I rose ... there was a dazzle on the water, a shimmer on every leaf, a falling away as of walls of air into the great river of the wind ... and there were three, not one, each staring dazed at the other, in the ears of each the bewilderment of the already faint echo of that lost "I."
VIII
Towards sundown we came upon a hamlet, set among the hills. Our hearts had beat quicker as we drew near, for with the glory of light gathered above the west the mountains had taken upon them a bloom soft and wonderful, and we thought that at last we were upon the gates of the hills towards which we had journeyed so eagerly. But when we reached the last pines on the ridge we saw the wild doves flying far westward. Beyond us, under a pale star, dimly visible in a waste of rose, were the Hills of Dream.
The Soul wished to go to them at once, for now they seemed so near to us that we might well reach them with the rising of the moon. But the others were tired, nor did the Hills seem so near to them. So we sat down by the peat-fire in a shepherd's cottage, and ate of milk and porridge, and talked with the man about the ways of that district, and the hills, and how best to reach them. "If you want work," he said, "you should go away south, where the towns are, an' not to these lonely hills. They are so barren, that even the goatherds no longer wander their beasts there."
"It's said they're haunted," added the Body, seeing that the others did not speak.
"Ay, sure enough. That's well known, master. An' for the matter o' that, there's a wood down there to the right where for three nights past I have seen figures and the gleaming of fire. But there isn't a soul in that wood—no, not a wandering tinker. I took my dogs through it to-day, an' there wasn't the sign even of a last-year's gypsy. As for the low bare hill beyond it, not a man, let alone a woman or child, would go near it in the dark. In the Gaelic it's called Maol Dè, that is to say, the Hill of God."
For a long time we sat talking with the shepherd, for he told us of many things that were strange, and some that were beautiful, and some that were wild and terrible. One of his own brothers, after an evil life, had become mad, and even now lived in caves among the higher hills, going ever on hands and feet, and cursing by day and night because he was made as one of the wild swine, that know only hunger and rage and savage sleep. He himself tended lovingly his old father, who was too frail to work, and often could not sleep at nights because of the pleasant but wearying noise the fairies made as they met on the dancing-lawns among the bracken. Our friend had not himself heard the simple people, and in a whisper confided to us that he thought the old man was a bit mazed, and that what he heard was only the solitary playing of the Amadan-Dhu, who, it was known to all, roamed the shadows between the two dusks. "Keep away from the river in the hollow," he said at another moment, "for it's there, on a night like this, just before the full moon got up, that, when I was a boy, I saw the Aonaran. An' to this day, if I saw you or any one standing by the water, it 'ud be all I could do not to thrust you into it and drown you: ay, I'd have to throw myself on my face, an' bite the grass, an' pray till my soul shook the murder out at my throat. For that's the Aonaran's doing."
Later, he showed us, when we noticed it, a bit of smooth coral that hung by a coarse leathern thong from his neck.
"Is that an amulet?" one of us asked.
"No: it's my lassie's."