The Uncrowned King

For many, many, weary months the Pilgrim journeyed in the wide and pathless Desert ofFacts. So many indeed were the months that the wayworn Pilgrim, himself, came at last toforget their number. And always, for the Pilgrim, the sky by day was a sky of brass, softened not by so much as awreath of cloud mist. Always, for him, the hot air was stirred not by so much as the lift of awild bird's wing. Never, for him, was the awful stillness of the night broken by voice of hiskind, by foot-fall of beast, or by rustle of creeping thing. For the toiling Pilgrim in the vastand pathless Desert of Facts there was no kindly face, no friendly fire. Only the stars weremany--many and very near. Day after day, as the Pilgrim labored onward, through the torturing heat, under the sky ofbrass, he saw on either hand lakes of living waters and groves of many palms. And thewaters called him to their healing coolness: the palms beckoned him to their restful shadeand shelter. Night after night, in the dreadful solitude, frightful Shapes came on silent feetout of the silent darkness to stare at him with doubtful, questioning, threatening eyes;drawing back at last, if he stood still, as silently as they had come, or, if he advanced, vanishing quickly, only to reappear as silently in another place. But the Pilgrim knew that the enchanting scenes that lured him by day were but pictures inthe heated air. He knew that the fearful Shapes that haunted him by night were butcreatures of his own overwrought fancy. And so he journeyed on and ever on, in thestaggering heat, under the sky of brass, in the awful stillness of the night: on and ever on, through the wide and pathless waste, until he came at last to the Outer-Edge-Of-Things--came to the place that is between the Desert of Facts and the Beautiful Sea, even as it iswritten in the Law of the Pilgrimag