The Corn King and the Spring Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

soft hairs. He was brown and red as to colour, as if he lay out in the sun all day, and let it warm his bare skin while others were working. Like Berris, he wore loose shirt and trousers, both of white linen, and a white felt coat embroidered with rising suns and a criss-cross of different-coloured sunrays. His belt was all gold, dolphins linked head to tail; it had a rather small sword hanging from it on one side, and at the other a gold-plated quiver of arrows, a whistle, and a tiny hunting-knife with an onyx handle. He wore a crown, being Chief, a high felt cap, covered with tiers and tiers of odd, fighting, paired griffins in soft gold; his hair, underneath, was dark brown and curly; on his upper lip, too, it was brown and quite short, so that one saw his mouth, and, when he laughed, as he often did, his white, even, upper teeth.
    The girl looked quickly from him to her brother; but Berris was tap-tapping on the gold, with his back to them both. Tarrik smiled, tightened his bowstring and began playing with it, till it buzzed like a wasp. She frowned at him, not sure whether he mightn’t be laughing at her, treating her like a baby, when really it was she who had all the power. She put her hand to the wooden star under her dress.
    Then the tapping at the bench stopped and Berris called her to blow the fire again; the gold was getting brittle, he had to anneal it. As he got up, Tarrik made the bowstring sound sharply again. He slipped off the stool and gave the Chief his formal salute, right hand with bare knife up to the forehead, then went over and took Tarrik by the upper arms and shook him with pleasure at the meeting. Tarrik grinned, and let him, and Erif Der took the opportunity of getting to her feet and taking out the wooden star. ‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ said Berris. ‘Oh, Tarrik, I’ve had a terrible day! I thought I’d made something good and it wasn’t!’
    â€˜How do you know?’ said Tarrik, and his voice was as pleasant as his smile. ‘Let me see it.’
    Berris shook his head. ‘No. I killed it. Wait, though; let me get this hot now, or it will crack.’ He took the gold and put it carefully on to the fire, gripping it lightly all the time with his wood-handled tongs.
    Tarrik leant over to look. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s bad. You’d better melt it down, Berris.’
    At that Berris coloured, but still held the buckle steady in the flame. ‘Suppose,’ he said, ‘suppose you know nothing at all about it?’
    â€˜Has our handsome friend Epigethes been here? Has he?’ asked Tarrik. ‘I thought so.’ He looked across the fire at Erif Der, blowing the bellows, with the bracelet on one arm and the star tight in the other hand. He began to sing at her, very low, in time with her movements, a child’s rhyme about little ships with all kinds of pretty ladings. And still she was not sure if he was laughing at her or making love to her. The fire on the forge between them nearly stopped her from working on him.
    The gold was hot and soft by now; it would not crack. Berris Der took it out and across to the bench. ‘It’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad,’ said Tarrik, leaning over, ‘it’s like a little Greek making a face.’ And suddenly Erif Der found that she liked Tarrik. That was so surprising that she nearly dropped the star; because she had never really thought of her own feelings before. There was she, Harn Der’s daughter and a witch; so of course she would do everything she could for her father and brothers. And there was the Chief, who was to have the magic done on him, to be her husband for a few months—because that was part of it—but never, somehow, to get into her life. But if she liked him it would all be much harder. Quickly, fear came swamping into her mind; she wanted to stop, to run away. She began to creep out, very quietly, slinking along the