The Corn King and the Spring Queen. Naomi Mitchison

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СКАЧАТЬ again moodily, thinking of his sons and all he was doing for them.

      Berris and his sister were out of sight by now; they were walking fast and Erif Der was out of breath and a little angry. She took an odd-looking, small wooden star out of the front of her dress and held it for a few yards, then stopped for a moment, panting, and touched her brother’s hand. It’s very hot, isn’t it, Berris?’

      ‘Yes, I suppose,’ said Berris vaguely, slowing down, and took off his coat as he walked and trailed it from his hand till it dropped. ‘Very hot,’ he went on, and began pulling at his shirt, and, ‘very hot,’ his sister echoed, looking at him gravely. He pulled the shirt over his head and his felt cap dropped off with it; there was a brown line at the base of his neck where he stopped being sunburnt. The belt went with the shirt; he started just a little at the chink of the clasps falling on the road, but he was looking at Erif Der. Still walking slowly, he stepped out of his loose trousers. ‘So hot,’ he said again, and there was a film of sweat on his skin. He pushed back the hair from his forehead, and suddenly behind Erif Der there seemed to be a face staring at him, two, three faces. He stared back at them. They were opening their mouths to say words to him, his sister faded and they came real, and all at once he noticed, first, that he was really quite cold, and then that he had nothing on and all his clothes were straggling in little heaps down the road where he had dropped them.

      He stood and swore at the starers till they ran—they were all poor men, and he, in spite of everything, Harn Der’s son. Then he went up to Erif Der; she had her mouth tight shut and her cheeks pink; she tried to look him in the eyes again, but he was too angry for her now. Tick up my clothes,’ he said.

      ‘I won’t!’ said Erif Der, getting pinker.

      ‘Yes you will,’ said her brother, and got her by the two plaits. She screamed and hit out at him, but he swung her away by her hair. Tick them up,’ he said.

      She went and got them without a word, and threw them down at his feet; she was too sore and angry to cry. ‘You beast, Berris!’ she said, ‘I’ll make you sorry for that!’

      Berris recovered his temper with his trousers. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said, ‘I can always pull your hair and you can’t always magic me, so it won’t do you any good in the long run.’ She kicked his coat and said nothing. ‘Little goose,’ he went on, ‘what did you do it for? Suppose Tarrik had seen?’

      ‘Well, let him!’ said Erif Der. ‘Let him! Then no one can say he didn’t know what I can do!’

      ‘Oh,’ said Berris, ‘so that’s what you’re after. My belt, please. No, pick it up. Pick it up! So you want Tarrik to know?’

      ‘Tarrik does know! I’m going home. I shall tell father you hurt me!’

      Berris caught her by one arm: ‘Baby! You come with me to the forge. Come and blow the fire for me. Erif, I’m making something—something exciting. A beast. Come on, Erif.’

      ‘Is Tarrik going to be there? Is he? Let go, Berris!’

      ‘Very likely. Erif, you are shiny when you’re so cross. There, that’s better. Are you coming?’

      ‘I won’t answer till you let me go.’

      He dropped her arm. She rubbed it against her cheek for a moment, then nodded and went down the street towards the forge.

      Berris Der unlocked the door, taking a little time over it, because he had made the lock himself and was proud of it: the key was like a little stag with mad horns. He left the door open and unfastened the shutters from inside. Erif Der went to the fire and raked away the earth that had been banked round it the evening before: it was still alive and stirred redly under her breath as she fed it with dry chips. She leaned to the bellows. ‘Why have you got to do that?’ asked Berris. ‘Can’t you make the fire obey?’ Erif Der shook her head: ‘I don’t know enough about fire,’ and she turned her back on him to get a purchase on the bellows handle. Berris was at another of his own locks now; it was on a great oak chest, bound with forking straps of silver-inlaid bronze. He took something out, and laid it carefully on the embers, which throbbed white and red with heat under the bellows. After a time he called her to look.

      She stood away from him, watching. There was a small, queer, iron horse, twisted and flattened, biting his own back; he was angry and hammer-marked all over; his mane shot up into a flame; his downward jammed feet were hard and resisting; the muscles of his body were ready to burst out. Berris Der laid him on the anvil and began hammering to a rhythm, one, two on the horse, three with a solider clink on the iron of the anvil. The horse twisted still more; fresh hammer marks beat out the old—the substance seemed less and the movement more; every moment he became less like the tamed horses of fenced pastures; and more like something wild in the mind, beaten madly by the violences of thought. The glow died out of him. The blows stopped suddenly; he was back in the fire, and his watchers at work, thinking of him. Then again the anvil. Berris chanted in time with the hammer, tunelessly: ‘Horse, horse, horse.’ At a point of the fantastic he stayed, the hammer half raised. ‘Well?’ he said. She came nearer, tracing the horse shape half unconsciously in the air with one finger. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I expect he is the best thing you have done?’ ‘Yes, but how do you know?’ ‘Not any way you’d like. Ask Tarrik.’ Her brother did not answer, but stayed still, his lips pursed, watching his queer little horse as it lay there with the light on it, the centre of the forge; he made the movement of touching it, but could not really, because of the heat in the iron.

      There was a tapping on the open door of the forge; Berris looked round, half angry at being disturbed, half pleased at having someone fresh to admire his work. Erif Der stepped back one pace and sat down on the floor beside another chest which stood between the fire and the window. ‘Come in!’ said Berris, smiling at his horse; ‘come and look.’

      A man came in out of the sunshine and stood beside Berris, one hand on his shoulder. ‘So!’ he said, ‘you have something new?’ And he stood with his head a little on one side, looking at it. He was older than Berris, tall and graceful, with long, broad-tipped fingers, bare legs, and dark, curly hair; he was clean shaven and his eyes and mouth showed what was going on in his mind. His clothes looked odd and bright in the forge: a short, full tunic of fine linen, light red bordered with deeper red, and a heavy mantle flung round him, one end caught in his belt, the other over his shoulder and hanging thickly and beautifully from his arm. He had thin sandals on his feet and moved cautiously, afraid of knocking against some hot metal.

      ‘What do you make of it, Epigethes?’ said Berris Der, speaking shyly in Greek.

      The other man smiled and did not answer at once; when he spoke it was gravely, paternally almost, though he was not so very much older than Berris. ‘Very nice,’ he said.

      ‘You don’t think so!’ said Berris quickly, flushing, frowning at his horse. ‘It isn’t!’

      The Greek laid a hand kindly on his shoulder: ‘Well, Berris, it’s rough, isn’t it?—harsh, tortured?’

      ‘Yes—yes—but isn’t that, partly, the hammering?’

      ‘Of course. What have I always told you? You must work on the clay first till you get out all these violences. And then cast.’

      ‘But, Epigethes, I hate clay! It’s so soft, such a long way from what I want. And then, there’s the time it takes, with the wax and all—and when it’s done I’ve got to scrape and file and chip and fill in nail holes!’

      ‘I know, I know,’ said Epigethes soothingly, СКАЧАТЬ