nor yet to the tales of temples in lone lands that the East Wind told
her, who had stood beside her when she flung her golden ball. But from
far away the West Wind came with news of three grey travellers wrapt
round with battered cloaks that carried away between them a golden
ball.

Then up leapt the North Wind, he who guards the pole, and drew his
sword of ice out of his scabbard of snow and sped away along the road
that leads across the blue. And in the darkness underneath the world he
met the three grey travellers and rushed upon them and drove them far
before him, smiting them with his sword till their grey cloaks streamed
with blood. And out of the midst of them, as they fled with flapping
cloaks all red and grey and tattered, he leapt up with the golden ball
and gave it to the Dawnchild.

Again Inzana tossed the ball into the sky, making the third day, and up
and up it went and fell towards the fields, and as Inzana stooped to
pick it up she suddenly heard the singing of all the birds that were.
All the birds in the world were singing all together and also all the
streams, and Inzana sat and listened and thought of no golden ball, nor
ever of chalcedony and onyx, nor of all her fathers the gods, but only
of all the birds. Then in the woods and meadows where they had all
suddenly sung, they suddenly ceased. And Inzana, looking up, found that
her ball was lost, and all alone in the stillness one owl laughed. When
the gods heard Inzana crying for her ball They clustered together on
the threshold and peered into the dark, but saw no golden ball. And
leaning forward They cried out to the bat as he passed up and down:
"Bat that seest all things, where is the golden ball?"

And though the bat answered none heard. And none of the winds had seen