THE CAPTIVITY
It was now autumn, and dark in Lapland.
The Lapp woman, Pimpedora, sat and cooked porridge over a blazing fire
in the tent, while her son Pimpepanturi sat waiting for the porridge and
looking idly at his reindeer shoes. Pimpepanturi was a good-natured boy;
but he was stupid, and not a little lazy besides. His father, Hirmu,
had wished very much to bring him up as a wizard, but it was of no use.
Pimpepanturi thought more about eating and drinking than of learning
anything,--whether sorcery or what not.
The Lapp woman turned toward the boy, and said, "Don't you hear
something?"
"I hear the fire crackle and the porridge bubble in the pot," answered
Pimpepanturi with a long yawn.
"Don't you hear something like a roar out in the autumn night?" asked
the Lapp woman again.
"Yes," said Pimpepanturi; "that is a wolf taking some of our reindeer."
"No," said the Lapp woman; "that is Father coming back. He has now been
away four winters, but I hear him growling like a wild animal. He must
have hurried to have reached home so soon again!"
At that moment Hirmu entered in the semblance of a tiger with the
Princess Lindagull hanging from his mouth. Placing her on a heap of moss
in the corner of the tent, he quickly regained his own body (replacing
his own heart in it now), at the same time calling out, "Mother, what
food have you? I have run a long way."
The tiger fell dead upon the moss in the tent. The Lapp woman had nearly
fallen into the porridge-pot from fright; but she recognized her husband
and promised him a good supper, if he would tell her where he had been
these four winters, and what kind of a grand doll he had brought home
with him.
"That is too long a story to tell," grumbled the husband. "Take care of
our grand doll and give her warm reindeer milk to restore her to life.
She is a fine young lady from Persia. She will bring us good fortune."
Princess Lindagull was not dead,--not even wounded. She had only fainted
from fright. When she awoke she lay (in her rich clothing of pearls and
silver tissue) on a reindeer skin spread over moss, in the Lapp tent. It
was dark and cold. The firelight shone on the close walls of the tent
and on the Lapp woman, who gave her reindeer milk to drink. Lindagull
believed herself to be in death's domain under the earth; and cried
because she, so young, should be snatched away from Persia's sun and
Ispahan's lovely rose gardens.
[Illustration: IN THE LAPP TENT.--_Page 60_.]
The wizard, in the meantime, hit upon a happy plan for winning Persian
treasure, and said to Lindagull:
"Weep not, beautiful princess. Thou art not dead. Thou hast only been
stolen away by a horrid tiger and my son, the brave Knight Morus
Pandorus von Pikkuluk'ulikuck'ulu, has saved thee at the greatest risk
of his own precious life. We will be thy slaves and serve thee with the
utmost zeal until it becomes possible to conduct thee back to Persia."
"What lie is that, old man?" said the honest Lapp woman in her own
language to the wizard.
The wizard continued: "My wife says that if thou wilt take our son, the
surpassingly beautiful and brave knight, Morus Pandorus von
Pikkuluk'ulikuck'ulu, for thy bridegroom, we will immediately conduct
thee back to Persia."
Pimpepanturi did not understand Persian; so he made great eyes when his
father pushed him forward toward the princess and pressed his stiff back
down with both hands that it might appear as if Pimpepanturi were
bowing.
Lindagull would not have been a princess and the daughter of proud Shah
Nadir if she had not felt herself insulted by such an indignity. She
gazed scornfully at the wizard, and at his clumsy lout of a son,--with
such eyes! Nay! it was not a gaze; for her eyes flashed lightning!
(And Persian eyes can flash lightning!) Father and son both flushed
dark red.
"No, that won't do," said the wizard. "She must first be tamed."
Then the wizard made a partition in the tent, three yards long and two
yards wide. There he imprisoned Lindagull, and gave her half a reindeer
cheese and a dipper of melted snow-water every day for food.
Thus day and night passed by in darkness, for winter came quickly; and
the Northern Lights shone in through the cracks of the tent.
Poor, innocent little Lindagull! Her eyes had flashed lightning once;
but as in thunder-storms it is not long between lightning gleams and
showers of rain, so the tears of Princess Lindagull soon began to fall.
Yes, she cried as one only can cry when one is twelve years old and has
been a princess in Persia and lived in rose-gardens and marble castles,
guarded by the friendliest attendants, and then suddenly finds herself
hungry and freezing, alone, in a dark Lapland winter. Yes, she wept as
one weeps over lost youth, health and beauty;--over a lost life; as the
dew weeps over a beautiful extinguished day in Ispahan's pleasure
garden.
When she had done weeping she slept. But lo! while she slept, there
stood by her side the friendly old fellow whom the Finns call Nukku
Matti, whom the Swedes call Jon Blund, and whom the Danes and Norwegians
call Ole Luköje,[4]--(I don't know what they call him in Persia;) and
he took her in his arms, bore her to Feather Islands and laid her on a
bed of fragrant roses in a lovely grotto. There all was peaceful and
good. The soft moon shone over date-palms and myrtle forests, just as in
Persia's fairest springtime. Small airy Dreams danced forth to her with
silken shoes over velvet rugs, and led her back to her home; to her
father the old Shah Nadir, to her friendly attendants and to all the
places dear to her from birth. And so passed the long winter nights.
And so passed weeks and months in the Kingdom of Dreams; because it was
now night altogether. But Lindagull was patient and wept no more. The
Dreams had said to her, "Wait; thy deliverer will come----"
Who would deliver her? Who should discover a path where no path lay, far
away in the snow?
The Lapp woman would willingly have set her free, but dared not on
account of her husband. And Pimpepanturi also had thoughts of it, but
was too lazy.
At length the winter was ended. The sun dared to shine, the snow melted
and the gnats danced about. Then the wizard thought, "Now she is tamed!"
Whereupon he went to Lindagull and asked if she wished to travel back to
Persia. If so, she need only to accept the grandly courageous and highly
admired knight, Morus Pandorus von Pikkuluk'ulikuck'ulu for her
bridegroom, and the reindeer would immediately stand harnessed at the
door ready to travel southward.
Lindagull did not shoot glances of lightning this time. But she thought
of the young Prince Abderraman who had once bled for her on Ispahan's
sand; and remembering his face she could not possibly accept
Pimpepanturi. She answered nothing.
At this the wizard became very angry. He shut the Princess Lindagull in
a deep, dark grotto on a mountainside, and said to her (dropping the
grandiloquent style he had heretofore used): "Soon the cloudberries will
be ripe. You shall keep account of the days as they pass, in this way.
The first day you shall have thirty cloudberries to eat and thirty
dewdrops to drink; the next day twenty-nine cloudberries to eat and
twenty-nine dewdrops to drink; and so on, for each day one berry and one
drop less. On the last day you shall tell me what you have decided."
So Lindagull stayed there confined in the grotto. The time of year had
now come when barren Lapland shone with light both day and night; but
the grotto was dark. The cloudberries and dewdrops steadily lessened in
number, but Lindagull's cheeks became no paler and her quiet patience
continued the same as before. What she had to forego by day Nukku Matti
and the Dreams made up to her every night. They lifted off the rocky
roof by their magic power so that she could see the glowing midnight sun
and hear the roar of the waterfall as it hurled itself over the edge of
the rock. Drippings from this waterfall fell into the grotto in the form
of a delicious honey-dew, which served the starving one as refreshing
meat and drink.
The thoughts of Princess Lindagull dwelt often upon Prince Abderraman.
She sang ballads of the Eastern lands, and it pleased her to hear a
hundred clear-voiced echoes answer back from the mountain walls. On the
thirtieth day, the wizard brought her the last berry and the last
dewdrop laid upon a leaf of Lapland dwarf-birch.
"Well now," he asked, "have you decided?"
Lindagull covered her fair face and answered nothing.
"There is still one day's time for thought," said the wizard, "and you
shall have some company to help hasten your decision." As he said this
he opened the door of the grotto, and immediately something like a great
cloud streamed in. It was a swarm of Lapland's starved-out gnats. There
were thousands and thousands and thousands of them, and they filled the
grotto like a thick cloud of smoke.
"I wish you much joy in your new acquaintances!" said the ugly wizard,
shutting the door quickly as he went out.
Lindagull did not understand his meaning. She did not know the sting of
the Lapland gnat. She had never been annoyed by the Persian firefly
even, for a slave had always stood at her side night and day with a long
waving peacock feather to protect her from all hurtful insects. The
knowledge of such suffering as the horde of stinging gnats would have
inflicted was kept from her now by the kindly Dreams; who, the instant
the door was shut, threw around her a close-woven veil of finest
texture, from the loom of the fairies. Through this veil the gnats could
not make their way. Not a drop of royal blood did they taste, day or
night. They bit with all their little power at the hard granite rocks;
but finding these too juiceless, the disappointed insects settled
themselves like a gray web about all the cracks and corners of the
grotto.
At midnight the door of the grotto was noiselessly opened and in walked
the Lapp woman, Pimpedora, with a jar in her hand, followed by
Pimpepanturi carrying a burning torch and some smoked reindeer meat.
"Poor child," said the good-hearted Lapp woman, "it is a sin to keep you
here; but I dare not let you out, for if I did my husband would change
me to a mountain rat. See, I have brought you some pitch-oil in my jar.
Spread it all over your body; that will keep you from being stung to
death by the gnats."
"And see here, I have brought you a smoked shoulder of reindeer so that
you shall not starve to death," said Pimpepanturi, good-naturedly. "It
is somewhat nibbled, because I grew so very hungry on the way; but there
is still a little meat on the bone. And I stole the key of the grotto
while Father slept, but I dare not let you out, for if I did Father
would change me into a wolverine. But you need not trouble yourself
about taking me for your husband. I'll wager that you cannot even cook a
black pudding properly."
"No, I know I cannot, truly," answered Princess Lindagull, and she
thanked them both for their good-will, but explained to them that she
was neither hungry nor gnat-stung.
"Well! Keep the pitch-oil for safety's sake," said the Lapp woman.
"Yes, keep the shoulder of reindeer, too," said Pimpepanturi.
"A thousand thanks," replied Lindagull.
Then the door was closed and she was again alone.
The next morning the wizard came, expecting that now he should surely
find his captive half stung to death by gnats and completely subdued.
But when he saw Lindagull as blooming as before, and saw her again look
thoughtfully into his face without speaking, his wrath knew no bounds.
"Come out!" he shouted.
Lindagull stepped forth in the clear day, as delicate and bright as a
fairy in moonlight. When she threw back her veil to look about, the sun
shone before her, warm and radiant as on a spring morning in the blue
mountains of Afghanistan.
Then said the wizard: "I have a great mind to take you to old King Bom
Bali in Turan. He would load six asses with gold to get hold of you
for a single day! But no; I will not give up yet. Listen to what I have
decided upon. You shall be turned into a heather blossom on a Lappish
moor and live only as long as a heather blossom lives, unless you will
yield to my wishes. Notice the sun: it now stands low in the sky. In two
weeks and a day comes the first polar frost. Then the heather blossoms
die. Just before the frost comes, I shall question you for the last
time."
[Illustration: LINDAGULL STEPPED FORTH IN THE CLEAR DAY.--_Page 70_.]
Glaring at her, he waited, as if expecting the desired answer at once;
but as Lindagull again only gazed thoughtfully up at him in silence, the
wizard cried out in a voice trembling with anger:
"_Adáma donai Marrabataësan!_"
which meant, "Human life! sink into the likeness of a flower!"
The wizard had learned these magic words one autumn evening from the
South Wind when it came from the African desert and laid itself to rest
on a Lapland mountain. The wind understands all languages, for all
words are spoken in its hearing.
As the magician uttered this frightful command, it seemed to Lindagull
as if all the flower-stalks on the heath grew to trees and overshadowed
her; but it was she herself who sank down to the earth. The next moment
a stranger's eye could no longer distinguish her from the thousands and
thousands of pale purple-pink heather blossoms on the Lappish waste. "In
one day and two weeks!" mumbled the wizard, casting a malignant glance
behind him as he turned back to his tent.
[4] Ole Shut-Eye. (The Sandman.)