When the birds fly south

by Stanton A. Coblentz

"Friends," he was saying, "we have reached the season of the great flight.... The auguries are propitious ... we may take advantage of them whenever the desire is upon us.... Yulada will help us, and Yulada commands...." At this point there was much that I could not gather, since Hamul-Kammesh spoke in lower tones, with his head bowed as though in prayer.... "The time of yellow leaves and of cold winds is upon us. Soon the rain will come down in showers from the gray skies; soon the frost will snap and bite; soon all the land will be desolate and deserted. Prepare yourselves, my people, prepare!—for now the trees make ready for winter, now the herbs wither and the earth grows no longer green, now the bees and butterflies and fair flowers must depart until the spring—and now the birds fly south, the birds fly south, the birds fly south!"

The last words were intoned fervently and with emphatic slowness, like a chant or a poem; and it seemed to me that an answering emotion swept through the audience. But on and on Hamul-Kammesh went, on and on, speaking almost lyrically, and sometimes driving up to an intense pitch of feeling. More often than not I could not understand him, but I divined that his theme was still the same; he still discoursed upon the advent of autumn, and the imminent and still more portentous advent of winter....

After Hamul-Kammesh had finished, his audience threw themselves chests downward on the ground, and remained thus for some minutes, mumbling unintelligibly to themselves. I observed that they all faced in one direction, the south; and I felt that this could not be attributed merely to chance.

Then, as though at a prearranged signal, all the people simultaneously arose, reminding me of a church-meeting breaking up after the final prayer. Yet no one made any motion to leave; and I had an impression that we were nearer the beginning than the end of the ceremonies. This impression was confirmed when Hamul-Kammesh began to wave his arms before him with a bird-like rhythm, and when, like an orchestra in obedience to the band-master, the audience burst into song.

I cannot say that the result pleased me, for there was in it a weird and barbarous note; yet at the same time there was a certain wild melody ... so that, as I listened, I came more and more under the influence of the singing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice not of individuals but of a people, a people pouring forth its age-old joys and sorrows, longings and aspirations. But how express in words the far-away primitive quality of that singing?—It had something of the madness and abandon of the savage exulting, something of the loneliness and long-drawn melancholy of the wolf howling from the midnight hilltop, something of the plaintive and querulous tone of wild birds calling and calling on their way southward.

After the song had culminated in one deep-voiced crescendo, it was succeeded by a dance of equal gusto and strangeness. Singly and in couples and in groups of three and four, the people leapt and swayed in the wavering light; they flung their legs waist-high, they coiled their arms snake-like about their bodies, they whirled around like tops; they darted forward and darted back again, sped gracefully in long curves and spirals, tripped from side to side, or reared and vaulted like athletes; and all the while they seemed to preserve a certain fantastic pattern, seemed to move to the beat of some inaudible rhythm, seemed to be actors in a pageant whose nature I could only vaguely surmise. As they flitted shadow-like in the shadowy background or glided with radiant faces into the light and then back into the gloom, they seemed not so much like sportive and pirouetting humans as like dancing gods; and the sense came over me that I was beholding not a mere ceremony of men and women, but rather a festival of wraiths, of phantoms, of cloudy, elfin creatures who might flash away into the mist or the firelight.

Nor did I lose this odd impression when at intervals the dance relaxed and the dancers lay on the ground recovering from their exertions, while one of them would stand in the blazing light chanting some native song or ballad. If anything, it was during these intermissions that I was most acutely aware of something uncanny. It may, of course, have been only my imagination, for the recitations were all of a weird nature; one poem would tell of men and maidens that vanished in the mists about Yulada and were seen no more; another would describe a country to which the south wind blew, and where it was always April, while many would picture the wanderings of migrant birds, or speak of bodiless spirits that floated along the air like smoke, screaming from the winter gales but gently murmuring in the breezes of spring and summer.

For some reason that I cannot explain, these legends and folk-tales not only filled my mind with eerie fancies but made me think of one who was quite human and real. I began to wonder about Yasma—where was she now? What part was she taking in the celebration? And as my thoughts turned to her, an irrational fear crept into my mind—what if, like the maidens described in the poems, she had taken wing? Smiling at my own imaginings, I arose quietly from my couch of grass, and slowly and cautiously began to move about the edge of the crowd, while scanning the nearer forms and faces. In the pale light I could scarcely be distinguished from a native; and, being careful to keep to the shadows, I was apparently not noticed. And I had almost circled the clearing before I had any reason to pause.

All this time I had seen no sign of Yasma. I had almost given up hope of finding her when my attention was attracted to a solitary little figure hunched against a cabin wall in the dimness at the edge of the clearing. Even in the near-dark I could not fail to recognize her; and, heedless of the dancers surging and eddying through the open spaces, I made toward her in a straight line.

I will admit that I had some idea of the unwisdom of speaking to her tonight; but my impatience had gotten the better of my tongue.