Part 7

Fleuriss was happy in a flash. Laughing and dancing, she took her sister down to the lake and showed her the wondrous fishes. They went in bathing together, and Eepersip showed Fleuriss how to swim, as she had shown Toby. Fleuriss was wild with joy. Then they splashed each other and played tag in the water. Eepersip puzzled Fleuriss by swimming under water, and Fleuriss would scream with delight when she came up in a totally unexpected place. This new pastime kept them happy for several days.

But again Fleuriss began to grow miserable--and homesick.

And again Eepersip resisted this feeling for a long time--two or three weeks of misery. But at the end of that time she began to think.

To begin with, she thought about where she had been on that little expedition of hers. She had been up toward those blue hills to see from nearer the snowy mountains. She had loved them more and wanted more than ever to go to them. She asked Fleuriss if she would not like to climb the high peaks with her. But Fleuriss replied, almost snappishly: "You know what I want, Eepersip."

Of course this misery weighed down Eepersip's mind frightfully; she was very uncomfortable. And then she began to think that after all she would want to be alone when she went amongst the mountains; Fleuriss would be all right if she were happy, perhaps, but a miserable companion would be unendurable. Perhaps she had made a mistake in taking Fleuriss away. Maybe it was true that they had to go in different directions--that she herself could not live at home, and that her little sister could not live elsewhere. And even in Eepersip's untamed heart there was a bit of pity. And she found that that pity kept growing. How badly the Eigleens must feel, after all! Once she smothered it with the thought, "No, she will be happy if she stays long enough, and they will forget her." But it only began to grow again.

Up to this unhappy time Fleuriss's flowers had not withered or drooped: in this they were like those of Eepersip. But now Eepersip noticed that for some peculiar reason hers only stayed fresh and sweet. And then she thought again about the mountains and about those poor wasted flowers, and the pity grew and grew.

And one happy, happy day for Fleuriss, Eepersip led her safely home again.

"Good-bye, Fleuriss," she said. "I'm sorry you wouldn't stay with me."

"Yes, I know, Eepersip, but I just couldn't. Why don't you come home--you've been away so long--and Mother cries for you still. Please come."

"Oh, Fleuriss, I _couldn't_. If I were to go back home now, I should just die--even with you."

"Good-bye, then. Sometime I'm going to take Mother to see that beautiful hill."

"But not for a long time?"

"As soon as I can."

"Don't."

"Why?"

"You know. Please don't."

"Well, I'm not sure. I'm going to--pretty soon. Good-bye, Eepersip--Aren't you _ever_ coming home?"

"Oh, Fleuriss, no!"

"I wish you would."

"But I can't."

"Won't you let me take Mother and Daddy to live over there?"

"Well, after a while--if you want to. I shan't be there."

"Why, where are you going?"

"I'm going to the beautiful, beautiful white mountains. And then maybe the sea again, Fleuriss--the sea."

"Oo!"

"Coming?"

"NO! I'll ask Mother to take me to the sea. She will."

"Then--good-bye!"

And she decked Fleuriss's fern dress with beautiful flowers--a crown of them and a girdle. A sweet wind arose, carrying the scent of Eepersip's flowers to Fleuriss. A few butterflies were blown over to her. Eepersip stood on her tiptoes an instant: then, quick as a flash, she whirled about and bounded off, free--relieved of a gigantic burden. She went up to the lovely hill and stayed there a few days, amid the dancing butterflies and the gorgeous roses. At the lake she would dream hour after hour and watch the little jewelled minnows playing about the white stones and shining pebbles. In the evening she crept into a great bed of thick vines with flowers of white and gold, and listened to the lapping of the waves and watched the twinkling fireflies. They were her favourites, those poor ignorant little insects. She loved them as well as the delicate, gauzy butterflies, the sweeping swallows with their slim white wings, or the great gold-and-black bees. She adored them all, but the tiny blue-black fireflies, with thin gauze wings and the spot of phosphorescence showing now and then, were perhaps the loveliest of all. How she liked to see them playing about at dusk, sparkling and gleaming--little stars of the trees, in golden waves across the sky.

Sometimes, when they began to come out, she would go forth and dance and skip with myriads of them clustered in her hair. Around each invisible fern and blossom in her dress would gather a row of the little insects, until finally one could have seen her entire form bordered with fireflies. And besides these which alighted on her dress, thousands gathered swarming about her, so that her head was entirely hidden in a maze of gold.

Sometimes she would sleep at night and in the daytime play with the butterflies, birds, and bees. But now she began to sleep more and more in the day and play about at night.

One cool morning Eepersip went down the lovely hill that she and Fleuriss had found. She walked down and then out toward the pastured side of the hill. Here she stayed for a long time. She lived in the golden smell of steeple-bush, and instead of the wild strawberries that she had had on the hill she found great crops of blueberries. And in this pasture she had a sample of a new food--checkerberries. To be sure, she had eaten the leaves often enough, but to see the waxen white berries was quite new. These also she tasted and found greatly to her liking. She would lie and eat hundreds of those white berries which tasted of the woods. They were almost as good as the blueberries.

Now this pasture formed a steep hill, and one delicious morning when a soft, warm wind was blowing rather strongly, Eepersip climbed to the top of it. And oh, what a sight met her dark brown eyes! Far and near, far and near rose mountains, mountains, mountains! Stretching away, fold after fold, layer after layer, rose marvellous blue peaks, with the dazzling light of the sun brightening the white granite at some of their tops. Peak after peak rose up around her, lake after lake stretched out in the dim blue distance, with the sun striking them until they were a mass of gold, like great precious stones in that setting of purple mountains. She could make out three or four farmhouses, but no villages. She stood there entranced, watching.

Then down she dashed, through the tall grass sprinkled with buttercups and daisies. It seemed miles. but it also seemed no more than seconds. At last she found herself by the shore of a cobalt lake. It was almost perfectly round, with a group of tiny green islets sprinkled in it like a handful of emerald beads. No house could Eepersip see, for the lake was entirely surrounded with low green-blue hills. The shore was for the most part soft white sand, fine as pepper. With a cry of joy at the discovery of this beautiful little lake Eepersip dashed into it and swam in the cool of those waters from the mountains. And then she saw, playing up and down in the shallow water just off one of those many beaches, a shoal of slim fishes. They were all silver except one or two that were gold, and they had rather bulging red eyes.

For a long time Eepersip watched them. Then something caused her to look up. This something was the strange, shrill cry of a bird above her. She looked up suddenly and saw the bird. But she did not watch it, for the glint of something white--a strange whiteness which she had never seen before--caught her eye. She gazed long upon it, until, when her eyes became accustomed, she was able to make out the outline of a peak, going up sharp as a tooth, with bumps of smoother outline stretching away, away into the blue immensity of space on either side.

"Oh," said Eepersip, " a dream! Oh, what a beautiful dream! But--I feel so wide awake."

She gazed and gazed, silent.

"Oh," she said again, after a while, "it cannot be a dream, it mustn't be a dream!"

She gazed and gazed again.

"Oh," she repeated, "I must go there at once! The snowy mountains!"

She plunged into the beautiful, icy lake and swam across it with never a thought of the beauty in the green depths around her. Her eyes were fixed upon that one thing only. Soon she reached the opposite shore, consisting only of thick woods. Her heart--that heart beautiful, yet with a certain sense of childlikeness in it which had never left her--was mad for a glimpse of those mountains. It was then that she felt as if there were a great bird in her, pulling her, hauling her forward, regardless of the thorns and nettles which tore her delicate dress of ferns and blossoms. At last she got through the forest and found herself in an open meadow, with the wondrous mountain before her and warm rain falling gently. She saw a farmhouse, and as she went along the simple peasant farmer saw her and muttered to his wife: "Look there, Mary." Mary looked, and then she said: "Ay, God hath taken this child into his care--ignorance demands mercy."

A moment of intense thought. She gazed and gazed, bewitched. Then she gave, or tried to give, a little laugh. It did not sound. "Oh," she tried to say, "how _queer_ I feel! I believe I never felt so queer." And indeed she did feel queer. For she felt the feeling of speaking to her heart. She was talking, it seemed to her, loudly, but when, even in the midst of her talk, she listened, nothing sounded.

After a few seconds, it seemed, she ran on, leaping through the wet. Raindrops gathered on the ferns and the flowers of her dress, outlining them with the pearly water. She looked like a rain-fairy. Hour after hour passed, and she went like the wind itself; yet she did not tire. At last she found herself near the foot of that wondrous mountain, shimmering with snow-fields, cold white against a deepening night sky.

That night a bird of modest wood-colour, with speckled breast, sang of moonlight; and, rippling faintly, softly, came echoes from his silver-tongued mate. They sang, and they answered, and the moon-frost-tipped pines were quiet, and clouds floated near, snowy palaces of silence. Spellbound, Eepersip was borne away to fairy kingdoms where she danced and where birds sang the only melody in the world.

The next morning the sun came out and shone through every raindrop in splendid crimsons and purple-greens. Eepersip looked about her and discovered a little plant with a peculiar flower of white and crimson. She found that its leaves were quite delicious, unlike anything that she had had in the meadow or by the shore of the sea. They were green--a strange pale green, delicately outlined and veined in marble white and pale gold. Eepersip loved their pleasant flavour, but could not bear to touch them, they were so beautiful.

Then she looked up and beheld the strange rough outline of the mountain, and far in the distance, almost on the top, was a great snow-field, on which the sun shone directly, covering it incredibly with brilliant tints and shades of gold. And, oh, the bright green foliage, shining in the dear golden light!

"Fairyland!" whispered Eepersip. "I loved the meadow, I loved the sea more, but even before I am really _in_ the mountains, I love them the best of all." Then, after a pause, she added: "That snow-field of gold, these heavenly little flowers--oh, such beauty!"

After a few more moments of breathless gazing, gazing upon everything, she started up the mountain. The first few hundred yards she followed a faintly marked trail which led through dense woods, over great boulders covered with dark green moss. Occasionally a little rushing brook trickled across her path. For quite a way Eepersip kept climbing over the huge boulders, and the path was very mossy. After a while it began to grow fainter and harder to follow, and at last it was shut off entirely by the thick bushes and trees which surrounded it. Here she sat down to rest and to think a while.

She looked about and came upon a bubbling spring, at which she drank. No water she had ever found was like this. It tasted of the strong, delicious mountain air. She drank deeply, and, when she had quenched her thirst, continued her way. Here flowers which made her think of foam at sea--white, star-like, with silver-tipped petals--twined themselves among the trees mingled with wild roses--dawn-flowers of deep pink or sun-bright yellow. Strange orchids grew about, many of them pure white and fringed like fluffy clouds. One had green blossoms with long whitish spurs--mystic flowers on tall spikes with two smooth leaves. Yellow lady-slippers made her think of butterflies with folded wings, or of the sun peeping out from dark clouds. But the loveliest of all were pink orchids--hosts of them with more deeply tinted lips fringed like fairies' fingers: hosts of them on slender stems, each stem a dawn-sprite's wand.

"Like the dawn I saw once," she thought, "when snow-pink fringey flowers wreathed the sky. The sun was pleased and smiled. I danced for him, and the bobolinks and skylarks greeted him with song." There were tall flowers, too, pink silk beneath white tissue, with very dark and curious leaves up the stalks among the blossoms. Butterflies were playing like sun rays, winging softly from flower to flower. And as she went on she passed through forests of thick bushes and poisonous thorns, open pine-groves, and great pastures smelling of hay-scented ferns and budding steeple-bush. All the time the path, or rather the easiest way through the thick bushes, had been fairly level, but now it began to shoot up steeply, and it was all Eepersip could do to keep herself from sliding back in an avalanche of pebbles and stones. A bit of tough scrambling followed, and at last she broke out on a comparatively level piece of ground. on one side of which was a deep ravine in which she heard a brook rushing and rippling. On the other side of the ravine was a peak of the mountain, crowned with snow and with the sun flashing upon it.

Eepersip longed to see the brook, which, by the sound, she judged to be quite large. She was not actually afraid to go down over those steep walls of dirt and sand, but she _was_ rather afraid that, once being down, she would not be able to get up again. So on she went, and it grew so steep that, even by digging her feet into every crevice and clutching the roots of the trees, which were getting much scarcer and more stunted, she could just manage to cling on.

But at last a change came. She stood on that high peak, on which there were only bare rocks and a little snow, no roots or plants. On either side it went down, down, and it was getting late in the afternoon. She could see nothing to do. Still the highest peak was many miles ahead, and she knew that she could not make it in the remaining daylight. So she climbed warily down into a little crevice, where a few ferns and luscious mountain blueberries managed to grow. She ate a supper of these and of another hardy little berry which she found; then slept in peace till daybreak, her tired mind dreaming of strange things--of deep palaces at the bottom of the sea and snow palaces at the tops of the mountains; of fairies, nymphs, and elves.

In the morning she breakfasted on the mountain blueberries again, and found, much to her delight, that they quenched her thirst almost as well as water. After her juicy breakfast she went on down for about a mile; then up, up again on sheer walls of rock, where there was not a sign of a plant of any kind. After a stretch of difficult climbing snow again began to appear, as the slope became more level. Eepersip went down through a snug hollow in the rocks, where it was thick with small, scrubby trees and where very little snow had managed to penetrate the thick branches.

Oh, but it was cold up here on these tremendous heights; the wind was keen and shrilly whistling. But, however cold, it was a mountain wind, an exhilarating mountain wind which made Eepersip leap into the air--leap and dance as on the meadow. Then, after she had rested a while under the welcome branches of the stunted firs and eaten tart mountain blueberries again, she went on, up out of the hollow and on to the solid rock covered with a deep snow, into which she sank at every step. Another mile she trudged. along, pulling herself through it. And still the mighty peak retreated before her, so that she could make no progress--or, at least, it seemed so. It seemed as far away and as faint in the snowy distance as from where she had been when the night had come on--a dreaming peak caressed with fingers of mist.

At last the ground went up abruptly again. However steep, Eepersip found it much easier, being there wasn't so much snow. It rose and rose, becoming more gradual, until she stood on another high peak, looking off over a tremendous range of mountains. Large flakes of snow were falling gently, so that she could not see much of these. She thought that she was now on the highest peak, and she sat down to wait for the snow to cease and give her a clear view. After a time it did; and then, and not until then, she saw another peak, the true summit of the mountain, going up, up, and up on the other side of a deep valley into which she would have to descend. After sucking a few handfuls of the pure mountain snow, she set off with a light heart and a happy spirit, her feet falling fast through the light drifts. After a while she got down into the valley; and here she came upon a brooklet full of icicles, winding through the long ravine and dashing over the green slimy rocks in great cascades of rattling icicles and foam. Eepersip drank deeply, and was refreshed.

Then, after resting a few moments, she went on, up that steep wall of snow and rock which would take her to the longed-for summit. Eepersip counted sixteen brooklets rushing down over it, carrying hundreds of icicles with their currents, foaming and dashing with spray and myriads of shiny iridescent bubbles.

Across brook after brook she went, watching the colours change in the dazzling snowflakes. The sun was shining brilliantly now, making everything unimaginably beautiful in magnificent shades of ruby, copper, silver-gold, emerald, and sapphire. Each snowflake seemed covered with an almost invisible layer of tiny sparkling gems. And once, when Eepersip sat down in a deep snow-bank to watch and to rest, the sun happened to strike directly on one of the many brooklets that went dashing down the mountain-side, making it a blinding ribbon of silver and gold. Occasionally Eepersip saw the blossoms of the beautiful talatuna, with ruby-red leaves and blossoms of pale green and changing white. She thought that the leaves were _all_ red, but when the wind flipped one over she saw that their backs were moon-white, pale but glistening.

On she went, through the incredible beauty of the fairyland about her. "Oh," she murmured to herself, "how marvellous it is! Oh, fairies, fairies." She whirled happily around. She had felt a few delicate touches on her shoulders, and at once the air was a-flock with glistening snowflakes. Each fern in her dress was bordered with a row of the fairy things, and her autumn hair was crowned white.

After a while a slight breeze sprang up and the big flakes whirled faster. The breeze rose and rose until it was a strong, cold wind, and she could not see a foot before her. The only thing to do was to wait for clear weather. But in that she was disappointed, for it was growing darker and darker, and at last she realized that night was coming on. So she lay down and ate a supper of snow, as it fell and fell.

All night the snow whirled and whirled, and in the morning Eepersip was completely buried. It was a long, hard task to find her way out, or rather to push her way out, for almost as fast as the snow fell it froze into ice, so that there was on top of Eepersip a thick layer of ice. But just before she decided to give up and wait for warmer weather, she broke through. Out into the bright sunlight she came; and lo and behold! all the ferns on her dress, and the dainty blossoms, together with her hair, were covered with a layer of ice which shimmered and sparkled in the sun like jewels set in something brighter than the brightest gold.

But as soon as she came out into the sun the ice began to melt and run off in all directions, and as she skipped and jumped about she was almost hidden in the shower of water-drops which flew from her as she ran.

And how beautiful, how fairy-like, she was! Each fern was covered with a thin layer of the melting ice, and the crown of pink blossoms around her curly hair was frozen likewise, their fair colour persisting through the ice. Once in a while, when the sun touched her, she was a blaze of colour--of silver and gold, with here and there a splotch of brilliant red as the sun struck a red flower.

After she had found that there was nothing to be eaten except snow, she sucked a few handfuls, flavoured with the petals of the flowers which she wore. Then she went on, through paradises of silver, gold, and red, through deep hollows of shining green. Everything was something besides white, and the world that was in Eepersip's range of vision was fairyland.

But, as she went on, clouds began to float in--little white clouds. They grew thicker and thicker, until, before she had come near the highest peak, there was nothing but pearly mist--scudding grey mist, curling into fantastic shapes as it rose. She could see nothing, and she sat down in the snow to wait. That night a gale came up, whistling and howling around the peaks, reminding Eepersip of that storm at sea. What an awesome sound it made! It sleeted, too, and when she awoke the next morning the snow was covered with a crust. The mist had partly cleared, and she pushed on again. She went through icy hollows and up on shimmering peaks, until, finally, she saw near her that long-sought summit, and, with a shout of joy, she dashed up. Fast she went, but when she really reached it at last, the mist had closed in again, the wind was up, and it was sleeting furiously. It was only through a break in the mist that she had made the summit at all.

The next morning it was still misty, but not nearly so thick. There was even a faint purple glow over on the eastern horizon where the sun was rising. Occasionally the mist would break open above, and she would see glimpses of blue sky--the deep, deep blue of that day in the meadow with Fleuriss. And lying all around on the boulders were frost-feathers. When Eepersip first saw them she thought that she was dreaming. But no, they were really there, delicate ferns and feathers with scalloped edges--ferns and feathers of frost.

"Oh, mountain-fairies--fairies have left them here," she said quietly. Some were as long as her forearm, and others tiny--oh, so tiny; some were almost round like the inner feathers of a bird, and others long and narrow like the outer plumes. Down in a hollow were some stunted firs, laden with snow and covered with those fronds of ivory chiselled by wind-sprites, lovelier than anything Eepersip had ever seen, lovelier than anything ever made by Nature. No, Nature could never have carved them, Eepersip thought. The fairies--fairies!