lowed in the dark through the Hill that
Nehemoth, the first of Pharaohs, carved into the City of Marvel.
Sterile and desolate they float far through the desert, each in the
appointed cleft, with life upon neither bank, but give birth in
Babbulkund to the sacred purple garden whereof all nations sing.
Thither all the bees come on a pilgrimage at evening by a secret way
of the air. Once, from his twilit kingdom, which he rules equally
with the sun, the moon saw and loved Babbulkund, clad with her
purple garden; and the moon wooed Babbulkund, and she sent him
weeping away, for she is more beautiful than all her sisters the
stars. Her sisters come to her at night into her maiden chamber.
Even the gods speak sometimes of Babbulkund, clad with her purple
garden. Listen, for I perceive by your eyes that ye have not seen
Babbulkund; there is a restlessness in them and an unappeased
wonder. Listen. In the garden whereof I spoke there is a lake that
hath no twin or fellow in the world; there is no companion for it
among all the lakes. The shores of it are of glass, and the bottom
of it. In it are great fish having golden and scarlet scales, and
they swim to and fro. Here it is the wont of the eighty-second
Nehemoth (who rules in the city today) to come, after the dusk has
fallen, and sit by the lake alone, and at this hour eight hundred
slaves go down by steps through caverns into vaults beneath the
lake. Four hundred of them carrying purple lights march one behind
the other, from east to west, and four hundred carrying green lights
march one behind the other, from west to east. The two lines cross
and re-cross each other in and out as the slaves go round and
round, and the fearful fish flash up and down and to and fro.'

But upon that traveller speaking night descended, solemn and cold,
and we wrapped ourselves in our blankets and lay down upon the sand
in the sight of the astral sisters of Babbulkund. And all that night
the desert said many things, softly and in a whisper, but I knew not
what he said. Only the sand knew and arose and was troubled and lay
down again, and the wind knew. Then, as the hours of the night went
by, these two discovered the foot-tracks wherewith we had disturbed
the holy desert, and they troubled over them and covered them up;
and then the wind lay down and the sand rested. Then the wind arose
again and the sand danced. This they did many times. And all the
while the desert whispered w