“My friend did not know why he went, or how he went, or where he went. They came to a place in the mountains, but it was a strange place, and strange mountains—my friend could not describe that place. It was a place in our mountains, but such a place as no man had ever seen. There were trees that were alive; it was all my friend could say. There were many souls of trees about him, and they were ora, and among them was their king, who is the king of the ora. He stood before the king of the ora.
“The king looked at him and said, ‘Will you marry my daughter?’ And he said, ‘No.’
“The king said to him:‘My daughter has seen you. My daughter wishes to be your wife. She will be a good wife to you. She will bring you great happiness. She is my daughter, a lady ora.’
“My friend said: ‘I thank you. Your daughter is very beautiful and very good. But I do not wish to marry.’
“The king of the ora said, ‘If you will marry my daughter you will have all the heart desires. I will make you rich in the things that men call riches in the Land of the Eagle.’
“My friend said: ‘I am a poor man. I am not a bey of the south, of the land of the Toshk, but I am a Gheg, a man of the mountains. All that I need I earn with my hands, and that is enough. I do not wish to marry.’
“Then the king of the ora rose, and he was not angry, but he was very terrible. He said, ‘Marry my daughter.’
“And my friend married his lady daughter.”
The man of Ipek seemed to think that the story was ended. But I, who had been scribbling all this down in my notebook, hidden in the shadow of Rexh, as Perolli translated it to me paragraph by paragraph, did not agree with him at all. “What happened?” I wanted to know.
“Nothing happened. His family came into the empty house and he was gone, leaving his gun on the wall and the empty coffee cup by the dead ashes of the fire. They were very much afraid. My friend had not told any man but me about the visit of the ora three years before, and I said nothing. Some days went over the tops of the mountains, and no one knew where he had gone. Then he came back, and brought with him his wife, the ora.”