U r sure dat bcoz it had a hoomin hed it wos sumtin from di hoomin part ov di kript?
Thas thi way it wurx, Mr Zoliparia. It woz sumfin that had 2 preserv hoomin form evin in its monstrisness or it coodin funkshin, or mayb bcoz it mite ? let thi birdz c whot it woz reely like, which givin that birdz doan much like hoomins in thi furst place, is sayin sumfin.
& it woz after u.
It shure woz. Am not sayin I am what thare actuli lookin 4 — doan xpect I am — but thare catchin & cajin evrybody a bit diffrint or suspishis & that hed fing seems 2 b involved in thi round-up.
Mr Zoliparia shakes his hed. O deer Bascule, o deer.
Nevir mind, Mr Zoliparia. No harm dun.
Thass tru, Bascule; lease u bak heer safe & soun, no tanks 2 me. Nway, i tink u shude keep away from thi kript 4 a bit, doan u?
Wel that mite b a idear, Mr Zoliparia, I sez. U certinly got a point thare..
Good boy, he sez. I no; why doan we play a game? Or mayb u wude like 2 go 4 a wok; take a constichewshinil roun sum ov thi terrices on thi roof, mayb stop off sumware 4 lunch — wot u say, Bascule?
Ol soundz good 2 me, Mr Zoliparia.
Less do boat tings, he lafs. Weel go 4 a wok but weel take di portibil Go board wif us & ? a game ovir a nice long lunch @ a rathir nice restoront i no.
Good idear, Mr Zoliparia. Thas a fine ole complicatid game, that Go.
Rite! Ahl get di Go, den weel go! he lafs, & he jumps up & heds indoars. Drink up yoor t! he shouts.
I luke out @ them birdz again, circlin above a far towr. I doan want 2 tel Mr Zoliparia but am goan strait bak in thare 2 that kript juss as soon as I feel abil. I stil want 2 find out whot happind 2 poor Ergates, but I want 2 no whots goan on, 2.
Truth b told, it terryfys me ? 2 def jus finkin about it, but I got this feelin I lerned a lot while I woz in thi kript today & iss tru whot they say; iss like a addictiv game, & 1nce u cum out ov it a bit brused & woondid, thi furst thing u want 2 do is get strate bak in thare & get it rite next time. I juss woan fink about that horribl hed fing.
I finish my t & tidy up thi cups & stuf (u ? 2 do this @ Mr Zoliparias cos he hasnt eny servitors) & take thi tray inside juss as heez puttin on his coat & stuffin thi portabil Go board in his pokit.
Redy, Bascule? he asks.
Am redy, Mr Zoliparia.
Redy ol rite. Big stuf happenin in thi kript & sum poor buggir bein huntid & me wif a hed start on thi peepil doin thi huntin.
Bascule thi rascule thas me & am moar than redy;
A lid bird tole me.
FOUR
1
When she awoke there was a halo of light all around the circular bed; the light led up forever into and beyond the sky and shrank to a point that was both the source of the light and a calm, dark hole.
She wondered where the ceiling had gone.
The light was like nothing she had ever seen or even had any words for; it was at once absolutely smooth, uniform and pure, and somehow wildly various, composed of every hue there were words to describe and many more besides; it was every shade and intensity of every colour any eye or instrument ever born or made had ever been able to distinguish, and it was the utter un-colour of profound darkness too.
As she sat up, the tunnel of light moved with her so that she was always looking straight into it, until she was gazing down to the end of the bed over the little hills her feet made in the soft coverings. Now the tunnel of light led away across where the floor ought to be and out through the tall windows and over the balcony and the lawns outside. It was as though in that silent gloriousness she could see vague dim outlines of the earlier room around her, but the brilliant shining had made them the unreal world, not the real one.
She could remember waking and her journey through the garden and the hedge-castle and the talking heads and her conversations with the old man in this house; she could remember the two younger people and the lunch and supper they had taken together, and recall being shown to this room by the old man and the woman, and shown the bathroom by the woman, but all that was made as though into a dream by this utterly quiet cascade of light, so that now she could have believed that all of it had indeed been a fiction.
She crawled to the foot of the bed and slipped out of the covers. They had given her a beautiful nightgown of soft blue and she had worn it first then taken it off because it felt restricting, but now she reached back and slipped it on again.
They had given her slippers too but she stared into the light and could not bear to go back round the side of the bed to look for them, and so she set off into the light, walking gently with a flowing, measured tread, as though frightened her footsteps might bruise the fabric of this beckoning radiance.
The tunnel's floor was neither warm nor cold; it yielded to her soles but it was not soft. The air seemed to drift with her as she walked and she had the impression that with every step she took she moved a great but somehow natural distance, as if one could stand on a desert and look to a far mountain peak and suddenly be there on that summit, in the thin rush of cold air, looking at a line of hills on the horizon, and then be there too, and then turn and see a broad grassy plain in the distance and be there, standing on the warm earth with the tall swaying grass brushing at her legs and buzzing insects sounding lazy in the hot, damp air; she looked from there to a small hill where short grass grew around old, fallen stones and birds trilled overhead and from where she looked into a broad forest and then she was within the forest and surrounded by trees and didn't know where to go; everywhere she looked was the same, and she could no longer tell whether she was actually moving anywhere now or not and after a while realised that she was completely lost and so stood there, her mouth set in a tight line, her fists clenched and her brows furrowed as though trying to contain within herself the fury and perplexity she felt at still being enclosed by the night-dark jungle, until she noticed a cool shaft of soft light glowing through the branches, and was there, bathed in it but still surrounded by the green pouring weight of rustling foliage.
But then she smiled and lifted up her head and there in the sky was a beautiful moon, round and wide and welcoming.
She looked at it.
She went to the moon where a small ape-man tried to explain what was happening, but she didn't completely understand what he was telling her. She knew it was something important, and that she had something important to do, but she could not quite work out what. She set the memory aside. She would think about it later.
The moon disappeared.
In the distance there was a castle. Or, at least, something that looked like a castle. It rose above a blue line of hills in the far distance, castle-shaped but impossibly big; a blue outline painted on the pale air, flat— and even upside-down-looking, not because it was not the correct shape for a castle — it was exactly the right shape — but because the higher up you looked the clearer the castle appeared.
Its horizon-spanning, many-towered outer wall was barely visible through the heat-haze above the hills, while the bulk of its sky-filling middle section was more defined, although obscured by cloud in places; its upper storeys and highest towers shone with a pale whiteness that brightened with altitude, and the tallest tower of all, just off-centre, positively glowed towards its summit, its sharpness giving it the perverse appearance of proximity
