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The Return Of The Triboldies

Part 18

For hours I have rested myself on The summit of this wall, over-looking our main gate, and watching the people pass. Half of yesterday, all last night, and half of today they have been coming. Already they have filled the city as far as the buildings at the edge of the first road I see. Grey-faced people are in the buildings, opening and closing the openings, inspecting the buildings, making sure that they still work after immerstion (many do not, but publicly sleep). Smoke is emerging from the tops of many buildings. This indicates that the people are sending signals to one another, saying The owners of this town stay mostly within the walls yonder, watching us. What an impertinent lot! They think us to be the owners of the town, yet under our chins they blatantly take possession of the buildings. If we owned this town we should be enraged at their antics. We have made a mistake in not vigorously opposing their entry. If we had shown them no sign of our wakeful presence we could pretend we had been asleep, or carousing, and could rise up with justified ferocity and slay them out of the town; but we have been foolish in standing at the gates yesterday and today, watching them pass, letting them see us. Our best course now is to pretend that we sutler them (as we do) to stay in the town, provided that they take care not to interfere with our possessions, or anything that might become our possession.

Good news. Their traffic has at last died down. With a basilisk to protect us, we are about to set out in Ottoman's wagon for the spot where my wagon lies sunk. It is lucky that I dfecided nol to carry in my wagon all the chronicles of our people, when the occasion was happening and I was becoming our historian. Because my wagon was filled with inventions, Ocarina continued to keep the chronicles with him. So the forty large volumes containing the history and the literature of our people are saved. (I have known this good news for some time.)

As I write this we travel down the road, passing the buildings, all very similar to one another, with openings that open and close. How quiet these people are! and how noisy our progress! I begin to feel asnamed of our crude means of travel, though surely it can be no more noisy than the clatter of Horses and their carts which kept me awake and fearful throughout last night, though 1 lay shivering on the soggy turf of the most distant clearing (Large thistle-like spiders ran around me while I slept.) Suddenly I feel oppressed by the hundreds of people who are peering us from behind the cloths they put in the openings, and running from behind the corners of the buildings when we come to their eeys; they must be idiots if they think we cannot see them running and peering and pointing. Ottoman obviously has been thinking in the same way as I have; for thewagon is slowly revolving, and we are now going [unclear: b] to where we have come from. What astonishment we shall [unclear: I] causing in the minds of those who watched us travel [unclear: nort] ward a few moments ago, as we trevel southward in a [unclear: fe] moments' time.

We shall have to go back into that town by night at recover my wagon. My inventions must not be lost, if [unclear: o] because these pale men may find them and use them against us. Tomorrow night there should be no moon; we must then. Half of our animals are lost with my wagon; we [unclear: m] find them before they run wild and go to seed.

Our new found

has grown alarmingly, On the miserable afternoon (or morning) when we found it. it [unclear: w] only as big as my near foot. Now it is larger than 1 [unclear: an] I entertain powerful suspicions that our twenty-minute [unclear: ti] growers have been practising with new mixtures, and [unclear: ha] fed them to our cat. Or perhaps the recent surfeit of [unclear: mois] was temporarily stunting the cat's growth, which now [unclear: struggi] to catch up with itself by racing through the passage [unclear: e] lime. I shall have words with Cagliostro over this [unclear: unwan] practical joke.

Only seventeen among us have chosen to camp in this [unclear: to] most clearing: ourselves, Cagliostro and his friends, [unclear: an] Paraphernalia and his friends. Most of our people [unclear: a] gathered in the central clearing, around Ocarina's [unclear: Partis] building. Already work has begun on the digging of [unclear: cavern] where the people will live. There is to be one [unclear: gjganti] cavern under Ocarina's building, extending far below and

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beyond the building. Corridors will reach far into the earth and tunnel under all this country. It is known, from the chronicle of Quinquagcsima, that our forefathers had a wide and deep network of tunnels and caverns uder these very pot. If we keep digging we are certain to find these underground passages, and we shall be saved further effort, except in connecting Ocarina's building with the ancient diggings.

Reports have now come to my ears that the people who inhabit our lower clearing-those in wagons with gentle Harmony-in-a-treetop, gentle Phenylketonuria, gentle Popocatapetl, gentle Panjandrum, and gentle Chrononhotonthologos are having their heads terrified from their throats because furtive unknown things grunt in the night as they trip over square stones, and whistle softly (or loudly) to one another. Perhaps it is Grokes. Ocarina is worried; he suspects that the shadows of our martyred predecessors may be among us, punishing us for the cowardice of our forebears in running from this place. Hexatriximcnia wrote "If an elder dies, during the daytime, his shadow alone will not be pecked by the vultures, but will live on to reprimand those who let its master lie low." Did those who begot our ancestors put any cause to the destruction of those who were not our ancestors, and who are now our shadows' companions (and therefore our own)? Quinquagcsima has little to say on this; only that "those who survived left their home in great haste, some not bringing even their shadows." The same has happened in our own day: Phenobarbara has had no shadow since the fracas at Aggabug; she is thus too well heated by the sun, and to preserve her calmness she must at all times carry a parasol. How sadly we must have acted at Aggabug! Waterlulu was imprisoned there, Corstorphine* and Sockerdocka weer lost, Charlemagne has not returned from his search for Waterlulu, Olla Podrida has disappeared, and nobody has seen Octones or Myomy for years. It would have been better for us if we had never entered that fatal city, * Some (such as Cantilever) now believe that Corstophine never existed and for alt his four hundred years has been nothing but a sickly and pale fragment.

If we had skirted instead around its outskirts and away from it But we travelled over its rooftops, risking blindness from the dazzling sun and dizziness from the great height. We amazed the Buggers; some of them concealed themselves in a window-hole and ineffectually attempted to cast stones up at us as we rode well-shod over their rooftop, vainly attempting to hide our wagon behind a crumbling parapet. And when Antimacassar became overenthusiastic and drew too near in his ugliness to the edge of the rooftop, a tremendous rock struck him with horrific force. It bent his head back and pushed him tumbling over the cobblestones; the force of his impact hit his head a mighty blow and replaced it too far forward. That is why Antimacassar is not in the best of spirits today. After this incident he told me that he had been trying to look down to the alley set in the nearby pround. to see the wagons of Antihexagram and Parabellum jammed sideways to prevent passers-by from passing by, I cannot remember why. Great Sparadrap ( ) mentioned to me later that he would include an account of this sad story in a letter concerning Aggabug, which he wrote while we were outside that city and waiting to be found. He must have had the latter in his pocket at the time of his immersion. I weep. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ). Enough reminiscences!

As Mazinta took a stroll with our new large cat (which, sinco it has dried, we have found to be more purple than black) she passed a path that none among us had trod.

So she trod it and shortly came upon a large tree, of a darkish gren leaf, and of a round nut of an entirely new colour. A new colour has been discovered by my beloved co-being! It is of indescribable brilliance and hue! It is fire made still and cooled! it is the consummation of orpiment and realgar! As we stand in admiration before this tree. Cagliostro is turning an odd colour; the green of envy and the pink of embarrassment run together, I suppose. Now he must take some nuts and rush to his wagon (which a fish now hangs from) and work without stop till he finds the means of producing at will this glorious colour. I had not imagined that there might be colours still undiscovered, after at least 18648 years of our awareness. Perhaps there are more colours, more astonishing than this, concealed among the leaves of our wonderful old home. Others share my thoughts and are looking excitedly all around themselves.

It is agreed that the privilege of naming the new colour must be accorded to Mazinta. After much thought, and walking in circles, and running in eggs, and hopping in squares, she became inspired and pronounced this word—

Narani