Page:Wet Magic - Nesbit.djvu/158

Wet Magic wisest of all. He invented the nets that caught you—or rather, making nets was one of the things that he had learned and couldn't forget."

"But who thought of using them for catching prisoners?"

"I did," said Ulfin proudly, "I'm to have a glass medal for it."

"Do you have glass down here?"

"A little comes down, you know. It is very precious. We engrave it. That is the Library—millions of tables of stone—the Hall of Public Joy is next to it—that garden is the mothers' garden where they go to rest while their children are at school—that's one of our schools. And here's the Hall of Public Archives."

The Keeper of the Records received them with grave courtesy. The daily services of Ulfin had accustomed the children to the appearance of the Under Folk, and they no longer found their strange, mournful faces terrifying, and the great hall where, on shelves cut out of the sheer rock, were stored the graven tables of Underworld Records, was very wonderful and impressive.

"What is it you want to know?" said the Keeper, rolling away some of the stones he had been showing them. "Ulfin said there was something special."

"Why the war began?" said Francis.

"Why the King and Queen are different?" said Mavis.

"The war," said the Keeper of the Records, "began exactly three million five hundred and seventy-nine thousand three hundred and eight years ago. An Under-man, getting off his Sea Horse in a hurry trod on the tail of a sleeping Merman. He did not apologize because he was under a vow not to speak for a year and a day. If the Mer-people had only waited he would have explained, but they went to war at once, and, of course, after that you couldn't expect him to apologize. And the war has gone on, off and on and on and off, ever since." 148