And then, as a pleasant means of shifting the burden, I suggested, "But maybe you'll show me how, Yasma. Maybe you'll show me by telling something about yourself."
"Do you really want to know?"
"There is nothing that interests me more."
"Very well," she assented, after an instant's hesitation. "I will tell you from the beginning."
And, with a reflective smile, she related, "I was born here in the Valley of Sobul, seventeen summers ago. I have two brothers and three sisters—but I won't say anything about them, because you're going to meet them some day. When I was born, a strange prophecy was made by the soothsayer, Hamul-Kammesh"—here she paused, and the trace of a frown came over her face—"but I won't say anything about that, either."
At this point, of course, I interrupted and insisted on knowing about the prophecy, which, I suspected, was connected with the prediction she had already mentioned. But she would neither confirm my surmise nor deny it.
"When I was five summers old," she went on, "I suffered a great misfortune. My mother, whom I remember only as a kind spirit who came to me long ago in a dream, was taken away by the genii of the wind and snowstorms, and went to live with the blessed ones on the highest peak of that range which meets the stars. Ever since that time, I have been lonely. I have often stood looking up above our tallest mountains, up above Yulada to the mountains of the clouds, and wondered if she might be there, gazing down and hearing the prayers I spoke to her in my heart. But she never seemed to see me, and never seemed to hear. And as I grew up, my brothers and sisters would go off playing by themselves, and I would be left to myself—but I would not always care, for I loved to be alone with the mountains and trees. I would go chasing butterflies all afternoon; or I would scramble up the mountainside, picking wild fruits and berries and laughing to see the little squirrels go jumping out of my path; or I would watch the clouds riding through the sky, and imagine that they were fairy boats bearing me away to strange and wonderful lands. But sometimes I would be frightened, when I heard some big beast rustle in the bushes; and once I saw the face of a great staring black bear, and ran down the mountain so fast I nearly fell over a cliff; and once I almost trod on a coiling snake, but the good spirits of the mountain were with me, because if it had bitten me you would not see me now."
Yasma paused, a dreamy glow in her lustrous brown eyes. And before she could continue I put a question which, I fancied, might shed a ray on some perplexing problems.
"You are telling me only about the summers. How was it in the wintertime, when the blizzards shrieked and the snow fell, and you were cooped up in your log cabin?"
It seemed to me that a curious light, half happy and half melancholy, came into her eyes as she murmured, "Ah, the winters, the winters—until now I have never worried about them. They were always the best time of all."