The Three Mulla-mulgars

by Walter De la Mare

But the rains came; he did not return. The long days strode softly by, the chatter and screams of Munza at dawn, the long-drawn, moaning shout of Mullabruk to Mullabruk as darkness deepened. Nod would sometimes venture a little way into the forest, hoping to hear the gongs that his father had told him the close-shorn slaves of Assasimmon tie with leopard-thongs about their Zevveras' necks. He would sit in the gigantic shadows of evening, watching the fireflies, and saying to himself: "Sst, Nod, see what they say—to-morrow!" But the morrow never came that brought him back his father.

Mutta-matutta cared and cooked for them. She made a great store of Manaka-cake, packed for coolness all neatly in plantain-leaves; Nano-cheese, and two or three big pots of Subbub. She kept them clean and combed; plastered and physicked them; taught them to cook, and many things else, until, as one by one they grew up, they knew all that she could teach them, except the wisdom to use what they had learnt. She would often, too, in the first hush of night, tell them stories of their father, and of her own father, back even to Zebbah, and the Portingal dangling with his bunch of wild-cats' tails in the corner.

But as the years wasted away, she grew thin and mournful, and fell ill of pining and grief and age, and even had at last to keep to her bed of moss and cotton in the hut.

Her sons worked hard for her, pushing into the forest and across the narrow swamp in search of fruits to tempt her appetite. Nod heaped up fresh leaves for her bed, and sang in his shrill, quavering voice every evening Tishnar's hymn to his poor old mother. He baked her sweet potatoes and Nanoes wrapped in leaves, and would dance round, "wriggle and stamp—wriggle and stamp," as Seelem had told him dance the Oomgar-nuggas, to try to make her cheerful. But by-and-by she began to languish, her teeth chattering, her eyes burning, unable to eat.... And one still afternoon, when only Nod was near (his brothers, tired of the heat and buzzing in the green hut, having gone to gather nuts and sticks in the forest), as Mutta-matutta sat dozing and muttering in her corner, came the voice of Tishnar, calling in the hush of evening: and she knew she must die.

Nod crept close to her, thinking at first the strange voice singing was the sound of Seelem's Zevveras' distant gongs, and he held the hard thin hand between his. When Thumb and Thimble returned with their bags and faggots of smoulder-wood, she called them all three, and told them she too must go away now, perhaps even, if only in Meermut, to find their father. And she besought them to be always true and faithful one to another, and to be brave. "Five fingers serve one hand, my good men," she said. "And oh, remember this always: that you are all three Mulla-mulgars, sons of Seelem, whose home is far from here—Mulla-mulgars who never do walk flambo—that is, on all fours—never taste blood, and never, unless in danger and despair, climb trees or grow a tail."

It was hot and gloomy in the tangled little hut, lit only by the violet of the dying afterglow. And when she had rested a little while to recover her breath, she told them that Seelem, the night before he left them, had said that, should he perish on his journey and not return, in seven Munza years they were, as best they could, bravely to follow after him. In time they would perhaps reach the Valleys of Tishnar, and their uncle, Prince Assasimmon, would welcome them.

"His country lies beyond and beyond," she said, "forest and river, forest, swamp and river, the Mountains of Arakkaboa—leagues, leagues away."

And, as she paused, a feeble wind sighed through the open window, stirring the dangling bones of the Portingal, so that, with their faint clicking, they too, seemed to echo, "leagues, leagues away."

"It will be a long and dreary journey, my sons. But the Prince Assasimmon, Mulla-mulla of the Mulgars, is great and powerful, and has for hut a palace of ivory and Azmamogreel, with scarlet and Mamasul, slaves and peacocks, and beasts uncountable; and leagues of Ukka and Barbary-nuts; and boundless fields of Ummuz, and orchards of fruit, and bowers of flowers and pleasure. And his, too, is the Rose of all the Mulgars." And as he listened Thimble shuffled from foot to foot, his heart uneasy, to hear her cry so hollowly the beauty of that Rose. And at her bidding, out of the cupboard they took the civeted bundles of all the stuff and little Mulgar treasures she had been hoarding up all these years for them against this last day.