Читать книгу Faery Stories - Charles L. Marson - Страница 4

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Little Roland’s house was near the sea and was almost hidden in a nest of tall bamboos. The Bamboos were always looking over the wooden fence for the Wind, who was their great friend. When he came they whispered together, and told him messages and nodded to him, and he told them secrets, which no one else understood, not even Roland’s father and mother, for they were too busy to notice such friends. The Bamboos loved best to hear the Wind when he came from the sea, and as Roland lay in bed he could hear them talking together, and sometimes the Bamboos shuddered, even the tallest of them shuddered, until Roland wondered what things the Wind had seen out over the sea to make people shudder, because the sun, and the ships, and the white birds, and the sparkling salt water, and the beautiful colored evening sky all seemed pleasant enough to talk about. Yet every night he heard them talking and shuddering until he knew there must be something terrible out over the sea, which the Wind had seen and the Bamboos heard of.

Roland’s mother had often told him about his great namesake in olden times, rough Roland the Paladin, and how brave and pitiful he was, and how ready to listen to any poor thing who cried for help, and little Roland had made up his mind that he would be a soldier too, like old Roland the Peerless, and go and find out the truth of what the Wind told the Bamboos, and search out the unhappy ones and do them right. So he used, when he played on the shore and found poor things, fishes and such like, dying on the hot sands, to throw them back into the water and say, as the priest had taught him, “Pray God for me, brother, in my hour of need!” and they knew and understood, and swam away gratefully. But one day he found a large fish, a leathern jacket, golden and blue, and he lay groaning on the sands in the warm morning sun, and little Roland longed to keep him for the sake of his beautiful skin, but the poor fish sighed and sighed, until Roland pitied him, and dragged him to the waves and got him afloat, and when the fish got better he spoke and thanked little Roland in a queer humming voice, and they had a long talk together. The leathern jacket told him about the wonderful ways of the sea things, and all the strange life they lead, and how the sea caves are lighted with silver stars. At last he had to swim away to get some food, as he had not breakfasted that day, but he promised to come again for a chat, and so he did. Every day little Roland thought of nothing else than his strange friend, and he forgot to play and almost forgot to eat, thinking about the sea things. But one night the Bamboos and the Wind told stories louder than ever and shuddered worse than usual, and little Roland made up his mind to ask his friend the fish what it was all about, and so he did. Then the fish told him that it must be about Yewli, the King of the Sea Trolls, and about his palace of black rocks, and his pack of sharks, and about the evil he was ever planning, and the mischief he did to men and even to fishes. “Indeed, my dear, it was in alarm of him that I rushed into the foam and got left by the waves, and it was a false alarm too,” said the poor fish, a little ashamed of himself. “Do you know where his sea palace is?” asked Roland, “for some one ought to go and kill him.” “O, dear! do not talk to me about it,” said the fish testily; “I am the father of a family, but a flabby little thin-skinned thing like you would have no chance against any of them, besides I do not know how the grey dwarfs manage to get down to him from Air World; but Air World is a queer place, I do not understand it myself.” And with these words he whisked his tail and disappeared in the blue water, leaving a little ring of cream where he dived in.

“Some one ought to do it,” said little Roland, “and if I only knew how—”

So he went back home and talked to the family magpie about it. Magpies, as you perhaps know, have studied all such matters, and can tell a great deal if they only choose, and this magpie chose to help, being tired of studying wickedness and needing a little holiday from such studies. “Say nothing about it, but leave it to me,” she said, “and I will talk to the dwarfs.”

The very next morning it luckily came to pass that the magpie met one of the grey dwarfs in the mist. The grey dwarf was big with importance and pride, for was he not to go down to Yewli’s palace that very night with a message from the Hill Trolls? “Could men and women anyhow get in there alive?” asked the magpie carelessly, cracking an insect in her beak as she spoke. The grey dwarf laughed. “The charm is easy enough,” he said, kicking a white arum lily. “This miserable thing is so bad for all of us, that the fools could do anything they liked if they knew how to use it, but then they happily do not know that,” and, with a grin, he ran away in a wreath of curling mist. The magpie looked up at the white flower and gently pulled the tip of one of its wonderful leaves, and then ruffled up her feathers and stood on one leg, and thought and thought until the sun was well up and breakfast had begun.

Little Roland came into the garden after breakfast, and they sat on an old kerosene tin together, and he heard the grey dwarf’s story. It was a funny tale the magpie had to tell. “You must say nothing to anyone, but just go out in the little boat to-night,” she said, “and row towards the setting sun, and get the fish to guide you, and then lie down in the boat and wait, and you want nothing with you but the arum flower, and when the grey dwarf comes jump out after him, and you will find the way in to Yewli’s palace, and as for the rest I cannot tell you; but I think you had better stay at home and be quiet after all, for no good comes of such doings.”

But little Roland thought of old Roland, the bravest knight of Charlemagne’s court, and how he never cared what he endured so that he might slay the wicked, and set the people free from tyrants, and he resolved to try at any rate. So he went into the house and looked at it all over, and said good-bye to the tables and chairs, and the picture of “Evening Shadows,’’ and to the Iron Duke, and to the piano where his mother played every evening, and to the flowers in the verandah, and to the cat, and he looked at his stamp album and took his father’s revolver out, but put it back again because it could not be fired in the sea: and then he went to his mother and found she was going out shopping, so he walked with her and carried her parcels, and clung to her all day and helped her in the housework, and blacked his father’s boots until they sparkled with the polish. He thought of the boys he played with, and the cattle, and the old horse, and the peas in the garden, and everything seemed far nicer than he had ever known it to be before, as he saw it—for the last time perhaps. Then his father and sister came to tea, and Roland did not talk a word and looked troubled, so that they laughed at him, and after tea he slipped out, having kissed them all, and he picked the white arum and put it in his bosom, and then he ran over the sandhills.

The sun was setting, and the tide was high, and the whole air was full of quiet light, but he never stopped for a moment, but dragged the little boat into the water, and rowed out along the golden path as quickly as he could pull. The little waves against the keel sang as he rowed, and the world seemed glorious and as if there could be no Trolls; and Roland shook his shock of golden hair and seemed in a dream.

But the sun went down, and a little grey mist was rising, when a humming voice spoke to him out of the water—”So you have come out here to look for Yewli. Row quickly, or I shall be too late.” It was the leathern jacket, and Roland rowed and rowed, and the fish swam on before, until the sky grew so dark he could not see the fish’s track; and then he said his prayers in the boat. “Wait here,” said the fish, “and when the grey dwarf comes, follow him. And now, good-bye. Do not speak a word to any one, and they will never see you.”

Roland lay quite still, and waited in the bottom of the boat, and the mist grew thicker; but no one came. At last he heard some one step into the boat from the sea, but it was too dark to see; and the oars were seized and dipped in the water. And how the boat went along! It was the grey dwarf who was rowing, rowing until the waves against the keel yelled and sent up a tall spout of sea water into the air. He did not seem to see Roland, because, I suppose, of the magic lily; but, by-and-by, the boat stopped, and he made a cry like the curlew’s note, and then the boat swung round and round until she seemed to be standing half-upright, with her nose in the air. And then the grey dwarf leaped into the sea, and Roland after him. The water was whirling round and round, and they had leapt into a great round passage; and down they went —down to the bottom of the sea, and the little boat floated away in the mist. There was a faint blue light at the bottom of the sea, which came from little creatures on the weeds, and just showed the rush of dark waters and the black things moving in them. The dwarf ran quickly along a passage, and Roland after him, until they came to an enormous square black rock, and this was opened as if a huge trap-door spider had opened his house, and they passed in quickly, and the rock shut tight again, and they were in Yewli’s palace. The floor sloped down with firm sand, and the jagged walls were lit by little tongues of greenish pale flame; but the grey dwarf took no notice of anything. He hurried down the passage, and seemed uneasy, and looked round often; but Roland noticed that the dwarfs eyes never seemed to see him, and that was because of the magic lily. It was cold and silent there, as cold as ice, and so silent that they could hear the sharks if one swam against the rock outside to rub himself, and the crunch of the sand under the dwarf’s little feet seemed to make a crackle as he walked. Down went the path—down and down, until they came to a huge dim cavern, and there lay Yewli. His body was lost in the darkness, but Roland could see huge yellow arms and black hands, every nail of which was as broad as his own head. Yewli was lying on his belly on the sand, resting on his elbows, and his nails rested upon his coarse yellow cheeks. His hair was like seaweed, and his eyes were a glassy sea-green, shot with red gleams, and he had huge white tusks, each one as big as the grey dwarf. Roland seemed to be only in a dream, and he stood by, quite curious, but not in the least frightened. The dwarf gave his message to the monster, who smiled sleepily, and promised to meet the Hill Trolls, and then he sniffed and moved a little, and asked if all was right. “I feel a smarting in my eyes,” he said, “almost as though there were lily pollen in the air,” and with that he winked his great fishy eyes many times. Roland wondered how lily pollen could hurt either of them; but no one seemed to see him, and he took the flower out of his bosom. Its golden tongue was there, covered with yellow pollen; and a quick thought came to him to blow some into the Troll’s green eyes. No sooner had he done so than he heard a roar like the roar of a hundred cannon, and a shrill scream, and all the lights went out and the sea rushed in. Yewli had opened the door, and the cavern was filled with the plunge of the charging sea. Roland felt himself whirled along by the blinding water, he knew not whither, until at last he saw a star, and felt and heard that the waves were beating him against a rock; and he breathed the fresh salt wind again. Then he clung to the rock for dear life, and dragged himself out of the sea upon a far-off coast.

And Yewli was blinded—blinded for ever, and can never plot more. And some day he will crawl out of his cavern by accident when the sun is up, and then he will burst—as Trolls always do and must when the sun shines on them.

And it all seemed to be done in a few minutes by one child and a flower.

But there is a sad bit still to tell you, after all. Roland was found and saved, and he got home again; but he was not a child any more. He was an old, grey-haired, and wrinkled man, and lame, too; and he crawled and limped home one morning as the sun rose. The Bamboos were gone; his father and mother and sister were gone; and the cattle, and the horse, and the garden, and the lilies were gone; and the house was all altered, and on it a board—”To Let.” Thirty years had gone by in the world of men since they picked up the little boat, and thought the boy must have been drowned, and cried about him.

But the magpie was sitting on a sheaoak, and she knew the lame old man—knew him at once.

“I am glad you have got back,” she said. “I knew you would; but they are all gone away, and I am the oldest magpie about here.”

Roland found out his parents. They were not dead, nor his sister; but they refused to know him, and thought him an old mad tramp. So he went back to the magpie and told her. “Well,” she said, “what could you expect? You gave them all up, and yourself, too, to go after Sea Trolls. You must pay the fiddler, if you will dance. That is but fair.”

“But Yewli is blind, and they have made their last cauldron of Goblin Glue,” said old Roland.

“Yes,” said the magpie, “but you won’t see the end of it; and no one will believe your story except poor old me.”

Roland’s eyes shone, and he looked at the sea, and then at the beautiful hills, in silence, and at last said again—”But Yewli is blind; Yewli is blind.”

“O, yes!” said the magpie, angrily. Then she ate an earwig, and whistled. And so they parted.

But Yewli is blind now, and that is the great thing.