next day, to the Trees, taking with me meat, wool, and
curdled milk, as I had promised. We found the Magic Knives laid out on
the grass, as the Children of the Night had promised. They watched us
from among the Trees. Their Priestess called to me and said, "How is it
with your people?" I said "Their hearts are changed. I cannot see their
hearts as I used to." She said, "That is because you have only one eye.
Come to me and I will be both your eyes." But I said, "I must show my
people how to use their knives against The Beast, as you showed me how
to use my knife." I said this because the Magic Knife does not balance
like the flint. She said, "What you have done, you have done for the
sake of a woman, and not for the sake of your people." I asked of her,
"Then why did the God accept my right eye, and why are you so angry?"
She answered, "Because any man can lie to a God, but no man can lie to
a woman. And I am not angry with you. I am only very sorrowful for you.
Wait a little, and you will see out of your one eye why I am sorry." So
she hid herself.

'I went back with my people, each one carrying his Knife, and making
it sing in the air--tssee-sssse. The Flint never sings. It
mutters--ump-ump. The Beast heard. The Beast saw. He knew! Everywhere
he ran away from us. We all laughed. As we walked over the grass my
Mother's brother--the Chief on the Men's Side--he took off his Chief's
necklace of yellow sea-stones.'

'How? Eh? Oh, I remember! Amber,' said Puck.

'And would have put them on my neck. I said, "No, I am content. What
does my one eye matter if my other eye sees fat sheep and fat children
running about safely?" My Mother's brother said to them, "I told you he
would never take such things." Then they began to sing a song in the Old
Tongue--The Song of Tyr. I sang with them, but my Mother's brother said,
"This is your song, O Buyer of the Knife. Let us sing it, Tyr."

'Even then I did not understand, till I saw that--that no man stepped
on my shadow; and I knew that they thought me to be a God, like the God
Tyr, who gave his right hand to conquer a Great Beast.'

'By the Fire in the Belly of the Flint was that so?' Puck rapped out.

'By my Knife and the Naked Chalk, so it was! They made way for my shadow
as though it had been a Priestess walking to the Barrows of the Dead.
I was afraid. I said to myself, "My Mother and my Maiden will know I am
not Tyr." But still I was afraid, with the fear of a man who falls