At first light Vane leads his strange army — the Little Ones on bears and deer and elephants, with birds and butterflies for an honor guard — across the plain and through the sounding archway into Bulika, the city of Lilith. The children, who have never known fear in all their “long little lives,” meet it for the first time at the sight of “nests of stone”; the grown inhabitants prove to be the very “bad giants” the children might have become — cruel, joyless, and so unmotherly that Lona despairs of finding a single mother among them. Boys are snatched and thrown into pits; one little captive is murdered; the white leopardess hunts through the lanes, good after all, carrying a rescued child gently on her back. And then Lona, who came to deliver this people, says the unbearable thing: “This people is not worth delivering” — the moment a child of mercy looks on hardened wickedness and is tempted to write it off as beyond saving.
The Point of ReferenceBefore we weigh a single judgment in this chapter — whether a city is “worth delivering,” whether a face is mother enough, whether the leopardess is good or deadly — we fix the reference point the whole series stands on. Reason and worth are not measured from the shifting opinions of those who do the measuring; they are measured against the One who does not shift. The God who names Himself I AM is the unchanging ground of every true valuation. Lona’s verdict on Bulika changes with her weariness; God’s verdict on a people does not bend with the weather of His mercy. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and it is His constancy — not our exhaustion — that decides whether anyone is “worth” rescue.
Malachi 3:6 · LXX
Διότι ἐγὼ κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν καὶ οὐκ ἠλλοίωμαι· καὶ ὑμεῖς, οἱ υἱοὶ Ἰακώβ, οὐκ ἀπέχεσθε.
Malachi 3:6 · ESV
For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
Lona’s sentence over Bulika — spoken in grief, not malice — is exactly the verdict Scripture overturns at its center. The cross is God’s answer to a world that was, by every honest reckoning, “not worth delivering.” He delivered it anyway, not because it deserved rescue but because He is love.
Romans 5:6–8 · Greek
6Ἔτι γὰρ Χριστὸς ὄντων ἡμῶν ἀσθενῶν ἔτι κατὰ καιρὸν ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν ἀπέθανεν. 8συνίστησιν δὲ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀγάπην εἰς ἡμᾶς ὁ θεὸς, ὅτι ἔτι ἁμαρτωλῶν ὄντων ἡμῶν Χριστὸς ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἀπέθανεν.
Romans 5:6–8 · ESV
6For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 8But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Ezekiel 33:11 · LXX
Ζῶ ἐγώ, λέγει κύριος, οὐ βούλομαι τὸν θάνατον τοῦ ἀσεβοῦς ὡς ἀποστρέψαι τὸν ἀσεβῆ ἀπὸ τῆς ὁδοῦ αὐτοῦ καὶ ζῆν αὐτόν.
Ezekiel 33:11 · ESV
As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die?
The same word stands over Bulika’s giants and over us. In Romans 5:6 Christ dies “for the asebōn”; in Ezekiel 33:11 God takes no pleasure in the death of the asebous. The grammar of grace runs one direction only: the ungodly are precisely the ones the gospel is for. To call a sinner “not worth delivering” is to mistake the diagnosis for the verdict.
Fear, learned for the first time
The Little Ones have lived “long little lives” without fear; the walls of Bulika teach it in an instant — “for the first time in their lives… they knew fear.” That is true to how the brain works. Fear is not pure instinct alone; the amygdala learns threat by association, and a single overwhelming encounter can imprint a dread that was never there before. The “nests of stone” do real work on real nervous systems.
Yet notice what blunts the fear: trust. The children “went on bravely, for they had confidence in Lona.” Modern stress research says the same — a trusted, regulated presence dampens the threat response in those nearby. Courage in this chapter is not the absence of the alarm but a relationship strong enough to walk through it.
Who has standing to declare a people worthless?
“This people is not worth delivering,” Lona says, surveying the unmotherly faces. It is a judgment of worth — and worth is the deepest question in ethics. If value is something we assign, then Lona may revoke it, and Bulika is indeed disposable. If value is something a being has, conferred by its Maker, then no weariness of ours can cancel it.
The chapter itself argues against Lona. The one boy who is killed she is consoled to lose only because death “saved him” from becoming a bad giant — which quietly concedes that even the giants were once salvageable little ones. Worth was not absent in Bulika; it was buried, papered over like a masked door, but not destroyed.
The leopardess who is good after all
The white leopardess bursts down the lane, and the children waver — they remember her as a thing of “daily terror.” Yet she rolls aside rather than crush little Odu, carries the rescued boy gently “across her back,” and seizes the murderer “like a cat with a great rat.” The same fierce creature is both dreadful and a deliverer. Appearance and being do not coincide.
This is MacDonald’s recurring metaphysics: a power that looks like an enemy may be mercy in another form — as Mara’s House of Bitterness wounds in order to heal. The deepest realities cannot be read off the surface. What terrifies the natural eye may be exactly the thing sent to save you.
A city that drives out its children
Bulika is built on fear and greed, and its sin shows in its treatment of the little: boys snatched, thrown into pits, one murdered outright. Scripture knows this city. “Whoever causes one of these little ones… to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck” (Matt 18:6). The measure of a people is what it does with its children.
And the answer to Bulika is not Lona’s “leave the horrible place,” but the King who said “Let the children come to me.” The Little Ones ride into the city precisely to find mothers in it. Mission does not abandon the hardened; it walks the army of innocents through the sounding archway and stays.
The white leopardess is one creature, not two. She does not become a different beast when she turns out to be good; she was good while she still looked deadly. Little Odu trusts that identity — “he had heard me speak of the goodness of the white leopardess” — and runs to meet her. Faith is often simply holding fast to what a thing truly is when its surface frightens us.
Vane sees his own contradiction and names it: he leads “an army of innocents” toward a kingdom of obedience, yet “had not myself learned to obey… I was myself but a slave.” One cannot be at once the free king and the bound rebel in the same respect. The chapter exposes the lie a divided heart tells itself — that it may command what it will not first submit to.
Either Bulika is “worth delivering” or it is not; Lona cannot leave the question open and still ride away. But the false dilemma is hers, not God’s. The real disjunction is sharper: either worth is something we assign and may revoke, or it is conferred by the Maker and cannot be. Choose the first and the city is rubbish; choose the second and even bad giants were once little ones worth saving. There is no middle shelf to abstain upon.
Pleasant Springs Church — Discipleship School