The Third Labour

And a third time I was taken into a dream, and again the woman's face in the water laughed at me, my farmers-boy boots, my sullen accent. I put up with the laughter. She told me again to look into the pool, and this time it seemed to become a map. I didn't understand the map; it was. made of many colours sparsely and formally lined and patterned, like a Navajo sand painting. She told me to look for the land called Emteil Coverts, but no part of the map seemed at all like a part of a landscape. Then she said that I must gather the honey of the wild bees that lived there, and feed the Sleepers with it. I saw the faces, the bloodless lips of the Sleepers, again, in the water and superimposed on the map, and again I was one of them.