Yasma

“ You could live with me here in a cabin in Sobul, or maybe I could take you with me to see the world I come from, and you would then know where the clouds go, and see strange cities with houses as tall as precipices and people many as the leaves of a tree. What do you say, Yasma? Don't you want to make us both happy?"
Yasma stared at me with wide-lidded eyes in which I seemed to read infinite longing.
"You know I would!" she cried. "You know I would—if I could! But ours is a strange people, and our ways are not your ways. ”

“ No sooner were we within touching distance than the soothsayer, with a wide sweep of his arms, enfolded Yasma in a close embrace. Of course, I realized that this was held essential to the ceremony; but it did seem to me that Hamul-Kammesh was unnecessarily long about releasing Yasma. I was about to cough tactfully when he at length freed her, and, to my disgust, flung his arms in my direction, and for an instant I felt his bristly white beard against my face. ”

“ But it is wrong to love you! wrong even to encourage you! Only evil can come of it! Oh, why did you ever, ever have to come among our tribe?"
Having delivered herself of this outburst, Yasma paced back and forth, back and forth amid the dense grass, with fists clenched and head upraised to the heavens, like one in an extremity of distress. ”

“ Only three men, within living memory, have ever defied the warning; and all have learned the way of bitter wisdom. One fell to his death in a crevasse of the mountain, and one was bitten by a serpent and perished in agony, and one lost his wife and first-born son, and passed the rest of his days in loneliness and despair."
Yasma paused again, sadly as though brooding on some personal grief; then passionately demanded, "Promise me, promise that whatever happens, you will never, never go up to Yulada!" ”

“ But I cannot live without you! Tomorrow I leave your valley—yes, leave it not knowing where I go; it does not matter where! I may be lost in the mountains and starve, or stumble over a precipice, or be torn to death by wild beasts—it does not matter! Nothing matters, nothing but you! Good-bye, Yasma! ”

“ And love, the blinding, all-powerful master, came as always to silence the protests of reason; I was flooded once more with tenderness and yearning, was held once more as in a magic mood; and the little remembered things Yasma had said, and the things Yasma had done, the dimpling smiles that played across her face and even the petulant frowns, her quaint little manner of nodding when happy, the puckish creasing of merriment about the corners of her lips, and the pitiful sadness of her half-closed tearful eyes, had all a part in weaving the halo that enveloped her. ”

“ That was harder to bear than the blizzards. But, thank heaven! that is over now. You won't ever go away from me again, will you, Yasma?"
She averted her eyes, then impulsively turned from me, and stood staring toward that steel-gray figure on the peak. It was a minute before she faced me again; and when she did so it was with lips drawn and compressed.
"We must not talk of such things!" she urged, with pleading in her eyes. "We must be happy, happy now while we can be, and not question what is to come!" ”

“ Always, when questioned, they would evade the issue; they would tell me to wait and be assured of an answer from heaven; or they would point mutely and mysteriously to Yulada, as though that were a self-evident solution.
Even Yasma failed me despite repeated questionings. When I referred even casually to the winter, she would assume that meditative and far-away expression which I detested so heartily because it seemed to make her so remote; a deep melancholy would shine in her eyes, and she would peer at me with a vague unspoken regret. ”

“ Startled, I wheeled about; then strode back, and in an instant had my arms about the yielding, convulsive form of Yasma.
"Oh, do not go away!" she wailed. "Do not go away from me, ever, ever! You are everything to me, everything! Oh, what does anything else matter? Let them warn me, forbid me, predict horrible things—I do not care! Nothing could be more horrible than to have you go away! Oh, if I knew I would be smitten dead for it tomorrow, I would still want you here today!" ”

“ But my broodings persisted, and would not be stilled even after a wavering golden illumination filled the cabin. Outside, the storm still moaned like a band of driven souls in pain; and the uncanny fancy came to me that lost spirits were speaking from the gale; that the spirits of the Ibandru wandered homelessly without, and that Yasma, even Yasma, might be among them! Old folk superstitions, tales of men converted into wraiths and of phantoms that appeared as men, forced themselves upon my imagination ”

“ But she halted me with a passionate outburst.
"All I know is that I love you, love you, love you!" she broke out, with the fury of a vehement wild thing; and for a moment we were again clasped in a tight embrace.
"But if you love me, Yasma," I pleaded, when her emotion had nearly spent itself, "why treat me so oddly? Why not be perfectly frank? I love you too, Yasma. Why not say you will be my wife? For I want you with me always, always! Oh, I'd gladly live with you here in Sobul—but if we could we'd go away, far, far away, to my own land, and see things you never saw in your strangest dreams! ”

“ I heard myself repeating the old commonplace of lovers. "What a rare, beautiful girl! I have never known anyone—never—"
"Come, let us not talk of such things!" Yasma cut me short. And she leapt to her feet with a return of her former animation. "See! the sunset shadows are already deepening! In another hour the woods will be cold and dark!"
Again the impetuous wild thing, she seized one of the bags of nuts before I had had time to stop her, and went darting off before me along the forest track, while I was left to follow slowly in a sober mood. ”

“ The occasion was more than welcome to me, not because of the liquor, which I scarcely tasted, but for the sake of Yasma, with whom I desired an occasional word on this our bridal day. While the men and women were crowding forward for their share of the drink, I recognized my opportunity; and, motioning Yasma to follow me, I threaded my way to the edge of the crowd and beyond the furthest cabin to a trail winding through the woods. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice our departure, for the enchantment of the "sacru" was already at work. ”

“ He's very, very good to me, of course, but he's like all the men—imagines that the great god of the flowering spring, and the god of the ripening fall, who put women into the world, had only one use for them. And he thinks I'm growing old enough to—"
Abruptly Yasma halted, as though she feared to tread on unsafe ground. Her fingers still fumbled among the dead leaves, while her averted eyes searched the dense, dark masses of foliage as if in pursuit of something elusive and much desired. ”

“ Or what if Yasma's own fears, or her passionate religious scruples, or her peculiar training and habits of thought, should precipitate disaster?
Such were my thoughts as I sadly wandered back to my cabin after the interview with Abthar. I was at the bleakest point of my reveries when I heard a familiar voice hailing me cheerfully, and looked up to find a brawny hand slapping me companionably on the shoulder and two glittering black eyes staring inquiringly into mine.
"Tell me, what's wrong with the world today?" exclaimed Karem, gaily, as he fell in at my side. ”

“ As always before, my pleas had no effect except to bring the tears to Yasma's eyes.
"Do you not think I would tell you if I could?" she asked, gently and sadly. "But Yulada would not permit it, and I dare not lift my voice against her. I could not if I would. For there are things we cannot describe, and things that can be known only to those that share in them. Could you expect the wild dove to tell you of its flight? Could you expect the eagle to make known the joy it feels when it sails into the sun?" ”

“ At this query I was struck by a fancy so wild that even now I hesitate to mention it: the thought that Yasma and her people were not wholly human! that for half the year they walked the earth as men and women, and for the other half sailed the sky as birds! Nor did this notion seem quite so absurd as it would have appeared before my arrival in Sobul. Here in this world-forsaken valley, with its periodically migrating inhabitants, anything at all seemed possible; even the supernatural appeared to lose its remote and fabulous glow. ”

“ Having made my resolve, I could face the world with fresh courage. All that winter, when the mountains were white specters beneath the blue sky or when the clouds blotted out the peaks and the snow was sifted down day after day, I kept hope alive not only at the thought of Yasma's return in the spring but by the determination that she should not leave in the autumn. I might be tormented by loneliness; I might read only sorrow in the denuded woods, and menace in the lowering skies; I might quiver at the wail of the wolf, and people the shadows of the night with evil shapes ”

“ Possibly it is that the girls of the Ibandru come early to maturity; or possibly they do not labor under civilized repressions, and are seldom other than their natural selves. At all events, Yasma suffered from few of those inhibitions which would have hampered her western sisters. Finding something in me to interest her, she was at no pains to conceal her interest, but would act as unhesitatingly as if she had been the man and I the woman. ”

“ Half an hour later, after Yasma had raided a second tree and I had collected all the nuts I could carry, we sat side by side with our backs against a tree-trunk, recovering from our exertions. I cannot say why, but, in contrast to our previous exuberance, a silence had fallen over us; we each seemed wrapped up in our own thoughts, almost like strangers who have never been introduced. ”

“ I was particularly interested in Yasma's brothers and sisters, all of whom I met in quick succession. They were all older than she, and all had something of her naïvety and vivaciousness without her own peculiar charm. Her three sisters had found husbands among the men of the tribe, and two were already the mothers of vigorous toddling little sons and daughters; while her brothers, Karem and Barkodu, were tall, proud, and dignified of demeanor like their father.
With Karem, the elder, I struck up a friendship that was to prove my closest masculine attachment in Sobul. ”

“ I must be in Sobul each year when the birds fly south! Or I too might go the way of the birds, and never be able to fly back!"
It was an instant before I had grasped the significance of her words. "But you cannot mean that, Yasma!" I protested, with a return of my old, half-buried forebodings. "No, no, you cannot—"
"I do mean it!"—In her tones there was an unfathomable sadness, and the humility of one who bows to inexorable forces.—"I do mean it! I know that it is so! Oh, if you love me, if you care to have me with you, do not speak of this again! ”

“ Late that afternoon I was busying myself in the cabin, lighting a fire and preparing some simple articles of food, for I could not let myself spend all my time brooding like Yasma. A brilliant light gleamed in her eyes; ecstasy and longing and terror and furious enthusiasm convulsed her features; she seemed a living blaze of vehemence and desire. Urgently she seized my hand, and led me unresisting into the open; then passionately pointed upward, upward to a triangle of black dots darting across the gray heavens.
"See!" she cried. "See, the birds fly south! The last birds fly south!" ”

“ Yasma hesitated. The light faded from her eyes; an expression of sorrow, almost of compassion, flooded her face.
"That I cannot say," she returned, sadly. "You must feel the call within you, feel it as the birds do, drawing you on to lands where robins sing and the lilac blooms. No one can tell you how to feel it; it must come from within or not at all, and you yourself must recognize it. But oh, you cannot help recognizing it! It is so strong, so very strong!—and it takes your whole body and soul with it, draws you like a rainbow or a beautiful sunset ”

“ More than I wish!" declared Yasma's father, gloomily. "At the time of her birth a prophecy was made—"
"Prophecy?"
"Yes, a bitter prophecy! I well recall the day; the wild geese were flying south, and Yulada's head and shoulders were hooded in gray cloud. In that cloud a slit appeared and vanished; but we could see that it took the form of a man—a man striding toward us from across the mountains. At the same time, a flock of seventeen birds went winging above the peak; so that Hamul-Kammesh, reflecting upon these omens, was led to foretell a sad fate for the babe born on that day. ”

“ As calmly as I could, I explained about Yasma, emphasizing the need of having our relationship accepted in the village.
All the while that I was talking, Karem remained busy at his spade; yet his bronzed brow was ruffled with thought.
"You have not an easy fight to win," he reminded me, when I had finished. And he paused in his labors, and stood with one hand clutching the wooden spade-handle, and one hand meditatively propping up his chin. "Still, there must be ways. If you can only gain the favor of Hamul-Kammesh, the others will follow fast enough." ”