The White People | Page 7

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