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Acolyte, v. 1, issue 4, Summer 1943
Page 13
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cause she saw them dimly. Thence streamed all good and hateful things, and the power which shaped them knew them not apart, but somehow this was consoling. Her robbed goods were returned to her; her tears washed away. It was autumn in her heart, a golden-haired autumn which had forgotten the flower which was to perish, and nurtured the life-crowded root. What did she expect so joyously?---She turned with a face but lately contorted, and gazed ambiguously at Dal. She touched his incredible flesh with hands no longer restless for aught save the dust a thousand years deep on the ruin which was each day lighted curiously by an expiring sun. Dal startled her with a request, made with closed eyes, for water. There was none. She had forgotten to bring any in. On the previous night it would have been twenty steps of terror to the well, but she roused herself, selected a bundle of dried stalks, twisted it tightly, and touched it to the fire. By its blaze she went out into the darkness............ Awakening slowly, Dal seemed to recall a quest through unending corridors; through forests of black-trunked pines in whose upper gloom the birds flitted anonymously; through boulder-peopled ravines. His journey amid these things had been more strenuous even than that with Leyenda, and Leyenda did not share it. She had left him midway---though how or why he could not remember. Leyenda! He knew of course that it had been a dream occasioned by his fever, but sill he grieved weakly. Then he turned and stared at the burnt sticks where the fire had been and where she had sat feeding it. The spot was cold and she was gone indeed. In a small voice he called her, with expectant eyes on the sun-flooded door. A line of grasses, a few crazily embedded stone blocks, and the sky's blue were all that he could see, prone as he was. He waited. Was she gathering eggs? The dream of his lone journey remained disquietingly present. If she did not come, he would look for her. The half-remembered fever had kept him from using the ankle; it was swollen but only negligibly painful. He could make his way about with a stick--perhaps he could eve climb the cone, from whose top such a wide range was visible. So, the wait becoming unendurable, and his cries availing naught, he stood up and found his strength was gone. Such weakness was incredible to him--his very hand, clutching the door-edge, was flaccid and powerless. Now he was thoroughly frightened, but he managed to stagger out calling her name. What devilish thing had happened in the intervals of his delirium? Had she gone out and fallen from the cliff? Had the thing which scratched at the cone-side....but he smothered the thought. Hunger told him of days that had elapsed unseen...sunless dawns and unstarred evenings. Outdoors, he sensed a change in his surroundings, as if someone assiduously [[underline]]tidied[[end underline]] the ruin, set one block upon another, pulled away the creepers. HIs eye fell upon a brick pillar, and judged it to be higher than before, but this information can hardly be said to have reached his brain. Then, calling up a strength he did not have, propelling himself clumsily with a stick under his arm-pit, Dal searched. He searched like the wind searching the night, the wind whose remembered cry was similar to his own; the wind which touched regretfully the grass of unsown fields, that fretted the wave of lake and sea; but not like the rain-weighted wind was his weeping. Then by the gourd-vine he came upon a clue, and his heart was marble. It was the ruinous, thousand-year old basin which had once served to hold the victims of the god. It had been righted, cleansed of moss, mended. And on its shallow curve reposed Leyenda's bracelet. Her hateful shackel of a bracelet. A while since it had clasped her soft arm. It would do so no more--nor would Dal. For the baubel was smeared with blood. He seized it, and drawing back his weak arm, threw -- 13 --
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cause she saw them dimly. Thence streamed all good and hateful things, and the power which shaped them knew them not apart, but somehow this was consoling. Her robbed goods were returned to her; her tears washed away. It was autumn in her heart, a golden-haired autumn which had forgotten the flower which was to perish, and nurtured the life-crowded root. What did she expect so joyously?---She turned with a face but lately contorted, and gazed ambiguously at Dal. She touched his incredible flesh with hands no longer restless for aught save the dust a thousand years deep on the ruin which was each day lighted curiously by an expiring sun. Dal startled her with a request, made with closed eyes, for water. There was none. She had forgotten to bring any in. On the previous night it would have been twenty steps of terror to the well, but she roused herself, selected a bundle of dried stalks, twisted it tightly, and touched it to the fire. By its blaze she went out into the darkness............ Awakening slowly, Dal seemed to recall a quest through unending corridors; through forests of black-trunked pines in whose upper gloom the birds flitted anonymously; through boulder-peopled ravines. His journey amid these things had been more strenuous even than that with Leyenda, and Leyenda did not share it. She had left him midway---though how or why he could not remember. Leyenda! He knew of course that it had been a dream occasioned by his fever, but sill he grieved weakly. Then he turned and stared at the burnt sticks where the fire had been and where she had sat feeding it. The spot was cold and she was gone indeed. In a small voice he called her, with expectant eyes on the sun-flooded door. A line of grasses, a few crazily embedded stone blocks, and the sky's blue were all that he could see, prone as he was. He waited. Was she gathering eggs? The dream of his lone journey remained disquietingly present. If she did not come, he would look for her. The half-remembered fever had kept him from using the ankle; it was swollen but only negligibly painful. He could make his way about with a stick--perhaps he could eve climb the cone, from whose top such a wide range was visible. So, the wait becoming unendurable, and his cries availing naught, he stood up and found his strength was gone. Such weakness was incredible to him--his very hand, clutching the door-edge, was flaccid and powerless. Now he was thoroughly frightened, but he managed to stagger out calling her name. What devilish thing had happened in the intervals of his delirium? Had she gone out and fallen from the cliff? Had the thing which scratched at the cone-side....but he smothered the thought. Hunger told him of days that had elapsed unseen...sunless dawns and unstarred evenings. Outdoors, he sensed a change in his surroundings, as if someone assiduously [[underline]]tidied[[end underline]] the ruin, set one block upon another, pulled away the creepers. HIs eye fell upon a brick pillar, and judged it to be higher than before, but this information can hardly be said to have reached his brain. Then, calling up a strength he did not have, propelling himself clumsily with a stick under his arm-pit, Dal searched. He searched like the wind searching the night, the wind whose remembered cry was similar to his own; the wind which touched regretfully the grass of unsown fields, that fretted the wave of lake and sea; but not like the rain-weighted wind was his weeping. Then by the gourd-vine he came upon a clue, and his heart was marble. It was the ruinous, thousand-year old basin which had once served to hold the victims of the god. It had been righted, cleansed of moss, mended. And on its shallow curve reposed Leyenda's bracelet. Her hateful shackel of a bracelet. A while since it had clasped her soft arm. It would do so no more--nor would Dal. For the baubel was smeared with blood. He seized it, and drawing back his weak arm, threw -- 13 --
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