The Three Mulla-mulgars

by Walter De la Mare

Now, Immanâla in Munza means, as it were, unstoried, nameless, unknown, darkness, secrecy. All these the word means. Night is Immanâla to Munza-mulgar. So is sorcery. So, too, is the dark journey to death or the Third Sleep. And this Beast they name Immanâla because it comes of no other beast that is known, has no likeness to any. Child of nothing, wits of all things, ravenous yet hungerless, she lures, lures, and if she die at all, dies alone. By some it is said that this Immanâla is the servant of Nōōmanossi, and has as many lives as his white resting-tree has branches. And so she is born again to haunt and raven and poison Munza with cruelty and strife. All this Nod had heard from his father Seelem, and his skin crept at sound of the name. But he pretended he felt no fear.

"Who is this Immanâla, the Nameless?" he scoffed softly, "that a Mulla-mulgar should heed her yapping (uggagugga)?"

"Ah," said the old hare, "he boasts best who boasts in safety. Mishcha, little Mulgar, has met the Nameless face to face, and when I hear her hunting-cry I do not make merry. How could she all these days have given ear to the Oomgar's gun in the forest, and make no sign—she who has for her servants leopards and Jaccatrays of many years' hunting? Mark this, too," said Mishcha, "if the little Mulgar were not the chosen of Tishnar, his Oomgar would long ago have been nothing but a few picked bones."

The old hare touched him with her long-clawed foot, and gazed earnestly into his face with her half-blind, whitening eyes. "Yes, Mulgar," she said at last, whispering, "your brothers that rode on the little Horses of Tishnar are none so far away. 'Why,' say they to each other, roosting half-frozen in their tree-huts—'why does Ummanodda betray all Munza-mulgar to the Oomgar's gun? He is no child of Royal Seelem's now.'"

Nod's heart stood still to hear again of his brothers, and that they were so near. And Mishcha promised if he would abandon the Oomgar, she would lead him to them. Nod gazed long into the gloom before he sadly answered:

"I cannot leave my master," he said, "who has fed and befriended me. I cannot leave him to be torn in pieces by this Beast of Shadows. He is wise—oh, he is wise! He was born to stand upright. He fears not any shadow. He walks with Nōōmas beneath every tree. He kills, old Mishcha—that I know well—and feeds like a glutton on flesh. But a she-leopard in one moon eats as many of the Munza-mulgars as she has roses on her skin. As for the Nameless, my father Seelem told me many a time of her thirsty tongue."

Then Mishcha whispered warily in Nod's ear in the shadow of the thorn-bush beneath which they sat, turning her staring stone-coloured eyes this way, that way. "If the Oomgar were safe from her," she said, scarcely opening her thin lips above the lean curved teeth, "would then the little Mulgar go?"

Nod laughed. "Then would I go on all fours, O Mishcha, for I am weary of waiting and being far from my brothers, Thumb and Thimble. Then would I go at once if I could leave the Oomgar quietly to his hunting, and safe from this Shadow-beast and from more than three lean hunting leopards on the Ollaconda boughs at one time."

Then Mishcha told him what he should do. And Nod listened, shivering, in part for the cold, and in part for dread of what she was saying. "There be three things, Nizza-neela," she said, when she had told him all her stratagem—"there be three things even a Mulla-mulgar must have who fights with Immanâla, Queen of Shadows: he must have Magic, he must have cunning, and he must have courage. Oh, little Prince of Tishnar, should I have physicked you and saved you from the sooty spits of the Minimuls if you had been neither wise nor brave?"

And Nod promised by his Wonderstone to do all that she had bidden him. And she crept soundlessly back into the gloom of the forest. Nod himself quickly hobbled home, took up his sliding-shoes again, and returned to the little hut and the Oomgar's red fire.