Rondah; or, thirty-three years in a star

by Florence Carpenter Dieudonné

Once more in the palace, Rondah and Regan were happy. Father Renaudin sat beside the fire in the silver room, engrossed in his studies. The star—a satellite of Jupiter—in one soft, steady reign of a new sun, began to change.

From the elf men’s forest of pods a new and superior race, though still of a small-winged, dwarfish kind, bloomed out. From the transplanted pods in the new fields there blossomed wingless creatures, whose advent Regan hailed with delight, but the cause of this phenomenon—the absence of wings—was unsuspected until he informed the wonder-stricken bird men that he had amputated all wings at the time of removal and transplanting.

These differing races were not so harmonious as were the previous classes. The bird people were strangely restless and cared nothing at all for those great architectural achievements which they had formerly been so pleased to pursue.

The elf men, always a trouble, were still more stubborn and destructive, so much so that Father Renaudin ordered their permanent removal from the continent to one great island of the sea, and with the help of the huge wings of the bird people, having reasoned them into an enthusiastic acceptance of the gift of the great island, they were conveyed there, where their destructive propensities could not affect the work of the superior races.

To the pleased surprise of their scheming managers, as soon as they absolutely possessed the isle, instead of destroying they began to build and cultivate their vales and decorate their mountains. A grotesque and clumsy style of architecture was theirs, and a gaudy and clashing selection of hues adorned the walls, but they were proud and triumphant, and Father Renaudin, who visited the new land with each week to teach and to preach, began soon to boast of his colonists. He was a monarch without knowing it.

The interior cities were almost deserted by the bird men. They would not even repair the damages of the winter drift. The wingless men, who took this labor in charge, were very slow, but had much more judgment than their brilliant brethren.

The cause of all this restlessness of these people seemed to be the continual rising of the beautiful emerald moon. When it came close to the star, the voices of the bird men made a clamor on the vales and hills. They did not seem to fear, although the two orbs were often dangerously close to each other. They only seemed wild as a fetterless flock of unreasoning birds.

The star was transforming itself into a dreamland. The silver trees of diamond leaves were transplanted from the Sun Island, and these bloomed freely everywhere. There came to life new forms of vegetation, new orders of annuals. The storms of intense violence gradually died in the air. The showers of rain became frequent and no longer frightful.

The southern lava seas so cooled that the snow of the polar regions settled in spots upon the islands. Earthquakes became of less power. There were many of the boiling spots in the sea which ceased to simmer, when one far-off island burst into a living volcano and closed these lesser outlets.

And as the softened years thus redly glided on, the children of man were born in the star, and Regan’s sons and daughters played under the silver trees.