But just as it was
completed, and before he had time to work the spell on the other twin,
the Ki-Ki grew impatient, and exclaimed:
"We beg your Highnesses not to keep us waiting. Let us have your
decision at once!"
And the twin maidens raised their fair heads and replied. But the
reply was of such a nature that both the old Ki and both the young Ki-Ki
staggered backward in amazement. For one of the twin High Ki said:
"They shall die!"
And the other twin High Ki said at the same instant:
"They shall NOT die!"
Had twin thunderbolts fallen through the twin roofs of the twin
palaces and struck the twin Ki and the twin Ki-Ki upon their twin
heads it would have created no more stupendous a sensation than did
this remark. Never before had any two halves of a twin of the Land of
Twi thought differently or spoken differently. Indeed, it startled
the two maidens themselves as much as it did their hearers, for each
one turned her head toward the other and, for the first time in her
life, looked into the other's face!
This act was fully as strange as their speech, and a sudden horrible
thought came into the startled heads of the twin Ki and the twin
Ki-Ki: THE HIGH KI OF TWI WAS NO LONGER ONE, BUT TWO.
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