Land of Unreason Read Free Page A

and abruptly fell down. The others clustered around
him, twittering, babbling and pushing, a singular crowd.
     
                Some were as tall as Barber,
and some small, down to a foot in height, and their appearance was as various
as their size. Many, especially of the smaller ones, had wings growing out of
their backs; some were squat and broad, as though a gigantic hand had pushed
them groundward while they were in a semi-fluid state. An individual with a
beard and wall eyes that gave him an expression of perpetual surprise was
dressed like a Palmer Cox brownie; others wore elaborate clothes that might
have been thought up by King Richard II, and some had no more clothes than a
billiard ball.
     
                Pink elephants, thought
Barber, or am I going nuts? One half of his mind was rather surprised to find
the other considering the question with complete detachment.
     
                "What ails yon wight?"
demanded the regal lady, who had not condescended to join the crowd.
     
                The brownie looked around.
"A sleeps; plain insensible like a stockfish, and snoring." There was
a chatter o£ other voices: "An enchantment, for sure— Send for Dos Erigu
... The leprechauns again, they followed the king ... Nay, that's no prank,
'tis sheer black kobbold malice ..."
     
                "Peace!" The
contralto cut sharply across the other voices, and she extended her arm. Barber
saw that she held a slender rod about a foot long, with a point of light at its
tip. "If there's sorcery here we'll soon have it unsorcelled.
Azam-mancestu-monejalma—sto!" The point of light leaped from the tip of
the rod, and moved through the air with a sinuous, flowing motion. It lit on
the forehead of the antennaed one, where it spread across his features till
they seemed to glow from within. He grunted and turned over, a fatuous smile
spreading across his face, but did not wake. The tall lady let arm and rod
fall.
     
                "Pah!" said she.
"Like a stockfish, you put it? Say a stock rather; here's no enchantment
but a booby with barely wit enough to live. Oh, I'm well served." She
gazed down at Barber, with an expression of scorn on her delicately cut
features. "And here he's brought this great oafish ill-favored creature,
beyond doubt the least attractive changeling of the current reign."
     
                Barber was being
scrutinized. "Think you His Radiance will accept the thing?" inquired
one doubtfully.
     
                The tall lady sighed.
"We can but try. Mayhap 'twill find him in his mad humor and so suit. See
to the object; we return within an hour." She swept off into a little
grove of trees through which the pillars of some structure gleamed whitely.
     
                The one who had spoken last,
a winged female about four feet high, bent over Barber, examining his pajamas.
"He has arrived without his clout," she said. "Have we
one?"
     
                A square of whitish cloth
was passed from hand to hand. The four-footer folded it diagonally and tried to
roll Barber over.
     
                "Hey!" he
protested. "What's the idea?"
     
                "The changeling
speaks," said one of them, in an astonished tone. "Faith, and
well," replied another, admiringly. "What precocity! His Radiance
will, after all, be pleased." And half a dozen of them went off into peals
of gay, tinkling laughter. Barber could see neither rhyme nor reason to it, but
he was not granted the opportunity, as at the same moment he was seized by a
dozen pairs of busy hands. They were trying to diaper him; the idea was so
comic that he could not stop laughing enough to resist. But neither could these
queer little people control his movements well enough to get the diaper on, and
the struggle ended with three or four of them collapsing on top of him in a
tangle of arms and legs.
     
                The four-footer