CHAPTER V

THE OREAD

Fiona was out long before breakfast next morning, digging furiously in her garden. Not many minutes passed before she was rewarded by a glint of something yellow in a shovelful of earth, and there was the centipede.

"You dear creature," she said, and caught it up quickly before it could wriggle away.

"How polite we are this morning," said the centipede, swelling with conscious pride. "I suppose we want something."

Fiona's mind was far too completely taken up with her one object to notice or resent any insinuations.

"Yes, I do," she said. "You told me that if I could not get what I wanted by beginning at the top I must start again at the bottom. I can do nothing from the top this time, so I've come to you."

"Flattered, to be sure," said the centipede. "How frank we are."

"Please don't be cross," said Fiona, humbly. "I am only doing what you told me to do."

"Bless you, child, I'm not cross," said the centipede. "I'm a philosopher."

"Don't philosophers get cross?" asked the girl.

"Never," said the centipede. "And when they do they call it something else. What's the matter with me is, that I've sprained my seventh ankle on bow side, counting from the tail. Don't say you're sorry, for you're not. Anyone can see you're not."

"You are horrid to-day," said Fiona. "And the other day you were so nice."

"That's what makes me such a charming companion," said the centipede. "You never know what to expect. So I never pall."

"I want to know where the Urchin is, and how I am to find him," said Fiona.

"Is that all?" said the centipede. "Fancy interrupting my breakfast on account of that boy. Well, one question at a time. We'll have the last one first; I'm in that sort of mood to-day."

"How can I find the Urchin, then, please?" asked Fiona.

"Well, you've been told _that_ already," said the centipede. "Haven't you a memory?"

Fiona thought and thought, but could make nothing of it.

"My friend the bookworm was there at the time," said the centipede, "and heard the shore lark tell you that the last man went up a hill. Very well. Go up a hill."

"But that was for something quite different," said Fiona. "That was for my treasure. I am not thinking of any treasure now."

"Silly of you, then," said the centipede. "I would be. Ever studied philosophy?"

"No," said Fiona.

"That's a pity," said the centipede. "Then you've never heard of Hegel and the unity of opposites? Black and white are only different aspects of the same thing, you know. And as soon as you begin to think about it, you see at once how sensible it is. Well, a treasure-hunt and a boy-hunt are only different aspects of a hunt, aren't they? Therefore they are the same thing. Therefore what does for one does for the other. Therefore you go up a hill. There's logic for you," and once more he swelled proudly.

"Thank you very much," said Fiona. "And now will you please tell me where the Urchin is?"

"Tell you!" exclaimed the centipede. "Why, it was you told me. You prophesied the whole thing."

"I'm sure I don't remember it, then," said Fiona.

"What's the matter with _you_," said the centipede, "is that you refuse to exert your intelligence, such as it is. You should take a lesson by me. You humans are all forgetting nowadays that the spoken word is an instrument of great power, and that once it is launched it goes on and on, and can work magic on its own account, quite independently of you. If you say a thing will happen, it frequently does happen."

"But what did I say?" asked Fiona.

"You told the Urchin that if he hurt the shore lark the Little People would take him. Well, they've taken him. That's all."

And the centipede slid down on to the ground, and with something like a chuckle vanished. He had evidently learned from his philosophy to bear with resignation the misfortunes of others.

But Fiona did not set off up a hill at once. After breakfast she went to the bookroom and spoke to her father.

"I have found out where the Urchin is, daddy," she said. "He was carried off by the fairies."

The Student showed no surprise.

"You have not been long finding out, Fiona," he said. "I thought you had ways and means of your own."

"But, daddy," she said, "I don't _really_ believe it, you know. It sounds so absurd nowadays. Do you believe it?"

"I believe it, yes," said the Student. "I knew yesterday. Now that you know, I may talk to you about it, so far."

"I don't know that I do really know," she said. "Things like that don't _really_ happen, do they? Whoever heard of it?"

"You and I have heard of it," he answered. "And that is enough. The proposition that people are not carried off by fairies is a mere working hypothesis, liable to be overthrown by any one case to the contrary. Well, we've got a case to the contrary, and that's the end of the hypothesis."

"I'm arguing against myself, daddy, you know," she said. "I want to believe that we do know where he is."

"No difficulty at all," said the Student, "to anyone with a properly trained mind, like yours and mine. Take it this way. No one has ever crossed the South Arabian desert or explored the snow ranges of New Guinea, have they? Well, for all anyone can say to the contrary, people may be carried off by fairies every day of the week in New Guinea or South Arabia, mayn't they? It may even be the rule there. It may be a working hypothesis among the pygmies of New Guinea that such a thing _always_ happens--at death, for instance. It would be just as good a working hypothesis as it is that it _never_ happens."

"But, daddy, it would be so extraordinary, wouldn't it?"

"Not a bit more extraordinary," he said, "than the inside of a bit of radium, or the inside of an egg, for that matter. It is probably simpler for the Urchin to become a fairy than for an egg to become a bird, or a caterpillar a butterfly. It would not be nearly as strange as it is that there is a water beast which can shed its gills and become a land beast, or that Uranus moons go round the wrong way. You can't knock it out by any reasoning of that kind, Fiona. It's merely a matter of fact; and if we have found a case we _have_ found a case."

"Then you knew yesterday, daddy?" she said.

"I had a very fair idea," he answered. "That is why I was tapping in the cave with a hammer. Can you guess why?"

Fiona saw.

"To find the rest of the cave," she said. "That is where he would be."

"Just so," said the Student. "These caves cannot end in a wall, as that one seems to. I thought the wall must ring hollow somewhere, and the hollow is in the recess where the stone nearly fell on me. The apparent end of the cave is not in the line of the true cave at all."

"It is the same place where the stones fell on Mr. Johnson," said Fiona.

"That is strange," said the Student.

And then Fiona told about the hand she had seen.

"Of course, of course," said the Student. "That explains the whole thing. They threw the stone down on me too. They did not wish me to know that the wall was hollow just there. They must use it as a doorway. They will have carried the boy through at the moment that you turned your back, of course. I suppose he invited them in some way; they could have no power otherwise."

"He said he would go _anywhere_ to find his treasure," said Fiona.

"That would be quite sufficient for them to act on," said the Student.

"Then the stories about the cruelty of the Little People are true," asked Fiona.

"Only in part," said the Student. "I take it that they are all sorts, like ourselves. They are, as you know, the vanished debris of all the peoples that have helped to make this planet what it is. Good people, many of them. But they cannot altogether love those who have driven them under the ground."

"And who is the old hawker, daddy," she asked, "and what has he to do with it all?"

"I can't talk about anything except what you already know," said the Student. "Have you found out yet how to start?"

"I am to go up a hill," said Fiona. "And I am going up Heleval now. And I came to see if you would come with me."

"I wish I could; I wish very much I could," said the Student. "I do not know what you may find; but I know well that if I went with you, you would find nothing but grass and rock. I am too old to see the things you can see, you know. You have to do it alone, little daughter."

So Fiona filled her pocket with bread and cheese, and started; and the Student, after a useless attempt to settle down to his inscriptions, set up a little three-inch telescope with which he sometimes entertained Fiona on fine nights, gazing at Jupiter's moons or Saturn's rings, and followed her across the moor as far as he could. It was the only way he could go with her.

* * * * *

There are many worse things in the world than setting out to climb Heleval on a beautiful morning on the first of October, when the grass in unsunned corners is still pearly with the frost of the night, and the whole earth is touched with the wonderful caress of the cool autumn sunshine. Fiona's way lay along the shore road, past the bank of heather and fern which in August had been gay with flowers, napperd and potentilla, blue milkwort and starry eye-bright, and alive with butterflies, blues and small heaths and pearl-bordered fritillaries; but the flowers were faded now, and in their place, in the little burn where the hazelnuts grew, was a tapestry of purple burrs and scarlet hips. The shore road ended at a little burn; here an old stone bridge, grown over with grass, crossed the pool which in times of spate would hold a fat, white sea-trout, and here Fiona and the Urchin had used to come in summer to gather globe flowers. From this point a sheep track led up the valley beside the burn, through great spaces of yellowing bracken, by little swampy springs where late forget-me-nots still lingered and an early snipe might rise with a skeep, and across low-lying wastes of bog-myrtle, perfuming all the air with its dying leaves; then the ground began to rise, and fern and bog-myrtle gave place to short, hard grass tufted with bulrushes, and beds of matted unburnt heather, seamed with rabbit tracks.

After a time Fiona left the valley and began to climb the hillside, rising steeply through heather and red grass and heather again, most of it dying by now, but with patches still in full flower, worked by the wild bees and making the moorland smell like a honey-pot. Then more grass, and limestone ridges, and she stood on the crest of the moor, which billowed away on her right, wave after wave, till it ran down to the low ground and the sea, and rose up on her left till it ended in the great mass of Heleval, standing up into the cloudless sky. The ground before her was scarred with deep peat-hags, their gray banks touched with the tiny scarlet blossoms of the trumpet-moss, while from their crumbling sides projected bits of the whitened trunks of trees long since dead, last vestiges of the forests that had clothed the island ere ever the Gael first fought his way in. Walking became impossible, and she jumped from gray bank to gray bank, occasionally floundering across a little lake of soft peat, where the wild cotton grass still bloomed, and the mountain hares had left telltale tracks. Now and again a hare itself would scurry away before her up one of the peat ditches, rising to the moor level as soon as he thought he was out of gunshot and sitting up on his haunches to watch; now and again an old grouse, his head and hackles red as a berry in the sunlight, would rise, crow, and swing away over the brow of the moor. And presently from behind Heleval came drifting a gray bird with a long bill who on hovering wings wheeled three times in the air above her and gave his full spring call, the most wonderful sound that the hills ever hear; then he stooped close over her head and with wings spread sickle-wise shot away for the sea. One may see a curlew on the moor in October, but he will not give his spring call; and Fiona felt of good courage, for she knew that the bird had called for her, to tell her she was in the right way.

So she came to the foot of Heleval itself, and started to climb the steep slope of short grass, slippery as polished board, which led up to the rock pinnacle above; the hillside twinkled with the white scuts of rabbits racing up before her to their holes, as round the side of the mountain came their enemy, perhaps the last kite in the island, glittering in the sun as only a glede can, till the beautiful cowardly creature caught sight of Fiona and swept away across the valley. She passed the great cairn where the hill foxes live, and began the last climb to the pinnacle of rock that fronts the flat crest of the mountain. And now something white on the rock, which she had noticed from below without taking account of, began to become insistent. It could not possibly be a patch of snow yet, she thought. Perhaps the shepherd had hung a sheepskin there. But no sheepskin was ever so white.

Then she came up near the pinnacle, and saw. Standing upright against it was a girl, not much older than herself. Her long dark hair blew back over the rock; her white body was half hidden in a trembling veil of white light, which shimmered and played all about her, waving with every breath of the wind. Her face was beautiful and cold, like a frosty moonrise; her eyes shone like the drip of phosphorescent water under the stars.

"You have come at last," said the girl. "Every day for many days I have watched for you."

"Who are you, you beautiful girl?" asked Fiona.

"I am an Oread," said the girl. "I am the spirit of Heleval."

"I have heard," said Fiona, "that long ago people used to believe that everything had a spirit of its own, mountains and rivers and trees. Is it true then?"

"It _was_ true," said the girl. "The world was full of my sisters, once. There were the Naiads in the streams, and the Hamadryads in the woods, and we, the Oreads, in the mountains. Men were wiser and simpler in those days. But now my sisters are nearly all gone. When a tree has become so many cubic feet of timber, how can it shelter a Dryad? When a stream is merely so many units of waterpower, how can a Naiad dwell there? Only the barren mountains, if they contain neither gold nor iron, have been left unappraised and unexploited; and a few Oreads still linger here and there. Once in a while a man fancies that he sees one of us; then he must climb and climb till the day he dies, hoping to see her indeed; down in your world people call him mountain mad."

"How is it then that I have seen you?" asked Fiona.

The Oread touched her bracelet.

"Partly because of this," she said. "But chiefly because you are a child, and can still see. What is it you have come to ask me?"

"How to find the Urchin," said Fiona.

"You know of course where he is?" the girl asked; and Fiona said, "Yes, he is in Fairyland; but I do not know the way to go."

"That is easily told," said the Oread. "The King of the Woodcock will let you in, and any of his people can tell you where to find him. But do you know the danger? If you do arrive, which is very doubtful, the fairies will make you wish a wish; and if your wish be one that does not find favor with them, they will keep you there forever, till you lose your memory and yourself and become even as one of them."

"I will take the risk," said Fiona, "for I must go and try to bring him back."

"Why do you want to bring him back?" asked the Oread. "He is much better where he is. Will he thank you for bringing him back? Not a bit. You will have the labor and the danger, and he will take it all for granted. And then he will become a man, and what use is that? He may be a financier, and cheat somebody; or a politician, and slander somebody; or a learned man, and hinder wisdom. He is much better in Fairyland. Why are you going?"

"I can't help it," said Fiona. "You can't leave people in the lurch, you know."

"Of course you can," said the Oread. "Be sensible and go home; eat, drink, and be merry."

"O, don't you understand?" said Fiona. "Don't you see that there are some things you _can't_ do, whatever anybody says? It's not the reason of the thing; it's only just because I am I, and he is lost. You are so beautiful; haven't you any heart?"

"Neither heart nor soul," said the Oread. "So I ought to be perfectly happy. You have a heart and a soul, and you are not. Which of us is the better off?"

"I wouldn't change, anyhow," said Fiona.

The Oread laughed.

"Of course you wouldn't. It is I who would change if I could. But as I have no soul, and cannot get one, and do not know what it would mean to get one, it is no use worrying; it is best to be happy as I am. In any case, I would not care to be like men and women. I would not mind having a child's heart, like you. I had a heart once, but it is so long ago that I have almost forgotten what it was like. How old do you think I am?"

"You _look_ about seventeen," said Fiona.

"I am exactly as old as Heleval," said the girl. "And that is more hundreds of thousands of years than you or I could ever count. I am older than any of the fishes or birds or beasts; far older than men or fairies. Look at that," and the Oread swept her arm over the glorious prospect around her; the two great wings of the Isle of Mist stretched far out into the sea, the Atlantic throbbing and sparkling under the blue sky, and across the loch the jagged gray range of the Cuchullins, peak upon peak. "Isn't it all beautiful? We came into being together. Heleval was a giant in those days, a king among other kings; and there was no sea there, and the Cuchullin Hills stood right up into the sky, and twisted and bubbled while the Earth cooled and cracked, and my sisters of the Fire came out of the cracks and taught us mountain spirits the fire dance, and we danced it all night on the great peaks till the stars reeled to watch us. And then the fiery summits cooled and sank down, and my sisters of the Fire sank with them, and a mighty river went foaming out down the valley yonder to a distant sea; and every evening my sisters the Naiads came floating up in a circle with garlands of green on their hair, and they taught us mountain spirits the water dance, and we danced it all night on the moonlit water, while the Ocean crept nearer and nearer to gaze. And then the sea came up, and the river carved Heleval out as you see it, and shrank away, and my sisters the Naiads shrank away with it; and the island was covered with great forests, and my sisters the Hamadryads came out of the tree-trunks and taught us mountain spirits the tree dance, and we danced it all night in the forest glades, till one night men saw; and men felled the forests to capture my sisters of the trees and enslave them, but they vanished as the trees vanished. And to-day only the hills are left, and we, the Oreads, a people few and fading away; and we no longer dance, for we have lost all our sisters, and we no longer have hearts."

The girl's face had filled with color as she spoke, and her eyes had become soft, and her voice sounded like the music of waters far away. Fiona looked at her in wonder.

"Indeed, indeed, you have your heart still," she said. "And you are far more beautiful even than I thought you were. Come home with me, and I will love you as you loved your sisters."

"It is not possible," said the Oread. "It is not free to me to leave Heleval. I _am_ Heleval. And I shall be here till one day men find iron or copper in my mountain, and come up with great engines to carve it and tear its flanks and carry it away; and then I shall go too, as my sisters have gone."

"Will you die?" asked Fiona.

"I do not know what death means," said the girl. "I shall just go back, like a drop of water when it falls into the sea. But do you know what you have done to-day? For a few moments, because you are brave and loyal, you have given me back my heart, which was lost thousands of years ago. It will all fade away again; but before it fades, will you kiss me?"

So Fiona took her in her arms and kissed her, and then turned and went down the hill. Once she faced round, and saw the Oread standing, frosty and white, against the pinnacle of rock, holding out her arms; and she started to go back to her. And even as she moved the whiteness vanished, and there was nothing there but the rocky pinnacle, shining in the slanting sunlight. Rather sadly she went home.