“In the wrong direction,” said Polecrab.

Maskull gave him a strange look.  “How so?”

“I don’t speak from my own wisdom,” said Polecrab, “for I have none; but I have just now recalled what Broodviol once told me, when I was a young man, and he was an old one.  He said that Crystalman tries to turn all things into one, and that whichever way his shapes march, in order to escape from him, they find themselves again face to face with Crystalman, and are changed into new crystals.  But that this marching of shapes (which we call ‘forking’) springs from the unconscious desire to find Surtur, but is in the opposite direction to the right one.  For Surtur’s world does not lie on this side of the one, which was the beginning of life, but on the other side; and to get to it we must repass through the one.  But this can only be by renouncing our self-life, and reuniting ourselves to the whole of Crystalman’s world.  And when this has been done, it is only the first stage of the journey; though many good men imagine it to be the whole journey....  As far as I can remember, that is what Broodviol said, but perhaps, as I was then a young and ignorant man, I may have left out words which would explain his meaning better.”

Maskull, who had listened attentively to all this, remained thoughtful at the end.

“It’s plain enough,” he said.  “But what did he mean by our reuniting ourselves to Crystalman’s world?  If it is false, are we to make ourselves false as well?”

“I didn’t ask him that question, and you are as well qualified to answer it as I am.”

“He must have meant that, as it is, we are each of us living in a false, private world of our own, a world of dreams and appetites and distorted perceptions.  By embracing the great world we certainly lose nothing in truth and reality.”

Polecrab withdrew his feet from the water, stood up, yawned, and stretched his limbs.

“I have told you all I know,” he said in a surly voice.  “Now let me go to sleep.”

Maskull kept his eyes fixed on him, but made no reply.  The old man let himself down stiffly on to the ground, and prepared to rest.

While he was still arranging his position to his liking, a footfall sounded behind the two men, coming from the direction of the forest.  Maskull twisted his neck, and saw a woman approaching them.  He at once guessed that it was Polecrab’s wife.  He sat up, but the fisherman did not stir.  The woman came and stood in front of them, looking down from what appeared a great height.

Her dress was similar to her husband’s, but covered her limbs more.  She was young, tall, slender, and strikingly erect.  Her skin was lightly tanned, and she looked strong, but not at all peasantlike.  Refinement was stamped all over her.  Her face had too much energy of expression for a woman, and she was not beautiful.  Her three great eyes kept flashing and glowing.  She had great masses of fine, yellow hair, coiled up and fastened, but so carelessly that some of the strands were flowing down her back.