IV
The days passed one by one, and the placid existence of the Island went
on almost without a ripple. The Three Companions obeyed no rules nor
regulations. They never did anything correctly either in sitting or
standing or turning themselves round or lying on their back. On the
contrary, wherever they saw these things going on precisely and exactly
according to the Rules, they gave way to inordinate laughter. They
remained unimpressed altogether by the eternal gravity of those eternal
regulations.
One day the great Court Cards came to the Son of the Kotwal and the Son
of the Merchant and the Prince.
"Why," they asked slowly, "are you not moving according to the
Rules?"
The Three Companions answered: "Because that is our Ichcha (wish)."
The great Court Cards with hollow, cavernous voices, as if slowly
awakening from an age-long dream, said together: "Ich-cha! And pray who
is Ich-cha?"
They could not understand who Ichcha was then, but the whole island was
to understand it by-and-by. The first glimmer of light passed the
threshold of their minds when they found out, through watching the
actions of the Prince, that they might move in a straight line in an
opposite direction from the one in which they had always gone before.
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