...
VI.
As an apple tossed spinning into
the air, so spun the world above the hand that tossed it into space.
And one day in early spring,
Sé-só-Kah, the robin, awoke at dawn, and saw a girl at the
foot of the blossoming tree holding a babe cradled in the silken sheets
of her hair.
At its feeble cry, Kaug, the
porcupine, raised his quilled head. Wabosé, the rabbit, sat still
with palpitating sides. Kay-óshk, the gray gull, tiptoed along the
beach.
Kent knelt with one bronzed arm
around them both.
"1hó! Ina'h!" whispered
the girl, and held the babe up in the rosy flames of dawn.
But Kent trembled as he looked,
and his eyes filled. On the pale green moss their shadows lay-three shadows.
But the shadow of the babe was white as froth.
Because it was the firstborn
son, they named it Chaské; and the girl sang as she cradled it there
in the silken vestments ofher hair; all day long in the sunshine she sang:
Wa-wa, wA-wa, wA-we--yeA;
Kah-w~en, nee-zhe.ka Ke-diaus-Ai,
K&gAh nau-wAi, ne-m~go S'we~,
Ne-hAun, ne-hAun, ne-dAun-is
ais.
E-we wA-wa, wA-we-yeA;
E-we wA-wa, wA-we-yeA.
Out in the calm ocean, Shinge-bis,
the diver, listened, preening his satin breast in silence. In the forest,
Ta-hinca, the red deer, turned her delicate head to the wind.
That night Kent thought of the
dead, for the first time since he had come to the Key of Grief.
"Aké-u! aké-u!"
chirped Sé-só-Kah, the robin. But the dead never come again.
"Beloved, sit close to us," whispered
the girl, watching his troubled eyes. Ma-cAnte mas~ca."
But he looked at the babe and
its white shadow on the moss, and he only sighed: "Ma-cAnte mas~ca, beloved!
Death sits watching us across the sea."
Now for the first time he knew
more than the fear of fear; he knew fear. And with fear came grief.
He never before knew that grief
lay hidden there in the forest. Now he knew it. Still, that happiness,
eternally reborn when two small hands reached up around his neck, when
feeble fingers clutched his hand-that happiness that Sé-só-Kah
understood, chirping to his brooding mate-that Ta-mdóka knew, licking
his dappled fawns-that happiness gave him heart to meet griefcalmly, in~dreams
or in the forest depths, and it helped him to look into the hollow eyes
of fear.
He often thought of the camp
now; of Bates, his blanket mate; of Dyce, whose wrist he had broken with
a blow; of Tully, whose brother he had shot. He even seemed to hear the
shot, the sudden report among the hemlocks; again he saw the haze of smoke,
he caught a glimpse of a tall form falling through the bushes.
He remembered every minute incident
of the trial: Bates's hand laid on his shouldcr; Tully, red-bearded and
wild-eyed, demanding his death; while Dyce spat and spat and smoked and
kicked at the blackened log-ends projecting from the fire. He remembered,
too, the verdict, and Tully's terrible laugh; and the new jute rope that
they stripped off the market-sealed gum packs.
He thought of these things, sometimes
wading out on the shoals, shell-tipped fish spear poised: at such times
he would miss his fish. He thought of it sometimes when he knelt by the
forest stream listening for Ta-hinca's splash among the cresses: at such
moments the feathered shaft whistled far from the mark, and Ta-mdóka
stamped and snorted till even the white fisher, stretched on a rotting
log, flattened his whiskers and stole away into the forest's blackest depths.
When the child was a year old,
hour for hour notched at sunset and sunrise, it prattled with the birds,
and called to Ne-KA, the wild goose, who called again to the child from
the sky: "Northward! northward, beloved!"
When winter came there is no
frost on the Island of Grief-Ne-KA, the wild goose, passing high in the
clouds, called: "South-ward! southward, beloved!" And the child answered
in a soft whisper of an unknown tongue, till the mother shivered, and covered
it with her silken hair.
"0 beloved!" said the girl, "Chaské
calls to all things living---to Kaug, the porcupine, to Wabóse,
to Kay-óshk, the gray gull-he calls, and they understand."
Kent bent and looked into her
eyes.
"Hush, beloved; it is not that
I fear."
"Then what, beloved?"
"His shadow. It is white as surf
foam. And at night---I---I have seen---"
"Oh, what?"
"The air about him aglow like
a pale rose."
"Ma cânté maséca.
The earth alone lasts. I speak as one dying---I know, 0 beloved!"
Her voice died away like a summer
wind.
"Beloved!" he cried.
But there before him she was
changing; the air grew misty, and her hair wavered like shreds of fog,
and her slender form swayed, and faded, and swerved, like the mist above
a pond.
In her arms the babe was a figure
of mist, rosy, vague as a breath on a mirror.
"The earth alone lasts. Inâh!
It is the end, 0 beloved!"
The words came from the mist---a
mist as formless as the ether---a mist that drove in and crowded him, that
came from the sea, from the clouds, from the earth at his feet. Faint with
terror, he staggered forward calling, "Beloved! And thou, Chaské,
0 beloved! Aké u! Aké u!"
Far out at sea a rosy star glimmered
an instant in the mist and went out.
A sea bird screamed, soaring
over the waste of fog---smothered waters. Again he saw the rosy star; it
came nearer; its reflection glimmered in the water.
"Chaské!" he cried.
He heard a voice, dull in the
choking mist.
"0 beloved, I am here!" he called
again.
There was a sound on the shoal,
a flicker in the fog, the flare of a torch, a face white, livid, terrible---the
face of the dead.
He fell upon his knees; he closed
his eyes and opened them. Tully stood beside him with a coil of rope.
Ihó! Behold the end! The
earth alone lasts. The sand, the opal wave on the golden beach, the sea
of sapphire, the dusted starlight, the wind, and love, shall die. Death
also shall die, and lie on the shores of the skies like the bleached skull
there on the Key to Grief, polished, empty, with its teeth embedded in
the sand.
FINIS
