The White People | Page 7

Frances Hodgson Burnett
tongues, and others were like words that I could not say, and
others like dead people lying on the grass. I went on among them,
though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked songs that
they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about in
the way they did, and I went on and on a long way till at last I liked the
rocks, and they didn't frighten me any more. I sang the songs I thought
of; songs full of words that must not be spoken or written down. Then I
made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like
the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones,
and I went up to one that was grinning, and put my arms round him and
hugged him. And so I went on and on through the rocks till I came to a
round mound in the middle of them. It was higher than a mound, it was
nearly as high as our house, and it was like a great basin turned upside
down, all smooth and round and green, with one stone, like a post,
sticking up at the top. I climbed up the sides, but they were so steep I
had to stop or I should have rolled all the way down again, and I should
have knocked against the stones at the bottom, and perhaps been killed.
But I wanted to get up to the very top of the big round mound, so I lay
down flat on my face, and took hold of the grass with my hands and
drew myself up, bit by bit, till I was at the top Then I sat down on the

stone in the middle, and looked all round about. I felt I had come such a
long, long way, just as if I were a hundred miles from home, or in some
other country, or in one of the strange places I had read about in the
"Tales of the Genie" and the "Arabian Nights," or as if I had gone
across the sea, far away, for years and I had found another world that
nobody had ever seen or heard of before, or as if I had somehow flown
through the sky and fallen on one of the stars I had read about where
everything is dead and cold and grey, and there is no air, and the wind
doesn't blow. I sat on the stone and looked all round and down and
round about me. It was just as if I was sitting on a tower in the middle
of a great empty town, because I could see nothing all around but the
grey rocks on the ground. I couldn't make out their shapes any more,
but I could see them on and on for a long way, and I looked at them,
and they seemed as if they had been arranged into patterns, and shapes,
and figures. I knew they couldn't be. because I had seen a lot of them
coming right out of the earth, joined to the deep rocks below, so I
looked again, but still I saw nothing but circles, and small circles inside
big ones, and pyramids, and domes, and spires, and they seemed all to
go round and round the place where I was sitting, and the more I looked,
the more I saw great big rings of rocks, getting bigger and bigger, and I
stared so long that it felt as if they were all moving and turning, like a
great wheel, and I was turning, too, in the middle. I got quite dizzy and
queer in the head, and everything began to be hazy and not clear, and I
saw little sparks of blue light, and the stones looked as if they were
springing and dancing and twisting as they went round and round and
round. I was frightened again, and I cried out loud, and jumped up from
the stone I was sitting on, and fell down. When I got up I was so glad
they all looked still, and I sat down on the top and slid down the mound,
and went on again. I danced as I went in the peculiar way the rocks had
danced when I got giddy, and I was so glad I could do it quite well, and
I danced and danced along, and sang extraordinary songs that came into
my head. At last I came to the edge of that great flat hill, and there were
no more rocks, and the way went again through a dark thicket in a
hollow. It was just as bad as the other one I went
Continue reading on your phone by scaning this QR Code

 / 22
Tip: The current page has been bookmarked automatically. If you wish to continue reading later, just open the Dertz Homepage, and click on the 'continue reading' link at the bottom of the page.