The Book of Wonder | Page 3

heart awoke and romantically he pondered all those
rumours that used to come to him from Sombelenë, because of the
fellowship of fabulous things. She dwelt (said evening secretly to the
bat) in a little temple by a lone lakeshore. A grove of cypresses
screened her from the city, from Zretazoola of the climbing ways. And
opposite her temple stood her tomb, her sad lake-sepulchre with open
door, lest her amazing beauty and the centuries of her youth should
ever give rise to the heresy among men that lovely Sombelenë was
immortal: for only her beauty and her lineage were divine.
Her father had been half centaur and half god; her mother was the child
of a desert lion and that sphinx that watches the pyramids;--she was
more mystical than Woman.
Her beauty was as a dream, was as a song; the one dream of a lifetime
dreamed on enchanted dews, the one song sung to some city by a
deathless bird blown far from his native coasts by storm in Paradise.
Dawn after dawn on mountains of romance or twilight after twilight
could never equal her beauty; all the glow-worms had not the secret
among them nor all the stars of night; poets had never sung it nor
evening guessed its meaning; the morning envied it, it was hidden from
lovers.
She was unwed, unwooed.
The lions came not to woo her because they feared her strength, and the
gods dared not love her because they knew she must die.
This was what evening had whispered to the bat, this was the dream in
the heart of Shepperalk as he cantered blind through the mist. And
suddenly there at his hooves in the dark of the plain appeared the cleft
in the legendary lands, and Zretazoola sheltering in the cleft, and

sunning herself in the evening.
Swiftly and craftily he bounded down by the upper end of the cleft, and
entering Zretazoola by the outer gate which looks out sheer on the stars,
he galloped suddenly down the narrow streets. Many that rushed out on
to balconies as he went clattering by, many that put their heads from
glittering windows, are told of in olden song. Shepperalk did not tarry
to give greetings or to answer challenges from martial towers, he was
down through the earthward gateway like the thunderbolt of his sires,
and, like Leviathan who has leapt at an eagle, he surged into the water
between temple and tomb.
He galloped with half-shut eyes up the temple-steps, and, only seeing
dimly through his lashes, seized Sombelenë by the hair, undazzled as
yet by her beauty, and so haled her away; and, leaping with her over the
floorless chasm where the waters of the lake fall unremembered away
into a hole in the world, took her we know not where, to be her slave
for all centuries that are allowed to his race.
Three blasts he gave as he went upon that silver horn that is the
world-old treasure of the centaurs. These were his wedding bells.

DISTRESSING TALE OF THANGOBRIND THE JEWELLER
When Thangobrind the jeweller heard the ominous cough, he turned at
once upon that narrow way. A thief was he, of very high repute, being
patronized by the lofty and elect, for he stole nothing smaller than the
Moomoo's egg, and in all his life stole only four kinds of stone--the
ruby, the diamond, the emerald, and the sapphire; and, as jewellers go,
his honesty was great. Now there was a Merchant Prince who had come
to Thangobrind and had offered his daughter's soul for the diamond that
is larger than the human head and was to be found on the lap of the
spider-idol, Hlo-hlo, in his temple of Moung-ga-ling; for he had heard
that Thangobrind was a thief to be trusted.
Thangobrind oiled his body and slipped out of his shop, and went

secretly through byways, and got as far as Snarp, before anybody knew
that he was out on business again or missed his sword from its place
under the counter. Thence he moved only by night, hiding by day and
rubbing the edges of his sword, which he called Mouse because it was
swift and nimble. The jeweller had subtle methods of travelling;
nobody saw him cross the plains of Zid; nobody saw him come to
Mursk or Tlun. O, but he loved shadows! Once the moon peeping out
unexpectedly from a tempest had betrayed an ordinary jeweller; not so
did it undo Thangobrind; the watchman only saw a crouching shape
that snarled and laughed: "'Tis but a hyena," they said. Once in the city
of Ag one of the guardians seized him, but Thangobrind was oiled and
slipped from his hand; you scarcely heard his bare feet patter away. He
knew