Argosy, September 1955 — page 115: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CHRYSALIDS {13 drained away, leaving his face a blotchy grey. For a moment he looked like a very ill man, but his eyes never left the other’s face. I looked quickly at the other man again. He sat on his horse rigid, as though petrified. His expression made something clutch suddenly in my chest. I was terrified. I had never seen naked hatred before, the lines cut deep, the eyes glittering, the mouth like a savage animal’s. It came like a sudden searing flash, this horrid revelation of something I had never known to exist; the expression seemed to burn my mind in an instant, so that I have never forgotten it... Then my father put out his good hand to steady himself against the doorpost, and turned back into the house. One of the escort cut the rope which held the prisoner’s arms. He dismounted, and it was then that I was able to see what was wrong with him. He was a good eighteen inches taller than any- one else, but not because he was a big man. If his legs had been right, he would have been no taller than my father’s five-foot-ten; but they were not: they were monstrously long and thin, and his arms were long and thin, too. He looked half spider, half man... The escort gave him food and a pot of beer. He sat down ona bench, his bony knees sticking up almost level with his shoulders. He looked round the yard malevolently as he munched his bread and cheese, and noticed me again. He beckoned. I hung back, pretending not to see. He beckoned again. I became ashamed of being afraid of him, so I went a little closer, then a little closer still, but keeping warily out of range, I judged, of those spidery arms. ‘* What’s your name, boy? ”’ he asked me. ‘** David,” I told him. ‘‘ David Strorm.”’ ““'That was your father at the door? What’s his name? ”’ “Joseph,” I told him. He nodded several times, as though to himself. “This place, then,”’ he said, looking round the yard, the ROnBE and the outbuildings, ‘ “this will be Waknuk? ” “Yes,”’ I told him. I don’t know whether he would have asked more, but somebody told me to clear off, and presently they all remounted, and began to move on, the spidery man with his arms tied together behind him once more. I watched them ride away in the Kentak direc- tion, glad to see them go. My first encounter with someone from the Fringes had not been exciting at all, but it had been unpleasantly disturbing. I heard later that both the Fringes men managed to escape that same night. I can’t remember who told me, but I am perfectly certain it was not my father. I never had the courage to ask him about that day, and I never once heard him refer to it. . It would be about three days after that that Petra was born. It hap- pened, I think, about five in the morning—though, of course, nobody actually mentioned it at all ‘We of the household spent an anxious comiclbooks.conn