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his enemy, shot him with an arrow from a bow that he had made out of bamboo,
and took his pretty lily up the hill and offered it to the Goddess of
Abundance in her temple Aoul Keroon. And the Goddess was pleased with the
gift, as all women are, and sent pleasant dreams to Ap Ariph for seven
nights straight from the moon.
And on the seventh night the gods held conclave together, on the cloudy
peaks they held it, above Narn, Ktoon, and Pti. So high their peak arises
that no man heard their voices. They spake on that cloudy mountain (not the
highest hamlet heard them). "What doth the Goddess of Abundance," (but
naming her Lling, as they name her), "what doth she sending sweet dreams for
seven nights to Ap Ariph?"
And the gods sent for their seer who is all eyes and feet, running to and
fro on the Earth, observing the ways of men, seeing even their littlest
doings, never deeming a doing too little, but knowing the web of the gods is
woven of littlest things. He it is that sees the cat in the garden of
parakeets, the thief in the upper chamber, the sin of the child with the
honey, the women talking indoors and the small hut's innermost things.
Standing before the gods he told them the case of Ap Ariph and the wrongs of
Meoul Ki Ning and the rape of the lotus lily; he told of the cutting and
making of Ap Ariph's bamboo bow, of the shooting of Meoul Ki Ning, and of
how the arrow hit him, and the smile on the face of Lling when she came by
the lotus bloom.
And the gods were wroth with Ap Ariph and swore to avenge Ki Ning.
And the ancient one of the gods, he that is older than Earth, called up the
thunder at once, and raised his arms and cried out on the gods' high windy
mountain, and prophesied on those rocks with runes that were older than
speech, and sang in his wrath old songs that he had learned in storm from
the sea, when only that peak of the gods in the whole of the earth was dry;
and he swore that Ap Ariph should die that night, and the thunder raged
about him, and the tears of Lling were vain.
The lightning stroke of the gods leaping earthward seeking Ap Ariph passed
near to his house but missed him. A certain vagabond was down from the
hills, singing songs in the street near by the house of Ap Ariph, songs of a
former folk that dwelt once, they say, in those valleys, and begging for
rice and curds; it was him the lightning hit.
And the gods were satisfied, and their wrath abated, and their thunder
rolled away and the great black clouds dissolved, and the ancient one of the
gods went back to his age-old sleep, and morning came, and the birds and the
light shone on the mountain, and the peak stood clear to see, the serene
home of the gods.




Tales of Three Hemispheres -- Chapter 7




THE GIFT OF THE GODS