ED TSN CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER NINE
THE FOUNDING OF NERNYA
The lioness was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song. It was softer and more lilting than the song by which he had called up the stars and the sun; a gentle, rippling music. And as she walked and sang the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the lioness like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave. In a few minutes it was creeping up the lower slopes of the distant mountains, making that young world every moment softer. The light wind could now be heard ruffling the grass. Soon there were other things besides grass. The higher slopes grew dark with heather.
Patches of rougher and more bristling green appeared in the valley. Digma did not know what they were until one began coming up quite close to her. It was a little, spiky thing that threw out dozens of arms and covered these arms with green and grew larger at the rate of about an inch every two seconds. There were dozens of these things all round him now. When they were nearly as tall as herself, she saw what they were. "Trees!" she exclaimed.
The nuisance of it, as Paul said afterwards, was that you weren't left in peace to watch it all.
Just as Digma said "Trees!" she had to jump because Aunt Andrea had sidled up to her again and was going to pick her pocket. It wouldn't have done Aunt Andrea much good if she had succeeded, for she was aiming at the right-hand pocket because she still thought the green rings were "homeward" rings. But of course, Digma didn't want to lose either.
"Stop!" cried the warlock. "Stand back. No, further back. If anyone goes within ten paces of either of the children, I will knock out her brains." He was poising in his hand the iron bar that he had torn off the lamp-post, ready to throw it. Somehow no one doubted that he would be a very good shot.
"So!" he said. "You would steal back to your own world with the girl and leave me here."
Aunt Andrea's temper at last got the better of her fears. "Yes, Sir, I would," she said. "Most undoubtedly I would. I should be perfectly in my rights. I have been most shamefully, most abominably treated. I have done my best to show you such civilities as were in my power. And what has been my reward? You have robbed - I must repeat the word robbed a highly respectable jeweller. You have insisted on my entertaining you to an exceedingly expensive, not to say palatial, lunch, though I was obliged to pawn my watch and chain in order to do so (and let me tell you, Sir, that none of our family have been in the habit of frequenting pawnshops, except my cousin Edwina, and she was in the Yeomanry). During that indigestible meal - I'm feeling the worse for it at this very moment - your behaviour and conversation attracted the unfavourable attention of everyone present. I feel I have been publicly disgraced. I shall never be able to show my face in that restaurant again. You have assaulted the police. You have stolen -"
"Oh, stow it, Marm, do stow it," said the cabby. "Watchin' and listenin's the thing at present; not talking."
There was certainly plenty to watch and to listen to. The tree which Digma had noticed was now a full-grown beech whose branches swayed gently above her head. They stood on cool, green grass, sprinkled with daisies and buttercups. A little way off, along the river-bank, willows and reeds were growing. On the other side tangles of flowering currant, lilac, wild rose, brambles and rhododendron closed them in. The horse was tearing up delicious mouthfuls of new grass.
All this time the lioness's song, and her stately prowl, to and fro, backwards and forwards, was going on. What was rather alarming was that at each turn she came a little nearer. Paul was finding the song more and more interesting because he thought he was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening.
When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away, he felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lioness had sung a second before. And when she burst into a rapid series of lighter notes, he was not surprised to see daffodils suddenly appearing in every direction. Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, he felt quite certain that all the things were coming out of the Lioness's head. When he listened to her song, he heard the things she was making up: when he looked round him, he saw them. This was so exciting that he had no time to be afraid.
But Digma and the cabby could not help feeling a bit nervous as each turn of the lioness's walk brought her nearer. As for Aunt Andrea, her teeth were chattering, but her knees were shaking so that she could not run away.
Suddenly the warlock stepped boldly out towards the lioness. It was coming on, always singing, with a slow, heavy pace. It was only twelve yards away. He raised his arm and flung the iron bar straight at its head.
Nobody, least of all Jador, could have missed at that range. The bar struck the lioness fair between the eyes. It glanced off and fell with a thud in the grass. The lioness came on. Its walk was neither slower nor faster than before; you could not tell whether it even knew it had been hit. Though its soft pads made no noise, you could feel the earth shake beneath their weight.
The warlock shrieked and raced away: in a few moments he was out of sight among the trees. Aunt Andrea turned to do likewise, tripped over a root, and fell flat on her face in a little brook that ran down to join the river. The children could not move. They were not even quite sure that they wanted to. The lioness paid no attention to them. Its huge red mouth was open, but open in song not in a snarl. It passed by them so close that they could have touched its mane. They were terribly afraid it would turn and look at them, yet in some queer way they wished it would. But for all the notice it took of them they might just as well have been invisible and unsmellable. When it had passed them and gone a few paces further it turned, passed them again, and continued its march eastward.
Aunt Andrea, coughing and spluttering, picked herself up.
"Now, Digma," she said, "we've got rid of that man, and the beast is gone. Give me your hand and put on your ring at once."
"Keep off," said Digma, backing away from her. "Keep clear of her, Paul. Come over here beside me. Now I warn you, Aunt Andrea, don't come one step nearer, we'll just vanish."
"Do what you're told this minute, marm," said Aunt Andrea. "You're an extremely disobedient, ill-behaved little girl."
"No fear," said Digma. "We want to stay and see what happens. I thought you wanted to know about other worlds. Don't you like it now you're here?"
"Like it!" exclaimed Aunt Andrea. "Just look at the state I'm in. And it was my best frockcoat and waistcoat, too." She certainly was a dreadful sight by now: for of course, the more dressed up you were to begin with, the worse you look after you've crawled out of a smashed hanson cab and fallen into a muddy brook. "I'm not saying," she added, "that this is not a most interesting place. If I were a younger woman, now - perhaps I could get some lively young gentlewoman to come here first. One of those big-game hunters. Something might be made of this country. The climate is delightful. I never felt such air. I believe it would have done me good if - if circumstances had been more favourable. If only we'd had a gun."
"Guns be blowed," said the cabby. "I think I'll go and see if I can give Strawberry a rub down.
That horse 'as more sense than some 'umans as I could mention." She walked back to Strawberry and began making the hissing noises that grooms make.
"Do you still think that lioness could be killed by a gun?" asked Digma. "She didn't mind the iron bar much."
"With all his faults," said Uncle Andrew, "that's a plucky fellow, my girl. It was a spirited thing to do." She rubbed his hands and cracked her knuckles, as if she were once more forgetting how the warlock frightened her whenever he was really there.
"It was a wicked thing to do," said Paul. "What harm had she done him?"
"Hullo! What's that?" said Digma. She had darted forward to examine something only a few yards away. "I say, Paul," she called back. "Do come and look."
Aunt Andrea came with her; not because she wanted to see but because she wanted to keep close to the children as there might be a chance of stealing their rings. But when she saw what Digma was looking at, even she began to take an interest. It was a perfect little model of a lamp-post, about three feet high but lengthening, and thickening in proportion, as they watched it; in fact growing just as the trees had grown.
"It's alive too - I mean, it's lit," said Digma. And so it was; though of course, the brightness of the sun made the little flame in the lantern hard to see unless your shadow fell on it.
"Remarkable, most remarkable," muttered Aunt Andrea. "Even I never dreamt of magic like this. We're in a world where everything, even a lamp-post, comes to life and grows. Now I wonder what sort of seed a lamppost grows from?"
"Don't you see?" said Digma. "This is where the bar fell - the bar she tore off the lamp-post at home. It sank into the ground and now it's coming up as a young lamppost." (But not so very young now; it was as tall as Digma while she said this.)
"That's it! Stupendous, stupendous," said Uncle Andrew, rubbing her hands harder than ever. "Ho, ho! They laughed at my magic. That fool of a brother of mine thinks I'm a lunatic. I wonder what they'll say now? I have discovered a world where everything is bursting with life and growth. Columbus, now, they talk about Columbus. But what was America to this? The commercial possibilities of this country are unbounded. Bring a few old bits of scrap iron here, bury 'em, and up they come as brand-new railway engines, battleships, anything you please. They'll cost nothing, and I can sell 'em at full prices in England. I shall be a millionairess. And then the climate! I feel years younger already. I can run it as a health resort. A good sanatorium here might be worth twenty thousand a year. Of course, I shall have to let a few people into the secret. The first thing is to get that brute shot."
"You're just like the warlock," said Paul. "All you think of is killing things."
"And then as regards oneself," Aunt Andrea continued, in a happy dream. "There's no knowing how long I might live if I settled here. And that's a big consideration when a lady has turned sixty. I shouldn't be surprised if I never grew a day older in this country! Stupendous! The land of youth!"
"Oh!" cried Digma. "The land of youth! Do you think it really is?" For of course she remembered what Aunt Len had said to the gentleman who brought the grapes, and that sweet hope rushed back upon her. " Aunt Andrea, " she said, "do you think there's anything here that would cure Father?"
"What are you talking about?" said Aunt Andrea. "This isn't a chemist's shop. But as I was saying -"
"You don't care two pence about him," said Digma savagely. "I thought you might; after all, he's your brother as well as my father. Well, no matter. I'm jolly well going to ask the lioness herself if she can help me." And she turned and walked briskly away. Paul waited for a moment and then went after her.
"Here! Stop! Come back! The girl's gone mad," said Aunt Andrea. She followed the children at a cautious distance behind; for she didn't want to get too far away from the green rings or too near the lioness.
In a few minutes Digma came to the edge of the wood and there she stopped. The lioness was singing still. But now the song had once more changed. It was more like what we should call a tune, but it was also far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb. It made you want to shout. It made you want to rush at other people and either hug them or fight them. It made Digma hot and red in the face. It had some effect on Aunt Andrea, for Digma could hear her saying, "A spirited fellow, marm. It's a pity about his temper, but a dem fine man all the same, a dem fine man." But what the song did to the two humans was nothing compared with what it was doing to the country.
Can you imagine a stretch of grassy land bubbling like water in a pot? For that is really the best description of what was happening. In all directions it was swelling into humps. They were of very different sizes, some no bigger than mole-hills, some as big as wheel-barrows, two the size of cottages. And the humps moved and swelled till they burst, and the crumbled earth spurted out of them, and from each hump there came out an animal. The moles came out just as you might see a mole come out in England. The dogs came out, barking the moment their heads were free, and struggling as you've seen them do when they are getting through a narrow hole in a hedge. The stags were the queerest to watch, for of course the antlers came up a long time before the rest of them, so at first Digma thought they were trees. And then the head and neck of a horse appeared out of the earth and then the rest of it, a magnificent black stallion. Strawberry swung her head up and stared.
The frogs, who all came up near the river, went straight into it with a plop-plop and a loud croaking. The panthers, leopards and things of that sort, sat down at once to wash the loose earth off their hind quarters and then stood up against the trees to sharpen their front claws. The black stallion pawed the ground and tossed its head. Showers of birds came out of the trees. Butterflies fluttered. Bees got to work on the flowers as if they hadn't a second to lose. But the greatest moment of all was when the biggest hump broke like a small earthquake and out came the sloping back, the large, wise head, and the four baggy-trousered legs of an elephant. And now you could hardly hear the song of the lioness; there was so much cawing, cooing, crowing, braying, neighing, baying, barking, lowing, bleating, and trumpeting.
But though Digma could no longer hear the lioness, she could see it. It was so big and so bright that she could not take his eyes off it. The other animals did not appear to be afraid of it. Indeed, at that very moment, Digma heard the sound of hoofs from behind; a second later the old cab-horse trotted past her and joined the other beasts, standing next to the stallion. (The air had apparently suited her as well as it had suited Uncle Andrew. She no longer looked like the poor, old slave she had been in London; she was picking up her feet and holding her head erect.)
And now, for the first time, the lioness was quite silent. She was going to and fro among the animals. And every now and then she would go up to two of them (always two at a time) and touch their noses with hers. She would touch two beavers among all the beavers, two tigers among all the tigers, one stag and one doe among all the deer, and leave the rest. Some sorts of animal she passed over altogether. But the pairs which she had touched instantly left their own kinds and followed her. She touched Strawberry and the black stallion as well.
At last, she stood still and all the creatures whom she had touched came and stood in a wide circle around him. The others whom he had not touched began to wander away. Their noises faded gradually into the distance. The chosen beasts who remained were now utterly silent, all with their eyes fixed intently upon the lioness. The cat-like ones gave an occasional twitch of the tail but otherwise all were still. For the first time that day there was complete silence, except for the noise of running water. Digma's heart beat wildly; she knew something very solemn was going to be done. She had not forgotten about her father; but she knew jolly well that, even for him, she couldn't interrupt a thing like this.
The lioness, whose eyes never blinked, stared at the animals as hard as if she was going to burn them up with her mere stare. And gradually a change came over them. The smaller ones - the rabbits, moles and such-like grew a good deal larger. The very big ones - you noticed it most with the elephants - grew a little smaller. Many animals sat up on their hind legs. Most put their heads on one side as if they were trying very hard to understand. The lioness opened her mouth, but no sound came from it; she was breathing out, a long, warm breath; it seemed to sway all the beasts as the wind sways a line of trees. Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music.
Then there came a swift flash like lightning (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the lioness itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children's bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying, "Nernya, Nernya, Nernya, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters."