Ahead of them, everything seemed to cease and then go on again.
Cautiously they went to see what they had arrived at. The ground underfoot had been uneven. Now it broke altogether into a wide crevasse. Beyond the crevasse the vegetation grew again – but how did humans span that gulf? The four of them stood anxiously where the ferns ended, looking across at the far side.
Haris the man screwed his face in pain to show he had a troublesome idea in his head.
'What I did before – going up in the air," he began awkwardly. 'If we do it again now, all of us, we go in the air across to the other side.'
'No!' Lily-yo said. 'When you go up you come down hard. You will fall to the green!'
'I will do better than before. I think I have the art now.'
'NoI' repeated Lily-yo. 'You are not to go. You are not safe.'
'Let him go," Flor said. 'He says he has the art.'
The two women turned to glare at each other. Taking his chance, Haris raised his arms, waved them, rose slightly from the ground, and began to use his legs too. He moved forward over the crevasse before his nerve broke.
As he fluttered down, Flor and Lily-yo, moved by instinct, dived into the gulf after him. Spreading their arms, they glided about him, shouting. Jury remained behind, crying in baffled anger down to them.
Regaining a little control, Haris landed heavily on an outcropping ledge. The two women alighted chattering and scolding beside him. They looked up, pressing against the cliff for safety. Two lips fringed with fern sucked a narrow purple segment of sky above their heads. Jury could not be seen, though her cries still echoed down to them. They called back to her.
Behind the ledge on which they stood, a tunnel ran into the cliff. All the rock face was peppered with similar holes, so that it resembled a sponge. From the tunnel ran three flymen, two male and one female, ropes and spears in their hands.
Flor and Lily-yo were bending over Haris. Before they had time to recover, they were knocked sprawling and tied with ropes. Other flymen launched themselves from other holes and came gliding in to help secure them. Their flight seemed more sure, more graceful, than it had done on earth. Perhaps the fact that humans were lighter here had something to do with it.
'Bring them in!' the flymen cried to each other. Their sharp, clever faces jostled round eagerly as they hoisted up their captives and bore them into the gloom of tunnel.
In their alarm, Lily-yo, Flor and Haris forgot about Jury, still crouching on the lip of the crevasse. They never saw her again.
The tunnel sloped gently down. Finally it curved and led into another which ran level and true. This in its turn led into an immense cavern with regular sides and a regular roof. Grey daylight flooded in at one end, for the cavern stood at the bottom of the crevasse.
To the middle of this cavern the three captives were brought. Their knives were taken from them and they were released. As they huddled together uneasily, one of the flymen stood forward and spoke.
'We will not harm you unless we must,' he said. 'You come by traverser from the Heavy World. You are new here. When you learn our ways, you will join us.'
'I am Lily-yo,' Lily-yo proudly said. 'You must let me go. We three are humans and you are flymen.'
'Yes, you are humans, we are flymen. Also we are humans, you are flymen, for we are all the same. Just now you know nothing. Soon you will know more when you have seen the Captives. They will tell you many things.'
'I am Lily-yo. I know many things.'
'The Captives will tell you many more things,' the flyman insisted.
'If there were many more things, then I should know them, for I am Lily-yo.'
'I am Band Appa Bondi and I say come to see the Captives. Your talk is stupid Heavy World talk, Lily-yo.'
Several flymen began to look aggressive, so that Haris nudged Lily-yo and muttered, 'Let us do what he asks. Do not make more trouble.'
Grumpily, Lily-yo let herself and her two companions be led to another chamber. This one was partially ruined, and stank. At the far end of it, a fall of tindery rock marked where the roof had collapsed, while a shaft of the unremitting sunlight burnt on the floor, sending up a curtain of golden light about itself. Near this light were the Captives.
'Do not fear to see them. They will not harm you.' Band Appa Bondi said, going forward.
The encouragement was needed, for the Captives were not prepossessing.
Eight of them there were, eight Captives, kept in eight great burnurns big enough to serve them as narrow cells. The cells stood grouped in a semicircle. Band Appa Bondi led Lily-yo, Flor and Haris into the middle of this semicircle, where they could survey and be surveyed.
The Captives were painful to look on. All had some kind of deformity. One had no legs. One had no flesh on his lower jaw. One had four gnarled dwarf arms. One had short wings of flesh connecting ear lobes and thumbs, so that he lived perpetually with hands half raised to his face. One had boneless arms dangling at his side and one boneless leg. One had monstrous wings which trailed about him like carpet. One was hiding his ill-shaped form away behind a screen of his own excrement, smearing it on the transparent walls of his cell. And one had a second head, a small wizened thing growing from the first that fixed Lily-yo with a malevolent eye. This last captive, who seemed to lead the others, spoke now, using the mouth of his main head.
'I am the Chief Captive. I greet you, children, and invite you to know yourselves. You are of the Heavy World; we are of the True World. Now you join us because you are of us. Though your wings and your scars are new, you are welcome to join us.'
'I am Lily-yo. We three are humans, while you are only flymen. We will not join you.'
The Captives grunted in boredom. The Chief Captive spoke again.
'Always this talk from you denizens of the Heavy World! Understand that you have joined us by becoming like us. You are flymen, we are human. You know little, we know much.'
'But we – '
'Stop your stupid talk, woman!'
'We are – '
'Be silent, woman, and listen,' Band Appa Bondi said.
'We know much,' repeated the Chief Captive. 'Some things we will tell you now to make you understand. All who make the journey from the Heavy World become changed. Some die. Most live and grow wings. Between the worlds are many strong rays, not seen or felt, which change our bodies. When you come here, when you come to the True World, you become a true human. The grub of the tigerfly is not a tigerfly until it changes. So humans change, becoming what you call flymen.'
'I cannot know what he says,' Haris said stubbornly, throwing himself down. But Lily-yo and Flor were listening.
'To this True World, as you call it, we came to die,' Lily-yo said, doubtingly.
The Captive with the fleshless jaw said, 'The grub of the tigerfly thinks it dies when it changes into a tigerfly.'
'You are still young,' said the Chief Captive. 'You have entered a fresh life. Where are your souls?'
Lily-yo and Flor looked at each other. In their flight from the wiltmilt they had heedlessly thrown down their souls. Haris had trampled on his. It was unthinkable!
'You see. You needed your souls no more. You are still young, and may be able to have babies. Some of those babies may be born with wings.'
The Captive with the boneless arms added, 'Some may be born wrong, as we are. Some may be born right.'
'You are too foul to live!' Haris growled. 'Why are you not killed for your horrible shapes?'
'Because we know all things," the Chief Captive said. His second head roused itself and declared in a husky voice, 'To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important. Because we cannot move well, we can think. This tribe of the True World is good and understands the value of thought in any shape. So it lets us rule it.'