hand nor the left, till he came to the Unshapen Land, and the place
which has no name.

And seven days he walked through it on a path which few can tell,
till he came to the edge of the everlasting night, where the air was
full of feathers, and the soil was hard with ice; and there at last
he found the three Grey Sisters, by the shore of the freezing sea,
nodding upon a white log of driftwood, beneath the cold white winter
moon; and they chanted a low song together, "Why the old times were
better than the new."

There was no living thing around them, not a fly, not a moss upon
the rocks. Neither seal nor sea gull dare come near, lest the ice
should clutch them in its claws. The surge broke up in foam, but it
fell again in flakes of snow; and it frosted the hair of the three
Grey Sisters, and the bones in the ice cliff above their heads. They
passed the eye from one to the other, but for all that they could
not see; and they passed the tooth from one to the other, but for
all that they could not eat; and they sat in the full glare of the
moon, but they were none the warmer for her beams. And Perseus
pitied the three Grey Sisters; but they did not pity themselves.

So he said, "Oh, venerable mothers, wisdom is the daughter of old
age. You therefore should know many things. Tell me, if you can, the
path to the Gorgon."

Then one cried, "Who is this who reproaches us with old age?" And
another, "This is the voice of one of the children of men."

Then one cried, "Give me the eye, that I may see him"; and another,