shadows in a deep forest glade which are dryads half-tempted to reveal themselves? I thought of them as she came toward us.
She was a dark girl, and a tall girl. Her eyes were brown under long black lashes, the clear brown of the mountain brook in autumn; her hair was black, the jetty hair that in a certain light has a sheen of darkest blue. Her face was small, her features certainly neither classic nor regular — the brows almost meeting in two level lines above her small, straight nose; her mouth was large but finely cut, and sensitive. Over her broad, low forehead the blue-black hair was braided like a coronal Her skin was clear amber. Like polished fine amber it shone under the loose, yet clinging, garment that clothed her, knee-long, silvery, cobweb fine and transparent. Around her hips was the white loin-cloth of the Little People. Unlike them, her feet were sandalled.
But it was the grace of her that made the breath catch in your throat as you looked at her, the long flowing line from ankle to shoulder, delicate and mobile as the curve of water flowing over some smooth breast of rock, a liquid grace of line that changed with every movement.
It was that — and the life that bumed in her like the green flame of the virgin forest when the kisses of spring are being changed for the warmer caresses of summer. I knew now why the old Greeks had believed in the dryads, the naiads, the nereids — the woman souls of trees, of brooks and waterfalls and fountains, and of the waves.
I could not tell how old she was — hers was the pagan beauty which knows no age.
She examined me, my clothes and boots, in manifest perplexity; she glanced at Jim, nodded, as though to say there was nothing in him to be disturbed about; then turned back to me, studying me. The small soldiers ringed her, their spears ready.
The little man and his woman had stepped forward. They were both talking at once, pointing to his breast, to my hand, to my yellow hair. The girl laughed, drew the little woman to her and covered her lips with a hand. The little man went on trilling and twittering.
Jim had been listening with a puzzled intensity whenever the girl had done the talking. He caught my arm.
“It’s Cherokee they’re speaking! Or something like it — Listen . . . there was a word . . . it sounded like ‘Yun’-wini’giski’ . . . it means ‘Man-eaters’. Literally, ‘They eat people’ . . . if that’s what it was . . . and look . . . he’s showing how the vines crawled down the cliffs . . . .”
The girl began speaking again. I listened intently. The rapid enunciation and the trilling made understanding difficult, but I caught sounds that seemed familiar — and now I heard a combination that I certainly knew.
“It’s some kind of Mongolian tongue, Jim. I got a word just then that means ‘serpent-water’ in a dozen different dialects.”
“I know — she called the snake ‘aha’nada’ and the Cherokees say ‘inadu’— but it’s Indian, not Mongolian.”
“It might be both. The Indian dialects are Mongolian. Maybe it’s the ancient mother-tongue. If we could only get her to speak slower, and tune down on the trills.”
“It might be that. The Cherokees called themselves ‘the oldest people’ and their language ‘the first speech’— wait —”
He stepped forward, hand upraised; he spoke the word which in the Cherokee means, equally, friend or one who comes with good intentions. He said it several times. Wonder and comprehension crept into the girl’s eyes. She repeated it as he had spoken it, then turned to the pygmies, passing the word on to them — and I could distinguish it now plainly within the trills and pipings. The pygmies came closer, staring up at Jim.
He said, slowly: “We come from outside. We know nothing of this place. We know none within it.”
Several times he had to repeat this before she caught it. She looked gravely at him, and at me doubtfully — yet as one who would like to believe. She answered haltingly.
“But Sri”— she pointed to the little man —“has said that in the water he spoke the tongue of evil.”
“He speaks many tongues,” said Jim — then to me:
“Talk to her. Don’t stand there like a dummy, admiring her. This girl can think — and we’re in a jam. Your looks make no hit with the dwarfs, Leif, in spite of what you did.”
“Is it any stranger that I should have spoken that tongue than that I now speak yours, Evalie?” I said. And asked the same question in two of the oldest dialects of the Mongolian that I knew. She studied me, thoughtfully.
“No,” she said at last —“no; for I, too, know something of it, yet that does not make me evil.”
And suddenly she smiled, and trilled some command to the guards. They lowered their spears, regarding me with something of the friendly interest they had showed toward Jim. Within the tower, the drums began to roll a cheerful tattoo. As at a signal, the other unseen drums which the shrill alarm had silenced, resumed their lilting rhythm.
The girl beckoned us. We walked behind her, the little soldiers ringing us, between a portcullis of thorn and the tower.
We passed over the threshold of the Land of the Little People and of Evalie.
CHAPTER IX.
THE GREEN LIGHT THAT FILLED THE SHADOWED-LAND WAS DARKENING. AS THE GREEN FOREST DARKENS AT DUSK. THE SUN MUST LONG SINCE HAVE DIPPED BENEATH THE PEAKS CIRCLING THAT ILLUSORY FLOOR WHICH WAS THE SKY OF THE SHADOWED-LAND. YET HERE THE GLOW FADED SLOWLY, AS THOUGH IT WERE NOT WHOLLY DEPENDENT UPON THE SUN, AS THOUGH THE PLACE HAD SOME LUMINOSITY OF ITS OWN.
We sat beside the tent of Evalie. It was pitched on a rounded knoll not far from the entrance of her lair within the cliff. All along the base of the cliff were the lairs of the Little People, tiny openings through which none larger than they could creep into the caves that were their homes, their laboratories, their workshops, their storehouses and granaries, their impregnable fortresses.
It had been hours since we had followed her over the plain between the watch-tower and her tent. The golden pygmies had swarmed from every side, curious as children, chattering and trilling, questioning Evalie, twittering her answers to those on the outskirts of the crowd. Even now there was a ring of them around the base of the knoll, dozens of little men and little women, staring up at us with their yellow eyes, chirping and laughing. In the arms of the women were babies like tiniest dolls, and like larger dolls were the older children who clustered at their knees.
Child-like, their curiosity was soon satisfied; they went back to their occupations and their play. Others, curiosity not yet quenched, took their places.
I watched them dancing upon the smooth grass. They danced in circling measures to the lilting rhythm of their drums. There were other knolls upon the plain, larger and smaller than that on which we were, and all of them as rounded and as symmetrical. Around and over them the golden pygmies danced to the throbbing of the little drums.
They had brought us little loaves of bread, and oddly sweet but palatable milk and cheese, and unfamiliar delicious fruits and melons. I was ashamed of the number of platters I had cleaned. The little people had only watched, and laughed, and urged the women to bring me more. Jim said, laughingly:
“It’s
