Figures of Earth | Page 8

they have made of these
affairs. What sort of a world is it, I ask you, in which time peculates the
gold from hair and the crimson from all lips, and the north wind carries
away the glow and glory and contentment of October, and a driveling
old magician steals a lovely girl? Why, such maraudings are out of
reason, and show plainly that our elders have no notion how to manage
things."
"Eh, Manuel, and will you re-model the world?"
"Who knows?" says Manuel, in the high pride of his youth. "At all
events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered."
Then Niafer, a more prosaic person, gave him a long look compounded
equally of admiration and pity, but Niafer did not dispute the matter.

Instead, these two pledged constant fealty until they should have
rescued Madame Gisèle.
"Then we will fight for her," says Manuel, again.
"First, Manuel, let me see her face, and then let me see her state of
mind, and afterward I will see about fighting you. Meanwhile, this is a
very tall mountain, and the climbing of it will require all the breath
which we are wasting here."
So the two began the ascent of Vraidex, by the winding road upon
which the dreams traveled when they were sent down to men by the
lord of the seven madnesses. All gray rock was the way at first. But
they soon reached the gnawed bones of those who had ascended before
them, scattered about a small plain that was overgrown with ironweed:
and through and over the tall purple blossoms came to destroy the boys
the Serpent of the East, a very dreadful design with which Miramon
afflicted the sleep of Lithuanians and Tartars. The snake rode on a
black horse, a black falcon perched on his head, and a black hound
followed him. The horse stumbled, the falcon clamored, the hound
howled.
Then said the snake: "My steed, why do you stumble? my hound, why
do you howl? and, my falcon, why do you clamor? For these three
doings foresay some ill to me."
"Oh, a great ill!" replies Manuel, with his charmed sword already half
out of the scabbard.
But Niafer cried: "An endless ill is foresaid by these doings. For I have
been to the Island of the Oaks: and under the twelfth oak was a copper
casket, and in the casket was a purple duck, and in the duck was an egg:
and in the egg, O Norka, was and is your death."
"It is true that my death is in such an egg," said the Serpent of the East,
"but nobody will ever find that egg, and therefore I am resistless and
immortal."

"To the contrary, the egg, as you can perceive, is in my hand; and when
I break this egg you will die, and it is smaller worms than you that will
be thanking me for their supper this night."
The serpent looked at the poised egg, and he trembled and writhed so
that his black scales scattered everywhither scintillations of reflected
sunlight. He cried, "Give me the egg, and I will permit you two to
ascend unmolested, to a more terrible destruction."
Niafer was not eager to do this, but Manuel thought it best, and so at
last Niafer consented to the bargain, for the sake of the serpent's
children. Then the two lads went upward, while the serpent bandaged
the eyes of his horse and of his hound, and hooded his falcon, and crept
gingerly away to hide the egg in an unmentionable place.
"But how in the devil," says Manuel, "did you manage to come by that
invaluable egg?"
"It is a quite ordinary duck egg, Manuel. But the Serpent of the East has
no way of discovering the fact unless he breaks the egg: and that is the
one thing the serpent will never do, because he thinks it is the magic
egg which contains his death."
"Come, Niafer, you are not handsome to look at, but you are far
cleverer than I thought you!"
Now, as Manuel clapped Niafer on the shoulder, the forest beside the
roadway was agitated, and the underbrush crackled, and the tall
beech-trees crashed and snapped and tumbled helter-skelter. The crust
of the earth was thus broken through by the Serpent of the North. Only
the head and throat of this design of Miramon's was lifted from the
jumbled trees, for it was requisite of course that the serpent's lower
coils should never loose their grip upon the foundations of Norroway.
All of the design that showed was overgrown with seaweed and
barnacles.
"It is the will of Miramon Lluagor that I forthwith demolish you both,"
says this serpent, yawning with a mouth like a fanged cave.

Once more young Manuel