"Not until the spring," she murmured, with such finality that I felt intuitively the uselessness of argument. "Not until the flowers come out from their winter hiding, and the birds fly north. Then you will know more about our tribe."
Without further explanation, she sprang impulsively from her seat of grass. "Come," she warned me, pointing to a gray mass that was obscuring the northern peaks. "Come, a storm is on the way! If we don't hurry, we'll be wet through and through!"
And she flitted before me toward the village with such speed that I could scarcely get another word with her.
Chapter X
THE IBANDRU TAKE WING
As October drifted by and November loomed within two weeks' beckoning, a striking change came over Sobul. The very elements seemed to feel and to solemnize that change, which was as much in the spirit of things as in their physical aspect; and the slow-dying autumn seemed stricken with a bitter foretaste of winter. Cold winds began to blow, and even in the seclusion of the valley they shrieked and wailed with demonic fury; torn and scattered clouds scudded like great shadows over granite skies, and occasionally gave token of their ill will in frantic outbursts of rain; ominous new white patches were forming about the peaks, to vanish within a few hours, and appear again and vanish once more; and daily the dead leaves came drifting down in swarms and showers of withered brown and saffron and mottled red, while daily the flocks of winged adventurers went darting and screeching overhead on their way beyond the mountains.
But the stormy days, with all the wildness and force and passionate abandon of wind and rain, were less impressive for me than the days of calm. Then, when the placid sky shone in unbroken blue, all nature seemed sad with a melancholy I had never felt among my native hills. There was something tragic about the tranquil, ragged forest vistas, shot through as with an inner light of deep golden and red, and standing bared in mute resignation to the stroke of doom. But there was something more than tragic; there was something spectral about those long waiting lines of trees, with their foliage that at times appeared to reflect the sunset, and at times seemed like the painted tapestries of some colossal dream pageant. More and more, as I gazed in a charmed revery at the gaudy death-apparel of the woods, I was obsessed with the sense of some immanent presence, some weird presence that hovered intangibly behind the smoldering autumn fires, some presence that I could not think of without a shudder and that filled me with an unreasonable awe.
Certainly my feelings, uncanny as they were, were to be justified only too fully by time. Already I had more than a suspicion that the season of southward-flying birds was a season of mystic meaning for the Ibandru, but little did I understand just how important it was. Only by degrees did realization force itself upon me; and then I could only gape, and rub my eyes, and ask if I were dreaming. Stranger than any tale I had ever read in the Arabian Nights, stranger than any fancy my fevered mind had ever beckoned forth, was the reality that set the Ibandru apart from all other peoples on earth.
As the weeks went by, the agitation I had noted among the natives was intensified rather than lessened. I was aware of a sense of waiting which grew until the very atmosphere seemed anxious and strained; and I observed that the men and women no longer went as usual about their tasks, but flitted to and fro aimlessly or nervously or excitedly, as though they had no definite place in the world and were hesitating on the brink of some fearful decision.