Outland

by Mary Austin

Herman and I, since no one seemed to regard us, thought of going down to revisit the meadow and the lovely open water below the Leap. But the expectant sense that brooded over the camp bound us to the consideration of what might be decided about us personally at the Council. If we looked afar at the sea rim, trying to make out at what point we were, we looked suddenly back to see if the councilors were not coming up the hill. If we heard a lark rising with its breast all brightening yellow from some grassy water border, we listened the more anxiously immediately to hear if any one had come to call us in to judgment.

When the shadows were gone far toward midday we heard what might have been the breaking out of bird songs low and urgently through all the open woodland. There was a sound of feet moving all together, and then some one calling us by name. The Council men were coming up from the Hollow and the Outliers crowded up to them to hear what they had to say. They said nothing whatever until we were all come into hearing, and ranged, the Far-Folk on one side and we on the other, on the crown of a hill, open, and having a large grassy space beyond it.

I thought then, and I have not since reconsidered it, that of all times the noon is the most solemn in which to deliver judgment. When all the earth is quiet, shadows folded up, no bird singing, no beast abroad, all the outer sense drowses under the sun glare. At such a time to hear a voice crying punishment and doom is more terrible than any hour of night. A convocation of wolves in the open sun would not have seemed more singular, but this was not a business which could await a gentler time.

We could see Persilope standing up, all expression beaten out of his face by the sun, like leaf under the gold beater’s hand. Presently when we were all well quieted, he began in a voice pitched for carrying, but toneless as the light, ordering some skins to be spread in the grassy space in front of him. Then it was ordered that all the Outliers who had anything of the King’s Desire should bring it to that place. The chief held up as he spoke, the circlet which he had taken from Oca’s head; and as he turned it in the sun, it melted and ran a ring of changing fire. When he had done speaking he cast it down with so much force that the setting, which was old and delicate, burst and sent the stones scattering like broken coals. There was a little pause after that, and then Noche, springing up from behind him, held up the King’s Cup, but neither so high nor so steadily. A little laggard of perception, as the very strong commonly are, the point of what Ravenutzi had said about the way in which he had come to learn the secret of the Treasure, had driven slowly to the old man’s brain. Now it troubled his countenance: his eyes were dark sockets between the drift of his brows and beard. He held up the vase in his hands.

“Cup of the Four Quarters,” he said, “O Cup of Tears!” His strength surged in him with the recollection; the bowl crumpled in his grip, he bent back the base upon the stem and dropped it on the ground.

After him came every man with what he had; armlets and buckles and chains of wrought and beaten gold and jewels, and the jeweled lamps and vessels. The heap grew; it glittered and darted pain into the eyes; it had green and blue and ruby gleams in it that winked and mocked the sun. When it was all in—all but the great rubies which lie still in a place known only to some few of us who are not likely to go there to fetch them—and the men had sat down again, Persilope began.

He spoke steadily and without passion, saying what was well known to them, that a curse was laid on whoever lifted the King’s Desire. But the truth was, the curse lay in the mere possession of it by whatever means; as if one should expect to keep a viper in his house and not himself be stung by it. Itlan had been destroyed for it, and all those of their own people who had kept the Treasure since, had purchased nothing but wars and trouble with it. All of which being within their knowledge and true, it was agreed for the safety of the Outliers to cast out the King’s Desire as men would a poison snake which they had found among the huts.

At this there was a spark, a quiver of expectancy among the Far-Folk. As if they imagined, eyeing it so greedily, that the treasure heap was to be handed over to them as it lay, not so very unlike the snake of his comparison, coiled glisteningly upon itself with red jeweled eyes.

Such an expectation, if it amounted to that, died with Persilope’s next sentence, which was, briefly, to the effect that for all these reasons it had been determined that when the Treasure was buried again, as it shortly would be, it was to be followed by a forgetfulness from which there would be no revival. It was to be forgetfulness of such a fashion—here he looked over at Ravenutzi and the bleakness of his delivery augmented—that there would be no picking of their brains afterward.

I could see that the news of this conclusion had already spread and been accepted by the Outliers. It was, perhaps, in the eye of all that had recently occurred, not strange they should accept it with so much gravity, and on the part of the women with some consternation.