"Wonderful! What is your secret?"
"I use the force of sheer will to put myself beyond perception!"
"I must learn this method."
"Intellectual thrust, pure and simple, is the key," said Grofinet, and added the warning: "If you fail, don't be disappointed. It is a difficult feat."
"We shall see."
The following day Grofinet experimented with his new sleight. Shimrod would calclass="underline" "Grofinet! Where are you? Have you gone invisible again?" Whereupon Grofinet would step from a corner of the room in triumph.
One day Grofinet suspended himself from the ceiling beams of the workroom, on a pair of straps, to hang as if in a hammock. Shimrod, upon entering the room, might have noticed nothing, except that Grofinet had neglected to put up his tail, which dangled into the middle of the room, terminating in a tuft of tawny fur.
Grofinet at last decided to put by all his previous ambitions and to become a magician in earnest. To this end he frequented the workroom, to watch Shimrod at his manipulations. He was, however, intensely afraid of fire; whenever Shimrod, for one reason or another, excited a tongue of flame, Grofinet bounded from the room in a panic, and at last put by his plans to become a magician.
Midsummer's Eve drew near. Coincidentally a series of vivid dreams came to disturb Shimrod's sleep. The landscape was always the same: a terrace of white stone overlooking a beach of white sand and a calm blue sea beyond. A marble balustrade enclosed the terrace, and low surf broke into foam along the beach.
In the first dream Shimrod leaned on the balustrade, idly surveying the sea. Along the beach came walking a dark-haired maiden, in a sleeveless smock of a soft gray-brown cloth. As she approached, Shimrod saw that she was slender and an inch or so taller than medium stature. Black hair, caught in a twist of dark red twine, hung almost to her shoulders. Her arms and bare feet were graceful; her skin was a pale olive. Shimrod thought her exquisitely beautiful, with an added quality which included both mystery and a kind of provocation that, rather than overt, was implicit in her very existence. As she passed, she turned Shimrod a somber half-smile, neither inviting nor forbidding, then went along the beach and out of sight. Shimrod stirred in his sleep and awoke.
The second dream was the same, except that Shimrod called to the maiden and invited her to the terrace; she hesitated, smilingly shook her head and passed on.
On the third night, she halted and spoke: "Why do you call me, Shimrod?"
"I want you to stop, and at least talk with me."
The maiden demurred. "I think not. I know very little of men, and I am frightened, for I feel a strange impulse when I pass by."
On the fourth night, the maiden of the dream paused, hesitated, then slowly approached the terrace. Shimrod stepped down to meet her, but she halted and Shimrod found that he could approach her no more closely, which in the context of the dream seemed not unnatural. He asked: "Today will you speak to me?"
"I know of nothing to tell you."
"Why do you walk the beach?"
"Because it pleases me."
"Whence do you come and where do you go?"
"I am a creature of your dreams; I walk in and out of thought."
"Dream-thing or not, come closer and stay with me. Since the dream is mine, you must obey."
"That is not the nature of dreams." As she turned away, she looked over her shoulder, and when at last Shimrod awoke, he remembered the exact quality of her expression. Enchantment! But to what purpose?
Shimrod walked out on the meadow, considering the situation from every conceivable aspect. A sweet enticement was being laid upon him by subtle means, and no doubt to his eventual disadvantage. Who might work such a spell? Shimrod cast among the persons known to him, but none would seem to have reason to beguile him with so strangely beautiful a maiden.
He returned to the workroom and tried to cast a portent, but the necessary detachment failed him and the portent broke into a spatter of discordant colors.
He sat late in the workroom that night while a cool dark wind sighed through the trees at the back of the manse. The prospect of sleep brought him both misgivings and an uneasy tingle of anticipation which he tried to quell, but which persisted nevertheless. "Very well then," Shimrod told himself in a surge of bravado, "let us face up to the matter and discover where it leads."
He took himself to his couch. Sleep was slow in coming; for hours he twitched through a troubled doze, sensitive to every fancy which chose to look into his mind. At last he slept.
The dream came presently. Shimrod stood on the terrace; along the beach came the maiden, bare-armed and bare-footed, her black hair blowing in the sea-wind. She approached without haste. Shimrod waited imperturbably, leaning on the balustrade. To show impatience was poor policy, even in a dream. The maiden drew near; Shimrod descended the wide marble stairs.
The wind died, and also the surf; the dark-haired maiden halted and stood waiting. Shimrod moved closer and a waft of perfume reached him: the odor of violets. The two stood only a yard apart; he might have touched her.
She looked into his face, smiling her pensive half-smile. She spoke. "Shimrod, I may visit you no more."
"What is to stay you?"
"My time is short. I must go to a place behind the star Ach-ernar."
"Is this of your own will where you would go?"
"I am enchanted."
"Tell me how to break the enchantment!"
The maiden seemed to hesitate. "Not here."
"Where then?"
"I will go to the Goblins Fair; will you meet me there?"
"Yes! Tell me of the enchantment so that I may fix the counter-spell."
The maiden moved slowly away. "At the Goblins Fair." With a single backward glance she departed.
Shimrod thoughtfully watched her retreating form... From behind him came a roaring sound, as of many voices raised in fury. He felt the thud of heavy footsteps, and stood paralyzed, unable to move or look over his shoulder.
He awoke on his couch at Trilda, heart pumping and throat tight. The time was the darkest hour of the night, long before dawn could even be imagined. The fire had guttered low in the fireplace. All to be seen of Grofinet, softly snoring in his deep cushion was a foot and a lank tail.
Shimrod built up the fire and returned to his couch. He lay listening to sounds of the night. From across the meadow came a sad sweet whistle, of a bird awakened, perhaps by an owl.
Shimrod closed his eyes and so slept the remainder of the night.
The time of the Goblins Fair was close at hand. Shimrod packed all his magical apparatus, books, librams, philtres and operators into a case, upon which he worked a spell of obfuscation, so that the case was first shrunk, then turned in from out seven times to the terms of a secret sequence, so as finally to resemble a heavy black brick which Shimrod hid under the hearth.
Grofinet watched from the doorway in total perplexity. "Why do you do all this?"
"Because I must leave Trilda for a short period, and thieves will not steal what they cannot find."
Grofinet pondered the remark, his tail twitching first this way then that, in synchrony with his thoughts. "This, of course, is a prudent act. Still, while I am on guard, no thief would dare so much as to look in this direction."
"No doubt," said Shimrod, "but with double precautions our property is doubly safe."
Grofinet, had no more to say, and went outside to survey the meadow. Shimrod took occasion to effect a third precaution and installed a House Eye high in the shadows where it might survey household events.
Shimrod packed a small knapsack and went to issue final instructions to Grofinet, who lay dozing in the sunlight. "Grofinet, a last word!"
Grofinet raised his head. "Speak; I am alert."