Chapter XVIII
Whenever I recall my sorrows and misfortunes in Sobul, I am tormented also by happy memories that wound like fresh trials. And foremost among those memories I place my first few months with Yasma. If a cloud hovered over our betrothal and a deeper cloud descended upon our marriage day, the skies became immediately blue again once the wedding festival was over. The consternation produced in Yasma's mind by the meteor proved to be only temporary; if she ever remembered it again, she did not mention the fact; and if she had any remaining scruples regarding Yulada and the righteousness of our marriage, she kept her doubts to herself. To me she was all sweetness, kindness and devotion; a new radiance seemed to have overspread her countenance, and her face shone with a richer and more beautiful light than ever; while all her movements were imbued with the grace and airiness of one at once perfectly carefree and perfectly unspoiled.
So potently had Yasma woven her spell over me that for the time I was a convert to the ways of Sobul. As the Ibandru lived, so I lived; momentarily I had almost forgotten that I was the son of civilized lands. Each morning I would go forth with Karem and Barkodu to till the fields; and each noon and evening I would return to a home where skilled feminine hands had prepared a tasteful meal. Sometimes, when the work on the farms was not too pressing, I would join the tribesmen in day-long expeditions across the mountains, expeditions in which Yasma would always take part; sometimes there would be holidays when I would go fishing with Karem or roaming the woods with Yasma; and in the evenings, except in the infrequent event of rain, I would take part with the others in the village sports, running and wrestling, dancing and singing, competing in the games, or merely sitting about the campfire exchanging reminiscences.
Now at last I was accepted almost as a native of Sobul. My marriage to a daughter of the tribe apparently made the people think of me as an Ibandru by adoption; yes, even though in some ways I was still a stranger, and though the people still were silent when I questioned them as to their autumnal flight. If any of them recalled Hamul-Kammesh's original prophecy, and in particular the omen of the fireball, they were careful to keep their recollections quiet; and even if they had their fears, they cherished no personal resentment—for was it not Yulada herself who had showed me the way to Sobul? Was it not by her will that I was remaining?
Certainly, it seemed to suit the pleasure of Yulada that I should linger here indefinitely. The way to the outer world was still unknown; no visitors came to Sobul, and in my wanderings among the mountains I had discovered no sign of human life and no road that gave promise of leading toward civilization. Not that I would have left if I could; to go away without Yasma would have been unthinkable; and to go with her would have been as difficult as it was dangerous. Yet I kept wondering if I was to spend my remaining days in this primitive valley; and I had more than an occasional day-dream of finding some previously unobserved mountain pass and making my way with Yasma toward some civilized settlement.
But as yet, in the happiness of my young wedded life, such thoughts troubled me very little. No one in my country was half so dear to me as Yasma; and all the friends I had left, the habits I had abandoned and the work I had lost could not weigh in the scales against her. And so for a while I merely toyed with the thought of escape; and even had it seemed possible to extricate myself from the wilderness of Sobul, I should scarcely have stirred to make the attempt. Months passed, and all remained as it had been; the hot days came, and the woods were densely green again with the summer foliage; the fruit of the orchards swelled and ripened, the plum was dyed a rich purple, and the face of the peach was delicately pink. But Yasma and I, in our enchanted retreat, scarcely noted the passing of the weeks, scarcely were aware that we were drifting on a slow tide toward the end of bliss. At times, indeed, some prematurely yellowing leaf or some field newly prepared for the harvest, would bring an uncomfortable premonition of autumn; at times the sight of Yulada perched inscrutably upon the peak would awaken unpleasant reminders of the past winter and still more unpleasant reminders of the winter to come. But mostly I managed to thrust such thoughts from me, to live in the enjoyment of the present moment, and to feel that the present moment was to endure. I was only deceiving myself with phantoms!—alas, I did not succeed in deceiving myself completely!—and now and then, when the veil was momentarily lifted, I was aware that a shadow still brooded above me, that for the moment it was dim and far-away, but that it would return, return as certainly as the days would grow frosty and the birds fly south once more!
I had been in Sobul more than a year when my worst forebodings seemed about to be fulfilled. The days were again on their decline; the unharvested fields once more lay ripe before the reaper; a chill began to creep into the air of evenings, and the landscape was occasionally blurred with mist; the wild fruits and nuts were falling in the forest, and the squirrels were laying up their winter supplies; the woods began to take on a ragged lining of brown and yellow and premature golden, and more than an occasional leaf was fluttering down in early deference to the fall.
Then came October; and with October I grew aware, as a year before, of an undercurrent of excitement in the village. Once more the youths and maidens had seemingly lost interest in their noisy evening pastimes; once more the people were growing restless and uneasy; once more they bore the aspect of waiting, of waiting for some imminent and momentous event.
Even Yasma did not escape the general anxiety. At times I observed a far-away look in her eyes, a melancholy that I could not quite fathom; and at such moments she would seek to avoid my presence. At other times she would burst without apparent cause into fits of weeping, and would cling to me, and beg me to forgive her if she could not do her duty and were not a good wife. But always it seemed futile to question her; for did I not surmise what the trouble was? Could I forget that the season of cold winds was at hand?
Not until the first southward flight of the birds did my fears crystallize. It was as if this event, the occasion for wild rejoicing among the Ibandru, signalized the close of my idyllic life with Yasma. On a day of wind and gathering cloud, when the first triangle of living dots came soaring from across the mountains and out of sight beyond Yulada, it seemed as if the birds were speeding away with my hopes. Just as a year before, the entire village became tumultuously excited, and abandoned all other occupations to watch the winged travelers; and, as a year before, a great firelight celebration was held, in which all the tribe participated, and over which Abthar and Hamul-Kammesh presided.
But although the ceremonies of a year ago were almost duplicated, I did not find this festival so interesting as the former. Rather, I found it terrifying, for it brought me visions of deserted cabins and snow-clad mountainsides, and seemed to impose a dismal gulf between Yasma and me.
To reassure myself, I sought to stay at Yasma's side during the celebration. But somehow she slipped away, much as last year; and I could find no trace of her until late that night I discovered her in our cabin with moist face, and eyes that even by the flickering firelight seemed swollen and red.
"Yasma!" I cried. "What is the matter?"
For a moment she did not reply, but looked at me with large smoldering eyes. Then tenderly she came to me, placed her hands upon my shoulders, and murmured, "I was thinking of you, my beloved, thinking of you here all alone when the cold winds blow and the days grow gray and empty, and there is no one, no one to take care of you!"
Overcome by her own words, she gave way to sobbing.
And I, faced with the inevitable, could only put the question I had put so many times before. "But could you not stay with me here, Yasma? Could you not—"
"No, no, no!" she interrupted, in the midst of her tears. "I could not, could not! Yulada would not permit it!"
"Not even for me?" I entreated, as one might entreat a favor of a refractory child.
"Not even for you! Could I make my heart stop beating for you? Could I cease breathing and still live because you wished it of me? No, no, no, do not ask me to change my nature!"
"I would not ask you to change your nature, Yasma," I assured her gently, as I took her again into my arms. "But I love you so much, my dearest, so much that I can hardly bear to think of being parted from you."
"Or I to be parted from you!"
Mastered once more by her emotion, she turned from me, wringing her hands.
A long, silent moment intervened before she faced me again. But when she did turn to me, her face was more composed, and her eyes shone with new resolution.
"Let us try to be brave, my beloved," she urged. "I will stay with you here a while yet; will stay as long as Yulada permits. And what if, after I go, the winter must come?—it will pass, and the green leaves will grow again, and the snow will melt on the mountainsides; and I will come back, come back with the first northward-flying birds!"
She paused, and smiled in melancholy reassurance. But I did not reply, and the smile quickly faded; and she continued, pleadingly, "Remember, my beloved, when you asked me to marry you, you said you were willing to lose me half the year. You promised, or I could never have consented. So why are you not willing now?"
"Yes, I did promise," I admitted, with a groan. "I did promise, and I know I should be willing. But how different things seemed then! How much harder to lose you after all these months together! Why, Yasma, I must lose you without even knowing where you're going! At least, you might tell me that! How would you feel if I went away and you didn't know where?"
As always before, my pleas had no effect except to bring the tears to Yasma's eyes.
"Do you not think I would tell you if I could?" she asked, gently and sadly. "But Yulada would not permit it, and I dare not lift my voice against her. I could not if I would. For there are things we cannot describe, and things that can be known only to those that share in them. Could you expect the wild dove to tell you of its flight? Could you expect the eagle to make known the joy it feels when it sails into the sun?"
"Oh, but you are not as the eagle or the dove!" I protested.
"Why do you think we are not?" she returned, with a curious smile.
At this query I was struck by a fancy so wild that even now I hesitate to mention it: the thought that Yasma and her people were not wholly human! that for half the year they walked the earth as men and women, and for the other half sailed the sky as birds! Nor did this notion seem quite so absurd as it would have appeared before my arrival in Sobul. Here in this world-forsaken valley, with its periodically migrating inhabitants, anything at all seemed possible; even the supernatural appeared to lose its remote and fabulous glow. And so, for an instant, I had the impression that something unearthly enveloped Yasma, even Yasma, my wife! And once again, as on first coming to Sobul, I experienced the sense of otherworldly forces at work all about me, forces that had Yasma in their keeping and were bound to wrest her from me, no matter how I might groan and struggle, no matter how I might cry out and entreat and reach forth my arms and call and call after her dwindling form!