The Ethics of the Dust | Page 9

seem to know where they were going, and, besides, were going where

they had no business: but my spell-bound bricks, though they have no
wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find their way in
the air just where they should settle, into towers and roofs, each flying
to his place and fastening there at the right moment, so that every other
one shall fit to him in his turn.
LILY. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals?
L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more than crystals;
but she builds these also. I dreamed that I saw her building a pyramid,
the other day, as she used to do, for the Pharaohs.
ISABEL. But that was only a dream?
L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel; but I won't tell it
you unless you like.
ISABEL. Oh, please, please.
L. You are all such wise children, there's no talking to you; you won't
believe anything.
LILY. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, when you say
we ought.
L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect that evening
when we had been looking at your old cave by Cumae, and wondering
why you didn't live there still: and then we wondered how old you were;
and Egypt said you wouldn't tell, and nobody else could tell but she;
and you laughed--I thought very gayly for a Sibyl--and said you would
harness a flock of cranes for us, and we might fly over to Egypt if we
liked, and see.
SIBYL. Yes, and you went, and couldn't find out after all!
L. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that third pyramid of
hers; [Footnote: Note i.] and making a new entrance into it; and a fine
entrance it was! First, we had to go through an ante- room, which had
both its doors blocked up with stones; and then we had three granite
portcullises to pull up, one after another; and the moment we had got
under them, Egypt signed to somebody above; and down they came
again behind us, with a roar like thunder, only louder; then we got into
a passage fit for nobody but rats, and Egypt wouldn't go any further
herself, but said we might go on if we liked; and so we came to a hole
in the pavement, and then to a granite trap-door--and then we thought
we had gone quite far enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed at us.
EGYPT. You would not have had me take my crown off, and stoop all

the way down a passage fit only for rats?
L. It was not the crown, Egypt--you know that very well. It was the
flounces that would not let you go any further. I suppose, however, you
wear them as typical of the inundation of the Nile, so it is all right.
ISABEL. Why didn't you take me with you? Where rats can go, mice
can. I wouldn't have come back.
L. No, mousie; you would have gone on by yourself, and you might
have waked one of Pasht's cats,[Footnote: Note iii] and it would have
eaten you. I was very glad you were not there. But after all this, I
suppose the imagination of the heavy granite blocks and the
underground ways had troubled me, and dreams are often shaped in a
strange opposition to the impressions that have caused them; and from
all that we had been reading in Bunsen about stones that couldn't be
lifted with levers, I began to dream about stones that lifted themselves
with wings.
SIBYL. Now you must just tell us all about it.
L. I dreamed that I was standing beside the lake, out of whose clay the
bricks were made for the great pyramid of Asychis. [Footnote: Note ii]
They had just been all finished, and were lying by the lake margin, in
long ridges, like waves. It was near evening; and as I looked towards
the sunset, I saw a thing like a dark pillar standing where the rock of
the desert stoops to the Nile valley. I did not know there was a pillar
there, and wondered at it; and it grew larger, and glided nearer,
becoming like the form of a man, but vast, and it did not move its feet,
but glided, like a pillar of sand. And as it drew nearer, I looked by
chance past it, towards the sun; and saw a silver cloud, which was of all
the clouds closest to the sun (and in one place crossed it), draw itself
back from the sun, suddenly. And it turned, and shot towards the dark
pillar; leaping in an arch, like an arrow out of a bow.