Beneath great pale cliffs the path wound, the stones not black and dark, but pale as light in hue and very strange, and nothing grew there, for there was no water anywhere. So the path wound up and yet more up and when noon was passed an hour or two, they came suddenly into a round deep valley in the mountain tops, and there some water was, for there was a small square village enclosed about with a rocky wall, and about it the green of a few fields. But when the mother and her son stopped at the gate to that village and asked of the place they sought, one who stood there pointed yet higher to a ridge and said, “There where the green ends on that lower edge there are the two houses. It is the last edge of green, and above it there are only rocks and sky.”
Now all this time the mother had stared astonished at these mountains and at their strange wild shapes and paleness, and at the scanty green. She had spent her life in the midst of valleys, and now as the path wound up from the enclosed village she stared about aghast to see how mortally poor the land was here and how shallow on the pale rocks the soil was and how scanty all the crops, even now when harvest drew on, and she cried out to the youth, “I do not like the looks of this place, son! I doubt it is too hard a place for your sister. Well, we will take her home, then. Yes, if it is too hard for her here I can walk and we will put her on the ass, and let them say what they will. They paid nothing for her, and I will ask nothing but her back again.”
But the young man did not answer. He was weary and hungry, for they had eaten but a bit of cold food they had brought with them, and he longed to reach his sister’s house, for there they thought to spend the night. He pulled at the ass’s bridle until the mother could not bear it and was about to brave his anger and reprove him.
Suddenly they came upon that house. Yes, there the two houses were, caught upon the side of the ridge and stuck there somehow to the rocks, and the mother knew this was where her maid was, for there the ill-looking old man stood at the door of one of the two houses, and when he saw her he stared as if he could not believe it was she, and then he ran in and out came more people, another man, dark and lean and wild in looks, and two women and a slack-hung youth, but not her blind maid.
The mother came down from her ass then and went near, and all these stared at her in silence, and she looked back and was afraid. Never had she seen such looks as these, the women’s hair uncombed and full of burrs and their faces withered and blackened with the sun, their garments never washed, and so were they all. They gathered there and out of the other house came a sickly child or two, yellowed with some fever, their lips parched and broken, and their bodies foul with filth, and they all stared silently, and gave no greeting, their eyes as wild and reasonless as beasts’ eyes are.
Then did the mother’s heart break suddenly with fear and she ran forward crying, “Where is my maid? Where have you hid my maid?” And she ran into their midst, but the young man stood doubting and holding to the ass.
Then a woman spoke sullenly, and her speech was not easily understood, some rude northern speech it was, and the sounds caught between her broken teeth and nothing came out clear and she said, “You have come well, goodwife. She has just died today.”
“Died!” the mother whispered and said no more. Her heart stopped, her breath was gone, she had no voice. But she pushed into the nearest hut and there upon a bed of reeds thrown on the ground her blind maid lay. Aye, there the maid was lying quietly and dead, dressed in the same clothes she had when she left her home, but not clean now nor mended. Of those new things there was no trace, for the room was empty save for the heap of rushes and a rude stool or two.
Then the mother ran and knelt beside her maid and stared down at the still face and sunken eyes and at the patient little mouth and all the face she knew so well. And suddenly she burst out crying and she fell upon the maid and seized her hands and pushed the ragged sleeves back and looked at her little arms and drew the trousers up her legs and looked to see if they were bruised or beaten or harmed in any way.
But there was nothing. No, the maid’s soft skin was all unbroken, the slender bones whole, and there was nothing to be seen. She was pale and piteously thin, but she was thin always and death is pale. Then did the mother stoop and smell at the child’s lips to see if there was any smell of poison, but there was no smell, nothing now except the faint sad scent of death.
Yet somehow the mother could not believe that this was any good and usual death. She turned on those who stood about the door watching her in silence, and she looked at them and saw their wild rude faces, not one of which she knew, and she shouted at them through sudden great weeping, “You have killed her — well I know you have — if you did not, then tell me how did my maid die so soon, and she left me sound and well!”
Then the evil old man whom she had hated from the first time she saw him grinned and said, “Be careful how you speak, goodwife! It is not a small thing to say we killed her and—”
But the sullen, rough-haired woman broke in screaming, “How did she die? She died of a cold she caught, being so puny, and that is how she died!” And she spat upon the ground and said again, screeching as she said, “A useless maid she was, too, if there was one, and knowing nothing — no, she could not even learn to fetch the water from the spring and not stumble and fall or lose her way!”
Then the mother looked and saw a narrow stony path leading down the mountain to a small pool and she groaned and cried, “Is that the way you mean?” But no one answered her and she cried out in further agony, “You beat her — doubtless every day my maid was beaten!”
But the woman answered quickly, “Search and see if there be bruises on her! Once my son did beat her for she came to him too slowly, but that is all!”
The mother looked up then and said faintly, “Where is your son?” And they pushed him forward, that son they had, and there he stood, a gangling, staring lad, and the mother saw he was nearly witless.
Then did the mother lay her head down upon her dead maid and weep and weep most wildly, and more wildly still she wept when she thought of what the maid had suffered, must have suffered, at such hands as these. And while she wept the anger grew about her in those who watched her. At last she felt a touch upon her and looking up she saw it was her son, and he bent and whispered to her urgently, “Mother, We are in danger here — I am afraid — we must not stay. Mother, she is dead now and what more can you do? But they look so evil I do not know what they will do to us. Come and let us hasten to the village and buy a little food and then press on home tonight!”
The mother rose then unwillingly, but as she looked she saw it was true those people stood together close, and there was that about them to make her fear, too, and she did not like their muttering nor the looks they cast at her and at the youth. Yes, she must think of him. Let them kill her if they would, but there was her son.
She turned and looked down once more at her dead maid and put her garments neat and laid her hands to her side. She went out into the late afternoon. When they saw her calmer and that she made ready to mount the ass again, the man, who had not spoken yet, and who was father to the witless son, said, “Look you, goodwife, if you do not think us honest folk, look at the coffin we have bought your child. Ten pieces of silver did it cost us, and all we had, and do you think we would have bought a coffin if we had not valued her?”