The red feathers

“He felt a sudden pang, as of the touch of flame, in his arm. He reeled backward, and at a glance discovered a tiny arrow of strange form, and no longer than a man’s finger, embedded in the muscles below his shoulder. He plucked it out; and in the same instant of time made himself invisible. Already a horrible madness was upon him, tearing at limbs, and brain, and heart. The walls of living green billowed and span around him.

“I am struck by magic,” he cried; “but I, too, am a magician.”

His voice sounded like the voice of a stranger. He saw grinning faces on every side—green, grinning masks that mouthed and vanished and returned. He sprang at them, striking with his magic axe, wrenching them apart with hands that contained the strength of giants and the madness of the poison in his blood. Something strangely familiar got within his reach, something human of body, and armed with a long stick, and he snatched it, and broke it, and hurled it away among the reeling masks of green. Here was another. And here they ran like ants in a forest of moss, darting this way and that. He leaped upon them in his madness, and crushed them. Again the faces swayed in upon him, and he tore at them with all the strength of his magic and the blindness of his agony. He beat them back. He tore them, and struck them down. Then he turned and ran through a tide of leaping, bubbling green that washed about him, and over him, with a pleasant music of waves. And so he drowned, and yet resolved to fight on. And he looked up through the fathoms of green tide and had not the strength, nor the thought, to close his eyelids. But his brave spirit, armed with all the magic he had ever known, fought on, unbidden, to save the quiet body against the poison of the dart.

Of a sudden, after what may have been an age of death or only a night of sleep, he sobbed his lungs full of air again like one who wins to the surface of the water after a long dive. The blackness that had weighed upon him rolled away; and behold, the green tide was gone, and he saw the open sky and felt a ruffling of wind on his face. “I have tasted death,” he murmured, “and found it bitter in my soul, for all my power of magic.”

He moved a little, turning on his left side, and his body was full of darting pain. The dew of sweat broke out on him, streaming on brow and limbs and breast. He saw that he had struggled from the jungle and now lay on a grassy hummock; but on all sides stood the hideous, green forest, as if waiting to engulf him again. He glanced at his right arm, and saw a tiny ring of purple, hot and puckered, on the sunburned skin. Then he knew that it was poison, and not magic, that had leaped upon him, and filled him with madness and the pangs of death. Yet is not poison a kind of magic, after all, compounded by the gods of hate, in the beginning of the world, such hidden death as Bright Robe would make, if he were wise enough?

Wise-as-a-she-wolf touched the grass near him in a dozen places, with his left hand, starting a dozen little fires that weaved a tent of smoke for protection from the sun. He took a leather bottle from his belt and drank his fill of cool water; and no sooner had he withdrawn the vessel from his lips than it was full again. But as he did not possess the Wallet of Plenty, he drew his magic hunger-belt tight. So he lay until night, with the little fires burning around him, yet consuming nothing, and the smoke of them shutting him in as with walls and roof. Strange and terrible sounds rang from the forest, but he gave small heed to them, knowing that neither weapon nor living body could pass the thin boundaries of his circle of fires. His body ached and his brain felt like a withered leaf in his skull. At last he sank into a troubled sleep. Again the green faces mouthed at him; and he struggled with sleep—or was it death?—and threw the monster off. After that he lay awake until sunrise, drinking frequently of the cool water.

When the sun came up, throwing level shafts of gold across the walls of the forest, a cool wind arose with it, bending the frailer tree-tops and washing the stagnant night from where he lay. There was a tang of salt in the wind, and the good magician breathed it with thankfulness. “I must get down to the sea,” he murmured, “and wash in the strong, salt waters, and forget these tides of poisoned leaves.” But when he tried to raise himself on his elbow, the pain of every bone and muscle was so keen that he had to sink flat again. All that day, and for two days afterward, he fasted. But he drank the water from the magic bottle, without denying his thirst, and felt the poison weakening. On the fourth morning he stood upright and sniffed the wind that swooped and baffled over the eastern wall of the forest. Though his head span dizzily, and horrible pains gripped him, he fastened the magic bottle to his belt, took up his weapons, and jumped feebly into the air. He arose like a wounded bird, struggled crookedly and at last topped the barrier of living, threatening green. In front, beyond miles of jungle, he saw a thin line of crested, wind-bent palms, and further out, the haze and glint of the sea. The clean, salt wind blew against him, and he set his feet upon it and staggered forward. Sometimes he dropped so low that his moccasins touched the massed foliage of the forest, that seemed to look upward, with smeared, uncertain faces, waiting for him; but he arose again and again, with desperate efforts, and held on his course. At last he won to the fringe of palms, and fell to the white sand beside the crystal lip of the tide.

The good magician dwelt in the shade of the wind-bent palms for many days, at first lying inactive, but soon going down to the water each morning and evening to bathe. It was not a great while before he was strong enough to kill a few of the fish that swam in those clear waters, using one of his magic arrows for a spear. Between the beach of white sand and the outer sea-ways, lay a still lagoon, fenced by a reef that stood gleaming in the sun at the time of low water, and broke white and green with surf when the tide was high. In this sheltered water Wise-as-a-she-wolf bathed without fear of treacherous currents and prowling monsters of the deep. Day by day the poison left him, the pains became milder and less frequent in their attacks, and muscle and flesh regained a little of their old strength.

“It is midwinter in my island now, and Featherfoot is telling stories at his father’s fire, and my lodge is empty,” said the good magician, one morning. His heart was sore with homesickness; and his eyes were weary of the everlasting sunshine, the white surf and the green water; his ears were tired of the continual rattling of the wind in the harsh leaves of the palms and his body was tired of its feebleness. Far to seaward, like a shadow of cloud on the horizon, lay an island, and he resolved to fly to it, as soon as the heat of the day was spent, thereby to test his strength. By this time his head was steady, and he could use all the joints of his body without more pain than a man would wince at. Also, he could walk quite briskly, for a short distance, without the aid of the magic moccasins.

When the sun was touching the westward forests, Wise-as-a-she-wolf tightened the thongs of the moccasins of the wind, ran forward for a few steps and sprang into the air. He crossed the lagoon, and the naked reef where the crabs scuttled heavily in the red light, and rose a little when he saw the outer waters heaving beneath him.

“It is a long flight,” he said. “I must save my strength.” And so he ran cautiously, measuring every well-considered stride. Sometimes he touched the smooth back of a billow, and not until then would he put forth fresh effort and rise a few yards in the air. He flew visibly, so as to have all his mind and energy in the flight. The island grew on the darkling sea-rim. He glanced backward and saw the long coast of the mainland flat under the red sky. Beneath him swam a great shark, like a shadow in the deep. He looked down on the dim shape of the fish, and knew why it cruised there, patient yet expectant.

“It is but a short flight after all,” he said, and laughed a little to feel so much of the old strength in his heart and legs. So he ran faster, and saw that the wavering shape below also gathered speed. “We are all hunters or hunted,” he mused. “The shark follows me, because of the poor flesh on my bones; and I follow Bright Robe because of the red feathers on his feet. Yes, and because he has injured my people and struck at my power. But if it were not for the feathers, I think I should forsake this dreary quest.”

He reached the island safely, just at the fall of the sudden night. Here, too, he found a white beach, the sand of which was still pleasantly warm from the day-long heat of the sun. He was tired, so lit his circle of magic fires immediately, and lay down. For three nights he dreamed that his people needed him. “It is foolishness,” he assured himself. “What can they want of me, now that they are at peace with each other, and ruled by wise heads and strong hands? The poison is filling my brain with ugly dreams, in its last efforts to injure me.” And on the second morning he told himself the same thing; but on the third, his argument rang falsely to his heart. He went down to the sea, just at the rising of the sun, and splashed about in the crystal water; but he could not clear his mind of his dream. He fished, cooked, and ate his breakfast, and retired into his tent of smoke; but still the dream whispered within him. When the heat of the day was spent, he started northward, over the rocking sea.

Wise-as-a-she-wolf’s homeward journey proved to be both slow and painful. He was forced to rest many times, in many strange lands.