Legenda Maris Read Online Free PDF

mermaid’s daughter,” said
Elaidh.
    She was solemn as the quietness of the
lake, and her long hair was the pale brown of a duck’s wing, but her eyes were
green.
    “Now and then,” said Elrahn, as if idly,
but not looking at her at all, “I thought I would see you grow to be a woman,
and I should dance at your wedding when the fiddler played his best tunes.”
    Elaidh said “I would like that, dadda.
But now I love you first.”
    “Do not be loving me,” said Elrahn, “and
I must not love you, for it’s your mother loves you best. She made you with me,
which is how all her clan make their children, by a sort of magic, and they are
always daughters. Last night I saw her again in a dream, only the second dream
I ever had of her. I never saw her all these years till then. But it was as she
promised or she warned me. She told me this, Elaidh. And she told me she will
swim up in a while today, out of the lake. And when you see her, she is that
lovely, Elaidh, and young still as when I met her last. She will never grow
old, and not for an age will she die. Her kind live for centuries, perhaps they
do for ever. And this too she said I must say to you: How they roam all the
waters, the fresh and the salt, the endless oceans that lead one into another,
and the rivers and the lakes that pierce and cross the land. How they own vast
treasures, huge rubies and diamonds and hoards of golden coins that have gone
down with ships, and pearls that grow in the shells of creatures in the sea.
How they play on sands miles under water, lit at night by a moon so vigorous
its light is as the summer at midday. And how they sing and make music. And how
they are free as the tides. And their beauty, Elaidh, and I should know it, is
like a secret of the heart.”
    “Yes, dadda?” asked the child, all attention.
    “You and I,” said he, “have had our life
together. A chancy travelling existence. Doing this and that, mending,
fetching, or pulling trick birds from a scarf to tickle crowds. I have taught
you the little I know, little enough it could fit inside an acorn. That was all
I could do, but it was given to me to do it. And at first it seemed too much
for me, the task. And then it was only simple as to breathe. And now, it’s
done. For when she comes from the lake, your mother Trisaphee, she will offer
another life to you. She will offer to take you among her own kind, half of
which kind you are. By her spell, your hair will turn to the colour of the
reeds, and you will have a tail like a fish, strong as a leopard. And water and
air will be alike to your lungs. You will live for centuries never growing
old. You will journey through the oceans, free as the tides, playing with
rubies and pearls. You will be a mermaid, if so you wish it.’’
    The child stared. She said, “But if not?”
    Elrahn said. “Then you’ll stay with me
and be my daughter. You will wed a man and bear his children, not as she and I
bore you, but in pain and labour. You will likely be poor, and certainly
hard-worked, and you will wither with the years, a piece of time which to a
mermaid is like an afternoon. Then you will die and be dust. Unless, as the
priest said, you have a soul. We have been good friends—but oh, a mermaid—you
would be a fool to refuse this chance.”
    Then all at once Elaidh had turned from
him and Elrahn knew why. He heard the murmur of the water, the flutter of it as
if a great fish swam just under the surface. Then came a dash of light and
water-drops.
    Turning himself, he saw Trisaphee
standing there, as in the second dream he had, lifted on her tail in the reeds,
a girl dressed all in green.
    And she held out her smiling arms, not
to him, but to Elaidh, and Elaidh jumped to her feet and ran towards her mother
and the lake, the centuries and the shadows, to sing and laugh, and to bite the
bones of men.
    Elaidh had her foot even on the water’s
hem. She had let her hand almost into the hand of the tall green girl, her
mother, who