Allan and the Ice Gods (25 page)

fear that she would shoot a curse at them with a glance of those dark

eyes, whispered debate broke out among them as, huddled together, they

followed on her footsteps.

“She is a very ugly witch,” said one woman, “who has hair the colour

of sunlight and such long arms.”

“I wish you were as ugly,” answered her husband rudely, and thus the

argument began to rage, all the women and some of the old men holding

that she was vile to look on, while the young men, also the children

as soon as they grew used to the sight of her, thought her beautiful.

“Where will Wi take her?” asked one.

“Nowhere,” answered Urk the Aged, “because she will vanish away,” and

as the point was disputed, hastily invented a tale.

His grandfather, he said, had been told by
his
grandfather that such

a witch as this, probably the same witch, since witches never grew

old, had visited the tribe, coming to the shore standing upon an ice

floe that was pushed by white bears with their noses. Knowing her for

what she was, the people had tried to kill her with stones, but when

they threw the stones, these fell back upon their heads and killed

them; also the bears attacked them. So she came ashore and sat in the

cave for six days singing, till the chief’s son, a bold and dissolute

youth, fell in love with her and tried to kiss her, whereon she turned

him into a bear and, mounting on his back, went out into the sea again

and was no more seen.

Now some believed this tale and some did not, yet it worked well for

Laleela, since all made up their minds that they would be on the safe

side and neither try to stone nor to kiss this witch, lest they also

should be turned into bears or otherwise come to harm.

When they drew near to the cave, Aaka and Moananga overtook them, also

Tana, who, having spread the news, had rejoined her husband, very

breathless.

“What are you going to do with the witch, Husband?” Aaka asked,

looking at her sideways.

“I am not sure,” he answered, then added in a hesitating voice,

“Perhaps you, Wife, would take her into our old hut, seeing that now

you sleep in the cave and are only there during the day.”

“Not so,” answered Aaka firmly. “Have I not enough troubles that I

should add a witch to them? Also, now that the winter is gone, I, who

hate that cave and the crying of the children, intend to sleep in the

hut again.”

Wi bit his lip and stood thinking.

“Brother,” broke in Moananga, “we have two huts side by side and in

the second one only keep our food. This sea-woman might live in it

and–-”

He got no further for Tana cut him short:

“What are you saying, Husband?” she asked. “That hut is needed for the

dried fish, the firewood, and the nets, also by me for the cooking of

our food.”

Then Wi walked on, leaving Moananga and Tana disputing. At the mouth

of the cave stood those women who tended the girl children that would

have been cast out to perish but were saved under Wi’s new law. Some

of these were young and nursed the children at the breast, while

others were old and widows, who watched them when the nurses were not

there. Addressing them, Wi bade them choose one of their number to

wait upon and cook for this stranger from the sea. They heard, they

looked at the stranger, and then they ran away, into the cave or

elsewhere, so that Wi saw no more of them. Now Wi turned to Pag and

said:

“All things have happened as you told me, and the women refuse her

from the sea who is named Laleela and comes we know not whence. What

is to be done?”

Pag spat upon the ground; Pag stared upward with his one eye, Pag

looked at Laleela and at Wi. Then he answered:

“When a cord is knotted and cannot be unravelled, the best thing is to

cut it through and knit up the ends afresh. Take the witch into the

cave and look after her yourself, Wi, as Aaka and the others will not

receive her and she cannot be left to starve. Or if this does not

please you, kill her, if she can be killed.”

“Neither of these things will I do,” answered Wi. “Into the cave she

cannot come because of my oath. Starve she shall not, for who could

refuse food even to a dog that creeps hungry to the hut door? Kill her

I will not; it would be murder and bring the sky onto our heads.”

“Yes, Wi; though if she were old and hideous the sky might remain

where it is, since, perhaps, for an ancient hag it would not fall. But

as all these things are so, what next?”

“This, Pag. Take her to the hut of Rahi who is dead. Command some of

my servants, men, not women, to make it ready for her, to light fire

and to furnish food from my store. Then go you and dwell in the

outhouse against the hut which was Rahi’s workshop where he shaped

flints and the place where he kept his goods and traded in them, and

by day and night be the guard of this beautiful one whom the gods have

sent to us.”

“So I am to become a witch’s nurse. Well, I thought that would be the

end of the story,” said Pag.

Thus it came about that Laleela the Beautiful One, who had risen from

the sea, went to dwell in the hut of Rahi, the dead miser, and there

was tended by Pag the dwarf, the hater of women. Without a word she

went, patiently submitting to all things as one who feels herself to

be swept along by the stream of Fate, and waits for it to bear her

whither it will, caring little how that journey might end. Pag, too,

went patiently to fulfil his strange and unaccustomed task of guard

and servant to one whom all the tribe held to be a witch, providing

for her needs, teaching her the customs of the people, and protecting

her from every harm. All these things he did, not only to please Wi,

but for a certain reason of his own. He, who saw farther than the

rest, except perhaps Wi himself, understood from the first that this

woman was no witch, but one of some people unknown to them. He saw

also that this unknown people had many arts which were strange to him,

and he desired to learn these arts, also where they lived and

everything else about them. Of what was the blue cloak made? How came

it that the stranger woman travelled across the sea in a hollowed log,

and how was that log made fit to bear her? What knowledge was hid in

her which she could not utter because her tongue was different? All

these things and many others Pag, who was athirst for wisdom, desired

to learn. Therefore, when Wi commanded him to be the guide and

companion of Laleela, the Risen-from-the-Sea, he obeyed without a

word.

Strange was the life of Laleela. There she sat in the hut and cooked

the food that Pag brought to her after new fashions that were unknown

to him. Or sometimes she walked abroad, followed and guarded by Pag,

taking note of the ways of the people, and after she had learned

these, up and down upon the beach with her eyes ever fixed upon the

sea, looking southward.

Or when the weather was bad, by signs she caused Pag to give her

dressed skins and sinews, also splinters of ivory from the tusks of

the walrus. These splinters she fashioned into needles, boring an eye

in the head of them with a sharp and heated flint, and threading the

sinews through them, began to sew in a fashion such as Pag had never

seen. Of this sewing he told the women of the tribe who, gathering in

front of the hut, watched her with amazement and later prayed Pag to

ask of the witch to make them needles like her own, which she did,

smiling, till there was no more ivory.

Then Pag, since he could not understand hers, began to teach her his

own language, which she learned readily enough, especially after Wi

came to join in the lessons. Within two moons, indeed, she could ask

for what she wanted and understand what was said to her, and within

four, being quick and clever, could talk the tongue of the people well

enough, if but slowly.

Thus, at last it came about that Wi and Pag learned as much of her

history as she chose to tell them which was but little. She said that

she was the daughter of a Great One, the ruler of a tribe that could

not be counted, who lived far away to the south. This tribe for the

most part dwelt in houses that were built upon tree-trunks sunk into

the mud in the waters of a lake, though some of them made their homes

upon the shores of the lake. Fish and game were their food; also they

cultivated certain herbs the seeds of which they gathered and ate,

after grinding them between stones and making them into a paste that

they cooked in clay heated with fire. They had implements also, and

weapons of war beautifully fashioned from flint, ivory, and the horns

of deer, and they wove cloth such as that of her garments from the

wool of tame beasts and dyed it with the juices of herbs, different

from those that bore the seeds which they ate.

Moreover, where they lived, although much rain fell, the sun shone

more brightly and the air was warmer than here in the home of the

tribe.

To all of these tales, gathered painfully word by word, Wi and Pag

listened with wonder, then at last Wi asked:

“How comes it, O Woman Laleela, that you left a land where you were so

great and where you lived in such plenty and comfort?”

“I left it because of one I hated and because of a dream,” they

understood her to answer.

“Why did you hate this one and what was the dream?” asked Wi.

She paused a while as though to master his question, which she seemed

to be translating in her mind, then answered:

“The one I hated was my father’s brother. My father was going away”

(by this she meant dying), “the brother wished to marry me and become

king. I hate him. Taking boat with much food, I row down river to the

sea at night.”

Wi nodded to show that he understood, and asked again:

“But what of the dream?”

“The dream told me to go north,” she replied, “a great wind blow me

north for days and days, till I fall asleep and you find me.”

“Why did the dream tell you to go north?” asked Wi, with the help of

Pag.

She shook her head and answered with a set face:

“Ask of the dream, O Wi.” Nor would she say any more.

From this time forward, Laleela began to learn the language of the

tribe very fast, so that soon she could speak it quite well, for she

was quick and clever, and Pag, who was also clever, taught her

continually. In the evenings, when his work was done, Wi would come to

her hut and, sitting there with Pag, he asked her many things about

her people and her country. In answer, she told him that it was much

warmer than his own, though there was a great deal of rain if little

snow; also that it lay a long way off, for she had been days and

nights in the boat driven by the gale before she fell asleep.

“Could you find your way home?” asked Wi.

“I think so,” she answered, “because all the time I was seldom out of

the sight of the shore, and I marked the headlands and know the

mountains between which the river runs that leads to my country. I

mean that I should know all this if once I were out of the ice that

floats upon your sea. For it was after I passed the last headland and

came across open water into the ice, that I fell asleep.”

“Then that headland cannot be so very far away,” said Wi, “for if it

were, the cold would have been your death before I found you.”

So this talk ended, but Wi thought much of it afterward, and often he

and Pag spoke together of the matter.

A little while later Laleela began to grow restless and to say that

she lacked work, she who had been a big woman among her people with

much to do.

Pag thought over her words for a while, then, one day when Wi was out

upon some business, he took her to the cave and showed her the little

girl infants which were nurtured there, telling her their story: how

they had been cast out to perish, or rather how they would have been

cast out had it not been for Wi’s new law.

“Your mothers are very cruel,” she said. “In my country, she who did

this would herself be cast out.”

Then she took up some of the infants and, after looking them all over,

said that they were ill-tended as though by hirelings, and that two of

them were like to die.

“Several have died,” said Pag.

Now, although they did not see him, Wi, having returned to the cave,

stood in the shadow watching them and listening to their talk.

Presently he stepped forward and said:

“You are right, Laleela, these babes need more care. After the first

few weeks their mothers neglect them, I think to show that they were

fated to die and that for this reason they wished to cast them out;

nor do the other women nurse them as they should. Yet I am helpless

who lack time to see to the business, and when I complain, find all

the women leagued against me. Will you help me with these children,

Laleela?”

“Yes, Wi,” she answered, “though if I do so the women of your tribe

will become even more bitter against me than they are now. Why does