by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

“ Her fingers clung to his almost desperately, and her unhappy little face looked up at his so that she stumbled as she pulled him out of the room and down the hall to the door. And then they were running across the grass, with danger making the air electric behind them from the forest.
The shining flowers flashed past underfoot. The Shaking Lands loomed up dim before them, grey air wavering in a wall beyond the sunshine, and the earth shifting beneath it. ”

“ The breath of ancient life stirred in it as I looked in that dim radiance at the Golden Apple and it winked back at me, many-eyed, cold-eyed, all the loveliness of the past compressed into an orb no larger than my hands could compass. In the darkness it gathered all the faint glow of the blackout lamp and shone like a sun that might rise above magic lands.
Argyle's voice roused me. "Can you work the spring?" ”

“ Here were the trees and fountains he had seen in the bright pages of Froissart and twined into the capitals of old Malorian texts. The lawn was strewn with the same unreal, flat flowers that Botticelli painted beneath the feet of his dancing nymphs. And over the grass a girl was hurrying now. .
She was very slim in the bell of her swaying skirts, and she was blindingly golden in the sunlight, the gown standing out about her stiff with the richness of its embossed and embroidered fabric. ”

“ She led him by the hand into the castle hall and through it into a round, paneled room with a desk in its center and a quill pen sitting in a little carved box of sand. There was parchment paper on the desk, and a well of purple ink.
"These are the Sorcerer's," said the girl. "But I think he must be dead. . . . You can only come back if you remember, so you must write down the way and the secret of the pomander, and write down what lies inside the Shaking Land, so you will know your promise again, and remember me. . . . ”

“ There was no counterpart for the thinker of that terrible thought in any medieval picture he had ever seen. A dumb, blind, murderous thought, keen as a sword in the sunlight, but keen for killing and for no other purpose. ”

“ Sharp and keen through the quiet the thought of murder flashed. A bright crimson thought, so that Argyle could almost see the color in the air. It was time to go. Time to go fast! He stuffed the crackling sheets into the pomander. ”

“ It seems that some time in the middle ages an unknown craftsman had made a pomander—a golden ball crusted with semi-precious stones, meant to hold perfumes. It was said to be a masterpiece of its type; the workman must have been very nearly as good as Cellini. The thing was hollow, and there was an ingenious secret spring concealed in the filigree. It had been so well concealed that the trick of opening the ball up was a lost art, apparently, up to 1890 or thereabouts when some museum curator—the fellow who'd written all this dope—borrowed the pomander for exhibition and decided to have a try. ”

“ Nothing ever dies here except those from outside."
"And what," demanded Argyle, "do they die of?"
"They die of the Snake," the girl told him thoughtfully, and looked down at the yellow flower. "The Sorceror put it here when he built the world. ”

“ You'll be able to see better in a few minutes, when you get used to the dark. I've got a lamp here, you'll notice."
■ I looked, but scarcely saw it at first—one of those tiny blackout lamps that seems only to make black blacker by contrast. In its almost invisible glow I could glimpse only the vague shadows of furniture and the outline of my companion, who seemed to be slightly built—I couldn't tell any more than that yet.
I heard him cross the room, his shoes squeaking faintly, and I heard glass clink.
"Drink? We can manage a straight one even in the dark, I think." ”