The wall was wreathed in rainbow, not puny arcs such as we sometimes see after a shower, but great circles and bows, one within another, like the radiance of a butterfly’s wing or the feathers of certain birds where the light breaks its own color through barbs and scales to make a glorious aureole. The waterfall was a silver marvel, tumbling in sprays and droplets, each catching the light, separating and rejoining in a myriad braided saults. Above, upon the height, I could see trees and towers and color where great tracts of flowers bloomed. The angle was wrong, I should not have been able to see anything there. It was as though the light itself bent, as it does going around stars, to give me a glimpse of what lay above.
The vision was more like taste than sight. When I looked away, my eyes longed for me to look back, as the tongue longs for savor. Each tree upon the height was the epitome of tree. Each tower the quintessence of what towers could be. Everything there seemed to be the design from which earthly things were made. I was conscious that the burning presence in my chest was still. I did not feel it. It was at rest.
In a moment my eyes stung again, perhaps from the ointment, more likely from tears, and when I looked back, the vision was gone.
“The ointment is stale,” Mama said in an annoyed tone. “I waited for rescue overlong in that jungle. Never mind, my dear. When we come to Ylles, you will learn it is as beautiful as Baskarone.” Her words sounded confident, but her smile, when I turned to look at her, seemed forced.
I believed her, but still I wiped tears from my eyes as we returned to the Stugos Queen. We were not alone. Several of the passengers had come along for the sightseeing, and they, too, seemed depressed and sad. It seemed almost willfully malicious to let us see what lay upon the heights and yet forbid us access to it, but when I said this to Constanzia she rebuked me.
“Such is not the case. It is only from such visions and temptations that fantastic longing comes. Out of that vision, a thousand worlds are built. I have heard it said in Nacifia that it is better to be a climber who falls to his death from the walls of Baskarone, than to be king in any other land.” She sounded somewhat doubtful, as though the source of the quotation was not a trustworthy one. “Any other land,” she repeated, as though to convince herself.
“Except Faery itself,” I commented to Mama, as a quiet aside.
“Except Faery itself,” she agreed. “Oh yes, dear. Of course.”
When the cargo was aboard, the Queen turned downriver, and we raced with the current instead of against it, achieving in one or two days what had taken ten or twelve to accomplish on the way up. Our speed was such that we felt quite giddy. Before we knew it, we were at Novabella once more, having dinner with Don Masimiliano (sopa de limon, filetes des pesces del rio, ensalada de los helechos tropicales, plantain tostarse, quarto trasero de gallivant asado—from the colonel’s successful hunt—pastelillos de frutas, with patito-chuleta as a savory followed by coffee and liqueurs) and then away downstream toward Nacifia.
Mama did not feel well after eating the roast gallivant. She whispered to me that the fauna of imaginary regions were invariably poisonous to beings from her realm. Not binding, necessarily, as were fairy fruits or the pomegranate seeds of Hell, but simply unhealthful. I had felt no such trouble, and therefore decided that my digestive system was probably fully human. When I mentioned this to Mama, she said in a tart voice that it had taken me some little time to arrive at that conclusion. Only then did I realize that she had not had recourse to the personal cabinet at the rear of the ship once since she had come aboard.
“In many imaginary lands, as here, they shit and piss,” she advised me. “As on earth, though rather less copiously. But not in Ylles nor, I believe, in Baskarone. Never mind, dearest. When you eat fairy fruits, you will not be bothered with such grossness any longer.”
I had not precisely been bothered up until this time, though afterward I seemed to give a great deal of unaccustomed attention to the matter. No doubt this was one of the differences that Roland sensed in Mama. The implications were shattering. How refreshing to have all the joys of love (I write in a literary or conventional sense, rather than from experience) sans consequent familiarity with those anatomical proximities which humans find both so unfortunate and so teasingly attractive. I came to the conclusion that there would be no perversions in Ylles.
We arrived at Nacifia late one night and tied up at the pier with no sound from the whistle. I thought it might be thoughtfulness on the captain’s part until I saw him and Mrs. Gallimar tête-à-tête in the dining room and realized he simply had not wished to interrupt their last evening together. Last, one assumes, for a time, for a long time, though not for all time, since everything in Chinanga repeats itself. Constanzia had already gone ashore. It was one of those evenings when Mama and I felt close and familial, a dear feeling, one that left tears brooding in the corners of my eyes.
