Part 25

‘By the Great Rings of the Chalk!’ he cried. ‘Was that your price? Turn sunward that I may see better, and shut your eye.’ He slipped his hand beneath the man’s chin and swung him till he faced the children up the slope. They saw that his right eye was gone, and the eyelid lay shrunk. Quickly Puck turned him round again, and the two sat down.

‘It was for the sheep. The sheep are the people,’ said the man, in an ashamed voice. ‘What else could I have done? You know, Old One.’

Puck sighed a little fluttering sigh. ‘Take the knife. I listen.’ The man bowed his head, drove the knife into the turf, and while it still quivered said: ‘This is witness between us that I speak the thing that has been. Before my Knife and the Naked Chalk I speak. Touch!’

Puck laid a hand on the hilt. It stopped shaking. The children wriggled a little nearer.

‘I am of the People of the Worked Flint. I am the one son of the Priestess who sells the Winds to the Men of the Sea. I am the Buyer of the Knife--the Keeper of the People,’ the man began, in a sort of singing shout. ‘These are my names in this country of the Naked Chalk, between the Trees and the Sea.’

‘Yours was a great country. Your names are great too,’ said Puck.

‘One cannot feed some things on names and songs.’ The man hit himself on the chest. ‘It is better--always better--to count one’s children safe round the fire, their Mother among them.’

‘Ahai!’ said Puck. ‘I think this will be a very old tale.’ ‘I warm myself and eat at any fire that I choose, but there is no one to light me a fire or cook my meat. I sold all that when I bought the Magic Knife for my people. It was not right that The Beast should master man. What else could I have done?’

‘I hear. I know. I listen,’ said Puck.

‘When I was old enough to take my place in the Sheepguard, The Beast gnawed all our country like a bone between his teeth. He came in behind the flocks at watering-time, and watched them round the Dew-ponds; he leaped into the folds between our knees at the shearing; he walked out alongside the grazing flocks, and chose his meat on the hoof while our boys threw flints at him; he crept by night ‘into the huts, and licked the babe from between the mother’s hands; he called his companions and pulled down men in broad daylight on the Naked Chalk. No--not always did he do so! This was his cunning! He would go away for a while to let us forget him. A year--two years perhaps--we neither smelt, nor heard, nor saw him. When our flocks had increased; when our men did not always look behind them; when children strayed from the fenced places; when our women walked alone to draw water--back, back, back came the Curse of the Chalk, Grey Shepherd, Feet-in-the-Night--The Beast, The Beast, The Beast!

‘He laughed at our little brittle arrows and our poor blunt spears. He learned to run in under the stroke of the hammer. I think he knew when there was a flaw in the flint. Often it does not show till you bring it down on his snout. Then--Pouf!---the false flint falls all to flinders, and you are left with the hammer-handle in your fist, and his teeth in your flank! I have felt them. At evening, too, in the dew, or when it has misted and rained, your spear-head lashings slack off, though you have kept them beneath your cloak all day. You are alone--but so close to the home ponds that you stop to tighten the sinews with hands, teeth, and a piece of driftwood. You bend over and pull--so! That is the minute for which he has followed you since the stars went out. “Aarh!” he “Wurr-aarh!” he says.’ (Norton Pit gave back the growl like a pack of real wolves.) ‘Then he is on your right shoulder feeling for the vein in your neck, and--perhaps your sheep run on without you. To fight The Beast is nothing, but to be despised by The Beast when he fights you--that is like his teeth in the heart! Old One, why is it that men desire so greatly, and can do so little?’

‘I do not know. Did you desire so much?’ said Puck.

‘I desired to master The Beast. It is not right that The Beast should master man. But my people were afraid. Even, my Mother, the Priestess, was afraid when I told her what I desired. We were accustomed to be afraid of The Beast. When I was made a man, and a maiden--she was a Priestess--waited for me at the Dew-ponds, The Beast flitted from off the Chalk. Perhaps it was a sickness; perhaps he had gone to his Gods to learn how to do us new harm. But he went, and we breathed more freely. The women sang again; the children were not so much guarded; our flocks grazed far out. I took mine yonder’--he pointed inland to the hazy line of the Weald--‘where the new grass was best. They grazed north. I followed till we were close to the Trees’--he lowered his voice--‘close there where the Children of the Night live.’ He pointed north again.

‘Ah, now I remember a thing,’ said Puck. ‘Tell me, why did your people fear the Trees so extremely?’

‘Because the Gods hate the Trees and strike them with lightning. We can see them burning for days all along the Chalk’s edge. Besides, all the Chalk knows that the Children of the Night, though they worship our Gods, are magicians. When a man goes into their country, they change his spirit; they put words into his mouth; they make him like talking water. But a voice in my heart told me to go toward the north. While I watched my sheep there I saw three Beasts chasing a man, who ran toward the Trees. By this I knew he was a Child of the Night. We Flint-workers fear the Trees more than we fear The Beast. He had no hammer. He carried a knife like this one. A Beast leaped at him. He stretched out his knife. The Beast fell dead. The other Beasts ran away howling, which they would never have done from a Flint-worker. The man went in among the Trees. I looked for the dead Beast. He had been killed in a new way--by a single deep, clean cut, without bruise or tear, which had split his bad heart. Wonderful! So I saw that the man’s knife was magic, and I thought how to get it,--thought strongly how to get it.

‘When I brought the flocks to the shearing, my Mother the Priestess asked me, “What is the new thing which you have seen and I see in your face?” I said, “It is a sorrow to me”; and she answered, “All new things are sorrow. Sit in my place, and eat sorrow.” I sat down in her place by the fire, where she talks to the ghosts in winter, and two voices spoke in my heart. One voice said, “Ask the Children of the Night for the Magic Knife. It is not fit that The Beast should master man.” I listened to that voice.

‘One voice said, “If you go among the Trees, the Children of the Night will change your spirit. Eat and sleep here.” The other voice said, “Ask for the Knife.” I listened to that voice.

‘I said to my Mother in the morning, “I go away to find a thing for the people, but I do not know whether I shall return in my own shape.” She answered, “Whether you live or die, or are made different, I am your Mother.”

‘True,’ said Puck. ‘The Old Ones themselves cannot change men’s mothers even if they would.’

‘Let us thank the Old Ones! I spoke to my Maiden, the Priestess who waited for me at the Dew-ponds. She promised fine things too.’ The man laughed. ‘I went away to that place where I had seen the magician with the knife. I lay out two days on the short grass before I ventured among the Trees. I felt my way before me with a stick. I was afraid of the terrible talking Trees. I was afraid of the ghosts in the branches; of the soft ground underfoot; of the red and black waters. I was afraid, above all, of the Change. It came!’

They saw him wipe his forehead once again, and his strong back-muscles quivered till he laid his hand on the knife-hilt.

‘A fire without a flame burned in my head; an evil taste grew in my mouth; my eyelids shut hot over my eyes; my breath was hot between my teeth, and my hands were like the hands of a stranger. I was made to sing songs and to mock the Trees, though I was afraid of them. At the same time I saw myself laughing, and I was very sad for this fine young man, who was myself. Ah! The Children of the Night know magic.’

‘I think that is done by the Spirits of the Mist. They change a man, if he sleeps among them,’ said Puck. ‘Had you slept in any mists?’

‘Yes--but I know it was the Children of the Night. After three days I saw a red light behind the Trees, and I heard a heavy noise. I saw the Children of the Night dig red stones from a hole, and lay them in fires. The stones melted like tallow, and the men beat the soft stuff with hammers. I wished to speak to these men, but the words were changed in my mouth, and all I could say was, “Do not make that noise. It hurts my head.” By this I knew that I was bewitched, and I clung to the Trees, and prayed the Children of the Night to take off their spells. They were cruel. They asked me many questions which they would never allow me to answer. They changed my words between my teeth till I wept. Then they led me into a hut and covered the floor with hot stones and dashed water on the stones, and sang charms till the sweat poured off me like water. I slept. When I waked, my own spirit--not the strange, shouting thing--was back in my body, and I was like a cool bright stone on the shingle between the sea and the sunshine. The magicians came to hear me--women and men--each wearing a Magic Knife. Their Priestess was their Ears and their Mouth.

‘I spoke. I spoke many words that went smoothly along like sheep in order when their shepherd, standing on a mound, can count those coming, and those far off getting ready to come. I asked for Magic Knives for my people. I said that my people would bring meat, and milk, and wool, and lay them in the short grass outside the Trees, if the Children of the Night would leave Magic Knives for our people to take away. They were pleased. Their Priestess said, “For whose sake have you come?” I answered, “The sheep are the people. If The Beast kills our sheep, our people die. So I come for a Magic Knife to kill The Beast.”

‘She said, “We do not know if our God will let us trade with the people of the Naked Chalk. Wait till we have asked.”

‘When they came back from the Question-place (their Gods are our Gods), their Priestess said, “The God needs a proof that your words are true.” I said, “What is the proof?” She said, “The God says that if you have come for the sake of your people you will give him your right eye to be put out; but if you have come for any other reason you will not give it. This proof is between you and the God. We ourselves are sorry.”

‘I said, “This is a hard proof. Is there no other road?”