Terrified, he said into th.e thistledown locks: “What do you mean, what must you do?”
“Go under. In the lake or a stream. Didn’t you know?” She pressed outward, slightly but enough for him to mark. He released her and she stepped back a pace to regard him. What blue had been in her great eyes was nearly faded away. “In winter, the sun is not too bright on the water for me,” she told him; “but the bare woods give no shelter from it. In the depths I find shadow. Surely you’ve heard this.”
“Yes-“ He glanced earthward. The spear he had dropped
lay between them. “Yes, but-“
“Erenow I could stay later awake. This fall, we’re bound straight into winter.” A dead leaf drifted from its twig to her feet.
“When must you leave?”
She hugged herself against the chill. “Soon. Today. Will you
be here in spring, Tauno?”
He undid his belt. “Why, I’ll be at your side.”
She shook her head. Where he was now trembling and stam-
mering, she had gained an odd clarity (and did she look more than ever translucent, a mist-wraith?). “No, dear love. I will float among dreams. Seldom could you rouse me, never for long. And there’s naught of your sea in yonder tomb-quietness. You’d go mad.”
He kept at work on his garments. “I can come ashore termly.”
“I think that would be worse for you than if you stayed up the
whole dark while.”
For a span the vilja gazed steadily at the merman’s child. She had grown wise, had little Nada, in this twilight of her year.
“No,” she said at last. “Abide my return. That is my wish.” Mter another stillness: “Nor wait in the woods. Seek out man-kind. . . for we’ve no elven women in these mountains such as you’ve told me of. . . and how often I’ve seen your desire that I cannot ever fulfill. My dreams down below will be happier if I’ve known you’re with someone living.”
“I don’t want any.”
Horror smote her. Crouched back as if beneath a whip, she
wailed, “Oh, Tauno, what have I done to you? Go while you can.
Never come back!”
The last garment dropped from him. His very knife lay fallen across the spearshaft, and he wore nothing but the spirit bone. She shrank further away and covered her eyes. “Go, go,” she pleaded. “You are too beautiful.”
Like tall waves joining, her despair met his and he was over-whelmed. “By the nets of Ran,” he choked, “you’re mine. I’ll make you mine.”
He sprang forward and seized her. She wrenched her mouth from his raking kiss. “It’s death for you!” she screamed.
“How better to die. . . and be done-;– ?”
They struggled. Dimly he knew he was being savage to her,
but the force of it possessed him. “Nada,” he heard himself rave,
“yield, be kind to me, this is what I want, and you’ll remem-
ber-“
She was out of his grasp, she had escaped him as might the wind. He lost footing and tumbled onto the withered turf. When he raised his head, he saw her yards off. She stood white against hueless water and sky, murkful trees, merciless cold wherein no breath showed around her. From her right hand hung the sigil.
He groped erect and staggered her way. She drifted backward. “I can easily leave you behind,” she warned. “I’d liefer not have to.”
He stopped and stood swaying, “I love you,” heaved out of him.
“I know,” she said with infinite tenderness. “And I love you.”
“I didn’t mean harm. I just wanted us to be together, truly
together, the one time-if else we must be sundered forever.”
“There is a third way.” Calm had come upon her; she smiled. “You’ve told me about this thing. I’ll enter it, and you can have me with you always.”
“Nada, no!”
“Could I hope for more happiness than to lie on your heart?
And maybe someday-“ She broke off. “Stand where you are, Tauno,” she begged. “Let me see you while.I can, and that be the wedding gift you give me.”
He could not even weep.
At fIrst she did look at him as much as she did at the piece of