of the fruit. He could not only see, feel, and smell it, but could detect its intrinsic nature. This nature was hard, persistent and melancholy.
Joiwind answered the questions he had not asked.
“Those organs are called ‘poigns.’ Their use is to enable us to understand and sympathise with all living creatures.”
“What advantage do you derive from that, Joiwind?”
“The advantage of not being cruel and selfish, dear Maskull.”
He threw the fruit away and flushed again.
Joiwind looked into his swarthy, bearded face without embarrassment and slowly smiled. “Have I said too much? Have I been too familiar? Do you know why you think so? It’s because you are still impure. By and by you will listen to all language without shame.”
Before he realised what she was about to do, she threw her tentacle round his neck, like another arm. He offered no resistance to its cool pressure. The contact of her soft flesh with his own was so moist and sensitive that it resembled another kind of kiss. He saw who it was that embraced him—a pale, beautiful girl. Yet, oddly enough, he experienced neither voluptuousness nor sexual pride. The love expressed by the caress was rich, glowing, and personal, but there was not the least trace of sex in it—and so he received it.
She removed her tentacle, placed her two arms on his shoulders and penetrated with her eyes right into his very soul.
“Yes, I wish to be pure,” he muttered. “Without that what can I ever be but a weak, squirming devil?”
Joiwind released him. “This we call the ‘magn,’ ” she said, indicating her tentacle. “By means of it what we love already we love more, and what we don’t love at all we begin to love.”
“A godlike organ!”
“It is the one we guard most jealously,” said Joiwind.
The shade of the trees afforded a timely screen from the now almost insufferable rays of Branchspell, which was climbing steadily upward to the zenith. On descending the other side of the little hills, Maskull looked anxiously for traces of Nightspore and Krag, but without result. After staring about him for a few minutes he shrugged his shoulders; but suspicions had already begun to gather in his mind.
A small, natural amphitheatre lay at their feet, completely circled by the tree-clad heights. The centre was of red sand. In the very middle shot up a tall, stately tree, with a black trunk and branches, and transparent, crystal leaves. At the foot of this tree was a natural, circular well, containing dark green water.
When they had reached the bottom, Joiwind took him straight over to the well.
Maskull gazed at it intently. “Is this the shrine you talked about?”
“Yes. It is called Shaping’s Well.
