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Margaret St. Clair’s dark fantasy takes place around Dragonetsa, where Lycius and a prince hope to escape their provincial surroundings for Paris. Their plans become entangled with a mountain cave and the strange processes operating inside it.
Lycius’s werewolf nature complicates his dealings with the other characters, while political suspicion and personal bargaining add to the village’s unease. The cave promises a way of recovering something lost, but its contents reveal an unfamiliar relationship between objects, decay and time. What initially seems an opportunity becomes much more difficult to control.
The story combines grotesque humor with a progressively unsettling discovery, following the consequences of the characters’ attempts to exploit what they find. Its final condition for Lycius brings his original wish into a distorted relationship with his new surroundings. This complete 1955 story retains its original illustration by Virgil Finlay and the Project Gutenberg edition’s production credits and license.