_The Grey Tent in the Evening_
On the day that the hunted unicorn crossed the valley of Erl Alveric had
wandered for over eleven years. For more than ten years, a company of
six, they went by the backs of the houses by the edge of the fields we
know, and camped at evenings with their queer material hung greyly on
poles. And whether or not the strange romance of their quest mirrored
itself in all the things about them, those camps of theirs seemed always
the strangest thing in the landscape; and as evening grew greyer around
them their romance and mystery grew.
And for all the vehemence of Alveric's ambition they travelled leisurely
and lazily: sometimes in a pleasant camp they stayed for three days;
then they went strolling on. Nine or ten miles they would march and then
they would camp again. Someday, Alveric felt sure in his heart, they
would see that border of twilight, someday they would enter Elfland. And
in Elfland he knew that time was not as here: he would meet Lirazel
unaged in Elfland, with never one smile lost to the raging years, never
a furrow worn by the ruin of time. This was his hope; and it led his
queer company on from camp to camp, and cheered them round the fire in
the lonely evenings, and brought them far to the North, travelling all
along the edge of the fields we know, where all men's faces turned the
other way, and the six wanderers went unseen and unheeded. Only the mind
of Vand hung back from their hope, and more and more every year his
reason denied the lure that was leading the rest. And then one day he
lost his faith in Elfland. After that he only followed until a day when
the wind was full of rain, and all were cold and wet and the horses
weary; he left them then.
And Rannok followed because he had no hope in his heart and wished to
wander from sorrow; until one day when all the blackbirds were singing
in trees of the fields we know, and his hopelessness left him in the
glittering sunshine, and he thought of the cosy homes and the haunts of
men. And soon he too passed out of the camp one evening and set off for
the pleasant lands.
And now the four that were left were all of one mind, and under the wet
coarse cloth that they hung on poles there was deep content in the
evenings. For Alveric clung to his hope with all the strength of his
race, that had once won Erl in old battles and held it for centuries
long, and in the vacant minds of Niv and Zend this idea grew strong and
big, like some rare flower that a gardener may plant by chance in a wild
untended place. And Thyl sung of the hope; and all his wild fancies that
roamed after song decked Alveric's quest with more and more of glamour.
So all were of one mind. And greater quests whether mad or sane have
prospered when this was so, and greater quests have failed when it was
otherwise.
They had gone northwards for years along the backs of those houses; and
then one day they would turn eastwards, wherever a certain look in the
sky or a touch of weirdness at evening, or a mere prophecy of Niv's,
seemed to suggest a proximity of Elfland. Upon such occasions they would
travel over the rocks, that for all those years lay bordering the fields
we know, until Alveric saw that provisions for men and horses would
barely bring them back to the houses of men. Then he would turn again,
but Niv would have led them still onward over the rocks, for his
enthusiasm grew as they went; and Thyl sang to them prophesying success;
and Zend would say that he saw the peaks and the spires of Elfland; only
Alveric was wise. And so they would come to the houses of men again, and
buy more provisions. And Niv and Zend and Thyl would babble of the
quest, pouring out the enthusiasm that burned in their hearts; but
Alveric did not speak of it, for he had learned that men in those fields
neither speak of nor look towards Elfland, although he had not learned
why.
Soon they were on again, and the folk that had sold them the produce of
fields we know gazed curiously after them as they went, as though they
thought that from madness alone or from dreams inspired by the moon came
all the talk they had heard from Niv and Zend and Thyl.
Thus they always travelled on, always seeking new points from which to
discover Elfland; and on the left of them blew scents from the fields we
know, the scent of lilac from cottage gardens in May, and then the scent
of the white-thorn and then of roses, till all the air was heavy with
new-mown hay. They heard the low of cattle away on their left, heard
human voices, heard partridges calling; heard all the sounds that go up
from happy farms; and on their right was always the desolate land,
always the rocks and never grass nor a flower. They had the
companionship of men no more, and yet they could not find Elfland. In
such a case they needed the songs of Thyl and the sure hope of Niv.
And the talk of Alveric's quest spread through the land and overtook his
wanderings, till all men that he passed by knew his story; and from some
he had the contempt that some men give to those who dedicate all their
days to a quest, and from others he had honour; but all he asked for was
provender, and this he bought when they brought it. So they went on.
Like legendary things they passed along the backs of the houses, putting
up their grey shapeless tent in the grey evenings. They came as quietly
as rain, and went away like mists drifting. There were jests about them
and songs. And the songs outlasted the jests. At last they became a
legend, which haunted those farms for ever: they were spoken of when men
told of hopeless quests, and held up to laughter or glory, whichever men
had to give.
And all the while the King of Elfland watched; for he knew by magic when
Alveric's sword drew near: it had troubled his kingdom once, and the
King of Elfland knew well the flavour of thunderbolt iron when he felt
it loom on the air. From this he had withdrawn his frontiers far,
leaving all that ragged land deserted of Elfland; and though he knew not
the length of human journeys, he had left a space that to cross would
weary the comet, and rightly deemed himself safe.
But when Alveric with his sword was far to the North the Elf King
loosened the grip with which he had withdrawn Elfland, as the Moon that
withdraws the tide lets it flow back again, and Elfland came racing back
as the tide over flat sands. With a long ribbon of twilight at its edge
it floated back over the waste of rocks; with old songs it came, with
old dreams, and with old voices. And in a while the frontier of
twilight lay flashing and glimmering near the fields we know, like an
endless Summer evening that lingered on out of the golden age. But bleak
and far to the North where Alveric wandered the limitless rocks still
heaped the desolate land; only to fields from which he and his sword and
his adventurous band were remotely gone that mighty inlet of Elfland
came lapping back. So that close again to the leather-worker's cottage
and to the farms of his neighbours, a bare three fields away, lay the
land that was heaped and piled with all the wonder for which poets seek
so hard, the very treasury of all romantic things; and the Elfin
Mountains gazed over the border serenely, as though their pale-blue
peaks had never moved. And here the unicorns fed along the border as it
was their custom to do, feeding sometimes in Elfland, which is the home
of all fabulous things, cropping lilies below the slopes of the Elfin
Mountains, and sometimes slipping through the border of twilight at
evening when all our fields are still, to feed upon earthly grass. It is
because of this craving for earthly grass that comes on them now and
then, as the red deer in Highland mountains crave once a year for the
sea, that, fabulous though they are on account of their birth in
Elfland, their existence is nevertheless known among men. The fox, which
is born in our fields, also crosses the frontier, going into the border
of twilight at certain seasons; it is thence that he gets the romance
with which he comes back to our fields. He also is fabulous, but only in
Elfland, as the unicorns are fabulous here.
And seldom the folk on those farms saw the unicorns, even dim in the
gloaming, for their faces were turned forever away from Elfland. The
wonder, the beauty, the glamour, the story of Elfland were for minds
that had leisure to care for such things as these; but the crops needed
these men, and the beasts that were not fabulous, and the thatch, and
the hedges and a thousand things: barely at the end of each year they
won their fight against Winter: they knew well that if they let a
thought of theirs turn but for a moment towards Elfland, its glory would
grip them soon and take all their leisure away, and there would be no
time left to mend thatch or hedge or to plough the fields we know. But
Orion lured by the sound of the horns that blew from Elfland at evening,
and that some elvish attuning of his ears to magical things caused him
alone in all those fields to hear, came with his hounds to a field
across which ran the frontier of twilight, and found the unicorns there
late on an evening. And, slipping along a hedge of the little field with
his hounds padding behind him, he came between a unicorn and the
frontier and cut it off from Elfland. This was the unicorn that with
flashing neck, covered with flecks of foam that shone silvery in the
starlight, panting, harried and weary, came across the valley of Erl,
like an inspiration, like a new dynasty to a custom-weary land, like
news of a happier continent found far-off by suddenly returned
sea-faring men.