III
At midnight, when the whole isle lay in the full flood of the moon, Cathal stirred.
For three days and three nights he had been in that dark hollow, erect, wedged as a spear imbedded in the jaws of a dead beast. He had died thrice: with hunger, with thirst, with weariness. Then when hunger was slain in its own pain, and thirst perished of its own agony, and weariness could no more endure, he stirred with the death-throe.
“I die,” he moaned.
“Die not, O white one,” came a floating whisper, he knew not whence, though it was to him as though the crushing walls of oak breathed the sound.
“I die,” he gasped, and the froth bubbled upon his nether lip. With that his last strength went. No more could he hold his head above his shoulder, nor would his feet sustain him. Like a stricken deer he sank. So thin was he, so worn, that he slipt into a narrow crevice where dead leaves had been, and lay there, drowning in the dark.
Was that death, or a cold air about his feet, he wondered? With a dull pain he moved them: they came against no tree-wood—the coolness about them was of dewy moss. A wild hope flashed into his mind. With feeble hands he strove to sink farther into the crevice.
“I die,” he gasped, “I die now, at the last.”
“Die not, O white one,” breathed the same low sweet whisper, like leaves stirred by a nesting bird.
“Save, O save,” muttered the monk, hoarse with the death-dew.
Then a blackness came down upon him from a great height, and he swung in that blank gulf as a feather swirled this way and that in the void of an abyss.
When the darkness lifted again, Cathal was on his back, and breathing slow, but without pain. A sweet wonderful coolness and ease, that he knew now! Where was he? he wondered. Was he in that Pàras that Colum and Molios had spoken of? Was he in Hy Bràsil, of which he had heard Aodh the Harper sing? Was he in Tir-na’n-Òg, where all men and women are young for evermore, and there is joy in the heart and peace in the mind and delight by day and by night?
Why was his mouth so cool, that had burned dry as ash? Why were his lips moist, with a bitter-sweet flavour, as though the juice of fruit was there still?
He pondered, with closed eyes. At last he opened them, and stared upward. The profound black-blue dome of the sky held group after group of stars that he knew: was not that sword and belt yonder the sword-gear of Fionn? Yon shimmering cluster, were they not the dust of the feet of Alldai? That leaping green and blue planet, what could it be but the harp of Brigidh, where she sang to the gods?
A shadow crossed his vision. The next moment a cool hand was upon his eyes. It brought rest, and healing. He felt the blood move in his veins: his heart beat: a throbbing was in his throat.
Then he knew that he had strength to rise. With a great effort he put his weariness from off him, and staggered to his feet.
Cathal gave a low sob. A fair beautiful woman stood by him.
“Ardanna!” he cried, though even as the word leaped from his lips he knew that he looked upon no Pictish woman.
She smiled. All his heart was glad because of that. The light in her eyes was like the fire of the moon, bright and wonderful. The delicate body of her was pale green, and luminous as a leaf, with soft earth-brown hair falling down her shoulders and over the swelling breast; even as the small green mounds over the dead the two breasts were. She was clad only in her own loveliness, though the moonshine was about her as a garment.
“Like a green leaf, like a green leaf,” Cathal muttered over and over below his breath.
“Are you a dream?” he asked simply, having no words for his wonder.
“No, Cathal, I am no dream. I am a woman.”
“A woman? But ... but ... you have no body as other women have: and I see the moonbeam that is on your breast shining upon the moss behind you!”
“Is it thinking you are, poor Cathal, that there are no women and no men in the world except those who are in thick flesh, and move about in the suntide.”
Cathal stared wonderingly.
“I am of the green people, Cathal. We are of the woods. I am a woman of the woods.”
“Hast thou a name, fair woman?”
“I am called Deòin.”[6]
[6] Deo-uaine.
“That is well. Truly ‘Green Life’ is a good name for thee. Are there others of thy kin in this place?”
“Look!” and at that she stooped, lifted the dew of a white flower in the moonshine, and put it upon his eyes.
Cathal looked about him. Everywhere he saw tall fair pale-green lives moving to and fro: some passing out of trees, swift and silent as rain out of a cloud; some passing into trees, silent and swift as shadows. All were fair to look upon: tall, lithe, graceful, moving this way and that in the moonshine, pale green as the leaves of the lime, soft shining, with radiant eyes, and delicate earth-brown hair.
“Who are these, Deòin?” Cathal asked in a low whisper of awe.
“They are my people: the folk of the woods: the green people.”
“But they come out of trees: they come and they go like bees in and out of a hive.”
“Trees? That is your name for us of the woods. We are the trees.”
“You the trees, Deòin! How can that be?”
“There is life in your body. Where does it go when the body sleeps, or when the sap rises no more to heart or brain, and there is chill in the blood, and it is like frozen water? Is there a life in your body?”
“Ay, so. I know it.”
“The flesh is your body: the tree is my body.”
“Then you are the green life of a tree?”
“I am the green life of a tree.”
“And these?”
“They are as I am.”
“I see those that are men and those that are women, and their offspring too I see.”
“And some are crowned with pale flowers.”
“They love.”
“And hast thou no crown, Deòin, who art so fair?”
“Neither hast thou, Cathal, though thy face is fair. Thy body I cannot see, because thou hast a husk about thee.”
With a low laugh Cathal removed his raiment from him. The whiteness of his body was like a flower there in the moonshine.
“That shall not be against me,” he said. “Truly I am a man no longer, if thee and thine will have me as one of the wood-folk.”
At that Deòin called. Many green phantoms glided out of the trees, and others, hand-in-hand, flower-crowned, crossed the glade.
“Look, green lives,” Deòin cried in her sweet leaf-whisper, rising now like a wind-song among birchen boughs: “Look, here is a human. His life is mine, for I saved him. I have put the moonshine dew upon his eyes. He sees as we see. He would be one of us, for all that he has no tree for his body, but flesh, white over red.”
One who had moved thitherward out of an ancient oak looked at Cathal.
“Wouldst thou be of the wood-folk, man?”
“Ay, fain am I; for sure, for sure, O druid of the trees.”
“Wilt thou learn and abide by our laws, the first of which is that none may stir from his tree until the dusk has come, nor linger away from it when the dawn opens gray lips and drinks up the shadows?”
“I have no law now but the law of green life.”
“Good. Thou shalt live with us. Thy home shall be the hollow oak where thy kin left thee to die. Why did they do that evil deed?”
“Because I did not believe in the new gods.”
“Who are thy gods, man whom this green one here calls Cathal?”
“They are the Sun, and the Moon, and the Wind, and others that I will tell you of.”
“Hast thou heard of Keithoir?”
“No.”
“He is the god of the green world. He dreams, and his dreams are Springtide and Summertide and Appletide. When he sleeps without dream there is winter.”
“Have you no other god but this earth-god?”
“Keithoir is our god. We know no other.”
“If he is thy god, he is my god.”
“I see in the eyes of Deòin that she loves thee, Cathal the human. Wilt thou have her love?”
Cathal looked at the girl. His heart swam in light.
“Ay, if Deòin will give me her love, my love shall be hers.”
The Annir-Choille moved forward, and brushed softly against him as a green branch.
He put his arms around her. She had a cool, sweet body to feel. He was glad she was no moonshine phantom. The beating of her heart against his made a music that filled his ears.
Deòin stooped and plucked white, dewy flowers. Of these she wove a wreath for Cathal. He, likewise, plucked the white blooms, and made a coronal of foam for the brown wave of her hair.
Then, hand in hand, they fared slowly forth across the moonlit glade. None crossed their path, though everywhere delicate green lives flitted from tree to tree. They heard a wonderful sweet singing, aerial, with a ripple as of leaves lipping a windy shore of light. A green glamour was in the eyes of Cathal. The green fire of life flamed in his veins.