Part 9

“Akk,” said a capercailzie hen, wide awake and warning—“Akk, akk!” A capercailzie cock had finished his play, a neck stretched out from the brown-flecked pine branches, and his wings beat the air noisily when he rose.

Rauten staggered forwards, Gaupa on his back. Gaupa had a piece of chewing tobacco in his mouth. It was caught between his clenched teeth and a brown juice ran out of the corners of his mouth down into his beard. He caught the knife out of the elk’s back and swung it aloft once more. But it drew no shiny line this time, it was wet. Once more it sank into Rauten’s body while Gaupa spat out the words:

“Take that for Bjönn.”

The same knife met Rauten with the first rays of day on the morning he was born on Black Mountain slopes. The blade was worn and narrow now, but fate decreed that it should sit in Rauten’s body at his death-leap east of Gipsy Lake. Perhaps they knew, the dull-red sunbeams which that morning, so many years ago, stroked their warm hands over the little calf bidding him welcome to life and to the forest.

But now Rauten had lived his life. Trees and grass, air and water had given him of their own, which they now claimed back. Rauten was old; over his melancholy head the sunset was dead. He was entering on the long night which never is awakened by a dawn in the east.

He had created a number of elks, most of them gone before him into the land of shadows. Now his turn had come to follow them. The Ré Valley woods had no more use for him. His legs were stiff and his steps short. No longer was he a roaring storm at mating time. His muscles sang no more wild songs from bottomless depths of forces; his life was on the ebb, and no flood would rise in him again.

§ 29

That morning a marten sat crouching in a spruce tree near Gipsy Lake. The marten might tell what happened.

That morning a broad-winged eagle soared round and round above Ré Valley. The eagle also might tell what happened.

Rauten ran out on a southwards slope where the snow was partly gone. He hardly saw anything; Gaupa’s knife was diving voluptuously into him. But terror paralysed his nerves so that he hardly felt any pain.

When the elk and the man ran the small bushes nodded after them. But the old trees were indifferent to what happened. Everything was as it should be. The old trees had seen the bear pawing the elk’s skull, had seen the adder swallowing live mice. Life takes life. Thus it was when night first dewed the grass, as long as stars have twinkled in the heavens.

While Rauten leapt down that slope the wind slipped in under Gaupa’s blue-striped blouse, making it bulge out at the back. He rode on intoxicated, far away from everything and everybody. He gave vent to a long yell, old man that he was, and the yell sank into the spring-time roar from Ré River and was swallowed up by it.

Almost blind, the wizard elk rushed down a precipice, about three or four times the height of a man, sliding with legs stretched out and back straight. Gaupa pressed his knees against the elk’s flanks with all his might, but could not keep his seat. He slid forwards along the neck, found the antlers and hung on. The elk’s hoofs tore away patches of moss, disturbing a small stone which became a living thing and jumped down; a jay perched on a tree on that rock started a thin piping as if bewailing the scene it saw. High up under a small cloud red with sunlight the eagle soared easily in the air. Then he screamed, long and hungrily.

Rauten found firm earth below the rocky wall; he nearly fell forwards with the shock, but managed to keep his balance. Gaupa did not let go of the antlers, but his legs slipped off from the elk’s body and turned a somersault, his soles high up towards the sky, as if he wished to kick the tree-tops in play. Then he lost his hold on the antlers, turned over the elk’s muzzle and lay on the snow, his knife still in his hand.

The wizard elk lifted one foreleg. Gaupa saw it, a helpless look in his eyes. An icy-cold blast ran through him, before he rose to his knees. The light-grey elk’s leg was lifted still higher, stopped in the air for a tiny moment, and then fell rapidly. It hit Gaupa between his shoulder-blades. Daylight was extinguished for him as suddenly as when a candle is blown out. With incredible speed he rushed into empty space, then began to sink—down, down.

Gaupa lay on his face, his left arm bent under him, but the right hand which held the knife was stretched out to one side. Then his fingers loosened slowly from the curly maple shaft, straightened out, and the knife lay loose on the snow crust.

Rauten lifted his leg for another blow, but half-way up it became so heavy that he could lift it no further, could not even hold it up. It was as if Rauten thought better of it, as if he believed that the man had had enough. He remained standing, his eyes, soft as dusk, staring sadly at Gaupa. Then he grew sleepy and tired, strangely tired. His great head nodded, nodded lower still, rose and nodded again. Then it stiffened. There lay Rauten, the wizard elk.

The morning sun reached the tree-tops and crept slowly down the trunks. Then reaching the earth it stole forwards as if nosing the man and the elk curiously.

* * * * *

The day was not different from many other days.

It was a day in May, when spring dwells below in the great valleys, early flowers bloom, and clouds sail across the blue sky.

On the Ré Valley slopes dusk turned to evening.

For a little space there was silence.

The jay said no more. A marten sat well hidden in a spruce tree close by, his eyes shining like raindrops among the needles. Dawn lit copper-red fires on all the mountain peaks.

Then the snow crust crashed noisily below that rocky wall on Gipsy Lake slope. Rauten fell on his side. He did not move, but inside him something bubbled with the sound of hidden brooklets under the peat in a bog.

Suddenly the great body curled up and straightened out again just as suddenly.

Gaupa and Rauten slept side by side, Rauten’s head touching Gaupa’s chest as if the animal wished to rest with him.

In the snow beside them red flowers seemed to bloom.

Summer must have come to Ré Valley very early that year.

_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._