Page:Tudor Jenks--Imaginotions.djvu/27

Rh and thin like scraped horn. This was dropped into an earthen dish which held some most ill-smelling compound. And he rocked the dish, to and fro, smiling a ghastly smile,—such as is the grin of the long shark in the water of the deep. But behold, the dark and the light took shape and became an image! And if all the prophets and if all the counselors of the tribe were to prophesy till the hair of all was gray upon their shoulders, they could not have divined what was the image which came forth to mock me!

It was my soul. For as I leaped in the air to catch my hood, the wizard had caught my soul from me and fixed it there within the awful black-box-which-has-an-eye! But I was changed so that my own dear mother would not have known me. My face, paler than that of the sunburned warriors, was black like those of the men of the far south whose hair twists. My dark tunic was like the snow that flies in the sky when men walk upon rivers and the flowers die. All was like nothing I ever saw.

Then did the wizard wash the flat piece in a spring that came from the rock near at hand, and he did wash and wash again, until even the weariness of the rocking was not so long. Then did he soak the piece in another liquor in yet another dish, while I was faint with the long darkness.

Gladly I saw the sunlight again, and heard the birds chirp as if black caves were not.

"More washing?" I asked; for it seemed that there would never be an end of the plashing of water.

"Only a little," said the wizard. He did fix the flat piece next in a four-sided frame, and cooked it in the sunshine, while I wondered if he would desire me to eat my soul, baked in the sun, for dinner!

But after he had baked the frame, he did break it open, and then came more washing. I thought that the wizard would wear out his fingers with much plashing, in the water.