The Three Mulla-mulgars

by Walter De la Mare

"What wonder our father Seelem stumbled as he ran?" muttered Nod to Thumb.

But Ghibba stood thinking, the skin of his forehead twitching up and down, as is the habit of nearly all Mulgars, high and low. "This is our riddle, O Mulla-mulgars," he said: "If we turn back and climb slowly upward, so as to creep round in hiding from these giant Meermuts, we shall only come at last to batter our heads against the walls of Mōōt. And Mōōt I know of old: there the Gunga-moonas make their huddles. And the other way, under the moon, there juts a precipice five thousand Mulgars deep, through which, so the old news goes, creeps slowlier than moss Tishnar's never-melting Obea of ice. Here, then, is our answer, Princes: The valleys must be yet many long days' journey. Either, then, we go straight forward beneath the feet of Tishnar's Orchard-meermuts, like forest-mice that gambol among a Mutti of Ephelantoes, or else, like shivering Jack-Alls, we go back, to live out the rest of this littlest of lives itching, but having nowhere to scratch. What thinks the Mulgar Eengenares?"

And at that Nod remembered what the watchman had said, when they were talking together by the eagles' watch-fires. He touched Thumb, speaking softly in Mulgar-royal. "Thumb, my brother, what of the Wonderstone? what of the Wonderstone? Shall we tell this Moona-mulgar of that?"

Thumb laughed sulkily. "Seelem kept all his wits for you, Jugguba," he answered; "rub and see!"

So Nod spread open his pocket-flap and fetched out the Wonderstone, wrapped in its wisp of wool and the stained leaf of paper from Battle's little book. He held it out in his brown, hairless palm to Ghibba beneath the thorn. "What think you of that, Mulla-moona?" he said. And even Ghibba's dim eyes could discern its milk-pale shining. They talked long together in the shadow of the thorns, while the rest of the skinny travellers sat silent beside their bundles, coughing and blinking as they mumbled their mouldy cheese-rind.

Ghibba said that, as Nod was a Nizza-neela, they should venture out alone together. "I am nothing but a skin of bones—nothing to pick," he said, "and all but sand-blind, and therefore could not see to be afraid."

"No, no, no, Mulla-moona," Thumb grunted stubbornly. "If mischief came to my brother, how could I live on, listening to the chittering of his mother's Meermut asking me, 'Where is Nod?' Stay here and guard my brother, Thimbulla, who is too sick and weak to go with us; and if we neither of us return before morning, deal kindly with him, Mulla-moona, and have our thanks till you too are come to be a shadow."

So at last it was agreed between them. And Thumb and Nod returned together to the edge of the wood and peered out once more towards the phantom-guarded orchards. Nod waited no longer. He wetted his thumb once more, and rubbed thrice, droning or crooning, and stamping nimbly in the snow, till suddenly Thumb sprang back clean into the midst of a thorn-tree in his dismay.

"Ubbe nimba sul ugglourint!" he cried hollowly. For the child stood there in the snow, shining as if his fur were on fire with silver light. About his head a wreath of moon-coloured buds like frost-flowers was set. His shoulders were hung with a robe like spider-silk falling behind him to his glistening heels. But it was Nod's shrill small laughter that came out of the shining.

"Follow, oh follow, brother," he said. "I am Fulby, I am Oomgar's M'keeso; it is a dream; it is a night-shadow; it is Nod Meermut; it is fires of Tishnar. Hide in my blaze, Thumb Mulgar. And see these Noomas cringe!"