The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison [best e reader for academics txt] 📗

bearing east and a little north across the moor, falling because of the strange harmony that was between outward things and the inward thoughts of his heart into a deep study. So came he to the moor’s end, and entered among the skirts of the mountains beyond, crossing low passes, threading a way among woods and watercourses, up and down, about and about. The horse led him which way that he would, for no heed nor advice had he of aught about him, for cause of the deep contemplation that he had within himself.

It was now high noon. The horse and his rider were come to a little dell of green grass with a beck winding in the midst with cool water flowing over a bed of shingle. About the dell grew many trees both tall and straight. Above the trees high mountain crags a-bake in the sun showed ethereal through the shimmering heat. A murmur of waters, a hum of tiny wings flitting from flower to flower, the sound of the horse grazing on the lush pasture: there was nought else to hear. Not a leaf moved, not a bird. The hush of the summer noonday, breathless, burnt through with the sun, more awful than any shape of night, paused above that lonely dell.

Gro, as if waked by the very silence, looked quickly about him. The horse felt belike in his bones his rider’s unease; he gave over his feeding and stood alert with wild eye and quivering flanks. Gro patted and made much of him; then, guided by some inward prompting the reason whereof he knew not, turned west by a small tributary beck and rode softly toward the wood. Here he was stopped with a number of trees so thickly placed together that he was afraid he should with riding through be swept from the saddle. So he lighted down, tied his horse to an oak, and climbed the bed of the little stream till he was come whence he might look north over the treetops to a green terrace about at a level with him and some fifty paces distant along the hillside, shielded from the north by three or four great rowan trees on the far side of it, and on the terrace a little tarn or rock cistern of fair water very cool and deep.

He paused, steadying himself with his left hand by a jutting rock overgrown with rose-campion. Surely no children of men were these, footing it on that secret lawn beside that fountain’s brink, nor no creatures of mortal kind. Such it may be were the goats and kids and soft-eyed does that on their hind-legs merrily danced among them; but never such those others of manly shape and with pointed hairy ears, shaggy legs, and cloven hooves, nor those maidens white of limb beneath the tread of whose feet the blue gentian and the little golden cinquefoil bent not their blossoms, so airy-light was their dancing. To make them music, little goat-footed children with long pointed ears sat on a hummock of turf-clad rock piping on panpipes, their bodies burnt to the hue of red earth by the wind and the sun. But, whether because their music was too fine for mortal ears, or for some other reason, Gro might hear no sound of that piping. The heavy silence of the waste white noon was lord of the scene, while the mountain nymphs and the simple genii of sedge and stream and crag and moorland solitude threaded the mazes of the dance.

The Lord Gro stood still in great admiration, saying in himself, “What means my drowsy head to dream such fancies? Spirits of ill have I heretofore beheld in their manifestations; I have seen fantasticoes framed and presented by art magic; I have dreamed strange dreams a-nights. But till this hour I did account it an idle tale of poets’ faining, that amid woods, forests, fertile fields, seacoasts, shores of great rivers and fountain brinks, and also upon the tops of huge and high mountains, do still appear unto certain favoured eyes the sundry-sorted nymphs and fieldish demigods. Which thing if I now verily behold, ’tis a great marvel, and sorteth well with the strange allurements whereby this oppressed land hath so lately found a means to govern mine affections.” And he thought awhile, reasoning thus in his mind: “If this be but an apparition, it hath no essence to do me a hurt. If o’ the contrary these be very essential beings, needs must they joyfully welcome me and use me well, being themselves the true vital spirits of many-mountained Demonland; unto whose comfort and the restorement of her old renown and praise I have with such a strange determination bent all my painful thoughts and resolution.”

So on the motion he discovered himself and hailed them. The wild things bounded away and were lost among the flanks of the hill. The capripeds, leaving on the instant their piping or their dancing, crouched watching him with distrustful startled eyes. Only the Oreads still in a dazzling drift pursued their round: quiet maiden mouths, beautiful breasts, slender lithe limbs, hand joined to delicate hand, parting and closing and parting again, in rhythms of unstaled variety; here one that, with white arms clasped behind her head where her braided hair was as burnished gold, circled and swayed with a languorous motion; here another, that leaped and paused hovering a-tiptoe, like an arrow of the sun shot through the leafy roof of an old pine-forest when the warm hill-wind stirs the treetops and opens a tiny window to the sky.

Gro went toward them along the grassy hillside. When he was come a dozen paces the strength was gone from his limbs. He kneeled down crying out and saying, “Divinities of earth! deny me not, neither reject me, albeit cruelly have I till now oppressed your land, but will do so no more. The footsteps of mine overtrodden virtue lie still as bitter accusations unto