The Wooing Of Lakla

: The Moon Pool

I had slept soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in the great

chamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe and myself after that

culminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking hours--the facing of

the Three.



Now, lying gazing upward at the high-vaulted ceiling, I heard Larry's

voice:



"They look like birds." Evidently he was thinking of the Three; a

silence--then: "Yes, t ey look like birds--and they look, and it's

meaning no disrespect to them I am at all, they look like

lizards"--and another silence--"they look like some sort of gods, and,

by the good sword-arm of Brian Boru, they look human, too! And it's

none of them they are either, so what--what the--what the sainted St.

Bridget are they?" Another short silence, and then in a tone of awed

and absolute conviction: "That's it, sure! That's what they are--it

all hangs in--they couldn't be anything else--"



He gave a whoop; a pillow shot over and caught me across the head.



"Wake up!" shouted Larry. "Wake up, ye seething caldron of fossilized

superstitions! Wake up, ye bogy-haunted man of scientific unwisdom!"



Under pillow and insults I bounced to my feet, filled for a moment

with quite real wrath; he lay back, roaring with laughter, and my

anger was swept away.



"Doc," he said, very seriously, after this, "I know who the Three

are!"



"Yes?" I queried, with studied sarcasm.



"Yes?" he mimicked. "Yes! Ye--ye" He paused under the menace of my

look, grinned. "Yes, I know," he continued. "They're of the Tuatha De,

the old ones, the great people of Ireland, that's who they are!"



I knew, of course, of the Tuatha De Danann, the tribes of the god

Danu, the half-legendary, half-historical clan who found their home in

Erin some four thousand years before the Christian era, and who have

left so deep an impress upon the Celtic mind and its myths.



"Yes," said Larry again, "the Tuatha De--the Ancient Ones who had

spells that could compel Mananan, who is the spirit of all the seas,

an' Keithor, who is the god of all green living things, an' even

Hesus, the unseen god, whose pulse is the pulse of all the firmament;

yes, an' Orchil too, who sits within the earth an' weaves with the

shuttle of mystery and her three looms of birth an' life an'

death--even Orchil would weave as they commanded!"



He was silent--then:



"They are of them--the mighty ones--why else would I have bent my knee

to them as I would have to the spirit of my dead mother? Why else

would Lakla, whose gold-brown hair is the hair of Eilidh the Fair,

whose mouth is the sweet mouth of Deirdre, an' whose soul walked with

mine ages agone among the fragrant green myrtle of Erin, serve them?"

he whispered, eyes full of dream.



"Have you any idea how they got here?" I asked, not unreasonably.



"I haven't thought about that," he replied somewhat testily. "But at

once, me excellent man o' wisdom, a number occur to me. One of them is

that this little party of three might have stopped here on their way

to Ireland, an' for good reasons of their own decided to stay a while;

an' another is that they might have come here afterward, havin' got

wind of what those rats out there were contemplatin', and have stayed

on the job till the time was ripe to save Ireland from 'em; the rest

of the world, too, of course," he added magnanimously, "but Ireland in

particular. And do any of those reasons appeal to ye?"



I shook my head.



"Well, what do you think?" he asked wearily.



"I think," I said cautiously, "that we face an evolution of highly

intelligent beings from ancestral sources radically removed from those

through which mankind ascended. These half-human, highly developed

batrachians they call the Akka prove that evolution in these

caverned spaces has certainly pursued one different path than on

earth. The Englishman, Wells, wrote an imaginative and very

entertaining book concerning an invasion of earth by Martians, and he

made his Martians enormously specialized cuttlefish. There was nothing

inherently improbable in Wells' choice. Man is the ruling animal of

earth today solely by reason of a series of accidents; under another

series spiders or ants, or even elephants, could have become the

dominant race.



"I think," I said, even more cautiously, "that the race to which the

Three belong never appeared on earth's surface; that their development

took place here, unhindered through aeons. And if this be true, the

structure of their brains, and therefore all their reactions, must be

different from ours. Hence their knowledge and command of energies

unfamiliar to us--and hence also the question whether they may not

have an entirely different sense of values, of justice--and that is

rather terrifying," I concluded.



Larry shook his head.



"That last sort of knocks your argument, Doc," he said. "They had

sense of justice enough to help me out--and certainly they know

love--for I saw the way they looked at Lakla; and sorrow--for there

was no mistaking that in their faces.



"No," he went on. "I hold to my own idea. They're of the Old People.

The little leprechaun knew his way here, an' I'll bet it was they who

sent the word. An' if the O'Keefe banshee comes here--which save the

mark!--I'll bet she'll drop in on the Silent Ones for a social visit

before she an' her clan get busy. Well, it'll make her feel more at

home, the good old body. No, Doc, no," he concluded, "I'm right; it

all fits in too well to be wrong."



I made a last despairing attempt.



"Is there anything anywhere in Ireland that would indicate that the

Tuatha De ever looked like the Three?" I asked--and again I had

spoken most unfortunately.



"Is there?" he shouted. "Is there? By the kilt of Cormack

MacCormack, I'm glad ye reminded me. It was worryin' me a little

meself. There was Daghda, who could put on the head of a great boar

an' the body of a giant fish and cleave the waves an' tear to pieces

the birlins of any who came against Erin; an' there was Rinn--"



How many more of the metamorphoses of the Old People I might have

heard, I do not know, for the curtains parted and in walked Rador.



"You have rested well," he smiled, "I can see. The handmaiden bade me

call you. You are to eat with her in her garden."



Down long corridors we trod and out upon a gardened terrace as

beautiful as any of those of Yolara's city; bowered, blossoming,

fragrant, set high upon the cliffs beside the domed castle. A table,

as of milky jade, was spread at one corner, but the Golden Girl was

not there. A little path ran on and up, hemmed in by the mass of

verdure. I looked at it longingly; Rador saw the glance, interpreted

it, and led me up the stepped sharp slope into a rock embrasure.



Here I was above the foliage, and everywhere the view was clear.

Below me stretched the incredible bridge, with the frog people

hurrying back and forth upon it. A pinnacle at my side hid the abyss.

My eyes followed the cavern ledge. Above it the rock rose bare, but at

the ends of the semicircular strand a luxuriant vegetation began,

stretching from the crimson shores back into far distances. Of browns

and reds and yellows, like an autumn forest, was the foliage, with

here and there patches of dark-green, as of conifers. Five miles or

more, on each side, the forests swept, and then were lost to sight in

the haze.



I turned and faced an immensity of crimson waters, unbroken, a true

sea, if ever there was one. A breeze blew--the first real wind I had

encountered in the hidden places; under it the surface, that had been

as molten lacquer, rippled and dimpled. Little waves broke with a

spray of rose-pearls and rubies. The giant Medusae drifted--stately,

luminous kaleidoscopic elfin moons.



Far down, peeping around a jutting tower of the cliff, I saw dipping

with the motion of the waves a floating garden. The flowers, too, were

luminous--indeed sparkling--gleaming brilliants of scarlet and

vermilions lighter than the flood on which they lay, mauves and odd

shades of reddish-blue. They gleamed and shone like a little lake of

jewels.



Rador broke in upon my musings.



"Lakla comes! Let us go down."



It was a shy Lakla who came slowly around the end of the path and,

blushing furiously, held her hands out to Larry. And the Irishman took

them, placed them over his heart, kissed them with a tenderness that

had been lacking in the half-mocking, half-fierce caresses he had

given the priestess. She blushed deeper, holding out the tapering

fingers--then pressed them to her own heart.



"I like the touch of your lips, Larry," she whispered. "They warm me

here"--she pressed her heart again--"and they send little sparkles of

light through me." Her brows tilted perplexedly, accenting the nuance

of diablerie, delicate and fascinating, that they cast upon the flower

face.



"Do you?" whispered the O'Keefe fervently. "Do you, Lakla?" He bent

toward her. She caught the amused glance of Rador; drew herself aside

half-haughtily.



"Rador," she said, "is it not time that you and the strong one, Olaf,

were setting forth?"



"Truly it is, handmaiden," he answered respectfully enough--yet with a

current of laughter under his words. "But as you know the strong one,

Olaf, wished to see his friends here before we were gone--and he comes

even now," he added, glancing down the pathway, along which came

striding the Norseman.



As he faced us I saw that a transformation had been wrought in him.

Gone was the pitiful seeking, and gone too the just as pitiful hope.

The set face softened as he looked at the Golden Girl and bowed low to

her. He thrust a hand to O'Keefe and to me.



"There is to be battle," he said. "I go with Rador to call the armies

of these frog people. As for me--Lakla has spoken. There is no hope

for--for mine Helma in life, but there is hope that we destroy the

Shining Devil and give mine Helma peace. And with that I am well

content, ja! Well content!" He gripped our hands again. "We will

fight!" he muttered. "Ja! And I will have vengeance!" The sternness

returned; and with a salute Rador and he were gone.



Two great tears rolled from the golden eyes of Lakla.



"Not even the Silent Ones can heal those the Shining One has taken,"

she said. "He asked me--and it was better that I tell him. It is part

of the Three's--punishment--but of that you will soon learn," she went

on hurriedly. "Ask me no questions now of the Silent Ones. I thought

it better for Olaf to go with Rador, to busy himself, to give his mind

other than sorrow upon which to feed."



Up the path came five of the frog-women, bearing platters and ewers.

Their bracelets and anklets of jewels were tinkling; their middles

covered with short kirtles of woven cloth studded with the sparkling

ornaments.



And here let me say that if I have given the impression that the

Akka are simply magnified frogs, I regret it. Frog-like they are,

and hence my phrase for them--but as unlike the frog, as we know it,

as man is unlike the chimpanzee. Springing, I hazard, from the



stegocephalia, the ancestor of the frogs, these batrachians followed a

different line of evolution and acquired the upright position just as

man did his from the four-footed folk.



The great staring eyes, the shape of the muzzle were frog-like, but

the highly developed brain had set upon the head and shape of it vital

differences. The forehead, for instance, was not low, flat, and

retreating--its frontal arch was well defined. The head was, in a

sense, shapely, and with the females the great horny carapace that

stood over it like a fantastic helmet was much modified, as were the

spurs that were so formidable in the male; colouration was different

also. The torso was upright; the legs a little bent, giving them their

crouching gait--but I wander from my subject.[1]



They set their burdens down. Larry looked at them with interest.



"You surely have those things well trained, Lakla," he said.



"Things!" The handmaiden arose, eyes flashing with indignation. "You

call my Akka things!"



"Well," said Larry, a bit taken aback, "what do you call them?"



"My Akka are a people," she retorted. "As much a people as your race

or mine. They are good and loyal, and they have speech and arts, and

they slay not, save for food or to protect themselves. And I think

them beautiful, Larry, beautiful!" She stamped her foot. "And you call

them--things!"



Beautiful! These? Yet, after all, they were, in their grotesque

fashion. And to Lakla, surrounded by them, from babyhood, they were

not strange, at all. Why shouldn't she think them beautiful? The same

thought must have struck O'Keefe, for he flushed guiltily.



"I think them beautiful, too, Lakla," he said remorsefully. "It's my

not knowing your tongue too well that traps me. Truly, I think them

beautiful--I'd tell them so, if I knew their talk."



Lakla dimpled, laughed--spoke to the attendants in that strange speech

that was unquestionably a language; they bridled, looked at O'Keefe

with fantastic coquetry, cracked and boomed softly among themselves.



"They say they like you better than the men of Muria," laughed Lakla.



"Did I ever think I'd be swapping compliments with lady frogs!" he

murmured to me. "Buck up, Larry--keep your eyes on the captive Irish

princess!" he muttered to himself.



"Rador goes to meet one of the ladala who is slipping through with

news," said the Golden Girl as we addressed ourselves to the food.

"Then, with Nak, he and Olaf go to muster the Akka--for there will

be battle, and we must prepare. Nak," she added, "is he who went

before me when you were dancing with Yolara, Larry." She stole a

swift, mischievous glance at him. "He is headman of all the Akka."



"Just what forces can we muster against them when they come, darlin'?"

said Larry.



"Darlin'?"--the Golden Girl had caught the caress of the word--"what's

that?"



"It's a little word that means Lakla," he answered. "It does--that

is, when I say it; when you say it, then it means Larry."



"I like that word," mused Lakla.



"You can even say Larry darlin'!" suggested O'Keefe.



"Larry darlin'!" said Lakla. "When they come we shall have first of

all my Akka--"



"Can they fight, mavourneen?" interrupted Larry.



"Can they fight! My Akka!" Again her eyes flashed. "They will

fight to the last of them--with the spears that give the swift

rotting, covered, as they are, with the jelly of those Saddu

there--" She pointed through a rift in the foliage across which, on

the surface of the sea, was floating one of the moon globes--and now I

know why Rador had warned Larry against a plunge there. "With spears

and clubs and with teeth and nails and spurs--they are a strong and

brave people, Larry--darlin', and though they hurl the Keth at them,

it is slow to work upon them, and they slay even while they are

passing into the nothingness!"



"And have we none of the Keth?" he asked.



"No"--she shook her head--"none of their weapons have we here,

although it was--it was the Ancient Ones who shaped them."



"But the Three are of the Ancient Ones?" I cried. "Surely they can

tell--"



"No," she said slowly. "No--there is something you must know--and

soon; and then the Silent Ones say you will understand. You,

especially, Goodwin, who worship wisdom."



"Then," said Larry, "we have the Akka; and we have the four men of

us, and among us three guns and about a hundred cartridges--an'--an'

the power of the Three--but what about the Shining One, Fireworks--"



"I do not know." Again the indecision that had been in her eyes when

Yolara had launched her defiance crept back. "The Shining One is

strong--and he has his--slaves!"



"Well, we'd better get busy good and quick!" the O'Keefe's voice rang.

But Lakla, for some reason of her own, would pursue the matter no

further. The trouble fled from her eyes--they danced.



"Larry darlin'?" she murmured. "I like the touch of your lips--"



"You do?" he whispered, all thought flying of anything but the

beautiful, provocative face so close to his. "Then, acushla, you're

goin' to get acquainted with 'em! Turn your head, Doc!" he said.



And I turned it. There was quite a long silence, broken by an

interested, soft outburst of gentle boomings from the serving

frog-maids. I stole a glance behind me. Lakla's head lay on the

Irishman's shoulder, the golden eyes misty sunpools of love and

adoration; and the O'Keefe, a new look of power and strength upon his

clear-cut features, was gazing down into them with that look which

rises only from the heart touched for the first time with that true,

all-powerful love, which is the pulse of the universe itself, the real

music of the spheres of which Plato dreamed, the love that is stronger

than death itself, immortal as the high gods and the true soul of all

that mystery we call life.



Then Lakla raised her hands, pressed down Larry's head, kissed him

between the eyes, drew herself with a trembling little laugh from his

embrace.



"The future Mrs. Larry O'Keefe, Goodwin," said Larry to me a little

unsteadily.



I took their hands--and Lakla kissed me!



She turned to the booming--smiling--frog-maids; gave them some

command, for they filed away down the path. Suddenly I felt, well, a

little superfluous.



"If you don't mind," I said, "I think I'll go up the path there again

and look about."



But they were so engrossed with each other that they did not even hear

me--so I walked away, up to the embrasure where Rador had taken me.

The movement of the batrachians over the bridge had ceased. Dimly at

the far end I could see the cluster of the garrison. My thoughts flew

back to Lakla and to Larry.



What was to be the end?



If we won, if we were able to pass from this place, could she live in

our world? A product of these caverns with their atmosphere and light

that seemed in some subtle way to be both food and drink--how would

she react to the unfamiliar foods and air and light of outer earth?

Further, here so far as I was able to discover, there were no

malignant bacilli--what immunity could Lakla have then to those

microscopic evils without, which only long ages of sickness and death

have bought for us a modicum of protection? I began to be oppressed.

Surely they had been long enough by themselves. I went down the path.



I heard Larry.



"It's a green land, mavourneen. And the sea rocks and dimples

around it--blue as the heavens, green as the isle itself, and foam

horses toss their white manes, and the great clean winds blow over it,

and the sun shines down on it like your eyes, acushla--"



"And are you a king of Ireland, Larry darlin'?" Thus Lakla--



But enough!



At last we turned to go--and around the corner of the path I caught

another glimpse of what I have called the lake of jewels. I pointed to

it.



"Those are lovely flowers, Lakla," I said. "I have never seen

anything like them in the place from whence we come."



She followed my pointing finger--laughed.



"Come," she said, "let me show you them."



She ran down an intersecting way, we following; came out of it upon a

little ledge close to the brink, three feet or more I suppose about

it. The Golden Girl's voice rang out in a high-pitched, tremulous,

throbbing call.



The lake of jewels stirred as though a breeze had passed over it;

stirred, shook, and then began to move swiftly, a shimmering torrent

of shining flowers down upon us! She called again, the movement became

more rapid; the gem blooms streamed closer--closer, wavering,

shifting, winding--at our very feet. Above them hovered a little

radiant mist. The Golden Girl leaned over; called softly, and up from

the sparkling mass shot a green vine whose heads were five flowers of

flaming ruby--shot up, flew into her hand and coiled about the white

arm, its quintette of lambent blossoms--regarding us!



It was the thing Lakla had called the Yekta; that with which she had

threatened the priestess; the thing that carried the dreadful

death--and the Golden Girl was handling it like a rose!



Larry swore--I looked at the thing more closely. It was a hydroid, a

development of that strange animal-vegetable that, sometimes almost

microscopic, waves in the sea depths like a cluster of flowers

paralyzing its prey with the mysterious force that dwells in its

blossom heads![2]



"Put it down, Lakla," the distress in O'Keefe's voice was deep. Lakla

laughed mischievously, caught the real fear for her in his eyes;

opened her hand, gave another faint call--and back it flew to its

fellows.



"Why, it wouldn't hurt me, Larry!" she expostulated. "They know me!"



"Put it down!" he repeated hoarsely.



She sighed, gave another sweet, prolonged call. The lake of

gems--rubies and amethysts, mauves and scarlet-tinged blues--wavered

and shook even as it had before--and swept swiftly back to that place

whence she had drawn them!



Then, with Larry and Lakla walking ahead, white arm about his brown

neck; the O'Keefe still expostulating, the handmaiden laughing

merrily, we passed through her bower to the domed castle.



Glancing through a cleft I caught sight again of the far end of the

bridge; noted among the clustered figures of its garrison of the

frog-men a movement, a flashing of green fire like marshlights on

spear tips; wondered idly what it was, and then, other thoughts

crowding in, followed along, head bent, behind the pair who had found

in what was Olaf's hell, their true paradise.





[1] The Akka are viviparous. The female produces progeny at

five-year intervals, never more than two at a time. They are

monogamous, like certain of our own Ranidae. Pending my monograph

upon what little I had time to learn of their interesting habits and

customs, the curious will find instruction and entertainment in

Brandes and Schvenichen's Brutpfleige der Schwanzlosen Bat rachier,

p. 395; and Lilian V. Sampson's Unusual Modes of Breeding among

Anura, Amer. Nat. xxxiv., 1900.--W. T. G.



[2] The Yekta of the Crimson Sea, are as extraordinary developments

of hydroid forms as the giant Medusae, of which, of course, they are

not too remote cousins. The closest resemblances to them in outer

water forms are among the Gymnoblastic Hydroids, notably Clavetella

prolifera, a most interesting ambulatory form of six tentacles.

Almost every bather in Southern waters, Northern too, knows the pain

that contact with certain "jelly fish" produces. The Yekta's

development was prodigious and, to us, monstrous. It secretes in its

five heads an almost incredibly swiftly acting poison which I suspect,

for I had no chance to verify the theory, destroys the entire nervous

system to the accompaniment of truly infernal agony; carrying at the

same time the illusion that the torment stretches through infinities

of time. Both ether and nitrous oxide gas produce in the majority this

sensation of time extension, without of course the pain symptom. What

Lakla called the Yekta kiss is I imagine about as close to the

orthodox idea of Hell as can be conceived. The secret of her control

over them I had no opportunity of learning in the rush of events that

followed. Knowledge of the appalling effects of their touch came, she

told me, from those few "who had been kissed so lightly" that they

recovered. Certainly nothing, not even the Shining One, was dreaded by

the Murians as these were--W. T. G.