The Thulski are a tall, mysterious race of prophets, known only in Empskutia, who attain to an unknown age. Many of them cannot even remember their own boyhood. These prophets are reverenced by all the people. As year after year is added to their life, they grow thin, dark, and shrivelled, like mummies. The skin is dry and hangs loose about the bones. The hair is long and white, and every year adds to its length and its whiteness, while the eyes seem blacker and more piercing. They wear very high black caps, square, and carry in the hand a peculiar flower, a snow-white flower, having five petals, which grows in secret places, and which, even if found, no other person ever dare to pluck, lest its peculiar smell should work a charm upon them. None but the Thulski themselves know when and where the Thulski die. If they have graves they are unknown graves, though it is a common belief in the country that the mysterious white-petalled flower blooms only in their burial-places. During life they live apart from all others, seldom speaking, even when mingled in the busy crowd.
The order of the Thulski is kept up in this way. Their chief, clad in long dark robes, wanders silently the streets, and when, among the children at play, he discovers one who has some peculiar mark about him,—the nature of this mark is unknown,—he beckons, and the child follows him. Must follow him. For that silent beckoning joins him to their order. He is from that moment a Thulsk, and has no wish to escape.
Now, although to be a Thulsk is to be certain of long life, yet no mother desires this fate for her child, but, on the contrary, children are warned against them, and have among themselves a secret sign, a rapid motion of the fingers, which means “scatter!” And if, when they are at play, the white-haired prophet is seen, though even at a great distance, this sign is rapidly made, and the little flock disappears so instantly, one would suppose the earth had swallowed them. You will see, before my melancholy story is finished, what all this has to do with Hyladdu’s misfortune.
As I was saying, when he had attained the age of eighty-one days,—eighty-one being the third multiple of three,—his parents, according to the custom of the Empskutians, summoned one of these prophets to the cradle of their child, that his fortunes might be foretold.
The weird, shrivelled old Thulsk, with his flowing white hair, wrapped his dark robes about him, and sat silently at the low cradle, gazing upon the sleeping child. At length he arose, with a look of sorrow, and would have departed without uttering a single word.
“Speak! speak!” cried the father.
“Ah, do not speak!” murmured the mother; for she perceived that the prophet foresaw evil. “Yet speak, yes, speak!” she cried. “Let us know the worst, that we may prepare ourselves.”
The prophet then made a reply, of which these five words are a translation:—
“Sorrow cometh sufficiently soon. Wait!”
But, on being very earnestly entreated, he disclosed that before the beautiful infant attained his sixth year—six being the double of three—he would sustain injuries from a fall, by which either his mind or his body would be blighted. Which, it was not given him to say. He added that it grieved him to still further disclose that he himself would be in some way connected with the child’s misfortune, though in what way even his prophetic vision could not foresee.