Not To Mention Camels by R. A. Lafferty

Author:R. A. Lafferty [Lafferty, R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473213562
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2016-01-28T21:00:00+00:00

9

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew

You know how that camel does it? He just closes one of his own eyes and flops back his ears and plunges right through. A camel is mighty narrow when he closes one eye and flops back his ears. Besides, they use a big-eyed needle in the act.

Narrow Valley

This was in one of the narrow provinces of the country of those who have just died. It was at a place sometimes called the Iron Meadows and sometimes called the Camel’s Eye; the most straitened portion of this place was known as the Narrow Corner.

There were three figures coming up the steep, dangerous, and molten path where it climbed toward the Narrow Corner at an angle that sighted into the lowering iron sky above. One of these three had been a powerful cult figure in another place, and now appeared in most peculiar outline. It was not in fuzzy outline; it seemed to be expressed in a number of sharp and clear outlines superimposed. It was like a clear figure seen by double vision, by triple vision, by dozen vision. But no detail of it was smudged.

Thus the creature, according to its various outlines, might sometimes be taken for an ape, at other times a teras, or a Groll’s Troll, or a tityrus, or one of the sorts of man, an Enacian, a frog. This pan-morphous creature seemed brittle and unplastic, and yet he could have been manipulated.

The two other creatures coming up the garish, steep, scorching path were an ariel and a dog. These had once been a human brother and sister who had served the first figure in his cult. Indeed, they were still in human form, but the impression they gave was of a dog and an ariel. These two moved with a sort of leashed fury, and all three of the climbing creatures were dangerous and fanged.

Confronting them above were three other figures. One was an ape-shaped human who had once been called the Holy Knacker. One was a wrathy person who in life had born the cognomen of Wut. One was a demented and furious child who, in another place, had been born to parents named Pym.

“Easy, easy,” said the climbing ariel in her controlled fury. “Those waiting above are as wary of us as we are of them. We will fill their eyes with murk and be invisible to them. But our eyes will see.”

It was a battle for centrality, then. From which boxlike head would which eyes look out to establish themselves as the center?

It was the pan-morphous cult figure climbing up the smoky path from below who won the first slight advantage for his party. The eyes of this pan-morphic (he had jeweled eyes or cracked-glass eyes) established the field of battle and made it conform to their own vision. So those above were purblind and made to move in a private darkness.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.