The Wonder Stick

Excerpt: A hundred thousand years have passed since a certain memorable twilight in the forest of Umbaddu. Beyond a long ragged ridge of spruce, the sun went down in forlorn crimson precisely like the suns of a later day; across the winding valley, with its shaggy woods and age-battered buttes and cliffs, an enchanted calm had settled, as though time had ended and there were no other days to come. Only the Harr-Sizz or Long-Snake River, foaming in tumultuous serpentine along its deep rocky cañon, persistently broke the silence of the great wilderness; though now and again the call of some belated bird, or howling of hyena, or long-drawn, mournful plaint of some lonely wolf, would sound weirdly and from far away like a voice from another world.