Though it was a relief to have returned to the fresh air of reality, Master Nathaniel was frightened. He realized that he was alone at dead of night in the Elfin Marches. And the moon kept playing tricks on him, turning trees and boulders into goblins and wild beasts; cracking her jokes, true humourist that she was, with a solemn impassive face. But, how was this? She was a waxing moon, and almost full, while the night before—or what he supposed was the night before—she had been a half moon on the wane.
Had he left time behind him in Dorimare?
Then suddenly, like some winged monster rushing from its lair, there sprang up a mighty wind. The pines creaked and rustled and bent beneath its onslaught, the grasses whistled, the clouds flocked together and covered the face of the moon.
Several times he was nearly lifted from his saddle. He drew his cloak closely round him, and longed, with an unspeakable longing, for his warm bed in Lud; and it flashed into his mind that what he had so often imagined in that bed, to enhance his sense of well-being, was now actually occurring—he was tired, he was cold, and the wind was finding the fissures in his doublet.
Suddenly, as if some hero had slain the monster, the wind died down, the moon sailed clear of the clouds, and the pines straightened themselves and once more stood at attention, silent and motionless. In spite of this, his horse grew strangely restive, rearing and jibbing, as if something was standing before it in the path that frightened it; and in vain Master Nathaniel tried to quiet and sooth it.
Then it shuddered all over and fell heavily to the ground.
Fortunately, Master Nathaniel was thrown clear, and was not hurt, beyond the inevitable bruises entailed by the fall of a man of his weight. He struggled to his feet and hurried to his horse. It was stone dead.
For some time he sat beside it ... his last link with Lud and familiar things; as yet too depressed in mind and aching in body to continue his journey on foot.
But what were those sudden strains of piercingly sweet music, and from what strange instrument did they proceed? They were too impersonal for a fiddle, too passionate for a flute, and much too sweet for any pipes or timbrels. It must be a human—or superhuman—voice, for now he was beginning to distinguish the words.
"There are windfalls of dreams, there's a wolf in the stars,