On the Golden Key

Pt. 1: George MacDonald and the Roots of Modern Fantasy

[Greetings, friends, from Austin! Last week, in On Writing, I mentioned how C.S. Lewis considered George MacDonald his literary master, responsible for baptizing his imagination. This week, I want to offer a brief introduction to MacDonald and one of his most imaginative works (The Golden Key).

First, a little on the man. MacDonald was born in 1824 in Scotland to an unusually literate family full of scholars and poets. He grew up in the Congregational Church, graduated from King’s College, Aberdeen, and then spent the next few years trying to figure out what to do with his life before being appointed minister in Arundel in 1850. There, his sermons were met with mixed reviews (largely on account of his Universalist beliefs) until he resigned in 1853.

It was then that MacDonald began focusing on his writing and would work himself into the title of founding father of modern fantasy writing, serving as a mentor to Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland) and becoming the godfather of the Oxford Inklings.¹

G.K. Chesterton considered MacDonald “one of the three or four greatest men of 19th-century Britain… a true mystic to whom the supernatural was natural.”² In his MacDonald anthology, C.S. Lewis recognized MacDonald as his great inspiration: “In making this collection I was discharging a debt of justice. I have never concealed the fact that I regarded [MacDonald] as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.”³

What was it, you might ask, that earned MacDonald these distinctions as a beloved forefather of fantasy? Read his tales, and I promise it will quickly become apparent. His stories are an invitation to see the ordinary world with otherworldly wonder. This is why Lewis described the feeling of being “washed” when reading MacDonald—his works provide a much-needed antidote to our modern state of disenchantment and world weariness. To speak of beauty, we might say his work opens a window to the land to which we belong but cannot enter. As Chesterton describes it:

A curious glow pervades [MacDonald’s] books: the flowers seem like coloured flames broken loose from the flaming heart of the world: every bush of gorse is a burning bush, borning for the same cause as that of Moses… ⁴

As for the magic of the man, Chesteron explained MacDonald this way:

MacDonald was a mystic who was half mad with joy, of a joy all the more violent because it remained mystical. For him the secret of the Cosmos was a secret because it was too good to tell. The stars and all things in his world tingled with the tension of that painful pleasure of the soul. For him the pity of God was so positive as to be a definite passion like thirst; it was a fierce tenderness; he was never tired of saying that his God was a consuming fire... True Mysticism is entirely concerned with absolute things; not with twilight, but with the sacred black darkness and the sacred white sun. For to all good Mystics, from Plato downwards, absolute ideas like those of light and darkness, are the real and interesting things. It must always be remembered that the only person in the world who can be really exact and definite is the Mystic. All sane materialism is avowedly agnostic and relative. The Evolutionist cannot be precise. The Positivist cannot be positive. But the Mystic believes that a rose is red with a fixed and sacred redness, and that a cucumber is green by a thundering decree of Heaven.⁵

There is one particular MacDonald story that captures, in my view, the author’s characteristic hold on the imagination: The Golden Key. It is a short story that, for whatever it lacks in coherent plot, makes up for with its countless scenes familiar to the collective consciousness that seem to spring directly from the Cauldron of Myth.

Side note: Initially, when I set out to write this essay, I was going to attempt to offer a summary and analysis all in one essay, but eventually decided against that approach for two reasons: the first, most obvious, is that the essay would be far too long. And the second, most important, is that by separating the two essays, the reader will have time to sit with the story and allow it to work within as it wills before I pollute any magic with my personal reflections. You can read the full story online here.

So with that in mind, it is to The Golden Key (Pt. 1) that we devote the rest of today’s essay.]

Figure: The Golden Stairs by Edward Burne-Jones (1880)

Published in 1867, George MacDonald’s The Golden Key is a cornerstone of modern fantasy literature. Its plot is hard to follow and perhaps less cohesive than the modern reader is used to, but the fact that it defies logic is a feature, not a defect. As MacDonald explains in his essay, The Fantastic Imagination:

I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there, not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, “Roses! Boil them, or we won’t have them!” My tales may not be roses, but I will not boil them.

[…]

The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must—he cannot help himself—become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.⁶

For MacDonald, the aim of any good fiction or fantasy writer is to awaken wonder in the imagination and re-enchant the everyday world… it is to make the world more child-like, for “unless [we] change and become like little children, [we] will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”⁷

I will go farther.—The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is—not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding—the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.⁸

One of the most remarkable aspects of The Golden Key is how it contains several scenes experiencing the numinous within such a concise narrative. It offers us the opportunity to access and engage with things from the other side of the veil.

The imagery and scenes are shallow enough for children to play in and deep enough for leviathans to swim. There are at least a handful of eternal scenes that draw on ancient sources and have since gone on to inspire some of the best modern writers. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Dante… they’re all there.

In Part 2 of this series, we will explore how The Golden Key was influenced by antiquity’s greats and inspired modernity’s giants. But with the rest of this Part 1, we walk through a summary of the story’s plot.⁹

The Story

The Golden Key tells the story of two children, Mossy and Tangle, who embark on a mystical journey to find the keyhole that fits a golden key. It starts with Mossy, a young boy who hears tales from his great-aunt about the magical key.

There was a boy who used to sit in the twilight and listen to his great-aunt's stories. She told him that if he could reach the place where the end of the rainbow stands he would find there a golden key.

“And what is the key for?” the boy would ask. “What is it the key of? What will it open?”

“That nobody knows,” his aunt would reply. “He has to find that out.”

“I suppose, being gold,” the boy once said, thoughtfully, “that I could get a good deal of money for it if I sold it.”

“Better never find it than sell it,” returned his aunt.

One night, Mossy sees a rainbow dropping in the forest that borders both his house and Fairyland.

And as he gazed into the forest he began to feel as if the trees were all waiting for him, and had something they could not go on with till he came to them. But he was hungry and wanted his supper. So he lingered.

Suddenly, far among the trees, as far as the sun could shine, he saw a glorious thing. It was the end of a rainbow, large and brilliant. He could count all seven colours, and could see shade after shade beyond the violet; while before the red stood a colour more gorgeous and mysterious still. It was a colour he had never seen before.

Seeing his chance to find the golden key, Mossy ventures into the forest and finds the end of the rainbow, which reaches to the heavens.

The trees welcomed him. The bushes made way for him. The rainbow grew larger and brighter; and at length he found himself within two trees of it.

It was a grand sight, burning away there in silence, with its gorgeous, its lovely, its delicate colours, each distinct, all combining. He could now see a great deal more of it. It rose high into the blue heavens, but bent so little that he could not tell how high the crown of the arch must reach. It was still only a small portion of a huge bow.

He stood gazing at it till he forgot himself with delight—even forgot the key which he had come to seek. And as he stood it grew more wonderful still. For in each of the colours, which was as large as the column of a church, he could faintly see beautiful forms slowly ascending as if by the steps of a winding stair. The forms appeared irregularly—now one, now many, now several, now none—men and women and children—all different, all beautiful.

Mossy sits near the rainbow all day and night, content “with standing as near it as he might, and watching the forms that ascended the glorious colours towards the unknown height of the arch.” Once evening falls, he makes himself a bed of moss and falls asleep. When he wakes up, he finds the golden key.

When he woke in the morning the sun was looking straight into his eyes. He turned away from it, and the same moment saw a brilliant little thing lying on the moss within a foot of his face. It was the golden key. The pipe of it was of plain gold, as bright as gold could be. The handle was curiously wrought and set with sapphires. In a terror of delight he put out his hand and took it, and had it.

***

Then the story cuts to Tangle, a neglected merchant’s daughter.

Not far from the house where the boy had lived, there was another house, the owner of which was a merchant, who was much away from home. He had lost his wife some years before, and had only one child, a little girl, whom he left to the charge of two servants, who were very idle and careless. So she was neglected and left untidy…

One evening, when Tangle is alone, a group of fairies frighten her into the Fairyland forest by pretending to be bears.

[T]hey knew that she had been reading the story of Silverhair all day.¹⁰ So the next moment she heard the voices of the three bears upon the stair, big voice, middle voice, and little voice, and she heard their soft, heavy tread, as if they had stockings over their boots, coming nearer and nearer to the door of her room, till she could bear it no longer. She did just as Silverhair did, and as the fairies wanted her to do; she darted to the window, pulled it open, got upon the ivy, and so scrambled to the ground. She then fled to the forest as fast as she could run.

In the forest, a tree traps Tangle in its branches until she is saved by an air-fish (a creature that swims through the air like fish through water) that then leads her to a cottage.

[The tree] dropped its branches to the ground all about her, and caught her as in a trap. She struggled to get out, but the branches pressed her closer and closer to the trunk. She was in great terror and distress, when the air-fish, swimming into the thicket of branches, began tearing them with its beak. They loosened their hold at once, and the creature went on attacking them, till at length they let the child go. Then the air-fish came from behind her, and swam on in front, glittering and sparkling all lovely colours; and she followed.

It led her gently along till all at once it swam in at a cottage door.

Arriving at the cottage, the air-fish swims into a boiling pot of water, and Tangle talks with the wise woman who lives there. In the conversation, we discover (among other things) that the woman’s name is Grandmother, and she is thousands of years old, and she has great blue eyes that look “as if all the stars in the sky were melted in them to make their brightness” … “as if the moon were melted in her eyes.”

After their conversation, Grandmother bathes Tangle in a strange tank.

She took off the girl’s night-gown, rose with her in her arms, and going to the wall of the cottage, opened a door. Then Tangle saw a deep tank, the sides of which were filled with green plants, which had flowers of all colours. There was a roof over it like the roof of the cottage. It was filled with beautiful clear water, in which swam a multitude of such fishes as the one that had led her to the cottage. It was the light their colours gave that showed the place in which they were.

The lady spoke some words Tangle could not understand, and threw her into the tank.

The fishes came crowding about her. Two or three of them got under her head and kept it up. The rest of them rubbed themselves all over her, and with their wet feathers washed her quite clean. Then the lady, who had been looking on all the time, spoke again; whereupon some thirty or forty of the fishes rose out of the water underneath Tangle, and so bore her up to the arms the lady held out to take her.

After the bath, the Grandmother then feeds Tangle a spread of bread, milk, fruit, and the air-fish who led Tangle to the cottage. Tangle has reservations about eating the air-fish, but the Grandmother assures her that, in Fairyland, “the ambition of the animals is to be eaten by the people; for that is their highest end in that condition. But they are not, therefore, destroyed. Out of that pot comes something more than the dead fish, you will see.”

Once Tangle eats the fish, she is given the ability to hear animals.

And the moment she had swallowed a mouthful of it, a change she could not describe began to take place in her. She heard a murmuring all about her, which became more and more articulate, and at length, as she went on eating, grew intelligible. By the time she had finished her share, the sounds of all the animals in the forest came crowding through the door to her ears; for the door still stood wide open, though it was pitch-dark outside; and they were no longer sounds only; they were speech, and speech that she could understand. She could tell what the insects in the cottage were saying to each other too. She had even a suspicion that the trees and flowers all about the cottage were holding midnight communications with each other; but what they said she could not hear.

Once Tangle and the Grandmother finish their meal, the Grandmother comes back to the pot where the air-fish was boiled and lifts the lid to release a creature with large white wings.

A lovely little creature in human shape, with large white wings, rose out of it, and flew round and round the roof of the cottage; then dropped, fluttering, and nestled in the lap of the lady. She spoke to it some strange words, carried it to the door, and threw it out into the darkness. Tangle heard the flapping of its wings die away in the distance.

“Now have we done the fish any harm?” she said, returning.

“No,” answered Tangle, “I do not think we have. I should not mind eating one every day.”

“They must wait their time, like you and me too, my little Tangle.”

After this, the Grandmother goes back to the tank of fish and asks for the wisest among them to fetch Mossy.

“I want one of you.” [Grandmother] said,—”the wisest.”

Thereupon the fishes got together in the middle of the tank, with their heads forming a circle above the water, and their tails a larger circle beneath it. They were holding a council, in which their relative wisdom should be determined. At length one of them flew up into the lady’s hand, looking lively and ready.

“You know where the rainbow stands?” she asked.

“Yes, mother, quite well,” answered the fish.

“Bring home a young man you will find there, who does not know where to go.”

After this, Tangle goes to sleep, and when she wakes in the morning, she’s in the open forest and sees nothing but the mossy grown wall of the cottage—all doors and windows have disappeared. She decides to spend the day bathing in streams and listening to the animals until twilight reveals the cottage door open once more.

Tangle enters and is soon joined by Mossy and the wise air-fish that led him to the cottage.

But at length in rushed the shining fish, and snuggled down in the pot. It was followed by a youth who had outgrown his worn garments. His face was ruddy with health, and in his hand he carried a little jewel, which sparkled in the firelight.

The first words the lady said were,—

“What is that in your hand, Mossy?”

Now Mossy was the name his companions had given him, because he had a favourite stone covered with moss, on which he used to sit whole days reading; and they said the moss had begun to grow upon him too.

With Tangle and Mossy now in the same room, the Grandmother tells Mossy he must look for the keyhole and take Tangle with him.

“You must look for the keyhole. That is your work. I cannot help you. I can only tell you that if you look for it you will find it.”

“What kind of box will it open? What is there inside?”

“I do not know. I dream about it, but I know nothing.”

“Must I go at once?”

“You may stop here tonight, and have some of my supper. But you must go in the morning. All I can do for you is to give you clothes. Here is a girl called Tangle, whom you must take with you.”

Saying this, the Grandmother proceeds to wash and feed Mossy the same as she had done with Tangle. Then, the Grandmother sends them off on their quest to find the place where the key fits—“the country from which the shadow falls.”

“And,” said the lady, “If you should lose each other as you go through the—the—I never can remember the name of that country,—do not be afraid, but go on and on.”

She kissed Tangle on the mouth and Mossy on the forehead, led them to the door, and waved her hand eastward. Mossy and Tangle took each other’s hand and walked away into the depth of the forest. In his right hand Mossy held the golden key.

Together, Mossy and Tangle venture off, led by the animals, eventually arriving at a valley of glorious shadows, where they grow (unknowingly) into old age and develop a desire to travel “to the country whence the shadows fall.”

Suddenly they came upon a rude doorway, by which they entered a narrow gallery cut in the rock. It grew darker and darker, till it was pitch dark, and they had to feel their way. At length the light began to return, and at last they came out upon a narrow path on the face of a lofty precipice. This path went winding down the rock to a wide plain, circular in shape, and surrounded on all sides by mountains. Those opposite to them were a great way off, and towered to an awful height, shooting up sharp, blue, ice-enamelled pinnacles. An utter silence reigned where they stood. Not even the sound of water reached them.

Looking down, they could not tell whether the valley below was a grassy plain or a great still lake. They had never seen any place look like it. The way to it was difficult and dangerous, but down the narrow path they went, and reached the bottom in safety. They found it composed of smooth, light-coloured sandstone, undulating in parts, but mostly level. It was no wonder to them now that they had not been able to tell what it was, for this surface was everywhere crowded with shadows. It was a sea of shadows. The mass was chiefly made up of the shadows of leaves innumerable, of all lovely and imaginative forms, waving to and fro, floating and quivering in the breath of a breeze whose motion was unfelt, whose sound was unheard. No forests clothed the mountain-sides, no trees were anywhere to be seen, and yet the shadows of the leaves, branches, and stems of all various trees covered the valley as far as their eyes could reach. They soon spied the shadows of flowers mingled with those of the leaves, and now and then the shadow of a bird with open beak, and throat distended with song. At times would appear the forms of strange, graceful creatures, running up and down the shadow-boles and along the branches, to disappear in the wind-tossed foliage. As they walked they waded knee-deep in the lovely lake. For the shadows were not merely lying on the surface of the ground, but heaped up above it like substantial forms of darkness, as if they had been cast upon a thousand different planes of the air. Tangle and Mossy often lifted their heads and gazed upwards to descry whence the shadows came; but they could see nothing more than a bright mist spread above them, higher than the tops of the mountains, which stood clear against it. No forests, no leaves, no birds were visible.

After a while, they reached more open spaces, where the shadows were thinner; and came even to portions over which shadows only flitted, leaving them clear for such as might follow. Now a wonderful form, half bird-like half human, would float across on outspread sailing pinions. Anon an exquisite shadow group of gambolling children would be followed by the loveliest female form, and that again by the grand stride of a Titanic shape, each disappearing in the surrounding press of shadowy foliage. Sometimes a profile of unspeakable beauty or grandeur would appear for a moment and vanish. Sometimes they seemed lovers that passed linked arm in arm, sometimes father and son, sometimes brothers in loving contest, sometimes sisters entwined in gracefullest community of complex form. Sometimes wild horses would tear across, free, or bestrode by noble shadows of ruling men. But some of the things which pleased them most they never knew how to describe.

About the middle of the plain they sat down to rest in the heart of a heap of shadows. After sitting for a while, each, looking up, saw the other in tears: they were each longing after the country whence the shadows fell.

“We MUST find the country from which the shadows come,” said Mossy.

“We must, dear Mossy,” responded Tangle. “What if your golden key should be the key to it?”

“Ah! that would be grand,” returned Mossy.—“But we must rest here for a little, and then we shall be able to cross the plain before night.”

Once rested, they return to crossing the plain. We’re not told how much time passes, but by the time they have done so, Mossy’s hair is grey and Tangle has wrinkles, and somewhere along the way, the two lose each other.

How long they were in crossing this plain I cannot tell; but before night Mossy’s hair was streaked with grey, and Tangle had got wrinkles on her forehead.

As evening drew on, the shadows fell deeper and rose higher. At length they reached a place where they rose above their heads, and made all dark around them. Then they took hold of each other’s hand, and walked on in silence and in some dismay. They felt the gathering darkness, and something strangely solemn besides, and the beauty of the shadows ceased to delight them. All at once Tangle found that she had not a hold of Mossy’s hand, though when she lost it she could not tell.

From here, we follow the two as they take their separate journeys. The story first follows Tangle down into the Earth.

Before long she arrived at a precipice, in the face of which a stair was cut. When she had ascended halfway, the stair ceased, and the path led straight into the mountain. She was afraid to enter, and turning again towards the stair, grew giddy at the sight of the depth beneath her, and was forced to throw herself down in the mouth of the cave.

On her way down, Tangle finds the former air-fish who led her to the cottage (now an aëranth), which leads her through the cave’s passageways to a sandy shore. Tangle falls asleep there, and when she wakes up, she sees “an old man with long white hair down to his shoulders, leaning upon a stick covered with green buds, and so bending over her.”

The Old Man of the Sea asks Tangle what she wants, and she answers, “show me the way up to the country from which the shadows fall.” The Old Man of the Sea (who we find out is the Father of the Grandmother) says he does not know the way and that she must go to the Old Man of the Earth and that she must first be made ready with a baptism.

He led her to a hole in the wall, which she had not observed before. It was covered with the green leaves and white blossoms of a creeping plant.

“Only white-blossoming plants can grow under the sea,” said the old man. “In there you will find a bath, in which you must lie till I call you.”

Tangle went in, and found a smaller room or cave, in the further corner of which was a great basin hollowed out of a rock, and half full of the clearest sea-water. Little streams were constantly running into it from cracks in the wall of the cavern. It was polished quite smooth inside, and had a carpet of yellow sand in the bottom of it. Large green leaves and white flowers of various plants crowded up and over it, draping and covering it almost entirely.

No sooner was she undressed and lying in the bath, than she began to feel as if the water were sinking into her, and she was receiving all the good of sleep without undergoing its forgetfulness. She felt the good coming all the time. And she grew happier and more hopeful than she had been since she lost Mossy. But she could not help thinking how very sad it was for a poor old man to live there all alone, and have to take care of a whole seaful of stupid and riotous fishes.

After about an hour, as she thought, she heard his voice calling her, and rose out of the bath. All the fatigue and aching of her long journey had vanished. She was as whole, and strong, and well as if she had slept for seven days.

When Tangle returns to the Old Man of the Sea, he points her down a winding stair. At the bottom, she meets the Old Man of the Earth.

At last there was not one step more, and she found herself in a glimmering cave. On a stone in the middle of it sat a figure with its back towards her—the figure of an old man bent double with age. From behind she could see his white beard spread out on the rocky floor in front of him. He did not move as she entered, so she passed round that she might stand before him and speak to him. The moment she looked in his face, she saw that he was a youth of marvellous beauty. He sat entranced with the delight of what he beheld in a mirror of something like silver, which lay on the floor at his feet, and which from behind she had taken for his white beard. She stood and watched him. At length, all trembling, she spoke. But her voice made no sound. Yet the youth lifted up his head. He showed no surprise, however, at seeing her—only smiled a welcome.

Like the Old Man of the Sea before him, the Old Man of the Earth also cannot tell Tangle the way to the country where the shadows fall, and says she must go to the Old Man of the Fire through a daunting hole in the cave.

Then the Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down.

“That is the way,” he said.

“But there are no stairs.”

“You must throw yourself in. There is no other way.”

She turned and looked him full in the face—stood so for a whole minute, as she thought: it was a whole year—then threw herself headlong into the hole.

At first, Tangle is swept downward by rushing water, but when that dries up, she is forced to take a “burning descent.”

The heat was terrible. She felt scorched to the bone, but it did not touch her strength. It grew hotter and hotter. She said, “I can bear it no longer.” Yet she went on.

At the long last, the stair ended at a rude archway in an all but glowing rock. Through this archway Tangle fell exhausted into a cool mossy cave.

Tangle spots a spout from the rock in the cave, plunges her face in, and takes a drink, and when she looks around again, she has an overwhelming sense of understanding.

[T]he moment she stood upright she had a marvellous sense that she was in the secret of the earth and all its ways. Everything she had seen, or learned from books; all that her grandmother had said or sung to her; all the talk of the beasts, birds, and fishes; all that had happened to her on her journey with Mossy, and since then in the heart of the earth with the Old man and the Older man—all was plain: she understood it all, and saw that everything meant the same thing, though she could not have put it into words again.

After this realization, she sees, in the corner of the cave, a little naked child sitting on moss, endlessly arranging balls of various colours and sizes into patterns. We find out this is the Old Man of the Fire, who is both the oldest of old and the most youthful looking. When Tangle asks him the way to the country from which the shadows fall, he responds that she cannot go the way he knows, for she is not old enough.

The Old Man of the Fire leads Tangle from the cave, and she finds, curiously, that the heat no longer burns her. When they had gone some distance, the Old Man of the Fire hatches a snake to lead her on her way.

When they had gone some distance, the child turned up a great stone, and took something like an egg from under it. He next drew a long curved line in the sand with his finger, and laid the egg in it. He then spoke something Tangle could not understand. The egg broke, a small snake came out, and, lying in the line in the sand, grew and grew till he filled it. The moment he was thus full-grown, he began to glide away, undulating like a sea-wave.

“Follow that serpent,” said the child. “He will lead you the right way.”

Tangle follows the serpent, who went “straight on, turning neither to the right nor left.”

***

Then the story cuts back to Mossy, who has washed up on the shore of the Old Man of the Sea. Mossy wakes up and follows the Old Man of the Sea to his cave, where they sit and talk after Mossy is bathed. The Old Man of the Sea asks about the golden key and what Mossy thinks it’s for, and when Mossy comments about being old, the Old Man insists that Mossy look at himself in the water.

“Get up and look at yourself in the water.”

He rose and looked at himself in the water, and there was not a grey hair on his head or a wrinkle on his skin.

“You have tasted of death now,” said the Old Man. “Is it good?”

“It is good,” said Mossy. “It is better than life.”

“No,” said the Old Man, “it is only more life.—Your feet will make no holes in the water now.”

After this revelation, the Old Man of the Sea leads Mossy out onto the waves of the raging ocean, where they see the foot of the rainbow to the east. Mossy recognizes this is his way and goes on toward the rainbow until he finds the keyhole.

He fought the wind, and climbed the waves, and went on towards the rainbow.

The storm died away. A lovely day and a lovelier night followed. A cool wind blew over the wide plain of the quiet ocean. And still Mossy journeyed eastward. But the rainbow had vanished with the storm.

Day after day he held on, and he thought he had no guide. He did not see how a shining fish under the waters directed his steps. He crossed the sea, and came to a great precipice of rock, up which he could discover but one path. Nor did this lead him farther than half-way up the rock, where it ended on a platform. Here he stood and pondered.—It could not be that the way stopped here, else what was the path for? It was a rough path, not very plain, yet certainly a path.—He examined the face of the rock. It was smooth as glass. But as his eyes kept roving hopelessly over it, something glittered, and he caught sight of a row of small sapphires. They bordered a little hole in the rock.

“The keyhole!” he cried.

The key opens to a chamber where the colors of the rainbow appear as columns of light, and Tangle is waiting for him.

He tried the key. It fitted. It turned. A great clang and clash, as of iron bolts on huge brazen caldrons, echoed thunderously within. He drew out the key. The rock in front of him began to fall. He retreated from it as far as the breadth of the platform would allow. A great slab fell at his feet. In front was still the solid rock, with this one slab fallen forward out of it. But the moment he stepped upon it, a second fell, just short of the edge of the first, making the next step of a stair, which thus kept dropping itself before him as he ascended into the heart of the precipice. It led him into a hall fit for such an approach—irregular and rude in formation, but floor, sides, pillars, and vaulted roof, all one mass of shining stones of every colour that light can show. In the centre stood seven columns, ranged from red to violet. And on the pedestal of one of them sat a woman, motionless, with her face bowed upon her knees. Seven years had she sat there waiting. She lifted her head as Mossy drew near. It was Tangle. Her hair had grown to her feet, and was rippled like the windless sea on broad sands. Her face was beautiful, like her grandmother’s, and as still and peaceful as that of the Old Man of the Fire. Her form was tall and noble. Yet Mossy knew her at once.

Mossy and Tangle remained in the chamber until it began to glimmer, and another keyhole was revealed.

After a while, however, the cave began to glimmer again. The light came from the moon, but it did not look like moon light, for it gleamed through those seven pillars in the middle, and filled the place with all colours. And now Mossy saw that there was a pillar beside the red one, which he had not observed before. And it was of the same new colour that he had seen in the rainbow when he saw it first in the fairy forest. And on it he saw a sparkle of blue. It was the sapphires round the keyhole.

He took his key. It turned in the lock to the sounds of Aeolian music. A door opened upon slow hinges, and disclosed a winding stair within. The key vanished from his fingers. Tangle went up. Mossy followed. The door closed behind them. They climbed out of the earth; and, still climbing, rose above it. They were in the rainbow. Far abroad, over ocean and land, they could see through its transparent walls the earth beneath their feet. Stairs beside stairs wound up together, and beautiful beings of all ages climbed along with them.

They knew that they were going up to the country whence the shadows fall.

And by this time I think they must have got there.

1. Though inspired by MacDonald, Tolkien’s opinion of him soured as an adult. We know this because Tolkien was asked to write a preface for The Golden Key (a book he loved earlier in life) and found it “distasteful” as an adult (probably because he thought MacDonald, a little like Lewis, did not take fairy stories seriously enough).

2. G.K. Chesterton, George MacDonald, The Daily News, September 1905.

3. C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology.

4. G.K. Chesterton, George MacDonald and His Work, 1901.

5. G.K. Chesterton, George MacDonald, The Daily News, September 1905.

6. George MacDonald, The Fantastic Imagination.

7. Matthew 18:3.

8. George MacDonald, The Fantastic Imagination.

9. All quotes in this section come from George MacDonald, The Golden Key.

10. Silverhair is an earlier version of the fairy, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In the tale, Silver-hair jumps out of the window and runs away when the tree bears return to their house and find Silver-hair has been tasting their porridge.