“She looks like a lady, and seems like a queen, and certainly dreams to
the queen’s taste,” Henry whispered, and earned a scowl from the Sun
Priest.
Leoncia was breathless, but Torres shuddered and crossed himself, and
said:
“This I have never heard of the Valley of Lost Souls. This woman who
sleeps is a Spanish lady. She is of the pure Spanish blood. She is
Castilian. I am as certain, as that I stand here, that her eyes are
blue. And yet that pallor!” Again he shuddered. “It is an unearthly
sleep. It is as if she tampered with drugs, and had long tampered with
drugs——”
“The very thing!” Francis broke in with excited whispers. “The Lady Who
Dreams drug dreams. They must keep her here doped up as a sort of
super-priestess or super-oracle.—That’s all right, old priest,” he broke
off to say in Spanish. “If we wake her up, what of it? We have been
brought here to meet her, and, I hope, awake.”
The Lady stirred, as if the whispering had penetrated her profound of
sleep, and, for the first time, the dog moved, turning his head toward
her so that her down-dropping hand rested on his neck caressingly. The
priest was imperative, now, in his scowls and gestured commands for
silence. And in absolute silence they stood and watched the awakening of
the oracle.
Slowly she drew herself half upright, paused, and re-caressed the happy
wolf hound, whose cruel fangs were exposed in a formidable, long-jawed
laugh of joy. Awesome the situation was to them, yet more awesome it
became to them when she turned her eyes full upon them for the first
time. Never had they seen such eyes, in which smouldered the world and
all the worlds. Half way did Leoncia cross herself, while Torres, swept
away by his own awe, completed his own crossing of himself and with
moving lips of silence enunciated his favorite prayer to the Virgin.
Even Francis and Henry looked, and could not take their gaze away from
the twin wells of blue that seemed almost dark in the shade of the long
black eyelashes.
“A blue-eyed brunette,” Francis managed to whisper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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