Lulluma felt an intense desire to giggle again. This little man was funnier even than the one they called the Doctor but from her childhood she had been trained to suppress any emotion which might give pain to other people. With a grave smile she stood up.
'Certainly I will leave you if you wish. Forgive me please that I should appear so ignorant of your customs—but I have had so little opportunity to travel yet.'
With a friendly wave of her hand she left them and gathering up the soiled dishes disappeared behind the nearest block of buildings.
The McKay waited until she vanished then he turned back to Nahou and said slowly: 'This travelling business— is it true that you and she have both been in the upper world among ordinary human beings?'
Nahou nodded. 'Yes, Lulluma is young yet but I and my companions have visited your country and other centres of modern civilisation many times.'
'Ah!' the McKay's eyes brightened. 'I felt certain that must be so. It's the only possible explanation of you being able to speak such darn good English. There's a way out of this place somehow then. A long tunnel which leads up under the sea and comes up in the Azores eh? By Jove I we're not sunk yet—we'll get back after all 1'
Nahou regarded him a little sadly. 'Did you learn much of the tradition which still exists about Atlantis before you came on this expedition?' he asked slowly.
'Enough to write a book,' declared the McKay. 'No offence of course—but I'm fed to the teeth with the whole darned business.'
'Then you will know that the earlier Atlanteans were credited with powers which the ignorant term "Magic"?'
'O-ah! Sons of the God going in unto the daughters of men, Nephilim, and all that sort of thing—hence the Flood. Yes, I know all about that but what's it got to do with this secret entrance to the place by which we can get home?'
'We still retain certain of those powers,' said Nahou gently, 'and they enable us to travel in the spirit, but none of my race have ever left this island in our physical bodies for over eleven thousand years. 1 am afraid my friend that you must put out of your mind once and for all any hope of being able to return.'
Count Axel Treads the Fields of Aspodel
Count Axel was the first to wake. All his friends were still sleeping soundly on either side of him but Lulluma was sitting near by busily stitching at some form of garment.
His first impression was of her serene untroubled smile and that she was no creation of his subconscious imagination but warm flesh and blood; his next, that he had grown a beard. As he passed his hand over his face he felt it—a stubby growth on his lips and chin.
'How do you feel now?' she asked, laying aside her work and standing up.
He took a long breath and sighed contentedly. 'If I were on my death bed I believe that the sight of you would be enough to raise me from it—but I never awoke feeling less like death than I do at the moment.'
'That is as it should be—you have slept well, nearly a week.'
'A week! surely that is impossible?'
'Almost a week,' she assured him, 'and you look terribly dirty. Come with me and you shall have a bath.'
Axel took the hand that she held out to pull him to his feet. Then he noticed that he and his friends had been stripped during their sleep; but the girl beside him did not seem the least embarrassed by his nakedness and he could not help murmuring as he surveyed the others: 'Don't they look funny without their clothes?'
Lulluma chuckled. 'The fat doctor is a very queer shape. The tall dark man has a good body though, also the fair one whom you call Nicky.'
'Yes,' he agreed, as he studied his friends with complete detachment, 'Vladimir is a fine figure of a man and both the
girls do credit to their race. Camilla is particularly lovely.'
Luiluma jerked his hand with sudden petulance, 'She is just passable—but she is nothing like as good-looking as I ami'
Count Axel had drawn her attention to Camilla's loveliness with deliberate intent. She had risen to the bait magnificently and he almost trembled with joy at this first real assurance that she was as vulnerable as any ordinary human girl. When he turned and looked into her eyes he meant every word as he said, 'You are right—in all my life I have never seen anyone quite so beautiful as you.'
She shrugged her well-covered shoulders; 'My mother carried out her ideas of my type quite well in me I think, but you may change your opinion when you see my companions. I would not change my nature with any of them but they are more beautiful. I am too short and lack the grace which they possess. Come now and wash.'
He followed her to one of the blocks of buildings which faced each other across the pool, each of them had six curtained entrances. She pulled aside the hangings over one doorway and disclosed a large square room furnished with spartan simplicity. There was a couch against the far wall, a dressing-table to one side, above which was set a large metal mirror and against the other wall stood a single oblong coffer. In the middle of the floor was a low sunken bath.
'This is my room,' announced Luiluma. 'You are not afraid of me I hope like the little muscular man who nearly had a fit when he found that Nahou and I were about to remove his damp trousers.'
Count Axel stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips and quite at his ease. 'No,' he replied, passing his fingers over his chin. 'If you do wish to eat me I am yours to eat, but first I would prefer to remove this beard—if that is possible. It would be more comfortable for us both.'
'Later on, if I find that I like you I might try,' she said with delightful frankness, 'but I would hardly care to touch you as you are. Look I Nahou has provided this sharp steel against your waking. In this vase you will find oil for lather and here is a linen towel. Water will enter the bath from the hot spring if you press down the Triton's head which decorates its end. After you have finished remove the spigot from the bottom and it will drain away. On the bed there I have put out a selection of men's garments. Since you are the first to wake you can choose which you like best. Now I will leave you to make yourself presentable.'
As she turned to go he laid his hand gently on her arm to detain her. 'Forgive me,' he said, 'but, since neither of us suffer from any shyness may I confess one thing to you?— I have never found it altogether easy to wash my own back.'
Lulluma looked at him for a moment and then she began to laugh again. 'Well really,' she declared, 'you are almost civilised. Quite like one of us. I will bath you with pleasure if you like?'
When Axel looked at himself in Lulluma's highly polished metal mirror he saw that he was indeed a filthy sight, but after some initial difficulty with Nahou's big hand-ground razor he got the hang of it and soon his chin was as smooth as silk. A good wash restored his face to its normal appearance and then he studied himself again. He saw a long humorous countenance smiling at him lazily and decided that his forty-odd years had not treated him too harshly. He felt no more than thirty and the abnormally long sleep seemed to have removed half a dozen years of deepening wrinkles from round his eyes and mouth. With an impulsive gesture he swung round to Lulluma.
'Well, how do I look now?'
She was sitting on her divan polishing her toe-nails and she looked up with a start. 'Why—you're quite good-looking,' her big eyes widened, 'I thought you were almost an old man and was only attracted by something about your mind which your friends do not possess ... before!'
As he turned on the water she stood up and added: 'I only consented to bath you out of courtesy you know—but now I think it will be rather fun.'
With a little wriggle of her shoulders she slipped off her red dress and picked up the vase of oil. Then amid splash-ings and laughter she scrubbed him so vigorously that he had to cry for mercy.
He chose a green tunic and when she had helped him to adjust it they went outside together. The others were still sound asleep so she offered to show him the island and they strolled off side by side.
In the grove of palm trees behind the temple there was 264
another grou
p of buildings. A wide kitchen, a small laundry, and a row of workshops for metallurgy, dyeing, weaving, and distilling. All were quite deserted and showed no signs of recent labour. The rows of golden plates and dishes were arranged neatly in the kitchen racks, every tool and implement in the shops occupied its special place; no trace of waste material marred the scrupulous cleanness in any corner.
'You see, each of us makes what we require for ourselves and nothing more,' Lulluma explained, 'and when we wish to eat we gather whatever fresh fruit is in season from the trees or net a fish in the lake and cook it. All waste is consumed immediately after by the earthshine.'
'How does that work?' he asked. 'It seems to have all the properties of sunshine.'
'It has,' she assured him. 'You doubtless know that the centre of the earth is molten and gives off gases which are exactly similar to those which shoot out in great flames from the sun. Long ages ago our people tapped that source of heat and light and then it was a comparatively simple matter to conduct it through certain minerals so that it should give a steady glow. The circular arrangement round the roof enables the trees and plants to benefit from it at every angle in the same degree so that they are never distorted in one direction. The result is similar to that produced by the movement of your sun.'
'Forgive me, but there are so many things I want to ask you,' he smiled down at her. 'From the way you speak you are obviously familiar with our upper world?'
'There is little to do here,' she answered enigmatically, 'except make love!'
'You find that palls at times?'
'No, never—because we do not abuse our zest for it. Once every year or two each of us has some tremendous affair which lasts a few months, then when we are satiated for the moment, we go away. Later the urge rises again and when we feel it really strongly we take our happiness with another.'
'You speak of going away. What do you mean by that?'
'Two of us are always what you would call "on duty" here. It was the turn of Nahou and myself when you arrived. The others spend most of the year in sleep. Sometimes we sleep for a month or more at a stretch, and during that time our spirit travels—as quickly as an ether wave. We have learned to direct it to the place where we wish to go. The eyes of our invisible bodies can observe your customs and our ears can hear your speech. That is how we have learned your languages and know quite a lot about you, but there are many things you do which puzzle us still.'
Axel nodded. 'That sounds amazing—but I understand it. In a rudimentary way the people of the upper world practise thought transference at times or visit their friends in dreams, so that they are able to listen to their speech and see what they are doing. Such things with us are rare, haphazard and chancy though, whereas you must have developed these faculties to a fine art.'
'We have had an unbroken civilisation for twenty-nine thousand years in which to do it,' she said simply.
'Twenty-nine ... thousand ... years! That makes us seem to be still in the embryo stage then—but tell me more of what you do?'
'We remain here for a few days to renew our strength, then we set off again, and so life goes on until the love-urge is upon us once more; then, for a little while, we revel in what you would term a new honeymoon.'
'I should have thought that your bodies would have wasted during those long periods of sleep.'
'On the contrary. It is that which enables our tissues to restore themselves and rests the organs, so that we remain young and beautiful far longer than the people of your world above. Come now—I will show you what you would call our "Kitchen Garden".'
She pushed her arm impulsively through his and led him out of the palm grove to the far side of the island.
Just as the flower garden behind the pool was different from any which Axel had ever seen before so this 'Kitchen-Garden' was quite unusual in its lay-out. It extended the whole breadth of the island between the ten-foot deep creeper-clad walls and covered about two acres of ground, but there were no large ugly patches of vegetables and it had been planned with the most skilful care.
Its design was rigidly formal and the intersecting paths were bordered by successive rows of different plants, each slightly higher than the one in front until the rearmost hedged in solid squares of cereals. On each side of the paved walks Axel noticed lines of low root-crops—types of radish, carrot, turnip and many others which he did not recognise. Further in there were lettuces, dwarf beans and peas, then potatoes, broccoli and cabbages until rows of tall artichokes and espaliered fruit trees fenced in the blocks of wheat, oats, barley and maize.
He would never have believed that any purely utilitarian garden could be made so beautiful, yet the long lines of contrasting greens were worthy of Le Notre and the restful colouring gave a peace to the eyes which no massed ranks of flowers could have conveyed.
Luiluma pointed to a low, square building at the far end. 'That is where our roots and crops are stored—also it contains our wine-press and our mill. The wines of course have to be kept underground for many years before they are drinkable. Beyond is the enclosure where we pasture our herd of deer, and the fish-pond. Then at the extremity of the island is the jungle. Would you like to see those too?'
'Please.' Axel moved forward beside her, 'I wish to admire everything. Your domain is more enchanting than any fairyland of which I have ever dreamed.'
The vegetable garden ended in a metal fence almost entirely hidden by vines from which hung bunches of small unripe grapes. They passed through a gateway in it to a grassy, uncultivated wilderness. The island was slightly narrower here and a small stream, fed by some hidden spring meandered through the meadow to a lake fringed by tall reeds. As they walked forward a little herd of antelope, no more than twenty inches high, raised their heads to gaze at them with large liquid eyes, then scampered off to cover in the wall of greenness which kept the island secret and enclosed.
Beyond the lake another fence cut off the far segment of the island which was entirely covered by dense jungle. At first, when they entered it through another gate it seemed a solid mass of flowering creepers so inextricably interwoven that it was difficult to see the tree trunks on which they climbed. Splashes of blossom, yellow, pink, blue, and scarlet stood out against the massed green of the background and scented the air with the fragrance of a perfume-maker's laboratory.
Lulluma pulled aside a bunch of hanging tendrils and Axel followed her into a cool dark maze gently dappled by the earthshine which penetrated in speckled patches between the leaves above. Hardly discernible paths wound in and out among the massed bushes and clumps of flowering vines while here and there were more open spaces and recesses which invited rest on their mossy banks among the warm shadows.
'it is here,' said Lulluma, 'that we often come to make love.'
Axel felt his heart pounding beneath his ribs and his arm trembled as he put it round her shoulder, but a subtle instinct told him that she intended no invitation and that his only hope lay in exercising the greatest restraint. This small warm pagan goddess was no primitive creature to be taken by rough assault. Something told him that in spite of her apparent youth she knew the game of love even better than he did and could only be caressed at her own pleasure. When that time came he felt that she would show her desire as naturally as she would hunger or thirst.
His blood was pounding heavily behind his temples and he knew that he must break the tension or else he might do something which he would ever afterwards regret, so he removed his arms and leaned against a tree trunk, then spoke unthinkingly of the first thing which came into his mind.
'This is like Eden—to make it complete you only need the Serpent 1'
Instantly she sprang away from him with dark, fear-distended eyes.
'What is it? .. . I'm sorry! . .. please, what have I done?' he exclaimed, holding out his hands to her in quick supplication.
She shuddered and glanced over her shoulder fearfully. The jungle garden seemed very silent now as though every tree and vine were listening.
Then she sighed and placed her hands in his.
'You should not have said that,' she whispered. 'Never— never speak of evil. It is almost our only rule but very strictly kept. The Ancient One has been barred out of here for countless centuries but he still waits, as he will wait until the end of time, for an invitation to enter in.'
Her voice was so intensely earnest that he could find no adequate apology and only bowed his head as though guilty of having broken some fragile priceless treasure.
She lifted a hand to his cheek and stroked it gently, seeking now to comfort him; 'You spoke only thoughtlessly and in jest I know but words have such terrible power. They vibrate on the ether long, long after our ears have ceased to hear them and evil forces focus, unseen, all about them. I am so afraid that what you have said may, in some awful way, mar the wonderful happiness I foresee for us—but that which has been spoken can never be recalled. All I can do now is to throw my vibrations about us both and trust that they may prove an effectual barrier.'
In silence now they moved on again yet, after Lulluma's outburst she soon seemed to push the episode into the back of her mind and regain her spirits. A few moments later she put her finger to her lips to enjoin quietness before drawing him round a corner of the maze.
There, in a nook, a fully grown girl was sleeping at the foot of a stone pillar topped by a bust of the God Priapus. A garland hung from the age-old symbol by which Axel recognised the Deity. The girl wore only a light tunic of white linen edged with gold; her hair, a lustrous ash-blonde colour, contrasting also with Lulluma's in that she wore it long, covered her shoulders and fell below her delicately modelled breasts. She was extremely lovely, with the milk and rose complexion of Axel's own Nordic people and her limbs, scarcely veiled by the semi-transparent material of her dress were long and graceful. He could not remember ever seeing such a perfect example of her type.
'Well, what do you say now?' Lulluma asked with a mocking glance, 'Would you not rather make love to her than to me? Speak truthfully—I shall not bear any ill-will. No man could hesitate at such a choice for she is far lovelier than I.'
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