The morocco binding of the book was faded, and the colour had grown
faint, but there were no stains nor bruises nor marks of usage. The book
looked as if it had been bought 'on a visit to London' some seventy or
eighty years ago, and had somehow been forgotten and suffered to lie
away out of sight. There was an old, delicate, lingering odour about it,
such an odour as sometimes haunts an ancient piece of furniture for a
century or more. The end-papers, inside the binding, were oddly
decorated with coloured patterns and faded gold. It looked small, but
the paper was fine, and there were many leaves, closely covered with
minute, painfully formed characters.
I found this book (the manuscript began) in a drawer in the old bureau
that stands on the landing. It was a very rainy day and I could not go
out, so in the afternoon I got a candle and rummaged in the bureau.
Nearly all the drawers were full of old dresses, but one of the small
ones looked empty, and I found this book hidden right at the back. I
wanted a book like this, so I took it to write in. It is full of
secrets. I have a great many other books of secrets I have written,
hidden in a safe place, and I am going to write here many of the old
secrets and some new ones; but there are some I shall not put down at
all. I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I
found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian
language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the
chief songs. I may write something about all these things but not the
way to do them, for peculiar reasons. And I must not say who the Nymphs
are, or the Dols, or Jeelo, or what voolas mean. All these are most
secret secrets, and I am glad when I remember what they are, and how
many wonderful languages I know, but there are some things that I call
the secrets of the secrets of the secrets that I dare not think of
unless I am quite alone, and then I shut my eyes, and put my hands over
them and whisper the word, and the Alala comes. I only do this at night
in my room or in certain woods that I know, but I must not describe
them, as they are secret woods. Then there are the Ceremonies, which are
all of them important, but some are more delightful than others--there
are the White Ceremonies, and the Green Ceremonies, and the Scarlet
Ceremonies. The Scarlet Ceremonies are the best, but there is only one
place where they can be performed properly, though there is a very nice
imitation which I have done in other places. Besides these, I have the
dances, and the Comedy, and I have done the Comedy sometimes when the
others were looking, and they didn't understand anything about it. I
was very little when I first knew about these things.
When I was very small, and mother was alive, I can remember remembering
things before that, only it has all got confused. But I remember when I
was five or six I heard them talking about me when they thought I was
not noticing. They were saying how queer I was a year or two before, and
how nurse had called my mother to come and listen to me talking all to
myself, and I was saying words that nobody could understand. I was
speaking the Xu language, but I only remember a very few of the words,
as it was about the little white faces that used to look at me when I
was lying in my cradle. They used to talk to me, and I learnt their
language and talked to them in it about some great white place where
they lived, where the trees and the grass were all white, and there were
white hills as high up as the moon, and a cold wind. I have often
dreamed of it afterwards, but the faces went away when I was very
little. But a wonderful thing happened when I was about five. My nurse
was carrying me on her shoulder; there was a field of yellow corn, and
we went through it, it was very hot. Then we came to a path through a
wood, and a tall man came after us, and went with us till we came to a
place where there was a deep pool, and it was very dark and shady. Nurse
put me down on the soft moss under a tree, and she said: 'She can't get
to the pond now.' So they left me there, and I sat quite still and
watched, and out of the water and out of the wood came two wonderful
white people, and they began to play and dance and sing. They were a
kind of creamy white like the old ivory figure in the drawing-room; one
was a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave face, and long
black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile at the other, who
laughed and came to her. They played together, and danced round and
round the pool, and they sang a song till I fell asleep. Nurse woke me
up when she came back, and she was looking something like the lady had
looked, so I told her all about it, and asked her why she looked like
that. At first she cried, and then she looked very frightened, and
turned quite pale. She put me down on the grass and stared at me, and I
could see she was shaking all over. Then she said I had been dreaming,
but I knew I hadn't. Then she made me promise not to say a word about it
to anybody, and if I did I should be thrown into the black pit. I was
not frightened at all, though nurse was, and I never forgot about it,
because when I shut my eyes and it was quite quiet, and I was all alone,
I could see them again, very faint and far away, but very splendid; and
little bits of the song they sang came into my head, but I couldn't sing
it.
I was thirteen, nearly fourteen, when I had a very singular adventure,
so strange that the day on which it happened is always called the White
Day. My mother had been dead for more than a year, and in the morning I
had lessons, but they let me go out for walks in the afternoon. And this
afternoon I walked a new way, and a little brook led me into a new
country, but I tore my frock getting through some of the difficult
places, as the way was through many bushes, and beneath the low branches
of trees, and up thorny thickets on the hills, and by dark woods full of
creeping thorns. And it was a long, long way. It seemed as if I was
going on for ever and ever, and I had to creep by a place like a tunnel
where a brook must have been, but all the water had dried up, and the
floor was rocky, and the bushes had grown overhead till they met, so
that it was quite dark. And I went on and on through that dark place; it
was a long, long way. And I came to a hill that I never saw before. I
was in a dismal thicket full of black twisted boughs that tore me as I
went through them, and I cried out because I was smarting all over, and
then I found that I was climbing, and I went up and up a long way, till
at last the thicket stopped and I came out crying just under the top of
a big bare place, where there were ugly grey stones lying all about on
the grass, and here and there a little twisted, stunted tree came out
from under a stone, like a snake. And I went up, right to the top, a
long way. I never saw such big ugly stones before; they came out of the
earth some of them, and some looked as if they had been rolled to where
they were, and they went on and on as far as I could see, a long, long
way. I looked out from them and saw the country, but it was strange. It
was winter time, and there were black terrible woods hanging from the
hills all round; it was like seeing a large room hung with black
curtains, and the shape of the trees seemed quite different from any I
had ever seen before. I was afraid. Then beyond the woods there were
other hills round in a great ring, but I had never seen any of them; it
all looked black, and everything had a voor over it. It was all so still
and silent, and the sky was heavy and grey and sad, like a wicked
voorish dome in Deep Dendo. I went on into the dreadful rocks. There
were hundreds and hundreds of them. Some were like horrid-grinning men;
I could see their faces as if they would jump at me out of the stone,
and catch hold of me, and drag me with them back into the rock, so that
I should always be there. And there were other rocks that were like
animals, creeping, horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and
others were like words that I could not say, and others like dead people
lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and
my heart was full of wicked songs that they put into it; and I wanted to
make faces and twist myself about in the way they did, and I went on and
on a long way till at last I liked the rocks, and they didn't frighten
me any more. I sang the songs I thought of; songs full of words that
must not be spoken or written down. Then I made faces like the faces on
the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay
down flat on the ground like the dead ones, and I went up to one that
was grinning, and put my arms round him and hugged him. And so I went on
and on through the rocks till I came to a round mound in the middle of
them. It was higher than a mound, it was nearly as high as our house,
and it was like a great basin turned upside down, all smooth and round
and green, with one stone, like a post, sticking up at the top. I
climbed up the sides, but they were so steep I had to stop or I should
have rolled all the way down again, and I should have knocked against
the stones at the bottom, and perhaps been killed. But I wanted to get
up to the very top of the big round mound, so I lay down flat on my
face, and took hold of the grass with my hands and drew myself up, bit
by bit, till I was at the top. Then I sat down on the stone in the
middle, and looked all round about. I felt I had come such a long, long
way, just as if I were a hundred miles from home, or in some other
country, or in one of the strange places I had read about in the 'Tales
of the Genie' and the 'Arabian Nights,' or as if I had gone across the
sea, far away, for years and I had found another world that nobody had
ever seen or heard of before, or as if I had somehow flown through the
sky and fallen on one of the stars I had read about where everything is
dead and cold and grey, and there is no air, and the wind doesn't blow.
I sat on the stone and looked all round and down and round about me. It
was just as if I was sitting on a tower in the middle of a great empty
town, because I could see nothing all around but the grey rocks on the
ground. I couldn't make out their shapes any more, but I could see them
on and on for a long way, and I looked at them, and they seemed as if
they had been arranged into patterns, and shapes, and figures. I knew
they couldn't be, because I had seen a lot of them coming right out of
the earth, joined to the deep rocks below, so I looked again, but still
I saw nothing but circles, and small circles inside big ones, and
pyramids, and domes, and spires, and they seemed all to go round and
round the place where I was sitting, and the more I looked, the more I
saw great big rings of rocks, getting bigger and bigger, and I stared so
long that it felt as if they were all moving and turning, like a great
wheel, and I was turning, too, in the middle. I got quite dizzy and
queer in the head, and everything began to be hazy and not clear, and I
saw little sparks of blue light, and the stones looked as if they were
springing and dancing and twisting as they went round and round and
round. I was frightened again, and I cried out loud, and jumped up from
the stone I was sitting on, and fell down. When I got up I was so glad
they all looked still, and I sat down on the top and slid down the
mound, and went on again. I danced as I went in the peculiar way the
rocks had danced when I got giddy, and I was so glad I could do it quite
well, and I danced and danced along, and sang extraordinary songs that
came into my head. At last I came to the edge of that great flat hill,
and there were no more rocks, and the way went again through a dark
thicket in a hollow. It was just as bad as the other one I went through
climbing up, but I didn't mind this one, because I was so glad I had
seen those singular dances and could imitate them. I went down, creeping
through the bushes, and a tall nettle stung me on my leg, and made me
burn, but I didn't mind it, and I tingled with the boughs and the
thorns, but I only laughed and sang. Then I got out of the thicket into
a close valley, a little secret place like a dark passage that nobody
ever knows of, because it was so narrow and deep and the woods were so
thick round it. There is a steep bank with trees hanging over it, and
there the ferns keep green all through the winter, when they are dead
and brown upon the hill, and the ferns there have a sweet, rich smell
like what oozes out of fir trees. There was a little stream of water
running down this valley, so small that I could easily step across it. I
drank the water with my hand, and it tasted like bright, yellow wine,
and it sparkled and bubbled as it ran down over beautiful red and yellow
and green stones, so that it seemed alive and all colours at once. I
drank it, and I drank more with my hand, but I couldn't drink enough,
so I lay down and bent my head and sucked the water up with my lips. It
tasted much better, drinking it that way, and a ripple would come up to
my mouth and give me a kiss, and I laughed, and drank again, and
pretended there was a nymph, like the one in the old picture at home,
who lived in the water and was kissing me. So I bent low down to the
water, and put my lips softly to it, and whispered to the nymph that I
would come again. I felt sure it could not be common water, I was so
glad when I got up and went on; and I danced again and went up and up
the valley, under hanging hills. And when I came to the top, the ground
rose up in front of me, tall and steep as a wall, and there was nothing
but the green wall and the sky. I thought of 'for ever and for ever,
world without end, Amen'; and I thought I must have really found the end
of the world, because it was like the end of everything, as if there
could be nothing at all beyond, except the kingdom of Voor, where the
light goes when it is put out, and the water goes when the sun takes it
away. I began to think of all the long, long way I had journeyed, how I
had found a brook and followed it, and followed it on, and gone through
bushes and thorny thickets, and dark woods full of creeping thorns. Then
I had crept up a tunnel under trees, and climbed a thicket, and seen all
the grey rocks, and sat in the middle of them when they turned round,
and then I had gone on through the grey rocks and come down the hill
through the stinging thicket and up the dark valley, all a long, long
way. I wondered how I should get home again, if I could ever find the
way, and if my home was there any more, or if it were turned and
everybody in it into grey rocks, as in the 'Arabian Nights.' So I sat
down on the grass and thought what I should do next. I was tired, and my
feet were hot with walking, and as I looked about I saw there was a
wonderful well just under the high, steep wall of grass. All the ground
round it was covered with bright, green, dripping moss; there was every
kind of moss there, moss like beautiful little ferns, and like palms and
fir trees, and it was all green as jewellery, and drops of water hung on
it like diamonds. And in the middle was the great well, deep and shining
and beautiful, so clear that it looked as if I could touch the red sand
at the bottom, but it was far below. I stood by it and looked in, as if
I were looking in a glass. At the bottom of the well, in the middle of
it, the red grains of sand were moving and stirring all the time, and I
saw how the water bubbled up, but at the top it was quite smooth, and
full and brimming. It was a great well, large like a bath, and with the
shining, glittering green moss about it, it looked like a great white
jewel, with green jewels all round. My feet were so hot and tired that I
took off my boots and stockings, and let my feet down into the water,
and the water was soft and cold, and when I got up I wasn't tired any
more, and I felt I must go on, farther and farther, and see what was on
the other side of the wall. I climbed up it very slowly, going sideways
all the time, and when I got to the top and looked over, I was in the
queerest country I had seen, stranger even than the hill of the grey
rocks. It looked as if earth-children had been playing there with their
spades, as it was all hills and hollows, and castles and walls made of
earth and covered with grass. There were two mounds like big beehives,
round and great and solemn, and then hollow basins, and then a steep
mounting wall like the ones I saw once by the seaside where the big guns
and the soldiers were. I nearly fell into one of the round hollows, it
went away from under my feet so suddenly, and I ran fast down the side
and stood at the bottom and looked up. It was strange and solemn to look
up. There was nothing but the grey, heavy sky and the sides of the
hollow; everything else had gone away, and the hollow was the whole
world, and I thought that at night it must be full of ghosts and moving
shadows and pale things when the moon shone down to the bottom at the
dead of the night, and the wind wailed up above. It was so strange and
solemn and lonely, like a hollow temple of dead heathen gods. It
reminded me of a tale my nurse had told me when I was quite little; it
was the same nurse that took me into the wood where I saw the beautiful
white people. And I remembered how nurse had told me the story one
winter night, when the wind was beating the trees against the wall, and
crying and moaning in the nursery chimney. She said there was, somewhere
or other, a hollow pit, just like the one I was standing in, everybody
was afraid to go into it or near it, it was such a bad place. But once
upon a time there was a poor girl who said she would go into the hollow
pit, and everybody tried to stop her, but she would go. And she went
down into the pit and came back laughing, and said there was nothing
there at all, except green grass and red stones, and white stones and
yellow flowers. And soon after people saw she had most beautiful emerald
earrings, and they asked how she got them, as she and her mother were
quite poor. But she laughed, and said her earrings were not made of
emeralds at all, but only of green grass. Then, one day, she wore on her
breast the reddest ruby that any one had ever seen, and it was as big as
a hen's egg, and glowed and sparkled like a hot burning coal of fire.
And they asked how she got it, as she and her mother were quite poor.
But she laughed, and said it was not a ruby at all, but only a red
stone. Then one day she wore round her neck the loveliest necklace that
any one had ever seen, much finer than the queen's finest, and it was
made of great bright diamonds, hundreds of them, and they shone like all
the stars on a night in June. So they asked her how she got it, as she
and her mother were quite poor. But she laughed, and said they were not
diamonds at all, but only white stones. And one day she went to the
Court, and she wore on her head a crown of pure angel-gold, so nurse
said, and it shone like the sun, and it was much more splendid than the
crown the king was wearing himself, and in her ears she wore the
emeralds, and the big ruby was the brooch on her breast, and the great
diamond necklace was sparkling on her neck. And the king and queen
thought she was some great princess from a long way off, and got down
from their thrones and went to meet her, but somebody told the king and
queen who she was, and that she was quite poor. So the king asked why
she wore a gold crown, and how she got it, as she and her mother were so
poor. And she laughed, and said it wasn't a gold crown at all, but only
some yellow flowers she had put in her hair. And the king thought it was
very strange, and said she should stay at the Court, and they would see
what would happen next. And she was so lovely that everybody said that
her eyes were greener than the emeralds, that her lips were redder than
the ruby, that her skin was whiter than the diamonds, and that her hair
was brighter than the golden crown. So the king's son said he would
marry her, and the king said he might. And the bishop married them, and
there was a great supper, and afterwards the king's son went to his
wife's room. But just when he had his hand on the door, he saw a tall,
black man, with a dreadful face, standing in front of the door, and a
voice said--
Venture not upon your life,
This is mine own wedded wife.
Then the king's son fell down on the ground in a fit. And they came and
tried to get into the room, but they couldn't, and they hacked at the
door with hatchets, but the wood had turned hard as iron, and at last
everybody ran away, they were so frightened at the screaming and
laughing and shrieking and crying that came out of the room. But next
day they went in, and found there was nothing in the room but thick
black smoke, because the black man had come and taken her away. And on
the bed there were two knots of faded grass and a red stone, and some
white stones, and some faded yellow flowers. I remembered this tale of
nurse's while I was standing at the bottom of the deep hollow; it was so
strange and solitary there, and I felt afraid. I could not see any
stones or flowers, but I was afraid of bringing them away without
knowing, and I thought I would do a charm that came into my head to
keep the black man away. So I stood right in the very middle of the
hollow, and I made sure that I had none of those things on me, and then
I walked round the place, and touched my eyes, and my lips, and my hair
in a peculiar manner, and whispered some queer words that nurse taught
me to keep bad things away. Then I felt safe and climbed up out of the
hollow, and went on through all those mounds and hollows and walls, till
I came to the end, which was high above all the rest, and I could see
that all the different shapes of the earth were arranged in patterns,
something like the grey rocks, only the pattern was different. It was
getting late, and the air was indistinct, but it looked from where I was
standing something like two great figures of people lying on the grass.
And I went on, and at last I found a certain wood, which is too secret
to be described, and nobody knows of the passage into it, which I found
out in a very curious manner, by seeing some little animal run into the
wood through it. So I went after the animal by a very narrow dark way,
under thorns and bushes, and it was almost dark when I came to a kind of
open place in the middle. And there I saw the most wonderful sight I
have ever seen, but it was only for a minute, as I ran away directly,
and crept out of the wood by the passage I had come by, and ran and ran
as fast as ever I could, because I was afraid, what I had seen was so
wonderful and so strange and beautiful. But I wanted to get home and
think of it, and I did not know what might not happen if I stayed by the
wood. I was hot all over and trembling, and my heart was beating, and
strange cries that I could not help came from me as I ran from the
wood. I was glad that a great white moon came up from over a round hill
and showed me the way, so I went back through the mounds and hollows and
down the close valley, and up through the thicket over the place of the
grey rocks, and so at last I got home again. My father was busy in his
study, and the servants had not told about my not coming home, though
they were frightened, and wondered what they ought to do, so I told them
I had lost my way, but I did not let them find out the real way I had
been. I went to bed and lay awake all through the night, thinking of
what I had seen. When I came out of the narrow way, and it looked all
shining, though the air was dark, it seemed so certain, and all the way
home I was quite sure that I had seen it, and I wanted to be alone in my
room, and be glad over it all to myself, and shut my eyes and pretend it
was there, and do all the things I would have done if I had not been so
afraid. But when I shut my eyes the sight would not come, and I began to
think about my adventures all over again, and I remembered how dusky and
queer it was at the end, and I was afraid it must be all a mistake,
because it seemed impossible it could happen. It seemed like one of
nurse's tales, which I didn't really believe in, though I was frightened
at the bottom of the hollow; and the stories she told me when I was
little came back into my head, and I wondered whether it was really
there what I thought I had seen, or whether any of her tales could have
happened a long time ago. It was so queer; I lay awake there in my room
at the back of the house, and the moon was shining on the other side
towards the river, so the bright light did not fall upon the wall. And
the house was quite still. I had heard my father come upstairs, and just
after the clock struck twelve, and after the house was still and empty,
as if there was nobody alive in it. And though it was all dark and
indistinct in my room, a pale glimmering kind of light shone in through
the white blind, and once I got up and looked out, and there was a great
black shadow of the house covering the garden, looking like a prison
where men are hanged; and then beyond it was all white; and the wood
shone white with black gulfs between the trees. It was still and clear,
and there were no clouds on the sky. I wanted to think of what I had
seen but I couldn't, and I began to think of all the tales that nurse
had told me so long ago that I thought I had forgotten, but they all
came back, and mixed up with the thickets and the grey rocks and the
hollows in the earth and the secret wood, till I hardly knew what was
new and what was old, or whether it was not all dreaming. And then I
remembered that hot summer afternoon, so long ago, when nurse left me by
myself in the shade, and the white people came out of the water and out
of the wood, and played, and danced, and sang, and I began to fancy that
nurse told me about something like it before I saw them, only I couldn't
recollect exactly what she told me. Then I wondered whether she had been
the white lady, as I remembered she was just as white and beautiful, and
had the same dark eyes and black hair; and sometimes she smiled and
looked like the lady had looked, when she was telling me some of her
stories, beginning with 'Once on a time,' or 'In the time of the
fairies.' But I thought she couldn't be the lady, as she seemed to have
gone a different way into the wood, and I didn't think the man who came
after us could be the other, or I couldn't have seen that wonderful
secret in the secret wood. I thought of the moon: but it was afterwards
when I was in the middle of the wild land, where the earth was made into
the shape of great figures, and it was all walls, and mysterious
hollows, and smooth round mounds, that I saw the great white moon come
up over a round hill. I was wondering about all these things, till at
last I got quite frightened, because I was afraid something had happened
to me, and I remembered nurse's tale of the poor girl who went into the
hollow pit, and was carried away at last by the black man. I knew I had
gone into a hollow pit too, and perhaps it was the same, and I had done
something dreadful. So I did the charm over again, and touched my eyes
and my lips and my hair in a peculiar manner, and said the old words
from the fairy language, so that I might be sure I had not been carried
away. I tried again to see the secret wood, and to creep up the passage
and see what I had seen there, but somehow I couldn't, and I kept on
thinking of nurse's stories. There was one I remembered about a young
man who once upon a time went hunting, and all the day he and his hounds
hunted everywhere, and they crossed the rivers and went into all the
woods, and went round the marshes, but they couldn't find anything at
all, and they hunted all day till the sun sank down and began to set
behind the mountain. And the young man was angry because he couldn't
find anything, and he was going to turn back, when just as the sun
touched the mountain, he saw come out of a brake in front of him a
beautiful white stag. And he cheered to his hounds, but they whined and
would not follow, and he cheered to his horse, but it shivered and stood
stock still, and the young man jumped off the horse and left the hounds
and began to follow the white stag all alone. And soon it was quite
dark, and the sky was black, without a single star shining in it, and
the stag went away into the darkness. And though the man had brought his
gun with him he never shot at the stag, because he wanted to catch it,
and he was afraid he would lose it in the night. But he never lost it
once, though the sky was so black and the air was so dark, and the stag
went on and on till the young man didn't know a bit where he was. And
they went through enormous woods where the air was full of whispers and
a pale, dead light came out from the rotten trunks that were lying on
the ground, and just as the man thought he had lost the stag, he would
see it all white and shining in front of him, and he would run fast to
catch it, but the stag always ran faster, so he did not catch it. And
they went through the enormous woods, and they swam across rivers, and
they waded through black marshes where the ground bubbled, and the air
was full of will-o'-the-wisps, and the stag fled away down into rocky
narrow valleys, where the air was like the smell of a vault, and the man
went after it. And they went over the great mountains and the man heard
the wind come down from the sky, and the stag went on and the man went
after. At last the sun rose and the young man found he was in a country
that he had never seen before; it was a beautiful valley with a bright
stream running through it, and a great, big round hill in the middle.
And the stag went down the valley, towards the hill, and it seemed to
be getting tired and went slower and slower, and though the man was
tired, too, he began to run faster, and he was sure he would catch the
stag at last. But just as they got to the bottom of the hill, and the
man stretched out his hand to catch the stag, it vanished into the
earth, and the man began to cry; he was so sorry that he had lost it
after all his long hunting. But as he was crying he saw there was a door
in the hill, just in front of him, and he went in, and it was quite
dark, but he went on, as he thought he would find the white stag. And
all of a sudden it got light, and there was the sky, and the sun
shining, and birds singing in the trees, and there was a beautiful
fountain. And by the fountain a lovely lady was sitting, who was the
queen of the fairies, and she told the man that she had changed herself
into a stag to bring him there because she loved him so much. Then she
brought out a great gold cup, covered with jewels, from her fairy
palace, and she offered him wine in the cup to drink. And he drank, and
the more he drank the more he longed to drink, because the wine was
enchanted. So he kissed the lovely lady, and she became his wife, and he
stayed all that day and all that night in the hill where she lived, and
when he woke he found he was lying on the ground, close to where he had
seen the stag first, and his horse was there and his hounds were there
waiting, and he looked up, and the sun sank behind the mountain. And he
went home and lived a long time, but he would never kiss any other lady
because he had kissed the queen of the fairies, and he would never drink
common wine any more, because he had drunk enchanted wine. And sometimes
nurse told me tales that she had heard from her great-grandmother, who
was very old, and lived in a cottage on the mountain all alone, and most
of these tales were about a hill where people used to meet at night long
ago, and they used to play all sorts of strange games and do queer
things that nurse told me of, but I couldn't understand, and now, she
said, everybody but her great-grandmother had forgotten all about it,
and nobody knew where the hill was, not even her great-grandmother. But
she told me one very strange story about the hill, and I trembled when I
remembered it. She said that people always went there in summer, when it
was very hot, and they had to dance a good deal. It would be all dark at
first, and there were trees there, which made it much darker, and people
would come, one by one, from all directions, by a secret path which
nobody else knew, and two persons would keep the gate, and every one as
they came up had to give a very curious sign, which nurse showed me as
well as she could, but she said she couldn't show me properly. And all
kinds of people would come; there would be gentle folks and village
folks, and some old people and boys and girls, and quite small children,
who sat and watched. And it would all be dark as they came in, except in
one corner where some one was burning something that smelt strong and
sweet, and made them laugh, and there one would see a glaring of coals,
and the smoke mounting up red. So they would all come in, and when the
last had come there was no door any more, so that no one else could get
in, even if they knew there was anything beyond. And once a gentleman
who was a stranger and had ridden a long way, lost his path at night,
and his horse took him into the very middle of the wild country, where
everything was upside down, and there were dreadful marshes and great
stones everywhere, and holes underfoot, and the trees looked like
gibbet-posts, because they had great black arms that stretched out
across the way. And this strange gentleman was very frightened, and his
horse began to shiver all over, and at last it stopped and wouldn't go
any farther, and the gentleman got down and tried to lead the horse, but
it wouldn't move, and it was all covered with a sweat, like death. So
the gentleman went on all alone, going farther and farther into the wild
country, till at last he came to a dark place, where he heard shouting
and singing and crying, like nothing he had ever heard before. It all
sounded quite close to him, but he couldn't get in, and so he began to
call, and while he was calling, something came behind him, and in a
minute his mouth and arms and legs were all bound up, and he fell into a
swoon. And when he came to himself, he was lying by the roadside, just
where he had first lost his way, under a blasted oak with a black trunk,
and his horse was tied beside him. So he rode on to the town and told
the people there what had happened, and some of them were amazed; but
others knew. So when once everybody had come, there was no door at all
for anybody else to pass in by. And when they were all inside, round in
a ring, touching each other, some one began to sing in the darkness, and
some one else would make a noise like thunder with a thing they had on
purpose, and on still nights people would hear the thundering noise far,
far away beyond the wild land, and some of them, who thought they knew
what it was, used to make a sign on their breasts when they woke up in
their beds at dead of night and heard that terrible deep noise, like
thunder on the mountains. And the noise and the singing would go on and
on for a long time, and the people who were in a ring swayed a little to
and fro; and the song was in an old, old language that nobody knows now,
and the tune was queer. Nurse said her great-grandmother had known some
one who remembered a little of it, when she was quite a little girl, and
nurse tried to sing some of it to me, and it was so strange a tune that
I turned all cold and my flesh crept as if I had put my hand on
something dead. Sometimes it was a man that sang and sometimes it was a
woman, and sometimes the one who sang it did it so well that two or
three of the people who were there fell to the ground shrieking and
tearing with their hands. The singing went on, and the people in the
ring kept swaying to and fro for a long time, and at last the moon would
rise over a place they called the Tole Deol, and came up and showed them
swinging and swaying from side to side, with the sweet thick smoke
curling up from the burning coals, and floating in circles all around
them. Then they had their supper. A boy and a girl brought it to them;
the boy carried a great cup of wine, and the girl carried a cake of
bread, and they passed the bread and the wine round and round, but they
tasted quite different from common bread and common wine, and changed
everybody that tasted them. Then they all rose up and danced, and secret
things were brought out of some hiding place, and they played
extraordinary games, and danced round and round and round in the
moonlight, and sometimes people would suddenly disappear and never be
heard of afterwards, and nobody knew what had happened to them. And
they drank more of that curious wine, and they made images and
worshipped them, and nurse showed me how the images were made one day
when we were out for a walk, and we passed by a place where there was a
lot of wet clay. So nurse asked me if I would like to know what those
things were like that they made on the hill, and I said yes. Then she
asked me if I would promise never to tell a living soul a word about it,
and if I did I was to be thrown into the black pit with the dead people,
and I said I wouldn't tell anybody, and she said the same thing again
and again, and I promised. So she took my wooden spade and dug a big
lump of clay and put it in my tin bucket, and told me to say if any one
met us that I was going to make pies when I went home. Then we went on a
little way till we came to a little brake growing right down into the
road, and nurse stopped, and looked up the road and down it, and then
peeped through the hedge into the field on the other side, and then she
said, 'Quick!' and we ran into the brake, and crept in and out among the
bushes till we had gone a good way from the road. Then we sat down under
a bush, and I wanted so much to know what nurse was going to make with
the clay, but before she would begin she made me promise again not to
say a word about it, and she went again and peeped through the bushes on
every side, though the lane was so small and deep that hardly anybody
ever went there. So we sat down, and nurse took the clay out of the
bucket, and began to knead it with her hands, and do queer things with
it, and turn it about. And she hid it under a big dock-leaf for a minute
or two and then she brought it out again, and then she stood up and sat
down, and walked round the clay in a peculiar manner, and all the time
she was softly singing a sort of rhyme, and her face got very red. Then
she sat down again, and took the clay in her hands and began to shape it
into a doll, but not like the dolls I have at home, and she made the
queerest doll I had ever seen, all out of the wet clay, and hid it under
a bush to get dry and hard, and all the time she was making it she was
singing these rhymes to herself, and her face got redder and redder. So
we left the doll there, hidden away in the bushes where nobody would
ever find it. And a few days later we went the same walk, and when we
came to that narrow, dark part of the lane where the brake runs down to
the bank, nurse made me promise all over again, and she looked about,
just as she had done before, and we crept into the bushes till we got to
the green place where the little clay man was hidden. I remember it all
so well, though I was only eight, and it is eight years ago now as I am
writing it down, but the sky was a deep violet blue, and in the middle
of the brake where we were sitting there was a great elder tree covered
with blossoms, and on the other side there was a clump of meadowsweet,
and when I think of that day the smell of the meadowsweet and elder
blossom seems to fill the room, and if I shut my eyes I can see the
glaring blue sky, with little clouds very white floating across it, and
nurse who went away long ago sitting opposite me and looking like the
beautiful white lady in the wood. So we sat down and nurse took out the
clay doll from the secret place where she had hidden it, and she said we
must 'pay our respects,' and she would show me what to do, and I must
watch her all the time. So she did all sorts of queer things with the
little clay man, and I noticed she was all streaming with perspiration,
though we had walked so slowly, and then she told me to 'pay my
respects,' and I did everything she did because I liked her, and it was
such an odd game. And she said that if one loved very much, the clay man
was very good, if one did certain things with it, and if one hated very
much, it was just as good, only one had to do different things, and we
played with it a long time, and pretended all sorts of things. Nurse
said her great-grandmother had told her all about these images, but what
we did was no harm at all, only a game. But she told me a story about
these images that frightened me very much, and that was what I
remembered that night when I was lying awake in my room in the pale,
empty darkness, thinking of what I had seen and the secret wood. Nurse
said there was once a young lady of the high gentry, who lived in a
great castle. And she was so beautiful that all the gentlemen wanted to
marry her, because she was the loveliest lady that anybody had ever
seen, and she was kind to everybody, and everybody thought she was very
good. But though she was polite to all the gentlemen who wished to marry
her, she put them off, and said she couldn't make up her mind, and she
wasn't sure she wanted to marry anybody at all. And her father, who was
a very great lord, was angry, though he was so fond of her, and he asked
her why she wouldn't choose a bachelor out of all the handsome young men
who came to the castle. But she only said she didn't love any of them
very much, and she must wait, and if they pestered her, she said she
would go and be a nun in a nunnery. So all the gentlemen said they
would go away and wait for a year and a day, and when a year and a day
were gone, they would come back again and ask her to say which one she
would marry. So the day was appointed and they all went away; and the
lady had promised that in a year and a day it would be her wedding day
with one of them. But the truth was, that she was the queen of the
people who danced on the hill on summer nights, and on the proper nights
she would lock the door of her room, and she and her maid would steal
out of the castle by a secret passage that only they knew of, and go
away up to the hill in the wild land. And she knew more of the secret
things than any one else, and more than any one knew before or after,
because she would not tell anybody the most secret secrets. She knew how
to do all the awful things, how to destroy young men, and how to put a
curse on people, and other things that I could not understand. And her
real name was the Lady Avelin, but the dancing people called her Cassap,
which meant somebody very wise, in the old language. And she was whiter
than any of them and taller, and her eyes shone in the dark like burning
rubies; and she could sing songs that none of the others could sing, and
when she sang they all fell down on their faces and worshipped her. And
she could do what they called shib-show, which was a very wonderful
enchantment. She would tell the great lord, her father, that she wanted
to go into the woods to gather flowers, so he let her go, and she and
her maid went into the woods where nobody came, and the maid would keep
watch. Then the lady would lie down under the trees and begin to sing a
particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of
the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among
the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to
the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her
body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing
serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered to
them, and she sang to them, and they writhed round and round, faster and
faster, till she told them to go. And they all went away directly, back
to their holes, and on the lady's breast there would be a most curious,
beautiful stone, shaped something like an egg, and coloured dark blue
and yellow, and red, and green, marked like a serpent's scales. It was
called a glame stone, and with it one could do all sorts of wonderful
things, and nurse said her great-grandmother had seen a glame stone with
her own eyes, and it was for all the world shiny and scaly like a snake.
And the lady could do a lot of other things as well, but she was quite
fixed that she would not be married. And there were a great many
gentlemen who wanted to marry her, but there were five of them who were
chief, and their names were Sir Simon, Sir John, Sir Oliver, Sir
Richard, and Sir Rowland. All the others believed she spoke the truth,
and that she would choose one of them to be her man when a year and a
day was done; it was only Sir Simon, who was very crafty, who thought
she was deceiving them all, and he vowed he would watch and try if he
could find out anything. And though he was very wise he was very young,
and he had a smooth, soft face like a girl's, and he pretended, as the
rest did, that he would not come to the castle for a year and a day, and
he said he was going away beyond the sea to foreign parts. But he
really only went a very little way, and came back dressed like a servant
girl, and so he got a place in the castle to wash the dishes. And he
waited and watched, and he listened and said nothing, and he hid in dark
places, and woke up at night and looked out, and he heard things and he
saw things that he thought were very strange. And he was so sly that he
told the girl that waited on the lady that he was really a young man,
and that he had dressed up as a girl because he loved her so very much
and wanted to be in the same house with her, and the girl was so pleased
that she told him many things, and he was more than ever certain that
the Lady Avelin was deceiving him and the others. And he was so clever,
and told the servant so many lies, that one night he managed to hide in
the Lady Avelin's room behind the curtains. And he stayed quite still
and never moved, and at last the lady came. And she bent down under the
bed, and raised up a stone, and there was a hollow place underneath, and
out of it she took a waxen image, just like the clay one that I and
nurse had made in the brake. And all the time her eyes were burning like
rubies. And she took the little wax doll up in her arms and held it to
her breast, and she whispered and she murmured, and she took it up and
she laid it down again, and she held it high, and she held it low, and
she laid it down again. And she said, 'Happy is he that begat the
bishop, that ordered the clerk, that married the man, that had the wife,
that fashioned the hive, that harboured the bee, that gathered the wax
that my own true love was made of.' And she brought out of an aumbry a
great golden bowl, and she brought out of a closet a great jar of wine,
and she poured some of the wine into the bowl, and she laid her mannikin
very gently in the wine, and washed it in the wine all over. Then she
went to a cupboard and took a small round cake and laid it on the
image's mouth, and then she bore it softly and covered it up. And Sir
Simon, who was watching all the time, though he was terribly frightened,
saw the lady bend down and stretch out her arms and whisper and sing,
and then Sir Simon saw beside her a handsome young man, who kissed her
on the lips. And they drank wine out of the golden bowl together, and
they ate the cake together. But when the sun rose there was only the
little wax doll, and the lady hid it again under the bed in the hollow
place. So Sir Simon knew quite well what the lady was, and he waited and
he watched, till the time she had said was nearly over, and in a week
the year and a day would be done. And one night, when he was watching
behind the curtains in her room, he saw her making more wax dolls. And
she made five, and hid them away. And the next night she took one out,
and held it up, and filled the golden bowl with water, and took the doll
by the neck and held it under the water. Then she said--
Sir Dickon, Sir Dickon, your day is done,
You shall be drowned in the water wan.
And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Richard had been
drowned at the ford. And at night she took another doll and tied a
violet cord round its neck and hung it up on a nail. Then she said--
Sir Rowland, your life has ended its span,
High on a tree I see you hang.
And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Rowland had been
hanged by robbers in the wood. And at night she took another doll, and
drove her bodkin right into its heart. Then she said--
Sir Noll, Sir Noll, so cease your life,
Your heart pierced with the knife.
And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Oliver had fought in a
tavern, and a stranger had stabbed him to the heart. And at night she
took another doll, and held it to a fire of charcoal till it was melted.
Then she said--
Sir John, return, and turn to clay,
In fire of fever you waste away.
And the next day news came to the castle that Sir John had died in a
burning fever. So then Sir Simon went out of the castle and mounted his
horse and rode away to the bishop and told him everything. And the
bishop sent his men, and they took the Lady Avelin, and everything she
had done was found out. So on the day after the year and a day, when she
was to have been married, they carried her through the town in her
smock, and they tied her to a great stake in the market-place, and
burned her alive before the bishop with her wax image hung round her
neck. And people said the wax man screamed in the burning of the flames.
And I thought of this story again and again as I was lying awake in my
bed, and I seemed to see the Lady Avelin in the market-place, with the
yellow flames eating up her beautiful white body. And I thought of it so
much that I seemed to get into the story myself, and I fancied I was the
lady, and that they were coming to take me to be burnt with fire, with
all the people in the town looking at me. And I wondered whether she
cared, after all the strange things she had done, and whether it hurt
very much to be burned at the stake. I tried again and again to forget
nurse's stories, and to remember the secret I had seen that afternoon,
and what was in the secret wood, but I could only see the dark and a
glimmering in the dark, and then it went away, and I only saw myself
running, and then a great moon came up white over a dark round hill.
Then all the old stories came back again, and the queer rhymes that
nurse used to sing to me; and there was one beginning 'Halsy cumsy Helen
musty,' that she used to sing very softly when she wanted me to go to
sleep. And I began to sing it to myself inside of my head, and I went to
sleep.
The next morning I was very tired and sleepy, and could hardly do my
lessons, and I was very glad when they were over and I had had my
dinner, as I wanted to go out and be alone. It was a warm day, and I
went to a nice turfy hill by the river, and sat down on my mother's old
shawl that I had brought with me on purpose. The sky was grey, like the
day before, but there was a kind of white gleam behind it, and from
where I was sitting I could look down on the town, and it was all still
and quiet and white, like a picture. I remembered that it was on that
hill that nurse taught me to play an old game called 'Troy Town,' in
which one had to dance, and wind in and out on a pattern in the grass,
and then when one had danced and turned long enough the other person
asks you questions, and you can't help answering whether you want to or
not, and whatever you are told to do you feel you have to do it. Nurse
said there used to be a lot of games like that that some people knew of,
and there was one by which people could be turned into anything you
liked, and an old man her great-grandmother had seen had known a girl
who had been turned into a large snake. And there was another very
ancient game of dancing and winding and turning, by which you could take
a person out of himself and hide him away as long as you liked, and his
body went walking about quite empty, without any sense in it. But I came
to that hill because I wanted to think of what had happened the day
before, and of the secret of the wood. From the place where I was
sitting I could see beyond the town, into the opening I had found, where
a little brook had led me into an unknown country. And I pretended I was
following the brook over again, and I went all the way in my mind, and
at last I found the wood, and crept into it under the bushes, and then
in the dusk I saw something that made me feel as if I were filled with
fire, as if I wanted to dance and sing and fly up into the air, because
I was changed and wonderful. But what I saw was not changed at all, and
had not grown old, and I wondered again and again how such things could
happen, and whether nurse's stories were really true, because in the
daytime in the open air everything seemed quite different from what it
was at night, when I was frightened, and thought I was to be burned
alive. I once told my father one of her little tales, which was about a
ghost, and asked him if it was true, and he told me it was not true at
all, and that only common, ignorant people believed in such rubbish. He
was very angry with nurse for telling me the story, and scolded her,
and after that I promised her I would never whisper a word of what she
told me, and if I did I should be bitten by the great black snake that
lived in the pool in the wood. And all alone on the hill I wondered what
was true. I had seen something very amazing and very lovely, and I knew
a story, and if I had really seen it, and not made it up out of the
dark, and the black bough, and the bright shining that was mounting up
to the sky from over the great round hill, but had really seen it in
truth, then there were all kinds of wonderful and lovely and terrible
things to think of, so I longed and trembled, and I burned and got cold.
And I looked down on the town, so quiet and still, like a little white
picture, and I thought over and over if it could be true. I was a long
time before I could make up my mind to anything; there was such a
strange fluttering at my heart that seemed to whisper to me all the time
that I had not made it up out of my head, and yet it seemed quite
impossible, and I knew my father and everybody would say it was dreadful
rubbish. I never dreamed of telling him or anybody else a word about it,
because I knew it would be of no use, and I should only get laughed at
or scolded, so for a long time I was very quiet, and went about thinking
and wondering; and at night I used to dream of amazing things, and
sometimes I woke up in the early morning and held out my arms with a
cry. And I was frightened, too, because there were dangers, and some
awful thing would happen to me, unless I took great care, if the story
were true. These old tales were always in my head, night and morning,
and I went over them and told them to myself over and over again, and
went for walks in the places where nurse had told them to me; and when
I sat in the nursery by the fire in the evenings I used to fancy nurse
was sitting in the other chair, and telling me some wonderful story in a
low voice, for fear anybody should be listening. But she used to like
best to tell me about things when we were right out in the country, far
from the house, because she said she was telling me such secrets, and
walls have ears. And if it was something more than ever secret, we had
to hide in brakes or woods; and I used to think it was such fun creeping
along a hedge, and going very softly, and then we would get behind the
bushes or run into the wood all of a sudden, when we were sure that none
was watching us; so we knew that we had our secrets quite all to
ourselves, and nobody else at all knew anything about them. Now and
then, when we had hidden ourselves as I have described, she used to show
me all sorts of odd things. One day, I remember, we were in a hazel
brake, overlooking the brook, and we were so snug and warm, as though it
was April; the sun was quite hot, and the leaves were just coming out.
Nurse said she would show me something funny that would make me laugh,
and then she showed me, as she said, how one could turn a whole house
upside down, without anybody being able to find out, and the pots and
pans would jump about, and the china would be broken, and the chairs
would tumble over of themselves. I tried it one day in the kitchen, and
I found I could do it quite well, and a whole row of plates on the
dresser fell off it, and cook's little work-table tilted up and turned
right over 'before her eyes,' as she said, but she was so frightened and
turned so white that I didn't do it again, as I liked her. And
afterwards, in the hazel copse, when she had shown me how to make
things tumble about, she showed me how to make rapping noises, and I
learnt how to do that, too. Then she taught me rhymes to say on certain
occasions, and peculiar marks to make on other occasions, and other
things that her great-grandmother had taught her when she was a little
girl herself. And these were all the things I was thinking about in
those days after the strange walk when I thought I had seen a great
secret, and I wished nurse were there for me to ask her about it, but
she had gone away more than two years before, and nobody seemed to know
what had become of her, or where she had gone. But I shall always
remember those days if I live to be quite old, because all the time I
felt so strange, wondering and doubting, and feeling quite sure at one
time, and making up my mind, and then I would feel quite sure that such
things couldn't happen really, and it began all over again. But I took
great care not to do certain things that might be very dangerous. So I
waited and wondered for a long time, and though I was not sure at all, I
never dared to try to find out. But one day I became sure that all that
nurse said was quite true, and I was all alone when I found it out. I
trembled all over with joy and terror, and as fast as I could I ran into
one of the old brakes where we used to go--it was the one by the lane,
where nurse made the little clay man--and I ran into it, and I crept
into it; and when I came to the place where the elder was, I covered up
my face with my hands and lay down flat on the grass, and I stayed there
for two hours without moving, whispering to myself delicious, terrible
things, and saying some words over and over again. It was all true and
wonderful and splendid, and when I remembered the story I knew and
thought of what I had really seen, I got hot and I got cold, and the air
seemed full of scent, and flowers, and singing. And first I wanted to
make a little clay man, like the one nurse had made so long ago, and I
had to invent plans and stratagems, and to look about, and to think of
things beforehand, because nobody must dream of anything that I was
doing or going to do, and I was too old to carry clay about in a tin
bucket. At last I thought of a plan, and I brought the wet clay to the
brake, and did everything that nurse had done, only I made a much finer
image than the one she had made; and when it was finished I did
everything that I could imagine and much more than she did, because it
was the likeness of something far better. And a few days later, when I
had done my lessons early, I went for the second time by the way of the
little brook that had led me into a strange country. And I followed the
brook, and went through the bushes, and beneath the low branches of
trees, and up thorny thickets on the hill, and by dark woods full of
creeping thorns, a long, long way. Then I crept through the dark tunnel
where the brook had been and the ground was stony, till at last I came
to the thicket that climbed up the hill, and though the leaves were
coming out upon the trees, everything looked almost as black as it was
on the first day that I went there. And the thicket was just the same,
and I went up slowly till I came out on the big bare hill, and began to
walk among the wonderful rocks. I saw the terrible voor again on
everything, for though the sky was brighter, the ring of wild hills all
around was still dark, and the hanging woods looked dark and dreadful,
and the strange rocks were as grey as ever; and when I looked down on
them from the great mound, sitting on the stone, I saw all their amazing
circles and rounds within rounds, and I had to sit quite still and watch
them as they began to turn about me, and each stone danced in its place,
and they seemed to go round and round in a great whirl, as if one were
in the middle of all the stars and heard them rushing through the air.
So I went down among the rocks to dance with them and to sing
extraordinary songs; and I went down through the other thicket, and
drank from the bright stream in the close and secret valley, putting my
lips down to the bubbling water; and then I went on till I came to the
deep, brimming well among the glittering moss, and I sat down. I looked
before me into the secret darkness of the valley, and behind me was the
great high wall of grass, and all around me there were the hanging woods
that made the valley such a secret place. I knew there was nobody here
at all besides myself, and that no one could see me. So I took off my
boots and stockings, and let my feet down into the water, saying the
words that I knew. And it was not cold at all, as I expected, but warm
and very pleasant, and when my feet were in it I felt as if they were in
silk, or as if the nymph were kissing them. So when I had done, I said
the other words and made the signs, and then I dried my feet with a
towel I had brought on purpose, and put on my stockings and boots. Then
I climbed up the steep wall, and went into the place where there are the
hollows, and the two beautiful mounds, and the round ridges of land, and
all the strange shapes. I did not go down into the hollow this time,
but I turned at the end, and made out the figures quite plainly, as it
was lighter, and I had remembered the story I had quite forgotten
before, and in the story the two figures are called Adam and Eve, and
only those who know the story understand what they mean. So I went on
and on till I came to the secret wood which must not be described, and I
crept into it by the way I had found. And when I had gone about halfway
I stopped, and turned round, and got ready, and I bound the handkerchief
tightly round my eyes, and made quite sure that I could not see at all,
not a twig, nor the end of a leaf, nor the light of the sky, as it was
an old red silk handkerchief with large yellow spots, that went round
twice and covered my eyes, so that I could see nothing. Then I began to
go on, step by step, very slowly. My heart beat faster and faster, and
something rose in my throat that choked me and made me want to cry out,
but I shut my lips, and went on. Boughs caught in my hair as I went, and
great thorns tore me; but I went on to the end of the path. Then I
stopped, and held out my arms and bowed, and I went round the first
time, feeling with my hands, and there was nothing. I went round the
second time, feeling with my hands, and there was nothing. Then I went
round the third time, feeling with my hands, and the story was all true,
and I wished that the years were gone by, and that I had not so long a
time to wait before I was happy for ever and ever.
Nurse must have been a prophet like those we read of in the Bible.
Everything that she said began to come true, and since then other things
that she told me of have happened. That was how I came to know that her
stories were true and that I had not made up the secret myself out of my
own head. But there was another thing that happened that day. I went a
second time to the secret place. It was at the deep brimming well, and
when I was standing on the moss I bent over and looked in, and then I
knew who the white lady was that I had seen come out of the water in the
wood long ago when I was quite little. And I trembled all over, because
that told me other things. Then I remembered how sometime after I had
seen the white people in the wood, nurse asked me more about them, and I
told her all over again, and she listened, and said nothing for a long,
long time, and at last she said, 'You will see her again.' So I
understood what had happened and what was to happen. And I understood
about the nymphs; how I might meet them in all kinds of places, and they
would always help me, and I must always look for them, and find them in
all sorts of strange shapes and appearances. And without the nymphs I
could never have found the secret, and without them none of the other
things could happen. Nurse had told me all about them long ago, but she
called them by another name, and I did not know what she meant, or what
her tales of them were about, only that they were very queer. And there
were two kinds, the bright and the dark, and both were very lovely and
very wonderful, and some people saw only one kind, and some only the
other, but some saw them both. But usually the dark appeared first, and
the bright ones came afterwards, and there were extraordinary tales
about them. It was a day or two after I had come home from the secret
place that I first really knew the nymphs. Nurse had shown me how to
call them, and I had tried, but I did not know what she meant, and so I
thought it was all nonsense. But I made up my mind I would try again, so
I went to the wood where the pool was, where I saw the white people, and
I tried again. The dark nymph, Alanna, came, and she turned the pool of
water into a pool of fire....