Chapter XV: Gold and Glitter

The meteorite was stopped in the clouds of the sky. The angel-man, bronze, strong and glorious once more, flew down with Rondah and Regan, and they stood upon the raised steps of the great Cathedral, where all the assembled multitudes could see them.

For months previous to the departure Father Renaudin had been calculating and preparing for this return, for the ceremonial of the marriage and coronation of Rondah.

Sheets of yellow gold, spun fine and hanging heavy, glistened on the columns and were spread upon the floors, falling in rich masses to the foot of the long flight of steps.

As Rondah stood looking, a flock of bird women flew from one of the spires above and draped her in a veil and trailing robe of gold.

With much state, Father Renaudin, accompanied by a troop of elf men, alike in copying the red of his attire, and decked with glass and gold until they could scarcely trudge for their burden, came to meet her. Father Renaudin, no older than when he left Earth, with all the mark of earth care gone, years gone from his face, came to speak blessing, in which he even faltered. He feared for an instant that Regan had again brought to the star the wrong woman.

For that Rondah whom he had known stood no more before him. This gold-draped woman had beauty more fair than Earth gave, had wondrous eyes, glowing like stars. In her perfect face there was the chiseled beauty of an angel’s dream, not an earthly dream.

But still, like Regan, he knew it was Rondah, the same Rondah.

The lengthy marriage rite was first—stately, religious, slow. Even with its words Rondah kept thinking: “Am I here, or do I dream to waken to the old, lonely misery?”

With the benediction there swooped down her subjects by thousands to kiss her robe or her hand, or to caress her gold-red hair with one soft touch.

How kindly clear rang out their song of words, “Our queen! the Earth-woman, Rondah!”

“I could never dream all this,” the queen was thinking to herself, “I could never dream all this! I don’t know enough!”

There was a feast—flowers, fruit, shade and multitudes. Then there was the short hour’s rest between noon and sunset. At sunset were to begin the magnificent entertainments which the bird people had arranged in accordance with Father Renaudin’s design.

To a most lovely day was added the magnificence of a most perfect star sunset, of itself a wonder to the woman of Earth, the sea sweeping a phosphorescent sheet of reflection and the land bathed in brilliance which was blinding. The Earth moon rose and the bird people flew in hosts into the sky; there they flashed lamps and swung streamers of gorgeous colors, forming into groups of circles stars, lines and crescents, to make moving, brilliant gems in the sky.

Last of all they swept in one mass, chaos of light and color, for a single moment. Then clear, motionless save for the slight shimmer of the many wings, in the sky was one mighty crown of flame.

They flew down on the shores of an artificial lake of large dimensions, where they lighted lamps of various colors. Upon an island in this lake they stood in statuesque groups, until from water to the white temple built on the summit it was a wall of beauty.

One ethereal bird woman just touched the spire of the temple with her foot; her white veiling robes made her like a goddess. She held in each hand a lamp, and she shook from the same hands two great, misty flags of softest golden web.

In a second’s time the same flags, like fiery sheen, flew from every hand upon the rock, a pyramid of golden glory and gorgeous light.

Then the lamps were replaced by crescents and stars of colored light, until there was nothing to be seen of the bird people; like a scintillating jewel the rock glowed.

A cloud of whiteness, they swept into the distant forest as a flame, bursting from the lower part of the isle, wrapped the whole in fire from water to temple top, a great torch from which the glow fell upon the white stone and glass-paneled palace which Regan had built for Rondah’s home—Rondah’s home like the remembered homes of Earth.

In all this it was only the fairy-like women who had sailed and shone. Now there came hundreds of men, dark-robed, copying Regan’s taste in dress, aware that there was a splendor of color to lighten to glory any darkness in the splotches of radiance on their cloaking wings.

They bore a slight wicker car, cushioned with crimson and covered with pendants of glass. They carried Regan and Rondah, seated in this car, above the summit of the loftiest peak.

Over a vast surface Rondah looked upon moving black wings, hiding all else. She was awed with the exhibition of their immense strength, as she saw it thus exhibited in one huge, moving mass.

“I can see nothing but a carpet of wings,” she whispered to Regan; “but, if they would rise, I could see the whole star.”

In a few moments they did so. They swept in a canopy above the car, and like a little ball the star slept beneath them. In the midnight whiteness of the Earth moon and its satellite there lay its islanded seas, its banding continent, the fiery south, the arctic north, the gray moonlit forests, the white moonlit mountains, the mist-pale vales, silver streams, diamond lakes.

“Earth was not so fair,” said Rondah. “Then Earth was ponderous; no man could own all Earth; it was beyond one man in its expanse of endless miles. This, our world, Regan, is within human comprehension, within the grasp of one man’s mind, under the sway of one man’s sceptre.”

“You appreciate the kingdom,” said Regan.

He had feared a little that Rondah, with her tastes moulded by custom of Earth’s poverty, would not understand what an achievement was the successful reaching and the continued ruling of the star.

She knew it all.

Rondah’s pleased laugh, like the joyous laugh of a careless child, rang out in her delight, as she contemplated it, and the murmur of the bird men’s whisper of admiration sounded like the sudden wakening of a breeze in the trees, for the bird women did not laugh.

And Regan did not think that Isabella had ever laughed when the people heard her.

“What is that light like a star, that one bright spot in the sea?”

“That is the Sun Island. The angel-man lives there.”

“Have you not been there?”

“No. Father Renaudin spent years of the last winter there, but he is silent about them.”

“We will go there.”

“There is a wall in the air.”

“Not for us. All the star is ours!”

“Gregg Dempster and I shared the star.”

“We can sail around the island.”

“Not on these seas. Everything sinks.”

“The bird people will carry us there.”

“They dare not go; like Father Renaudin they are forbidden. There is a mystery on the island.”

“I can go there, Regan.”

“Of all the stars why do you single out that island, Rondah? Is there no other place so interesting?” asked Regan.

They were descending. The island sank from view. Rondah little thought where and how she should see it next, as she slowly answered:

“No, it is not so much more interesting, but something seems to tell me that I must go there!”

“So has something whispered to me all the years,” answered Regan, “and I have never found means to go!”