e on the horizon, and told me it was Swaylone's Island.
Men sometimes go there, but none ever return. In the evening of the
same day we found Broodviol standing in a deep, miry pit in the forest,
surrounded on all sides by trees three hundred feet high. He was a big
gnarled, rugged, wrinkled, sturdy old man. His age at that time was a
hundred and twenty of our years, or nearly six hundred of yours. His
body was trilateral: he had three legs, three arms, and six eyes, placed
at equal distances all around his head. This gave him an aspect of
great watchfulness and sagacity. He was standing in a sort of trance.
I afterward heard this saying of his: 'To lie is to sleep, to sit is to
dream, to stand is to think.' My father caught the infection, and fell
into meditation, but my mother roused them both thoroughly. Broodviol
scowled at her savagely, and demanded what she required. Then I
too learned for the first time the object of our journey. I was a
prodigy--that is to say, I was without sex. My parents were troubled
over this, and wished to consult the wisest of men.

"Old Broodviol smoothed his face, and said, 'This perhaps will not be so
difficult. I will explain the marvel. Every man and woman among us is a
walking murderer. If a male, he has struggled with and killed the female
who was born in the same body with him--if a female, she has killed the
male. But in this child the struggle is still continuing.'

"'How shall we end it?' asked my mother.

"'Let the child direct its will to the scene of the combat, and it will
be of whichever sex it pleases.'

"'You want, of course, to be a man, don't you?' said my mother to me
earnestly.

"'Then I shall be slaying your daughter, and that would be a crime.'

"Something in my tone attracted Broodviol's notice.

"'That was spoken, not selfishly, but magnanimously. Therefore the male
must have spoken it, and you need not trouble further. Before you arrive
home, the child will be a boy.'

"My father walked away out of sight. My mother bent very low before
Broodviol for about ten minutes, and he remained all that time looking
kindly at her.

"I heard that shortly afterward Alppain came into that land for a few
hours daily. Broodviol grew melancholy, and died.

"His prophecy came true--before we reached home, I knew the meaning of
shame. But I have often pondered over his words since, in later
years, when trying to understand my own nature; and I have come to the
conclusi