Lilith: A Romance

by George MacDonald

  CHAPTER XIII. THE LITTLE ONES

  I had been at work but a few moments, when I heard small voices near me,and presently the Little Ones, as I soon found they called themselves,came creeping out from among the tiny trees that like brushwood filledthe spaces between the big ones. In a minute there were scores andscores about me. I made signs that the giants had but just left me,and were not far off; but they laughed, and told me the wind was quiteclean.

  "They are too blind to see us," they said, and laughed like a multitudeof sheep-bells.

  "Do you like that rope about your ankles?" asked one.

  "I want them to think I cannot take it off," I replied.

  "They can scarcely see their own feet!" he rejoined. "Walk with shortsteps and they will think the rope is all right."

  As he spoke, he danced with merriment.

  One of the bigger girls got down on her knees to untie the clumsy knot.I smiled, thinking those pretty fingers could do nothing with it, but ina moment it was loose.

  They then made me sit down, and fed me with delicious little fruits;after which the smaller of them began to play with me in the wildestfashion, so that it was impossible for me to resume my work. When thefirst grew tired, others took their places, and this went on until thesun was setting, and heavy steps were heard approaching. The littlepeople started from me, and I made haste to put the rope round myankles.

  "We must have a care," said the girl who had freed me; "a crush of oneof their horrid stumpy feet might kill a very little one!"

  "Can they not perceive you at all then?"

  "They might see something move; and if the children were in a heap onthe top of you, as they were a moment ago, it would be terrible; forthey hate every live thing but themselves.--Not that they are much aliveeither!"

  She whistled like a bird. The next instant not one of them was to beseen or heard, and the girl herself had disappeared.

  It was my master, as doubtless he counted himself, come to take me home.He freed my ankles, and dragged me to the door of his hut; there hethrew me on the ground, again tied my feet, gave me a kick, and left me.

  Now I might at once have made my escape; but at length I had friends,and could not think of leaving them. They were so charming, so full ofwinsome ways, that I must see more of them! I must know them better!"To-morrow," I said to myself with delight, "I shall see them again!"But from the moment there was silence in the huts until I fell asleep, Iheard them whispering all about me, and knew that I was lovingly watchedby a multitude. After that, I think they hardly ever left me quitealone.

  I did not come to know the giants at all, and I believe there wasscarcely anything in them to know. They never became in the leastfriendly, but they were much too stupid to invent cruelties. Often Iavoided a bad kick by catching the foot and giving its owner a fall,upon which he never, on that occasion, renewed his attempt.

  But the little people were constantly doing and saying things thatpleased, often things that surprised me. Every day I grew more loathto leave them. While I was at work, they would keep coming and going,amusing and delighting me, and taking all the misery, and much of theweariness out of my monotonous toil. Very soon I loved them more thanI can tell. They did not know much, but they were very wise, and seemedcapable of learning anything. I had no bed save the bare ground, butalmost as often as I woke, it was in a nest of children--one or other ofthem in my arms, though which I seldom could tell until the light came,for they ordered the succession among themselves. When one crept into mybosom, unconsciously I clasped him there, and the rest lay close aroundme, the smaller nearer. It is hardly necessary to say that I did notsuffer much from the nightly cold! The first thing they did in themorning, and the last before sunset, was to bring the good giant plentyto eat.

  One morning I was surprised on waking to find myself alone. As I cameto my senses, however, I heard subdued sounds of approach, and presentlythe girl already mentioned, the tallest and gravest of the community,and regarded by all as their mother, appeared from the wood, followed bythe multitude in jubilation manifest--but silent lest they should rousethe sleeping giant at whose door I lay. She carried a boy-baby in herarms: hitherto a girl-baby, apparently about a year old, had been theyoungest. Three of the bigger girls were her nurses, but they sharedtheir treasure with all the rest. Among the Little Ones, dolls wereunknown; the bigger had the smaller, and the smaller the still less, totend and play with.

  Lona came to me and laid the infant in my arms. The baby opened his eyesand looked at me, closed them again, and fell asleep.

  "He loves you already!" said the girl.

  "Where did you find him?" I asked.

  "In the wood, of course," she answered, her eyes beaming with delight,"--where we always find them. Isn't he a beauty? We've been out allnight looking for him. Sometimes it is not easy to find!"

  "How do you know when there is one to find?" I asked.

  "I cannot tell," she replied. "Every one makes haste to tell the other,but we never find out who told first. Sometimes I think one must havesaid it asleep, and another heard it half-awake. When there is a baby inthe wood, no one can stop to ask questions; and when we have found it,then it is too late."

  "Do more boy or girl babies come to the wood?"

  "They don't come to the wood; we go to the wood and find them."

  "Are there more boys or girls of you now?"

  I had found that to ask precisely the same question twice, made themknit their brows.

  "I do not know," she answered.

  "You can count them, surely!"

  "We never do that. We shouldn't like to be counted."

  "Why?"

  "It wouldn't be smooth. We would rather not know."

  "Where do the babies come from first?"

  "From the wood--always. There is no other place they can come from."

  She knew where they came from last, and thought nothing else was to beknown about their advent.

  "How often do you find one?"

  "Such a happy thing takes all the glad we've got, and we forget the lasttime. You too are glad to have him--are you not, good giant?"

  "Yes, indeed, I am!" I answered. "But how do you feed him?"

  "I will show you," she rejoined, and went away--to return directly withtwo or three ripe little plums. She put one to the baby's lips.

  "He would open his mouth if he were awake," she said, and took him inher arms.

  She squeezed a drop to the surface, and again held the fruit to thebaby's lips. Without waking he began at once to suck it, and she went onslowly squeezing until nothing but skin and stone were left.

  "There!" she cried, in a tone of gentle triumph. "A big-apple world itwould be with nothing for the babies! We wouldn't stop in it--would we,darling? We would leave it to the bad giants!"

  "But what if you let the stone into the baby's mouth when you werefeeding him?" I said.

  "No mother would do that," she replied. "I shouldn't be fit to have ababy!"

  I thought what a lovely woman she would grow. But what became of themwhen they grew up? Where did they go? That brought me again to thequestion--where did they come from first?

  "Will you tell me where you lived before?" I said.

  "Here," she replied.

  "Have you NEVER lived anywhere else?" I ventured.

  "Never. We all came from the wood. Some think we dropped out of thetrees."

  "How is it there are so many of you quite little?"

  "I don't understand. Some are less and some are bigger. I am very big."

  "Baby will grow bigger, won't he?"

  "Of course he will!"

  "And will you grow bigger?"

  "I don't think so. I hope not. I am the biggest. It frightens mesometimes."

  "Why should it frighten you?"

  She gave me no answer.

  "How old are you?" I resumed.

  "I do not know what you mean. We are all just that."

  "How big will the baby grow?"

  "I cannot tell.-
-Some," she added, with a trouble in her voice, "beginto grow after we think they have stopped.--That is a frightful thing. Wedon't talk about it!"

  "What makes it frightful?"

  She was silent for a moment, then answered,

  "We fear they may be beginning to grow giants."

  "Why should you fear that?"

  "Because it is so terrible.--I don't want to talk about it!"

  She pressed the baby to her bosom with such an anxious look that I darednot further question her.

  Before long I began to perceive in two or three of the smaller childrensome traces of greed and selfishness, and noted that the bigger girlscast on these a not infrequent glance of anxiety.

  None of them put a hand to my work: they would do nothing for thegiants! But they never relaxed their loving ministrations to me. Theywould sing to me, one after another, for hours; climb the tree to reachmy mouth and pop fruit into it with their dainty little fingers; andthey kept constant watch against the approach of a giant.

  Sometimes they would sit and tell me stories--mostly very childish, andoften seeming to mean hardly anything. Now and then they would call ageneral assembly to amuse me. On one such occasion a moody littlefellow sang me a strange crooning song, with a refrain so pathetic that,although unintelligible to me, it caused the tears to run down my face.This phenomenon made those who saw it regard me with much perplexity.Then first I bethought myself that I had not once, in that world, lookedon water, falling or lying or running. Plenty there had been in somelong vanished age--that was plain enough--but the Little Ones had neverseen any before they saw my tears! They had, nevertheless, it seemed,some dim, instinctive perception of their origin; for a very small childwent up to the singer, shook his clenched pud in his face, and saidsomething like this: "'Ou skeeze ze juice out of ze good giant'sseeberries! Bad giant!"

  "How is it," I said one day to Lona, as she sat with the baby in herarms at the foot of my tree, "that I never see any children among thegiants?"

  She stared a little, as if looking in vain for some sense in thequestion, then replied,

  "They are giants; there are no little ones."

  "Have they never any children?" I asked.

  "No; there are never any in the wood for them. They do not love them. Ifthey saw ours, they would stamp them."

  "Is there always the same number of the giants then? I thought, before Ihad time to know better, that they were your fathers and mothers."

  She burst into the merriest laughter, and said,

  "No, good giant; WE are THEIR firsters."

  But as she said it, the merriment died out of her, and she lookedscared.

  I stopped working, and gazed at her, bewildered.

  "How CAN that be?" I exclaimed.

  "I do not say; I do not understand," she answered. "But we were here andthey not. They go from us. I am sorry, but we cannot help it. THEY couldhave helped it."

  "How long have you been here?" I asked, more and more puzzled--in thehope of some side-light on the matter.

  "Always, I think," she replied. "I think somebody made us always."

  I turned to my scraping.

  She saw I did not understand.

  "The giants were not made always," she resumed. "If a Little One doesn'tcare, he grows greedy, and then lazy, and then big, and then stupid, andthen bad. The dull creatures don't know that they come from us. Veryfew of them believe we are anywhere. They say NONSENSE!--Look at littleBlunty: he is eating one of their apples! He will be the next! Oh! oh!he will soon be big and bad and ugly, and not know it!"

  The child stood by himself a little way off, eating an apple nearlyas big as his head. I had often thought he did not look so good as therest; now he looked disgusting.

  "I will take the horrid thing from him!" I cried.

  "It is no use," she answered sadly. "We have done all we can, and itis too late! We were afraid he was growing, for he would not believeanything told him; but when he refused to share his berries, and saidhe had gathered them for himself, then we knew it! He is a glutton, andthere is no hope of him.--It makes me sick to see him eat!"

  "Could not some of the boys watch him, and not let him touch thepoisonous things?"

  "He may have them if he will: it is all one--to eat the apples, and tobe a boy that would eat them if he could. No; he must go to the giants!He belongs to them. You can see how much bigger he is than when firstyou came! He is bigger since yesterday."

  "He is as like that hideous green lump in his hand as boy could look!"

  "It suits what he is making himself."

  "His head and it might change places!"

  "Perhaps they do!"

  "Does he want to be a giant?"

  "He hates the giants, but he is making himself one all the same: helikes their apples! Oh baby, baby, he was just such a darling as youwhen we found him!"

  "He will be very miserable when he finds himself a giant!"

  "Oh, no; he will like it well enough! That is the worst of it."

  "Will he hate the Little Ones?"

  "He will be like the rest; he will not remember us--most likely willnot believe there are Little Ones. He will not care; he will eat hisapples."

  "Do tell me how it will come about. I understand your world so little! Icome from a world where everything is different."

  "I do not know about WORLD. What is it? What more but a word in yourbeautiful big mouth?--That makes it something!"

  "Never mind about the word; tell me what next will happen to Blunty."

  "He will wake one morning and find himself a giant--not like you, goodgiant, but like any other bad giant. You will hardly know him, but Iwill tell you which. He will think he has been a giant always, and willnot know you, or any of us. The giants have lost themselves, Peony says,and that is why they never smile. I wonder whether they are not gladbecause they are bad, or bad because they are not glad. But they can'tbe glad when they have no babies! I wonder what BAD means, good giant!"

  "I wish I knew no more about it than you!" I returned. "But I try to begood, and mean to keep on trying."

  "So do I--and that is how I know you are good."

  A long pause followed.

  "Then you do not know where the babies come from into the wood?" I said,making one attempt more.

  "There is nothing to know there," she answered. "They are in the wood;they grow there."

  "Then how is it you never find one before it is quite grown?" I asked.

  She knitted her brows and was silent a moment:

  "They're not there till they're finished," she said.

  "It is a pity the little sillies can't speak till they've forgotteneverything they had to tell!" I remarked.

  "Little Tolma, the last before this baby, looked as if she had somethingto tell, when I found her under a beech-tree, sucking her thumb, but shehadn't. She only looked up at me--oh, so sweetly! SHE will never gobad and grow big! When they begin to grow big they care for nothing butbigness; and when they cannot grow any bigger, they try to grow fatter.The bad giants are very proud of being fat."

  "So they are in my world," I said; "only they do not say FAT there, theysay RICH."

  "In one of their houses," continued Lona, "sits the biggest and fattestof them--so proud that nobody can see him; and the giants go to hishouse at certain times, and call out to him, and tell him how fat he is,and beg him to make them strong to eat more and grow fat like him."

  The rumour at length reached my ears that Blunty had vanished. I saw afew grave faces among the bigger ones, but he did not seem to be muchmissed.

  The next morning Lona came to me and whispered,

  "Look! look there--by that quince-tree: that is the giant that wasBlunty!--Would you have known him?"

  "Never," I answered. "--But now you tell me, I could fancy it might beBlunty staring through a fog! He DOES look stupid!"

  "He is for ever eating those apples now!" she said. "That is what comesof Little Ones that WON'T be little!"

  "They call it growing-
up in my world!" I said to myself. "If only shewould teach me to grow the other way, and become a Little One!--Shall Iever be able to laugh like them?"

  I had had the chance, and had flung it from me! Blunty and I were alike!He did not know his loss, and I had to be taught mine!