A DOORWAY IN FAIRYLAND
This selection of fairy-tales is reprinted from the following original
editions, now out of print:
_A Farm in Fairyland_ (1894)
_The House of Joy_ (1895)
_The Field of Clover_ (1898)
_The Blue Moon_ (1904)
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
A DOORWAY IN FAIRYLAND
BY LAURENCE HOUSMAN
NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY
ENGRAVED BY
CLEMENCE HOUSMAN
]
_Made and
Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.,
London and Aylesbury._
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE BLUE MOON 13
THE WISHING-POT 21
THE WAY OF THE WIND 33
THE BOUND PRINCESS:
THE FIRE-EATERS 53
THE GALLOPING PLOUGH 59
THE THIRSTY WELL 66
THE PRINCESS MELILOT 74
THE BURNING ROSE 82
THE CAMPHOR-WORM 90
THE RAT-CATCHER’S DAUGHTER 97
THE TRAVELLER’S SHOES 108
THE ROOTED LOVER 133
THE WOOING OF THE MAZE 147
THE MOON-FLOWER 156
THE WHITE KING 181
THE PASSIONATE PUPPETS 192
KNOONIE IN THE SLEEPING PALACE 211
THE BLUE MOON
Nillywill and Hands-pansy were the most unimportant and happy pair of
lovers the world has ever gained or lost. With them it had been a case
of love at first blindness since the day when they had tumbled into
each other’s arms in the same cradle. And Hands-pansy, when he first
saw her, did not discover that Nillywill was a real princess hiding her
birthright in the home of a poor peasant; nor did Nillywill, when she
first saw Hands, see in him the baby-beginnings of the most honest and
good heart that ever sprang out of poverty and humble parentage. So
from her end of their little crib she kicked him with her royal rosy
toes, and he from his kicked back and laughed: and thus, as you hear,
at first blindness they fell head over ears in love with one another.
Nothing could undo that; for day by day earth and sun and wind came to
rub it in deeper, and water could not wash it off. So when they had
been seven years together there could be no doubt that they felt as if
they had been made for each other in heaven. And then something very
big and sad came to pass; for one day Nillywill had to leave off being
a peasant child and become a princess once more. People very grand and
grown-up came to the woodside where she flowered so gaily, and caught
her by the golden hair of her head and pulled her up by her dear little
roots, and carried her quite away from Hands-pansy to a place she had
never been in before. They put her into a large palace, with woods and
terraces and landscape gardens on all sides of it; and there she sat
crying and pale, saying that she wanted to be taken back to Hands-pansy
and grow up and marry him, though he was but the poor peasant boy he
had always been.
Those that had charge of Nillywill in her high station talked wisely,
telling her to forget him. “For,” said they, “such a thing as a
princess marrying a peasant boy can only happen once in a blue moon!”
When she heard that, Nillywill began every night to watch the moon
rise, hoping some evening to see it grow up like a blue flower against
the dusk and shake down her wish to her like a bee out of its deep
bosom.
But night by night, silver, or ruddy, or primrose, it lit a place for
itself in the heavens; and years went by, bringing the Princess no
nearer to her desire to find room for Hands-pansy amid the splendours
of her throne.
She knew that he was five thousand miles away and had only wooden
peasant shoes to walk in; and when she begged that she might once
more have sight of him, her whole court, with the greatest utterable
politeness, cried “No!”
The Princess’s memory sang to her of him in a thousand tunes, like
woodland birds carolling; but it was within the cage which men call a
crown that her thoughts moved, fluttering to be out of it and free.
So time went on, and Nillywill had entered gently into sweet
womanhood--the comeliest princess that ever dropped a tear; and all
she could do for love was to fill her garden with dark-eyes pansies,
and walk among their humble upturned faces which reminded her so well
of her dear Hands--Hands who was a long five thousand miles away. “And,
oh!” she sighed, watching for the blue moon to rise, “when will it come
and make me at one with all my wish?”
Looking up, she used to wonder what went on there. She and Hands had
stolen into the woods, when children together, and watched the small
earth-fairies at play, and had seen them, when the moon was full, lift
up their arms to it, making, perhaps, signals of greeting to far-off
moon-brothers. So she thought to herself, “What kind are the fairies
up there, and who is the greatest moon-fairy of all who makes the blue
moon rise and bring goodwill to the sad wishers of the human race? Is
it,” thought Nillywill, “the moon-fairy who then opens its heart and
brings down healing therefrom to the lovers of earth?”
And now, as happens to all those who are captives of a crown, Nillywill
learned that she must wed with one of her own rank who was a stranger
to her save for his name and his renown as the lord of a neighbouring
country; there was no help for her, since she was a princess, but she
must wed according to the claims of her station. When she heard of it,
she went at nightfall to her pansies, all lying in their beds, and told
them of her grief. They, awakened by her tears, lifted up their grave
eyes and looked at her.
“Do you not hear?” said they.
“Hear what?” asked the Princess.
“We are low in the ground: we hear!” said the pansies. “Stoop down your
head and listen!”
The Princess let her head go to the ground; and “click, click,” she
heard wooden shoes coming along the road. She ran to the gate, and
there was Hands, tall and lean, dressed as a poor peasant, with a
bundle tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief across his shoulder, and
five thousand miles trodden to nothing by the faithful tramping of his
old wooden shoes.
“Oh, the blue moon, the blue moon!” cried the Princess; and running
down the road, she threw herself into his arms.
How happy and proud they were of each other! He, because she remembered
him and knew him so well by the sight of his face and the sound of his
feet after all these years; and she, because he had come all that way
in a pair of wooden shoes, just as he was, and had not been afraid that
she would be ashamed to know him again.
“I am so hungry!” said Hands, when he and Nillywill had done kissing
each other. And when Nillywill heard that, she brought him into the
palace through the pansies by her own private way; then with her own
hands she set food before him, and made him eat. Hands, looking at her,
said, “You are quite as beautiful as I thought you would be!”
“And you--so are you!” she answered, laughing and clapping her hands.
And “Oh, the blue moon,” she cried--“surely the blue moon must rise
to-night!”
Low down in the west the new moon, leaning on its side, rocked and
turned softly in its sleep; and there, facing the earth through the
cleared night, the blue moon hung like a burning grape against the sky.
Like the heart of a sapphire laid open, the air flushed and purpled to
a deeper shade. The wind drew in its breath close and hushed, till not
a leaf quaked in the boughs; and the sea that lay out west gathered its
waves together softly to its heart, and let the heave of its tide fall
wholly to slumber. Round-eyed, the stars looked at themselves in the
charmed water, while in a luminous azure flood the light of the blue
moon flowed abroad.
Under the light of many tapers within drawn curtains of tapestry, and
feasting her eyes upon the happiness of Hands, the Princess felt the
change that had entranced the outer world. “I feel,” she said, “I do
not know how--as if the palace were standing siege. Come out where we
can breathe the fresh air!”
The light of the tapers grew ghostly and dim, as, parting the thick
hangings of the window, they stepped into the night.
“The blue moon!” cried Nillywill to her heart; “oh, Hands, it is the
blue moon!”
All the world seemed carved out of blue stone; trees with stems
dark-veined as marble rose up to give rest to boughs which drooped the
altered hues of their foliage like the feathers of peacocks at roost.
Jewel within jewel they burned through every shade from beryl to onyx.
The white blossoms of a cherry-tree had become changed into turquoise,
and the tossing spray of a fountain as it drifted and swung was like a
column of blue fire. Where a long inlet of sea reached in and touched
the feet of the hanging gardens the stars showed like glow-worms,
emerald in a floor of amethyst.
There was no motion abroad, nor sound: even the voice of the
nightingale was stilled, because the passion of his desire had become
visible before his eyes.
“Once in a blue moon!” said Nillywill, waiting for her dream to become
altogether true. “Let us go now,” she said, “where I can put away my
crown! To-night has brought you to me, and the blue moon has come for
us: let us go!”
“Where shall we go?” asked Hands.
“As far as we can,” cried Nillywill. “Suppose to the blue moon!
To-night it seems as if one might tread on water or air. Yonder across
the sea, with the stars for stepping-stones, we might get to the blue
moon as it sets into the waves.”
But as they went through the deep alleys of the garden that led down to
the shore they came to a sight more wonderful than anything they had
yet seen.
Before them, facing toward the sea, stood two great reindeer, their
high horns reaching to the overhead boughs; and behind them lay a
sledge, long and with deep sides like the sides of a ship. All blue
they seemed in that strange light.
There, too, but nearer to hand, was the moon-fay himself waiting--a
great figure of lofty stature, clad in furs of blue fox-skin, and with
heron’s wings fastened above the flaps of his hood; and these lifted
themselves and clapped as Hands and the Princess drew near.
“Are you coming to the blue moon?” called the fay, and his voice
whistled and shrilled to them like the voice of a wind.
Hands-pansy gave back answer stoutly: “Yes, yes, we are coming!” And
indeed what better could he say?
“But,” cried Nillywill, holding back for a moment, “what will the blue
moon do for us?”
“Once you are there,” answered the moon-fay, “you can have your wish
and your heart’s desire; but only once in a blue moon can you have it.
Are you coming?”
“We are coming!” cried Nillywill. “Oh, let us make haste!”
“Tread softly,” whispered the moon-fay, “and stoop well under these
boughs, for if anything awakes to behold the blue moon, the memory of
it can never die. On earth only the nightingale of all living things
has beheld a blue moon; and the triumph and pain of that memory wakens
him ever since to sing all night long. Tread softly, lest others waken
and learn to cry after us; for we in the blue moon have our sleep
troubled by those who cry for a blue moon to return.” He looked towards
Nillywill, and smiled with friendly eyes. “Come!” he said again, and
all at once they had leapt upon the sledge, and the reindeer were
running fast down towards the sea.
The blue moon was resting with its lower rim upon the waters. At that
sight, before they were clear of the avenues of the garden, one of the
reindeer tossed up his great branching horns and snorted aloud for joy.
With a soft stir in the thick boughs overhead, a bird with a great
trail of feathers moved upon its perch.
The sledge, gliding from land, passed out over the smoothed waters,
running swiftly as upon ice; and the reflection of the stars shone
up like glow-worms as Nillywill and Hands-pansy, in the moon-fay’s
company, sped away along its bright surface.
The still air whistled through the reindeers’ horns; so fast they went
that the trees and the hanging gardens and the palace walls melted away
from view like wreaths of smoke. Sky and sea became one magic sapphire
drawing them in towards the centre of its life, to the heart of the
blue moon itself.
When the blue moon had set below the sea, then far behind them upon
the land they had left the leaves rustled and drew sharply together,
shuddering to get rid of the stony stillness, and the magic hues in
which they had been dyed; and again the nightingale broke out into
passionate triumph and complaint.
Then also, from the bough which the reindeer had brushed with its
horns, a peacock threw back its head and cried in harsh lamentation,
having no sweet voice wherewith to acclaim its prize. And so ever since
it cries, as it goes up into the boughs to roost, because it shares
with the nightingale its grief for the memory of departed beauty which
never returns to earth save once in a blue moon.
But Nillywill and Hands-pansy, living together in the blue moon, look
back upon the world, if now and then they choose to remember, without
any longing for it or sorrow.
THE WISHING-POT
Tulip was the son of a poor but prudent mother; from the moment of his
birth she had trained him to count ten before ever he wanted or asked
for anything. An otherwise reckless youth, he acquired an intrinsic
value through the practice of this habit. Only once, just as he was
reaching, but had not quite reached, years of discretion, did his habit
of precaution fail him; and this same failure became in the end the
opening of his fortunes.
Bathing one day in the river, to whose banks the woods ran down in
steep terraces, he heard a voice come singing along one of the upper
slopes; and looking up under the boughs of cedar and sycamore, he saw a
pair of green feet go dancing by, up and down like grasshoppers on the
prance.
There was such rhythm in them, and such sweetness in the voice, that
his heart was out of him before he could harness it to the number ten,
and he came out of the water the most natural and forlorn of lovers.
Before he was dressed the green feet and the voice were gone, and
before he got home his health and his appetite seemed to have gone
also. He pined industriously from day to day, and spent all his hours
in searching among the woods by the river side for his lady of the dear
green feet. He did not know so much as the size or colour of her face;
the sound of her voice alone, and the running up and down of her feet,
had, as he told his mother, “decimated his affections.”
In his trouble he could think of only one possible remedy, and that
he counted well over, knowing its risk. Away in the loneliest part of
the forest there lived a wise woman, to whom, now and then, folk went
for help when everything else had failed them. So he had heard tell
of a certain Wishing-Pot that was hers in which people might see the
thing they desired most, and into which for a fee she allowed lovers
and other poor fools of fortune to look. One thing, however, was told
against the virtues of this Wishing-Pot, that though many had had a
sight of it, and their wishes revealed to them therein, others had
gone and had never again returned to their homes, but had vanished
altogether from men’s sight, nor had any news ever been heard of them
after. There were some wise folk who held that they had only gone
elsewhere to seek the fortune that the Wishing-Pot had shown to them.
Nevertheless, for the most part, the wise woman and her Wishing-Pot had
an ill name in that neighbourhood.
To a lover’s heart risk gives value; so one fine morning Tulip kissed
his mother, counted ten, and set out for the woods.
Towards evening he came to the house of the witch and knocked at the
door. “Good mother,” said he, when she opened to him, “I have brought
you the fee to buy myself a wish over the Wishing-Pot.” “Ay, surely,”
answered the crone, and drew him in.
In one corner of the room stood a great crystal bowl. Nearly round
it was, and had a small opening at the top, to which a man might
place his eye and look in. To Tulip, as he looked at it, it seemed
all coloured fires and falling stars, and a soft crackling sound came
from it, as though heat burned in its veins. It threw long shapes and
lustres upon the walls, and within innumerable things writhed, and ran,
and whiffed in the floating of its vapours.
“You may have two wishes,” said the old witch, “a one and a two.” And
she said the spell that undid the secret of the Pot to the wisher.
Then Tulip bent down his head and looked in, counting softly to
himself, and at ten, he let the wish go to his lady of the dear green
feet.
The colours changed and sprang, as though stirred and fed with fresh
fuel; and down in the depths of the Wishing-Pot he saw the feet of his
Beloved go by in twinkling green slippers.
As soon as he saw that he began counting ten in great haste for the
second wish. “O to be inside the Wishing-Pot with her!” was his thought
now. He had got to nine, and the wish was almost on his tongue, when
he caught sight of the old woman’s eye looking at him. And the eye
had become like a large green spider, with great long limbs that kept
clutching up and out again!
His heart queegled to a jelly at the sight; but the green feet lured
him so, that he still thought how to get to them and yet be safe.
Surely, to be in the Wishing-Pot and out by the sound of the next
Angelus became the shape of his wish. He shut his eyes, cried ten upon
the venture, and was in the Wishing-Pot!
The little green feet were trebling over the glass with a sound like
running water; and he himself began running at full speed, shot off
into the Wishing-Pot like a pellet from a pop-gun. Nothing could he
see of his dear but her wee green feet. But above them as they ran he
heard showery laughter, and he knew that his lady was there before him,
though invisible to the eye.
The Pot, now he was in it, seemed bigger than the biggest dome in the
world; to run all round it took him two or three minutes. Away in the
centre of its base stood a great opal knob, like the axle to a wheel
round which he and the green feet kept circling.
However much he wished and wished, the green feet still kept their
distance, for now he was _in_ the Wishing-Pot wishes availed him
nothing. The green feet flew faster than his; the light laugh rang
further and further away; right across to the other side of the hall
his lady had passed from him now.
The magic fires of the crystal leaped and crackled under his tread;
now it seemed as if his feet ran on a green lawn, out of which broke
crocuses and daffodils, and now roses reddened in the track, and now
the purple of grapes spurted across the path like spilled wine. The
sound of the green feet and the running of overhead laughter, as they
distanced him in front, came nearer and nearer behind him from across
the hall. He felt that he must follow and not turn, however beaten he
might be.
Presently a voice, that he knew was his Beloved’s, cried,--
“Heart that would have me must hatch me!
Feet that would find me must catch me!
Man that would mate me must match me!”
Oh, how? wondered spent feet, and failing heart, and reeling brain.
He stumbled slower and slower in the race, till presently with quick
innumerable patterings the green feet grew closer, and were overtaking
him from the rear.
Warm breath was in his hair,--lips and a hand; he turned, open armed,
to snatch the mischievous morsel, but all that he clasped was a gust of
air; and he saw the green feet scudding out and away on a fresh start
before him.
Again, with laughter, the voice cried,--
“Lap for lap you must wind me:
Equal, before you can find me!
You are a lap behind me!”
Where they raced the surface of the glass sloped slightly to the upward
rise of its walls; Tulip shifted his ground, and ran where the footing
was leveller towards the centre, and the circle began to go smaller. So
he began to gain, till the green slippers, seeing how the advantage had
come about, shifted also in their turn.
Thus they ran on; there were no inner posts to mark the course, only
the great opal standing in the centre of all formed the pivot of the
race, and round and round it, a great way off, they ran.
All at once a big thought came into Tulip’s head; he waited not to
count ten, but, before Green Slippers knew what he was after, he had
reached the opal centre, and was circling it. Then quickly all the
laughter stopped; the green feet came twinkling sixteen to the dozen,
so as to get round the post before him and away.
One lap, he was before her; two laps, he turned again to her coming,
and found her falling into his arms. She blossomed into sight at his
touch: from top to toe she was there! All rosy and alive he had her in
his clasp, laughing, crying, clinging, yet struggling to be free. She
made a most endless handful, till Tulip had caught her by the hair and
kissed her between the eyes.
All round and overhead the magic crystal reared up arches of fire, to
a roof that dropped like rain, while Tulip and his prize sank down
exhausted on the great hub of opal to rest. As he touched it all the
secret wonders of the Wishing-Pot were opened and revealed to his gaze.
Crowds and crowds of faces were what he most saw; everywhere that he
turned he saw old friends and neighbours who, he thought, had been dead
and gone, looking sadly, and shaking long sorrowful faces at him. “You
here too, Tulip?” they seemed for ever to be saying. “Always another,
and another; and now you here too!”
There was the dairyman’s wife, who had waited seven years to have a
child, holding a little will-o’-the-wisp of a thing in her arms. Now
and then for a while it would lie still, and then suddenly it would
leap up and dart away; and she, poor soul, must up and after it, though
the chase were ever so long!
There also was Miller Dick with his broad thumbs, counting over a
rich pile of gold, which, ever and anon, spun up into the air, and
went strewing itself like dead leaves before the wind. Then he too
must needs up and after it, till it was all caught again, and added
together, and made right.
There were small playmates of Tulip’s childhood, each with its
little conceit of treasure: one had a toy, and another a lamb, another
a bird; and all of them hunted and caught the thing they loved, and
kissed it and again let go. So it went on, over and over again, more
sad than the sight of a quaker as he twiddles his thumbs.
[Illustration]
Whenever they were at peace for a moment, they turned their eyes his
way. “What, you here too, Tulip?” was always the thing they seemed to
be saying.
While Tulip sat looking at them, and thinking of it all, suddenly his
lady disappeared, and only her green feet darted from his side and
began running round and round in a circle. Then was he just about to
set off running after them, when he felt himself caught up to the
coloured fires of the roof and sent spinning ungovernably through
space. Suddenly he was dumped to the ground, and just as his feet were
gathering themselves up under him he heard the Angelus bell ringing
from the village below the slopes of the wood.
He was standing again by the side of the Wishing-Pot, and the old woman
sat cowering, and blinking her spider eye at him, too much astonished
to speak or move.
Tulip looked at her with a pleasant and engaging air. “Oh, good mother,
what a treat you have given me!” he said. “How I wish I had money for
another wish! what a pity it was ever to have wished myself back again!”
When the old witch heard that she thought still to entrap him, and
answered joyfully, “Why, kind Sir, surely, kind Sir, if you like it you
shall look again! Take another wish, and never mind about the money.”
So she said the spell once more which opened to him the wonders of the
Wishing-Pot.
Then cried Tulip, clapping his hands, “What better can I wish than to
have you in the Wishing-Pot, in the place of all those poor folk whom
you have imprisoned with their wishes!”
Hardly was the thing said than done; all the children who had been
Tulip’s playmates, and Miller Dick with his broad thumbs, and the
dairyman’s wife, were every one of them out, and the old witch woman
was nowhere to be seen.
But Tulip put his eye to the mouth of the Wishing-Pot; and there down
below he saw the old witch, running round and round as hard as she
could go, pursued by a herd of green spiders. And there without doubt
she remains.
And now everybody was happy except Tulip himself; for the children had
all of them their toys, and the old miller his gold, and as for the
dairyman’s wife, she found that she had become the mother of a large
and promising infant. But Tulip had altogether lost his lady of the
dear green feet, for in thinking of others he had forgotten to think of
himself. All the gratitude of the poor people he had saved was nothing
to him in that great loss which had left him desolate. For his part he
only took the Wishing-Pot up under his arm, and went sadly away home.
But before long the noise of what he had done reached to the king’s
ears; and he sent for Tulip to appear before him and his Court. Tulip
came, carrying the Wishing-Pot under his arm, very downcast and sad
for love of the lady of the dear green feet.
At that time all the Court was in half mourning; for the Princess
Royal, who was the king’s only child, and the most beautiful and
accomplished of her sex, had gone perfectly distraught with grief, of
which nothing could cure her. All day long she sat with her eyes shut,
and tears running down, and folded hands and quiet little feet. And
all this came, it was said, from a dream which she could not tell or
explain to anybody.
The king had promised that whoever could rouse her from her grief,
should have the princess for his wife, and become heir to the throne;
and when he heard that there was such a thing in the world as a
Wishing-Pot, he thought that something might be done with it.
From Tulip he learned, however, that no one knew the spell which opened
the resources of the Wishing-Pot save the old witch woman who was shut
up fast for ever in its inside. So it seemed to the king that the Pot
could be of no use for curing the princess.
But it was so beautiful, with its shooting stars and coloured fires,
that, when Tulip brought it, they carried it in to show to her.
After three hours the princess was prevailed upon to open her eyes; and
directly they fell upon the great opal bowl, all at once she started to
her feet and began laughing and dancing and singing.
These are the words that they heard her sing,--
“Lap for lap I must wind you;
Equal, before I can find you;
I am a lap behind you!”
Tulip, as soon as he heard the sweetness of that voice, and the words,
pushed his way past the king and all his court, to where the princess
was. And there over the heads of the crowd he saw his lady of the dear
green feet laughing and opening her white arms to him.
As she set eyes on his face the dream of the princess came true, and
all her unhappiness passed from her. So they loved and were married, to
the astonishment and edification of the whole court; and lived to be
greatly loved and admired by all their grandchildren.
THE WAY OF THE WIND
Where the world breaks up into islands among the blue waves of an
eastern sea, in a little house by the seashore, lived Katipah, the only
child of poor parents. When they died she was left quite alone and
could not find a heart in the world to care for her. She was so poor
that no man thought of marrying her, and so delicate and small that as
a drudge she was worth nothing to anybody.
Once a month she would go and stand at the temple gate, and say to the
people as they went in to pray, “Will nobody love me?” And the people
would turn their heads away quickly and make haste to get past, and
in their hearts would wonder to themselves: “Foolish little Katipah!
Does she think that we can spare time to love anyone so poor and
unprofitable as she?”
On the other days Katipah would go down to the beach, where everybody
went who had a kite to fly--for all the men in that country flew kites,
and all the children,--and there she would fly a kite of her own up
into the blue air; and watching the wind carrying it farther and
farther away, would grow quite happy thinking how a day might come at
last when she would really be loved, though her queer little outside
made her seem so poor and unprofitable.
Katipah’s kite was green, with blue eyes in its square face; and in
one corner it had a very small pursed-up red mouth holding a spray of
peach-blossom. She had made it herself; and to her it meant the green
world, with the blue sky over it when the spring begins to be sweet;
and there, tucked away in one corner of it, her own little warm mouth
waiting and wishing to be kissed: and out of all that wishing and
waiting the blossom of hope was springing, never to be let go.
All round her were hundreds of others flying their kites, and all had
some wish or prayer to Fortune. But Katipah’s wish and prayer were only
that she might be loved.
The silver sandhills lay in loops and chains round the curve of the
blue bay, and all along them flocks of gaily coloured kites hovered and
fluttered and sprang. And, as they went up into the clear air, the wind
sighing in the strings was like the crying of a young child. “Wahoo!
wahoo!” every kite seemed to cradle the wailings of an invisible infant
as it went mounting aloft, spreading its thin apron to the wind.
“Wahoo! wahoo!” sang Katipah’s blue-and-green kite, “shall I ever be
loved by anybody?” And Katipah, keeping fast hold of the string, would
watch where it mounted and looked so small, and think that surely some
day her kite would bring her the only thing she much cared about.
Katipah’s next-door neighbour had everything that her own lonely heart
most wished for: not only had she a husband, but a fine baby as well.
Yet she was such a jealous, cross-grained body that she seemed to get
no happiness out of the fortune Heaven had sent her. Husband and child
seemed both to have caught the infection of her bitter temper; all
day and night beating and brawling went on; there seemed no peace in
that house.
[Illustration]
But for all that the woman, whose name was Bimsha, was quite proud of
being a wife and a mother: and in the daytime, when her man was away,
she would look over the fence and laugh at Katipah, crying boastfully,
“Don’t think you will ever have a husband, Katipah: you are too poor
and unprofitable! Look at me, and be envious!”
Then Katipah would go softly away, and send up her kite by the seashore
till she heard a far-off, sweet, babe-like cry as the wind blew through
the strings high in air.
“Shall I ever be loved by anybody?” thought she, as she jerked at the
cord; and away the kite flew higher than ever, and the sound of its
call grew fainter.
One morning, in the beginning of the year, Katipah went up on to the
hill under plum-boughs white with bloom, meaning to gather field-sorrel
for her midday meal; and as she stooped with all her hair blowing over
her face, and her skirts knotting and billowing round her pretty brown
ankles, she felt as if someone had kissed her from behind.
“That cannot be,” thought Katipah, with her fingers fast upon a stalk
of field-sorrel; “it is too soon for anything so good to happen.” So
she picked the sorrel quietly, and put it into her basket. But now, not
to be mistaken, arms came round her, and she _was_ kissed.
She stood up and put her hands into her breast, quite afraid lest her
little heart, which had grown so light, should be caught by a puff of
wind and blown right away out of her bosom, and over the hill and into
the sea, and be drowned.
And now her eyes would not let her doubt; there by her side stood a
handsome youth, with quick-fluttering, posy-embroidered raiment. His
long dark hair was full of white plum-blossoms, as though he had just
pushed his head through the branches above. His hands also were loaded
with the same, and they kept sifting out of his long sleeves whenever
he moved his arms. Under the hem of his robe Katipah could see that he
had heron’s wings bound about his ankles.
“He must be very good,” thought Katipah, “to be so beautiful! and
indeed he must be very good to kiss poor me!”
“Katipah,” said the wonderful youth, “though you do not know me, I know
you. It is I who so often helped you to fly your green kite by the
shore. I have been up there, and have looked into its blue eyes, and
kissed its little red mouth which held the peach-blossom. It was I who
made songs in its strings for your heart to hear. I am the West Wind,
Katipah--the wind that brings fine weather. ‘Gamma-gata’ you must call
me, for it is I who bring back the wings that fly till the winter is
over. And now I have come down to earth, to fetch you away and make you
my wife. Will you come, Katipah?”
“I will come, Gamma-gata!” said Katipah, and she crouched and kissed
the heron-wings that bound his feet; then she stood up and let herself
go into his arms.
“Have you enough courage?” asked the West Wind.
“I do not know,” answered Katipah, “for I have never tried.”
“To come with me,” said the Wind, “you need to have much courage; if
you have not, you must wait till you learn it. But none the less for
that shall you be the wife of Gamma-gata, for I am the gate of the wild
geese, as my name says, and my heart is foolish with love of you.”
Gamma-gata took her up in his arms, and swung with her this way and
that, tossing his way through blossom and leaf; and the sunlight became
an eddy of gold round her, and wind and laughter seemed to become part
of her being, so that she was all giddy and dazed and glad when at last
Gamma-gata set her down.
“Stand still, my little one!” he cried--“stand still while I put on
your bridal veil for you; then your blushes shall look like a rose-bush
in snow!” So Katipah stood with her feet in the green sorrel, and
Gamma-Gata went up into the plum-tree and shook, till from head to foot
she was showered with white blossom.
“How beautiful you seem to me!” cried Gamma-gata when he returned to
ground.
Then he lifted her once more and set her in the top of a plum-tree, and
going below, cried up to her, “Leap, little Wind-wife, and let me see
that you have courage!”
Katipah looked long over the deep space that lay between them, and
trembled. Then she fixed her eyes fast upon those of her lover, and
leapt, for in the laughter of his eyes she had lost all her fear.
He caught her half-way in air as she fell. “You are not really brave,”
said he; “if I had shut my eyes you would not have jumped.”
“If you had shut your eyes just then,” cried Katipah, “I would have
died for fear.”
He set her once more in the tree-top, and disappeared from her sight.
“Come down to me, Katipah!” she heard his voice calling all round her.
Clinging fast to the topmost bough, “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried, “let
me see your eyes, and I will come.”
Then with darkened brow he appeared to her again out of his blasts, and
took her in his arms and lifted her down a little sadly till her feet
touched safe earth. And he blew away the beautiful veil of blossoms
with which he had showered her, while Katipah stood like a shamed child
and watched it go, shredding itself to pieces in the spring sunshine.
And Gamma-gata, kissing her tenderly, said: “Go home, Katipah, and
learn to have courage! and when you have learned it I will be faithful
and will return to you again. Only remember, however long we may be
parted, and whatever winds blow ill-fortune up to your door, Gamma-gata
will watch over you. For in deed and truth you are the wife of the West
Wind now, and truly he loves you, Katipah!”
“Oh, Gamma-gata!” cried Katipah, “tell the other winds, when they come,
to blow courage into me, and to blow me back to you: and do not let
that be long!”
“I will tell them,” said Gamma-gata; and suddenly he was gone. Katipah
saw a drift of white petals borne over the tree-tops and away to sea,
and she knew that there went Gamma-gata, the beautiful windy youth who,
loving her so well, had made her his wife between the showers of the
plum-blossom and the sunshine, and had promised to return to her as
soon as she was fit to receive him.
So Katipah gathered up her field-sorrel, and went away home and ate
her solitary midday meal with a mixture of pride and sorrow in her
timid little breast. “Some day, when I am grown brave,” she thought,
“Gamma-gata will come back to me; but he will not come yet.”
In the evening Bimsha looked over the fence and jeered at her. “Do not
think, Katipah,” she cried, “that you will ever get a husband, for all
your soft looks! You are too poor and unprofitable.”
Katipah folded her meek little body together like a concertina when it
shuts, and squatted to earth in great contentment of spirit. “Silly
Bimsha,” said she, “I already have a husband, a fine one! Ever so much
finer than yours!”
Bimsha turned pale and cold with envy to hear her say that, for she
feared that Katipah was too good and simple to tell her an untruth,
even in mockery. But she put a brave face upon the matter, saying only,
“I will believe in that fine husband of yours when I see him!”
“Oh, you will see him,” answered Katipah, “if you look high enough!
But he is far away over _your_ head, Bimsha; and you will not hear him
beating me at night, for that is not his way!”
At this soft answer Bimsha went back into her house in a fury, and
Katipah laughed to herself. Then she sighed, and said, “Oh, Gamma-gata,
return to me quickly, lest my word shall seem false to Bimsha, who
hates me!”
Every day after this Bimsha thrust her face over the fence to say:
“Katipah, where is this fine husband of yours? He does not seem to come
home often.”
Katipah answered slyly: “He comes home late, when it is dark, and he
goes away very early, almost before it is light. It is not necessary
for his happiness that he should see _you_.”
“Certainly there is a change in Katipah,” thought Bimsha: “she has
become saucy with her tongue.” But her envious heart would not allow
her to let matters be. Night and morning she cried to Katipah,
“Katipah, where is your fine husband?” And Katipah laughed at her,
thinking to herself: “To begin with, I will not be afraid of anything
Bimsha may say. Let Gamma-gata know that!”
And now every day she looked up into the sky to see what wind was
blowing; but east, or north, or south, it was never the one wind that
she looked for.
The east wind came from the sea, bringing rain, and beat upon Katipah’s
door at night. Then Katipah would rise and open, and standing in the
downpour, would cry, “East wind, east wind, go and tell your brother
Gamma-gata that I am not afraid of you any more than I am of Bimsha!”
One night the east wind, when she said that, pulled a tile off Bimsha’s
house, and threw it at her; and Katipah ran in and hid behind the
door in a great hurry. After that she had less to say when the east
wind came and blew under her gable and rattled at her door. “Oh,
Gamma-gata,” she sighed, “if I might only set eyes on you, I would fear
nothing at all!”
When the weather grew fine again Katipah returned to the shore and
flew her kite as she had always done before the love of Gamma-gata had
entered her heart. Now and then, as she did so, the wind would change
softly, and begin blowing from the west. Then little Katipah would pull
lovingly at the string, and cry, “Oh, Gamma-gata, have you got fast
hold of it up there?”
One day after dusk, when she, the last of all the flyers, hauled down
her kite to earth, there she found a heron’s feather fastened among the
strings. Katipah knew who had sent that, and kissed it a thousand times
over; nor did she mind for many days afterwards what Bimsha might say,
because the heron’s feather lay so close to her heart, warming it with
the hope of Gamma-gata’s return.
But as weeks and months passed on, and Bimsha still did not fail to say
each morning, “Katipah, where is your fine husband to-day?” the timid
heart grew faint with waiting. “Alas!” thought Katipah, “if Heaven
would only send me a child, I would show it to her; she would believe
me easily then! However tiny, it would be big enough to convince her.
Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I ask!”
And now every day and all day long she sent up her kite from the
seashore, praying that a child might be born to her and convince
Bimsha of the truth. Everyone said: “Katipah is mad about kite-flying!
See how early she goes and how late she stays: hardly any weather keeps
her indoors.”
One day the west wind came full-breathed over land and sea, and Katipah
was among the first on the beach to send up her messenger with word
to Gamma-gata of the thing for which she prayed. “Gamma-gata,” she
sighed, “the voice of Bimsha afflicts me daily; my heart is bruised by
the mockery she casts at me. Did I not love thee under the plum-tree,
Gamma-gata? Ask of Heaven, therefore, that a child may be born to
me--ever so small let it be--and Bimsha will become dumb. Gamma-gata,
it is a very little thing that I am asking!”
All day long she let her kite go farther up into the sky than all the
other kites. Overhead the wind sang in their strings like bees, or like
the thin cry of very small children; but Katipah’s was so far away she
could scarcely see it against the blue. “Gamma-gata,” she cried; till
the twilight drew sea and land together, and she was left alone.
Then she called down her kite sadly; hand over hand she drew it by
the cord, till she saw it fluttering over her head like a great moth
searching for a flower in the gloom. “Wahoo! wahoo!” she could hear the
wind crying through its strings like the wailing of a very small child.
It had become so dark that Katipah hardly knew what the kite had
brought her till she touched the tiny warm limbs that lay cradled
among the strings that netted the frame to its cord. Full of wonder
and delight, she lifted the windling out of its nest, and laid it in
her bosom. Then she slung her kite across her shoulder, and ran home,
laughing and crying for joy and triumph to think that all Bimsha’s
mockery must now be at an end.
So, quite early the next morning, Katipah sat herself down very
demurely in the doorway, with her child hidden in the folds of her
gown, and waited for Bimsha’s evil eye to look out upon her happiness.
She had not long to wait. Bimsha came out of her door, and looking
across to Katipah, cried, “Well, Katipah, and where is your fine
husband to-day?”
“My husband is gone out,” said Katipah, “but if you care to look you
can see my baby. It is ever so much more beautiful than yours.”
Bimsha, when she heard that, turned green and yellow with envy; and
there, plain to see, was Katipah holding up to view the most beautiful
babe that ever gave the sunlight a good excuse for visiting this wicked
earth. The mere sight of so much innocent beauty and happiness gave
Bimsha a shock from which it took her three weeks to recover. After
that she would sit at her window and for pure envy keep watch to see
Katipah and the child playing together--the child which was so much
more beautiful and well-behaved than her own.
As for Katipah, she was so happy now that the sorrow of waiting for
her husband’s return grew small. Day by day the west wind blew softly,
and she knew that Gamma-gata was there, keeping watch over her and her
child.
Every day she would say to the little one, “Come, my plum-petal, my
wind-flower, I will send thee up to thy father that he may see how fat
thou art getting, and be proud of thee!” And going down to the shore,
she would lay the child among the strings of her kite and send it up
to where Gamma-gata blew a wide breath over sea and land. As it went
she would hear the child crow with joy at being so uplifted from earth,
and laughing to herself, she would think, “When he sees his child so
patterned after his own heart, Gamma-gata will be too proud to remain
long away from me.”
When she drew the child back to her out of the sky, she covered it with
caresses, crying, “Oh, my wind-blown one, my cloudlet, my sky-blossom,
my little piece out of heaven, hast thou seen thy father, and has he
told thee that he loves me?” And the child would crow with mysterious
delight, being too young to tell anything it knew in words.
Bimsha, out of her window, watched and saw all this, not comprehending
it: and in her evil heart a wish grew up that she might by some means
put an end to all Katipah’s happiness. So one day towards evening, when
Katipah, alone upon the shore, had let her kite and her little one go
up to the fleecy edges of a cloud through which the golden sunlight was
streaming, Bimsha came softly behind and with a sharp knife cut the
string by which alone the kite was held from falling.
“Oh, silly Bimsha!” cried Katipah, “what have you done that for?”
Up in air the kite made a far plunge forward, fluttered and stumbled
in its course, and came shooting headlong to earth. “Oh dear!” cried
Katipah, “if my beautiful little kite gets torn, Bimsha, that will be
your fault!”
When the kite fell, it lay unhurt on one of the soft sandhills that
ringed the bay; but no sign of the child was to be seen. Katipah was
laughing when she picked up her kite and ran home. And Bimsha thought,
“Is it witchcraft, or did the child fall into the sea?”
In the night the West Wind came and tapped at Katipah’s window; and
rising from her bed, she heard Gamma-gata’s voice calling tenderly to
her. When she opened the window to the blindness of the black night, he
kissed her, and putting the little one in her arms, said, “Wait only a
little while longer, Katipah, and I will come again to you. Already you
are learning to be brave.”
In the morning Bimsha looked out, and there sat Katipah in her own
doorway, with the child safe and sound in her arms. And, plain to see,
he had on a beautiful golden coat and little silver wings were fastened
to his feet, and his head was garnished with a wreath of flowers the
like of which were never seen on earth. He was like a child of noble
birth and fortune, and the small motherly face of Katipah shone with
pride and happiness as she nursed him.
“Where did you steal those things?” asked Bimsha, “and how did that
child come back? I thought he had fallen into the sea and been drowned.”
“Ah!” answered Katipah slyly, “he was up in the clouds when the kite
left him, and he came down with the rain last night. It is nothing
wonderful. You were foolish, Bimsha, if you thought that to fall into
the clouds would do the child any harm. Up there you can have no idea
how beautiful it is--such fields of gold, such wonderful gardens, such
flowers and fruits: it is from there that all the beauty and wealth of
the world must come. See all that he has brought with him! and it is
all your doing, because you cut the cord of my kite. Oh, clever Bimsha!”
As soon as Bimsha heard that, she ran and got a big kite, and fastening
her own child into the strings, started it to fly. “Do not think,”
cried the envious woman, “that you are the only one whose child is to
be clothed in gold! My child is as good as yours any day; wait, and you
shall see!”
So presently, when the kite was well up into the clouds, as Katipah’s
kite had been, she cut the cord, thinking surely that the same fortune
would be for her as had been for Katipah. But instead of that, all at
once the kite fell headlong to earth, child and all; and when she ran
to pick him up, Bimsha found that her son’s life had fallen forfeit to
her own enviousness and folly.
The wicked woman went green and purple with jealousy and rage; and
running to the chief magistrate, she told him that while she was flying
a kite with her child fastened to its back, Katipah had come and cut
the string, so that by her doing the child was now dead.
When the magistrate heard that, he sent and caused Katipah to be thrown
into prison, and told her that the next day she should certainly be put
to death.
Katipah went meekly, carrying her little son in one hand and her
blue-and-green kite in the other, for that had become so dear to her
she could not now part from it. And all the way to prison Bimsha
followed, mocking her, and asking, “Tell us, Katipah, where is your
fine husband now?”
In the night the West Wind came and tapped at the prison window, and
called tenderly, “Katipah, Katipah, are you there?” And when Katipah
got up from her bed of straw and looked out, there was Gamma-gata once
more, the beautiful youth whom she loved and had been wedded to, and
had heard but had not seen since.
Gamma-gata reached his hands through the bars and put them round her
face. “Katipah,” he said, “you have become brave: you are fit now to
become the wife of the West Wind. To-morrow you shall travel with me
all over the world; you shall not stay in one land any more. Now give
me our son; for a little while I must take him from you. To prove your
courage you must find your own way out of this trouble which you have
got into through making a fool of Bimsha.” So Katipah gave him the
child through the bars of her prison window, and when he was gone lay
down and slept till it became light.
In the morning the chief magistrate and Bimsha, together with the whole
populace, came to Katipah’s cell to see her led out to death. And when
it was found that her child had disappeared, “She is a witch!” they
cried; “she has eaten it!” And the chief magistrate said that, being a
witch, instead of hanging she was to be burned.