I had crept up a tunnel under trees, and climbed a thicket, and seen all
the grey rocks, and sat in the middle of them when they turned round,
and then I had gone on through the grey rocks and come down the hill
through the stinging thicket and up the dark valley, all a long, long
way. I wondered how I should get home again, if I could ever find the
way, and if my home was there any more, or if it were turned and
everybody in it into grey rocks, as in the 'Arabian Nights.' So I sat
down on the grass and thought what I should do next. I was tired, and my
feet were hot with walking, and as I looked about I saw there was a
wonderful well just under the high, steep wall of grass. All the ground
round it was covered with bright, green, dripping moss; there was every
kind of moss there, moss like beautiful little ferns, and like palms and
fir trees, and it was all green as jewellery, and drops of water hung on
it like diamonds. And in the middle was the great well, deep and shining
and beautiful, so clear that it looked as if I could touch the red sand
at the bottom, but it was far below. I stood by it and looked in, as if
I were looking in a glass. At the bottom of the well, in the middle of
it, the red grains of sand were moving and stirring all the time, and I
saw how the water bubbled up, but at the top it was quite smooth, and
full and brimming. It was a great well, large like a bath, and with the
shining, glittering green moss about it, it looked like a great white
jewel, with green jewels all round. My feet were so hot and tired that I
took off my boots and stockings, and let my feet down into the water,
and the water was soft and cold, and when I got up I wasn't tired any
more, and I felt I must go on, farther and farther, and see what was on
the other side of the wall. I climbed up it very slowly, going sideways
all the time, and when I got to the top and looked over, I was in the
queerest country I had seen, stranger even than the hill of the grey
rocks. It looked as if earth-children had been playing there with their
spades, as it was all hills and hollows, and castles and walls made of
earth and covered with grass. There were two mounds like big beehives,
round and great and solemn, and then hollow basins, and then a steep
mounting wall like the ones I saw once by the seaside where the big guns
and the soldiers were. I nearly fell into one of the round hollows, it
went away from under my feet so suddenly, and I ran fast down the side
and stood at the bottom and looked up. It was strange and solemn to look
up. There was nothing but the grey, heavy sky and the sides of the
hollow; everything else had gone away, and the hollow was the whole
world, and I thought that at night it must be full of ghosts and moving
shadows and pale things when the moon shone down to the bottom at the
dead of the night, and the wind wailed up above. It was so strange and
solemn and lonely, like a hollow temple of dead heathen gods. It
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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