Time and the Gods | Page 6

But from far
away the West Wind came with news of three grey travellers wrapt
round with battered cloaks that carried away between them a golden
ball.
Then up leapt the North Wind, he who guards the pole, and drew his
sword of ice out of his scabbard of snow and sped away along the road
that leads across the blue. And in the darkness underneath the world he
met the three grey travellers and rushed upon them and drove them far
before him, smiting them with his sword till their grey cloaks streamed
with blood. And out of the midst of them, as they fled with flapping
cloaks all red and grey and tattered, he leapt up with the golden ball and
gave it to the Dawnchild.
Again Inzana tossed the ball into the sky, making the third day, and up
and up it went and fell towards the fields, and as Inzana stooped to pick
it up she suddenly heard the singing of all the birds that were. All the
birds in the world were singing all together and also all the streams, and
Inzana sat and listened and thought of no golden ball, nor ever of
chalcedony and onyx, nor of all her fathers the gods, but only of all the
birds. Then in the woods and meadows where they had all suddenly
sung, they suddenly ceased. And Inzana, looking up, found that her ball
was lost, and all alone in the stillness one owl laughed. When the gods
heard Inzana crying for her ball They clustered together on the
threshold and peered into the dark, but saw no golden ball. And leaning
forward They cried out to the bat as he passed up and down: "Bat that
seest all things, where is the golden ball?"
And though the bat answered none heard. And none of the winds had
seen it nor any of the birds, and there were only the eyes of the gods in
the darkness peering for the golden ball. Then said the gods: "Thou hast
lost thy golden ball," and They made her a moon of silver to roll about
the sky. And the child cried and threw it upon the stairway and chipped
and broke its edges and asked for the golden ball. And Limpang Tung,
the Lord of Music, who was least of all the gods, because the child

cried still for her golden ball, stole out of Pegana and crept across the
sky, and found the birds of all the world sitting in trees and ivy, and
whispering in the dark. He asked them one by one for news of the
golden ball. Some had last seen it on a neighbouring hill and others in
trees, though none knew where it was. A heron had seen it lying in a
pond, but a wild duck in some reeds had seen it last as she came home
across the hills, and then it was rolling very far away.
At last the cock cried out that he had seen it lying beneath the world.
There Limpang Tung sought it and the cock called to him through the
darkness as he went, until at last he found the golden ball. Then
Limpang Tung went up into Pegana and gave it to the Dawnchild, who
played with the moon no more. And the cock and all his tribe cried out:
"We found it. We found the golden ball."
Again Inzana tossed the ball afar, laughing with joy to see it, her hands
stretched upwards, her golden hair afloat, and carefully she watched it
as it fell. But alas! it fell with a splash into the great sea and gleamed
and shimmered as it fell till the waters became dark above it and could
be seen no more. And men on the world said: "How the dew has fallen,
and how the mists set in with breezes from the streams."
But the dew was the tears of the Dawnchild, and the mists were her
sighs when she said: "There will no more come a time when I play with
my ball again, for now it is lost for ever."
And the gods tried to comfort Inzana as she played with her silver
moon, but she would not hear Them, and went in tears to Slid, where
he played with gleaming sails, and in his mighty treasury turned over
gems and pearls and lorded it over the sea. And she said: "O Slid,
whose soul is in the sea, bring back my golden ball."
And Slid stood up, swarthy, and clad in seaweed, and mightily dived
from the last chalcedony step out of Pegana's threshold straight into
ocean. There on the sand, among the battered navies of the nautilus and
broken weapons of the swordfish, hidden by