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Reaperneep stood his ground in the face of the stranger before them, with sword drawn as his usual precaution when confronted with someone unknown to him.
“Why do you not draw your own sword, poltroon!” cheeped the Mouse. “Draw and fight like a Man!”
“Why should I fight against you, Little One?” a gentle Voice answered him.
“Do I understand,” said Reaperneep, withdrawing his sword for a moment and speaking very sternly, “that you do not intend to give me satisfaction?”
“Indeed not,” Mogūl replied, and it seemed to the Mouse that a light radiated from behind him. “I intend to show you the way to your greatest hope.”
“And just what do you think that is?” he queried sceptically.
“I can lead you to the eastern end of the world,” the Velour declared. “From East, across the sea, the great Blue Wizard ever comes to us. There you will find his own country.”
“So the end of the world is eastwards after all,” Reaperneep breathed ecstatically. “I knew it! Blue Wizard, you say? Isn’t a Wizard dangerous?”
“So am I, and you are dangerous as well, to your foes,” Mogūl answered. “Yet those who know how to speak with him will find wisdom in his words.”
The Mouse mused thoughtfully, “A wise woman of the woods, Silverberry was her name, once spoke this verse over me:
Where East and West met,
Where on waves dances flet,
Doubt not, Reaperneep;
To find all you seek,
Go unto the utter East.
“I do not know what it means. But the spell of it has been on me all my life.”
He turned his face eastwards, and it seemed to him that he saw from afar a wall that stood up between him and the sky, a greenish-grey, trembling, shimmering wall. Then up came the sun, and at its first rising he saw it through the wall and it turned into wonderful rainbow colours. Then he knew that the wall was really a long, tall wave – a wave endlessly fixed in one place as you may often see at the edge of a waterfall. Beyond the sun he saw a range of mountains, so high that he either never saw the top of it or forgot it. And those mountains must have been outside the world. Suddenly there came a breeze from the east, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes and ruffling the smooth water all round him.
Enchanted, he walked toward the Eastern light.
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