Ten years later, JM was into exceptional children, still. Lucky is bracketed with Henrietta for
reasons of logic rather than chronology. JM's first story written around a cover: Fantastic Stories
of Imagination—April, 1962.

                                   The Shrine of Temptation
     The name his own people called him was Lallayall. That was, of course, just his calling-name, and
because it meant almost the same thing that he meant to us, we called him Lucky.
     This was no transgression of courtesy, or culture-arrogance on our part. His true name, after the
fashion of his people, was already long, and growing, a descriptive catalogue useful only for records and
ritual occasions. A calling-name may be anything derived from the whole, so long as it suits, and the
called one will answer it. Lucky was delighted to have a new nickname from us, in our language.
     He was, when we came to the island, just eight years old as we reckon. His people count differently;
to them, he was halfway through his Third Decade; in five more seasons, he would undergo the
Apprenticeship Rites that would end his first age. Either way, he was just past the midpoint between
babyhood and puberty. Like most of his race—and all others but us on the island—he was
brown-skinned and dark-eyed, black-haired. Like most of his age, he was eager, questioning, rational,
mystical, obedient, rebellious,-clumsy and courteous, graceful and quick. Like too few of them, he was
generally happy and always healthy, serenely certain of parental love, highly intelligent and well-informed.
     Certain of these things, and all of them to a degree, were the product of island culture. Lucky lived in
a world he accepted as having been designed primarily for his own benefit and, largely, it had. Among his
people, there were no fears, hungers, troubles, or questions that could not be voiced, and none—within
the limits of the island's capacity—that would not be answered to the best extent of the child's
understanding. All children were swift and bright; but among them, Lucky was especially blessed. Thus,
his name.
     He was the first in his age group to find his apprenticeship. When we came, he already knew what he
wanted. A short time before that, he had spent his days, like the others, wandering from hunters to
planners to makers to teachers to planters to singers, spreading' his wonders and askings impartially. The
others still wandered, multiply curious, questioning the weavers and fishers and carpenters, healers and
painters and crafters of food. It might be three or four seasons yet until, one by one, they singled out the
preferred occupations to which they'd be bound in training at First Rites.
     But Lucky already knew what he wanted. Before we came, he went, day after day, to the Shrine, or
the House of Shrinemen, squatting patiently in the courtyard, waiting for the chance to carry sand (for
stone scrubbing) or water or polishing cloths or firewood for a Shrineman, listening in silence to such talk
as was carried on in his presence, storing up questions to ask them, hallall, when the time should be ripe.
Part of each day he sat at the feet of the Figures, self-hypnotized by gleaming amber and blue, spinning
out glorious fantasies of the Rebirth.
     (His own fascination with the Shrine and Shrinemen, and the weight of mystery he gave to some
words and phrases—which I have tried to translate with capitals and occasional sonorous phrases in this
account—led us later to a misunderstanding of some proportion. But, hallall . . .)
     His persistence was already recognized in the village.
     The other children first, then his mothers and fathers, had noticed his absence from forest, fields, and
shops. Then the Shrinemen began teasing him with familiar fondness at evening gatherings and rest-day
games, so that everyone started to realize what he had chosen. And if it was something of a shock to
parents and teachers, the boy did not know it.
     Perhaps because we settled as close to the Shrine as we dared do—perhaps out of the same
fascination with the unknown that had drawn him to the Shrine—Lucky was our first and most frequent
visitor, and became, either in his own person or as interpreter, our chief source of information about both
the Shrine and the islanders. He did not, at first, realize that our preoccupation with the Shrine was as
great as his own; we did not share his confident artlessness in question-asking. I do not know just how he
explained us to himself at first, or whether he even tried to. Perhaps he just waited to learn what he
wanted to know—hallall.
     It was not passive waiting. The first day, after his first attempt to speak with us, he sat in what must
have been stunned bemusement for several hours, pondering the incredible fact of a second language.
(We saw the squatting inward-turned boy as "a stolid impassive indigene." I blush to admit that the
phrase is from my own notebook.) Then, having fully accepted that the phenomenon was
not—obviously—impossible, but only previously unknown, it was he who approached us with the
second overture.
     We were just setting up the hand bellows for blowing foam into the camp wallforms. Lucky walked
over, watched, walked away, and came back with a round stone, flattened, on one side, just right to
prop up the foot that kept slipping.
     He held it out. We all stopped and stared. George Lazslo was quickest. He reached out and took the
stone, smiling. Lucky smiled back.
     "Thank you," George said.
     The boy touched the stone. "Sannacue?" His small brown face seemed to turn gold with joy of his
smile. "Mertz," he said, tapping the stone. "Mertz–sannacue?"
     Henry started to correct him, but Jenny and I both realized at the same time that it was better to let
the error ride, and not confuse the issue. (Starting as a joke, we all got to where we found sannacue as
natural a word as stone.)
     The principle was established, and it was astonishing to us how rapidly he learned. Jenny was our
linguist, and predictably proved quicker than the rest of us in learning the island language, but when they
sat exchanging names and phrases, it was she, far more often than he, who had to be told twice. Once he
heard it, and was sure he understood, he simply did not know how to forget. (For her fascinating account
of the process, see pp. 324-359, in "Language in the Isolated Culture," Dr. Jennifer R. Boxill, S&S,
1985).
     As scion as the bare minimum of mutual language was effective, Lucky (again) initiated the next step
in cultural exchange. He had been showing up at the camp just after breakfast each morning; this day he
came an hour earlier, with a basket of woven reeds on his arm. It was my day for KP, and I was opening
a can of bacon when he came up and touched my arm, showing me the basket. "Try my food?" he said.
     The basket was filled with fresh steamed fish, still hot, each on its own new-baked half-loaf of native
meal bread. At the bottom, five small pots of blue clay—the same stuff the Guardian Figure was molded
in—held a savory vegetable sauce to be poured over fish and bread.
     It was very good, but that seemed, at the time, irrelevant. The greatest significance of the gift was
learning that our self-appointed guide and mascot was, it seemed, fully accredited in his friendship by
the—so far—invisible parents and elders of the village.
     I should say, "parents or elders," because we were uncertain. When we asked if he'd prepared the
food himself, he laughed uproariously and then said, with ostentatious patience, "Mothers cook food."
Whether he meant mothers as a class (and in this case his mother), or several women of the class,
mother, we did not know.
     Both assumptions were wrong, as it happened. He meant his mothers.
     It took us most of six months to reach a level of communication at which mistakes of this sort could
be cleared up. And from that time on, it seemed as though most of our discussions consisted of
substituting closer approximations for old misconceptions. The more we learned, the more complex was
what we had to learn. As for Lucky's wrong assumptions about us, they took even longer for him to
recognize, and more time yet for us to realize he'd had them. We had been on the island the best part of a
year before we gained any comprehension of the extent to which our presence had affected the boy
himself. And through all that time, we so carefully leaned over backwards to avoid showing special
interest in the Shrine, that we had never learned of Lucky's particular infatuation with it!
     All through our second season on the island (by their time reckoning), we were pumping a steady
flow of information out of the boy. We learned the basic economy and social structure of the island; how
to reckon seasons, and count age and status.
     He explained the system of education and apprenticeship, the courtship and marriage customs. When
he did not know answers to what we asked, he would say, "Hallall; hallall you will know." And next
day, or next week, or even next season, he would come back with the answer. Most answers, that is.
Sometimes the second answer too was, Hallall. But then, he would add, "Hallall, I shall know, and then
you too."
     We worried, occasionally, about what was happening to Lucky, in his own village—whether his
contact with us singled him out for better or worse. What we never imagined was the delight of his
parents (He had nine at the time; Dr. Henry Cogswell's article in Anthropological Review, II, 1983, pp.
19-26, gives a brief comprehensive analysis of island family relationships) and teachers and the older
people in general at the effect we had on him.
     In the pursuit of the knowledge we asked, Lucky had gone back to learn himself all the things he had
scorned to observe before we came; now he watched weavers and planters and netters of fish, masons
and flutists and arrow-makers, with a concentrated attention that he had reserved before only for matters
concerning the Shrine. The older people watched, and were pleased. They had always thought well of
the boy. He was marked as lucky from birth. When it had seemed clear he would be a Shrineman, they
had been not disappointed so much as surprised. It did not seem quite suitable for one so lavishly
endowed. Now he was learning, as they had expected, all matters of concern to the people. If it were
what he wished, he would of course be a Shrineman; but they began speaking of him now as a future
Firstman.
     The pinky strangers ("Pinkies" was what they called us.) whose advent was otherwise inexplicable
and perhaps a bit disturbing, had perhaps been sent to train a leader among the people, as the people
themselves had not known how to do.
     So they reasoned; at least, they decided, we were causing Lucky to learn what they had hoped he
would, whether that was our purpose on coming or not. At the very least, it was indirectly due to us that
they had made sure of his extraordinary capacities, which had been indicated as probable by various
features of his birth and growth, but had never before been fully displayed. (The eidetic memory was as
impressive to them as to us; and his intelligence was high, even in that high-average society. Chapter X of
Dr. G. M. Lazslo's "Environment and Intelligence," S&S, 1987, deals with our findings on the island,
for those who are interested.)
     Two of his fathers came to thank us.
     It was the first visit we had from anyone but Lucky. Out of simple courtesy, no adult would have
come into our camp without some such cause. Out of simple caution, we might never have entered their
village without that prior visit. It was our opening contact with the group as a whole.

      The fathers were overjoyed to discover that Jennie spoke their language with some proficiency. That
made it possible to dismiss Lucky and thank us without requiring him to translate praise of himself or of
his friends. We told them in return how much we admired and relied on the boy—and how very pleased
we were to learn that our influence had helped him adjust to his own world, and not put him out of tune
with it.
      This is what we meant to say, but Jennie did not know any word in their language for "adjust" or
"maladjusted." She tried "out of season," and got only smiling puzzlement. She made a long speech full of
metaphor and analogy, and finally one of them said, "Oklall?"
      Oklall, Lucky had told us, was the opposite of hallall. They seemed to think we were concerned
about Lucky yesterday, but not tomorrow. We let well enough alone at that point, and offered food
instead of conversation. Lucky rejoined us, and took obvious pride in piloting his fathers' way through the
strange meal. When they left, we had our invitation to visit the village—paradoxical when we thought of
it, since what had occasioned the thanks-paying was our previous inability to go in person.

    If the fathers had the same thought, it would not have worried them. If we understood, as we thought
we did, what hallall meant, we would have known they'd see no cause to worry. They had seen
Lallayall's potential, displayed clearly, and were naturally content to let his nature take its own course.
Hallall, he would learn all he needed to know. Hallall he would grow to his proper adult place. If he
needed help or encouragement, they would provide it. The expectations they had begun to have before
his preoccupation with the Shrine, expectations based on his birth and early growth, now seemed once
again probable. Perhaps, as time grew closer for a Rebirth, it was necessary for a future Firstman to
know more of the Shrine than was usual. His unlikely interest in Shrinemen might then mean only that he
would be Firstman at the time of a Rebirth. Lallayall—Lucky—indeed! He was well-called.
     As for us, we were too busy and excited with our new observing privileges, and more than that, with
the news of Lucky's special concern with the Shrine, to think of the oddity of that tomorrow-yesterday
misunderstanding. We assumed, from his fathers' manner of mentioning it, that the Shrine was not in any
way taboo. It began to seem more likely that we might eventually be allowed to examine it: if a child
could spend his time there freely, when his parents disapproved, it was not unreasonable to hope that
visitors might be invited.
     One other assumption, based on our experience of Lucky's learning powers, proved unfounded:
there was almost nothing he was able to tell us about the Shrine or Shrinemen, except just such visual
descriptions as we now dared to hope might be redundant. He described the Figures, the blue Guardian
on the Window of Light, and the amber Lifegiver on the scroll pedestal. He painted a vivid word picture
of the reptiloid grace of the Lifegiver, the menacing power of the Guardian. About the Shrinemen and
their lives he knew many minute details—but none of significance. They ate thus, slept so, conversed in
the courtyard; they were celibate, wore brown robes with a design patterned on the Window of Light;
they had daily rituals to say; they performed certain calculations. Hallall, they would officiate at the
Recurrence, the Rebirth.
     From the Oldest Men in the village, of whom there were three, in their Seventh Age, we learned
more—if what we learned was fact. They could all recall, in young childhood, seeing the Life of the
Shrine then extant. There had been no Recurrence since then, nor had it occurred in their lives, but before
they were born.
     In twenty-five decades, they said, the Life would Recur. It was soon, soon ...
     And saying so, they glanced significantly at Lucky. Hallall, a Rebirth ...

     That word again—hallall. In the village and fields, we heard it incessantly. It was the only no-answer
a child evey got. No question was forbidden for young ones to ask—but some were not answered in
First Age, and some not in Second. Hallall, they were told, hallall, ye shall know.
     "When do we plant firstseed?" a child might ask.
     "In the day following the third full moon of Seedfall," he would be told.
     "Which seed is firstseed?"
     And he would be shown.
     "What comes of it?" "When do we harvest it?" "How is it stored?" "Who plants it?" "Who knows the
full moon?"
     All these would be answered and fully, readily. The people would lay down their work, if need be, to
go with a questioning child and show him the answer.
     But—"Why does it grow?" "How does the Firstman know which round moon is the full moon?" or
"Why do people seed themselves all year round, but fawns and fish only in Greengrowth Season?"
     Then the answer was always, "Hallall," given with a glad smile for the child who was thinking ahead
of his years. First Age children were to learn only what could be seen, touched, smelled, or heard. Why
and Wherefore were for Second Agers, the adolescent apprentices. So-
     "Hallall, little one . . ."
     It was listening to the teaching of the children that we finally came round to understand what the word
meant. We had thought it was "tomorrow"—or "later," vaguely. Then for a while we thought it just an
evasion, a sort of "I don't know either; perhaps some day we'll both find out." But what it meant,
precisely, was, "In the fullness of time . . ."
     The distinction is not nearly as much in the words as in the kind of thinking that must lie behind them.
Shrine Islanders, for instance, fear death less than any society known—and' this with no trace of belief in
discrete immortality. In the fullness of time one is born, grows and learns, loves, weds, and begets, rears
children, teaches the younger ones, acquires status, grows feeble and dies. If death comes, then one's
time is full.

     From the answers that were and were not given youngsters in Lucky's Age Group we also came to
understand how we must have troubled him with our determined questioning about the Shrinemen. Here,
too, we had progressed through a series of dead-wrong assumptions. Because Lucky told us of books
and calculations, of ideographs on the Shrine (which he could reproduce flawlessly, but with no
comprehension); because he had never seen books in the village, or never spoke of them; because he,
the brightest of his Age Group, went daily to the House of Shrinemen, we first took for granted that the
Shrinemen were priestly scholars, perhaps the guardians of an ancient culture, their role symbolized by
the red-mated blue Guardian Figure protecting the "Lifegiver"—a goddess, clearly, but perhaps of
wisdom rather than fertility. The reptilian appearance suggested this strongly. Henry got very enthusiastic
about the correlation of snakes and divinely protected knowledge. "Rebirth" could imply a predictable
renaissance—and that suggested the ugly thought that the secrecy of the Shrinemen's rites and formulae
was that of an unplanned bureaucracy perpetuating itself by withholding the knowledge it had been set up
to protect and disseminate .. .
     When we understood what hallall meant, we had to revise this unhappy picture, for much of what
Lucky did not know was not secret at all—just hallall at his age. By that time, also, we had heard from
the three Oldest Men such mutually confirming details of the appearance and function of the Life of the
Shrine, that the whole notion of a usurping bureaucracy became absurd. "Rebirth" was not symbol, but a
literal incarnation of new wisdom, presented at intervals of roughly—by our time—eighty years. The
incarnation took the form of a froglike creature at least roughly resembling the statue and relief Figures at
the Shrine. (The old men recalled an identical appearance, except for color, which was gray—but they
were old and remembering a strongly suggestible childhood.)
     So the Shrinemen became shamans, half-ignorant half-wise witchdoctors applying without
understanding some ancient formulae designed to release increments of knowledge slowly to a population
reverted—for what strange intriguing reasons?—to barbarism. The near-idyllic society we saw was the
planned result of this program; and the quiet patience of the hallall philosophy made sense now; hallall,
all would be known. We need only wait; hallall . . .
     But for witchdoctors , the Shrinemen were poor showmen. Neither did they do healing (any more
than they governed; both of these were functions of all other people who lived into the Second Decade
of the Sixth Age). The shaman theory began to fall apart the night George found out the man next to him
at a haybringing dance was a "shaman," off duty for the party; the putative witchdoctor invited us all, very
casually, to visit him at the Shrine. There had never been any taboo; no one suspected we might be
interested.

    We found the Shrinemen, as we had first assumed they would be, educated and cultured, in the
bookish sense, far above the level of the other islanders. They were intelligent men devoted to a faith, or
more, to a duty. When Rebirth occurred, it was necessary that they he on hand, trained in the formulae of
sacrifice. Without their precise weights and measures and chants, the Life of the Shrine would be
.monstrous and harmful.
    The Oldest Men, we suggested, were saying it was near Italian for Recurrence . . . ?
    The Shrinemen nodded. They brought out a register, a long papyrus-like scroll. One fourth of its
length was filled with ideographs—like those on the Shrine itself, tantalizingly like, but unlike, three
different ancient languages Jenny did know . . .
    On this scroll, they said, was the listing of dates and persons connected with Shrine Life. The first
entry, in barely legible, long-faded ink, went back—they said—almost 350 decades, nearly 1200 years,
as we reckon. One of them spread the scroll on a lectern, and began intoning with such singsong
regularity it was evident he was reciting by rote, and not actually reading.
    Yet there was an air of authenticity about their list; whether it was in the scroll or not, whether they
could read the symbols or not, we somehow believed that the time intervals—ranging from nineteen to
thirty decades between Recurrences—were legitimate history.
     The question was—history of what?
     The answer, of course, was—hallall.
     If our supplies lasted until the Recurrence, we'd know what it was. Not why, or wherefore, but how
and what, when and who. To the Life of the Shrine, it seemed, we were all as First Agers .. .

      Thus we arrived at our last misconception regarding the Shrinemen. They were—obviously—an
especially non-virulent academic breed of priest, serving their temple with civilized pleasant lives devoted
to learning, discussion, and ritual. Hallall, what they re-memorized every day would be of not just use,
but great need ...
      Happily, by that time we understood Lucky at least better than we did the Shrine; as a result, we did
not plague him with our latest errors—and plaguing they would have been, to say the least. Religion, as
we know it, had no words in the Shrine Island language. Sin, priest, faith, morals, were not only, in
complexity, subjects suitable only for adults—they were concepts unknown to the people. We did not
intend to introduce them.
      Since it would have been. Lucky to whom we expressed these thoughts first, it is doubly fortunate we
did not do so, for Lucky was lucky. From the time of his birth on, it was the outstanding trait of his young
life.
      In the calendar of the Shrine Islanders, there are three seasons to mark the year's circuit: first is
Greengrowth, when the soil is renewed, when the creatures of forest and river renew life, a time of
thriving for all young things. Then comes Ripening, when fawns, fish, and fruit come to full size and
ripeness. Last, there is Seedfall, when pods and clouds burst to shower the land with the next season's
new life, when bucks rage in combat throughout the forest, and such spawning fish as survived the nets of
the Season of Ripening spawn by the thousands far up the river.
      The calendar of events, of people's lives, is composed of these seasons, in sets of ten. Each Decade
of Seasons has separate significance in the course of lifetime. Three Decades make up an Age of Life.
      It is auspicious among the people to have Greengrowth for the ruling season of one's First Age.
Lucky, born lucky in Greengrowth, would come to his First Rites, dividing childhood from
apprenticeship, innocence from approaching courtship, just as the seasons changed from Greengrowth to
the appropriate Ripening. Three decades later, his Full Manhood Rites would coincide with the change of
the natural world from Ripening to Seedfall.
      Such children were known to be fortunate in their growing, somehow in tune with the world more
than others. In Lucky's case, each sign at every stage of development had confirmed the extraordinary
augury of his birth on the first morning of a Greengrowth season.
      And it was for the same reason that his early interest in the Shrine had so startled his elders: a child of
his sort was seldom attracted by abstraction or mental mystery; certainly, the children of Greengrowth
were too much in tune with the soil to make likely celibates.
      There is a certain innocence, when you think of it, implicit in the idea of luck. A truly lucky person
has, always, a certain natural and glorious naivete—a sort of superior unconsciousness, which can do for
some people, in their acts and impulses, precisely what the well-trained, reflex reactions of a star athlete
do for his body. The special ability to seize the right moment with the right hand is as vulnerable to
conscious thought as the act of high-jumping would be to a man who tried to think each muscle
separately into action.
      So it is well that we did not force on Lucky an exercise of the metaphysical part of his mind that his
keen intelligence could never have refused, once offered.

    We had been almost five full seasons on the island when the second ship came. Lucky, of course,
with his rare instinct, was walking in the woods when it landed, not half a mile from where it came down.
    Three people emerged—three more Pinkies! Rejoicing, the boy ran to greet them, one thought
predominant in his young mind: here at last was the making of a Pinkie family! (Seven is the minimum
number of adults in an island household. We had never attempted to explain our marriage customs to
him; frankly, living on the island, we had come to feel a little ashamed of confessing our one-to-one
possessiveness. We had simply allowed them to keep their first misimpression that we did not have
children because we were too few in number for a proper household.)
     With these thoughts in mind, he ran forward and greeted the strangers in clear pure English, offering
to guide them immediately to our camp.
     They seem to have managed a rapid recovery, when one considers the shock this must have
provided. Politely, they excused themselves, and announced they had come, not to join us (whom they
had never heard of, of course) but to pay their respects to the famous Shrine.
     Lucky led them there. On the way, they talked pleasantly with him, pleasantly but wrongly. They did
not sound like Pinkies—not like the Pinkies he knew. Vaguely, he sensed something oklall—unripe,
green, out of place and time. Gradually, his answers to the oversweet probings of the female among them
became less clear, so that by the time she asked the two crucial questions, he was almost incoherent.
     They did not find out how many Pinkies were on the island, nor how many others spoke English. If
they had known there were only four of us, unarmed academics, and only Lucky besides ourselves who
would ever know how to tell the world outside what happened, they would surely have been less
precipitate. As it was, they were on edge.
     He took them directly to the Shrine Window. This in itself was odd; it was bad etiquette; he should
have presented them first to the Shrinemen. But he was already acting under the impulse of that strange
quality of luckiness that ruled his life.
     Then he found himself staring at Lifegiver, terribly torn and uncertain, not knowing why he had done
such a thing, or why he had spoken to them softly, in false friendship. The amber figure glowed in double
light: sunlight cascading from the unroofed courtyard, and the golden glow from inside the Window.
     He—I believe it was he—said later that he did what he did just because she was beautiful: a simple
act of adoration. I suppose he was confused, aware of a responsibility too large for his young shoulders,
and seeking guidance of some sort. That at least is more rational than the notion that he acted then out of
the pure unconsciousness of his special—lucky—nature. I know, because I watched it happen, that he
moved forward in an almost trancelike manner.
     (Everything from the moment of the meeting in the forest up to this point I know only from having
been told. What occurred in the courtyard I saw for myself. It was almost time for the Shrinemen's
evening ritual, and Henry and I were on the hilltop, with binoculars, watching.)
     This is what happened:
     Lallayall stepped forward and fell to his knees before the statue of the Lifegiver. He reached up, and
his lanky arms were just long enough to wrap around her smooth stone legs. He gazed up at her, and
then bent his head, resting it against the carvings at the top of the scroll pedestal.
     At the instant of contact, the mace fell from the hands of the Blue Guardian.
     The two men were fast. One jumped for the mace, one for Lucky. While the second one held the
boy still, the first studied the rod and the Figure, and then reached out with the red mace and seemed to
be twisting it against something on the Window. (After much discussion and examination, we came to the
conclusion that it was the Guardian's eye he was twisting. The open end of the rod is exactly the shape
and size of the opal eye of the Guardian.)
     We did not see the Window open. It opened inwards, and our angle of vision was wrong. But we
knew what was happening from the oddly expressive way the three intruders stood and stared, at the
Window and at each other—questioning, triumphant, frightened, uncertain. We also saw the Shrinemen
coming, a split second before the woman did. We saw her point and heard her cry faintly from down
below.
     The others turned to look, and all three lost their irresolution. They moved as one, taking Lucky with
them. All four vanished (from our angle of view) inside the Shrine.
     The Shrinemen came to a full stop in front of the Window. Had it closed again? I looked at Henry for
the first tithe, and found him turning to look at me; it occurred to us for the first time that we ought to be
doing something to help.
     "You stay," he said. "I'll get the others. Keep watching."
     It was the sensible way to do it.
     I nodded, and put the glasses back to my eyes. Incredibly, the Shrinemen were arranging themselves
in their evening ritual position, as calmly as though it were any sundown; they formed their semicircle in
front of the Window, and brought forth the shining silver-tipped quills that were their badge of office, held
them up like dart-throwers, as they always did, and began their sundown chant!
     Perhaps the Window had not closed before. If it had, it had opened again. My first thought was that
the Guardian Figure had fallen. But it was not a Figure. It was alive.
     It was blue and glistening, and it sprang down to the ground, crouched, alert, so clearly menacing in
its intentions it was not necessary to see the face to understand the inherent malice. It had barely touched
ground when a quill—a dart, rather—from the first Shrineman in the semicircle caught it in the face. (The
eye, I have always assumed—the same left eye that must be the key to the Shrine?)
     By that time, another had leaped out—and the next dart brought it down. It went so almost-casually,
so rhythmically, so soundlessly, and with such economy of motion on both sides, that it seemed unreal.
There were ten of the blue things altogether; at the sixth, I took my eyes from the glasses, blinked, shook
my head, and looked back, unbelieving. I saw the same thing.
     But remember—I did have that moment of doubt.
     Without any break in the rhythm, the eleventh figure came out of the Shrine. It was not blue, or
crouching or perilous; it was brown-gold of skin, and leaped like a dancer, and as it landed the
Shrinemen who still held their darts poised, dropped them, and the whole semicircle burst into a chant of
overwhelming joy and welcoming.
     They faltered just once—when, still in the same timing, the twelfth creature came forth: then it rang
out again, louder and more joyous.
     But those who had dropped unused darts retrieved them.
     They finished the song, the two Lives of the Shrine standing inside their circle, apart from the heap of
lifeless blue bodies. Then—the Window must have closed meantime; they clearly knew the Rebirth was
completed—four of them walked to the two shining creatures, bowed to them (in the islanders' bow of
courtesy—not one of reverence), and led them into the House. The others approached the dead entities,
picked them up, and carried them off, around the House, out of sight.

    My stage was empty. I waited till dark, but saw no more. Not till I started down to the camp did I
even wonder what had become of Henry and the others, who should have had time to arrive at the scene
before the chant began. I found out when they joined me a few minutes after I. got back to camp: the
gates of the Shrine courtyard had been closed and barred; they had knocked and called out and
waited—also till dark—without answer. They had heard the chant of rejoicing; they had seen nothing.
    I told them what I had seen. I told it hesitantly; I did not completely believe my own memory. When,
next day, and days after that, all our questions and probings produced only mildly startled or baffled
replies from villagers and Shrinemen alike, we decided I had been the victim of some extraordinarily
powerful hypnotic illusion.
    We felt fairly sure of what part of it Henry and I had seen together; and this was further supported by
the presence of a strange ship in the forest, with no passengers —and by Lucky's disappearance.

     We left the island a few weeks later. Our supplies might have lasted another month, but we all felt
restless, and we missed Lucky, both personally and in our work. We knew there were answers we could
not get from anyone, about what had happened. But we saw no likelihood of getting them by staying
longer. And we had to report the strange ship.
     We agreed that as far as we knew—as far as four so-called scientists could claim to know
anything—four people had entered the Shrine; a watcher on the hilltop (Henry's article so describes me)
experienced an extraordinarily vivid hallucination of hypnotic illusion afterwards, during the ritual chant.
     For the others, that agreement was sufficient. They hadn't had the "hallucination."
      I went back. And of course, we had left too soon.
      Our questions had been, naturally, oklall. The life of the Shrine is never revealed until the next Rites
...
     This time it was a tremendous revelation; never before had twin Lives occurred.
     I stayed two full seasons on the island, that second trip. This time, I lived, in a special visitor's
capacity, with Lallayall's family. I learned to speak their language much better, and I spent many hours in
talk with the Shrinemen and with the Lives.
     The Lives told me about Lucky's meeting with the strange Pinkies; they told me how he felt when he
fell on his knees before the Lifegiver; they told me they were reborn of him in the Shrine.
     They told me how it felt, but could not tell me how or why it happened. They did not know. We all
speculated —the Lives, the Shrinemen, and I—on what the Shrine itself might be, and what sort of force
could produce ten glistening blue demons from three evil humans, and two golden angels from one lucky
boy.
     With all the speculation, and all I was told, I came back with not one shred of scientific evidence that
anything of the sort happened. For all I know, the Lives may still be a hypnotic illusion produced by the
Shrinemen; they may be some sort of periodic mutation. They may be Lucky Reborn.
     They do not know, any more than I, how the Shrine came to be there, or what happened inside a
chamber which they describe only as "filled with great light."
     I tried approaching the Lifegiver, as Lucky had. The Shrinemen gave full permission, clearly amused.
Nothing happened, though I tried it often, with minute variations of head and hand positions.
     I may have missed the exact pressure points; I may have had the wrong attitude. I believe, myself,
that I simply do not have the kind of unconsciousness Lucky had.

    My own tendency, also, is to believe that the Shrine is a sort of outpost of some other planet—but
why this should feel any more "scientific" to me than the Shrinemen's belief in an ancient lost magic, I
don't know.
    The Shrinemen, by the way, are still worried over some things. The weight of the entering bodies was
never ascertained, they point out. If there was unused mass left inside the Shrine, they cannot say what
may come forth the next time a pure innocent embraces goodness for her own sake.
    These things must be done by the formulae, they say. (They feel this Rebirth was most unscientific,
you see.) The embracer is not supposed to enter the Shrine. A fawn of so-and-so much weight,
precisely, is the only proper sacrifice.
    But these minor worries are unimportant, beside the double miracle of two Lives of the Shrine at one
Rebirth. The islanders generally feel they are alive at a time of great good luck. They are creating dozens
of songs and stories and paintings and dances about Lallayall, the lucky one who brought luck to his
people.
    I present this account of what I saw, what I heard, what I know, of the Shrine and its Rebirth
Recurrence. I have no evidence to prove its validity.