Part 6

There, having duly sunk their burdens, they took each other by the hand, and turned homeward. At one of the running brooks on their way home, Thia halted. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘will I wash my face well. And do you, too, O Thol, wash yours, so that when we wake in the morning mine shall not displease you.’

* * * * *

Every night Thia accompanied Thol on one of the two journeys; and during the other she would go to the forest and gather wood, so that there should always be plenty of fuel in hand. She was sorry to have had to abandon her geese, for she felt they would not be as happy with any one as they had been with her. Nothing else whatever was there to mar her joy in the life that she and Thol were leading together, and in the good that they were doing. It amused her to know that the homelanders would think she had wandered away--she who was serving them so well. Its very secrecy made her life the more joyous.

Daily she prayed to the sun and other gods that she and Thol might live to be very old and might never fail in their work.

But the sun and those others were not good listeners.

As the nights lengthened and the leaves began to fall, the mists over the marshes and around them grew ever thicker. It was not easy to find the way through them; and they were very cold, and had a savour that was bitter to the tongue and to the nostrils. And one morning Thia, when she woke, was shivering from head to foot, though she was in Thol’s arms. She slipped away from him without waking him, and went not merely to tend the fire but also to warm herself at it. All through the morning she was shivering; and in the evening her hands became hot, as did her face and all her body. She felt very weak. She could laugh no more now at Thol’s disquietude. She lay down, but could not lie very still. At about the time when they were wont to sally forth, she rose up, feeling that even though she might not be able to carry the birds to-night the journey would freshen her. She soon found that she was too weak even to stand. Thol was loth to leave her; but she insisted that the work must be done. Again and again, next day and during the next night, she implored him that if she died he would not mourn her very much and would not once falter in the work. He promised that he would not falter. Other days and nights passed. It seemed to Thol that Thia had ceased to know him. She did not even follow him with her eyes now. One morning, at daybreak, soon after his return from the third journey, she seemed, by her gaze, to know him. But presently she died in his arms.

On that night he went to the forest and dug a grave for his wife. Then, returning to the cave, he took her in his arms, and carried her away, and buried her.

In the time that followed, he was not altogether lonely. He felt by day that somehow she was in the cave with him still, and by night he felt that she walked with him. He never faltered in the work.

He faltered not much even when the marshes did to him as they had done to Thia. Shivering in every limb, or hot and aching, and very weak, he yet forced himself to tend the fire and at nightfall to brandish the torch and clash the stones and drag in the beasts and birds. It irked him that he was not strong enough to carry even one sheep away. Surely, he would be strong again soon? For Thia’s sake, and for the homeland’s, he wished ardently to live. But there came an evening when the watchers in the valley saw no rising and falling, heard no clashing, of the dragon’s jaws.

* * * * *

Would the dragon come forth to-night? The valley on the further side of the stream was now thickly crowded. On the nearer side were many single adventurers, with spears. Their prowess and skill were not tested. The dragon came not forth.

In the dawn it was noted that his smoke was far less thick than it was wont to be. Soon it ceased altogether. What had happened? Perchance the dragon was ailing? But even an ailing dragon would breathe. A great glad surmise tremulously formed itself. Was the dragon dead?

The surmise quickly became a firm belief--so firm that, in spite of protests from the precise Shib, songs of thanksgiving were heartily sung before the cave was approached and examined.

People were much puzzled. The dead man lying at the cave’s mouth, grasping in one hand a flat stone and in the other a charred staff, was not quickly recognised as Thol, so black were his hair and skin; nor was he at once known to have been the dragon. The quantities of stacked wood, the tunnel into the cave where Thol had lived, did not quickly divulge their meaning. Only after long arguments and many conjectures did the homelanders understand the trick that had been played on them. Why, with what evil intent, it had been played, they were almost too angry to discuss at present. But certain words of Thia’s were remembered; and it was felt that she herself perhaps had put the trick into Thol’s mind and that this was why she had fled the homeland. She had better not set foot in it again.

Before the sun sank, Thol was buried without honour, and far from Thia.

And before the sun sank many other times the homelanders were as they had been before the coming of the true dragon, and as they had been again before the false one was among them.

FINIS

And thus--does our tale end unhappily? I think not. After all, the homelanders at large are rather shadowy to us. Oc and Loga, Shib and Veo, Afa and her like, and all those others, all those nameless others, do not mean much to us. It is Thol and Thia that we care about. For their sake we wish that the good they did could have been lasting. But it is not in the nature of things that anything--except the nature of things--should last. Saints and wise statesmen can do much. Their reward is in the doing of it. They are lucky if they do not live long enough to see the undoing. It should suffice us that Thol and Thia together in their last days knew a happiness greater than they had ever known--Thol a greater happiness than in the days of his glory, and Thia than in the days of hers.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] Lest the reader assume that in the course of this narrative one or both of Thia’s parents will return to claim her, let me at once state that within a few months of her being left in the homeland her father was killed by a lion, and her mother by a lioness, in what has since become Shropshire.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.