LINDAGULL STEPPED FORTH IN THE CLEAR DAY.
Glaring at her, he waited, as if expecting the desired answer at once; but as Lindagull again only gazed thoughtfully up at him in silence, the wizard cried out in a voice trembling with anger:
"Adáma donai Marrabataësan!"
which meant, "Human life! sink into the likeness of a flower!"
The wizard had learned these magic words one autumn evening from the South Wind when it came from the African desert and laid itself to rest on a Lapland mountain. The wind understands all languages, for all words are spoken in its hearing.
As the magician uttered this frightful command, it seemed to Lindagull as if all the flower-stalks on the heath grew to trees and overshadowed her; but it was she herself who sank down to the earth. The next moment a stranger's eye could no longer distinguish her from the thousands and thousands of pale purple-pink heather blossoms on the Lappish waste. "In one day and two weeks!" mumbled the wizard, casting a malignant glance behind him as he turned back to his tent.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Ole Shut-Eye. (The Sandman.)