Time and the Gods | Page 8

in
triumph marched up the gleaming stairway of the gods, all praising
little Limpang Tung, who through the chase had followed Night so
close in search of the golden ball. Then far below on the world a human
child cried out to the Dawnchild for the golden ball, and Inzana ceased
from her play that illumined world and sky, and cast the ball from the
Threshold of the gods to the little human child that played in the fields

below, and would one day die. And the child played all day long with
the golden ball down in the little fields where the humans lived, and
went to bed at evening and put it beneath his pillow, and went to sleep,
and no one worked in all the world because the child was playing. And
the light of the golden ball streamed up from under the pillow and out
through the half shut door and shone in the western sky, and
Yoharneth-Lahai in the night time tip-toed into the room, and took the
ball gently (for he was a god) away from under the pillow and brought
it back to the Dawnchild to gleam on an onyx step.
But some day Night shall seize the golden ball and carry it right away
and drag it down to his lair, and Slid shall dive from the Threshold into
the sea to see if it be there, and coming up when the fishermen draw
their nets shall find it not, nor yet discover it among the sails. Limpang
Tung shall seek among the birds and shall not find it when the cock is
mute, and up the valleys shall go Umborodom to seek among the crags.
And the hound, the thunder, shall chase the Eclipse and all the gods go
seeking with Their stars, but never find the ball. And men, no longer
having light of the golden ball, shall pray to the gods no more, who,
having no worship, shall be no more the gods.
These things be hidden even from the gods.

THE VENGEANCE OF MEN
Ere the Beginning the gods divided earth into waste and pasture.
Pleasant pastures They made to be green over the face of earth,
orchards They made in valleys and heather upon hills, but Harza They
doomed, predestined and foreordained to be a waste for ever.
When the world prayed at evening to the gods and the gods answered
prayers They forgot the prayers of all the Tribes of Arim. Therefore the
men of Arim were assailed with wars and driven from land to land and
yet would not be crushed. And the men of Arim made them gods for
themselves, appointing men as gods until the gods of Pegana should
remember them again. And their leaders, Yoth and Haneth, played the

part of gods and led their people on though every tribe assailed them.
At last they came to Harza, where no tribes were, and at last had rest
from war, and Yoth and Haneth said: "The work is done, and surely
now Pegana's gods will remember." And they built a city in Harza and
tilled the soil, and the green came over the waste as the wind comes
over the sea, and there were fruit and cattle in Harza and the sounds of
a million sheep. There they rested from their flight from all the tribes,
and builded fables out of all their sorrows till all men smiled in Harza
and children laughed.
Then said the gods, "Earth is no place for laughter." Thereat They
strode to Pegana's outer gate, to where the Pestilence lay curled asleep,
and waking him up They pointed toward Harza, and the Pestilence
leapt forward howling across the sky.
That night he came to the fields near Harza, and stalking through the
grass sat down and glared at the lights, and licked his paws and glared
at the lights again.
But the next night, unseen, through laughing crowds, the Pestilence
crept into the city, and stealing into the houses one by one, peered into
the people's eyes, looking even through their eyelids, so that when
morning came men stared before them crying out that they saw the
Pestilence whom others saw not, and thereafter died, because the green
eyes of the Pestilence had looked into their souls. Chill and damp was
he, yet there came heat from his eyes that parched the souls of men.
Then came the physicians and the men learned in magic, and made the
sign of the physicians and the sign of the men of magic and cast blue
water upon herbs and chanted spells; but still the Pestilence crept from
house to house and still he looked into the souls of men. And the lives
of the people streamed away from Harza, and whither