“Doubtless it had a bird or snake for guardian, and that spirit came and took it away again,” said Cheremi, and Perolli explained that when one buries a treasure one calls to some creature of the woods and intrusts the hoard to its care. “O spirit of the small gray serpent with poison in thy tooth, guard for me this treasure. Let no man see it for ten times ten years, and then deliver it only to those of my family,” would be a simple formula, but usually more imagination is used. For instance, Perolli knew of a man who called the large magpie to watch him bury his treasure, and he said to the bird, “Let no one uncover this gold until two black mice have dragged three times around this tree a carriage made of an acorn cup, with a small mouse in it.” But his incantation was overheard, and the crafty neighbor caught and dyed and trained the mice and made the carriage, and had them drag it three times around the tree, after which the magpie gave up the treasure. Otherwise it would have disappeared when a hand was laid upon it.
“But does Cheremi really believe these things?” I asked myself, and, looking at his serious face and Perolli’s, I was struck with the startling idea that Perolli believed them, too, in spite of his English suit and European education, and I felt in my own mind something like a soft landslide, uncovering possibilities of wild beliefs in myself. “Anything can happen in the mountains of Albania,” I said, picking up my staff and rising, for the shadows of the western mountains were already climbing up the cone-shaped pinnacle of Pog.
We went on, up and down the trail, over mountain after mountain that at home no one would dream of climbing. The rain fell again, bringing premature night down with the flood of water, and again we came into clear weather and saw all the colors of sunset on the clouds below and around us.
Many times we passed above villages that clung like mud-daubers’ nests on the cliffs below the trail, and once Cheremi stopped at the trail’s edge and, closing his ears firmly with his thumbs, sent out into the interminable miles of air the clear high note of the “telephone call.”
A voice from the depths responded, and, searching with our eyes, we discovered a white-and-black figure among the rocks some hundreds of feet below. Then this conversation ensued:
“Are you a man?”
“I am a woman of Shoshi, married in Pultit.”
“What is the name of your husband?”
“The name of my husband is Lulash.”
“Say to your husband, Lulash, that Cheremi is on the trail. Cheremi goes to Plani with four strangers from far away and with a Mohammedan youth of Scutari. To-night Cheremi will be in Plani. Say to Lulash that he may bring to Cheremi in Plani the hundred kronen which he owes him.”