The Tree of Life Read online

hisshoulders. "I'll lead you to the well."

  She sighed in a deep gust of relief and dropped her compelling eyes fromhis, murmuring in that strange, gabbling tongue what must have beenthanks. He took her by the hand and turned toward the ruined archway ofthe door.

  Against his fingers her flesh was cool and firm. To the touch she wastangible, but even thus near, his eyes refused to focus upon the cloudyopacity of her body, the dark blur of her streaming hair. Nothing butthose burning, blinded eyes were strong enough to pierce the veil thatparted them.

  She stumbled along at his side over the rough floor of the temple,saying nothing more, panting with eagerness to return to herincomprehensible "tree." How much of that eagerness was assumed Smithstill could not be quite sure. When they reached the door he halted herfor a moment, scanning the sky for danger. Apparently the ships hadfinished with this quarter of the city, for he could see two or three ofthem half a mile away, hovering low over Illar's northern section. Hecould risk it without much peril. He led the girl cautiously out intothe sun-hot court.

  * * * * *

  She could not have known by sight that they neared the well, but whenthey were within twenty paces of it she flung up her blurred headsuddenly and tugged at his hand. It was she who led him that laststretch which parted the two from the well. In the sun the shadowtracery of the grille's symbolic pattern lay vividly outlined on theground. The girl gave a little gasp of delight. She dropped his hand andran forward three short steps, and plunged into the very center of thatshadowy pattern on the ground. And what happened then was too incredibleto believe.

  The pattern ran over her like a garment, curving to the curve of herbody in the way all shadows do. But as she stood there striped and lacedwith the darkness of it, there came a queer shifting in the lines ofblack tracery, a subtle, inexplicable movement to one side. And withthat motion she vanished. It was exactly as if that shifting had movedher out of one world into another. Stupidly Smith stared at the spotfrom which she had disappeared.

  Then several things happened almost simultaneously. The zoom of a planebroke suddenly into the quiet, a black shadow dipped low over therooftops, and Smith, too late, realized that he stood defenseless infull view of the searching ships. There was only one way out, and thatwas too fantastic to put faith in, but he had no time to hesitate. Withone leap he plunged full into the midst of the shadow of the tree oflife.

  Its tracery flowed round him, molding its pattern to his body. Andoutside the boundaries everything executed a queer little sidewise dipand slipped in the most extraordinary manner, like an optical illusion,into quite another scene. There was no intervention of blankness. It wasas if he looked through the bars of a grille upon a picture whichwithout warning slipped sidewise, while between the bars appearedanother scene, a curious, dim landscape, gray as if with the twilight ofearly evening. The air had an oddly thickened look, through which he sawthe quiet trees and the flower-spangled grass of the place with a queer,unreal blending, like the landscape in a tapestry, all its outlinesblurred.

  In the midst of this tapestried twilight the burning whiteness of thegirl he had followed blazed like a flame. She had paused a few stepsaway and stood waiting, apparently quite sure that he would come after.He grinned a little to himself as he realized it, knowing that curiositymust almost certainly have driven him in her wake even if the necessityfor shelter had not compelled his following.

  She was clearly visible now, in this thickened dimness--visible, andvery lovely, and a little unreal. She shone with a burning clarity, theonly vivid thing in the whole twilit world. Eyes upon that blazingwhiteness, Smith stepped forward, scarcely realizing that he had moved.

  Slowly he crossed the dark grass toward her. That grass was softunder-foot, and thick with small, low-blooming flowers of a shiningpallor. Botticelli painted such spangled swards for the feet of hisangels. Upon it the girl's bare feet gleamed whiter than the blossoms.She wore no garment but the royal mantle of her hair, sweeping about herin a cloak of shining darkness that had a queer, unreal tinge of purplein that low light. It brushed her ankles in its fabulous length. Fromthe hood of it she watched Smith coming toward her, a smile on her palemouth and a light blazing in the deeps of her moonstone eyes. She wasnot blind now, nor frightened. She stretched out her hand to himconfidently.

  "It is my turn now to lead you," she smiled. As before, the words weregibberish, but the penetrating stare of those strange white eyes gavethem a meaning in the depths of his brain.

  Automatically his hand went out to hers. He was a little dazed, and hereyes were very compelling. Her fingers twined in his and she set offover the flowery grass, pulling him beside her. He did not ask wherethey were going. Lost in the dreamy spell of the still, gray, enchantedplace, he felt no need for words. He was beginning to see more clearlyin the odd, blurring twilight that ran the outlines of things togetherin that queer, tapestried manner. And he puzzled in a futile, muddledway as he went on over what sort of land he had come into. Overhead wasdarkness, paling into twilight near the ground, so that when he lookedup he was staring into bottomless deeps of starless night.

  Trees and flowering shrubs and the flower-starred grass stretchedemptily about them in the thick, confusing gloom of the place. He couldsee only a little distance through that dim air. It was as if theywalked a strip of tapestried twilight in some unlighted dream. And thegirl, with her lovely, luminous body and richly colored robe of hair waslike a woman in a tapestry too, unreal and magical.

  After a while, when he had become a little adjusted to the queerness ofthe whole scene, he began to notice furtive movements in the shrubs andtrees they passed. Things flickered too swiftly for him to catch theiroutlines, but from the tail of his eye he was aware of motion, andsomehow of eyes that watched. That sensation was a familiar one to him,and he kept an uneasy gaze on those shiftings in the shrubbery as theywent on. Presently he caught a watcher in full view between bush andtree, and saw that it was a man, a little, furtive, dark-skinned man whododged hastily back into cover again before Smith's eyes could do morethan take in the fact of his existence.

  After that he knew what to expect and could make them out more easily:little, darting people with big eyes that shone with a queer, sorrowfuldarkness from their small, frightened faces as they scuttled through thebushes, dodging always just out of plain sight among the leaves. Hecould hear the soft rustle of their passage, and once or twice when theypassed near a clump of shrubbery he thought he caught the echo of littlewhispering calls, gentle as the rustle of leaves and somehow full of astrange warning note so clear that he caught it even amid the murmur oftheir speech. Warning calls, and little furtive hiders in the leaves,and a landscape of tapestried blurring carpeted with Botticelliflower-strewn sward. It was all a dream. He felt quite sure of that.

  * * * * *

  It was a long while before curiosity awakened in him sufficiently tomake him break the stillness. But at last he asked dreamily,

  "Where are we going?"

  The girl seemed to understand that without the necessity of the bond herhypnotic eyes made, for she turned and caught his eyes in a white stareand answered,

  "To Thag. Thag desires you."

  "What is Thag?"

  In answer to that she launched without preliminary upon a littlesingsong monolog of explanation whose stereotyped formula made himfaintly uneasy with the thought that it must have been made very oftento attain the status of a set speech; made to many men, perhaps, whomThag had desired. And what became of them afterward? he wondered. Butthe girl was speaking.

  "Many ages ago there dwelt in Illar the great King Illar for whom thecity was named. He was a magician of mighty power, but not mighty enoughto fulfill all his ambitions. So by his arts he called up out ofdarkness the being known as Thag, and with him struck a bargain. By thatbargain Thag was to give of his limitless power, serving Illar all thedays of Illar's life, and in return the king was to create a land forThag's dwelling-plac
e and people it with slaves and furnish a priestessto tend Thag's needs. This is that land. I am that priestess, the latestof a long line of women born to serve Thag. The tree-people are his--hislesser servants.

  "I have spoken softly so that the tree-people do not hear, for to themThag is the center and focus of creation, the end and beginning of alllife. But to you I have told the truth."

  "But what does Thag want of me?"

  "It is not for Thag's servants to question Thag."

  "Then what becomes, afterward, of the men Thag desires?" he pursued.

  "You must ask Thag that."

  She turned her eyes away as she spoke, snapping the mental bond that hadflowed between them with a suddenness that left Smith dizzy. He went onat her side more slowly, pulling back a little on the tug of herfingers. By degrees the sense of dreaminess was fading, and alarm beganto stir in the deeps of his mind. After all, there was no