Already the breath of the day was windlessly hot.
Flushed with her dancing in the sunlight, and with the languor of August
in her blood, Oona listened eagerly to the cool sound of the running of
Mairg Water.
The next moment she was free of her scanty raiment, and was by the
streamside. As she stood among a cluster of yellow irises, the sunlight
lay upon the gold of her hair and the glowing ivory-white of her body,
and then seemed to spill in yellow fire among the tall blooms about her
feet. A faint green glimmer from the emerald iris-sheaths dusked the
small white thighs.
A leap like a fawn, and she was in the water. A hundred miniature
rainbows gleamed in the dazzle of spray as she splashed to and fro,
after she had come to the surface some yards downstream. What joy it was
to feel the cool brown water laving her body: to dive and swim like an
otter: to float slowly with the current under overhanging foliage, and
see the young sedge-warblers in the reeds or among the water-willows, or
to look up at the curving boughs of a birch or rowan, deep green against
the deep blue! Then the wonder and beauty to rest with outspread arms,
and breast against the flow: to stare down into the mirroring depth, and
see the flickering feathers of the quicken and the red rowan-berries
marvellously real and near, with lovely shadow-birds flitting to and fro
among the shadow-branches, and, strangest of all, another white Oona
drifting like a phantom through that greenshine underworld!
When she swung round suddenly, and held herself back against the
downflow, as an otter half-alarmed will do, it was not because she was
drifting too near the "race" just above the cataract. A strange sound
came from the Linn, or beyond it. The noise of the water was in her
ears, and she could not hear distinctly: but surely that noise was the
cry of one in sorrow, and, at any rate, human.
With a swift movement she slid to the bank, caught at a tuft of
flowering sedge, and then stood, dripping and all agleam in the
sunlight, while with inclined head she listened intently.
Now she could hear more distinctly: certainly some one was by or near
the Linn. The noise of the churned waters rose and fell in a long,
wavering, unequal sigh; and in one of the downward hushes her keen ears
caught tones and even words she fancied she recognised.
She hesitated for a moment as to whether to run back for the handful of
clothes she had left upstream, but then bethought her that it was only
Nial and no stranger who might throw stones at her as a kelpie--as some
boys from the Strath, who at Beltane had been burning small fires and
cooking wild-birds' eggs, had done many weeks agone at Nial.[14]
[14] In many parts of the Highlands it is still the wont of
children at Beltane (May Day) to light fires in woods or on rocky
spurs, and there cook eggs, or play other pranks, sometimes very
fantastic ones. These meaningless observances are a survival of the
days of Druidic worship. Beltane means the _sacred fire_. _Baal_,
_beal_, or _bel_ is not the actual Gaelic word for the Sun, or the
Sun-god: though the Druids may have had _Baal_ from the Phœnician
mariners who came to Ireland. The ancient Celtic word is _bea'uil_,
"the life of everything," "the source of everything." _Beal_ (pron.
_bel_) and _teine_, "fire," give "Beltane"--the Festival of the
Sun.
How often, in her wanderings with Nial, she had bathed, to his wonder
and awe at her white beauty, her daring, her skill! As for him, though
he loved the running water almost with a passion, nothing would induce
him to enter it, except when alone and in the dim light. As a boy he had
been as much at home in it as any creature of the river. But once, after
he had come to know Oona, and to find in her the one person in the world
whose soul did not loom too infinitely remote above his drear loneliness
of spirit, he had leaped one dead-calm noon into the water; and there
and then, for the first time, realised, in the phantom which swam with
him or beneath him, the misshapen ugliness of his body, the savagery of
his distorted head and features. From that day he had never entered the
stream, save at late dusk or on moonless nights.
So with swift steps, which left small pads of damp upon the rock-ledges,
Oona ran toward the great boulder which overhung the cataract.
As she passed the place where, a few hours ago, she had left her
foster-father and the woman Anabal, she glanced here and there for any
trace of either she might not have seen before. The next moment she
caught sight of Nial.
She watched him curiously. What did it mean? she wondered. He was
crouching, with his back to her, on the extreme of the ledge overlooking
the Kelpie's Pool--that deep caldron which received all that was at last
disgorged from the maelstrom of the Linn. His head was bent forward, and
sometimes he leaned on his hands, and sometimes swayed backward or
sideways.
What startled her more were the strange, wild, barbaric words that Nial
was chanting, with thin, hoarse, monotonous wail. What was this rune he
chanted? Why did he crouch there, chanting and swaying, swaying and
chanting?
Sometimes he ceased for a few moments that crooning, mourning,
appealing, inexplicable chant, and appeared to be speaking, and to
gesticulate as he spoke.
Fantastic thoughts flashed through the child's brain. Perhaps it was the
kelpie who was trying to lure Nial to her arms; or mayhap Nial had seen
her, and was putting a _rosad_ upon her. She knew that the people of the
Strath, and even Murdo the shepherd--in truth, Alan, too, and perhaps
Sorcha, though she would not say it--believed that the elf-man was in
league with all the mysterious or dreadful creatures of the shadow, from
the harmless "guidfolk" of the hill-hollow to the yellow-clad
demon-woman who drove her herd of deer and sang her death-song, and to
the dark and terrible kelpie who lurked in the deep pool in that wild
place beyond the Linn o' Mairg. Or, again, Nial might be uttering some
incantation: or be at his old quest, the seeking of his lost soul.
Surely it must be that, she thought, as soundlessly she approached him.
Within the last minute or two a change had come over him. Every now and
then he raised his head, often clasping and unclasping his hands,
swaying to and fro the while, and speaking or chanting rapidly, with
wild, scarce coherent words. He was as one in an ecstasy. Oona, for the
first time, feared him. She stood, only a few yards behind him now, and
listened.
"_Ochan, ochone, arone! and so fair too, and so fair!
O white you are as the canna that floats in the breeze,
Or as the wool of the young lamb that Murdo found dead in the heather,
Or as the breast of Sorcha, or as Oona, little Oona!
O, O, arone, arone, Death of me, Woe!
Oh, white too and fair, and I black as the wet peats,
Black and ugly, so that even the deer know,
And Fior and Donn and all the dogs
Think me no more than a sheep, than the kye, ochan, ochone!_
_But oh, it's dead you are and drowned, Anam, my Soul!
And it's there you lie ... grey and still ... with ... and you laugh
at me, maybe ...
And it may be you are the shadow only that will go if I leap at you!
... and hair like mine thick with dew ...
Or ... the kelpie ...
And true it was, with the fēē-ach, and the feannag, and the corbie,
The corbie, the hoodie-craw, and the raven!_"
At these words Oona glanced swiftly to right and left. Nowhere had she
heard again the croaking of the raven, and now she could descry neither
of Nial's three birds of omen. But just as her gaze was wandering back
to the dwarf, she caught sight of the _fitheach_ further downstream,
perched upon a dead branch near some rocks, and even as she looked she
heard its harsh, savage _croak! croak!_
"_Ay, ay, ròc, Fēē-ach, ròc! Dean rocail, dean rocail!_" began Nial
again, with a wild gesture....
"_Nial! Nial!_"
He ceased all movement, all sound, as though smitten into silence. Her
fear partially overcome, now that she had gathered from his words that
he thought he had found his soul at last, but that it was dead--yet
with a dread in her heart because of the _thing_ that lay there in the
pool, whether alive, dead, or asleep, or treacherously assuming
life--she called again, and more loudly:
"Nial! Nial!"
Slowly he looked round. A bewildered terror in his eyes waned. It was
only Oona.
"Nial, Nial-mo-ghràidh, what is it?"
"Hush, mo-mùirnean," he muttered, beckoning to her to creep close to
him. The slight breeze that had sprung up for its brief life crept along
the stream, and whispered along the grass and in the hot-smelling fern.
The murmurous sound of it made the child glance apprehensively behind
her. She dreaded the elfin footsteps that folk said could be heard at
times near Nial.
"What is it, dear Nial?"
"_Ssh!_ Hush! Come here: look! ... look!" he whispered.
Gently she stole beside him, leaned over the ledge, and stared down into
the pool. A mere breath of the breeze ruffled the surface, and all she
could see was a dark mass with a dusky white splatch, looming shadowily
through the amber water, and strangely distorted by the silver shimmer
caused by the wind-eddy, which came and went round the circuit of the
pool like a baffled bird.
"What is it? Who is it? What is it, Nial?"
"Hush, do not speak so loud! It is my soul."
"Your soul, Nial?"
"Ay, true. Sure it is my soul. All night I was in the woods, and I heard
a _tap-tapping_ going ever before me, and at dawn it led me down by the
Mairg, and then the spirit flew away before me, and the _annir-choille_
was just like a woodpecker! And when it flew up by the Linn, I...."
"Whisper louder, Nial! I can't hear."
"When it flew up by the Linn, I saw it change into a curlew, and it
wheeled over the Linn and called _cian-cian-cianalas_, and then I was
afraid, though the annir-choille that was like a woodpecker had made
hope to me of finding my soul."
"Who is the annir-choille, Nial?"
He gloomed at her silently. Then in a constrained voice, and with
averted eyes:
"How should I know? I know nothing. I am Nial."
"But what have you been told?"
"They call her the wood-maid--the tree-maid."
"_Ah-h!_ ... and Nial...."
"But when I came near, the curlew flew away. Then it was that I looked
into the pool. And then, and then it was, Oona-mo-rùn, that I saw my
soul lying here--big as a man's soul should be, and with a face as white
as yours; ay, a fair, good body like Alan's, an' with clothes on,
too--dark, beautiful clothes; an' the hands of him that moved about were
white; an' ... oh, Oona-birdeen, look _you_ now, and see if it is not as
I say!"
The awed child stared into the brown depths, where the surface was still
ruffled silvery here and there, with a glinting, glancing shimmer that
made all things below shiftily uncertain.
"Do you see it, Oona?" cried an eager whisper at her ear.
"Ay, sure."
"Oona, Oona, is it dead? Oona, birdeen, Oona-mo-gràidh, it may--it _may
be living_! O Oona, the white soul o' me--white as you, my fawn!"
The blue eyes glanced up from the pool, and at the speaker. She looked
at him, then downward again.
"Nial!"
"Yes ... yes, Oona ..."
"The wood-maid has been playing with you."
"No, no, no--that is not a true word on your lips!"
"Sure, a true thing it is. Look, Nial; see how big it is. The white face
of it is yonder by the salmon-hole, and one foot is moving against the
rock below us!"
"And what of that! Sure, it is a beautiful soul, dead or alive; and big
as a man's should be, and fair and white and strong!"
"Nial ... Nial ... it may be alive, for I see its hands moving ... but
... but"--and here tears came into the child's eyes, and her voice shook
with sorrow for her hapless friend--"but ... oh, Nial ... so big a soul
will never be able to creep into _your_ body ... for you are small,
dear, small, and--and ... an' then _it_ is so big and strong!"
Alas, the pity of it! Never once had Nial thought of this; never had he
dreamed that so large a soul could not get into his dwarfish, misshapen
frame.
He stared in wild amaze, first at Oona, then at the drowned thing in the
water--his soul, or a phantom, or a body, or mayhap the kelpie, he knew
not which, now--then at Oona again. A fierce pain was in his eyes. He
bit his lip, in the way he did whenever Màm-Gorm struck him--a thing
that had not been for months past. A little rivulet of blood trickled
into his thin matted beard, tangled and twisted this way and that like a
goat's.
"Nial! Nial!" moaned Oona pitifully.
"Ay, it is true ... that is a true thing that you will be saying, Oona.
Sure, it would need to be a soul as small as your own that would do for
poor Nial."
"No, no, Nial!" cried the child comfortingly, "bigger than mine,
_really, really_--yes, and ... and ... fatter!"
A sob shook his heavy frame. Oh, the long seeking, and the near goal,
and the bitter futile finding! Still, Oona's sympathy was sweet. Dear
birdeen that she was, to say he would have a bigger soul than hers,
bigger and fatter too! But, no, he thought--no, better to have one the
same as Oona's, for all he was so much older and bigger and stronger
than she was.
"Ah, Oona-mùirnean, if I could only find my soul at all--anywhere,
anywhere!"
"But you _will_ find it, Nial! You _will_ find it! Sorcha told me that
you are _sure_ to find it. Never mind what they say down there in the
Strath. What do _they_ know about souls? And ... and ... Nial!"
"Yes, my birdeen."
"If ... if ... you _can't_ find your soul anywhere--and all this summer
we'll go seeking, seeking, for it, till we have listened at every tree
in the forest and on the mountain-side--if you _can't_ find it anywhere,
_I am going to marry you_!"
Nial looked at the child bewildered. He knew little of what marriage
was, save that in the Strath two married people lived in one house, and
that the woman was called by the name of her man, and that they were
sadder, and led duller lives--so at least it seemed to him. Sure, it
would be for pleasure that he and Oona should have a cot of their own,
though he, and she too for that, preferred the pinewood; and a thing for
laughter that she, the bit birdeen Oona, should be called Bean Nial!
"Why would you be marrying poor Nial, Oona my doo?"
"Because you would then have half my soul. Yes, _yes_, Nial! don't shake
your head like that; I _know_ you would. Sorcha told me it was in the
Book."
For the moment the outcast forgot what lay in the pool. Of three things
he stood ever in awe. First, Torcall Cameron, the man of men. Second,
the Book, which was a mystery, and held all the _sians_ and _rosads_,
all the spells and incantations in the world, and, as he had heard, was
full of "living words," though never had he, being soulless, seen any
coming or going to it, like bees, where it lay on the shelf above
Torcall's bed. Third, the inscrutable powers which worked somewhere,
somehow, behind Torcall, before which even he, Màm-Gorm, was, almost
incredible though it seemed, as mist before the wind.
When, therefore, he heard Oona speak of the Book, his awe held him for a
moment spellbound. Never had he so much as dreamed that his name was
even mentioned there at all. The wonder, the mystery of it, almost took
his breath away. What an ill thing, then, that word of the preaching-man
he had met once in the Strath, who had told him, in answer to his
asking, that he, Nial, could have no name in the Book of Life, because
he was unbaptised, and a godless heathen, and a soulless elf-man at
that! And now--now--Sorcha had seen his name in the Book--ay, and not in
any poor, small Strath Bible, but in the great _Bioball_ that was
Torcall Cameron's own, up at Màm-Gorm, on the hillside of Iolair!
But of that mystery he was to hear no more then and there. A cry had
come from Oona, a cry of such terror, with moan upon moan, that his
heart within him was as a flame in a windy place.
What had happened to the child? Was there a spell upon her? he wondered;
was _that_ down there in truth no other than the treacherous,
quiet-seeming, murderous kelpie!
He saw that she was shivering all over; that her body was as pallid as
her white face.
Not a word came from her. She kneeled forward, staring stonily into the
pool.
"Oona! Oona!" he whispered chokingly, terrified beyond further power of
speech. Without averting her gaze, she slowly raised an arm and pointed
at what had hitherto been but a blurred figure at the bottom of the
water. The arm, the pointing hand, remained thus, as though paralysed.
Nial bent over the ledge. The slight breeze had now passed. Not a breath
shook the feather-leaf of a rowan. The sunflood poured out of the east
upon the shimmering land. Though but an hour after sunrise, the heat
palpitated. For the first time that morning there was no wind-eddy upon
the pool. The brown water was as lucid as a mirror.
The thing--corpse, or soul, or kelpie--had begun to move. It was slowly
rising to the surface.
He shuddered. This, then, was the cause of Oona's fear. Yet, even as
this thought passed through his brain, he knew that there was some
other reason for the frozen agony of the child.
The body ascended gradually, face downward, the arms trailing stiffly
beneath it. One foot was still caught by the weeds, which had caught it
as in a net. With a slow gyration the corpse swung round, face upward.
The weed-thrall gave way. The drowned rose with outstretched arms.
Oona shrieked, then sank back, cowering, and covered her eyes with her
hands. Nial! Nial neither thought nor felt; he was stunned by a blank,
bewildering amaze.
For what he saw, and what Oona had seen, was the drowned body and the
dead face of ... Torcall Cameron!
In the awful, throbbing silence, broken only by the turmoil of the Linn
and by the incessant moaning of the child, the dwarf stared as at some
horrible impossibility.
It _could_ not be! Màm-Gorm, of all men in the world! Màm-Gorm, the
great, strong, stern man of the hills! no, no, no--sure, it could not
be! Moreover, as he knew, Màm-Gorm never left the hillside; in all the
time he had known him, he had never come nigh the Linn o' Mairg, nor
even near Mairg Water, and how could he be there? And would not Oona for
sure have seen him that very morning in his own bed belike? Besides ...
_Màm-Gorm_ ... it was as though the preaching-man were to cry out,
"_There is no God!_"
At his ear he heard a moaning whisper: "_It is my doing; it is my
doing._"
"Oona, Oona-lassie, is it mad that you will be!"
"O Nial, Nial, Nial! it is of me, this thing! Ay, sure--ay, sure! O
arone! arone! it was I who left him sleeping nigh the Linn last night,
thinking to make peace between him and the woman Anabal that is Alan's
mother! And oh, oh, she has gone away in the gloaming not seeing him,
and he will be for going home when he wakes, and will be calling _Oona,
Oona, Oona_, and I not be hearing him, for I was away in the wood, with
the fear upon me! And then he will be moving through the dark,
and--and--O Nial, _Nial!_ He is drowned, drowned, and the water is on
him because of _me_! Nial! Nial!"
The child swayed to and fro in her passionate grief. A new fear came
upon Nial: that she might throw herself into the pool, to be drowned
even as her foster-father was.
But at that moment both were hushed into staring silence.
Slowly the corpse began to sink again. Down, down it went, leaning
forward more and more, till it seemed as though it were standing upright
on some unseen ledge of rock. Then, gradually, it revolved further, till
once more it hung suspended in the depths, face downward, and with stiff
arms adroop beneath.
Without further gyration, motionlessly it seemed, the body sank, till it
became blurred, obscure, shapeless. Then there was no more of it than a
black shadow far down in the brown depths.
Oona rose to her full height. She gave a long sigh, one short, choking
sob. Her eyes stared unwaveringly at nothing; the nails of her fingers
cut the small clenched hands. The raven on the dead branch beyond the
pool, that had been croaking monotonously ever since she had first heard
it, became suddenly still.
Nial rose too. He knew, without word from her, without thought even,
what she meant to do.
"Oona!"
She did not glance round, but he saw her throat quiver.
"My birdeen, my birdeen, ah, my bonnie wee fawn! Come back, come back!
Sure, it is not him at all! It is the kelpie, Oona, it is the kelpie!"
When the words came from her, hushed and strange, he knew that she knew
the truth.
"I will be going ... now."
"Oona! come ..."--then in a flash his arms were about her as she leaped,
and with an effort that nearly hurled both into the pool he swung her
back to the ledge.
There she lay on the grass-covered rock, white and still. Nial bent over
her, moaning, trembling, moaning.
* * * * *
An hour later, Murdo the shepherd, coming down from the mountain, and
going by the Linn o' Mairg, so as to reach Inverglas by the west side of
the Strath, heard a wild barking of his dogs. Through the heat-haze he
stared indifferently, then curiously, at two stooping figures.
He approached the pool slowly. The dogs were silent. One had stopped,
and was sniffing and staring, the other whined at his feet.
Yes, he was right, he muttered; it was Nial ...and Oona! But what did it
mean?
Both sat silently by the Kelpie's Pool. The wild, fantastic, shrunken
figure of Nial was black against the light. He seemed as though rapt,
spellbound. The child was naked, her shoulder reddening under the flame
of the sun. He could see her strained, streaming eyes.
His heart beat quick with a vague fear as he moved toward them. He
stopped, when Oona's low, irregular sobbing was audible.
Beside him the collies crouched, whining.
Nial looked round, rose, and touched Oona. She, too, rose; her sobbing
breath ceasing.
"Màm-Gorm is dead," said Nial simply; "he is dead--_there_."