Tanil
A Great while ago a man in a stripéd jacket went travelling almost to the verge of the world, and there he came upon a region of green fertility, quiet sounds, and sharp colour; save for one tiny green mound it was all smooth and even, as level as the moon’s face, so flat that you could see the sky rising up out of the end of everything like a blue dim cliff. He passed into a city very populous and powerful, and entered the shop of a man who sold birds in traps of wicker, birds of rare kinds, the flame-winged antillomeneus and kriffs with green eyes.
“Sir,” said he to the hawker of birds, “this should be a city of great occasions, it has the smell of opulence. But it is all unknown to me, I have not heard the story of its arts and policy, or of its people and their governors. What annalists have you recording all its magnificence and glory, or what poets to tell if its record be just?”
The hawker of birds replied: “There are tales and the tellers of tales.”
“I have not heard of these,” said the other, “tell me, tell me.”
The bird man drew finger and thumb downwards from the bridge of his long nose to its extremity, and sliding the finger across his pliant nostrils said: “I will tell you.” They both sat down upon a coffer of wheat. “I will tell you,” repeated the bird man, and he asked the other if he had heard of the tomb in which none could lie, nor die, nor mortify.
“No,” said he.
“Or of the oracle that destroys its interpreter?”
“No,” answered the man in the stripéd jacket, and a talking bird in a cage screamed: “No, no, no, no!” The traveller whistled caressingly to the bird, tapping his finger nail along the rods of its cage, while the bird man continued: “Or of Fax, Mint, and Bombassor, the three faithful brothers?”
“No,” replied he again.