Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 6 (1925-06).djvu/18

Rh a sharp blade!' As you know, the doom is irrevocable—and remember that it refers to none but the king! It is the king who must prepare his bed of death at night under the moon!"

Mpatanasi’s eyes flashed, and he struck Mu-senyui across the face.

"If you are wise, Mu-senyui, you will say no more about it. You have made me pronounce a doom which I shall regret all my life."

Mu-senyui shook like a jellyfish on stilts. His eyes narrowed and a monstrous lump came into his throat.

"One little word," he thought, "one little word! If—if! But no, he wouldn't dare!"

The daughter of Mpatanasi took her father by the hand and led him back into the hut. He was sobbing and gibbering and muttering threats against Mu-senyui, and Mu-senyui slunk away between the trees, with a blasphemous fear in his soul.

awoke from a dream of parrakeets and moon-lipped orchids to a sense of physical peril. He got awkwardly to his feet and looked about him. The moon was gibbous, and it stood like a disheveled lemur in the center of the clearing, and glazed with its febrile white light the sardonic smile on the face of Mpatanasi’s daughter. A strange music filled the air, and a dark, amorphous form stalked splendidly across the doorway, and made no sound under the stars.

Mpatanasi moved noiselessly back and forth before the opening which served as a door, and then he tripped hysterically across the hut on bare feet and sat down beside his daughter. He looked at her for a moment with startled eyes. Her hair ran in rusty torrents down to her knees, and Mpatanasi suddenly realized that he had not guarded her sufficiently and that Mu-senyui could bear watching. He pinched his daughter's arm.

She sat up and looked at him. Then she gave a little scream, and started to get to her feet. But Mpatanasi told her to be quiet, and then he confessed to her that he was afraid—dreadfully afraid. "It is something which doesn't fear the moon," he said.

The daughter of Mpatanasi looked at her father for a moment without comprehending. Then she screamed again. But she didn't really believe in the forest-devil, in her heart of hearts.

But the night seemed to her so awesomely quiet and her father was unquestionably frightened! He got up again, and walked to the opening, and looked out into the night, and studied the gibbous moon. The moon was not a pleasant thing to reflect upon as it stood lonely and corpselike above the twisted, gnarled boles of incredibly ancient trees, but Mpatanasi had lost all fear of the moon. It was the shadow before the doorway which frightened Mpatanasi.

Suddenly Mpatanasi perceived with his large, frightened eyes the form which had cast the shadow across the doorway by the light of the gibbous moon. It crouched on its hands and knees, and its face was turned hideously toward Mpatanasi.

"Oh, it isn't a devil at all!" Mpatanasi's daughter was looking over her father's shoulder and tittering in the moonlight. "It isn't even a monster! It is only stupid little Bamuti. How lovely he looks in the moonlight! Poor little Bamuti with his shaven head and yellow eyes! Bamuti is jaundiced, and he shaves his head so that the women will speak to him. Naughty, naughty Bamuti! He is a very precocious child. He is only twelve, but he has whispered impertinences into the ears of the oldest crone in the queen's retinue. Nothing that goes on in the court escapes Bamuti. Come, child, step inside, and