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Alien Legacies
 Alien Legacies
The Evolution of the Franchise
Edited by
NAT HA N A B R A M S
AND
G R E G O RY F R A M E
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Abrams, Nathan, editor. | Frame, Gregory, 1985– editor.
Title: Alien legacies / [edited by] Nathan Abrams, Gregory Frame.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022049826 (print) | LCCN 2022049827 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197556030 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197556023 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780197556054 (epub) | ISBN 9780197556061
Subjects: LCSH: Alien films—History and criticism. | Science fiction films—History and criticism. |
Horror films—History and criticism. | Women heroes in motion pictures. |
Extraterrestrial beings in motion pictures. | Outer space in motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN 1995. 9. A 457 A 445 2022 (print) | LCC PN 1995 . 9 . A457 (ebook) |
DDC 791.43/75—dc23/eng/20221221
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049826
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049827

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197556023.001.0001

Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada

Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
 Contents

Foreword  vii
Robert P. Kolker
Acknowledgments  ix
List of Contributors  xi

1. Introduction—​Alien: The Evolution of the Franchise  1

Nathan Abrams and Gregory Frame
2. Boundaries of Viscerality: A Sense of Abjection Regarding
“the Perfect Organism”  20
Sara Louise Wheeler
3. Fractal Patterns Out of Chaos in Ridley Scott’s Alien,
Prometheus, and Covenant  41
Carrie Lynn Evans
4. The Progeny of H. R. Giger  61
Christopher L. Robinson
5. The Unescapable Labyrinth: Archetypal Retrogression and
Aesthetic Rigidity in Alien3  82
Kenneth Sloane
6. “Building Better Worlds”: The Rise of Alien’s Online
Marketing Campaigns  101
Kim Walden
7. “What the Hell Is That?”: A Transmedial Approach to
Taxonomic Ambiguity and Horror Affect in the Alien Franchise  123
Zoé Wible
8. From Personal Files to Blueprints: Exploring the Alien
Universe through Epistolary Paratexts  142
Tonguҁ Ibrahim Sezen
9. “Must Be a Chick Thing”: Ripley, the Alien Franchise and
the Female Gothic  162
Frances A. Kamm
vi Contents

10. Making the Mother: Pro/​Creation and Female Agency

in the Alien Series  182
Jonathan A. Rose and Florian Zitzelsberger
11. Melodrama of the Unknown Woman Lost in Space:
A Cavellian Reading of the Alien Franchise  200
Mario Slugan
12. Remediating Ripley: Negotiating the Patriarchal Gaze in
the Alien Franchise Video Games  215
Bronwyn Miller
13. Hissing in the Air Vents: Decoding the Narrative-​Verse
of Alien: Isolation (2014)  239
Reuben Martens

Index  257
 Foreword

Ridley Scott’s Alien has all the trappings of science fiction movies we are used
to seeing. It is set in the future, in outer space, on a spaceship far from Earth.
The spaceship itself, in its carefully articulated exterior and interior, owes
its design to the space vehicles in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey,
though with an important variation. The spaceship Nostromo is a towing ve-
hicle for a mining corporation and as such is well-​worn and something less
than the streamlined, fluorescent bright ships that became the norm post-​
2001. And the Nostromo becomes more than a spaceship. With its alien vis-
itor, it turns into an old archetype, an ancient place in the annals of horror
films and horror literature, the old dark house.
This canny integration of science fiction and horror, along with the intro-
duction of a strong female character, has made the film not only the source of
horrified pleasure for viewers, but fodder for three sequels, two prequels, and
a “mashup” with the Predator franchise. Scott’s film has triggered something
of a repetition compulsion in filmmakers and viewers alike, a “franchise” per-
haps, but also the need to see that monster again and again to try and master
its indestructible voraciousness, understand the woman who survives it, and,
in Alien: Covenant, the robot who created it.
All of the Alien films are seeded with dread, which is a central part of their
attraction: a dread that spreads throughout the inhabitants of the places
where the monster reigns and, in the prequels, to the origins of life itself.
Each of the directors—​Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, Jean-​Pierre
Jeunet—​who have taken on the original and its sequels and prequels have
reconsidered how dread is articulated. This in turn stimulates the study of
the films in order to reveal varying perspectives, and varying ways in which
dread is interpreted, created, and perpetuated. These are films of expanded
vision; they want to make us see the possibilities of the imagination of the
future and to consider the evolution of monsters and robots. They are specta-
cles made for the eye and the intellect, entertainments that also explore mys-
teries and horrors as only good science fiction can do. They also allow an
understanding of the ways in which Hollywood exploits spectacle, because
viii Foreword

repetition only follows commercialization—​in this case in comic books and

video games.
The Alien collection is a trove for critical enquiry, pursuing as many or
more perspectives as do the films themselves. The essays that follow wind
their way through the spaces of the Alien films and spinoffs: their meanings,
their creation, their reception, their exploitation. They interpret and honor
these important and exciting entries into the science fiction genre.

Robert P. Kolker
 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Norm Hirschy at Oxford University Press for his sup-
port, inviting us to assemble the papers from our conference into a new con-
tribution on the Alien franchise. With this in mind, we would also like to
thank our authors for their patience through the whole process, delivering
their chapters despite the challenges the pandemic has presented over the
past three years. Their work makes an excellent contribution to our under-
standing of Alien, and its position within contemporary popular media.
We would also like to thank everyone who supported the initial confer-
ence commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Ridley Scott’s original film:
the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies which funded
the travel and accommodation of our keynote speaker through their Event
Grants scheme; Nerys Boggan, from the College of Arts, Humanities and
Business, who provided invaluable support in the organization and execu-
tion of the event; and Emyr Williams, cinema coordinator at Pontio Arts and
Innovation Centre, who secured a print of Alien on the opening night of the
conference, which played to a packed audience. We would also like to thank
the many volunteers from our postgraduate community who helped us make
the event such a success.
 List of Contributors

Nathan Abrams is professor in film at Bangor University, and the lead director for
the Centre for Film, Television, and Screen Studies. He co-​founded Jewish Film and
New Media: An International Journal, and his most recent books are New Wave,
New Hollywood: Reassessment, Recovery, and Legacy (with Greg Frame, Bloomsbury
Academic, 2021), The Bloomsbury Companion to Stanley Kubrick (with I. Q. Hunter,
Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of
His Final Film (with Robert Kolker, Oxford University Press, 2019), Stanley Kubrick:
New York Jewish Intellectual (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Hidden in Plain Sight:
Jews and Jewishness in British Film, Television, and Popular Culture (Northwestern
University Press, 2016), and The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism
in Contemporary Cinema (IB Tauris; Rutgers University Press, 2012). He is currently
writing a biography of the legendary film director Stanley Kubrick with Robert
Kolker to be published by Faber & Faber in 2023.
Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student in English literature at Université Laval in
Quebec. Her master’s thesis focused on gender, technology, and cyborg theory in
Frank Herbert’s Dune. Her dissertation work seeks a precedent for contemporary
American astroculture, as expressed through fiction and the public imaginary, in an-
cient travel stories, including Homer’s Odyssey. In addition to sci-​fi, research interests
include technology and culture, horror, and postmodern theory.
Gregory Frame is teaching associate in film and television studies at the University
of Nottingham. His main area of interest and expertise is the politics of US film and
television. He has published widely on these subjects in Journal of American Studies,
Journal of Popular Film and Television, New Review of Film and Television Studies, and
several high-​profile edited collections. He is the co-​editor (with Nathan Abrams) of
New Wave, New Hollywood: Reassessment, Recovery, and Legacy, published in 2021.
He is the author of The American President in Film and Television: Myth, Politics and
Representation, which was runner-​up for the Best Monograph Award at the British
Association of Film, Television, and Screen Studies’ annual conference in 2016.
Frances A. Kamm is a lecturer and course lead of film and media at the University
of Kent, and co-​organizer of the Gothic Feminism Research Project. She is co-​­editor
of Gothic Heroines on Screen: Representation, Interpretation and Feminist Enquiry
xii List of Contributors

(Routledge, 2019) in which she wrote a chapter on Ripley in Aliens (1986). In ad-
dition to theories of the Gothic, Frances is also interested in visual effects, the on-​
screen body, and film history. She is also an editor for Devil’s Advocates (LUP).
Robert P. Kolker is professor emeritus at the University of Maryland. He is author of
numerous books, including The Extraordinary Image: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock,
Stanley Kubrick and the Reimagining of Cinema and Triumph Over Containment:
American Film in the 1950s (Rutgers University Press), A Cinema of Loneliness
(OUP), Film, Form, and Culture (Routledge), and, with Nathan Abrams, Eyes Wide
Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of his Final Film (OUP) and Stanley Kubrick: An
Odyssey (Faber & Faber).
Reuben Martens is an AMTD Waterloo Global Talent postdoctoral fellow at the
University of Waterloo (2022–​2024) and an affiliated researcher with the Literary
Studies Research Unit at KU Leuven. His work is mainly situated within the fields
of the energy humanities, ecocinema, postcolonial studies, contemporary North
American literature, and critical infrastructure studies. He has published arti-
cles on energy and ontology in The Matrix-​trilogy in ISLE, on petromelancholia in
Indigenous Canadian fiction in American Imago, and on the dynamics of infrastruc-
tural prolepsis in contemporary American fiction in Resilience.
Bronwyn Miller is a PhD candidate with the School of Arts and Media at the
University of New South Wales, whose research interests are centered around data
and algorithmic justice, intersectional feminist praxis, and representation in media.
They are a tutor in critical data studies, the co-​lead of the Allens Hub Data Justice
Research Network, and a member of the Media Futures Hub.
Christopher L. Robinson is assistant professor of English at the Institut
Polytechnique de Paris, one of France’s leading science and engineering schools. In
addition to being co-​author of Alien, entre arts et sciences (2019), and a contributor
to Dune: Exploration scientifique et culturelle d’une Planète-​Univers (2020), he has
published articles in the United Kingdom, United States, and France on works of sci-
ence fiction, horror and fantasy, including a comparative study of H. R. Giger and
H. P. Lovecraft that appeared in Lovecraft au prisme de l’image (2017). He is the co-​
­editor of 2001, l’odyssée de l’espace: au carrefour des arts et des sciences (2021) and The
Legacies of Ursula K. Le Guin: Science, Fiction, Ethics (2021).
Jonathan A. Rose is an assistant professor for English Cultural and Media Studies at
the University of Passau, Germany. In his PhD dissertation, he examined transgender
representation in fanfiction and its cultural contexts. Guided by an interest in all
kinds of marginal(ized) figures like aliens, zombies, and fungi, his research lies at the
intersections of literary, cultural, fan, media, and trans(gender) studies, with a focus
on genders and sexualities, adaptation and related phenomena, as well as fandom
and fanfiction. Recent publications include “ ‘My Male Skin’: (Self-​)Narratives of
Transmasculinity in Fanfiction” (European Journal for the Study of English, 2020) and
 List of Contributors xiii

“The Last of Us: Fungi, EcoGothic Zombies and Posthuman Hybrids in The Girl with
All the Gifts” (Journal for the Study of British Cultures, 2020).
Tonguҁ Ibrahim Sezen is a senior lecturer in transmedia production at Teesside
University. He holds a PhD in communications from Istanbul University, School
of Social Sciences. During his doctoral studies, he visited Georgia Institute of
Technology, School of Literature, Media, and Communication as a Fulbright scholar.
He has been an assistant professor and the founding department head of the Digital
Game Design Department at Istanbul Bilgi University and a research fellow at Rheine
Waal University of Applied Sciences. His research interests include cross-​media
narration, game design, interactive storytelling, and toy studies, and he has written
chapters on these subjects in books published by Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, and
Routledge. He is one of the editors of Interactive Digital Narrative: History, Theory,
and Practice (2015) published by Routledge.
Kenneth Sloane is a graduate of the Institute of Communications Studies at the
University of Leeds and works as a lecturer in film studies and audio-​visual produc-
tion in the School of Creative Arts at the Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland.
His work focuses on film studies and production techniques, with research interests
in Jungian archetypes and media effects. Kenneth cites the Alien franchise as the
inspiration for his academic interest in the medium of film. An avid football fan,
Kenneth is also the producer and host of “The Men Who Saved Football,” a podcast
dedicated to his hometown team Dundalk F.C.
Mario Slugan is senior lecturer in film studies, Queen Mary, University of London.
He is the author of three monographs—​Montage as Perceptual Experience: Berlin
Alexanderplatz from Döblin to Fassbinder (Camden House, 2017), Noël Carroll on
Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 2019), and Fiction and
Imagination in Early Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Kim Walden is Senior Lecturer: Film and Television Cultures in the School of
Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. Her current research interests in-
clude media archaeology and transmedia film marketing and promotion. She is
the author of “Nostalgia for the Future: How Tron: Legacy’s Paratextual Campaign
Rebooted the Franchise” in The Politics of Ephemeral Digital Media edited by Sara
Pesce and Paolo Noto (Routledge, 2016); “Archaeology of Mobile Film: Blink, Blue
Vend, and the Pocket Shorts” in Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age
of Bit-​Sized Media edited by Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki (Bloomsbury,
2017); and “404: File Not Found: Web Archives and the Challenges of Preserving
Film Promotion” published in Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television (2022).
She is currently writing a book for the Transmedia series published by Amsterdam
University Press.
Sara Louise Wheeler is a visiting research fellow in psychology at Glyndŵr University.
She is an editorial board member for Names: A Journal of Onomastics and writes the
xiv List of Contributors

column Synfyfyrion Llenyddol (literary musings) for Y Clawdd community news-

paper. Her poetry, belles lettres, and artwork have been published by: Tu Chwith,
Y Stamp, Meddwl.org, Gŵyl Y Ferch, Qualitative Inquiry, The Centre for Imaginative
Ethnography, and 3am Magazine. Sara currently has numerous intersecting projects
exploring themes of language, identity, and wellbeing, through a variety of creative
and scholarly mediums. She lives on the Wirral peninsula with her husband Peter
and their tortoise Kahless.
Zoé Wible is a PhD student in Film at the University of Kent. Her research interests
include science-​fiction and cognitive film theory. Following her master’s dissertation
on the reception of androids in contemporary television show Westworld, she is now
researching the relationship between imaginary creatures and spectator engagement
in visual narrative media. She also draws on recent developments in interactive media
and forms of engagement, including video games and online fandom spaces. The
provisional title for her thesis is: “Monster Schemas and the Space of Possible Minds:
A Cognitive Approach to Science Fiction Characters in Contemporary Cinema.”
Florian Zitzelsberger is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of
Passau, Germany, where he studied English and German. His research is situated
at the nexus of queer theory and narratology, with a specific interest in narrative
metalepsis, performativity, and the American musical, and has appeared, among
others, in the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, Humanities, and Comparative
American Studies. He has additionally published chapters on environmentalist met-
afiction, representations of gender and sexuality in film, as well as the aesthetics of
the branded self on YouTube. More recently, his work has shifted toward questions of
(dis)embodiment as well as the discursive and material effects of virality in the con-
frontation of the COVID-​19 pandemic and the memory of the HIV/​AIDS crisis. This
shift also informs his latest collaboration, a research project examining posthuman
drag performance, on which he is currently co-​editing a special issue.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The quest of
Iranon
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The quest of Iranon

Author: H. P. Lovecraft

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release date: March 16, 2024 [eBook #73182]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Weird Tales, 1939

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEST OF

IRANON ***
 The Quest of Iranon

By H. P. LOVECRAFT

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Weird Tales March 1939.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Into the granite city of Teloth wandered the youth, vine-crowned, his
yellow hair glistening with myrrh and his purple robe torn with briers
of the mountain Sidrak that lies across the antique bridge of stone.
The men of Teloth are dark and stern, and dwell in square houses,
and with frowns they asked the stranger whence he had come and
what were his name and fortune. So the youth answered:
"I am Iranon, and come from Aira, a far city that I recall only dimly
but seek to find again. I am a singer of songs that I learned in the far
city, and my calling is to make beauty with the things remembered of
childhood. My wealth is in little memories and dreams, and in hopes
that I sing in gardens when the moon is tender and the west wind
stirs the lotus-buds."
When the men of Teloth heard these things they whispered to one
another; for though in the granite city there is no laughter or song,
the stern men sometimes look to the Karthian hills in the spring and
think of the lutes of distant Oonai whereof travelers have told. And
thinking thus, they bade the stranger stay and sing in the square
before the Tower of Mlin, though they liked not the color of his
tattered robe, nor the myrrh in his hair, nor his chaplet of vine-leaves,
nor the youth in his golden voice. At evening Iranon sang, and while
he sang an old man prayed and a blind man said he saw a nimbus
over the singer's head. But most of the men of Teloth yawned, and
some laughed and some went away to sleep; for Iranon told nothing
useful, singing only his memories, his dreams, and his hopes.
"I remember the twilight, the moon, and soft songs, and the window
where I was rocked to sleep. And through the window was the street
where the golden lights came, and where the shadows danced on
houses of marble. I remember the square of moonlight on the floor,
that was not like any other light, and the visions that danced in the
moonbeams when my mother sang to me. And too, I remember the
sun of morning bright above the many-colored hills in summer, and
the sweetness of flowers borne on the south wind that made the
trees sing.
"O Aira, city of marble and beryl, how many are thy beauties! How
loved I the warm and fragrant groves across the hyaline Nithra, and
the falls of the tiny Kra that flowed through the verdant valley! In
those groves and in that vale the children wove wreaths for one
another, and at dusk I dreamed strange dreams under the yath-trees
on the mountain as I saw below me the lights of the city, and the
curving Nithra reflecting a ribbon of stars.
"And in the city were palaces of veined and tinted marble, with
golden domes and painted walls, and green gardens with cerulean
pools and crystal fountains. Often I played in the gardens and waded
in the pools, and lay and dreamed among the pale flowers under the
trees. And sometimes at sunset I would climb the long hilly street to
the citadel and the open place, and look down upon Aira, the magic
city of marble and beryl, splendid in a robe of golden flame.
"Long have I missed thee, Aira, for I was but young when we went
into exile; but my father was thy King and I shall come again to thee,
for it is so decreed of Fate. All through seven lands have I sought
thee, and some day shall I reign over thy groves and gardens, thy
streets and palaces, and sing to men who shall know whereof I sing,
and laugh not. For I am Iranon, who was a Prince in Aira."

That night the men of Teloth lodged the stranger in a stable, and in
the morning an archon came to him and told him to go to the shop of
Athok the cobbler, and be apprenticed to him.
"But I am Iranon, a singer of songs," he said, "and have no heart for
the cobbler's trade."
"All in Teloth must toil," replied the archon, "for that is the law." Then
said Iranon:
"Wherefore do ye toil; is it not that ye may live and be happy? And if
ye toil only that ye may toil more, when shall happiness find you? Ye
toil to live, but is not life made of beauty and song? And if ye suffer
no singers among you, where shall be the fruits of your toil? Toil
without song is like a weary journey without an end. Were not death
more pleasing?" But the archon was sullen and did not understand,
and rebuked the stranger.
"Thou art a strange youth, and I like not thy face or thy voice. The
words thou speakest are blasphemy, for the gods of Teloth have said
that toil is good. Our gods have promised us a haven of life beyond
death, where there shall be rest without end, and crystal coldness
amidst which none shall vex his mind with thought or his eyes with
beauty. Go thou then to Athok the cobbler or be gone out of the city
by sunset. All here must serve, and song is folly."
 "Beyond the Karthian hills lieth Oonai, the city of lutes and
dancing."

So Iranon went out of the stable and walked over the narrow stone
streets between the gloomy square houses of granite, seeking
something green, for all was of stone. On the faces of men were
frowns, but by the stone embankment along the sluggish river Zuro
sate a young boy with sad eyes gazing into the waters to spy green
budding branches washed down from the hills by the freshets. And
the boy said to him: "Art thou not indeed he of whom the archons
tell, who seekest a far city in a fair land? I am Romnod, and born in
the blood of Teloth, but am not old in the ways of the granite city,
and yearn daily for the warm groves and the distant lands of beauty
and song. Beyond the Karthian hills lieth Oonai, the city of lutes and
dancing, which men whisper of and say is both lovely and terrible.
Thither would I go were I old enough to find the way, and thither
shouldst thou go and thou wouldst sing and have men listen to thee.
Let us leave the city Teloth and fare together among the hills of
spring. Thou shalt show me the ways of travel and I will attend thy
songs at evening when the stars one by one bring dreams to the
minds of dreamers. And peradventure it may be that Oonai the city of
lutes and dancing is even the fair Aira thou seekest, for it is told that
thou hast not known Aira since old days, and a name often changeth.
Let us go to Oonai, O Iranon of the golden head, where men shall
know our longings and welcome us as brothers, nor ever laugh or
frown at what we say." And Iranon answered:
"Be it so, small one; if any in this stone place yearn for beauty he
must seek the mountains and beyond, and I would not leave thee to
pine by the sluggish Zuro. But think not that delight and
understanding dwell just across the Karthian hills, or in any spot thou
canst find in a day's, or a year's, or a lustrum's journey. Behold, when
I was small like thee I dwelt in the valley of Narthos by the frigid Xari,
where none would listen to my dreams; and I told myself that when
older I would go to Sinara on the southern slope, and sing to smiling
dromedarymen in the market place. But when I went to Sinara I
found the dromedarymen all drunken and ribald, and saw that their
songs were not as mine; so I travelled in a barge down the Xari to
onyx-walled Jaren. And the soldiers at Jaren laughed at me and drave
me out, so that I wandered to other cities.
"I have seen Stethelos that is below the great cataract, and have
gazed on the marsh where Sarnath once stood. I have been to Thraa,
Ilarnek, and Kadatheron on the winding river Ai, and have dwelt long
in Olathoë in the land of Lomar. But though I have had listeners
sometimes, they have ever been few, and I know that welcome shall
wait me only in Aira, the city of marble and beryl where my father
once ruled as King. So for Aira shall we seek, though it were well to
visit distant and lute-blessed Oonai across the Karthian hills, which
may indeed be Aira, though I think not. Aira's beauty is past
imagining, and none can tell of it without rapture, whilst of Oonai the
camel-drivers whisper leeringly."

At the sunset Iranon and small Romnod went forth from Teloth, and
for long wandered amidst the green hills and cool forests. The way
was rough and obscure, and never did they seem nearer to Oonai the
city of lutes and dancing; but in the dusk as the stars came out
Iranon would sing of Aira and its beauties and Romnod would listen,
so that they were both happy after a fashion. They ate plentifully of
fruit and red berries, and marked not the passing of time, but many
years must have slipped away. Small Romnod was now not so small,
and spoke deeply instead of shrilly, though Iranon was always the
same, and decked his golden hair with vines and fragrant resins
found in the woods. So it came to pass one day that Romnod seemed
older than Iranon, though he had been very small when Iranon had
found him watching for green budding branches in Teloth beside the
sluggish stone-banked Zura.
Then one night when the moon was full the travellers came to a
mountain crest and looked down upon the myriad lights of Oonai.
Peasants had told them they were near, and Iranon knew that this
was not his native city of Aira. The lights of Oonai were not like those
of Aira; for they were harsh and glaring, whilst the lights of Aira shine
as softly and magically as shone the moonlight on the floor by the
window where Iranon's mother once rocked him to sleep with song.
But Oonai was a city of lutes and dancing; so Iranon and Romnod
went down the steep slope that they might find men to whom songs
and dreams would bring pleasure. And when they were come into the
town they found rose-wreathed revellers bound from house to house
and leaning from windows and balconies, who listened to the songs
of Iranon and tossed him flowers and applauded when he was done.
Then for a moment did Iranon believe he had found those who
thought and felt even as he, though the town was not an hundredth
so fair as Aira.
When dawn came Iranon looked about with dismay, for the domes of
Oonai were not golden in the sun, but gray and dismal. And the men
of Oonai were pale with revelling, and dull with wine, and unlike the
radiant men of Aira. But because the people had thrown him
blossoms and acclaimed his songs Iranon stayed on, and with him
Romnod, who liked the revelry of the town and wore in his dark hair
roses and myrtle. Often at night Iranon sang to the revellers, but he
was always as before, crowned only with the vine of the mountains
and remembering the marble streets of Aira and the hyaline Nithra.
In the frescoed halls of the monarch did he sing, upon a crystal dais
raised over a floor that was a mirror, and as he sang, he brought
pictures to his hearers till the floor seemed to reflect old, beautiful
and half-remembered things instead of the wine-reddened feasters
who pelted him with roses. And the King bade him put away his
tattered purple, and clothed him in satin and cloth-of-gold, with rings
of green jade and bracelets of tinted ivory, and lodged him in a gilded
and tapestried chamber on a bed of sweet carven wood with
canopies and coverlets of flower-embroidered silk. Thus dwelt Iranon
in Oonai, the city of lutes and dancing.
It is not known how long Iranon tarried in Oonai, but one day the
King brought to the palace some wild whirling dancers from the
Liranian desert, and dusky flute-players from Drinen in the East, and
after that the revellers threw their roses not so much at Iranon as at
the dancers and the flute-players. And day by day that Romnod who
had been a small boy in granite Teloth grew coarser and redder with
wine, till he dreamed less and less, and listened with less delight to
the songs of Iranon. But though Iranon was sad he ceased not to
sing, and at evening told again his dreams of Aira, the city of marble
and beryl. Then one night the reddened and fattened Romnod snored
heavily amidst the poppied silks of his banquet-couch and died
writhing, whilst Iranon, pale and slender, sang to himself in a far
corner. And when Iranon had wept over the grave of Romnod and
strewn it with green budding branches, such as Romnod used to love,
he put aside his silks and gauds and went forgotten out of Oonai the
city of lutes and dancing clad only in the ragged purple in which he
had come, and garlanded with fresh vines from the mountains.
Into the sunset wandered Iranon, seeking still for his native land and
for men who would understand and cherish his songs and dreams. In
all the cities of Cydathria and in the lands beyond the Bnazic desert
gay-faced children laughed at his olden songs and tattered robe of
purple; but Iranon stayed ever young, and wore wreaths upon his
golden head whilst he sang of Aira.

So came he one night to the squalid cot of an antique shepherd, bent

and dirty, who kept flocks on a stony slope above a quicksand marsh.
To this man Iranon spoke, as to so many others:
"Canst thou tell me where I may find Aira, the city of marble and
beryl, where flows the hyaline Nithra and where the falls of the tiny
Kra sing to verdant valleys and hills forested with yath-trees?" And
the shepherd, hearing, looked long and strangely at Iranon, as if
recalling something very far away in time, and noted each line of the
stranger's face, and his golden hair, and his crown of vine-leaves. But
he was old, and replied:
"O stranger, I have indeed heard the name of Aira, and the other
names thou hast spoken, but they come to me from afar down the
waste of long years. I heard them in my youth from the lips of a
playmate, a beggar's boy given to strange dreams, who would weave
long tales about the moon and the flowers and the west wind. We
used to laugh at him, for we knew him from his birth though he
thought himself a King's son. He was comely, even as thou, but full of
folly and strangeness; and he ran away when small to find those who
would listen gladly to his songs and dreams. How often hath he sung
to me of lands that never were, and things that never can be! Of Aira
did he speak much; of Aira and the river Nithra, and the falls of the
tiny Kra. There would he ever say he once dwelt as a Prince, though
here we knew him from his birth. Nor was there ever a marble city of
Aira, or those who could delight in strange songs, save in the dreams
of mine old playmate Iranon who is gone."
And in the twilight, as the stars came out one by one and the moon
cast on the marsh a radiance like that which a child sees quivering on
the floor as he is rocked to sleep at evening, there walked into the
lethal quicksands a very old man in tattered purple, crowned with
withered vine leaves and gazing ahead as if upon the golden domes
of a fair city where dreams are understood.
That night something of youth and beauty died in the elder world.
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEST OF
IRANON ***

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