Read Ebook: Outland by Austin Mary

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1022 lines and 62351 words, and 21 pages

After an hour's walking we came to a bramble-fenced hollow, ringed with very tall trees, smelling of the sun. Here there might be a dozen of the wood folks, with four women among them, lying up like deer through the bright betraying noon.

Almost the first thing I noticed was that there was no curiosity among them of a prying sort over my appearance, and no fear. As if they had never imagined that one of my sort could do them harm. But there was regretfulness, particularly among the women, that appeared to be strangely for my sake, and a very grave concern. Moreover, when I spoke,--for I was moved to speak at once and declare that whatever the appearance of my coming among them, I meant no harm,--they turned all toward me, as if merely by attending quietly on this strange tongue they could make out what was said. I presently discovered that they had made it out, and by keeping this same considered quietness, without straining or trying to think what the words were, I was able to know what went on about me. Although it was several days before I could communicate fully, and I do not know yet, nor does Herman know, what language the Outliers spoke among themselves, we were able to get along very well in it.

They drew around me in a circle, which was left open at one side to admit a man whom I guessed at once by his bearing, as well as the deference they paid him, to be some sort of chief to them.

He was of a singular and appealing beauty, so that his bodily excellence was a garment to him, and adorned the simplicity of his dress. There was that in his way of standing which moved one to go up and lay hand on him as on the stem of a young cedar. But something stood within him that protected him more than a weapon from such impersonality. As he waited to hear the account of me which the red man gave, I felt I had never such a wish to have a man think well of me, nor been so much at a loss how to begin it. At the same time he seemed to be hearkening to something within himself, something that, when he asked a question of the women , seemed to speak more loudly. The question appeared to refer to something which should have settled my business then and there. The neglect of it devolved upon a woman, comely and perplexed, as though given to too great a sense of responsibility, and much overcome at being found at fault.

"No matter," he said to her excuses, and bending a troubled look on me, the doubt in him spoke out openly.

At that slight emphasis the dark man who had the smith's tools on him, looked at me with so sharp and surprising an interest that it distracted me from noticing who it was behind me asked with some eagerness:

"Of what did she speak?"

"That there was one walking toward us on the trail, bearing trouble. On the morning of our leaving, she waked me early to say it. I am thinking this is the one. If you have forgotten the cup, Evarra, it is an omen."

The interest of all the wood folk reawakened. They began to regard me with so much distrust that I was relieved when the chief made a sign to Noche to take me a little to one side. Thus they talk more freely, looking at me from time to time, sometimes seeming to blame the woman, and sometimes to praise her.

Noche was that same old man who had brought me from the neighborhood of Broken Tree, whose mild blue eyes, set rather shallowly in a broad face, continued to reassure me.

He sat off a considerate distance, and busied himself with plaiting of leather thongs. All his features were rugged, the mouth wide, the nose broad and open at the nostrils, but blunted all as if by some yielding humor in him which fitted oddly with the knotting of his muscles. Now and then he turned toward me with chuckling, slow laughter which served in place of comforting speech.

Whatever conclusion the woodlanders came to about me, it was not to take immediate effect. They talked or lay quietly in the fern as deer lie. They slept much, but always with some on guard, dropping off with even breathing peace, and waking without start or stretching, as if wakefulness were but a wind that stirred them by times, and sleep the cessation of the stir.

Toward evening they rose and cooked a meal, of which I had my share--deer meat, wild honey in the honey-comb, and some strange bread. Two or three others came in from hunting; they were dressed much the same as the red man who had found me, and carried slings in their belts or slung upon their shoulders. The west was red and the pines black against it. There rose a light ruffle of wind and sighed through the wood. With it passed through the camp an audible breath of expectation. One of the women stood up with water in a bowl of bark, holding it high above her head in the manner of one celebrating a ritual, crooning some words to which the others made a breathy, soft response. She turned the water out upon the fire, the ashes of which Noche deftly covered, then, extending the bowl toward the young leader, she smiled, saying:

"The word is with you, Persilope."

He took the vessel from her, scattering its few remaining drops westward.

"To the sea!" he said; "down to the sea!"

"To the sea!" cried the Outliers, and laughed and girt themselves. Suddenly I found myself caught up into a kind of litter or swing made of broad bands of skin, in a position of great uneasiness to myself, between the shoulders of two men. The whole body of woodlanders set off rapidly, but in their former noiseless fashion, going seaward.

The moon was up and the tide far out when we issued upon the promontory called Cypress Point. There was little surf, and the glimmer of the tide ran like silvered serpents all along the rocks. With a shout the Outliers stripped and cut the molten water with their shining bodies; laughed and plunged and rose again, laughing and blowing the spray as long as the moon lasted. They were at it again with the earliest light, and I should have known they were gathering sea food without what one of the women told me, of a great occasion going forward at their home which lay far from here, and a great feast of all the tribe. When the tide allowed, they gathered fish and abalones, which the women carried to some secret place among the pines to cure and dry.

When the tide was up the Outliers lay by in the dark rooms of cypress, bedded on the thick, resistant boughs, or stretched along the ancient trunks so wried and bent to purposes of concealment. Often in the heat, when there was cessation of the low whispering tones and light easy laughter, I would rise up suddenly seeming to myself quite alone only to discover by the stir of the wind on hair or garment the watchers lying close, untroubled and observant. While they worked I lay bound lightly under the wind-depressed cypresses where no light reached, but strange checkered gleams of it like phosphorescent eyes.

We could see the casual turning of the owner's head as some invisible string from the guard's stretched, pointed finger seemed to move it like a mechanical toy. Almost before it rounded the curve, old Noche took himself out of the seaweed and blew foam at them in derision.

The care and keeping of me fell to Evarra, by whose neglect a proper dealing with me was kept in abeyance, and to old Noche, with whom I began to be very well acquainted. Noche had the soul of a craftsman, though with no very great gift. Whenever the smith was busy at a forge improvised of two beach stones and a flint, mending fishhooks and hammering spear-heads from bits of metal picked up along the sand, Noche would choose to lie puffing his cheeks to blow the fire while Ravenutzi fitted his movements to the rhythm of the wind as it rose to cover the light clink of his hammers. Or the old man would sit with his lips a little apart and in his eyes the bright fixity of a child's, laying out iridescent fragments of abalone in curious patterns in which Ravenutzi took the greatest interest.

It was singular to me that the design the old man struggled with oftenest, the smith let pass. I had observed this the more because I became sure that there was no smallest hint of it escaped him, and the suspicion was fixed in my mind by its revelation of a great singularity in the character of Ravenutzi himself.

Time and again I had seen Noche laying out his abalone pearls in a design which, however dearly it was borne within his mind, seemed reluctant in expression. He would place the salient points of his pattern, connecting them by tracings in the sand, and when he had taken the greatest pains with it, startled, would sweep out the whole with his hand. There were times when its preciousness so grew upon him that he would not even commit it to the dust, but formed the delicate outline with his finger in the air.

One of those occasions, when it was full noon, and the tide charged thunderously along the coast, all the Outliers lying up in the windy gloom of the cypresses, I knew by the absorbed and breathless look of him that Noche had accomplished for once the whole of his design. He bent above it crooning in his beard, so absorbed in the complete and lonely joy of creation that he neither saw nor sensed the shifting of the stooped, twisty trunks above him to the form of Ravenutzi.

How he had come there I could not imagine, but there he bent from the flat-topped foliage, the mouth avid, the eyes burning and curious. As the shifting of his position brought him into line with my gaze he passed to a fixed intentness that held me arrested even in the process of thought. It left me uncertain as to whether it were not I who had been caught spying instead of Ravenutzi, and merely to meet that look in me had been, after all, the object of his secret scrutiny.

And this was what separated him from the others more than his dark skin and his clipped and nasal speech, making me sure, before I had heard a word of the Far-Folk, of some alien blood in him. Whatever one of the Outliers did, whether you agreed with him or not, there was at least no doubt about it.

That was how the days were going with me all the time Herman was writing me letters and tearing them up again, deciding that I was mad or foolish or both.

On the evening of the last day, about the time he had entered on the trail by Broken Tree, we were setting out for I knew not what far home of the Outliers. I was carried still in my litter, but that was more kindness than captivity, for though I count myself a good walker, I made poor work of keeping even with their light, running stride. We were not many hours out; it was after moonset, and I had lost all track of the time or the way, being a little sick with the motion, and very tired of it. I could guess this much, that we were rounding a steep and thick-set hill by what might have been an abandoned wagon road, for our pace increased here. Suddenly the company was arrested by sharp resounding cries and the crackling of underbrush on the slope above us. So does the night estrange familiar things, that I could get no clue at all to what the cries might be, except that it was some creature blundering and crying distressfully, making as if to cross our trail.

The Outliers were themselves alarmed by it, and considered a moment whether they should halt to let it pass before us or hurry on to leave it behind. But the check and the beginning of movement had caught the attention of the lost creature, for it turned directly toward us, and begun to come on more rapidly, redoubling its cries. Now I thought, though it seemed so extraordinary, that it said "Mona!" in a wild and urgent manner. Then it seemed to have slipped or bounded, for the slope was steep, and fell with a great clatter of stones and snapping of stems directly in our trail.

Several of the men precipitated themselves upon it. There was a short struggle, muffled groans, and quiet. One of them struck a light from his flint and showed a man, scratched and disheveled, lifted in the grip of Noche, lying limp and faint back from the knotted arms. I turned faint myself to see that it was Herman.

It was the very next day, and before I had learned as much of Herman's adventure as I have already set down, that I began to hear of the Treasure. My hearing became the means of my knowing all that happened afterwards in Outland on account of it.

It was the middle of the afternoon when I came out of Evarra's hut and found Herman, with his head bandaged, lying on a heap of skins with old Noche on guard, plaiting slings. He had a loop of raw hide about one foot stretched straight before him to keep it taut as he plaited. Now and then he turned his face toward us with a wordless reassurance, but chiefly his attention was taken by the children, who cooed and bobbed their heads together within the shadow.

Back of them the redwoods stood up thick as organ pipes, and when the wind stirred, the space above was filled with the click of dropping needles and the flicker of light displaced. I was going on to inquire of Herman how he happened to come stumbling on my trail when I thought him safe at the University, but Noche making a noise of disapproval in his throat, I left off at once, and began to attend to the talk of the children. It grew clear as I fixed upon it or lapsed into unmeaning murmurs as my mind wandered. There were four or five of them busy about those curious structures that children build with pebbles and potsherds and mounds of patted dust, set off by a feather or a flower. Noche, it appeared, was very good at this sort of thing. To their great delight, he was persuaded to undertake a more imposing mound than they could manage for themselves; and presently I had made out idly that the structure in the dust was the pattern of a story he was telling them. It was all of a king's treasure. Seventy bracelets of gold, he said, all of fine work, chased and hammered, and belts of linked gold, and buckles set with colored stones. He took pebbles from the creek and petals of flowers to show them how that was, and every child was for making one for himself, for Noche to approve. Also he said there were collars of filigree, and necklets set with green stones of the color of the creek where it turned over the falls at Leaping Water. There were cups of gold, and one particular goblet of chased work which an old king held between his knees, around the rim of which a matchless hunter forever pursued exquisite deer. The stem of it was all of honey-colored agate, and in the base there were four great stones for the colors of the four Quarters: blue for the North, green for the South where the wind came from that made the grass to spring, red for the Dawn side of earth, and yellow for the West. And for the same king there was a circlet for his brows, of fire-stones, by which I supposed he meant opals, half a finger long, set in beaten gold. Also there were lamps, jeweled and chased, on golden chains that hung a-light above the kings.

When then one of the children, who lay listening with his heels in the air, wished to know if it were true what his father had said, that there was evil in the Treasure which came out upon whoever so much as looked at it, there came a rueful blankness upon the face of old Noche.

"Ay," said he, "and upon whoever so much as talks of it." And he shook his neglected sling at them as though to have left it off for the sake of a story were a very culpable matter.

But the children would not have it like that at all. They flung themselves on him in a heap, and got upon his back and about his neck and rumpled his hair, declaring that he was the best old man that ever was, and he must tell them about the red necklace: till, growling a little, but very glad to be beguiled, Noche went on to say there was a necklace of red stones so splendid that every one of them was a little more splendid than the next one. Almost before he had begun and before Herman and I had heard anything louder than the unmeaning forest murmurs, we saw the children rise to attention, and scatter suddenly, with gay little splutters of laughter like the noise of water spilled along the ground. They disappeared down the trails that ran darkling among the rooted columns of the trees.

There was a certain dismay I thought on Noche's face as he turned back to his work, perceiving that I had listened, and not sure how much I had understood. He began to talk to us at once about his work, as though that might have been the object of our attention. With his hand he reached out furtively behind him and destroyed all the patterns in the dust.

Still I found my mind going back to the story with some insistence. Up to that time I had seen no metal in the camp but some small pieces of hammered silver and simple tools of hard iron, and no ornaments but shells and berries. But there had been a relish in old Noche's telling that hinted at reality. I remembered the pattern which he had pondered so secretly under the cypress trees, and it came into my mind in an obscure way, without my taking any particular notice of it, that this might be the pattern of the necklace of red stones. I had not time to think further then, for the sound to which the children had answered was the returning hunt and the Outliers coming toward us on the trail.

It was always so that they came together about the time that the blue haze and the late light rayed out long level bars across the hills. They would be awake and about at whatever hour pleased them, and take their nooning in whatever place. Through the days there would scarcely be so much seen of them as a woman beating fiber between two stones by a brook, or a man cutting fern on a steep slope. So still they were by use, and so habituated to the russet earth and the green fern and the gray stone, that they could melt into it and disappear. Though you heard close about you low-toned talk and cheerful laughter, you could scarcely, unless they wished it, come bodily upon them.

On this evening all those in the neighborhood of Deep Fern had come together, not only because of the news of House-Folk brought to camp, but because this was the time set for the return of Trastevera from some errand connected with the great occasion of which I had been told. It was she who had seen trouble walking with us on the trail from Broken Tree, and without whose advisement, so Evarra had already explained to me, nothing would be determined concerning Herman and me.

This Trastevera was also the wife of Persilope, and whatever the business that called her from Deep Fern that day, she was late returning. All the Outliers had come in. The light had left the lower reaches of the forest and began to shine level through the fan-spread boughs before Persilope came out of the grass walk where he had been pacing up and down restlessly. Advised by some sound or sense too fine for me, he lifted up his hand toward that quarter of the thick-set grove that fenced the far end of the meadow. In the quick attentiveness that followed on the gesture, he stood in the flush of rising tenderness until, with some others behind her, she came lightly through the wood. One perceived first that she was smaller than the others, most delicately shaped, and next, that the years upon her were like the enrichment of time on some rare ornament.

I do not know why in our sort of society it should always seem regrettable, when not a little ridiculous, for a woman to be ten years older than her husband. Since I have known the exquisite maturity of Trastevera's spirit, tempering her husband's passion to finer appreciation of her ripened worth, I have not thought it so. As she came lightly through the thick grass of the uncropped meadow there was, as often, a glow upon her that might have come from the business she had been abroad upon. It sustained her a little above the personal consideration, so that almost before she had recovered from the flush of her husband's embrace, she turned toward Prassade--the red man who had found me in the wood--to say that all was as he would have wished it, and he had good reason for being pleased. This being apparently a word he had waited for, he thanked her with a very honest satisfaction. Then, with her hand still in Persilope's, he looking down on her more rejoiced with having her back from her errand than with anything she had to say about it, she turned a puzzled, inquiring glance about the camp.

"Ravenutzi?" she questioned doubtfully; but the smith smiled and shook his head, and with one consent, as if she had answered expectation, the company parted and showed us to her where we stood. Without having any previous intention about it, I found myself rising to my feet to meet her, and heard Herman scramble lamely up behind.

She stood so, confronting us without a word for as long as it took Prassade briefly to explain how they had taken us, and why they had not done that to us which I already understood had threatened me on the first day of my captivity. This was long enough for me to discern that she was darker than the other Outliers, that her hair must have been about the color of Ravenutzi's before it turned. Her eyes were gray and clouded with amber like the morning surf. She moved a step toward me, nodding her head to what the young chief said, and shaking it slowly to something in herself. Wonder and perplexity deepened in her. Delicately, as seeking knowledge of me and not realizing that I could understand her speech or answer in it, she drew the tips of her fingers across my breast. There was no more offensiveness in the touch than in the questioning fingers of the blind. Wonder and perplexity deepening still, she turned back to Persilope.

"I grow an old woman," she said, "I have failed you."

He took the hand which she put out deprecatingly, and held it strongly against his breast, laughing the full, fatuous man's laugh of disbelief.

"When have you failed me?"

"I do not know," she protested; "I cannot tell;" and I understood that the doubt referred to her failure to get from me by that contact, the clew she sought.

"Surely these are they whom I feared for you to meet when you set out for the sea by the cypresses. Not for what they would do to you"--her look was toward Persilope--"but for what they might bring to all Outliers. But now I am not sure."

She spoke as much to the company at large as to her husband. The number of them had increased, until I could see the outer ring melting into the twilight of the trees, eyes in formless faces of amazement and alarm. Now at the admission of a difficulty, they all turned toward her with that courtesy of inward attention by which, when one of them would understand more of a matter than lay directly before him, each turned his thought upon the subject gravely for a time, like so many lamps lighted in a room, and turned it off again with no more concern when the matter was resolved. But even as she smiled to acknowledge their help she shook her head.

"No," she repeated, "I cannot tell." She turned and looked at me, and I gave her the look back with so deep a wish to have her understand that no trouble should come to them by me, that she must have sensed it, for her look went on by me and stopped at Herman.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet