I looked
at once toward the mountains of faery; the afterglow of the sunset
flamed on them, their avalanches flashed on their violet slopes coming
down tremendous from emerald peaks of ice; and there was the old gap
in the blue-grey hills above the precipice of amethyst whence one sees
the Lands of Dream.
All was still in the room where the poets slept when I came quietly
down. The old witch sat by a table with a lamp, knitting a splendid
cloak of gold and green for a king that had been dead a thousand
years.
"Is it any use," I said, "to the king that is dead that you sit and
knit him a cloak of gold and green?"
"Who knows?" she said.
"What a silly question to ask," said her old black cat who lay curled
by the fluttering fire.
Already the stars were shining on that romantic land when I closed the
witch's door; already the glow-worms were mounting guard for the night
around those magical cottages. I turned and trudged for the gap in
the blue-grey mountains.
Already when I arrived some colour began to show in the amethyst
precipice below the gap although it was not yet morning. I heard a
rattling and sometimes caught a flash from those golden dragons far
away below me that are the triumph of the goldsmiths of Sirdoo and
were given life by the ritual incantations of the conjurer Amargrarn.
On the edge of the opposite cliff, too near I thought for safety, I
saw the ivory palace of Singanee that mighty elephant-hunter; small
lights appeared in windows, the slaves were awake, and beginning with
heavy eyelids the work of the day.
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