When the birds fly south

by Stanton A. Coblentz

While such thoughts blundered through my mind, I tried to keep occupied by kindling some dry branches and oak logs in the great open fireplace. But my broodings persisted, and would not be stilled even after a wavering golden illumination filled the cabin. Outside, the storm still moaned like a band of driven souls in pain; and the uncanny fancy came to me that lost spirits were speaking from the gale; that the spirits of the Ibandru wandered homelessly without, and that Yasma, even Yasma, might be among them! Old folk superstitions, tales of men converted into wraiths and of phantoms that appeared as men, forced themselves upon my imagination; and I found myself harboring—and, for the moment, almost crediting—notions as strange as ever disturbed the primitive soul. What if the Ibandru were not human after all? Or what if, human for half the year, they roamed the air ghost-like for the other half? Or was it that, like the Greek Persephone, they must spend six months in the sunlight and six months in some Plutonian cave?

Preposterous as such questions would formerly have seemed, they did not impress me as quite absurd as I sat alone on the straw-covered floor of my log cave, gazing into the flames that smacked their lean lips rabidly, and listening to the gale that rushed by with a torrential roaring. Like a child who fears to have strayed into a goblin's den, I was unnerved and unmercifully the prey of my own imagination; I could not keep down the thought that there was something weird about my hosts. Now, as rarely before during my exile, I was filled with an overpowering longing for home and friends, for familiar streets, and safe, well-known city haunts; and I could almost have wept at the impossibility of escape. Except for Yasma—Yasma, whose gentleness held me more firmly than iron chains—I would have prayed to leave this dreary wilderness and never return.

Finally, in exhaustion as much of the mind as of the body, I sank down upon my straw couch, covered myself with my goatskin coat, and temporarily lost track of the world and its vexations. But even in sleep I was not to enjoy peace; confused dreams trailed me through the night; and in one, less blurred than the others, I was again with Yasma, and felt her kiss upon my cheek, wonderfully sweet and compassionate, and heard her murmur that I must not be sad or impatient but must wait for her till the spring. But even as she spoke a dark form intruded between us, and sealed our lips, and forced her away until she was no more than a specter in the far distance. And as in terror I gazed at the dark stranger, I recognized something familiar about her; and with a cry of alarm, I awoke, for the pose and features were those of Yulada!

Hours must have passed while I slept; the fire had smoldered low, and only one red ember, gaping like a raw untended wound, cast its illumination across the cabin. But through chinks in the walls a faint gray light was filtering in, and I could no longer hear the wind clamoring.

An hour or two later I arose, swallowed a handful of dried herbs by way of breakfast, and forced open the cabin door. It was an altered world that greeted me; the clouds had rolled away, and the sky, barely tinged with the last fading pink and buff of dawn, was of a pale, unruffled blue. But a white sheet covered the ground, and mantled the roofs of the log huts, and wove fantastic patterns over the limbs of leafless bushes and trees. All things seemed new-made and beautiful, yet all were wintry and forlorn—and what a majestic sight were the encircling peaks! Their craggy shoulders, yesterday bare and gray and dotted with only an occasional patch of white, were clothed in immaculate snowy garments, reaching far heavenward from the upper belts of the pines, whose dark green seemed powdered with an indistinguishable spray.

But I tried to forget that terrible and hostile splendor; urged by a hope that gradually flickered and went out, I made a slow round of the village. At each cabin I paused, peering through the window or knocking at the unbolted door and entering; and at each cabin I sank an inch nearer despair. As yet, of course, I had had no proof that I was altogether abandoned—might there not still be some old man or woman, some winter-loving hunter or doughty watchman, who had been left behind until the tribe's return in the spring? But no man, woman or child stirred in the white spaces between the cabins; no man, woman or child greeted me in any of the huts.... All was bare as though untenanted for months; and here an empty earthen pan or kettle hanging on the wall, there a dozen unshelled nuts forgotten in a corner, yonder a half-burnt candle or a cracked water jug or discarded sandal, were the only tokens of recent human occupancy.

It was but natural that I should feel most forlorn upon entering Yasma's cabin. How mournfully I gazed at the walls her eyes had beheld a short twenty-four hours before! and at a few scattered trifles that had been hers! My attention was especially caught by a little pink wildflower, shaped like a primrose, which hung drooping in a waterless jar; and the odd fancy came to me that this was like Yasma herself. Tenderly, urged by a sentiment I hardly understood, I lifted the blossom from the jar, pressed it against my bosom, and fastened it securely there.

The outside world now seemed bright and genial enough. From above the eastern peaks the sun beamed generously upon the windless valley; and there was warmth in his rays as he put the snow to flight and sent little limpid streams rippling across the fields. But to me it scarcely mattered whether the sun shone or the gale dashed by. Now there was an irony in the sunlight, an irony I resented even as I should have resented the bluster of the storm. Yet, paradoxically, it was to sunlit nature that I turned for consolation, for what but the trees and streams and soaring heights could make me see with broader vision? Scornful of consequences, I plodded through the slushy ground to the woods; and roaming the wide solitudes, with the snow and the soggy brown leaves beneath and the almost denuded branches above, I came to look upon my problems with my first trace of courage.

"This too will pass," I told myself, using the words of one older and wiser than I. And I pictured a time when these woods would be here, and I would not; pictured even a nearer time when I should roam them with laughter on my lips. What after all were a few months of solitude amid this magnificent world?

In such a mood I began to warm my flagging spirits and to plan for the winter. I should have plenty to occupy me; there were still many cracks and crannies in my cabin wall, which I must fill with clay; there was still much wood to haul from the forest; there were heavy garments to make from the skins supplied by the natives; and there would be my food to prepare daily from my hoard in the cabin, and my water to be drawn from the stream that flowed to the rear of village. Besides, I might be able to go on long tours of exploration; I might amuse myself by examining the mountain strata, and possibly even make some notable geological observations; and I might sometime—the thought intruded itself slyly and insidiously—satisfy my curiosity by climbing to Yulada.