“What the hell is ‘its maker’ playing at!” demanded Leelson, outraged.
We felt the earth shake, just a little, like a heavy footstep nearby. Poracious put her head on her knees and shuddered. Leelson pointed out into the sea, far, far, where the sky came down on the horizon. An island there, which had not been there before. It became larger while we watched.
“What’s it doing?” demanded Mitigan in a tone almost as furious as Leelson’s had been.
Lutha remarked. “Why so offended, Mitigan? You weren’t this offended by the shaggies or by the Rottens.”
“Animals,” he said. “Why bother being offended at animals?”
“So what’s coming out there isn’t an animal?”
He scalded her with a look, before turning back to watch the blob grow larger. It had horns on top. Even at this great distance it was ineluctable, numinous, but familiar!
Lutha had the same idea. “Did you see Nodders on your way to Tahs-uppi?” she asked Mitigan.
“We climbed around them,” he grated. “Such things have no right to be.”
The ex-king smiled. In some terrible, fatalistic way, he was enjoying himself. “Perhaps this creature feels it has every right to be alive and moving. Perhaps it has judged our storage vaults and found them wanting. Perhaps it has some more immediate destiny to attend to.”
“We will soon know,” said I, from my position atop a boulder. “It’s coming nearer.”
It was very tall. The head was massive. The horns on top showed clearly. This was the reality of which the Nodders were only a symbol. This, whatever this was—had the same proportion of height to horned top, to the great bulk of the nodding head. I had no time to consider the effect, for sound changed, the world shuddered, a peculiarly dreamy sensation overtook me, as though all happenings were inevitable and I did not greatly care.
Leely pushed past me and went out of the cavern. He plopped down on a shelf of wave-rounded pebbles and stared outward, his lips making silent words.
“By all that’s holy,” breathed Poracious. “Look, low down, against the water.”
We saw. Light. Shadow on one side, shadow on the other, shadow above, and light under, between.
“Legs,” I told them in my dreamy, languorous voice. “We only saw its upper part before. Now we are seeing between its legs.”
The Nodders had been only busts, then? Only heads and necks of Behemoth? There was more to the creature than that? Well, yes, my dreaming mind assented. Well, yes. Time went on. Eventually we saw its wings, which had until then been folded along its back. Eventually we saw its marvelous face, its wondrous eyes, its great adamantine teeth.
It stopped when the ocean was no deeper than its knees. Whales leapt around its legs. Gyring eagles made its aureole, and the wind of its breath pushed us to and fro, like little flags.
“I’ve seen it before,” whispered Poracious. “Somewhere.”
“Ancient earth,” Lutha replied. “Was it Babylon? Was it Ur? Mighty winged creatures were carved upon its walls.”
“Winged cattle,” said Poracious. “But that is mythology.”
“This is not myth.” The ex-king smiled. “And this is no kind of cattle.”
Lutha clung to Poracious as she backed into the cave, they two pulling me with them. Anything else was past doing. Past believing. Past thinking on. We were ants, crawlers between the hairs of immensity.
Leelson dragged Lutha into his arms and held her close. I saw sweat on his face. I saw fear.
“Come forth,” said a voice out of the whirlwind.
There was no place to hide. Stones shattered into powder. The cliff danced. Great boulders skittered through the cavern roof and bounced between us, close as a hair!
Lutha grabbed me by the arm and dragged me back against the wall, but it did no good. Dust rose from the floor in clouds, boiling upward, threatening to smother us in stone ash.
“We must go out,” I cried at them. “We can’t stay under here.” I broke away from them and ran. Lutha came after me. We stopped in the entrance. Leely and the ex-king hadn’t moved when the rest of us had retreated. Leely lay where he’d been before. The ex-king clung to a stony pillar, his back to us, staring up at the great face that floated above us like a thundercloud.