He jerked his head up.
“Wrong? Wrong? How do you mean, wrong?”
“I mean,” I said, his sharpness making me feel rather uncomfortable, “I mean, she says she's afraid of something.”
He gave me a very long stare which seemed to cover a good deal of thought, for at length he smiled as if he had understood the whole thing, and, moving away towards the window, he asked, “Did she say what she was afraid of?”
I told him what the strange word she had used sounded like to me. It seemed to puzzle him, for he knitted his brows and stared hard out of the window, but I suppose he was tracking it down in his own mind, for he suddenly laughed.
“Oh, lies−schi” (that's as near as I can come to the way he said it) “that's what she must have said.” His face lit up and he leaned comfortably against the bookcase to explain. “Lies−schi are the demons of the forest. To Katia any wild place like our own moor here is a forest, and she's afraid that if you go wandering by yourself over the moor the lies−schi, or, as we might say, the goblins will get you. She's firmly convinced that they nearly got her one day when she missed her way when she was up there gathering bilberries. It's very interesting to me, of course. I find Katia quite believes in a legend that is current in different forms in many parts of Eastern Europe. It is said that there is a demon lord of the forest, an Elf−King, who roams with his band of goblin huntsmen through wild and solitary places, and should they find a mortal there, especially if it be a young girl, straying to gather kindling or mushrooms, they seize her and carry her off to their goblin kingdom, which they say, exists all the time in the forest where the Elf−King roams, but mortal eyes can't see it. These legends, you know, always foresee the objections of the literal−minded critic! Well, there the captive must make sport for the elves for the period of a complete year. They endow her with more than mortal beauty of form and face and she, together with others whom they have captured, spends all her time in dances and games for the entertainment of the Elf−King and his people. The goblin kingdom is all green lawns and glades of enchanting beauty under perpetual sunshine and the captive quite forgets her little hut in the village and the smoky fire and the drizzling sky. Then, when the very day of her capture comes round again she finds herself free and in the very place where she was taken. The forest looks just the same as it did, it is the same season, the same weather; but when she looks at her clothes they are falling off her with age, and when she holds up her hand it is withered. She was young a year ago, but now she is a wrinkled, hunchbacked hag. She hobbles back to the village and there she finds that during her one year's service with the elves a hundred mortal years have passed. Well, now,” said the Doctor, taking breath and stroking the leather−bound volume he was holding. “It's most interesting to see the correspondences between this belief, which is still a living one for Katia, and some of our own fairy−stories. Take, for instance, the old Northumbrian superstition...” He caught my eye and checked himself, then gave a short, apologetic laugh. “Well, well. I mustn't mount my hobby−horse so early in the day! But if the Elf−King's pastimes interest you, dip into this work sometimes.” He held the thick old book up for me to see the title. I read, in letters from which the gilt had long vanished, The Secret Commonwealth. The Doctor nodded, tucked the book under his arm, and marched to the door.
“By−the−by,” he said, turning back to me with his hand on the knob. “It's most likely that I shall have to go away for a time very soon. I trust you won't mind staying here alone?”
“Alone?” I said, not quite understanding. “I mean, of course, with the children.”
“No, of course not,” I said. I wondered, but could not well ask any questions.
We went swimming that afternoon: Katia, Marvan, Ianthe and I. The water in our pool was never warm. My swimming was usually a few minutes' energetic splashing and then a long lazing on the bank until I was hot enough to make another plunge into the chill bright stream desirable. Katia seemed not to feel the cold at all. Perhaps she had been inured to it as a child, breaking the ice to draw water from the mighty Bug or Og or some such river of the steppes. She was too dispirited to splash and play this afternoon. She stood up to her armpits in the middle of the pool, letting her hands float listlessly on the water and looking down in moony contemplation of her own body which gleamed distorted through the stream and pale against the dark brown rock beneath.
The two young girls, too, stood the cold water far better than I did. But they were always active enough to keep their blood well circulating. This day they were in a particularly mischievous mood. I tried to clear up the little mystery of what they had been wearing the afternoon before, but they chose to be pert and contrary. They answered 'yes' at random to my questions, then giggled and spluttered together over some private joke. They spent most of the time teasing and playing tricks on each other. Ianthe had taken it into her head to wear her gay little two−piece swimming costume, which she normally wore for anything but swimming. Marvan, as usual, was swimming nude. The distinction seemed to be an excruciatingly funny joke to her, and half the time, by sly approaches and sudden pounces, in the pool and out, she was trying to peel Ianthe's trunks off; but Ianthe defended them grimly.
“For heaven's sake,” I expostulated, for the joke seemed to be one−sided, and I was getting a little tired of it, “why shouldn't she wear a costume if she wants to?”
Marvan chuckled. “She doesn't want. He says she must.”
I gasped at the enormity of that fib—as Nuaman would have called it; but Marvan, snorting with laughter, swore again and again it was true, until Ianthe, seeing her opportunity, leaped on her and put an end to the matter for the time being by half drowning her.
As none of us had a watch we had to guess the time to go back for tea. Through such a long succession of sunny days I had learned to notice the shadows of the trees and to tell the time by them near enough for the way we lived at Ringstones. In the glen I guessed the hour, and when we got back into the park I saw from the position of the shadows of some of my well−known trees that I had guessed pretty accurately. I had just pointed this out to Katia, when it was confirmed by our meeting Sarkissian trudging along the drive away from the Hall with a pick and shovel on his shoulder. He had been doing some repair work on the road up to Ringstones Moor this last day or two and was now going up to do another spell after his tea. Little as I liked him, I admired his capacity for hard work; he was labouring at something all day long. I spoke to him as we passed and got a sort of dark leer in reply. Katia, who ought, I suppose, to have been home before us to get the tea ready, took to her heels and ran all the way back to the Hall.
I did not see Nuaman until late in the evening. The girls had had their supper and I had said good−night to them and gone out to stroll about the lawn in the middle of the park for a while before changing for dinner. Nuaman joined me there. I asked him how my “surprise” was coming on, for I believe he had spent the whole day in his workshop.
He shook his head and grinned. “Now, don't be impatient. It'll soon be ready.”
“Well, what about my watch strap?” I asked. “Is that to wait until you've finished the other thing?”