taking with her her blue-and-green kite she trotted out to the place
of execution. When she was come to the appointed spot she said to
the chief magistrate, “To every criminal it is permitted to plead in
defence of himself; but because I am innocent, am I not also allowed to
plead?” The magistrate told her she might speak if she had anything to
say.
“All I ask,” said Katipah, “is that I may be allowed once more to fly
my blue-and-green kite as I used to do in the days when I was happy;
and I will show you soon that I am not guilty of what is laid to my
charge. It is a very little thing that I ask.”
So the magistrate gave her leave; and there before all the people
she sent up her kite till it flew high over the roofs of the town.
Gently the West Wind took it and blew it away towards the sea. “Oh,
Gamma-gata,” she whispered softly, “hear me now, for I am not afraid.”
The wind blew hard upon the kite, and pulled as though to catch it
away, so Katipah twisted the cord once or twice round her waist that
she might keep the safer hold over it. Then she said to the chief
magistrate and to all the people that were assembled: “I am innocent of
all that is charged against me; for, first, it was that wicked Bimsha
herself who killed her own child.”
“Prove it!” cried the magistrate.
“I cannot,” replied Katipah.
“Then you must die!” said the magistrate.
“In the second place,” went on Katipah, “I did not eat my own child.”
“Prove it!” cried the chief magistrate again.
“I will,” said Katipah; “O Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I
ask.”
Down the string of the kite, first a mere speck against the sky, then
larger till plain for all to see came the missing one, slithering and
sliding, with his golden coat, and the little silver wings tied to his
ankles, and handfuls of flowers which he threw into his mother’s face
as he came. “Oh! cruel chief magistrate,” cried Katipah, receiving the
babe in her arms, “does it seem that I have eaten him?”
“You are a witch!” said the chief magistrate, “or how do you come to
have a child that disappears and comes again from nowhere! It is not
possible to permit such things to be: you and your child shall both be
burned together!”
Katipah drew softly upon the kite-string. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried,
“lift me up now very high, and I will not be afraid!”
Then suddenly, before all eyes, Katipah was lifted up by the cord of
the kite which she had wound about her waist; right up from the earth
she was lifted till her feet rested above the heads of the people.
Katipah, with her babe in her arms, swung softly through the air, out
of reach of the hands stretched up to catch her, and addressed the
populace in these words:
“Oh, cruel people, who will not believe innocence when it speaks, you
must believe me now! I am the wife of the West Wind--of Gamma-gata, the
beautiful, the bearer of fine weather, who also brings back the wings
that fly till the winter is over. Is it well, do you think, to be at
war with the West Wind?
“Ah, foolish ones, I go now, for Gamma-gata calls me, and I am no
longer afraid: I go to travel in many lands, whither he carries me,
and it will be long before I return here. Many dark days are coming to
you, when you shall not feel the west wind, the bearer of fine weather,
blowing over you from land to sea; nor shall you see the blossoms
open white over the hills, nor feel the earth grow warm as the summer
comes in, because the bringer of fair weather is angry with you for
the foolishness which you have done. But when at last the west wind
returns to you, remember that Katipah the poor and unprofitable one, is
Gamma-gata’s wife, and that she has remembered, and has prayed for you.”
And so saying, Katipah threw open her arms and let go the cord of the
kite which held her safe. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried, “I do not see
your eyes, but I am not afraid!” And at that, even while she seemed
upon the point of falling to destruction, there flashed into sight
a fair youth with dark hair and garments full of a storm of flying
petals, who, catching up Katipah and her child in his arms, laughed
scorn upon those below, and roaring over the roofs of the town,
vanished away seawards.
When a chief magistrate and his people, after flagrant wrong-doing,
become thoroughly cowed and frightened, they are apt also to be cruel.
Poor Bimsha!
THE BOUND PRINCESS
I
THE FIRE-EATERS
A long time ago there lived a man who had the biggest head in the
world. Into it he had crammed all the knowledge that might be gathered
from the four corners of the earth. Everyone said he was the wisest man
living. “If I could only find a wife,” said the sage, “as wise for a
woman as I am for a man, what a race of headpieces we could bring into
the world!”
He waited many years before any such mate could be found for him: yet,
at last, found she was--one into whose head was bestowed all the wisdom
that might be gathered from the four quarters of heaven.
They were both old, but kings came from all sides to their wedding, and
offered themselves as god-parents to the first-born of the new race
that was to be. But, to the grief of his parents, the child, when he
arrived, proved to be a simpleton; and no second child ever came to
repair the mistake of the first.
That he was a simpleton was evident; his head was small and his
limbs were large, and he could run long before he could talk or do
arithmetic. In the bitterness of their hearts his father and mother
named him Noodle, without the aid of any royal god-parents; and from
that moment, for any care they took in his bringing-up, they washed
their wise hands of him.
Noodle grew and prospered, and enjoyed life in his own foolish way.
When his father and mother died within a short time of each other, they
left him alone without any friend in the world.
For a good while Noodle lived on just what he could find in the house,
in a hand-to-mouth sort of way, till at last only the furniture and the
four bare walls were left to him.
One cold winter’s night he sat brooding over the fire, wondering where
he should get food for the morrow, when he heard feet coming up to the
door, and a knock striking low down upon the panel. Outside there was a
faint chirping and crackling sound, and a whispering as of fire licking
against the woodwork without.
He opened the door and peered forth into the night. There, just before
him, stood seven little men huddled up together; three feet high they
were, with bright yellow faces all shrivelled and sharp, and eyes whose
light leaped and sank like candle flame before a gust.
When they saw him, they shut their eyes and opened famished mouths
at him, pointing inwards with flickering finger-tips, and shivering
from head to foot with cold, although it seemed to the youth as if the
warmth of a slow fire came from them. “Alas!” said Noodle, in reply
to these signs of hunger, “I have not left even a crust of bread in
the house to give you! But at least come in and make yourselves warm!”
He touched the foremost, making signs for them all to enter. “Ah,” he
cried, “what is this, and what are you, that the mere touch of you
burns my finger?”
[Illustration]
Without answer they huddled tremblingly across the threshold; but
so soon as they saw the fire burning on the hearth, they yelped all
together like a pack of hounds, and, throwing themselves face forwards
into the hot embers, began ravenously to lap up the flames. They lapped
and lapped, and the more they lapped the more the fire sank away and
died. Then with their flickering finger-tips they stirred the hot logs
and coals, burrowing after the thin tapes and swirls of vanishing
flame, and fetching them out like small blue eels still wriggling for
escape.
After each blue wisp had been gulped down, they sipped and sucked at
their fingers for any least tricklet of flavour that might be left; and
at the last seemed more famished than when they began.
“More, more, O wise Noodle, give us more!” they cried; and Noodle threw
the last of his fuel on the embers.
They breathed round it, fanning it into a great blaze that leaped and
danced up to the rafters; then they fell on, till not a fleck or a
flake of it was left. Noodle, seeing them still famished, broke up a
stool and threw that on the hearth. And again they flared it with their
breath and gobbled off the flame. When the stool was finished he threw
in the table, then the dresser, and after that the oak-chest and the
window-seat.
Still they feasted and were not fed. Noodle fetched an axe, and broke
down the door; then he wrenched up the boards from the floor, and
pulled the beams and rafters out of the ceiling; yet, even so, his
guests were not to be satisfied.
“I have nothing left,” he said, “but the house itself; but since you
are still hungry you shall be welcome to it!”
He scattered the fire that remained upon the hearth, and threw it out
and about the room; and as he ran forth to escape, up against all the
walls and right through the roof rose a great crackling sheaf of flame.
In the midst of the fire, Noodle could see his seven guests lying along
on their bellies, slopping their hands in the heat, and lapping up the
flames with their tongues. “Surely,” he thought, “I have given them
enough to eat at last!”
After a while all the fire was eaten away, and only the black and
smouldering ruins were left. Day came coldly to light, and there sat
Noodle, without a home in the world, watching with considerate eye his
seven guests finishing their inordinate repast.
They all rose to their feet together, and came towards him bowing; as
they approached he felt the heat of their bodies as it had been seven
furnaces.
“Enough, O wise Noodle!” said they, “we have had enough!” “That,”
answered Noodle, “is the least thing left me to wonder at. Go your ways
in peace; but first tell me, who are you?” They replied, “We are the
Fire-eaters: far from our own land, and strangers, you have done us
this service; what, now, can we do to serve you?” “Put me in the way
of a living,” said Noodle, “and you will do me the greatest service of
all.”
Then the one of them who seemed to be chief took from his finger a ring
having for its centre a great firestone, and threw it into the snow,
saying, “Wait for three hours till the ring shall have had time to
cool, then take it, and wear it; and whatever fortune you deserve it
shall bring you. For this ring is the sweetener of everything that it
touches: bread it turns into rich meats, water into strong wine, grief
into virtue, and labour into strength. Also, if you ever need our help,
you have but to brandish the ring, and the gleam of it will reach us,
and we will be with you wherever you may be.”
With that they bowed their top-knots to the ground and departed,
inverting themselves swiftly till only the shining print of seven pairs
of feet remained, red-hot, over the place where they had been standing.
Noodle waited for three hours; then he took up the firestone ring, and
putting it on his finger set out into the world.
At the first door he came to, he begged a crust of bread, and touching
it with the ring found it tasted like rich meats, well cooked and
delicately flavoured. Also, the water which he drew in the hollow of
his hand from a brook by the roadside tasted to him like strong wine.
II
THE GALLOPING PLOUGH
Noodle went on many miles till he came near to a rich man’s farm.
Though it was the middle of winter, all the fields showed crops of corn
in progress; here it was in thin blade, and here green, but in full
ear; and here it was ripe and ready for harvest. “How is this,” he
said to the first man he met, “that you have corn here in the middle
of winter?” “Ah!” said the man, “you have not heard of the Galloping
Plough; you too have to fall under bondage to my master.” “What is your
master?” inquired Noodle, “and in what bondage does he bind men?” “My
master, and your master that shall soon be,” answered the old man, “is
the owner of all this land and the farmer of it. He is rich and sleek
and fat like his own furrows, for he has the Galloping Plough as his
possession. Ah, that! ’tis a very miracle, a wonder, a thing to catch
at the heartstrings of all beholders; it shines like a moonbeam, and is
better than an Arab mare for swiftness; it warms the very ground that
it enters, so that seeds take root and spring, though it be the middle
of winter. No man sees it but what he loses his heart to it, and sells
his freedom for the possession of it. All here are men like myself who
have become slaves because of that desire. You also, when you see it,
will become slave to it.”
Noodle went on through the summer and the spring corn, till he came
to bare fields. Ahead of him on a hill-top he saw the farmer himself,
sleek and rosy, and of full paunch, lolling like a lord at his ease;
yet with a working eye in the midst of his leisure.
To and fro, up to him and back, shot a silver gleam over the purple
brown of the fields; and Noodle’s heart gave a thump at the sight, for
the spell of the Galloping Plough was on him.
Now and then he heard a clear sound that startled him with its note.
It was like the sweet whistling cry of a bird many times multiplied.
Ever when the silver gleam of the Plough had run its farthest from the
farmer, the cry sounded; and at the sound the gleam wavered and stayed
and flew back dartingly to the farmer’s side. So Noodle understood how
this was the farmer’s signal for the Plough to return; and the Plough
knew it as a horse its master’s voice, and came so fast that the wind
whistled against its silver side.
As he watched, Noodle’s heart went down into the valley and up the
hillside, following in the track of the Galloping Plough. “I can never
be happy again,” thought he; “either I must possess it, or must die.”
He came to the farmer where he sat calling his Plough to him and
letting it go; and the farmer smiled, the wide indulgent smile of a man
who knows that a bargain is about to fall his way.
“What is the price,” asked Noodle, “of yonder Galloping Plough, that
runs like an Arab mare, and returns to you at your call?”
Said the farmer, “A year’s service; and if the Plough will follow you,
it is yours; if not, then you must be my bondman until you die!”
Noodle looked once the way of the Galloping Plough, and his heart
flapped at his side like a sail which the wind drops and lets go; and
he had no thought or will left in him but to be where the Galloping
Plough was. So he closed hands on the bargain, to be the farmer’s
servant either for a year, or for his whole life.
For a year he worked upon the farm, and all the while plotted how he
might win the Galloping Plough to himself. The farmer kept no watch
upon it, nor put it under lock and key, for the Plough recognised no
voice but his own, nor went nor came save at his bidding. In the night
Noodle would go down to the shed or field where it lay, and whistle to
it, trying to put forth notes of the same magical power as those which
came through the farmer’s lips.
But no sound that came from his lips ever stroked life into its silver
sides. The year was nearly run out, and Noodle was in despair.
Then he remembered the firestone ring, the Sweetener. “Maybe,” said
he, “since it changes to sweetness whatever I eat and drink, it will
sweeten my voice also, so that the Plough will obey.” So he put the
ring between his lips and whistled; and at the sound his heart turned
a somersault for joy, for he felt that out of his mouth the farmer’s
magic had been over-topped and conquered.
The Galloping Plough stirred faintly from the furrow where it lay,
breaking the ground and marring its smooth course. Then it shook its
head slowly, and returned impassively to rest.
In the morning the farmer came and saw the broken earth close under
the Plough’s nose. Noodle, hiding among the corn hard by, heard him
say, “What hast thou heard in the night, O my moonbeam, my miracle,
that thy lily-foot has trodden up the ground? Hast thou forgotten whose
hand feeds thee, whose corn it is thou lovest, whose heart’s care also
cherishes thee?”
[Illustration]
The farmer went away, and presently came back bearing a bowl of corn;
and Noodle saw the Plough lift its head to its master’s palm, and feed
like a horse on the grain.
Then Noodle, gay of heart, waited till it was night, and surely his
time was short, for on the morrow his wages were to be paid, and the
Plough was to be his, or else he was to be the farmer’s bond-servant
for the rest of his life. He took with him three handfuls of corn, and
went down to where the Plough stood waiting by the furrow. Shaping his
lips to the ring, he whistled gently like a lover, and immediately the
Plough stirred, and lifted up its head as if to look at him.
“O my moonbeam, my miracle,” whispered Noodle, “wilt thou not come to
the one that feeds thee?” and he held out a handful of corn. But the
Plough gave no regard to him or his grain: slowly it moved away from
him back into the furrow.
Then Noodle laughed softly and dropped his ring, the Sweetener, into
the hand that held the grain; and barely had he offered the corn before
he felt the silver Plough nozzling at his palm, and eating as a horse
eats from the hand of its master.
Then he whistled again, placing the Sweetener back between his lips;
and the Galloping Plough sprang after him, and followed at his heels
like a dog.
So, finding himself its master, he bid it stay for the night; and in
the morning he said to the farmer, “Give me my wages, and let me go!”
And the farmer laughed, saying, “Take your wages, and go!”
Then Noodle took off his ring, the Sweetener, and laid it between his
lips and blew through it; and up like a moonbeam, and like an Arab
mare, sprang the Galloping Plough at his call. So he leaped upon its
back, crying, “Carry me away out of this land, O thou moonbeam, and
miracle of beauty, and never slacken nor stay except I bid thee!”
Vainly the farmer, borne down on a torrent of rage and amazement,
whistled his best, and threw corn and rice from the rear; for the
whistling of Noodle was sweeter to the ear, and his corn sweeter to the
taste, and he nearer to the heart of the Galloping Plough than was the
old master whom it left behind.
III
THE THIRSTY WELL
So they escaped, slitting the swift hours with ungovernable speed. The
furrow they two made in the world that day, as they went shooting over
the round of it, was called in after times the Equator, and men still
know it by the heat of it, though it has since been covered over by the
dust of ages.
To Noodle, as he went careering round it, the whole world’s circuit ran
in a line across his brain, entering his vision and passing through it
as a thread through the needle’s eye. Nor would he of his own will
ever have stopped his galloping, but that at the completion of the
first round a mighty thirst took hold of him. “O my moonbeam,” he said,
choking behind parched lips, and sick at heart, “check me, or I faint!”
And the Galloping Plough stopped at once, and set him to earth in a
green space under the shadow of overhanging boughs.
He found himself in a richly grown garden, a cool paradise for a
traveller to rest in. Close at hand and inviting to the eye was a well
with a bucket slung ready to be let down. Noodle had little thought of
seeking for the owner of the garden to beg for a drink, since water is
an equal gift to all and the right of any man; but as he drew near he
found the means to it withheld from him, the lid being fast locked. He
went on in search of the owner, till at length he came upon the same
lying half asleep under a thorn-bush with the key in her hand. She was
an old woman, so withered and dry, she looked as if no water could have
ever passed her lips.
When Noodle asked for a drink from the well, she looked at him bright
and sharp, and said: “Before any man drinks of my water he must make a
bargain with me.” “What is the bargain?” asked Noodle; and she led him
down to the well.
Then she unlocked the lid and bade him look in; and at the sight Noodle
knew for a second time that his heart had been stolen from him, and
that to be happy he must taste that water or die.
Again he asked, with his eyes intent upon the blue wrimpling of the
water in the well’s depth, “What is the bargain?” And the old woman
answered, “If you fail to draw water out of the well you must fling
yourself into it.” For answer Noodle swung down the bucket, lowering
it as fast as it would go; then he set both hands to the windlass and
wound.
He heard the water splashing off the sides of the bucket all the way
up, as the shortening rope brought it near; but when he drew it over
the well’s brink wonder and grief held him fast, for the bucket was as
empty as vanity. From behind him came a noise of laughter, and there
was the old witch running round and round in a circle; and everywhere a
hedge of thorns came shooting up to enclose him and keep him fast for
her.
“What a trap I am in!” thought Noodle; but once more he lowered the
bucket, and once more it returned to him empty.
The old woman climbed up into the thorn-hedge, and sat on its top,
singing:
“Overground, underground, round-about spell;
The Thirsty has come to the Thirsty Well!”
Again Noodle let down the bucket; and this time as he drew it up he
looked over into the well’s heart, and saw all the way up the side
a hundred blue arms reaching out crystal scallops and drawing water
out of the bucket as hard as they could go. He saw thick lips like
sea-anemones thrust out between the crevices of the wall, sucking the
crystals dry as fast as they were filled. “Truly,” he said to himself,
“this is a thirsty well, but myself am thirstier!”
[Illustration]
When he had drawn up the bucket empty for the third time, he stood
considering; and at last he fastened to it the firestone ring, the
Sweetener, and lowered it once more. Then he laughed to himself as he
drew up, and felt the bucket lightening at every turn till it touched
the surface of things.
Empty he found it, with only his firestone hanging by the rim, and once
again he let it down to be refilled. But this time as he wound up,
nothing could keep him from letting a curious eye go over the brink,
to see how the Well-folk fared over their wine; and in what he beheld
there was already comfort for his soul.
The blue arms went like oars out of unison; like carpet-beaters
stricken in the eyes and throat with dust, they beat foolishly against
the sides and bottom of the bucket, shattering and letting fall their
goblets in each unruly attempt. And because Noodle wound leniently at
the rope, willing that they should have their fill, at the last gasp
they were able to send the bucket empty to the top. It was the last
staving off of destiny that lay in their power to make; thereafter wine
conquered them.
Quickly Noodle drew out the ring, and sent the bucket flying on its
last errand. It smacked the water, heeled over, and dipped under a
full draught. Then Noodle spun the windlass with the full pinch of his
energies, calling on the bucket to ascend. He heard the water spilling
from its sides, and knew that the blue arms were there, battling to
arrest it as it flew, and to pay him back once more with emptiness and
mockery. Yet in spite of them the bucket hasted and lightened not, but
was drawn up to the well’s head brimming largely, and winking a blue
eye joyously to the light of day.
Over head and ears Noodle plunged for the quenching of his thirst, nor
stayed nor drew back till his head had smitten upon the bottom of the
bucket in his pursuit of the draught. Then it was apparent that only
a third of the water remained, the rest having obeyed the imperative
suction of his throat, and that the thirsty well had at last found a
master under the eye of heaven.
In the depth of the bucket the water flashed like a burning sapphire
and swung circling, curling and coiling, tossing this way and that,
as if struggling to get out. At last with a laugh it threw down the
bucket, and tore back into the well with a crash like thunder.
Up from the well rose a chant of voices:
“Under Heaven, over Hell,
You have broken the spell,
You are lord of the Well.”
Noodle stepped over the brink of his new realm, calling the Well-folk
to reach hands for him and bear him down. All round, the blue arms
started out, catching him and handing him on from one to another
ladderwise, down, and down, and down. As he went, anemone lips came out
of the crannies in the wall, and kissed his feet and hands in token of
allegiance. “You are lord of the well!” they said, as they passed him
each one to the next.
He came to the bottom of the well; under his feet, wherever he stepped
upon its waters, hands came up and sustained him. The knowledge of
everything that was there had become his. “Give me,” he said, “the
crystal cup that is for him who holds kingship over you; so shall I be
lord of you in all places wherever I go.”