“I seem to have no will, unfortunately.”
Oceaxe was seized with a paroxysm of laughter, but it was still rich and beautiful. “It’s obvious you aren’t a very heroic protector, Maskull. It seems I must play the man, and you the woman. I expected better things of your big body. Why, my husband would send those creatures dancing all around the sky, by way of a joke, before disposing of them. Now watch me. Two of the three I’ll kill; the third we will ride home on. Which one shall we keep?”
The shrowks continued their slow, wobbling flight toward them. Their bodies were of huge size. They produced in Maskull the same sensation of loathing as insects did. He instinctively understood that as they hunted with their wills, there was no necessity for them to possess a swift motion.
“Choose which you please,” he said shortly. “They are equally objectionable to me.”
“Then I’ll choose the leader, as it is presumably the most energetic animal. Watch now.”
She stood upright, and her sorb suddenly blazed with fire. Maskull felt something snap inside his brain. His limbs were free once more. The two monsters in the rear staggered and darted head foremost toward the earth, one after the other. He watched them crash on the ground, and then lie motionless. The leader still came toward them, but he fancied that its flight was altered in character; it was no longer menacing, but tame and unwilling.
Oceaxe guided it with her will to the mainland shore opposite their island rock. Its vast bulk lay there extended, awaiting her pleasure. They immediately crossed the water.
Maskull viewed the shrowk at close quarters. It was about thirty feet long. Its bright-coloured skin was shining, slippery, and leathery; a mane of black hair covered its long neck. Its face was awesome and unnatural, with its carnivorous eyes, frightful stiletto, and blood-sucking cavity. There were true fins on its back and tail.
“Have you a good seat?” asked Oceaxe, patting the creature’s flank. “As I have to steer, let me jump on first.”
She pulled up her gown, then climbed up and sat astride the animal’s back, just behind the mane, which she clutched. Between her and the fin there was just room for Maskull. He grasped the two flanks with his outer hands; his third, new arm pressed against Oceaxe’s back, and for additional security he was compelled to encircle her waist with it.
Directly he did so, he realised that he had been tricked, and that this ride had been planned for one purpose only—to inflame his desires.
The third arm possessed a function of its own, of which hitherto he had been ignorant. It was a developed magn. But the stream of love which was communicated to it was no longer pure and noble—it was boiling, passionate, and torturing. He gritted his teeth, and kept quiet, but Oceaxe had not plotted the adventure to remain unconscious of his feelings. She looked around, with a golden, triumphant smile. “The ride will last some time, so hold on well!” Her voice was soft like a flute, but rather malicious.
Maskull grinned, and said nothing. He dared not remove his arm.
The shrowk straddled on to its legs. It jerked itself forward, and rose slowly and uncouthly in the air. They began to paddle upward toward the painted cliffs. The motion was swaying, rocking, and sickening; the contact of the brute’s slimy skin was disgusting. All this, however, was merely background to Maskull, as he sat there with closed eyes, holding on to Oceaxe. In the front and centre of his consciousness was the knowledge that he was gripping a fair woman, and that her flesh was responding to his touch like a lovely harp.
They climbed up and up. He opened his eyes, and ventured to look around him. By this time they were already level with the top of the outer rampart of precipices. There now came in sight a wild archipelago of islands, with jagged outlines, emerging from a sea of air. The islands were mountain summits; or, more accurately speaking, the country was a high tableland, fissured everywhere by narrow and apparently bottomless cracks. These cracks were in some cases like canals, in others like lakes, in others merely holes in the ground, closed in all round. The perpendicular sides of the islands—that is, the upper, visible parts of the innumerable cliff faces—were of bare rock, gaudily coloured; but the level surfaces were a tangle of wild plant life. The taller trees alone were distinguishable from the shrowk’s back. They were of different shapes, and did not look ancient; they were slender and swaying but did not appear very graceful; they looked tough, wiry, and savage.
As Maskull continued to explore the landscape, he forgot Oceaxe and his passion. Other strange feelings came to the front. The morning was gay and bright. The sun scorched down, quickly-changing clouds sailed across the sky, the earth was vivid, wild, and lonely. Yet he experienced no aesthetic sensations—he felt nothing but an intense longing for action and possession. When he looked at anything, he immediately wanted to deal with it. The atmosphere of the land seemed not free, but sticky; attraction and repulsion were its constituents. Apart from this wish to play a personal part in what was going on around and beneath him, the scenery had no significance for him.
So preoccupied was he, that his arm partly released its clasp. Oceaxe turned around to gaze at him. Whether or not she was satisfied with what she saw, she uttered a low laugh, like a peculiar chord.
“Cold again so quickly, Maskull?”
“What do you want?” he asked absently, still looking over the side. “It’s extraordinary how drawn I feel to all this.”
“You wish to take a hand?”
“I wish to get down.”
“Oh, we have a good way to go yet.... So you really feel different?”
“Different from what? What are you talking about?” said Maskull, still lost in abstraction.
Oceaxe laughed again. “It would be strange if we couldn’t make a man of you, for the material is excellent.”
After that, she turned her back once more.
The air islands differed from water islands in another way. They were not on a plane surface, but sloped upward, like a succession of broken terraces, as the journey progressed. The shrowk had hitherto been flying well above the ground; but now, when a new line of towering cliffs confronted them, Oceaxe did not urge the beast upward, but caused it to enter a narrow canyon, which intersected the mountains like a channel. They were instantly plunged into deep shade. The canal was not above thirty feet wide; the walls stretched upward on both sides for many hundred feet. It was as cool as an ice chamber. When Maskull attempted to plumb the chasm with his eyes, he saw nothing but black obscurity.
“What is at the bottom?” he asked.
“Death for you, if you go to look for it.”
“We know that. I mean, is there any kind of life down there?”
“Not that I have ever heard of,” said Oceaxe, “but of course all things are possible.”
“I think very likely there is life,” he returned thoughtfully.
Her ironical laugh sounded out of the gloom. “Shall we go down and see?”
“You find that amusing?”
“No, not that. What I do find amusing is the big stranger with the beard, who is so keenly interested in everything except himself.”
Maskull then laughed too. “I happen to be the only thing in Tormance which is not a novelty for me.”
“Yes, but I am a novelty for you.”
The channel went zigzagging its way through the belly of the mountain, and all the time they were gradually rising.
“At least I have heard nothing like your voice before,” said Maskull, who, since he had no longer anything to look at, was at last ready for conversation.
“What’s the matter with my voice?”
“It’s all that I can distinguish of you now; that’s why I mentioned it.”
“Isn’t