A Voyage to Arcturus, David Lindsay [guided reading books TXT] 📗

are walking in a dream, and I can’t talk to you. As for you, woman⁠—sin must be like a pleasant bath to you.⁠ ⁠…”

“There are strange ties between Maskull and myself; but you are a passerby, a foreigner. I care nothing for you.”

“Nevertheless, I shall not be frightened out of my plans, which are legitimate and right.”

“Do as you please,” said Tydomin. “If you come to grief, your thoughts will hardly have corresponded with the real events of the world, which is what you boast about. It is no affair of mine.”

“I shall go on, and not back!” exclaimed Digrung, with angry emphasis.

Tydomin threw a swift, evil smile at Maskull. “Bear witness that I have tried to persuade this young man. Now you must come to a quick decision in your own mind as to which is of the greatest importance, Digrung’s happiness or Joiwind’s. Digrung won’t allow you to preserve them both.”

“It won’t take me long to decide. Digrung, I gave you a last chance to change your mind.”

“As long as it’s in my power I shall go on, and warn my sister against her criminal friends.”

Maskull again clutched at him, but this time with violence. Instructed in his actions by some new and horrible instinct, he pressed the young man tightly to his body with all three arms. A feeling of wild, sweet delight immediately passed through him. Then for the first time he comprehended the triumphant joys of “absorbing.” It satisfied the hunger of the will, exactly as food satisfies the hunger of the body. Digrung proved feeble⁠—he made little opposition. His personality passed slowly and evenly into Maskull’s. The latter became strong and gorged. The victim gradually became paler and limper, until Maskull held a corpse in his arms. He dropped the body, and stood trembling. He had committed his second crime. He felt no immediate difference in his soul, but⁠ ⁠…

Tydomin shed a sad smile on him, like winter sunshine. He half expected her to speak, but she said nothing. Instead, she made a sign to him to pick up Crimtyphon’s corpse. As he obeyed, he wondered why Digrung’s dead face did not wear the frightful Crystalman mask.

“Why hasn’t he altered?” he muttered to himself.

Tydomin heard him. She kicked Digrung lightly with her little foot. “He isn’t dead⁠—that’s why. The expression you mean is waiting for your death.”

“Then is that my real character?”

She laughed softly. “You came here to carve a strange world, and now it appears you are carved yourself. Oh, there’s no doubt about it, Maskull. You needn’t stand there gaping. You belong to Shaping, like the rest of us. You are not a king, or a god.”

“Since when have I belonged to him?”

“What does that matter? Perhaps since you first breathed the air of Tormance, or perhaps since five minutes ago.”

Without waiting for his response, she set off through the copse, and strode on to the next island. Maskull followed, physically distressed and looking very grave.

The journey continued for half an hour longer, without incident. The character of the scenery slowly changed. The mountaintops became loftier and more widely separated from one another. The gaps were filled with rolling, white clouds, which bathed the shores of the peaks like a mysterious sea. To pass from island to island was hard work, the intervening spaces were so wide⁠—Tydomin, however, knew the way. The intense light, the violet-blue sky, the patches of vivid landscape, emerging from the white vapour-ocean, made a profound impression on Maskull’s mind. The glow of Alppain was hidden by the huge mass of Disscourn, which loomed up straight in front of them.

The green snow on the top of the gigantic pyramid had by now completely melted away. The black, gold, and crimson of its mighty cliffs stood out with terrific brilliance. They were directly beneath the bulk of the mountain, which was not a mile away. It did not appear dangerous to climb, but he was unaware on which side of it their destination lay.

It was split from top to bottom by numerous straight fissures. A few pale-green waterfalls descended here and there, like narrow, motionless threads. The face of the mountain was rugged and bare. It was strewn with detached boulders, and great, jagged rocks projected everywhere like iron teeth. Tydomin pointed to a small black hole near the base, which might be a cave. “That is where I live.”

“You live here alone?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an odd choice for a woman⁠—and you are not unbeautiful, either.”

“A woman’s life is over at twenty-five,” she replied, sighing. “And I am far older than that. Ten years ago it would have been I who lived yonder, and not Oceaxe. Then all this wouldn’t have happened.”

A quarter of an hour later they stood within the mouth of the cave. It was ten feet high, and its interior was impenetrably black.

“Put down the body in the entrance, out of the sun,” directed Tydomin. He did so.

She cast a keenly scrutinising glance at him. “Does your resolution still hold, Maskull?”

“Why shouldn’t it hold? My brains are not feathers.”

“Follow me, then.”

They both stepped into the cave. At that very moment a sickening crash, like heavy thunder just over their heads, set Maskull’s weakened heart thumping violently. An avalanche of boulders, stones, and dust, swept past the cave entrance from above. If their going in had been delayed by a single minute, they would have been killed.

Tydomin did not even look up. She took his hand in hers, and started walking with him into the darkness. The temperature became as cold as ice. At the first bend the light from the outer world disappeared, leaving them in absolute blackness. Maskull kept stumbling over the uneven ground, but she kept tight hold of him, and hurried him along.

The tunnel seemed of interminable length. Presently, however, the atmosphere changed⁠—or such was his impression. He was somehow led to imagine that they had come to a larger chamber. Here Tydomin stopped, and then forced him down with quiet pressure. His groping hand encountered stone