Chapter IV: Melvar of Astran

Just before noon I staggered into a little dell that was covered with unusually profuse growths of the crimson plants. Along a little trickling stream of water they were waist high, bearing abundantly the star-shaped flowers, and small golden-brown fruits. Suddenly there was a rustling in the thicket and the head and shoulders of a young woman rose abruptly out of the red brush. In her hand she held a woven basket, half full of the fruits. In my alarm I had thrown up the rifle. But soon lowered it and grinned in confusion when I realized that it was a girl, and by far the most beautiful one I had ever seen. I have always been awkward in the presence of a beautiful woman, and for a few minutes I did nothing but stand and stare at her, while her quizzical dark, blue eyes inscrutably returned my look.

She was clad in a slight garment, green in color, that seemed to be woven of a fine-spun metal. Her hair was long and golden, fastened behind her shapely head with a circlet--a thin band cut evidently from a single monster ruby. Her features were fine and delicate, and she had a surpassing grace of figure. That her slender arms were stained to the elbows with the red juice of the plants--she had been picking the golden fruits--did not detract from her beauty. I was struck--and I will admit it, conquered--by her face. For a little time she stood very erect, looking at me with an odd expression, and then she spoke, enunciating the words very carefully, in a rich golden voice.

The language was English!

She said, "Are you--an American?"

"At your service completely," I told her, "Winfield Fowler, of White Deer, Texas, and New York City, not to mention other points. But I own to some surprise at finding a knowledge of the idiom in a denizen of so remote a locality."

"I can understand," she smiled. "But I think you could talk--more simply. So you are Winfield, who came with Austen across the great--ocean from America?"

"You guessed it," I said, trying to keep my growing excitement in hand, while I marveled at her beauty. "Is mind reading common in these parts?"

"Doctor Austen--the American--told me about you, his friend. And he gave me two books. Tennyson's poems, and--'The Pathfinder.'"

"So you have seen Austen?" I cried in real astonishment. "Are you Melvar? Are you the 'maiden of the crystal city?'"

"I am Melvar," she told me. "And Austen stopped in Astran one _sutar_--that is thirty-six days."

"Where is he now?" I eagerly demanded.

"He was a strange man," the golden voice replied. "He did not fear the Krimlu, as do the men of Astran. He walked off toward the pass in the north that leads around--around the Silver Lake, he called it. He had been watching the Krimlu as they came at night, and doing strange things with some stuff he took from--the Silver Lake. While he was here, the hunters brought in one of the--" again she hesitated, at a loss for a word. "--The Purple Ones," she concluded. "He took that to examine it."

"What are the Krimlu?" I exclaimed. "What--or who--are the Purple Ones? What is the Silver Lake?"

"You are a man of many questions," she laughed. For a moment she hesitated, with her blue eyes resting on my face.

"The Krimlu, so say the old men of Astran, are the spirits of the dead who come back from the land beyond the Silver Lake to watch the living, and to carry off the evil for their food. So the priests taught us, and so I believed until Austen came and told me of the world that is beyond. He told the Elders of the outer world, but they put upon him the curse of the sun, and drove him away. And indeed it is well that he was ready to go so willingly beyond the Silver Lake, for Jorak would have offered him to the Purple Sun had he been in the city another night."

Suddenly she must have become conscious of the intensity of my unthinking gaze, for she abruptly dropped her eyes, and flushed a little.

"Go on," I urged her. "What about the Purple Ones and the Silver Lake? Your account is certainly entertaining, if somewhat more mystifying than illuminating. At this rate you will have me a raving maniac in an hour, but the process is not unpleasant. Proceed."

* * * * *

Fowler Grows Bold

She looked up at me, smiled, looked off to the side, then let her eyes return to mine with curious speculation in them. "What is the Silver Lake," she went on, "you know as well as I, though Austen tried to find its secret. The touch of its water is death--a death that is terrible. And the Purple Ones--you will see them soon enough! They are strange beings who come, no one knows whence, into the land of Astran. The priests tell us that they are 'The Avengers of the Purple Sun.'--but did you come down the ladder as Austen did?"

"Most of the way in the same manner," I told her. "I finished the descent rather faster than he did, I imagine."

"Is there really," she asked, "a broad world beyond, with fields and forests that are green, and seas that are of clear blue water, and a sun that is not purple, but white? Such Austen told me, but the elders say that the ladder is the path to the Purple Sun, and beyond is nothing. Is it true that there is a great nation of the men of your race, a nation of men who know the art of fire that Austen showed us, and greater arts, who can travel in ships over water and through the air like the Krimlu?"

"Yes," I said, "the world is that, and more, but, in all of it, I have never seen a girl so beautiful as you."

It is not my habit to make such speeches to ladies, but I was feeling a bit light-headed on that morning, as a reaction from my terrible adventure, and I was rather intoxicated by her charm.

She smiled, evidently not displeased, and looked away again, apparently composing her expression with difficulty. There was a suspicious twinkle in her dark blue eyes.

"Tell me why you have come into this land," she asked abruptly.

"Austen sent for me to come to his aid." I replied.

"You and Austen are not like the men of Astran," she mused. "Not one of them ever went out to face the Krimlu or even the Purple Ones, of his own free will. You must be brave."

"Rather, ignorant," I said. "Since I have seen the 'Krimlu,' as you call the flying lights, I am about ready to give up my courage of any kind."

Then, because my exhausted condition had robbed me of my ordinary sense of responsibility, I did such a thing as I had never dared before. The girl was standing close before me, matchlessly beautiful, infinitely desirable. Her eyes were bright, and the sunlight glistened in her golden hair. And--well, I admit that I did not try very hard to resist the temptation to kiss her. I felt her arm at my back, a sudden quick thrust of her lithe body. The next I knew I was lying on my back, and she was bending over me, with tears in her eyes.

"Oh," she cried. "I didn't know. Your head! It is bleeding. And your hands and feet! I didn't notice!"

So I was compelled to lie there while the beautiful stranger very tenderly dressed and bandaged the cut on my head. In truth, I doubt that I would have been able to get up immediately. The touch of her cool fingers was very light and deft. Once her golden hair brushed against my cheek. Her nearness was very pleasant. I knew that I loved her completely, though I had never taken much stock in love at first sight.

Presently she had finished. Then she said, "When Austen gave me the books he left a letter for any man of the outside who might happen to come to Astran. You must come with me to the city, to get it, and to rest until you can walk without limping so painfully. Then, if you will, you can go on around the northern pass. Perhaps you can find Austen. But the Krimlu are mighty. No man of Astran has ever dared oppose them. No man who has ever gone into that accursed region has ever been seen again."