The Three Mulla-mulgars

by Walter De la Mare

  CHAPTER XVI

  And now that the moon was near her setting, dark grew the air. The Menof the Mountains had at last ceased to call their lost companions, andon either side of the path were breaking up their faggots and buildingfires, leaving two wide spaces beneath the beetling rock for theirencampment between the fires. Nod, sitting beside Thimble's litter,watched them for some time, and presently he fancied he heard a distanthowling, not from the darkness below, but seemingly from the heightsabove the Mulgar-pass. He rose and limped along to Ghibba, who was busyabout the fires. "Why are you heaping up such large fires?" he said,"and whose, Man of the Mountains, are those howlings I heard from themountain-tops?"

  Ghibba's face was scorched and bleeding; one of his long eyebrows wasnearly torn off. "The fires and the howls are cousins, little Mulgar,"he said. "The screams of the golden-folk have roused the wolves, and ifwe do not light big fires they will come down in packs along theirsecret paths to devour us. It is a good thing to fight bravely, but it'sa better not to have to fight at all."

  Nod came back and told this news to Thumb, who was sitting with a greatstrip of his jacket bound round his head like a Turk's turban. "It isgood news, brother," he said--"it is good news. What stories we shallhave to tell when we are old!"

  "But two of the hairy ones are dead," said Nod, "and one is slipping,they say, from his second sleep."

  "Then," said Thumb, looking softly over the valley, "they need fight nomore."

  Nod sat down again beside Thimble's litter and touched his hand. It wasdry and burning hot. He heard him gabbling, gabbling on and on tohimself, and every now and again he would start up and gaze fixedly intothe night. "No, Thimble, no," Nod would say. "Lie back, my brother. Itis neither the Harp-strings nor our father's Zevveras; it is only thelittle mountain-wolves barking at the icicles."

  On either side of their camping-place he heard yelp answering to yelp,and then a long-drawn howl far above his head. He began to think, too,he could see, as it were, small green and golden marshlights wanderingalong the little paths. And, watching them where he sat quietly on hisheels in a little hollow of the rock, it brought back, as if this werebut a dream he was in, the twangle of Battle's Juddie, the restlessfretting and howling of Immanala's Jaccatrays. As the Moona-mulgar'sfires mounted higher, great shadows sprang trembling up the mountains,and tongues of flame cast vague shafts of light across the shadowyabyss; while, stuck along the wall in sconces of the rock, a dozentorches smoked.

  Thumb grunted. "They'd burn all Munza up with fires like these," hemuttered. "Little wolves need only little fires." But Thumb did not knowthe ferocity of these small mountain-wolves. They are meagre andwrinkle-faced, with prick ears and rather bushy tails. In winter theygrow themselves thick coats as white as snow, except upon their legs,which are short-haired and grey, with long tapping claws. And they arefearless and very cunning creatures. Nod could now see them plainly inthe nodding flamelight, couched on their haunches a few paces beyond thefires, and along the galleries above, with gleaming eyes, scores andscores of them. And now the eagles were returning to their eyries fromtheir feasting in the valley, and though they swept up through the airmewing and peering, they dared not draw near to the great blaze of fireand torch, but screamed as they ascended, one to the other, until thewolves took up an answer, barking hard and short, or with long mournfulululation.

  When at last they fell quiet, then the Men of the Mountains beganwailing again for their lost comrades. They sit with their eyes shut,resting on their long narrow hands, their faces to the wall, and singthrough their noses. First one takes up a high lamentable note, thenanother, and so on, faster and faster, for all the world like a faintand distant wind in the hills, until all the voices clash together,"Tish--naehr!" Then, in a little, breaks out the shrillest in soloagain, and so they continue till they weary.

  Nod listened, his face in his hands, but so faint and fast sang thevoices he could only catch here and there the words of their drone, ifwords there were. He touched Thumb's shoulder. "These hairy fellows aresinging of Tishnar!" he said.

  Thumb grunted, half asleep.

  "Who taught them of Tishnar?" Nod asked softly.

  Thumb turned angrily over. "Oh, child!" he growled, "will you neverlearn wisdom? Sleep while you can, and let Thumb sleep too! To-morrow wemay be fighting again."

  But though the Ladder-mulgars soon ceased to wail, and, except for twowho were left to keep watch and to feed the fires, laid themselves downto sleep, Nod could not rest. The mountains rose black and unutterablystill beneath the stars. Up their steep sides enormous shadows jiggedaround the fires. Sometimes an eagle squawked on high, nursing itswounds. And whether he turned this way or that way he still saw thelittle wolves huddled close together, their pointed heads laid on theirlean paws, uneasily watching. And he longed for morning. For his heartlay like a stone in him in grief for his brother Thimble. A little drysnow harboured in the crevices of the rocks. He filled his hands withit, and laid it on poor Thimble's head and moistened his lips. Then hewalked softly along past the sleeping Mulgars towards the fire.

  Where should we all be now, he thought, if the eagles had come in themorning? On paths narrow as those there was not even room enough tobrandish a cudgel. The fire-watcher raised his sad countenance andpeered through his hair at Nod.

  "What is it in your mouldy cheese, Man of the Mountains, that haspoisoned my brother?" said Nod.

  The Mulgar shook his head. "Maybe it is something in the Mulla-mulgar,"he answered. "It is very good cheese."

  "Will morning soon be here?" said Nod, gazing into the fire.

  The Mulgar smiled. "When night is gone," he answered.

  "Why do these mountain-wolves fear fire?" asked Nod.

  The Mulgar shook his head. "Questions, royal traveller, are easier thananswers," he said. "They _do_."

  He caught up a firebrand, and threw it with all his strength beyond thefire. It fell sputtering on the ledge, and instantly there rose such ayelping and snarling the chasm re-echoed. Yet so brave are thesesnow-wolves one presently came venturing pitapat, pitapat, along thefrosty gallery, and very warily, with the tip of his paw, poked andpushed at it until the burning stick toppled and fell over, down, down,down, down, till, a gliding spark, it vanished into the torrent below.The Mountain-mulgar looked back over his shoulder at Nod, but saidnothing.

  Nod's eyes went wandering from head to head of the shadowy pack. "Is itfar now to my uncle, Prince Assasimmon's? Is it far to the Valleys?" hesaid in a while.

  "Only to the other side of death," said the watchman. "ComeN[=o][=o]manossi, we shall walk no more."

  "Do you mean, O Man of the Mountains," said Nod, catching his breath,"that we shall never, never get there alive?" The watchman hobbled overand threw an armful of wood on to the fire.

  "'Never' shares a big bed with 'Once,' Mulla-mulgar," he said, rakingthe embers together with a long forked stick. "But we have no Magic."

  Nod stared. Should he tell this dull Man of the Mountains to think nomore of death, seeing that _he_, Ummanodda himself, had magic? Should helet him dazzle his eyes one little moment with his Wonderstone? Hefumbled in the pocket of his sheep-skin coat, stopped, fumbled again.His hair rose stiff on his scalp. He shivered, and then grew burninghot. He searched and searched again. The Mulgar eyed him sorrowfully."What ails you, O nephew of a great King?" he said in his faint, highvoice. "Fleas?"

  Nod stared at him with flaming eyes. He could not think nor speak. HisWonderstone was gone. He turned, dropped on his fours, sidlednoiselessly back to Thimble's litter, and sat down.

  How had he lost it? When? Where? And in a flash came back to hisoutwearied, aching head remembrance of how, in the height of theeagle-fighting, there had come the plunge of a lean, gaping beak and thesudden rending of his coat. Vanished for ever was Tishnar's Wonderstone,then. The Valleys faded, N[=o][=o]manossi drew near.

  He sat there with chattering teeth, his little skull crouching in hiswool, worn out with travel and sleeplessness, and the t
ears sprangscalding into his eyes. What would Thumb say now? he thought bitterly.What hope was left for Thimble? He dared not wake them, but stoopedthere like a little bowed old man, utterly forlorn. And so sitting,cunning Sleep, out of the silence and darkness of Arakkaboa, camesoftly hovering above the troubled Nizza-neela; he fell into a shallowslumber. And in this witching slumber he dreamed a dream.

  He dreamed it was time gone by, and that he was sitting on his log againwith his master, Battle, just as they used to sit, beside their fire.And the Oomgar had a great flat book covering his knees. Nod could seethe book marvellously clearly in his dream--a big book, white as a driedpalm-leaf, that stretched across the sailor knee to knee. And the sailorwas holding a little stick in his hand, and teaching him, as he used ina kind of sport to do, his own strange "Ningllish" tongue. Before,however, the sailor had taught the little Mulgar only in words, bysound, never in letters, by sight. But now in Nod's dream Battle waspointing with his little prong, and the Mulgar saw a big straddle-leggedblack thing in the book strutting all across the page.

  "Now," said the Oomgar, and his voice sounded small but clear, "what'sthat, my son?"

  But Nod in his dream shook his head; he had never seen the strange shapebefore.

  "Why, that's old 'A,' that is," said Battle; "and what did oldstraddle-legs 'A' go for to do? What did 'A' do, Nod Mulgar?"

  And Nod thought a voice answered out of his own mouth and said: "A ...Yapple-pie."

  "Brayvo!" cried the Oomgar. And there, sure enough, filling plump thedog's-eared page, was a great dish something like a gourd cut in half,with smoke floating up from a little hole in the middle.

  "A--Apple-pie," repeated the sailor; "and I wish we had him here,Master Pongo. And now, what's this here?" He turned the page.

  Nod seemed in his dream to stand and to stare at the odd double-belliedshape, with its long straight back, but in vain. "Bless ye, Nod Mulgar,"said Battle in his dream, "that's old Buzz-buzz; that's that oldgarden-robber--that's 'B.'"

  "'B,'" squealed Nod.

  "And 'B'--he bit it," said Battle, clashing his small white teethtogether and laughing, as he turned the page.

  Next in the dream-book came a curled black fish, sitting looped up onits tail. And that, the Oomgar told him, leaning forward in thefirelight, was "C"; that was "C"--crying, clawing, clutching, andcroaking for it.

  Nod thought in his dream that he loved learning, and loved Battleteaching him, but that at the word "croaking" he looked up wonderinginto the sailor's face, with a kind of waking stir in his mind. What wasthis "IT"? What could this "_IT_" be--hidden in the puffed-out, smokingpie that "B" bit, and "C" cried for, and swollen "D" dashed after? And... over went another crackling page.... The Oomgar's face seemedstrangely hairy in Nod's dream; no, not hairy--tufty, feathery; and soloud and shrill he screamed "E," Nod all but woke up.

  "'E,'" squeaked Nod timidly after him.

  "And what--what--what did 'E' do?" screamed the Oomgar.

  But now even in his dream Nod knew it was not the beloved face of hissailor Zbaffle, but an angry, keen-beaked, clamouring, swooping Eaglethat was asking him the question, "'E,' 'E,' 'E'--what did 'E' do?" Andclipped in the corner of its beak dangled a thread, a shred of hissheep's-jacket. What ever, ever did "E" do? puzzled in vain poor Nod,with that dreadful face glinting almost in touch with his.

  "Dunce! Dunce!" squalled the bird. "'E' ate it...."

  "E ... ate it," seemed to be still faintly echoing on his ear in thedarkness when Nod found himself wide awake and bolt upright, his facecold and matted with sweat, yet with a heat and eagerness in his hearthe had never known before. He scrambled up and crept along in the rosyfirelight till he came to the five dead eagles. Their carcasses laythere with frosty feathers and fast-sealed eyes. From one to another hecrept slowly, scarcely able to breathe, and turned the carcasses over.Over the last he stooped, and--a flock, a thread of sheep's wool dangledfrom its clenched black beak. Nod dragged it, stiff and frozen, nearerthe fire, and with his knife slit open the deep-black, shimmering neck,and there, wrapped damp and dingily in its scrap of Oomgar-paper, hisfingers clutched the Wonderstone. He hastily wrapped it up, just as itwas, in the flock of wool, and thrust it deep into his other pocket, andwith trembling fingers buttoned the flap over it. Then he went softlyback to his brothers, and slept in peace till morning.