_EVA’S FIRST ADVENTURE._
How long she lay there asleep the child did not know. It might only
have been for a few minutes; it might have been for hours. Yet, when
she did awake, and think it was time for her to go home, she did not
understand where she could be. The place seemed the same, yet not the
same,--as though some wonderful change had come over it during her
sleep. There was the pond, to be sure, but was it the same pond? Tall
trees grew round it, yet their branches were bare and leafless. A
little brook ran into the pond, which she was sure that she never had
seen there before. Was she still asleep? No. She was wide awake. She
sprang to her feet and looked around. The green toad was gone, so was
the moon-face; her father’s house was nowhere to be seen; there was no
sun, but it was not dark, for a light seemed to come from the earth,
and yet the earth itself did not shine; mountains rose in the distance;
but, strangest of all, these mountains sometimes bore one shape,
sometimes another; at times they were like great crouching beasts, then
again like castles or palaces, then, as you looked, they were mountains
again. Strange shadows passed over the pond, stranger shapes flitted
among the trees.
Eva did not know how the change had been made, still less did she guess
that she was now in Shadow-Land.
Yet it was all so singular that, as she looked upon the changing
mountain forms, and the quaint shadows, a sudden longing came over
her, with a desire to go home, and she turned away from the pond. And
as she did so, a little fragrant purple violet, the last that was left
of all the flowers which she had gathered, and which had been tangled
in her curls, fell to the ground, melting into fragrance as it did
so; and as it fell, there passed from Eva’s mind all recollection of
father, mother, home, and the little brother cooing in his cradle:
the changing mountain forms seemed strange no longer; she forgot to
wonder at the singular earth-light, and at the absence of the sun; and
noticing for the first time that she was standing in a little path
which ran along the pond, and then followed the course of the little
brook, whose waters seemed singing the words, “Follow, follow me!” Eva
wondered no longer, but first stooping to pick up a little stick, in
shape like a boy’s cane, with a knob at one end, just like a roughly
carved head, and which was lying just at her feet, she walked along the
little path, which seemed made expressly for her to walk in.
She walked on and on, as she thought, for hours, yet there came neither
sunset nor moonrise, and there were no stars in the sky, which seemed
nearer the earth than she had ever seen it before. There were clouds,
to be sure, of shapes as strange as those of the mountains, which
passed and repassed each other, although there was no wind to move
them. Everything was silent. Even the trees, swaying, as they did, to
and fro, moved noiselessly; the only sound, save Eva’s light steps,
which broke the stillness was the silvery ripple of the brook, which
kept company with the path Eva trod, and whose waters murmured, gently,
“Follow, follow me!”
And Eva followed the murmuring brook, which seemed to her like a
pleasant companion in this silent land, where, even as there was no
sound, there was no sign of life; nothing like the real world which
the child had left, and of which, with the fall of the little violet
from her curls, she had lost all recollection; even as though that
world had never existed for her. Once or twice, as she went on, holding
her little stick in her hand, she imagined that she saw child-figures
beckoning to her; but, upon going up to them, she always found that
either a rock, or a low, leafless shrub, or else a rising wreath of
mist, had deceived her.
Yet, though she was alone, with no one near her, not even a bird to
flit merrily from tree to tree, nor an insect to buzz across her path,
Eva felt and knew no fear, and not for a moment did she care that she
was alone. The silvery ripple of the little brook, along which her path
lay, sounded like a pleasant voice in her ears; when thirsty, she
drank of its waters, which seemed to serve alike as food and drink;
when tired, she would lie fearlessly down upon its grassy margin, and
sleep, as she would imagine, only for a few minutes, for there would
be no change in the strange sky nor in the earth-light when she would
awake from what it had been when she lay down; and yet in reality she
would sleep as long as she would have done in her little bed at home.
For two whole days, which yet seemed as only a few hours, the child
followed the brook. During this time she had felt no desire to leave
the path; she had unhesitatingly obeyed the rippling voice of the
brook, which seemed to say, “Follow, follow me!” But now there was
a change: the water, at times, encroached upon the path, and rocks
obstructed the current, around which little waves broke and dashed,
while strange little flames, which yet did not burn, and gave no
heat, started from the waves, dancing on them; and misty shapes, more
definite than those she had first seen, beckoned to her to come to
them. Now, Eva felt an irresistible longing to leave the brook, and
wander away; far, far into the deep forest, away from the dancing
flames and the beckoning shapes.
And once or twice she did leave the path, and turn her back upon the
brook. But every time that she stepped off the beaten track, faint
though it was, her feet grew heavy, and clung to the earth, so that
she could scarcely move; and the waves of the brook leaped higher and
higher; and the dancing flames grew brighter; and the silvery voice,
louder and clearer than ever, would call, “Follow, follow me!” till the
child was always glad to return to the path, and then once again the
way would grow easy to her feet, and the water would resume its former
tranquillity.
On, on she went, still following the course of the brook. But at last
a new sound mingled, though but faintly, with its musical ripple,--the
distant voice of falling waters. And when first this new tone
reached Eva’s ears, a few signs of life began to show themselves,--a
sad-colored moth flitted lazily across the path into the forest,--a
slow-crawling worm or hairy caterpillar hid itself under a stone as Eva
passed,--the bright eyes of a mouse would peep out at her from under
the shelter of a leaf, or else a toad would leap hastily from the path
into the waters of the brook.
Still Eva walked onward, more eagerly than ever, for though the
“Follow, follow me!” of the brook was now silent, she heard the voice
of the other waters, and at every turn in the path she looked forward
eagerly for the little joyous cascade she expected to see. For it she
looked, yet in vain: though the sound of the waters grew louder, she
saw nothing, till at last a sudden gleam of golden light, from a long
opening in the forest, fell across the now placid waters of the brook;
and Eva looked up to see, far away in this opening, a fountain playing
in clouds of golden spray, amid which danced sparkles of light; and the
path, parting abruptly from the brook which it had followed so long,
led down the opening in the forest directly to this play of waters,
whose voice Eva had heard and followed.
And as she turned away from the little brook, whose course and her
own had so long been the same, it seemed to her that even the silvery
ripple of its waters died away into silence; and, looking back once
more, after she had taken a few steps, upon the way by which she had
come, lo! the brook and its waters had wholly disappeared, and an
impenetrable forest had already closed up the path behind her.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]