eir
bodies cleansing them of all dross; light that was food and drink;
light that carried their vision afar or bore to them images out of
space opening many windows through which they gazed down upon life on
thousands upon thousands of the rushing worlds; light that was the
flame of life itself and in which they bathed, ever renewing their
own. They set radiant lamps within the stones, and of black light they
wove the sheltering shadows and the shadows that slay.

"Arose from this people those Three--the Silent Ones. They led them
all in wisdom so that in the Three grew--pride. And the Three built
them this place in which we sit and set the Portal in its place and
withdrew from their kind to go alone into the mysteries and to map
alone the facets of Truth Jewel.

"Then there came the ancestors of the--_Akka_; not as they are now,
and glowing but faintly within them the spark of--self-realization.
And the _Taithu_ seeing this spark did not slay them. But they took
the ancient, long untrodden paths and looked forth once more upon
earth face. Now on the land were vast forests and a chaos of green
life. On the shores things scaled and fanged, fought and devoured each
other, and in the green life moved bodies great and small that slew
and ran from those that would slay.

"They searched for the passage through which the _Akka_ had come and
closed it. Then the Three took them and brought them here; and taught
them and blew upon the spark until it burned ever stronger and in time
they became much as they are now--my _Akka_.

"The Three took counsel after this and said--'We have strengthened
life in these until it has become articulate; shall we not _create_
life?'" Again she hesitated, her eyes rapt, dreaming. "The Three are
speaking," she murmured. "They have my tongue--"

And certainly, with an ease and rapidity as though she were but a
voice through which minds far more facile, more powerful poured their
thoughts, she spoke.

"Yea," the golden voice was vibrant. "We said that what we would
create should be of the spirit of life itself, speaking to us with the
tongues of the far-flung stars, of the winds, of the waters, and of
all upon and within these. Upon that universal matrix of matter, that
mother of all things that you name the ether, we laboured. Think not
that her wondrous fertility is limited by what ye see on earth or what
has been on earth from its beginning. Infinite, infinite are the forms
the mother bea