Michael Trehearne was to remember that evening as the end of the
world, for him. The end of his familiar life in a familiar Earth, and
the first glimmering vision of the incredible. It began with the man
who spoke to him on the heights behind St. Malo, by the light of the
Midsummer Fires.
There was a great crowd of tourists there, come to watch the old Breton
festival of the sacred bonfire. Trehearne was among them, but not of
them. He stood alone. He was always alone. He was thinking that the
ritual being performed in the wide space of stony turf was just too
quaint to be endured and wondering why he had bothered with it, when
someone said to him with casual intimacy,
"In four days we shall be through with all this, going home. A good
thought, isn't it?"
Trehearne turned his head, and looked into a face so like his own that
he was startled.
The resemblance was that of a strong racial stamp, rather than any
blood kinship. If two Mohawks were to meet unexpectedly in the hills of
Afghanistan they would recognize each other, and it was the same with
Trehearne and the stranger. There was the same arrogant bone-structure,
the odd and striking beauty of form and color that seemed to have no
root in any race of Earth, the long yellow eyes, slightly tilted and
flecked with sparks of greenish light. And there was the same pride.
In Trehearne it was a lonely, bitter thing. The stranger bore his like
a banner.
During the moment in which Trehearne stared, amazed, the stranger
remarked, "I don't remember seeing you on the last ship. How long have
you been here?"
"Since yesterday," answered Trehearne, and knew as he formed the words
that they were not the ones expected of him. A wild throb of excitement
ran through him. He said impulsively, "Look here, you've mistaken me
for someone else, but I'm glad you did!" In his eagerness he all but
clutched the man's arm. "I must talk to you."
Something in the stranger's expression had altered. His eyes were now
both wary and startled. "Upon what subject?"
"Your family--my family. Forgive me if I seem impertinent, but it's
important to me. I've come a long way, from America to Cornwall and now
to Brittany, trying to trace down my own line...." He paused, looking
again into that remarkable face that watched him, darkly handsome,
darkly mocking in the firelight. "Will you tell me your name?"
"Kerrel," said the man slowly. "I beg your pardon, Monsieur. The
resemblance is indeed striking. I mistook you for one of my kin."
Trehearne was frowning. "Kerrel?" he repeated, and shook his head. "My
people were called Cahusac, before they went into Cornwall."
"There was doubtless a connection," said Kerrel easily. He pointed
abruptly to the open space beyond. "Look--they begin the final ritual."
The great bonfire had burned low. The peasants and the fisherfolk,
some hundreds of them, were gathered in a circle around the windy glow
of the flames. A white-bearded old man began to pray, in the craggy
Breton Gaelic.
Trehearne barely turned his head. His mind was full of the stranger,
and of all the things that had oppressed and worried and driven him
since childhood, the nagging little mysteries about himself to which
now, perhaps, he would find the key.
He glanced away only a second, following the gesture of Kerrel's arm.
But when he looked back, Kerrel was gone.
Trehearne took half a dozen aimless steps, searching for the man, but
he had melted away into the darkness and the crowd, and Trehearne
stopped, feeling sold and furious.
His temper, long the bane of a rather luckless existence, reared up and
bared its claws. He had always been childishly sensitive to insults. If
he could have got his hands on the contemptuous Kerrel he would have
thrashed him. He turned again to the festival, controlling himself as
he had learned painfully to do, realizing that he was being ridiculous.
But his face, so like that of the vanished stranger, had a very ugly
look around the mouth.
The Bretons had begun the procession around the waning fire. Short,
burly men in bright jackets and broad-brimmed hats, sturdy women in
aprons and long skirts, their improbable starched coifs fluttering
with ribbons and lace. Sabots clumped heavily on the stony ground.
They would march three times sunward, circling the embers, and then
solemnly, each one, pick up a pebble and as solemnly cast it into the
coals. Then they would scramble for the charred brands and bear them
home to be charms against fever and lightning and the murrain until the
next Midsummer Eve.
It struck Trehearne that most of them, except the very old, looked
painfully self-conscious about it all. In a thoroughly bad humor, he
was on the point of leaving. And then he saw the girl.
She was standing some ten feet away from him, in the forefront of the
crowd, which had shaped itself into a semi-circle. She had wanted him
to see her. She was swinging a white hand-bag like a lazy pendulum on
a long strap, and her gaze was fixed on him. She was smiling, and the
smile was an open challenge.
In the reflection of the great bed of glowing embers, Trehearne saw
that she was another of Kerrel's breed--and his own, whatever it might
be. But it was not that recognition that made his heart leap up. It was
herself.
The red-gold light danced over her, and perhaps it was only that faery
glow that made her seem more than a handsome girl in a white dress.
Only a trick of wind and starlight, perhaps, that made Trehearne see
in her a changeling, bright, beautiful, wicked, and wise, and no more
human than Lilith.
She beckoned to him, with a small imperious movement of her head.
He had forgotten his anger for the moment, but now it returned. He
began to walk toward her, across the front of the crowd, a tall man,
splendidly built and strong, bearing in his own face the stamp of that
strange, wicked beauty, his eyes yellow as the fire and as hot. She saw
that he was angry, and she laughed.
Whether it was the sound of her laughter that drew the attention of the
Bretons, or merely a chance look, Trehearne never knew. He came up to
her, and she said,
"I am a Kerrel, also. Will you talk to me?"
He was about to answer, when he realized that the noise of the sabots
had broken rhythm, and that the crowd of tourists was staring at him
and the girl and then past them at the Bretons. He heard an uneasy
muttering of questions in French and English, and behind him a great
silence.
He turned. The ritual circle was broken. The old man who had prayed was
coming toward them, and with him were other men and women, drawn as
though by some compulsion from the ranks of the marchers. They were all
old, their faces weathered and seamed by the passing of many winters,
and in their eyes he saw the spark of an ancient hatred, the shadow of
an ancient fear.
He had seen that same look among the older country folk of
Cornwall--directed at himself.
The old man raised his hand. He stopped only a few feet away, and the
others with him. There was something infinitely threatening in the
squat monolithic bulk of that little crowd, a survival from an older
world. The girl flung up her head and laughed, but Trehearne did not
feel like laughing.
The old man cursed them.
Trehearne had not one word of Gaelic, but he did not need a knowledge
of the tongue. Nor did he need to have explained to him the gesture of
angry dismissal. The Bretons had already picked up their stones from
the fire. In another minute, they would use them, on himself and the
girl.
He caught her rather roughly by the arm, but she pulled away and
shouted something at the old man, still laughing, still mocking, and
he thought again that she was changeling and no ordinary girl. The
words she spoke might have been Gaelic, but they had a different sound.
Whatever they were, they held no kindness. Trehearne thrust his way
through the sightseers, who parted readily to let him through, and in a
minute the girl came after him. The voice of the old man followed them
down the slope of the hill, and the curious tourists stared after them
until they were out of sight.