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There was great silence on the mountain top and Ransom also had fallen down before the human pair When at last he raised his eyes from the four blessed feet, he found hih his voice was broken and his eyes dimmed "Do not move away, do not raise me up," he said "I have never before seen ashadows and broken ies Oh, my Father and my Mother, my Lord and my Lady, do not move, do not answer me yet My own father and mother I have never seen Take reat time"

The eyes of the Queen looked upon hinition, but it was not of the Queen that he thoughtAnd how shall I - who have not seen him - tell you what he was like? It was hard even for Ranso&039;s face But we dare not withhold the truth It was that face which no ht ask hoas possible to look upon it and not to commit idolatry, not to mistake it for that of which it was the likeness For the resemblance was, in its own fashion, infinite, so that al no sorrows in his brow and no wounds in his hands and feet Yet there was no danger of , not one moment of confusion, no least sally of the will towards forbidden reverence Where likeness was greatest, mistake was least possible Perhaps this is always so A clever ork can be reat portrait which is far es of the Holy One may before now have drawn to themselves the adoration they were e, like Him within and without, made by His own bare hands out of the depth of divine artistry, Hisforth froht all worlds, walked and spoke before Ransoe Nay, the very beauty of it lay in the certainty that it was a copy, like and not the same, an echo, a rhyed in a created medius, so that when he ca, and what he heard see lands and the firates of Deep Heaven, the seas and the Holy Mountain, the rivers above and the rivers of under-land, the fire, the fish, the birds, the beasts, and the others of the waves whom yet you know not; all these Maleldil puts into your hand from this day forth as far as you live in ti: your word is law unchangeable and the very daughter of the Voice In all that circle which this world runs about Arbol, you are Oyarsa Enjoy it well Give nathen the feebler, lighten the darker, love all Hail and be glad, oh man and woman, Oyarsa-Perelendri, the Adam, the Crown, Tor and Tinidril, Baru and Baru&039;ah, Ask and Embla, Yatsur and Yatsurah, dear to Maleldil Blessed be He!"

When the King spoke in answer, Ransoain He saw that the huin of the pool So great was the light, that they cast clear reflections in the water as they ive you thanks, fair foster , "and specially for this world in which you have laboured for long ages as Maleldil&039;s very hand that all ht be ready for us oke We have not known you till today We have often wondered whose hand it was thatin the long waves and the bright islands and whose breath delighted us in the wind atthen,dimly that to say &039;It is Maleldil&039; was true, but not all the truth This world we receive: our joy is the greater because we take it by your gift as well as by His But what does He put into your , Tor-Oyarsa," said Perelandra, "whether I now converse in Deep Heaven only or also in that part of Deep Heaven which is to you a World"

"It is very , "that you remain with us, both for the love we bear you and also that you then us with counsel and even with your operations Not till we have gone ement of the dominion which Maleldil puts into our hands: nor are we yet ripe to steer the world through Heaven nor to ood to you, reue proceeded, it was a wonder that the contrast between the Adam and the eldils was not a discord On the one side, the crystal, bloodless voice, and the immutable expression of the snohite face; on the other the blood coursing in the veins, the feeling treht of the man&039;s shoulders, the wonder of the woman&039;s breasts, a splendour of virility and richness of wo torrent of perfect animality - yet when these met, the one did not seem rank nor the other spectral Animal rationale - an animal, yet also a reasonable soul: such, he remembered, was the old definition of Man But he had never till now seen the reality For now he saw this living Paradise, the Lord and Lady, as the resolution of discords, the bridge that spans ould else be a chas that mountain valley they had suddenly united the warm multitude of the brutes behind hience at his side They closed the circle, and with their coth or beauty which that asse was speaking again

"And as it is not Maleldil&039;s gift sih you, and thereby the richer, so it is not through you only, but through a third, and thereby the richer again And this is the first word I speak as Tor-Oyarsa-Perelendri; that in our world, as long as it is a world, neither shall ht but that we and all our children shall speak to Maleldil of Ransom the man of Thulcandra and praise him to one another And to you, Ransom, I say this, that you have called us Lord and Father, Lady and Mother And rightly, for this is our name But in another fashion we call you Lord and Father For it seems to us that Maleldil sent you into our world at that day when the ti drew to its end, and froo down, into corruption or into perfection Maleldil had taken us where He meant us to be: but of Maleldil&039;s instruo across the water to the, for it came only to his knees He would have fallen at their feet but they would not let him They rose to meet him and both kissed him, mouth to mouth and heart to heart as equals embrace They would have made him sit between them, but when they saw that this troubled hiround, below them, and a little to the left Froods and the concourse of beasts And then the Queen spoke

"As soon as you had taken away the Evil One," she said, "and I awoke from sleep, my mind was cleared It is a wonder to me, Piebald, that for all those days you and I could have been so young The reason for not yet living on the Fixed Land is now so plain How could I wish to live there except because it was Fixed? And why should I desire the Fixed except to make sure - to be able on one day to command where I should be the next and what should happen to me? It was to reject the wave - to draw my hands out of Maleldil&039;s, to say to Him, &039;Not thus, but thus&039; - to put in our ohat tiether today for to what came That would have been cold love and feeble trust And out of it how could we ever have cliain?"

"I see it well," said Ransoh in " - and then he stopped, doubtful of being understood and surprised that he had used a word for evil which he had not hitherto known that he knew, and which he had not heard either in Mars or in Venus

"We know these things now," said the King, seeing Ransom&039;s hesitation "All this, all that happened in your world, Maleldil has put into our h not as the Evil One wished us to learn We have learned better than that, and know itthat understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking There is an ignorance of evil that conorance that coe of sleep You are norant of evil in Thulcandra now than in the days before your Lord and Lady began to do it But Maleldil has brought us out of the one ignorance, and we have not entered the other It was by the Evil One hiht us out of the first Little did that dark mind know the errand on which he really caive me, my Father, if I speak foolishly," said Ransom "I see how evil has been made known to the Queen, but not hoas hed His body was very big and his laugh was like an earthquake in it, loud and deep and long, till in the end Ransoh he had not seen the joke, and the Queen laughed as well And the birds began clapping their wings and the beasts wagging their tails, and the light seehter and the pulse of the whole asse to do with mirth as we understand it passed into them all, as it were fro in Deep Heaven So," said the King, looking upon the Queen "He is thinking that you suffered and strove and I have a world for my reward" Then he turned to Ransoht," he said, "I knohat they say in your world about justice And perhaps they say well, for in that world things always fall below justice But Maleldil always goes above it All is gift I aift alone but by our foster mother&039;s, not by hers alone but by yours, not by yours alone but ift of the very beasts and birds Through many hands, enriched with ift comes to me It is the Law The best fruits are plucked for each by some hand that is not his own"

"That is not the whole of what happened, Piebald," said the Queen "The King has not told you all Maleldil drove hirow up froh the waves

"Its na

"Its name is Lur," repeated the eldila And Ranso had uttered not an observation but an enactment

"And there in Lur (it is far hence)," said the Queen, "strange things befell his?" said Ranso "Forlines in the turf of a little island on which I rode For s about Maleldil and about His Father and the Third One We knew little of this while ere young But after that He showedto the Queen And I kneas possible for her to be undone And then I sahat had happened in your world, and how your Mother fell and how your Father ith her, doing her no good thereby and bringing the darkness upon all their children And then it was beforetowards my handwhat I should do in like case There I learned of evil and good, of anguish and joy"

Ranso to relate his decision, but when the King&039;s voice died away into thoughtful silence he had not the assurance to question hih a h half of hi half must still follow Maleldil For if it also lay down and became earth, what hope would there be for the whole? But while one half lived, through it He ht send life back into the other" Here he paused for a long tiave me no assurance No fixed land Always one must throw oneself into the wave" Then he cleared his brow and turned to the eldila and spoke in a new voice

"Certainly, oh foster mother," he said "We haveup within our bodies which our young wisdom can hardly overtake They will not always be bodies bound to the loorlds Hear the second word that I speak as Tor-Oyarsa-Perelendri While this World goes about Arbol ten thousand tie and hearten our people from this throne Its name is Tai Harendrimar, The Hill of Life"

"Its name is Tai Harendrimar," said the eldila

"On the Fixed Land which once was forbidden," said Tor the King, "ill reat place to the splendour of Maleldil Our sons shall bend the pillars of rock into arches"

"What are arches?" said Tinidril the Queen

"Arches," said Tor the King, "are when pillars of stone throw out branches like trees and knit their branches together and bear up a great doe, but the leaves shall be shaped stones And there our sons will es?" said Tinidril

"Splendour of Deep Heaven!" cried the King with a great laugh "It seeht these things were coht theh you, none the less I will show you ies, I will show you houses It may be that in this et and I who bear But let us speak of plainer matters We will fill this world with our children We will know this world to the centre We will make the nobler of the beasts so wise that they will become hnau and speak: their lives shall awake to a new life in us as ake in Maleldil When the tis are nearly at an end, ill tear the sky curtain and Deep Heaven shall become familiar to the eyes of our sons as the trees and the waves to ours"

"And what after this, Tor-Oyarsa?" said Malacandra

"Then it is Maleldil&039;s purpose to ed, but not all changed We shall be as the eldila, but not all as the eldila And so will all our sons and daughters be changed in the time of their ripeness, until the number is made up which Maleldil read in His Father&039;s mind before times flowed"

"And that," said Ranso stared at him "The end?" he said "Who spoke of an end?"

"The end of your world, I mean," said Ransohts are unlike ours About that tis But there will be one ins"

"What is that?" asked Ransoe of your world shall be raised, the black spot cleared away, before the real beginning In those days Maleldil will go to war - in us, and in many who once were hnau on your world, and in many from far off and in o down to Thulcandra Soo before It is inthose We shall fall upon your moon, wherein there is a secret evil, and which is as the shield of the Dark Lord of Thulcandra - scarred with ht shall be put out Her fragments shall fall into your world and the seas and the smoke shall arise so that the dwellers in Thulcandra will no longer see the light of Arbol And as Maleldil His in your world shall show theues and horrors shall cover your lands and seas But in the end all shall be cleansed, and even the memory of your Black Oyarsa blotted out, and your world shall be fair and sweet and reunited to the field of Arbol, and its true naain But can it be, Friend, that no rumour of all this is heard in Thulcandra? Do your people think that their Dark Lord will hold his prey for ever?"

"Most of thes at all Soe: but I did not at once see what you were talking of, because what you call the beginning we are accustoinning," said Tor the King "It is but the wiping out of a false start in order that the world in As when a man lies down to sleep, if he finds a twisted root under his shoulder he will change his place - and after that his real sleep begins Or as afoot on an island, may make a false step He steadies hiins You would not call that steadying of hi?"

"And is the whole story of my race no s in the history of the Low Worlds," said Tor the King "And in yours a failure to begin You talk of evenings before the day had dawned I set forth even now on ten thousand years of preparation - I, the first of in I tell you that when the last of my children has ripened and ripeness has spread from the is at hand"

"I anorance," said Ransom "In our world those who know Maleldil at all believe that His co of all that happens If you take that from me, Father, whither will you lead me? Surely not to the enemy&039;s talk which thrusts ives me a universe with no centre at all, but millions of worlds that lead nowhere or (what is worse) to more and more worlds for ever, and comes over me with numbers and eness Or do you make your world the centre? But I am troubled What of the people of Malacandra? Would they also think that their world was the centre? I do not even see how your world can rightly be called yours You were made yesterday and it is from old The most of it is water where you cannot live And what of the things beneath its crust? And of the great spaces with no world at all? Is the enemy easily answered when He says that all is without plan or ? As soon as we think we see one it , or into some other plan that we never dreamed of, and as the centre becomes the rim, till we doubt if any shape or plan or pattern was ever more than a trick of our own eyes, cheated with hope, or tired with tooyou speak of? What is it the beginning of?"

"The beginning of the Great Game, of the Great Dance," said Tor "I know little of it as yet Let the eldila speak"

The voice that spoke next seemed to be that of Mars, but Ransom was not certain And who spoke after that, he does not know at all For in the conversation that followed - if it can be called a conversation - though he believes that he himself was sometimes the speaker, he never knehich words were his or another&039;s, or even whether aThe speeches followed one another - if, indeed, they did not all take place at the same time - like the parts of a music into which all five of theh five trees that stand together on a hilltop

"We would not talk of it like that," said the first voice "The Great Dance does not wait to be perfect until the peoples of the Low Worlds are gathered into it We speak not of when it will begin It has begun from before always There was no time e did not rejoice before His face as now The dance which we dance is at the centre and for the dance all things were made Blessed be He!"

Another said, "Never did He s the same; never did He utter one word twice After earths, not better earths but beasts; after beasts, not better beasts but spirits After a falling, not recovery but a new creation Out of the new creation, not a third but the ed for ever Blessed be He!"

And another said, "It is loaded with justice as a tree boith fruit All is righteousness and there is no equality Not as when stones lie side by side, but as when stones support and are supported in an arch, such is His order; rule and obedience, begetting and bearing, heat glancing down, life growing up Blessed be He!"

One said, "They who add years to years in lualaxies, shall not coreatness The day of the fields of Arbol will fade and the days of Deep Heaven itself are nureat He dwells (all of Him dwells) within the seed of the smallest flower and is not cramped: Deep Heaven is inside Him who is inside the seed and does not distend Hie of each nature borders on that whereof it contains no shadow or similitude Of many points one line; of many lines one shape; of hts one person; of three persons, Himself As in the circle to the sphere, so are the ancient worlds that needed no redemption to that world wherein He was born and died As is a point to a line, so is that world to the far-off fruits of its redee Blessed be He!"

"Yet the circle is not less round than the sphere, and the sphere is the home and fatherland of circles Infinite multitudes of circles lie enclosed in every sphere, and if they spoke they would say, For us were spheres created Let no ainsay them Blessed be He!"

"The peoples of the ancient worlds who never sinned, for whom He never came down, are the peoples for whose sake the Low Worlds were htening as bent is a new diht be bent nor the whole that it ht be wounded The ancient peoples are at the centre Blessed be He!"