Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard by Eleanor Farjeon (best new books to read txt) 📕

"What does that mean?" asked the child.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Young Gerard. He kicked at the dying log on the hearth, and sent a fountain of sparks up the chimney. The child threw a dry leaf and saw it shrivel, and Young Gerard stirred the white ash and blew up the embers, and held a fan of bracken to them, till the fire ran up its veins like life in the veins of a man, and the frond that had already lived and died became a gleaming spirit, and then it too fell in ashes among the ash. Then Young Gerard took a handful of twigs and branches, and began to build upon the ash a castle of many sorts of wood, and the child helped him, laying hazel on his beech and fir upon his oak; and often before their turret was quite reared a spark would catch at the dry fringes of the fir, or the brown oakleaves, and one twig or another would vanish from the castle.

"How quickly wood burns," said the child.

"That's the lovely part of it," said Young Gerard, "the fire is always changing and doing different things with it."

And they watched the fire together, and smelled its smoke, that had as many smells as there were sorts of wood. Sometimes it was like roast coffee, and sometimes like roast chestnuts, and sometimes like incense. And they saw the lichen on old stumps crinkle into golden ferns, or fire run up a dead tail of creeper in a red S, and vanish in mid-air like an Indian boy climbing a rope, or crawl right through the middle of a birch-twig, making hieroglyphics that glowed and faded between the gray scales of the bark. And then suddenly it caught the whole scaffolding of their castle, and blazed up through the fir and oak and spiny thorns and dead leaves, and the bits of old bark all over blue-gray-green rot, and the young sprigs almost budding, and hissing with sap. And for one moment they saw all the skeleton and soul of the castle without its body, before it fell in.

The child sighed a little and yawned a little and said:

"How nice it is to live in a palace. Who lives here with you?"

"My friends," said Young Gerard, poking at the log with a bit of stick.

"What are your friends like?" she asked him, rubbing her knuckles in her eyes.

He was silent for a little, stirring up sparks and smoke. Then he answered, "They are gay in their hearts, and they're dressed in bright clothes, and they come with singing and dancing."

"Who else lives in your palace with you?" she asked drowsily.

"You do," said Young Gerard.

The child's head dropped against his shoulder and she said, "My name's Dorothea, but my father calls me Thea, and he is the Lord of Combe Ivy." And she fell fast asleep.

For a little while Young Gerard held and watched her in the firelight, and then he rose and wrapped her in the old embroidered mantle on the settle, and went out. And sure-foot as a goat he carried her over the dark hills by the tracks he knew, for roads there were none, and his arms ached with his burden, but he would not wake her till they stood at her father's gates. Then he shook her gently and set her down, and she clung to him a little dazed, trying to remember.

"This is Combe Ivy," he whispered. "You must go in alone. Will you come again?"

"One day," said Thea.

"One day there'll be flowers on my cherry-tree," said Young Gerard. "Don't forget."

"No, I won't," she said.

He returned through the night up hill and down dale, but did not go back to the shed until he had recovered his lamb. By then it was almost dawn, and he found his master awake and cursing. He had feared the boy had made off, and he had had curt treatment at Combe Ivy, which was in a stir about the loss of the little daughter. Young Gerard showed the lamb as his excuse, nevertheless the old shepherd leathered the young one soundly, as he did six days in seven.

After this when Young Gerard sat dreaming on the hills, he dreamed not only of his happy land and laughing friends, but of the next coming of little Thea. But Combe Ivy was far away, and the months passed and the years, and she did not come again. Meanwhile Young Gerard and his tree grew apace, and the limbs of the boy became longer and stronger, and the branches of the tree spread up to the roof and even began to thrust their way through the holes in the wall; but the boy's life, save for his dreaming, was as friendless as the tree's was flowerless. And of a tree's dreaming who shall speak? Meanwhile Old Gerard thrashed and rated him, and reckoned his gold pieces, and counted the years that still lay between him and his freedom. At last came another April bringing its hour.

For as he sat on the Mount in the early morning, when he was in his seventeenth year, Young Gerard saw a slender girl running over the turf and laughing in the sunlight, sometimes stopping to watch a bird flying, or stooping to pluck one of the tiny Down-flowers at her feet. So she came with a dancing step to the top of the Mount, and then she saw him, and her glee left her and shyness took its place. But a little pride in her prevented her from turning away, and she still came forward until she stood beside him, and said:

"Good morning, Shepherd. Is it true that in April the country north of the hills is filled with lakes?"

"Yes, sometimes, Mistress Thea," said Young Gerard.

She looked at him with surprise and said, "You must be one of my father's shepherds, but I do not remember seeing you at