Through the Western Wild of Neverland, on the other side of the floating island, is a rock rising mid-ocean. On and around this squarish rock the meer-maids would sun themselves and swim. And they would sing. At night the meer-maids who had children would bring them up to the rock, sit upon it with the little ones, and show them the moon, and show them to the moon. Undine did this too, with Emil when he was a little one, and he remembers still, half in and half out of consciousness.
This rock had other names in its other manifestations. In Narnia it was called the Stone Table. And on it Aslan was sacrificed by Jadis who wielded the Stone Knife.
Through the Western Wild and to the Stone Table, on which Prometheus had been bound so long ago, Emil Hering was leading Wilhelmina Wang. With them was one of the Lost Boys, Digory Kirke.
The meer-maids number three thousand, and among them were clans and factions. As Emil and Digory, who both knew the land, led Wilhelmina through the Western Wild, Emil recalled a song. He hummed, then sang. The words were strange, but here is a version translated from the Meerish by T. S. Eliot:
Around her fountain which flows
with the voice of men in pain,
are flowers that no man knows.
Their petals are fanged and red
with hideous streak and stain;
They sprang from the limbs of the dead. —
We shall not come here again.
Panthers rise from their lairs
in the forest which thickens below,
along the garden stairs
the sluggish python lies;
The peacocks walk, stately and slow,
and they look at us with the eyes
of men whom we knew long ago.