THEY RUN AWAY FROM OLD MOTHER FATE
[Illustration]
“A land that living warmth disowns,
It meets my wondering ken;
A land where all the men are stones,
Or all the stones are men.”
Before the apple-woman had finished, Jack and Mopsa saw the Queen
coming in great state, followed by thousands of the one-foot-one
fairies, and leading by a ribbon round its neck a beautiful brown doe.
A great many pretty fawns were walking among the fairies.
“Here’s the deputation,” said the apple-woman; but as the Guinea-fowl
rose like a cloud at the approach of the Queen, and the fairies and
fawns pressed forward, there was a good deal of noise and confusion,
during which Mopsa stepped up close to Jack and whispered in his ear,
“Remember, Jack, whatever you can do you may do.”
Then the brown doe laid down at Mopsa’s feet, and the Queen began:
“Jack and Mopsa, I love you both. I had a message last night from my
old mother, and I told you what it was.”
“Yes, Queen,” said Mopsa, “you did.”
“And now,” continued the Queen, “she has sent this beautiful brown
doe from the country beyond the lake, where they are in the greatest
distress for a queen, to offer Mopsa the crown; and, Jack, it is fated
that Mopsa is to reign there, so you had better say no more about it.”
“I don’t want to be a queen,” said Mopsa, pouting; “I want to play with
Jack.”
“You are a queen already,” answered the real Queen; “at least, you will
be in a few days. You are so much grown, even since the morning, that
you come up nearly to Jack’s shoulder. In four days you will be as tall
as I am; and it is quite impossible that any one of fairy birth should
be as tall as a queen in her own country.”
“But I don’t see what stags and does can want with a queen,” said Jack.
“They were obliged to turn into deer,” said the Queen, “when they
crossed their own border; but they are fairies when they are at home,
and they want Mopsa, because they are always obliged to have a queen of
alien birth.”
“If I go,” said Mopsa, “shall Jack go too?”
“Oh, no,” answered the Queen; “Jack and the apple-woman are my
subjects.”
“Apple-woman,” said Jack, “tell us what you think; shall Mopsa go to
this country?”
“Why, child,” said the apple-woman, “go away from here she must; but
she need not go off with the deer, I suppose, unless she likes. They
look gentle and harmless; but it is very hard to get at the truth in
this country, and I’ve heard queer stories about them.”
“Have you?” said the Queen. “Well you can repeat them if you like; but
remember that the poor brown doe cannot contradict them.”
So the apple-woman said, “I have heard, but I don’t know how true it
is, that in that country they shut up their queen in a great castle,
and cover her with a veil, and never let the sun shine on her; for if
by chance the least little sunbeam should light on her she would turn
into a doe directly, and all the nation would turn with her, and stay
so.”
“I don’t want to be shut up in a castle,” said Mopsa.
“But is it true?” asked Jack.
“Well,” said the apple-woman, “as I told you before, I cannot make out
whether it’s true or not, for all these stags and fawns look very mild,
gentle creatures.”
“I won’t go,” said Mopsa; “I would rather run away.”
All this time the Queen with the brown doe had been gently pressing
with the crowd nearer and nearer to the brink of the river, so that now
Jack and Mopsa, who stood facing them, were quite close to the boat;
and while they argued and tried to make Mopsa come away, Jack suddenly
whispered to her to spring into the boat, which she did, and he after
her, and at the same time he cried out:
“Now, boat, if you are my boat, set off as fast as you can, and let
nothing of fairy birth get on board of you.”
No sooner did he begin to speak than the boat swung itself away from
the edge, and almost in a moment it was in the very middle of the
river, and beginning to float gently down with the stream.
Now, as I have told you before, that river runs up the country instead
of down to the sea, so Jack and Mopsa floated still farther up into
Fairyland; and they saw the Queen, and the apple-woman, and all the
crowd of fawns and fairies walking along the bank of the river, keeping
exactly to the same pace that the boat went; and this went on for hours
and hours, so that there seemed to be no chance that Jack and Mopsa
could land; and they heard no voices at all, nor any sound but the
baying of the old hound, who could not swim out to them, because Jack
had forbidden the boat to take anything of fairy birth on board of her.
Luckily, the bottom of the boat was full of those delicious flowers
that had dropped into it at breakfast-time, so there was plenty of
nice food for Jack and Mopsa; and Jack noticed, when he looked at her
towards evening, that she was now nearly as tall as himself, and that
her lovely brown hair floated down to her ankles.
“Jack,” she said, before it grew dusk, “will you give me your little
purse that has the silver fourpence in it?”
Now Mopsa had often played with this purse. It was lined with a nice
piece of pale green silk, and when Jack gave it to her she pulled the
silk out, and shook it, and patted it, and stretched it, just as the
Queen had done, and it came into a most lovely cloak, which she tied
round her neck. Then she twisted up her long hair into a coil, and
fastened it round her head, and called to the fireflies which were
beginning to glitter on the trees to come, and they came and alighted
in a row upon the coil, and turned into diamonds directly. So now Mopsa
had got a crown and a robe, and she was so beautiful that Jack thought
he should never be tired of looking at her; but it was nearly dark now,
and he was so sleepy and tired that he could not keep his eyes open,
though he tried very hard, and he began to blink, and then he began
to nod, and at last he fell fast asleep, and did not awake till the
morning.
Then he sat up in the boat, and looked about him. A wonderful country,
indeed!--no trees, no grass, no houses, nothing but red stones and
red sand--and Mopsa was gone. Jack jumped on shore, for the boat had
stopped, and was close to the brink of the river. He looked about for
some time, and at last, in the shadow of a pale brown rock, he found
her; and oh! delightful surprise, the apple-woman was there too. She
was saying, “O my bones! Dearie, dearie me, how they do ache!” That was
not surprising, for she had been out all night. She had walked beside
the river with the Queen and her tribe till they came to a little
tinkling stream, which divides their country from the sandy land, and
there they were obliged to stop; they could not cross it. But the
apple-woman sprang over, and, though the Queen told her she must come
back again in twenty-four hours, she did not appear to be displeased.
Now the Guinea-hens, when they had come to listen, the day before, to
the apple-woman’s song, had brought each of them a grain of maize in
her beak, and had thrown it into her apron; so when she got up she
carried it with her gathered up there, and now she had been baking
some delicious little cakes on a fire of dry sticks that the river
had drifted down, and Mopsa had taken a honey-comb from the rock, so
they all had a very nice breakfast. And the apple-woman gave them a
great deal of good advice, and told them if they wished to remain in
Fairyland, and not be caught by the brown doe and her followers, they
must cross over the purple mountains, “For on the other side of those
peaks,” she said, “I have heard that fairies live who have the best of
characters for being kind and just. I am sure they would never shut up
a poor queen in a castle.
“But the best thing you could do, dear,” she said to Mopsa, “would
be to let Jack call the bird, and make her carry you back to his own
country.”
“The Queen is not at all kind,” said Jack; “I have been very kind to
her, and she should have let Mopsa stay.”
“No, Jack, she could not,” said Mopsa; “but I wish I had not grown so
fast, and I don’t like to go to your country. I would rather run away.”
“But who is to tell us where to run?” asked Jack.
“Oh,” said Mopsa, “some of these people.”
“I don’t see anybody,” said Jack, looking about him.
Mopsa pointed to a group of stones, and then to another group, and as
Jack looked he saw that in shape they were something like people--stone
people. One stone was a little like an old man with a mantle over him,
and he was sitting on the ground with his knees up nearly to his chin.
Another was like a woman with a hood on, and she seemed to be leaning
her chin on her hand. Close to these stood something very much like a
cradle in shape; and beyond were stones that resembled a flock of sheep
lying down on the bare sand, with something that reminded Jack of the
figure of a man lying asleep near them, with his face to the ground.
That was a very curious country; all the stones reminded you of people
or of animals, and the shadows that they cast were much more like than
the stones themselves. There were blocks with things that you might
have mistaken for stone ropes twisted round them; but, looking at the
shadows, you could see distinctly that they were trees, and that what
coiled round were snakes. Then there was a rocky prominence, at one
side of which was something like a sitting figure, but its shadow,
lying on the ground, was that of a girl with a distaff. Jack was very
much surprised at all this; Mopsa was not. She did not see, she said,
that one thing was more wonderful than another. All the fairy lands
were wonderful, but the men-and-women world was far more so. She and
Jack went about among the stones all day, and as the sun got low both
the shadows and the blocks themselves became more and more like people,
and if you went close you could now see features, very sweet, quiet
features, but the eyes were all shut.
By this time the apple-woman began to feel very sad. She knew she
should soon have to leave Jack and Mopsa, and she said to Mopsa, as
they finished their evening meal, “I wish you would ask the inhabitants
a few questions, dear, before I go, for I want to know whether they can
put you in the way how to cross the purple mountains.”
Jack said nothing, for he thought he would see what Mopsa was going
to do; so when she got up, and went towards the shape that was like a
cradle he followed, and the apple-woman too. Mopsa went to the figure
that sat by the cradle. It was a stone yet, but when Mopsa laid her
little warm hand on its bosom it smiled.
“Dear,” said Mopsa, “I wish you would wake.”
A curious little sound was now heard, but the figure did not move, and
the apple-woman lifted Mopsa on to the lap of the statue; then she put
her arms round its neck, and spoke to it again very distinctly: “Dear!
why don’t you wake? You had better wake now; the baby’s crying.”
Jack now observed that the sound he had heard was something like the
crying of a baby. He also heard the figure answering Mopsa. It said, “I
am only a stone!”
“Then,” said Mopsa, “I am not a queen yet. I cannot wake her. Take me
down.”
“I am not warm,” said the figure: and that was quite true, and yet she
was not a stone now which reminded one of a woman, but a woman that
reminded one of a stone.
All the west was very red with the sunset, and the river was red too,
and Jack distinctly saw some of the coils of rope glide down from
the trees and slip into the water; next he saw the stones that had
looked like sheep raise up their heads in the twilight, and then lift
themselves and shake their woolly sides. At that instant the large
white moon heaved up her pale face between two dark blue hills, and
upon this the statue put out its feet and gently rocked the cradle.
Then it spoke again to Mopsa: “What was it that you wished me to tell
you?”
“How to find the way over those purple mountains,” said Mopsa.
“You must set off in an hour, then,” said the woman, and she had hardly
anything of the stone about her now. “You can easily find it by night
without any guide, but nothing can ever take you to it by day.”
“But we would rather stay a few days in this curious country,” said
Jack; “let us wait at least till to-morrow night.”
The statue at this moment rubbed her hands together as if they still
felt cold and stiff.
“You are quite welcome to stay,” she observed; “but you had better not.”
“Why not?” persisted Jack.
“Father,” said the woman, rising and shaking the figure next to her by
the sleeve, “Wake up!” What had looked like an old man was a real old
man now, and he got up and began to gather sticks to make a fire, and
to pick up the little brown stones which had been scattered about all
day, but which now were berries of coffee; the larger ones, which you
might find here and there, were rasped rolls. Then the woman answered
Jack, “Why not? Why, because it’s full moon to-night at midnight, and
the moment the moon is past the full your Queen, whose country you have
just left, will be able to cross over the little stream, and she will
want to take you and that other mortal back. She can do it, of course,
if she pleases; and we can afford you no protection, for by that time
we shall be stones again. We are only people two hours out of the
twenty-four.”
“That is very hard,” observed Jack.
“No,” said the woman, in a tone of indifference; “it comes to the same
thing, as we live twelve times as long as others do.”
By this time the shepherd was gently driving his flock down to the
water, and round fifty little fires groups of people were sitting
roasting coffee, while cows were lowing to be milked, and girls with
distaffs were coming to them slowly, for no one was in a hurry there.
They say in that country that they wish to enjoy their day quietly,
because it is so short.
“Can you tell us anything of the land beyond the mountains?” asked Jack.
“Yes,” said the woman. “Of all fairy lands it is the best; the people
are the gentlest and kindest.”
“Then I had better take Mopsa there than down the river?” said Jack.
“You can’t take her down the river,” replied the woman; and Jack
thought she laughed and was glad of that.
“Why not?” asked Jack. “I have a boat.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the woman, “but where is it now?”
[Illustration: “Yes, sir,” said the woman, “But where is it now?”]