Robert laid down the whole Amulet, and Anthea gently restrained the eager hand of the learned gentleman as it reached out yearningly towards the “perfect specimen”.
And then, just as before on the Marcella quilt, so now on the dusty litter of papers and curiosities, the half Amulet quivered and shook, and then, as steel is drawn to a magnet, it was drawn across the dusty manuscripts, nearer and nearer to the perfect Amulet, warm from the pocket of Robert. And then, as one drop of water mingles with another when the panes of the window are wrinkled with rain, as one bead of mercury is drawn into another bead, the half Amulet, that was the children’s and was also Rekh-marā’s,—slipped into the whole Amulet, and, behold! there was only one—the perfect and ultimate Charm.
“And that’s all right,” said the Psammead, breaking a breathless silence.
“Yes,” said Anthea, “and we’ve got our hearts’ desire. Father and Mother and The Lamb are coming home today.”
“But what about me?” said Rekh-marā.
“What is your heart’s desire?” Anthea asked.
“Great and deep learning,” said the Priest, without a moment’s hesitation. “A learning greater and deeper than that of any man of my land and my time. But learning too great is useless. If I go back to my own land and my own age, who will believe my tales of what I have seen in the future? Let me stay here, be the great knower of all that has been, in that our time, so living to me, so old to you, about which your learned men speculate unceasingly, and often, he tells me, vainly.”
“If I were you,” said the Psammead, “I should ask the Amulet about that. It’s a dangerous thing, trying to live in a time that’s not your own. You can’t breathe an air that’s thousands of centuries ahead of your lungs without feeling the effects of it, sooner or later. Prepare the mystic circle and consult the Amulet.”
“Oh, what a dream!” cried the learned gentleman. “Dear children, if you love me—and I think you do, in dreams and out of them—prepare the mystic circle and consult the Amulet!”
They did. As once before, when the sun had shone in August splendour, they crouched in a circle on the floor. Now the air outside was thick and yellow with the fog that by some strange decree always attends the Cattle Show week. And in the street costers were shouting. “Ur Hekau Setcheh,” Jane said the Name of Power. And instantly the light went out, and all the sounds went out too, so that there was a silence and a darkness, both deeper than any darkness or silence that you have ever even dreamed of imagining. It was like being deaf or blind, only darker and quieter even than that.