Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/72

72 you like it. If you do not I will have to destroy that doll. That would be a sad thing, it is such a good one. So handsome a little doll it it is, yes!"

"Dolls and witchcraft are always someway intermingled, Tanil. Are your dolls connected with witchcraft?"

"Who told you I was a witch?"

"Call it masculine intuition. Do you deny the charge?"

"Not exactly. I have knowledge of certain arts not generally understood. Ignorant people might call them witchcraft. But surely you are too educated a man to believe in the supernatural?"

"Just what are you trying to do, Tanil?"

"I am trying to live interestingly, beautifully, powerfully! That such a life includes danger only adds spice."

"Doesn't explain anything. What use do you expect from me?"

"Your invention. I want several hundred of them for my employees."

"What do I get out of that?"

"That depends on you. If you cooperate willingly, a great deal. If you refuse co-operation, we will build them ourselves, and we will make you help by using the doll. You will understand all this as time goes on. I am myself a person like you—who must cooperate with others because they have my doll, can make me do as they wish. You have no alternative."

As if to explain her words, a peculiar feeingfeeling [sic] came over me, my mind seemed shoved aside by another thing; and without volition of my own, I kneeled before Tanil, placed her foot on my head. Then I took her foot off, got to my feet, and the strange compulsion passed. I swore.

"So that is what the dolls do! I don't understand what the dolls are or how they work, but that is what they are for?"

"That is why it was made. So that if you are not cooperative, through misunderstanding our methods and aims, we can use you that way."

"I don't like it! I'm getting out of here now!"

"You can't get out, Kent. The doll is a thing that binds us all here. There is no particular reason why you should worry about it, but it is a fact you should know. You are hired—and you can't quit! Enemies may lie to you, call me an evil witch who wants power at any cost—a terrible creature. Do you think I am a terrible creature, a horrible old witch?"

Tanil twisted her soft, sinuous body again toward me, and the soft light of the shaded lamps twinkled all over the gown where little gems of sequins were sewn onto the sheer fabric. My heart took a leap.

"No, Tanil, he would have to be a good liar to make an evil creature out of you. Still why all this concealment? It is an apparently criminal set-up in this hidden place. Why not operate openly?"

"We do things in an arbitrary way. Sometimes we take the law into our own hands. Always people of our kind must hide to avoid narrow-minded repression. Law is good, but it is sometimes so stupid in its workings that one must avoid all contact with it."

"I can understand that."

"That is good. Tonight, while you sleep, you will have good dreams that I make for you. Tomorrow you will tell me whether you work with us willingly, or be an enemy, which I do not advise."

Tanil lifted the great dragon shape, and behind its green folds revealed a corridor with several doors, a corridor which went on into darkness endlessly. To one of these doors she conducted me, and showed me a bed. I did not feel like sleeping and said so, but she laughed and answered:

"You may not feel like sleeping, but I promise you sleep and good dreams. Now listen for once to Tanil, and do not argue. She is sometimes wise."

Tanil left me with a smile.

I slipped off my clothes and hit the sheets. I no sooner sank into that bed than I fell asleep again.

I slept and I knew I slept. I knew I was dreaming, too, yet my dream was real. Myself and my dream self knew that my body lay and watched it all.

T SEEMED that I rose from bed, and floated through the wall into a strange land. And toward me came a vaporous, beautifully curved woman's figure; a figure awesome in its overstrong attraction for me. She took me by the hand.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"To the Kingdom of Micomican. To the Land of the Chimera. To the pleasures which only Atlantis, long dead, ever understood on this sad earth. To the temple of a cult which seeks to revive the ancient worship of the land of the freed imagination!"

Her answer seemed right to me, though