XVTHE WATER OF BOUNCEABILITY
PETERKIN turned his face at once towards the hazy line of hills which loomed through the darkness. He must escape over their crests while night was still here. He must take a sip—as the Princess Clem had taught him—of that purple liquid from the little vial in his hand.
Carefully he uncorked the bottle—and sniffed. What a sweet, fragrant odor! He touched his tongue to the rim. It was like melted candy—yet the taste of it stung like fire. His limbs seemed to twitch and throb at the touch.
He drew a long breath—and gulped down a gurgling mouthful of the Water of Bounceability.
Immediately he knew that he might jump—mustjump—jump anywhere, up into the sky, where the stars were, and over the distant hills. He made a little run, a hop, and then—up he went sailing far across the hilltops, down into the valley on the other side. The whole leap took but a moment: no more time than it takes the fluff of a withered dandelion to fly across a lawn.
Yet here he was thirty leagues or more from his starting place, in a strange, new valley! He wondered what the name of it could be.... It was such a wild and woody-looking place. He could not see very much, of course, for the stars gave little light, and the moon was but a thin, pale crescent. But he saw that all was tangled forests here and that wild, thorny heather and tall weeds had spread across what should have been clean meadows. An old road went across the heath, but it was overgrown with ferns and brambles and ditched with great muddy pools as if no one mended or repaired it—and no one traveled it. It was all a vast desert of waste and decay, hid by the dark of the night.
Peterkin knew how useless it would be to try to make his way forward before morning. So he lay down under the branches of the trees and slept.
But early the next day, before the sun was up, Peterkin had started on his way. A difficult journey it was, too, along the deserted road. There were puddles to wade and vines to skip and rocky barriers to climb. There were rutswhere the leaves of the past autumn had buried themselves in a soggy mass or where the summer dust had sifted into foolish heaps. There were trunks of fallen trees across the road, and lizards, frogs and hedge-hogs crawled or hopped or ran beside them. All was desolate and wild. It was a valley of mysterious decay.
Then, at last, where the road slanted down to meet another long stretch of brown heathered fields, Peterkin spied a house. A huge, tall house, too, which must have been a splendid mansion once upon a time. But now it was shabby and needed paint. The bricks of its walls were losing their mortar; the slates of the roof were falling to the ground; none of the windows had curtains and few of them glass. There was moss upon the steps and in the eaves. The chimney pots were crumbled, and the lawn was high with choking weeds.
Peterkin wondered, Could anyone live here?
As if in answer to his question, a little boy came around the corner of the house. He came slowly, though he never stopped or hesitated a moment when he was within sight of Peterkin. He stumbled unsteadily through the weeds, with his hands held out before him. His face was handsome, truly—but his hair was in a fearful tousle over his eyes and his clothes were all in rags.
“No wonder you can’t see a thing,” laughed Peterkin. “Take your hair out of your eyes!”
The little boy stopped short at the sound of a voice. He nodded his head sadly.
“What are eyes?” he asked. “I know I have two of them—but what use are they? Won’t you tell me, stranger?”
“Why, silly!” roared Peterkin. “Eyes are to see with!”
The little boy smiled more sadly than before. “No,” he sighed. “If you can see with your eyes, you are not of this valley. For I am blind. And so are my father and my mother, and all our neighbors, too. And so is everybody in this valley. All of us are blind!”