Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
“‘Where is the stream?’ cried he, with tears. ‘Seest thou not its blue
waves above us?’ He looked up, and lo! the blue stream was flowing
gently over their heads.” —NOVALIS, _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_.
While these strange events were passing through my mind, I suddenly, as
one awakes to the consciousness that the sea has been moaning by him
for hours, or that the storm has been howling about his window all
night, became aware of the sound of running water near me; and, looking
out of bed, I saw that a large green marble basin, in which I was wont
to wash, and which stood on a low pedestal of the same material in a
corner of my room, was overflowing like a spring; and that a stream of
clear water was running over the carpet, all the length of the room,
finding its outlet I knew not where. And, stranger still, where this
carpet, which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and
daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and
daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water’s flow;
while under the rivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the
changeful current, as if they were about to dissolve with it, and,
forsaking their fixed form, become fluent as the waters.
My dressing-table was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of black oak,
with drawers all down the front. These were elaborately carved in
foliage, of which ivy formed the chief part. The nearer end of this
table remained just as it had been, but on the further end a singular
change had commenced. I happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of
ivy-leaves. The first of these was evidently the work of the carver;
the next looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy; and just
beyond it a tendril of clematis had twined itself about the gilt handle
of one of the drawers. Hearing next a slight motion above me, I looked
up, and saw that the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of
my bed were slightly in motion. Not knowing what change might follow
next, I thought it high time to get up; and, springing from the bed, my
bare feet alighted upon a cool green sward; and although I dressed in
all haste, I found myself completing my toilet under the boughs of a
great tree, whose top waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with
many interchanging lights, and with shadows of leaf and branch gliding
over leaf and branch, as the cool morning wind swung it to and fro,
like a sinking sea-wave.
After washing as well as I could in the clear stream, I rose and looked
around me. The tree under which I seemed to have lain all night was one
of the advanced guard of a dense forest, towards which the rivulet ran.
Faint traces of a footpath, much overgrown with grass and moss, and
with here and there a pimpernel even, were discernible along the right
bank. “This,” thought I, “must surely be the path into Fairy Land,
which the lady of last night promised I should so soon find.” I crossed
the rivulet, and accompanied it, keeping the footpath on its right
bank, until it led me, as I expected, into the wood. Here I left it,
without any good reason: and with a vague feeling that I ought to have
followed its course, I took a more southerly direction.
CHAPTER III
“Man doth usurp all space,
Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in the face.
Never thine eyes behold a tree;
‘Tis no sea thou seest in the sea,
‘Tis but a disguised humanity.
To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan;
All that interests a man, is man.”
HENRY SUTTON.
The trees, which were far apart where I entered, giving free passage to
the level rays of the sun, closed rapidly as I advanced, so that ere
long their crowded stems barred the sunlight out, forming as it were a
thick grating between me and the East. I seemed to be advancing towards
a second midnight. In the midst of the intervening twilight, however,
before I entered what appeared to be the darkest portion of the forest,
I saw a country maiden coming towards me from its very depths. She did
not seem to observe me, for she was apparently intent upon a bunch of
wild flowers which she carried in her hand. I could hardly see her
face; for, though she came direct towards me, she never looked up. But
when we met, instead of passing, she turned and walked alongside of me
for a few yards, still keeping her face downwards, and busied with her
flowers. She spoke rapidly, however, all the time, in a low tone, as if
talking to herself, but evidently addressing the purport of her words
to me.
She seemed afraid of being observed by some lurking foe. “Trust the
Oak,” said she; “trust the Oak, and the Elm, and the great Beech. Take
care of the Birch, for though she is honest, she is too young not to be
changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder; for the Ash is an ogre,—you
will know him by his thick fingers; and the Alder will smother you with
her web of hair, if you let her near you at night.” All this was
uttered without pause or alteration of tone. Then she turned suddenly
and left me, walking still with the same unchanging gait. I could not
conjecture what she meant, but satisfied myself with thinking that it
would be time enough to find out her meaning when there was need to
make use of her warning, and that the occasion would reveal the
admonition. I concluded from the flowers that she carried, that the
forest could not be everywhere so dense as it appeared from where I was
now walking; and I was right in this conclusion. For soon I came to a
more open part, and by-and-by crossed a wide grassy glade, on which
were several circles of brighter green. But even here I was struck with
the utter stillness. No bird sang. No insect hummed. Not a living
creature crossed my way. Yet somehow the whole environment seemed only
asleep, and to wear even in sleep an air of expectation. The trees
seemed all to have an expression of conscious mystery, as if they said
to themselves, “we could, an’ if we would.” They had all a meaning look
about them. Then I remembered that night is the fairies’ day, and the
moon their sun; and I thought—Everything sleeps and dreams now: when
the night comes, it will be different. At the same time I, being a man
and a child of the day, felt some anxiety as to how I should fare among
the elves and other children of the night who wake when mortals dream,
and find their common life in those wondrous hours that flow
noiselessly over the moveless death-like forms of men and women and
children, lying strewn and parted beneath the weight of the heavy waves
of night, which flow on and beat them down, and hold them drowned and
senseless, until the ebbtide comes, and the waves sink away, back into
the ocean of the dark. But I took courage and went on. Soon, however, I
became again anxious, though from another cause. I had eaten nothing
that day, and for an hour past had been feeling the want of food. So I
grew afraid lest I should find nothing to meet my human necessities in
this strange place; but once more I comforted myself with hope and went
on.
Before noon, I fancied I saw a thin blue smoke rising amongst the stems
of larger trees in front of me; and soon I came to an open spot of
ground in which stood a little cottage, so built that the stems of four
great trees formed its corners, while their branches met and
intertwined over its roof, heaping a great cloud of leaves over it, up
towards the heavens. I wondered at finding a human dwelling in this
neighbourhood; and yet it did not look altogether human, though
sufficiently so to encourage me to expect to find some sort of food.
Seeing no door, I went round to the other side, and there I found one,
wide open. A woman sat beside it, preparing some vegetables for dinner.
This was homely and comforting. As I came near, she looked up, and
seeing me, showed no surprise, but bent her head again over her work,
and said in a low tone:
“Did you see my daughter?”
“I believe I did,” said I. “Can you give me something to eat, for I am
very hungry?” “With pleasure,” she replied, in the same tone; “but do
not say anything more, till you come into the house, for the Ash is
watching us.”
Having said this, she rose and led the way into the cottage; which, I
now saw, was built of the stems of small trees set closely together,
and was furnished with rough chairs and tables, from which even the
bark had not been removed. As soon as she had shut the door and set a
chair—
“You have fairy blood in you,” said she, looking hard at me.
“How do you know that?”
“You could not have got so far into this wood if it were not so; and I
am trying to find out some trace of it in your countenance. I think I
see it.”
“What do you see?”
“Oh, never mind: I may be mistaken in that.”
“But how then do you come to live here?”
“Because I too have fairy blood in me.”
Here I, in my turn, looked hard at her, and thought I could perceive,
notwithstanding the coarseness of her features, and especially the
heaviness of her eyebrows, a something unusual—I could hardly call it
grace, and yet it was an expression that strangely contrasted with the
form of her features. I noticed too that her hands were delicately
formed, though brown with work and exposure.
“I should be ill,” she continued, “if I did not live on the borders of
the fairies’ country, and now and then eat of their food. And I see by
your eyes that you are not quite free of the same need; though, from
your education and the activity of your mind, you have felt it less
than I. You may be further removed too from the fairy race.”
I remembered what the lady had said about my grandmothers.
Here she placed some bread and some milk before me, with a kindly
apology for the homeliness of the fare, with which, however, I was in
no humour to quarrel. I now thought it time to try to get some
explanation of the strange words both of her daughter and herself.
“What did you mean by speaking so about the Ash?”
She rose and looked out of the little window. My eyes followed her; but
as the window was too small to allow anything to be seen from where I
was sitting, I rose and looked over her shoulder. I had just time to
see, across the open space, on the edge of the denser forest, a single
large ash-tree, whose foliage showed bluish, amidst the truer green of
the other trees around it; when she pushed me back with an expression
of impatience and terror, and then almost shut out the light from the
window by setting up a large old book in it.
“In general,” said she, recovering her composure, “there is no danger
in the daytime, for then he is sound asleep; but there is something
unusual going on in the woods; there must be some solemnity among the
fairies to-night, for all the trees are restless, and although they
cannot come awake, they see and hear in their sleep.”
“But what danger is to be dreaded from him?”
Instead of answering the question, she went again to the window and
looked out, saying she feared the fairies would be interrupted by foul
weather, for a storm was brewing in the west.
“And the sooner it grows dark, the sooner the Ash will be awake,” added
she.
I asked her how she knew that there was any unusual excitement in the
woods. She replied—
“Besides the look of the trees, the dog there is unhappy; and the eyes
and ears of the white rabbit are redder than usual, and he frisks about
as if he expected some fun. If the cat were at home, she would have her
back up; for the young fairies pull the sparks out of her tail with
bramble thorns, and she knows when they are coming. So do I, in another
way.”
At this instant, a grey cat rushed in like a demon, and disappeared in
a hole in the wall.
“There, I told you!” said the woman.
“But what of the ash-tree?” said I, returning once more to the subject.