_On the Verge of Earth_
And on that day Orion rested his hounds. But the next day he rose early
and went to his kennels and loosened the joyous hounds in the shining
morning, and led them out of the valley and over the downs towards the
frontier of twilight again. And he took his bow with him no more, but
only his sword and his whip; for he had come to love the joy of his
fifteen hounds when they hunted the one-horned monster, and felt that he
shared the joy of every hound; while to shoot one with an arrow would be
but a single joy.
All day he went over the fields, greeting some farmer here and there, or
worker in the field, and gaining greetings in return, and good wishes
for sport. But when evening came and he was near the frontier, fewer and
fewer greeted him as he passed, for he was manifestly travelling where
none went, whence even their thoughts held back. So he went lonely, yet
cheered by his eager thoughts, and happy in the comradeship of his
hounds; and both his thoughts and his hounds were all for the chase.
And so he came to the barrier of twilight again, where the hedges ran
down to it from the fields of men and turned strange and dim in a glow
that is not of our Earth and disappeared in the twilight. He stood with
his hounds close in against one of these hedges just where it touched
the barrier. The light just there on the hedge, if like anything of our
Earth, was like the misty dimness that flashes upon a hedge, seen only
across one field, when touched by the rainbow: in the sky the rainbow is
clear, but close across one wide field the rainbow's end scarcely shows,
yet a heavenly strangeness has touched and altered the hedge. In some
such light as that glowed the last of the hawthorns that grew in the
fields of men. And just beyond it, like a liquid opal, all full of
wandering lights, lay the barrier through which no man can see, and no
sound come but the sound of the elfin horns, and only that to the ears
of very few. The horns were blowing now, piercing that barrier of dim
light and silence with the magical resonance of their silver note, that
seemed to beat past all things intervening to come to Orion's ear, as
the sunlight beats through ether to illumine the vales of the moon.
The horns died down, and nothing whispered from Elfland; and all the
sounds thenceforth were the sounds of an earthly evening. Even these
grew few, and still no unicorns came.
A dog barked far away: a cart, the sole sound on an empty road, went
homeward wearily: someone spoke in a lane, and then left the silence
unbroken, for words seemed to offend the hush that was over all our
fields. And in the hush Orion gazed at the frontier, watching for the
unicorns that never came, expecting each moment to see one step through
the twilight. But he had done unwisely in coming to the same spot at
which he had found the five unicorns only two days before. For of all
creatures the unicorns are the wariest, guarding their beauty from the
eye of man with never ceasing watchfulness; dwelling all day beyond the
fields we know, and only entering them rarely at evening, when all is
still, and with the utmost vigilance, and venturing even then scarcely
beyond the edges. To come on such animals twice at the same spot within
two days with hounds, after hunting and killing one of them, was more
unlikely than Orion thought. But his heart was full of the triumph of
his hunt, and the scene of it lured him back to it in the way that such
scenes have. And now he gazed at the frontier, waiting for one of these
great creatures to come proudly through, a great tangible shape out of
the dim opalescence. And no unicorn came.
And standing gazing there so long, that curious boundary began to lure
him till his thoughts went roaming with its wandering lights and he
desired the peaks of Elfland. And well they knew that lure who dwelt on
those farms lying all along the edge of the fields we know, and wisely
kept their eyes turned ever away from that wonder that lay with its
marvel of colours so near to the backs of their houses. For there was a
beauty in it such as is not in all our fields; and it is told those
farmers in youth how, if they gaze upon those wandering lights, there
will remain no joy for them in the goodly fields, the fine, brown
furrows or the waves of wheat, or in any things of ours; but their
hearts will be far from here with elfin things, yearning always for
unknown mountains and for folk not blessed by the Freer.
And standing now, while our earthly evening waned, upon the very edge of
that magical twilight, the things of Earth rushed swiftly from his
remembrance, and suddenly all his care was for elfin things. Of all the
folk that trod the paths of men he remembered only his mother, and
suddenly knew, as though the twilight had told him, that she was
enchanted and he of a magical line. And none had told him this, but he
knew it now.
For years he had wondered through many an evening and guessed where his
mother was gone: he had guessed in lonely silence; none knew what the
child was guessing: and now an answer seemed to hang in the air; it
seemed as though she were only a little way off across the enchanted
twilight that divided those farms from Elfland. He moved three steps and
came to the frontier itself; his foot was the furthest that stood in the
fields we know: against his face the frontier lay like a mist, in which
all the colours of pearls were dancing gravely. A hound stirred as he
moved, the pack turned their heads and eyed him; he stood, and they
rested again. He tried to see through the barrier, but saw nothing but
wandering lights that were made by the massing of twilights from the
ending of thousands of days, which had been preserved by magic to build
that barrier there. Then he called to his mother across that mighty gap,
those few paces of airy twilight lying over the fields, which had upon
one side Earth and the haunts of men, and the time that we measure by
minutes and hours and years, and upon the other Elfland and another way
of time. He called to her twice and listened, and called again; and
never a cry or a whisper came out of Elfland. He felt then the magnitude
of the gulf that divided him from her, and knew it to be vast and dark
and strong, like the gulfs that set apart our times from a bygone day,
or that stand between daily life and the things of dream, or between
folk tilling the Earth and the heroes of song, or between those living
yet and those they mourn. And the barrier twinkled and sparkled as
though so airy a thing never divided lost years from that fleeing hour
called Now.
He stood there with the cries of Earth faint in the late evening, behind
him, and the mellow glow of the soft earthly twilight; and before him,
close to his face, the utter silence of Elfland, and the barrier that
made that silence, gleaming with its strange beauty. And now he thought
no more of earthly things, but only gazed into that wall of twilight, as
prophets tampering with forbidden lore gaze into cloudy crystals. And to
all that was elvish in Orion's blood, to all that he had of magic from
his mother, the little lights of the twilight-builded boundary lured and
tempted and beckoned. He thought of his mother dwelling in lonely ease
beyond the rage of Time, he thought of the glories of Elfland, dimly
known by magical memories that he had had from his mother. The little
cries of the earthly evening behind him he heeded no more nor heard. And
with all these little cries were lost to him also the ways and the needs
of men, the things they plan, the things they toil for and hope for, and
all the little things their patience achieves. In the new knowledge that
had come to him beside this glittering boundary that he was of magical
blood he desired at once to cast off his allegiance to Time, and to
leave the lands that lay under Time's dominion and were ever scourged by
his tyranny, to leave them with no more than five short paces, and to
enter the ageless land where his mother sat with her father while he
reigned on his misty throne in that hall of bewildering beauty at which
only song has guessed. No more was Erl his home, no more were the ways
of man his ways: their fields to his feet no more! But the peaks of the
Elfin Mountains were to him now what welcoming eaves of straw are to
earthly labourers at evening; the fabulous, the unearthly, were to Orion
home. Thus had that barrier of twilight, too long seen, enchanted him;
so much more magical was it than any earthly evening.
And there are those that might have gazed long at it and even yet turned
away; but not easily Orion; for though magic has power to charm worldly
things they respond to enchantment heavily and slowly, while all that
was magic in Orion's blood flashed answer to the magic that shone in the
rampart of Elfland. It was made of the rarest lights that wander in air,
and the fairest flashes of sunlight that astonish our fields through
storm, and the mists of little streams, and the glow of flowers in
moonlight, and all the ends of our rainbows with all their beauty and
magic, and scraps of the gloaming of evenings long treasured in aged
minds. Into this enchantment he stepped to have done with mundane
things; but as his foot touched the twilight a hound that had sat behind
him under the hedge, held back from the chase so long, stretched its
body a little and uttered one of those low cries of impatience that
amongst the ways of man most nearly resembles a yawn. And old habit, at
that sound made Orion turn his head, and he saw the hound and went up to
him for a moment, and patted him and would have said farewell; but all
the hounds were around him then, nosing his hands and looking up at his
face. And standing there amongst his eager hounds, Orion, who but a
moment before was dreaming of fabulous things with thoughts that floated
over the magical lands and scaled the enchanted peaks of the Elfin
Mountains, was suddenly at the call of his earthly lineage. It was not
that he cared more to hunt than to be with his mother beyond the fret of
time, in the lands of her father lovelier than anything song hath said;
it was not that he loved his hounds so much that he could not leave
them; but his fathers had followed the chase age after age, as his
mother's line had timelessly followed magic; and the call towards magic
was strong while he looked on magical things, and the old earthly line
was as strong to beckon him to the chase. The beautiful boundary of
twilight had drawn his desires towards Elfland, next moment his hounds
had turned him another way: it is hard for any of us to avoid the grip
of external things.
For some moments Orion stood thinking among his hounds, trying to decide
which way to turn, trying to weigh the easy lazy ages, that hung over
untroubled lawns and the listless glories of Elfland, with the good
brown plough and the pasture and the little hedges of Earth. But the
hounds were around him, nosing, crying, looking into his eyes, speaking
to him if tails and paws and large brown eyes can speak, saying "Away!
Away!" To think amongst all that tumult was impossible; he could not
decide, and the hounds had it their way, and he and they went, together,
home over the fields we know.