Tales Before Tolkien

by Douglas A. Anderson

  My success was unexpectedly brilliant. There is something in the very atmosphere of Carcassonne which, once yielded to, exhilarates like wine. I have never danced, nor desired to learn. Last night, after a banquet so perfect that I hardly recall its details, I danced. I danced with Elva—and with Elva—and always with Elva. She laughed aside all other partners. We danced on no polished floors, but out on the green lawns, under white, laughing stars. Our music was not orchestral. Wherever the light-footed couples chose to circle, there followed a young flutist, piping on his flute of white ivory.

  Fluttering wings, driving clouds, wind-tossed leaves—all the light, swift things of the air were in that music. It lifted and carried one with it. One did not need to learn. One danced! It seems, as I write, that the flute’s piping is still in my ears, and that its echoes will never cease. Elva’s voice is like the ivory flute’s. Last night I was mad with the music and her voice. We danced—I know not how long, nor when we ceased.

  This morning I awakened in a gold-and-ivory room, with round windows that were full of blue sky and crossed by blossoming branches. Dimly I recalled that Elva’s father had urged me to accept his hospitality for the night.

  Too much of such new happiness may have gone to my head, I’m afraid. At least, it was nothing stronger. At dinner I drank only one glass of wine—sparkling, golden stuff, but mild and with a taste like the fragrance of Elva’s wild honeysuckle blooms.

  It is midmorning now, and I am writing this seated on a marble bench beside a pool in the central court of my host’s house. I am waiting for Elva, who excused herself to attend to some duty or other. I found this book in my pocket, and thought best to make an immediate record of not only a good joke on myself, but the only really pleasant social experience I have ever enjoyed.

  I must lay aside these fanciful white robes, bid Elva good-by, and return to my lonely bungalow and Jake. The poor old darky is probably tearing his wool over my unexplained absence. But I hope for another invitation to Carcassonne!

  Saturday, July 22.

  I seem to be “staying on” indefinitely. This won’t do. I spoke to Elva of my extended visit, and she laughingly informed me that people who have drunk the wine and worn the woven robes of Carcassonne seldom wish to leave. She suggested that I give up trying to “escape” and spend my life here. Jest, of course; but I half wished her words were earnest. She and her people are spoiling me for the common, workaday world.

  Not that they are idle, but their occupations as well as pleasures are of a delicate, fascinating beauty.

  Whole families are stopping here, including the children. I don’t care for children, as a rule, but these are harmless as butterflies. I met Elva’s messenger, her brother. He is a funny, dear little elf. How even in the dark I fancied him one of those gipsy brats is hard to conceive. But then I took Elva herself for a gipsy!

  My new friends engage in many pursuits besides painting. “Crafts,” I believe they are called. This morning Elva took me around the “shops.” Shops like architectural blossoms, carved out of the finest marble!

  They make jewelry, weave fabrics, tool leather, and follow many other interesting occupations. Set in the midst of the lawns is a forge. Every part of it, even to the iron anvil, is embellished with a fernlike inlay of other metals. Several amateur silversmiths were at work there, but Elva hurried me away before I could see what they were about.

  I have inquired for the young painter who first told me of Carcassonne and invited me to visit him here. I can’t recall his name, but on describing him to Elva she replied vaguely that not every “outsider” was permanently welcome among her people.

  I did not press the question. Remembering the ugliness which that same painter had been committing to canvas, I could understand that his welcome among these exquisite workers might be short-lived. He was probably banished, or banished himself, soon after our interview on the road.

  I must be careful, lest I wear out my own welcome. Yet the very thought of that old, rough, husk of a world that I must return to, brings back the sickness, and the pain behind my eyes that I had almost forgotten.

  Sunday, July 23.

  Elva! Her presence alone is delight. The sky is not bluer than her scarf and eyes. Sunlight is a duller gold than the wild honeysuckle she weaves in garlands for our heads.

  To-day, like child sweethearts, we carved our names on the smooth trunk of a tree. “Elva—Theron.” And a wreath to shut them in. I am happy. Why—why, indeed should I leave Carcassonne?

  Monday, July 24.

  Still here, but this is the last night that I shall impose upon these regally hospitable people. An incident occurred to-day, pathetic from one view-point, outrageous from another. I was asleep when it happened, and only woke up at sound of the gunshot.

  Some rough young mountaineers rode into Carcassonne and wantonly killed Elva’s collie dog. They claimed, I believe, that the unlucky animal attacked one of their number. A lie! The dog was gentle as a kitten. He probably leaped and barked around their horses and annoyed the young brutes. They had ridden off before I reached the scene.

  Elva was crying, and no wonder. They had blown her pet’s head clean off with a shotgun. Don’t know what will be done about it. I wanted to go straight to the county sheriff, but Elva wouldn’t have that. I pretended to give in, but if her father doesn’t see to the punishment of those men, I will. Murderous devils! Elva is too forgiving.

  Wednesday, July 26.

  I watched the silversmiths to-day. Elva was not with me. I had no idea that silver was worked like iron. They must use some peculiar amalgam, or it would melt in the furnace, instead of emerging white-hot, to be beaten with tiny, delicate hammers.

  They were making a strange looking contraption. It was all silver, beaten into floral patterns, but the general shape was a riddle to me. Finally I asked one of the smiths what they were about. He is a tall fellow, with a merry, dark face.

  “Guess!” he demanded.

  “Can’t. To my ignorance, it resembles a Chinese puzzle.”

  “Something more curious than that.”

  “What?”

  “An—elf-trap!” He laughed mischievously.

  “Please!”

  “Well, it’s a trap, anyway. See this?” The others had stepped back good naturedly. With his hammer he pressed on a lever. Instantly two slender, jawlike parts of the queer machine opened wide. They were set with needlelike points, or teeth. It was all red-hot, and when he removed his hammer the jaws clashed in a shower of sparks.

  “It’s a trap, of course.” I was still puzzled.

  “Yes, and a very remarkable one. This trap will not only catch, but it will recatch.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If any creature—a man, say”—he was laughing again—“walks into this trap, he may escape it. But sooner or later—soon, I should think—it will catch him again. That is why we call it an elf-trap!”

  I perceived suddenly that he was making pure game of me. His mates were all laughing at the nonsense. I moved off, not offended, but perturbed in another way.

  He and his absurd, silver trap-toy had reminded me of the gipsies. What a horrible, rough iron thing that was which they had held up to me from their forge! Men capable of creating such an uncouthly cruel instrument as that jag-toothed trap would be terrible to meet in the night. And I had come near blundering in among them—at night!

  This won’t do. I have been happy. Don’t let me drop back into the morbidly nervous condition which invested those gipsies with more than human horror. Elva is calling me. I have been too long alone.

  Friday, July 28.

  Home again. I am writing this in my bungalow-laboratory. Gray dawn is breaking, and I have been at work here since midnight. Feel strangely depressed. Need breakfast, probably.

  Last night Elva and I were together in the court of her father’s house. The pool in the center of it is lighted from below to a golden glow. We were watching the goldfish, with their wide, fi
lmy tails of living lace.

  Suddenly I gave a sharp cry. I had seen a thing in the water more important than goldfish. Snatching out the small collecting bottle, without which I never go abroad, I made a quick pass at the pool’s glowing surface.

  Elva had started back, rather frightened.

  “What is it?”

  I held the bottle up and peered closely. There was no mistake.

  “Dysteria,” I said triumphantly. “Dysteria ciliata. Dysteria giganticus, to give a unique specimen the separate name he deserves. Why, Elva, this enormous creature will give me a new insight on his entire species!”

  “What enormous creature?”

  For the first time I saw Elva nearly petulant. But I was filled with enthusiasm. I let her look in the bottle.

  “There!” I ejaculated. “See him?”

  “Where? I can’t see anything but water—and a tiny speck in it.”

  “That,” I explained proudly, “is dysterius giganticus! Large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Why, child, he’s a monster of his kind. A fresh-water variety, too!”

  I thrust the bottle in my pocket.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home, of course. I can’t get this fellow under the microscope any too quickly.”

  I had forgotten how wide apart are the scientific and artistic temperaments. No explanation I could make would persuade Elva that my remarkable capture was worth walking a mile to examine properly.

  “You are all alike!” she cried. “All! You talk of love, but your love is for gold, or freedom, or some pitiful, foolish nothingness like that speck of life you call by a long name—and leave me for!”

  “But,” I protested, “only for a little while. I shall come back.”

  She shook her head. This was Elva in a new mood, dark brows drawn, laughing mouth drooped to a sullen curve. I felt sorry to leave her angry, but my visit had already been preposterously long. Besides, a rush of desire had swept me to get back to my natural surroundings. I wanted the feel of the micrometer adjuster in my fingers, and to see the round, speckled white field under the lens pass from blurred chaos to perfect definition.

  She let me go at last. I promised solemnly to come to her whenever she should send or call. Foolish child! Why, I can walk over to Carcassonne every day, if she likes.

  I hear Jake rattling about in the breakfast-room. Conscience informs me that I have treated that negro rather badly. Wonder where he thought I was? Couldn’t have been much worried, or he would have hunted me up in Carcassonne.

  August 30.

  I shall not make any further entries in this book. My day for the making of records is over, I think. Any sort of records. I go back to my classes next month. God knows what I shall say to them! Elva!

  I may as well finish the story here. Every day I find it harder to recall details. If I hadn’t this book, with what I wrote in it when I was—when I was there, I should believe that my brain had failed in earnest.

  Locke said I couldn’t have been in Carcassonne. He stood in the breakfast-room, with the sunlight striking across him. I saw him clearly. I saw the huge, coarse, ugly creature that he was. And in that minute, I knew.

  But I wouldn’t admit it, even to myself. I made him go with me to Carcassonne. There was no stream. There was no bridge. The houses were wretched bungalows, set about on the bare, flat, yellow clay of the mountainside. The people—artists, save the mark!—were a common, carelessly dressed, painting-aproned crowd who fulfilled my original idea of an artists’ colony.

  Their coarse features and thick skins sickened me. Locke walked home beside me, very silent. I could hardly bear his company. He was gross—coarse—human!

  Toward evening, managing to escape his company, I stole up the road to the gipsy’s grove. The huts were empty. That queer look, as of a flat, dark tapestry, was gone from the grove.

  I crossed the plank bridge. Among the trees I found ashes, and a depression where the forge had stood. Something else, too. A dog, or rather its unburied remains. The yellow cur. Its head had been blown off by a shot-gun. An ugly little bell lay in the mess, tied to a piece of string.

  One of the trees—it had a smooth trunk—and carved in the bark—I can’t write it. I went away and left those two names carved there.

  The wild honeysuckle has almost ceased to bloom. I can leave now. Locke says I am well, and can return to my classes.

  I have not entered my laboratory since that morning. Locke admires my “will-power” for dropping all that till physical health should have returned. Will-power! I shall never look into a microscope again.

  Perhaps she will know that somehow, and send or call for me quickly.

  I have drunk the wine and worn the woven robes of her people. They made me one of them. Is it right that they should cast me out, because I did not understand what I have since guessed so well?

  I can’t bear the human folk about me. They are clumsy, revolting. And I can’t work. God knows what I shall say to my classes.

  Here is the end of my last record—till she calls!

  There was silence in Locke’s private study. At last the doctor expelled his breath in a long sigh. He might have been holding it all that time.

  “Great—Heavens!” he ejaculated. “Poor old Tademus! And I thought his trouble in the summer there was a temporary lapse. But he talked like a sane man. Acted like one, too, by Jove! With his mind in that condition! And in spite of the posse, he must have been with the gipsies all that week. You can see it. Even through his delusions, you catch occasional notes of reality.

  “I heard of that dog-shooting, and he speaks of being asleep when it happened. Where was he concealed that the posse didn’t find him? Drugged and hidden under some filthy heap of rags in one of the huts, do you think? And why hide him at all, and then let him go? He returned the very day they left.”

  At the volley of questions, Wharton shook his head.

  “I can’t even guess about that. He was certainly among the gipsies. But as for his delusions, to call them so, there is a kind of beauty and coherence about them which I—well, which I don’t like!”

  The doctor eyed him sharply.

  “You can’t mean that you—”

  “Doctor,” said Wharton softly, “do you recall what he wrote of the silversmiths and their work? They were making an elf-trap. Well, I think the elf-trap—caught him!”

  “What?”

  Locke’s tired eyes opened wide. A look of alarm flashed into them. The alarm was for Wharton, not himself.

  “Wait!” said the latter. “I haven’t finished. You know that I was in the classroom when Professor Tademus died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes! I was first to reach him. But before that, I stood near the desk. There are three windows at the foot of that room. Every other man there faced the desk. I faced the windows. The professor entered, laid down his book and turned to the class. As he did so, a head appeared in one of those windows. They are close to the ground, and a person standing outside could easily look in.

  “The head was a woman’s. No, I am not inventing this. I saw her head, draped in a blue scarf. I noticed, because the scarf’s blueness gave me the strangest thrill of delight. It was the exact blue of the sky behind it. Then she had raised her hand. I saw it. In her fingers was a spray of yellow flowers—yellow as sunshine. She waved them in a beckoning motion. Like this. Then Tademus dropped.

  “And there are legends, you know, of strange people, either more or less than human, who appear as gipsies, but are not the real gipsies, that possess queer powers. Their outer appearance is rough and vile, but behind that, as a veil, they live a wonderful hidden life of their own.

  “And a man who has been with them once is caught—caught in the real elf-trap, which the smiths’ work only symbolized. He may escape, but he can’t forget nor be joined again with his own race, while to return among them, he must walk the dark road that Tademus went when she called.

  “Oh, I’ve scoffed at ‘old
wives’ tales with the rest of our overeducated, modern kind. I can’t ever scoff again, because—

  “What’s that? A prescription? For me? Why, doctor, you don’t yet understand. I saw her, I tell you. Elva! Elva, of the wild honeysuckle and the skylike scarf!”

  The Thin Queen of Elfhame

  by James Branch Cabell

  James Branch Cabell was a prolific American writer, and much of his output centers on Dom Manuel, a swineherd in the imaginary medieval French province of Poictesme. Cabell represents a very different type of fantasy from Tolkien. Cabell’s writings are at times heavily ironic, sometimes very subtly so, but also filled with wisdom and beauty. Frequently his protagonists seek some ideal, only to learn that what they find is not the same as what they thought they sought.

  “The Thin Queen of Elfhame” was first published in the December 1922 issue of the Century Magazine. It was slightly revised to appear as chapter 4 in Cabell’s Straws and Prayer-Books (1924). The magazine version is reprinted here.

  How many silken ladies wept, well out of eyeshot of their husbands, when it was known that courteous Anavalt had left Count Emmerick’s court, remains an indeterminable matter; but it is certain the number was large. There were, in addition, three women whose grieving for him was not ever to be ended: these did not weep. In the meanwhile, with all this furtive sorrowing some leagues behind him and with a dead horse at his feet, tall Anavalt stood at a sign-post and doubtfully considered a rather huge dragon.

  “No,” the dragon was saying comfortably; “no, for I have just had dinner, and exercise upon a full stomach is unwholesome. So I shall not fight you, and you are welcome, for all of me, to go your ways into the Woods of Elfhame.”

  “Yet what,” says Anavalt, “if I were to be more observant than you of your duty and of your hellish origin? And what if I were to insist upon a fight to the death?”