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YS
Of the city of Ys, this is how it is; seven crystal walls of various colours surround it, the first and outermost wall being the highest, and the second inside that higher than the third, the third higher than the fourth, and so on, until the citadel is reached inside the seventh wall. The tops of all the walls reach to the same height, for the island slopes up out of the sea on a long gradual incline towards its centre, where the cathedral stands, its spire being the only feature within the entire city visible to the voyager who sees the place from a distance over the water, or on a clear day from the high jutting cape of the mainland, seven miles eastward. The first wall is of colourless coarse quartz and rises unevenly and vertically out of the granite rockface to a height that appears stupendous to one immediately below it. On all sides the place is surrounded by the sea, which throws innumerable shimmerings, glitterings and shadows up on the wall’s rough surface, breaking and refracting the light into every colour, texture and nuance imaginable, according to conditions of wind and weather and the quality and time of day and season; and like the sea itself watched from the side or stern of a tall ship, this light is never still, now shattering into countless stars, now cloudy or dark, now flecked with rainbows, now white as foam wake. And you may well consider how this place appears to an observer or traveller gradually approaching it by sea from the bay beyond the cape head, which is the only mode of access: how dazzling and aloof, like a rough broad pillar of fire or cloud, gigantic in its proportions, crowned by the thin spire pointing up like a needle of ice or swordblade at the sky. The tide rises between sixteen and thirty feet and the city may be entered only at high tide, by a flood-gate cut into the rockwall ten feet or so above the low tide mark. The aperture is narrow, and permits only a small boat to pass through. Above the entrance is a portcullis which can be lowered in a moment and so render the island wholly impregnable. Within this lies the harbour, which is full of these small craft, most of them used for fishing but some for transporting merchandise and visitors to and from the mainland. The quayside is decked with banners throughout the year and the small stone houses, taverns, shops and warehouses that constitute the port of Ys are all painted over with a pale blue wash, except for the roofs which are of slate. In the daytime, until the wall casts its long forbidding shadow, the harbour echoes with shouts of playing children. To the west of the island, towards the grey expanse of the Atlantic, lies a broken line of jutting rocks that gradually diminish in size to a permanent ridge of a shelf that once projected above sea level. On the nearest and largest rock the remains of a slate-built chapel erode and disintegrate, but apart from this, the rocks house nothing. No birds nest there, for the wind is too strong, though gulls, terns and the occasional razorbill wheel around them, gliding on the wind currents, and sometimes settling there to pause between their fishing and their aerial play. Here the waters are dangerous but on the mainland side the currents are easily navigated by an expert steersman, except in winter and during storms.
So much for the outer aspect and sea wall. The second wall is of sapphire and is surrounded by beds of cornflowers, honesty, forget-me-nots, bluebells, love-in-the-mist and other such delicate flowers in their season, offset here and there by small clumps of tough prickly briar, which bear faint-smelling five-petalled pink dog roses throughout summer and scarlet hips in autumn. This wall varies between a dull olive at dawn, to peacock at noon, to blue-of-ink in the evening. Apart from the harbour area, the space between the first two walls is covered by open pasture where short-horned cattle, ponies and horses graze freely, interspersed with woods that contain a great variety of trees, some of them very old. The third wall is of emerald and is surrounded by a ring of coniferous trees, none of which grows to the full height of the wall though they have never been lopped or pruned. The fourth wall is of amethyst, and is surrounded by vines and fruit trees: plum, pear, apple, cherry and fig. These trees are ordered radially, as evenly spaced quincunxes, into seven groves which are divided by open paths of worn flagstones. The cattle, ponies and horses, as well as sheep, goats, pigs, and ducks, geese and chickens are quartered in rows of sloping wooden sheds along most of the inner circumference of the amethyst wall. The fifth wall is of jaspered opal, whose smooth texture clouds in places to a thin opacity, as of water laced unevenly with milk, but for the most part reveals the continuous flickering of thousands of minute, multi-coloured flowers breaking open and dissolving beneath its surface. Between this and the wall of amethyst lies a patchwork of small fields and strips of land divided by narrow dykes, which are never quite straight or symmetrical, marked at every dozen or so intersections by a water pump or well. Some of these are disused, others relied on daily, and a variety of crops is sown here. Inside the opal wall the houses of the city are first seen, and behind them the sixth wall, which is built of chalcedony, varying in colour between onyx, agate, cornelian, chrysoprase and sard. The houses here are low, of one or two storeys, with summer swallows nesting under their ivy-covered eaves, over narrow streets barely wide enough for two carts to pass each other, between thin strips of low-walled gardens in front and behind, containing carefully tended perennial flowers and shrubs well pruned. Beyond the sixth wall are many more buildings, somewhat higher than those outside it, and grander and more ornamental in design and architecture, particularly those which are public places. Some have spacious inner courtyards lined with porticos and fountains at their centres. Here eight broader streets, spaced radially at equal distances from one another, transverse three concentric avenues, the second of which is the busiest thoroughfare of the city. On the mainland side, this avenue opens into a large square full of covered market stalls and surrounded by shops, taverns, hostels, places of entertainment, and the senate, library and administrative buildings. The seventh wall is of adamant and within this stands the cathedral, with its towers, turrets and buttresses on all sides and its central spire.
So both the innermost and the outermost walls are of colourless crystal, which is not to say that they display no colours to the human eye, but like the fifth wall of jasper, in the first and seventh walls all colours may be seen, which is as it should be.
A vertical and direct ascent to the central point and apex of the city-island is impossible, nor may you traverse the entire diameter of any of the rings within the first five walls more than once, for each concentric wall is joined to the one within it by another high radial wall. These are cunningly built on the left hand side of each gate, so that you must walk the entire circumference of each ring before you come to the gate opening on to the next ring, until you reach the city itself. So the ascent involves right-turnings, and the descent left-turnings, which is as it should be, and the island is structured like the whorl of a shell or primeval sea-creature, cut open to the sky.
Under the city, spanning the island from east to west, it is said there is a tunnel flowing deep under sea level, although none that I know of has ever discovered its exact location. Some say this was excavated by the first heathen generations of settlers; others, that it was eroded by the sea itself since time immemorial. A related story has it that under the floor of the lowest and central vault of the present cathedral, immediately below the level of its first foundation stone, is buried the rim of a well, over five yards in diameter, precariously lined with spiral steps leading vertically down to this submarine tunnel, which was either built by one of the early rulers or perhaps hollowed out of some long defunct volcanic flue. Before reaching the tunnel, it is said this well opens into a vast-domed, alembic-shaped cavern, just above sea level, where the first kings of Ys kept their treasures and mined their forgotten ores. However, neither I nor so far as I know any inhabitants since written records were kept have been able to verify either of these stories or find the entrance to the stairway, and I dare say they are both unreliable, as are many such legends.