Calvy, clinging to a boulder, shook his head angrily. Oh, to be so close and have this wonder hidden from him!
“Come,” murmured Simon, dragging him from the edge. “Your curiosity will kill you, g’Valdet.”
So quickly they could not follow it, the Fauxi-dizalonz rose of itself, making a single great fist of green that broke out the narrow dike of rock between it and the trench and poured furiously down that trench to the lip, tumbling over it into the chasm, eating the trench ever deeper as it flowed.
Deeper and deeper yet it cut, splitting the wall between caldera and chasm, all the Fauxi-dizalonz spilling into the abyss, an endlessly flowing green that poured silently, a cataract of purest emerald, down and down and down. Within the flow, an enormous and glassy shadow moved. Wings it had, or perhaps tentacles. A body it had and many eyes, for they peered upward for an instant before it plunged over the wall. They could not tell what it looked like, and even after it was gone, the emerald flow went on.
Below, the abyssal pounding slowed. The green rose around the Quaggima, totally submerging him except for the upper stretch of his wings. Beings of fire danced in the depths while music rained upon them from the walls of the abyss, for there the Timmys sang and the Joggiwagga beat upon stone pillars to make sounds like bells and blew into hollow stones to make flute and horn sounds while all around crouched a thousand other Joggiwagga, drumming on their own hides, stretched between their spikes. Behind and beneath it all sang the huge voice of Bofusdiaga, the mountains giving voice, the world making thunder.
The flow slowed, abated, finally ended. The trench ran dry. The Fauxi-dizalonz was an empty well, a deep and murky vacancy, all its contents plus the wellspring of its self drained away into the new lake that had accumulated within the chasm.
“I can’t see anything,” whispered Calvy, who had moved back to a rimstone that still rocked to the rhythms of the deep.
“I don’t think we are supposed to,” said Questioner, extending her stabilizers. “Shall I tell you what the Timmys are singing?”
Calvy looked incredulous. She smiled and said:
“Quaggima despairs,
driven against desire to brood Her spawn,
now loving death and longing to be gone.
Oh, Bofusdiaga, pain defying,
Oh, blessed Corojumi, who repair,
This Quaggima is dying,
Give him your care!
“Quaggida destroys
all life but Hers. He lies beside the nest
where his child and our doom are coalesced.
Oh, Corojumi, bring deliverance!
Oh, great Bofusdiaga, who alloys
all life, grant through this dance
compensatory joys … “
“How do you know that is what they are singing?” asked D’Jev-ier. “It is not in our language.”
“When we were afloat upon the Pillared Sea, they sang it upon the ship during the voyage of Quaggima, and Corojum had the kindness to translate it, though he left out the genders or mixed them up. You are not the first people to achieve compensating pleasures, Lady. Long before you came here, Bofusdiaga understood the need for them.”
D’Jevier snapped, “Are you convinced that at least that part of our arrangement is a good one, then? That our Consorts and our systems are appropriate?”
“Ah, no,” said Questioner. “On Newholme, I am convinced of very little.”
The song went on, and the dance. The moons moved into line with the sun and a gloom descended, a palpable shade that seemed to war with the music, advancing upon it, being driven away only to advance again. The earth shook, the mountains skipped, distant peaks tumbled like children’s blocks, and still the music went on, the liquid depths surging again and again, waves leaping high, only to fall into glassy calms that swirled and eddied and rose again.
When two moons moved from the face of the sun, the music softened. As other moons sailed out and away from their gathering, the music softened more. The world stopped rocking, and they breathed again. Bofusdiaga’s voice fell silent, then those of the Timmys, and last the drumming of the Joggiwagga ceased, leaving only the great stone flutes and horns making sonorous harmonies over the misty depths.