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Nathaniel was frightened. He realized that he was alone at dead of night in
the Elfin Marches. And the moon kept playing tricks on him, turning trees and
boulders into goblins and wild beasts; cracking her jokes, true humourist that
she was,
with a solemn impassive face. But, how was this? She was a waxing moon, and
almost full, while the night before  or what he supposed was the night before
 she had been a half moon on the wane.
Had he left time behind him in Dorimare?
Then suddenly, like some winged monster rushing from its lair, there sprang up
a mighty wind. The pines creaked and rustled and bent beneath its onslaught,
the grasses whistled, the clouds flocked together and covered the face of the
moon.
Several times he was nearly lifted from his saddle. He drew his cloak closely
round him, and longed, with an unspeakable longing, for his warm bed in Lud;
and it flashed into his mind that what he had so often imagined in that bed,
to enhance his sense of well-being, was now actually occurring  he was tired,
he was cold, and the wind was finding the fissures in his doublet.
Suddenly, as if some hero had slain the monster, the wind died down, the moon
sailed clear of the clouds, and the pines straightened themselves and once
more stood at attention, silent and motionless. In spite of this, his horse
grew strangely restive, rearing and jibbing, as if something was standing
before it in the path that frightened it; and in vain Master Nathaniel tried
to quiet and sooth it.
Then it shuddered all over and fell heavily to the ground.
Fortunately, Master Nathaniel was thrown clear, and was not hurt, beyond the
inevitable bruises entailed by the fall of a man of his weight. He struggled
to his feet and hurried to his horse. It was stone dead.
For some time he sat beside it . . . his last link with Lud and familiar
things; as yet too depressed in mind and aching in body to continue his
journey on foot.
But what were those sudden strains of piercingly sweet music, and from what
strange instrument did they proceed? They were too impersonal for a fiddle,
too passionate for a flute, and much too sweet for any pipes or timbrels. It
must be a human  or superhuman  voice, for now he was beginning to
distinguish the words.
"There are windfalls of dreams, there's a wolf in the stars, And Life is a
nymph who will never be thine, With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweet-brier, And bon-fire, And strawberry-wire, And columbine."
The voice stopped, and Master Nathaniel buried his face in his hands and
sobbed as if his heart would break.
In this magically sweet music once more he had heard the Note. It held, this
time, no menace as to things to come; but it aroused in his breast an
agonizing tumult of remorse for having allowed something to escape that he
would never, never recapture. It was as if he had left his beloved with harsh
words, and had returned to find her dead.
Through his agony he was conscious of a hand laid on his shoulder: "Why,
Chanticleer! Old John o'
Dreams! What ails you? Has the cock's crow become too bittersweet for
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Chanticleer?" said a voice, half tender and half mocking, in his ear.
He turned round, and by the light of the moon saw standing behind him  Duke
Aubrey.
The Duke smiled. "Well, Chanticleer," he said, "so we meet at last! Your
family has been dodging me down the centuries, but some day you were bound to
fall into my snares. And, though you did not know it, you have been working
for some time past as one of my secret agents. How I laughed when you and
Ambrose Honeysuckle pledged each other in words taken from my Mysteries! And
little did you think, when you stood cursing and swearing at the door of my
tapestry-room, that you had pronounced the most potent charm in Faerie," and
he threw back his head and broke into peal upon peal of silvery laughter.
Suddenly his laughter stopped, and his eyes, as he looked at Master Nathaniel,
became wonderfully compassionate.
"Poor Chanticleer! Poor John o' Dreams!" he said gently. "I have often wished
my honey were not so bitter to the taste. Believe me, Chanticleer, I fain
would find an antidote to the bitter herb of life, but none grows this side of
the hills  or the other."
"And yet . . . I have never tasted fairy fruit," said Master Nathaniel in a
low broken voice.
"There are many trees in my orchard, and many and various are the fruit they
bear  music and dreams and grief and, sometimes, joy. All your life,
Chanticleer, you have eaten fairy fruit, and some day, it may be, you will
hear the Note again  but that I cannot promise. And now I will grant your a
vision
 they are sometimes sweet to the taste."
He paused. And then he said, "Do you you know why it was that your horse fell
down dead? It was because you had reached the brink of Fairyland. The winds of
Faerie slew him. Come with me, Chanticleer."
He took Master Nathaniel's hand and dragged him to his feet, and they
scrambled a few yards further up the bridle-path and stepped on to a broad
plateau. Beneath them lay what, in the uncertain moonlight, looked like a
stretch of desolate uplands.
Then Duke Aubrey raised his arms high above his head and cried out in a loud
voice, "By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!"
At these words the uplands became bathed in a gentle light and proved to be
fair and fertile  the perpetual seat of Spring; for there were vivid green
patches of young corn, and pillars of pink and white smoke, which were fruit
trees in blossom, and pillars of blue blossom, which was the smoke of distant
hamlets, and a vast meadow of cornflowers and daisies, which was the great
inland sea of Faerie. And everything  ships, spires, houses  was small and
bright and delicate, yet real. It was not unlike
Dorimare, or rather, the transfigured Dorimare he had once seen from the
Fields of Grammary. And as he gazed he knew that in that land no winds ever
howled at night, and that everything within its borders had the serenity and
stability of trees, the unchanging peace of pictures.
Then, suddenly, it all vanished. Duke Aubrey had vanished too, and he was
standing alone on the edge of a black abyss, while wafted on the wind came the
echo of light, mocking laughter. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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