Allan and the Ice Gods

Chapter XII The Mother of the Cast-outs

The news spread fast—so fast that, when they reached the village, even from the huts that were farthest off, folk were rushing to look on this Witch–from–the–Sea whom Wi had found, for a witch they knew she must be, because they of the tribe were the only people who lived, or ever had lived, in the world. Of course, there was the Dead One who stood in the ice with the Sleeper, but if he were a man, of which they were not sure, doubtless he was one of their forefathers. Therefore this was no woman whom Wi and Pag brought with them, but a ghost or a spirit.

When they beheld her walking between the pair in such a calm and stately fashion, like a stag indeed, as one of them said, and noted her long yellow hair and the whiteness of her skin, her height, taller by a head than any of them except Aaka, and her wonderful blue cloak and other garments, the broidered sandals on her feet, the amber necklace on her breast and everything else about her, not forgetting her large, dark eyes, liquid and soft as a deer's yet somewhat scornful, then, of course, they knew that they were right and that this was in truth a witch, for no woman could look like that. They stared, they gaped, they pointed; some of the children ran away—here was proof of the worst—so did certain of the dogs that bounded forward barking, but on seeing and smelling that at which they barked, had turned tail and fled, as it was their custom to do from ghosts who pelted them with invisible stones. So, a dirty, unkempt, half–clothed crowd, they stared on while, guarded on either side like a captive by Wi and Pag, Laleela glided through them, glancing now to right and now to left with unchanging face and saying nothing.

At first they were silent; then, when she had passed and with her the 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 not your wife, Aaka, see to the matter?"

"If I walk one way, Aaka walks another," answered Wi sadly. "See now," he added, "I make you, Laleela, the Stranger–from–the–Sea, head nurse of these babes, with authority to do what you will for their welfare. This I will proclaim and with it my word that any who disobey you in your duty shall be punished."

So Laleela, the Witch–from–the–Sea, became the mother of the cast– outs, with other women set under her, and filled that office well. There she would sit by the fire among these little creatures, feeding them with such food as was known to this people, and in a low, sweet voice singing songs of her own country that were very pleasant to hear. At least, Wi thought them pleasant, for often he would come into the cave and, seated in the shadows, would watch and listen to her, thinking that she did not know he was there, though all the while she knew this well enough. At length, finding out that she knew, he came forward from the shadows, and, seated on a log of wood, would talk to her, who by now understood his language.

Thus he learned much for, though she would not speak about herself, in broken words she told him of her country and of how around it lived many other peoples with whom they made war or peace, which astonished him who had believed that the tribe were the only men upon the earth. Also, she told him and Pag of such simple arts as they practised, whereof these heard with wonder. But of why she fled from these folk of hers, trusting herself to the sea in an open boat to be driven wherever the winds would take her, she would or could tell him little. Moreover, when he asked her whether she wished to return to her own country, she answered that she did not know.

Then, after a while, Wi began to talk to her as a friend and to tell her of his own troubles, though of Aaka he said nothing at all. She listened, and at length answered that his sickness had no cure.

"You belong to this people, Chief," she said, "but are not of them. You should have been born of my people."

"In every company one walks quicker than the rest," answered Wi.

"Then he finds himself alone," said Laleela.

"Not so, because he must return to guide the others."

"Then, before the hilltop is gained, night will overtake them all," said Laleela.

"If a man gain that hilltop, what can he do by himself?"

"Look at the plains below and die. At least it is something to have been the first to see new things, and some day those who follow in his footsteps will find his bones."

From the time that Wi heard Laleela speak thus, he began to love her with his heart, and not only for her beauty's sake, as he had always done since first he looked upon her in the boat.

Soon Aaka noted all this and laughed at him.

"Why do you not take the witch to yourself, as it is lawful that you should do?" she asked, "for whoever heard of a chief with only one wife, I shall not be jealous of her, and you have but a single child left."

"Because she is far above me," he answered. "Moreover, I have sworn an oath upon this matter."

"That for your oath!" said Aaka, snapping her fingers.

Yet, when she spoke thus, Aaka did not tell all the truth. As a wife she was not jealous of Wi because of the customs of her people. Yet in other ways she was very jealous, because in old times she and no other had been his counsellor. Then she became bitter toward him because he set their children before her, and left him to go his own way. Thereon he turned to Pag and made a friend of him and hearkened to his words, and for this reason she hated Pag. Now the Witch–from–the–Sea had come with her new wisdom which he drank up as thirsty sand drinks up water, and, behold! she hated her even more than she had done Pag, not because she was fair but because she was clever.

Moreover, although he had liked Laleela well enough at first and guarded her as her friend, Pag began to hate her also, and for the same reason. The truth was that, notwithstanding his faults, which were many, Wi was one of those men who is beloved by all who are near to him, even when they do not understand him, so much so that those who love him grow jealous of each other. But this Wi himself never knew, any more than Pag did, that it was because he entered into the hearts of all, reading them and their joys and sorrows, that he drew the hearts of all after him.

So Wi made a friend of Laleela, telling her his troubles, and the closer he drew to her, the farther away moved Aaka and Pag. Laleela listened and advised and comforted, and being a woman, in her heart wondered why he did not come still nearer, though whether or not she would have been glad if he had, she did not know. At least, she would have wondered, had not Wi told her of the new law that he had made, under which, because women were so few among the tribe, no man might take more than one wife; and of the oath that he had sworn that this law he would keep himself, calling down upon his head the curse of the Ice–gods whom he worshipped, should he break it, and not on his own only, but also upon those of the people.

Now, Laleela did not believe in the Ice–gods because she was a Moon– worshipper. Yet she did believe that a curse invoked in the name of one god was just as terrible as that invoked in the name of another. In fact, she put more faith in the curse than she did in the gods, because, if the gods were invisible, always evil could be seen. Therefore, she was not angry because Wi, who was so near to her in mind, still remained as far away from her as though he were her brother, or her father; nor did she try to draw him closer as, had she wished, she knew well enough that she could do.

Meanwhile, it is to be told that this year all things went ill with the tribe. There was no spring, and when the time of summer came the weather remained so cold and sunless that always it felt as though snow were about to fall, while the wind from the east was so bitter that but little could grow. Moreover, only a few seals appeared from the south to breed, not enough to furnish the food of the people or their garments for the winter. With the ducks and other wild fowl, and the fish, especially the salmon, the story was the same, so that had it not been for the chance that four whales of the smaller sort, coming in with a high tide, were left stranded in the bay, which whales they cut up, preserving their flesh as best they could by smoking it, and otherwise, there would have been little for them to eat until the spring of another year.

At the cutting up of these whales, also at the collection of all food that could be found, Wi worked very hard. Yet the people who had been accustomed to plenty in the summer season, however tight they must draw their belts in winter, murmured and walked about with sullen, downcast faces, grumbling and asking each other why such trouble should come upon them, the like of which even Urk the Aged could not remember. Then a whisper began to run from ear to ear among them, that it was because the beautiful Witch–from–the–Sea had brought evil on them out of the sea, changing the face of heaven and driving away the seals and the fowls and the fish that would not come where no sun shone.

If she were gone, said the whisperers, the sun would shine again and the beasts and birds would return and their stomachs would be full and they could look up to the ridgepoles of their huts and see them bending beneath the weight of the winter food, as they used to do in the old days. Why could she not go back into the sea in her hollow log, or if she would not, why could she not be cast out thither living, or if need be—dead? Thus they said one to another by signs, or speaking in hints, but as yet, whatever he might guess, Wi knew nothing of their talk.