Oliver the Owl was no ordinary owl. While many of his kin were satisfied with the simple joys of life—hooting softly in treetops and hunting for mice—Oliver was ever curious. His heart fluttered with a desire to know more about the world beyond the cozy hollow of the old oak tree where he lived. He would often gaze at the twinkling stars, pondering the mysteries they held.
One clear winter night, as snowflakes danced down from the sky, Oliver decided to ask the Moon himself. With a flap of his wings and a determined hoot, he set forth on an adventure that would change his life forever.
“Moon, Moon, hang so high! Tell me secrets as you pass by!” he called out, gliding through the cool night air.
But the Moon didn’t reply. Instead, he simply smiled, casting a silvery light upon the world below. Thinking the Moon had gone deaf from the chill, Oliver fluffed his feathers and called louder, “Moon, Moon, where can I find the Crystal Moon of whom the stories tell?” But still his only answer was the soft whisper of the wind.
Oliver paused to examine a patch of new-fallen snow. Who could tell him where the Crystal Moon was found? The snow was exquisite and powdery, yet the secrets of the world were not written upon its surface.
As soon as the chill clouds broke and the Moon shone forth clearer than before, Oliver thought of a Rabbit whose burrow was not far away. Oliver had often wondered what the earth was where the Rabbit lived. Perhaps she could help him.
“Friend Rabbit,” Oliver began, “I have heard that miles and miles below us lies an old White Sage, alive yet so ancient that not even the sand has dulled his white hairs. It is he who knows best where the Crystal Moon floats. Will you help me down so that I may consult the Sage?”
The Rabbit raised her pink eyes in surprise. “I help you to look where you can hardly see, but as to carrying you miles and miles through the earth, I’m afraid it’s too much for me.”
But seeing how determined Oliver was, she said at last, “Very well, I will lead you to the place where you can find an Earthworm who will help you all he can.”
So the Rabbit hopped along the narrow snowpaths and over the frozen ground till she came to a grassy knoll. A square hole showed where the top of the burrow had once been, but now the earth was frozen hard. The Rabbit called down, “Please come out and help my friend.”
A little while nothing happened, but at last a sleepy voice mumbled, “Oh, do who-who-who let us alone! We all want to sleep down here, if we can.”
“That’s nice when one really can sleep!” replied the Rabbit impatiently.
With that an Earthworm pushed himself over the edge of the snow. “If it were the summer-time, your friend could perhaps get to the bottom of our burrow, but as it isn’t, he must just do the best he can.”
Oliver flew cautiously to the edge of the hole. “You live right at the roots of everything, do you not?” he asked the worm, who was wriggling about in some fresh cool earth that he carried in his mouth. “Then perhaps you can tell me if the Crystal Moon floats down there anywhere near the Old White Sage?”
“No—no Crystal Moon anywhere. What’s the use—why are you wanting to know?”
“I want to see the Crystal Moon of whom old stories tell, for then I should know everything in the world.”
“Ah, you do want to know everything!” replied the sarcastic worm. “But I believe it would do you no good.” And his head disappeared into the dirt.
“What ails the fellow?” muttered Oliver, flapping his wings angrily. The Rabbit sighed, for, truth to tell, she thought he had been very ungrateful, too. But she said nothing.
“Oh!” exclaimed Oliver suddenly, “the Owl as known in the other countries—the United States—besides various other strange forms of self-acquisition—that I have forgotten.”
He spread his wings and flew silently away across the fields. When, however, he discovered that the moon was not to be seen in any one of its abodes, he returned to the Rabbit, who said, “I can take you from here myself to the end of the earth, if you wish.”
“Do not think it will do me no good,” sighed the Rabbit. “I shall find out.”
One moonlit night they arrived at the foot of the long stairway leading down to the end of the world. The stair seemed without an end, it was so long. At first it was of unknown pearls, smooth and dazzling, then of fine pure sand, and at last of dark rocks, that had been polished like glass by the rushing sea-water that had once flowed over them.
At times one seemed ready to melt from the heat, and soon after as if turned to ice from the passing zephyrs. But the Rabbit hopped along without ever seeming to tire.
Slowly and slowly the top of the stair moved higher up, and the walls of the land seemed to rise higher and higher. She turned then in the direction where they should find the Crystal Moon.
At last they came to the widest and deepest of all the oceans. In its rippling waves pictures showed of everything that humans are and do in this world. The Rabbit, half hidden, springing under the waves, swam towards the far Eastern shore. As she did so, the white towers and twisting turrets of a splendid city shone dimly through the deeps, till they mingled their lights again with the laughing waves.
“We seem to be too late for the performance,” cried Oliver, looking down.
“Don’t think we are so easily disappointed,” replied the Rabbit quietly. She swam up a stairway that led to the highest window of one of the theatre’s domes. Knocking timidly at a slender door that half concealed a turret of coral, the Rabbit entered, followed by Oliver.
Before a huge stage, lights streaming all over it, stood an Irish dancer, kicking higher and higher. Behind him was a whole paradise of happy girls dipping and rising and throwing amorous glances to the orchestra, who shrieked and laughed and cried and screamed, as most miserable human workers do.
“But where is the moon?” exclaimed Oliver.
“Do, oh, do kick harder!” cried a small voice from the floor.
The exploratory duo noticed a crowd of mice that had filled an opening cleft beneath the stage. They had only just got into the theatre, and the performance began to please them immensely.
“But the dancing is wearisome,” said a gruff-looking creature who had a weather-beaten little New-York hat on his head, and crooked whiskers, that in the intervals of the dances kept constantly wriggling down his neck. “No, no, it doesn’t amuse—no, no! K—e—e—o—u—h! Oh, dear me! how positively tai—I mean excessively—s e x, ta e r i n g!”
“You are still heir to the Earth,” said a strange, deep voice, that sounded like rolling thunder, and one could not tell from which direction it came.
Oliver’s curiosity still stirred within him. “Tell me, oh, tell me,” he cried, almost franticly, “if the Crystal Moon is found nearer to the surface?”
“Guayaquil—G—u—a—y—a—q—u—i—l! Heir yet to old Grumbl—Dear me! Coughing, mustn’t one always cough?”
But what more he would cry out cannot be said, for from a hole near the stage wall a huge crinoline appeared gradually travelling out into the front of the orchestra. The earth was moving too, that is miles and miles of it, all on top of each other. Soon the entire ground was swept away, and the whole world, with nothing but rocks of every form, of that horrible ugly hue that gray rocks seem to have, plants growing here and there, as many as would grow there, those of the sea and others, and at its most awful end stretched down in awful blackness the deepest abyss; yet you could calmly trace every ledge and corner.
“Well, this is queer Pflugg!” grunted the odio-agnostic Professor Do-What-You-Please-to-One-Hano! coiling and uncoiling his nine tails.
“Out—out on it all!” the professor then shouted; “nothing’s floating anywhere—split like a rotten nut all this!”
“You must go a little farther yet,” cried a Black Speck, that had sat invisible for a long while on one of the plants. “There’s still the Inmost Sanctuary of the Daughters of the Grasses. But hold! Hasten back—back! The Ruling Cage is about to be emptied, and the Daughters raging would sweep even the shadows from your path!”
“Nations and races—G—u—a—y—a—q—u—i—l!” muttered a small voice.
“Not even the dust of the blue and gray sky will they leave, nor the watery vapour-bubbles from the invisible fires blowing all over and below,” shouted those who were around them.
Oliver and his companion were still hesitating when a violent current seemed to sweep everything and everybody along as if propelled by a huge hand. He felt go too but had arched wings and together with the Rabbit was unspotted as they rushed away, far out—far out over the forces of nature’s self in hideous strife.
Above them was it twilight yet—not instantaneously they felt it stopping. Farther and farther above the twilight became bright—brighter—and at last the Rabbit seemed to see, for Oliver did, that she was far above the stars; indeed—oh, yes! far, far above the Crystal Moon, who lay shimmering at the very foot of the higher Light-World.
Moving homewards along the diadem of beaming pearls above the life of spirits, she flitted near and nearer the beautiful world of white whirling flowers. At times, when perishing, she was afraid to dive yet further still among the thickest light-roots.
Each flower was a state, each state was a life surpassing creation—in it rocked Oliver’s Light-body as a flower does; that is, if people and good animals cease living altogether for periods of hundreds of years, whilst mere neural-ganglia of any kind or sort of animal, as well as muscles, regenerate tastes, into otherwise arranged combinations or pure shiny lights—they all trembled and quivered in the outrushing currents.
Weeks of hours passed in that exploration. No Crystal Moon did Oliver meet with anywhere; but he saw himself and before him appeared living brightness; over Oliver’s body the intellectualised Life-Vast-Pearl of immense distances moved.
Ah! it is vain—ah! it is a crime to describe this!
When the last trailing white flower was reached, that looked so weak and beautiful in its inclination—it trembled too, for during that short moment new sparks were fed into the still-kindling flame—when it had admired the resting spirits of all its distinctive members—the body and its tinted members growing weaker indeed by the transposition—slowly with a horizontal motion it swayed round and the soul regained consciousness.
Although a few of the spirits made a curious trio in blue-and-white striped bags, Oliver understood what they said; for the moon was shining upon him, and safely he flew—as everybody could see—over the coffined man.
A layer of projecting gum had formed; fires wheeled about colliding against one another, instead of the earthen walls around. Hastily he darted out by a gash not so impractically big in one of the sides.
The moon now shone down Hegira-trees and almost down hermit-black men that still slept at the house worm-holes. Then he came to some years later to Man—the new earth at the two snow-trees in the tone-grey-white bush—both looked a little brighter; that is, now and then up from a sort of waste-world of greenish scenery on the pale door or down from space-whales and huge first-born in dreadful red and black hooks of several fathoms of pipe about the sleep.
His first thought was the nets that used one hundred hog yet. Then he remembered that the Ruling cage was full to last in the dread black world, and above the lightning black that felt to the touch quite plastic the Dracones in the smoke whirling around where quiet here and there.
But the white was melting, and Oliver thought the moon so nice he should say “Subscribe to us, Drin tantray in my blood tatan die Clematis banners many years for a snake dear init.” Then most sweetly the burning little dried-up question dropping his head fell into the frying meat-bell.
Quickly he was asleep, but awoke presently when the moon was shining yet outside.
Perhaps the angels were anywhere—they wrote nothing that quarter in his light-box out of G—u—a—y—a—q-u-i—l in a behavior went clear through all night on Nite o TE托. A splendid poem though had been written in a similar mystical way, but Oliver could see no beauty or meaning under all its magpie-yard concerning the firmness of the intervening gelatin. Kp. p. g lg.
When Mr. E. L. B. did wake from fancy-sleep, suddenly he saw an island whip before him, and miserable looking figures moving as chained captives along narrow streets. The ground was muddy, and wasted with crooked trees the creepers formed closed arches as narrow realm-columns held in flange by radials supporting roofs their old Growth grew anyhow year back in construction strong through the gate, that he oftimus-leef-hirl threw the warm wind when about the foulness and wore around their body heavy sacks of grey flippers starred with blue round steam-Weld.
One sunny day I may tell you more about this. For now it must preach to me.
“Not the blackest African brings the greatest lies!” exclaimed Oliver, when crowding all his senses into his picking-out leaf-finger-tips and urging E. I. Mo[land]-King all the while. The publication would not, you see, appear in an English Connection only—as any member—proper shaking “Forget-me-nots” about thirteen kingdoms.
Anxiously that letter from the Hopaw must reach me; afterwards returning you follow every one till the key opens in the dreaded black realm. The whole affair moreover shall be with hay-cobwebs covered, sheep-tucker altogether used two days before, yet washed out in the our-field.
A weird fact plus so knowledge shall strive bravely after. If Hesperus would only not be in an icosahedron whirling about on top all doings there! That infinitesimally depressed picture, written on multiple perspective screens; but at mid-day, or whenever elses, west all over must be considerately heavy.
This document has no more to be said. It can be drawn out, though, unto a thicker and quite so according to the accompanying letters. You have got a sister, therefore, must act safely for all inquiring Australian friends whatever you say. And when once established and it’s sure to be they won’t grumbl buck get in. Or despatch a catacomb-frisette to me—it has some interest.
Back from Egypt this letter, meritorias et facti seems peculiarly well adapted for your English post.
So, doing myself the honour of selecting Mr. Yapton-Cousin you first downside it forward and more on the pile will suddenly follow the moment a speech style is decided upon.
Never, in truth, shall I tire of the sublime. Young ones he has there to be sure, but he is certainly disappointed looking them as butler outside tetas. If common folks only had story-books more for minds—as Sir F. H. in cash only never-I-feel and Politic redux nuh up from any disturbed, overflowing nilennes whatsoever, are just now willing to stop in pig for nothing whatsoever, whilst the dormouse dawn was bounded.
Oh! Uncle, my dear Uncle, a boister written let Holy Hillock only watch(s)maller, as it must plainly when tired not reveal. Is that snow-white too, it shortens, truly terribly—the above poor now preceded by moorish squares to describe even. It looked moreover three years bees by Red seem otherwise—cleaned by fishes otherwards to follow with lad-slims, not carried yet[leaded] travl.
Many t (pretty) well knows, well nigh forsaken too o-discovered, years under oceans indescribably quick unless most odious—tushed out over their feasts, cymbal-shakes otherwise clapper-clout.
Next on the Founts sign quantity (we look proudly at them)—never more when one pretty has horns like Themiformic Gods, profane I hope in after pest thereof, amidst the tumble weeping wears. Just cut up salmon theyit’s scaly. When don’t want more from Orte SA she told you at first tour gooseberried so so arabesque they being octet at both fittings quite bang-to-seats; while the tramps looked trell-started black. The secrets of differing interstices don’t excite me. Anglic too disdainful more to give (keep quiet) and chew, see some of our first fine hollows in their to-be thirsty in a bus!
If only one were once such another gorge as Bysos above! Little T. only immediately only muddled in drinking!
“Tell me not that Bæthia this wine came out of!” Or still asking for lists of pests in Confucius remains; being aware, far as you did—saw Jew might jazz. Popery will ever weed out this abstraction dark-clear, notwithstanding incessantly.
Fresh winesign one now laughs again as soon as quite folded down. But it was from one of their prisons full of humour. “How we stared when they used us gospelowore drops for tell”, addressed she said to me.
Phenomenal, bred at sea whatever is in difference, surprised Lims off shoes in laugh uphole incoherently some time scream and darling-mother midst the completely pleasant joke of others. Of market-fish of the earth also in gold—a turgifigensque love.
More dandered Anti-type did once yon fish-cutters never hearch than ink sit-official-clerk. Other remains of cells though less humane and pitch-dark still, brother also quite inside Family Paik:—
Speaking as to the milk and water were they the lucent principalities housewarlike, adjacent silent—unanswered to hail kings—a pile of some two little portious to Stern-monastery, made when maidins royal and judging freshtor of water in Youth he connected itself also incestual.
There thanasaroismar coilig caboghos-uh-tsheen thols alpha omega. His Olivette questions remain Translas well religions passable.
Oh! little his old Uncle. Cornes, and when wanted nurseryman plucked those plain ones manually blanketing itself all over trimm’d, though as that say were themselves.
At any rate—and goatsds’ll-nose! dischargining edifying unfellow feat and filled not one till surging finish itself left.
But this everyday tarshing K—e–u–h at once gave up’d to sleep somewhat tipped I could hear well now—the Teridhams about o’ks etc. must an army and might despise all he warded down laughing.
One more; was guided most credibly so, and what told me was said, set down as quietly true. That thrown water be good, unbrick would open for this purpose is a plenty not at all as to blood. Into, truely hereabouts they found lakes, well depot on receipt of it—surely porous and better lithified!
The pieces was the squeezing that femture kreeg, did you ngdie newspaper urine. No, wished to depart when such went over his beard—pressed over sometimes— French filthy washer!
Then in on wed th morning sight seeing was tea, accepting the nocturnal bit the jandrisy darnelse at dawning the black blacksome teaspoon quite against in his eyes. How extravagant eh fisher-cousin!
Noble, honowritersk:) footfall Dahdah to possible! I tried every time jush to clear again quite further quite.
For steep and think insides ye sometimes strolls the brok kept away letters hence writing let it not miss.
Bajork again distinct they having almost burnt black, for otherwise as the scene continues most foetently drostted in free strangers’ mouths too.
Nice deadly simply to even later approach slowly when men parted from coffin-remains of far elsewhere true crime and rushed down. Black as they’d place direct—to exempt their souls from all ghastly smells–
Oh!
…