The Treasure of the Isle of Mist Part 8

So Fiona filled her pocket with bread and cheese, and started; and the Student, after a useless attempt to settle down to his inscriptions, set up a little three-inch telescope with which he sometimes entertained Fiona on fine nights, gazing at Jupiter's moons or Saturn's rings, and followed her across the moor as far as he could.

It was the only way he could go with her.

There are many worse things in the world than setting out to climb Heleval on a beautiful morning on the first of October, when the gra.s.s in unsunned corners is still pearly with the frost of the night, and the whole earth is touched with the wonderful caress of the cool autumn sunshine. Fiona's way lay along the sh.o.r.e road, past the bank of heather and fern which in August had been gay with flowers, napperd and potentilla, blue milkwort and starry eye-bright, and alive with b.u.t.terflies, blues and small heaths and pearl-bordered fritillaries; but the flowers were faded now, and in their place, in the little burn where the hazelnuts grew, was a tapestry of purple burrs and scarlet hips. The sh.o.r.e road ended at a little burn; here an old stone bridge, grown over with gra.s.s, crossed the pool which in times of spate would hold a fat, white sea-trout, and here Fiona and the Urchin had used to come in summer to gather globe flowers. From this point a sheep track led up the valley beside the burn, through great s.p.a.ces of yellowing bracken, by little swampy springs where late forget-me-nots still lingered and an early snipe might rise with a skeep, and across low-lying wastes of bog-myrtle, perfuming all the air with its dying leaves; then the ground began to rise, and fern and bog-myrtle gave place to short, hard gra.s.s tufted with bulrushes, and beds of matted unburnt heather, seamed with rabbit tracks.

After a time Fiona left the valley and began to climb the hillside, rising steeply through heather and red gra.s.s and heather again, most of it dying by now, but with patches still in full flower, worked by the wild bees and making the moorland smell like a honey-pot. Then more gra.s.s, and limestone ridges, and she stood on the crest of the moor, which billowed away on her right, wave after wave, till it ran down to the low ground and the sea, and rose up on her left till it ended in the great ma.s.s of Heleval, standing up into the cloudless sky. The ground before her was scarred with deep peat-hags, their gray banks touched with the tiny scarlet blossoms of the trumpet-moss, while from their crumbling sides projected bits of the whitened trunks of trees long since dead, last vestiges of the forests that had clothed the island ere ever the Gael first fought his way in. Walking became impossible, and she jumped from gray bank to gray bank, occasionally floundering across a little lake of soft peat, where the wild cotton gra.s.s still bloomed, and the mountain hares had left telltale tracks. Now and again a hare itself would scurry away before her up one of the peat ditches, rising to the moor level as soon as he thought he was out of gunshot and sitting up on his haunches to watch; now and again an old grouse, his head and hackles red as a berry in the sunlight, would rise, crow, and swing away over the brow of the moor. And presently from behind Heleval came drifting a gray bird with a long bill who on hovering wings wheeled three times in the air above her and gave his full spring call, the most wonderful sound that the hills ever hear; then he stooped close over her head and with wings spread sickle-wise shot away for the sea. One may see a curlew on the moor in October, but he will not give his spring call; and Fiona felt of good courage, for she knew that the bird had called for her, to tell her she was in the right way.

So she came to the foot of Heleval itself, and started to climb the steep slope of short gra.s.s, slippery as polished board, which led up to the rock pinnacle above; the hillside twinkled with the white scuts of rabbits racing up before her to their holes, as round the side of the mountain came their enemy, perhaps the last kite in the island, glittering in the sun as only a glede can, till the beautiful cowardly creature caught sight of Fiona and swept away across the valley. She pa.s.sed the great cairn where the hill foxes live, and began the last climb to the pinnacle of rock that fronts the flat crest of the mountain. And now something white on the rock, which she had noticed from below without taking account of, began to become insistent. It could not possibly be a patch of snow yet, she thought. Perhaps the shepherd had hung a sheepskin there. But no sheepskin was ever so white.

Then she came up near the pinnacle, and saw. Standing upright against it was a girl, not much older than herself. Her long dark hair blew back over the rock; her white body was half hidden in a trembling veil of white light, which shimmered and played all about her, waving with every breath of the wind. Her face was beautiful and cold, like a frosty moonrise; her eyes shone like the drip of phosph.o.r.escent water under the stars.

"You have come at last," said the girl. "Every day for many days I have watched for you."

"Who are you, you beautiful girl?" asked Fiona.

"I am an Oread," said the girl. "I am the spirit of Heleval."

"I have heard," said Fiona, "that long ago people used to believe that everything had a spirit of its own, mountains and rivers and trees. Is it true then?"

"It _was_ true," said the girl. "The world was full of my sisters, once. There were the Naiads in the streams, and the Hamadryads in the woods, and we, the Oreads, in the mountains. Men were wiser and simpler in those days. But now my sisters are nearly all gone. When a tree has become so many cubic feet of timber, how can it shelter a Dryad? When a stream is merely so many units of waterpower, how can a Naiad dwell there? Only the barren mountains, if they contain neither gold nor iron, have been left unappraised and unexploited; and a few Oreads still linger here and there. Once in a while a man fancies that he sees one of us; then he must climb and climb till the day he dies, hoping to see her indeed; down in your world people call him mountain mad."

"How is it then that I have seen you?" asked Fiona.

The Oread touched her bracelet.

"Partly because of this," she said. "But chiefly because you are a child, and can still see. What is it you have come to ask me?"

"How to find the Urchin," said Fiona.

"You know of course where he is?" the girl asked; and Fiona said, "Yes, he is in Fairyland; but I do not know the way to go."

"That is easily told," said the Oread. "The King of the Woodc.o.c.k will let you in, and any of his people can tell you where to find him. But do you know the danger? If you do arrive, which is very doubtful, the fairies will make you wish a wish; and if your wish be one that does not find favor with them, they will keep you there forever, till you lose your memory and yourself and become even as one of them."

"I will take the risk," said Fiona, "for I must go and try to bring him back."

"Why do you want to bring him back?" asked the Oread. "He is much better where he is. Will he thank you for bringing him back? Not a bit. You will have the labor and the danger, and he will take it all for granted. And then he will become a man, and what use is that? He may be a financier, and cheat somebody; or a politician, and slander somebody; or a learned man, and hinder wisdom. He is much better in Fairyland. Why are you going?"

"I can't help it," said Fiona. "You can't leave people in the lurch, you know."

"Of course you can," said the Oread. "Be sensible and go home; eat, drink, and be merry."

"O, don't you understand?" said Fiona. "Don't you see that there are some things you _can't_ do, whatever anybody says? It's not the reason of the thing; it's only just because I am I, and he is lost. You are so beautiful; haven't you any heart?"

"Neither heart nor soul," said the Oread. "So I ought to be perfectly happy. You have a heart and a soul, and you are not. Which of us is the better off?"

"I wouldn't change, anyhow," said Fiona.

The Oread laughed.

"Of course you wouldn't. It is I who would change if I could. But as I have no soul, and cannot get one, and do not know what it would mean to get one, it is no use worrying; it is best to be happy as I am. In any case, I would not care to be like men and women. I would not mind having a child's heart, like you. I had a heart once, but it is so long ago that I have almost forgotten what it was like. How old do you think I am?"

"You _look_ about seventeen," said Fiona.

"I am exactly as old as Heleval," said the girl. "And that is more hundreds of thousands of years than you or I could ever count. I am older than any of the fishes or birds or beasts; far older than men or fairies. Look at that," and the Oread swept her arm over the glorious prospect around her; the two great wings of the Isle of Mist stretched far out into the sea, the Atlantic throbbing and sparkling under the blue sky, and across the loch the jagged gray range of the Cuchullins, peak upon peak. "Isn't it all beautiful? We came into being together.

Heleval was a giant in those days, a king among other kings; and there was no sea there, and the Cuchullin Hills stood right up into the sky, and twisted and bubbled while the Earth cooled and cracked, and my sisters of the Fire came out of the cracks and taught us mountain spirits the fire dance, and we danced it all night on the great peaks till the stars reeled to watch us. And then the fiery summits cooled and sank down, and my sisters of the Fire sank with them, and a mighty river went foaming out down the valley yonder to a distant sea; and every evening my sisters the Naiads came floating up in a circle with garlands of green on their hair, and they taught us mountain spirits the water dance, and we danced it all night on the moonlit water, while the Ocean crept nearer and nearer to gaze. And then the sea came up, and the river carved Heleval out as you see it, and shrank away, and my sisters the Naiads shrank away with it; and the island was covered with great forests, and my sisters the Hamadryads came out of the tree-trunks and taught us mountain spirits the tree dance, and we danced it all night in the forest glades, till one night men saw; and men felled the forests to capture my sisters of the trees and enslave them, but they vanished as the trees vanished. And to-day only the hills are left, and we, the Oreads, a people few and fading away; and we no longer dance, for we have lost all our sisters, and we no longer have hearts."

The girl's face had filled with color as she spoke, and her eyes had become soft, and her voice sounded like the music of waters far away.

Fiona looked at her in wonder.

"Indeed, indeed, you have your heart still," she said. "And you are far more beautiful even than I thought you were. Come home with me, and I will love you as you loved your sisters."

"It is not possible," said the Oread. "It is not free to me to leave Heleval. I _am_ Heleval. And I shall be here till one day men find iron or copper in my mountain, and come up with great engines to carve it and tear its flanks and carry it away; and then I shall go too, as my sisters have gone."

"Will you die?" asked Fiona.

"I do not know what death means," said the girl. "I shall just go back, like a drop of water when it falls into the sea. But do you know what you have done to-day? For a few moments, because you are brave and loyal, you have given me back my heart, which was lost thousands of years ago. It will all fade away again; but before it fades, will you kiss me?"

So Fiona took her in her arms and kissed her, and then turned and went down the hill. Once she faced round, and saw the Oread standing, frosty and white, against the pinnacle of rock, holding out her arms; and she started to go back to her. And even as she moved the whiteness vanished, and there was nothing there but the rocky pinnacle, shining in the slanting sunlight. Rather sadly she went home.

CHAPTER VI

THE KING OF THE WOODc.o.c.k

That night Fiona told her father that she believed she had found the way to go. They also discussed the question of catching a woodc.o.c.k; with the result that Fiona was up at dawn and off to the kennels behind the big house, where the Urchin's father kept his dogs. She understood that she must take advantage both of the night frost and the habits of the keeper, who was apt to lie in bed awhile when no one was about.

The two setters stood on their hind legs to greet her, and pawed at the bars, whining and dancing with joy. Artemis was white and brown and Apollo was white and black. Fiona threw open the door, and they were out in a moment, tumbling over each other as they made wild rings round the gra.s.s, and dashing back in between to lick her hand.

She had to sit down and wait till the first exuberance was over, and they came and lay down at her feet with their tongues out.

"It is good to be out so early," said Apollo.

"It's so slow in the kennel," said Artemis. "And we can't even talk to each other, because Apollo was broken in English and doesn't know any Gaelic, and I was broken by another man in Gaelic and don't know any English."

"You'll interpret, won't you?" said Apollo. "Of course we've the international code, but it doesn't take one much further than the pa.s.swords."

So for the rest of the morning Fiona had not only to interpret but to make every remark twice over, once in each language. But it will do if the reader takes this for granted.

"What are we going to do?" asked Apollo.

So Fiona explained to them that she wanted to catch a woodc.o.c.k and ask him a question, and she hoped they would help her.

"Of course we will," said Artemis. "We know all about woodc.o.c.k. When we go out with himself, we find them for him and stand still, and then he makes a noise and they fall down dead."

"Sometimes," said Apollo.