The Treasure of the Isle of Mist

by W. W. Tarn

  CHAPTER V

  THE OREAD

  Fiona was out long before breakfast next morning, digging furiously inher garden. Not many minutes passed before she was rewarded by a glintof something yellow in a shovelful of earth, and there was thecentipede.

  "You dear creature," she said, and caught it up quickly before itcould wriggle away.

  "How polite we are this morning," said the centipede, swelling withconscious pride. "I suppose we want something."

  Fiona's mind was far too completely taken up with her one object tonotice or resent any insinuations.

  "Yes, I do," she said. "You told me that if I could not get what Iwanted by beginning at the top I must start again at the bottom. Ican do nothing from the top this time, so I've come to you."

  "Flattered, to be sure," said the centipede. "How frank we are."

  "Please don't be cross," said Fiona, humbly. "I am only doing what youtold me to do."

  "Bless you, child, I'm not cross," said the centipede. "I'm aphilosopher."

  "Don't philosophers get cross?" asked the girl.

  "Never," said the centipede. "And when they do they call it somethingelse. What's the matter with me is, that I've sprained my seventhankle on bow side, counting from the tail. Don't say you're sorry, foryou're not. Anyone can see you're not."

  "You are horrid to-day," said Fiona. "And the other day you were sonice."

  "That's what makes me such a charming companion," said the centipede."You never know what to expect. So I never pall."

  "I want to know where the Urchin is, and how I am to find him," saidFiona.

  "Is that all?" said the centipede. "Fancy interrupting my breakfast onaccount of that boy. Well, one question at a time. We'll have the lastone first; I'm in that sort of mood to-day."

  "How can I find the Urchin, then, please?" asked Fiona.

  "Well, you've been told _that_ already," said the centipede. "Haven'tyou a memory?"

  Fiona thought and thought, but could make nothing of it.

  "My friend the bookworm was there at the time," said the centipede,"and heard the shore lark tell you that the last man went up a hill.Very well. Go up a hill."

  "But that was for something quite different," said Fiona. "That wasfor my treasure. I am not thinking of any treasure now."

  "Silly of you, then," said the centipede. "I would be. Ever studiedphilosophy?"

  "No," said Fiona.

  "That's a pity," said the centipede. "Then you've never heard of Hegeland the unity of opposites? Black and white are only differentaspects of the same thing, you know. And as soon as you begin to thinkabout it, you see at once how sensible it is. Well, a treasure-huntand a boy-hunt are only different aspects of a hunt, aren't they?Therefore they are the same thing. Therefore what does for one doesfor the other. Therefore you go up a hill. There's logic for you," andonce more he swelled proudly.

  "Thank you very much," said Fiona. "And now will you please tell mewhere the Urchin is?"

  "Tell you!" exclaimed the centipede. "Why, it was you told me. Youprophesied the whole thing."

  "I'm sure I don't remember it, then," said Fiona.

  "What's the matter with _you_," said the centipede, "is that yourefuse to exert your intelligence, such as it is. You should take alesson by me. You humans are all forgetting nowadays that the spokenword is an instrument of great power, and that once it is launched itgoes on and on, and can work magic on its own account, quiteindependently of you. If you say a thing will happen, it frequentlydoes happen."

  "But what did I say?" asked Fiona.

  "You told the Urchin that if he hurt the shore lark the Little Peoplewould take him. Well, they've taken him. That's all."

  And the centipede slid down on to the ground, and with something likea chuckle vanished. He had evidently learned from his philosophy tobear with resignation the misfortunes of others.

  But Fiona did not set off up a hill at once. After breakfast she wentto the bookroom and spoke to her father.

  "I have found out where the Urchin is, daddy," she said. "He wascarried off by the fairies."

  The Student showed no surprise.

  "You have not been long finding out, Fiona," he said. "I thought youhad ways and means of your own."

  "But, daddy," she said, "I don't _really_ believe it, you know. Itsounds so absurd nowadays. Do you believe it?"

  "I believe it, yes," said the Student. "I knew yesterday. Now that youknow, I may talk to you about it, so far."

  "I don't know that I do really know," she said. "Things like thatdon't _really_ happen, do they? Whoever heard of it?"

  "You and I have heard of it," he answered. "And that is enough. Theproposition that people are not carried off by fairies is a mereworking hypothesis, liable to be overthrown by any one case to thecontrary. Well, we've got a case to the contrary, and that's the endof the hypothesis."

  "I'm arguing against myself, daddy, you know," she said. "I want tobelieve that we do know where he is."

  "No difficulty at all," said the Student, "to anyone with a properlytrained mind, like yours and mine. Take it this way. No one has evercrossed the South Arabian desert or explored the snow ranges of NewGuinea, have they? Well, for all anyone can say to the contrary,people may be carried off by fairies every day of the week in NewGuinea or South Arabia, mayn't they? It may even be the rule there. Itmay be a working hypothesis among the pygmies of New Guinea that sucha thing _always_ happens--at death, for instance. It would be just asgood a working hypothesis as it is that it _never_ happens."

  "But, daddy, it would be so extraordinary, wouldn't it?"

  "Not a bit more extraordinary," he said, "than the inside of a bit ofradium, or the inside of an egg, for that matter. It is probablysimpler for the Urchin to become a fairy than for an egg to become abird, or a caterpillar a butterfly. It would not be nearly as strangeas it is that there is a water beast which can shed its gills andbecome a land beast, or that Uranus moons go round the wrong way. Youcan't knock it out by any reasoning of that kind, Fiona. It's merely amatter of fact; and if we have found a case we _have_ found a case."

  "Then you knew yesterday, daddy?" she said.

  "I had a very fair idea," he answered. "That is why I was tapping inthe cave with a hammer. Can you guess why?"

  Fiona saw.

  "To find the rest of the cave," she said. "That is where he would be."

  "Just so," said the Student. "These caves cannot end in a wall, asthat one seems to. I thought the wall must ring hollow somewhere, andthe hollow is in the recess where the stone nearly fell on me. Theapparent end of the cave is not in the line of the true cave at all."

  "It is the same place where the stones fell on Mr. Johnson," saidFiona.

  "That is strange," said the Student.

  And then Fiona told about the hand she had seen.

  "Of course, of course," said the Student. "That explains the wholething. They threw the stone down on me too. They did not wish me toknow that the wall was hollow just there. They must use it as adoorway. They will have carried the boy through at the moment that youturned your back, of course. I suppose he invited them in some way;they could have no power otherwise."

  "He said he would go _anywhere_ to find his treasure," said Fiona.

  "That would be quite sufficient for them to act on," said the Student.

  "Then the stories about the cruelty of the Little People are true,"asked Fiona.

  "Only in part," said the Student. "I take it that they are all sorts,like ourselves. They are, as you know, the vanished debris of all thepeoples that have helped to make this planet what it is. Good people,many of them. But they cannot altogether love those who have driventhem under the ground."

  "And who is the old hawker, daddy," she asked, "and what has he to dowith it all?"

  "I can't talk about anything except what you already know," said theStudent. "Have you found out yet how to start?"

  "I am to go up a hill," said Fiona. "And I am going up Heleval now.And I came to see if
you would come with me."

  "I wish I could; I wish very much I could," said the Student. "I donot know what you may find; but I know well that if I went with you,you would find nothing but grass and rock. I am too old to see thethings you can see, you know. You have to do it alone, littledaughter."

  So Fiona filled her pocket with bread and cheese, and started; and theStudent, after a useless attempt to settle down to his inscriptions,set up a little three-inch telescope with which he sometimesentertained Fiona on fine nights, gazing at Jupiter's moons orSaturn'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 climbHeleval on a beautiful morning on the first of October, when the grassin unsunned corners is still pearly with the frost of the night, andthe whole earth is touched with the wonderful caress of the coolautumn sunshine. Fiona's way lay along the shore road, past the bankof heather and fern which in August had been gay with flowers, napperdand potentilla, blue milkwort and starry eye-bright, and alive withbutterflies, blues and small heaths and pearl-bordered fritillaries;but the flowers were faded now, and in their place, in the little burnwhere the hazelnuts grew, was a tapestry of purple burrs and scarlethips. The shore road ended at a little burn; here an old stone bridge,grown over with grass, crossed the pool which in times of spate wouldhold a fat, white sea-trout, and here Fiona and the Urchin had usedto come in summer to gather globe flowers. From this point a sheeptrack led up the valley beside the burn, through great spaces ofyellowing bracken, by little swampy springs where late forget-me-notsstill lingered and an early snipe might rise with a skeep, and acrosslow-lying wastes of bog-myrtle, perfuming all the air with its dyingleaves; then the ground began to rise, and fern and bog-myrtle gaveplace to short, hard grass tufted with bulrushes, and beds of mattedunburnt heather, seamed with rabbit tracks.

  After a time Fiona left the valley and began to climb the hillside,rising steeply through heather and red grass and heather again, mostof it dying by now, but with patches still in full flower, worked bythe wild bees and making the moorland smell like a honey-pot. Thenmore grass, and limestone ridges, and she stood on the crest of themoor, which billowed away on her right, wave after wave, till it randown to the low ground and the sea, and rose up on her left till itended in the great mass of Heleval, standing up into the cloudlesssky. The ground before her was scarred with deep peat-hags, their graybanks touched with the tiny scarlet blossoms of the trumpet-moss,while from their crumbling sides projected bits of the whitened trunksof trees long since dead, last vestiges of the forests that hadclothed the island ere ever the Gael first fought his way in. Walkingbecame impossible, and she jumped from gray bank to gray bank,occasionally floundering across a little lake of soft peat, where thewild cotton grass still bloomed, and the mountain hares had lefttelltale tracks. Now and again a hare itself would scurry away beforeher up one of the peat ditches, rising to the moor level as soon as hethought 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 inthe sunlight, would rise, crow, and swing away over the brow of themoor. And presently from behind Heleval came drifting a gray birdwith a long bill who on hovering wings wheeled three times in the airabove her and gave his full spring call, the most wonderful sound thatthe hills ever hear; then he stooped close over her head and withwings spread sickle-wise shot away for the sea. One may see a curlewon the moor in October, but he will not give his spring call; andFiona felt of good courage, for she knew that the bird had called forher, to tell her she was in the right way.

  So she came to the foot of Heleval itself, and started to climb thesteep slope of short grass, slippery as polished board, which led upto the rock pinnacle above; the hillside twinkled with the white scutsof rabbits racing up before her to their holes, as round the side ofthe mountain came their enemy, perhaps the last kite in the island,glittering in the sun as only a glede can, till the beautiful cowardlycreature caught sight of Fiona and swept away across the valley. Shepassed the great cairn where the hill foxes live, and began the lastclimb to the pinnacle of rock that fronts the flat crest of themountain. And now something white on the rock, which she had noticedfrom below without taking account of, began to become insistent. Itcould not possibly be a patch of snow yet, she thought. Perhaps theshepherd had hung a sheepskin there. But no sheepskin was ever sowhite.

  Then she came up near the pinnacle, and saw. Standing upright againstit was a girl, not much older than herself. Her long dark hair blewback over the rock; her white body was half hidden in a trembling veilof white light, which shimmered and played all about her, waving withevery breath of the wind. Her face was beautiful and cold, like afrosty moonrise; her eyes shone like the drip of phosphorescent waterunder the stars.

  "You have come at last," said the girl. "Every day for many days Ihave 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 thateverything had a spirit of its own, mountains and rivers and trees. Isit 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 thewoods, and we, the Oreads, in the mountains. Men were wiser andsimpler in those days. But now my sisters are nearly all gone. When atree has become so many cubic feet of timber, how can it shelter aDryad? When a stream is merely so many units of waterpower, how can aNaiad dwell there? Only the barren mountains, if they contain neithergold nor iron, have been left unappraised and unexploited; and a fewOreads still linger here and there. Once in a while a man fancies thathe 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 mountainmad."

  "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 achild, 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 Woodcock willlet you in, and any of his people can tell you where to find him. Butdo you know the danger? If you do arrive, which is very doubtful, thefairies will make you wish a wish; and if your wish be one that doesnot find favor with them, they will keep you there forever, till youlose 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 bringhim back."

  "Why do you want to bring him back?" asked the Oread. "He is muchbetter where he is. Will he thank you for bringing him back? Not abit. You will have the labor and the danger, and he will take it allfor granted. And then he will become a man, and what use is that? Hemay be a financier, and cheat somebody; or a politician, and slandersomebody; or a learned man, and hinder wisdom. He is much better inFairyland. 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 aresome things you _can't_ do, whatever anybody says? It's not the reasonof the thing; it's only just because I am I, and he is lost. You areso beautiful; haven't you any heart?"

  "Neither heart nor soul," said the Oread. "So I ought to be perfectlyhappy. You have a heart and a soul, and you are not. Which of us isthe 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 Ihave no soul, and cannot get one, and do not kno
w what it would meanto get one, it is no use worrying; it is best to be happy as I am. Inany case, I would not care to be like men and women. I would not mindhaving a child's heart, like you. I had a heart once, but it is solong ago that I have almost forgotten what it was like. How old do youthink I am?"

  "You _look_ about seventeen," said Fiona.

  "I am exactly as old as Heleval," said the girl. "And that is morehundreds of thousands of years than you or I could ever count. I amolder than any of the fishes or birds or beasts; far older than men orfairies. Look at that," and the Oread swept her arm over the gloriousprospect around her; the two great wings of the Isle of Mist stretchedfar out into the sea, the Atlantic throbbing and sparkling under theblue 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 therewas no sea there, and the Cuchullin Hills stood right up into the sky,and twisted and bubbled while the Earth cooled and cracked, and mysisters of the Fire came out of the cracks and taught us mountainspirits the fire dance, and we danced it all night on the great peakstill the stars reeled to watch us. And then the fiery summits cooledand sank down, and my sisters of the Fire sank with them, and a mightyriver went foaming out down the valley yonder to a distant sea; andevery evening my sisters the Naiads came floating up in a circle withgarlands of green on their hair, and they taught us mountain spiritsthe water dance, and we danced it all night on the moonlit water,while the Ocean crept nearer and nearer to gaze. And then the seacame up, and the river carved Heleval out as you see it, and shrankaway, and my sisters the Naiads shrank away with it; and the islandwas covered with great forests, and my sisters the Hamadryads came outof the tree-trunks and taught us mountain spirits the tree dance, andwe 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 andenslave them, but they vanished as the trees vanished. And to-day onlythe 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 nolonger have hearts."

  The girl's face had filled with color as she spoke, and her eyes hadbecome 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 arefar 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 leaveHeleval. I _am_ Heleval. And I shall be here till one day men findiron or copper in my mountain, and come up with great engines to carveit and tear its flanks and carry it away; and then I shall go too, asmy sisters have gone."

  "Will you die?" asked Fiona.

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

  So Fiona took her in her arms and kissed her, and then turned and wentdown 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 whitenessvanished, and there was nothing there but the rocky pinnacle, shiningin the slanting sunlight. Rather sadly she went home.