They were frightened now in turn, more than she had been. Hoarse whispers sounded from them here and there. They drew farther back, then still farther back again. A space was left between her and them, a space of superstitious awe.
She moved. Her hands went up and drew the cotton from her ears. She was staring at them as raptly as they were at her.
One of them spoke. Some guttural sound passed the lips of one, meant for the others.
The answer came in a woman’s voice; that same guttural gibberish, but in a woman’s voice. He thought dimly that one of them must be a woman.
None was. The only woman in the room was Mitty, his wife. Some trick of the senses, some ventriloquistic effect had made the sound seem to come from against the wall, where she was.
Her lips were moving. Now he would hear her say, “Larry, who are they? What are they going to do to us?”
Her lips were moving. He heard them say, “Achini go achini haya—” It began like that, and then went on, and his ears couldn’t follow; it was a blurred cacophony to them.
A great sigh went up, and all those before her, all those who had been so dangerous to the two of them only a moment ago, went down suppliantly before her, some on one knee, some on both. Some shielded their eyes with their bent arms before them, others held their heads low, eyes averted to the floor.
She went on speaking, steadily speaking, in a hesitant way, as though trying to remember, trying to explain something that baffled her. And while she spoke, something even worse was happening than this sound of a voice he had loved receding back through the ages away from him, though both were in the same room. Her hands went to her hair, and a modern fastening she wore in it at night, a sort of pin or clip, was loosened and fell away. Then before his horrified eyes she began to pull at her single remaining modern garment that clothed her, the night robe, and ripped it bodily away from her, like someone emerging from a cocoon.
Not a head was raised, not an eye looked up. For a single instant she was completely unclad there, in this roomful of savages bowing before her; white and beautiful as even he, her own husband, had never quite seen her before. His cry of frightened reproach stuck in his throat. He was seeing something that his senses refused to accept. His eyes rolled a little and his mouth opened and he groaned deep in his chest, lying there bound on the floor.
But she had already reached forward and drawn away, from a pair of the submissive shoulders bent before her, a sort of military cloak or cape that one of them, higher in command than the others, had been wearing, and this she drew around her waist and fastened there into a kilt or girdle. Her upper part she left unconcealed, with the unselfconsciousness typical of primitives all the world over and in all ages. Last of all she withdrew the one foot that had been encased in the high-heeled slipper, and stood upon the floor unshod.
She had reverted to barbarism, gone into darkness there before his very eyes. She no longer saw him there, groveling on the floor. He didn’t even exist for her, he could see that. She had eyes only for the feathered heads bowed before her, making obeisance.
He couldn’t tell what it was he was crying to her, for his mind had no part in directing his tongue, only his heart and the very marrow of his being. For this was fright now in its deepest form, the fright of unreason. It must be a dream — and yet it wasn’t. She pointed toward him, yet without turning her face to look as she did so, and the blows that quickly fell on him to still him and punish the sacrilege of his crying out to her were real enough.
Then two of them quickly seized him and dragged him out of her presence, backward through the doorway into what had been the central room of the house last night — a thousand years ago.
There were others of them milling about in there. It must have been a raiding party of some two score or so. They had kindled several torches of some resinous wood to give them light, now that the capture had been effected and stealth was no longer needed. He was flung back against the wall, upright, beside Mallory and Chris, who were already bound as he was. A shrewd intelligence evidently directed these forays. The house was not looted, nor was the torch applied to it. It was as if their intention was to leave it exactly as it had been found, with only this difference, that it would be empty. They apparently wanted to give the outside world no actual proof of their existence.
“It’s my fault,” Mallory said in a low voice. “I fell asleep there over by the door. I guess I didn’t really think there was anything to be on the watch for.”
Jones was incapable of answering him. What difference did it make now, anyway? To him even the fact of their capture was not the terrifying thing.
“Why are you shaking so? What did they do in there?” Mallory asked him. It was as if he had said, We are all in the same boat. What have they done to you that is any worse than what they have done to the rest of us?
Jones was sick in some peculiar way that he couldn’t account for. Sick at his spirit, if there were such a thing. There was a great clammy weight upon him, all over, yet he couldn’t tell where. “I don’t know,” he gasped. “I’m seeing things that — aren’t so.”
Mallory didn’t understand what he meant. Who could have understood? “They’re real enough,” he said dryly. “You can almost feel the heat from their bodies every time they go by.”
Jones could hear Chris whimpering, over on the other side of her father. She was cowering against him, away from all this strangeness. He felt sorry for her, but even she didn’t have to contend with what he did. With her and her father, the fear was external, outside themselves; with him, it was on the inside. Even if all these strange, shadowy figures went away now and left them alone, the fear wouldn’t go away. It would never go away again.
A crude sort of palanquin was being knocked together outside the house, while they were held here awaiting its completion. It was of four crosspieces, covered over with plaited branches. Then the feathered men stood back and a lane was opened, leading from the inner room out to where it waited. Every knee was bent and every head inclined, and through their midst slowly moved the figure of reverence that Mitty had now become one of them. One set high above them, perhaps, sacred to them, dedicated to the offices of their religion, but one of them. One of their own. Impassive, idol-like. The figure of a woman who only a little while ago—
“Mitty,” he whispered hoarsely from the background.
He could hear Mallory, beside him, draw in his breath sharply, as if some sort of cold pang had just assailed him. And even Chris. He heard her give a little frightened whimper to herself. “They’ve dressed her all up.”
They hadn’t. She had done it herself.
He saw her step within the litter and seat herself upon it, in proud unapproachability. Then the litter was raised upon their shoulders, high above all heads, and slowly moved forward in ceremonial procession.
“Mitty!” he screamed out to her, in agonized terror. “Turn and look at me! I’m going mad!”
She seemed not to hear. She stared straight forward, into the past toward which they were carrying her.
A stinging blow drove the blood out of his lips and chin. What difference did its exact meaning make? It was eloquent enough for him to understand. One did not address a goddess, the high priestess of a cult.
His head lolled sideways against Mallory’s shoulder, then turned slowly so that his face was hidden at last. “Let me stay like this,” he said in a flagging voice. “I don’t want to look at it.”
He started to go limply downward. The other man couldn’t support him or arrest his descent, for he himself was bound.
He toppled inertly to the floor, into a little respite from strangeness that his mind couldn’t bear.