Curious smiles flickered across their faces.
"No, it is not quite time yet for the women," one of them replied, as if reading my thoughts. "We men must come first to break the soil and put the village in readiness."
If I had been of no practical use to the Ibandru in the fall, I was to be plunged into continuous service this spring. Daily now I repeated that first afternoon's help I had lent Karem in the fields; and when I did not serve Karem himself, I aided one of his tribesmen, working from sunrise to sunset with occasional intervals of rest.
It was well that I had this occupation, for it tended to keep me sane. After three or four days, my uneasiness would have amounted to agony had my labors not provided an outlet. For I kept looking for one familiar form; and that form did not appear. More than twenty of the men had returned, but not a single woman or child; and I had the dull tormenting sense that I might not see Yasma for weeks yet.
This was the thought that oppressed me one morning when I began tilling a little patch of land near the forest edge. My implements were of the crudest, a mere shovel and spade to break the soil in primitive fashion; and as I went through the laborious motions, my mind was less on the task I performed than on more personal things. I could not keep from thinking of Yasma with a sad yearning, wondering as to her continued absence, and offering up silent prayers that I might see her soon again.
And while I bent pessimistically over my spade, a strange song burst forth from the woods, a bird-song trilling with the rarest delicacy and sweetness. Enchanted, I listened; never before had I heard a song of quite that elfin, ethereal quality. I could not recognize from what feathered minstrel it came; I could only stand transfixed at its fluted melody, staring in vain toward the thick masses of trees for a glimpse of the tiny musician.
It could not have been more than a minute before the winged enchantress fell back into silence; but in that time the world had changed. Its black hostility had vanished; a spirit of beauty surrounded me again, and I had an inexplicable feeling that all would be well.
And as I gazed toward the forest, still hopeful of seeing the sweet-voiced warbler, I was greeted by an unlooked-for vision.
Framed in a sort of natural doorway of the woods, where the pale green foliage was parted in a little arched opening, stood a slender figure with gleaming dark eyes and loose-flowing auburn hair.