A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 68: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

68 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY that outer door from the crater, I suppose. Are those the same crows?” “You're simply being flippant, now,” said he. I began to sweat. ‘“‘Cleve,” said I, “I know that you’re better than this. A lot better. But I’m pretty sick from listening to you. I’ve told you everything from the first. I’ve not hidden a thing. And you’ve given me, in return, a lot of wind and mys- tery that means nothing. You’re hitched up to events so infernally important that life and death no longer mean a thing to you, it appears. “Well, I don’t hitch onto that sort of thinking. I say, if you’re being honest with me, heaven help you! And if you’re not being honest with me, you’re a low hound. Now, if I’m free to get out of this room, I’m going, and the next time I see you, it'll be because you hunt me up.” I turned around and marched to the door. AS EVERY step, I expected to hear his voice sing out behind me, or to hear his footstep overtaking me, but I was wrong. There was no move from him, no move whatever! When I got to the door, I turned the handle, and found that it opened readily, and then I looked back at him. He stood exactly where I had left him, and his head had dropped to the side and down, as though a weight sank it, and if ever weariness and thought combined in the face of a man, I saw it in the young-old face of Cleve Darrell. My heart melted. I wanted to go back to him and try all over again, but some- how I realized that nothing I could say would be apt to budge him. He was beyond my reach. So I went out into the hall, and there I found the two old women, and they showed me the way back to my room. I had one encounter on the way back. We had passed out of the one of the re- gular, narrow corridors of communication into a larger hall, and crossing this we met up with that same high-headed brunette whom [I had seen with the priestess in the garden, or conservatory. I stood and blinked at her. The old women had been right. Anyone had access to this place —if he or she had courage enough and the white fire was not roaring and burning outside—save only Sylvia, who was a priestess. A messenger had brought my clothes. Alice had followed us here. But Sylvia must die. When she saw me, she came straight on and stood close, and her fine eyes nar- rowed to glints of light. “Oh, hero that thou art—worm that thou art! Thou inconsiderable nothing! Thou wearest the form of a man, and thou hast the soul of a puff of wind. And now thou has betrayed the noblest and the best, the simplest and the sweetest of all women. May terrible hell receive thee !”’ And she went on, while I stood in a trance, without being able to speak a word in reply. She had not spoken over a whisper, and when my two escorts came bearing down on me, she was gone again before they could catch her. That encounter gave me enough to think about, the rest of the way to my room, for it was clear from what Alice had said that there were some members of the community who did not share in the belief that the sacrifice of blood could purify the others and free them from the dangers of sin. If Alice doubted it, as she most ap- parently did, the others were sure to agree with her. I thought I must find out something about those strange people and I got one of the old crones to talk to me about their beginnings, and the land they had come from. She told me that their race had always lived in the Smoking Land, and that they had, according to legend, sprung up out of the soil to honor the great goddess. I listened to this fable with interest. These people were like a slice of sixteenth or seventeenth century England put down here in the Artic; and if their forebears had not come from that England, I was willing, as before, to eat a fur hat. But the old lady knew nothing of that. She entertained me, then, with ballads. She chanted them to soft, droning, weary tunes—ballads about the merry green- wood, and good old England, and Robin Hood, and all the rest. It was grand to hear her. She was a charm when she sat forward in her chair and fixed her eyes on the floor, and went through her GOMIIGoOO S CO