“So even though you might not see the guiding fire, yet you shall know that it be there, I shall send a wind of far fetch so that the air and breeze shall bring you scented notice of me, for I am Huldah, and I am the headland and the winding river and the sheltering port as well.” (And all the while as, later, he was bound away, he saw her in the sheltering port’s placid wavelets and in the undulations of the winding river and in the cliffs and crannies of the headlands: and even, her face burned upon the waters of the open sea for many leagues and many.) Yet another moment she hesitated, and then she said, without change of countenance or voice, “And don’t fear, thou Messer Vergil, that however long thou tarriest, if even past time that I have ceased to wait daily for thy coming, that ever I shall make that fire a funeral fire —”
“Absit omen!” and thrice he spet upon that perfumed floor and thrice he rapped his knuckle-bones upon the wooden pillar he stood next to, so that the dryad which had dwelt within the tree, and might dwell there still, should hearken and prevent any possibility of coming true the words which the woman had said should not come true: she had had the thought: therein a danger. And Absit omen, he said, yet once again.
He met her eyes, those agate-colored eyes, in which he had seen the gleamings and the glisterings of far-off fires in nights by far-distant shores and in distant lands of interior. “I, more worth than that,” she said.
“Ah, Huldah—”
“For I am, after all, Huldah of Huldah. And I am far more worth than that.” She stopped and stooped and picked up her little cat-creature, which he had not seen nor heard enter the room. It made a sound to her, and she held it close her face, and the two faces looked upon him. A slight and aimless question he now asked of her, as one will do, to break silence. “What is biss’s name?” he asked.
And, in an odd, and yet it appeared and seemed an appropriate, tone, the question was answered him. “My name is Huldah,” said the creature.
Long he stayed there, and now and then he rose and paced, up and down, up and down that fragrant perfumed floor made of a wood whose name he had somehow never yet asked; fragrance he had never known before but which he knew he would never forget and would recognize were he ever to scent it again, even on the phoenix pyre, did the Fates yield him even that; and then he stood there long again, till the very fire upon the hearth burned down and he saw the embers dying, dying, and it seemed to him that he saw the dying embers of Carthage, Troy and Babylone, and it seemed to him that he saw them reflected in two pairs of eyes, and long he stayed there, then, again.
When he heard sounds of footfalls upon the path he did not, really, rouse himself. But out of his reverie he asked. “What thing, and who?”
It seemed the man’s voice was full of much relief. “The boat, Ser Vergil. She’s full, and fit, and ready now to sail upon the morning’s tide;” the early mornings tide that meant. He had known, been knowing, that this must very soon come, but had put the knowing away from him: could do so no more. Huldah had gone, and the knowledge of his own going had now come.
“Go, then,” said Vergil. “I follow.” Follow, then, he did, when he had quickly dressed. He did not attempt to seek out Huldah again. But all the walk to the harbor and the small ship, all along as he walked, he felt himself accompanied by someone, a someone who kept out of sight. A light-limbed and a body light of weight.
Whence, then, Huldah? How came she here? Was she named for the place, or the place for her? Was there a woman named Roma in the village midst the marsh of Tiber ere Romulus butted his downy, unclosed head to force yet further milk from the she-vulp’s yielding paps? or not? Useless to ask; the Sybil at Cumae may have noted it in her books of leaves, but … the Sybil, where was she? and your mothers, do they live forever? Who Huldah’s parents were and where they had come from, these things he knew: but as to why they had left the tideless Inland Sea to settle here upon the Coasts of Ocean, this she had not told him. How did she live? She had of course her farms and fruit trees, her hares and poultry, including those harsh-voiced speckled fowl which seemed to live as much in the trees as on the ground, and of course her doves and dovecots, whence the so small eggs on which she sometimes breakfasted. Her milch-goats … And she traded. Others along that shore were obliged to use the “mute” or “dumb” or “silent” trade, but she, being trusted, not; Sometimes ships came from as far-off as Babylone: none, though, whilst he had tarried there. “Gold and grain, I buy. Local grain I sometimes buy, if there be abundance and surfeit of it,” she had said. “If there is surplus, there, away, and the grainbins cannot hold it all, they bring it hither, and I buy. Though, when I foresee drought or a bad crop coming, or when I reck a year of the locusts coming, then I send my word abroad, and grain I buy from over-the-seas; and I provide it to my people here and I sell it to those who come from the Interiors, and from far along the coasts…. far away far … as far as from the borders of those eat no grain, but only the wild fruit flesh of the forests do they eat.”
And, “Gems? Gold? Gem comes not in abundantly, but it comes and I take of it. Perfect stones, only: nothing flawed. Gold? The people of this land and of the lands behind and past the lands behind, though fairly steadily they come to sell me gold, they never come to buy it. They have their own sources, far away far, I see … others may see it too, I suppose … but so far ….” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“And elephant?” he had asked. Such a look fled swiftly along her face. “Five-limbed Uluvendas, though long he lives, though long he lives, does not live forever.” Why not buy and sell the obviously very old elephant? — “Uluvendas?” he asked. — “Five-limbed Uluvendas,” she answered.
For a moment he paused; then, “The oliphaunt!” he exclaimed. She did not at once reply, but he saw that he was correct. (Later, when he had the time to consult the Olden Books, he realized that according to the Law of Letters, as laid down by the Punes, who had invented letters, from uluvend to oliphaunt was no great change: and that the original word had passed from the Hethits of northern Asia Minore to the Greeks of western Asia Minore: the very thought of there having been oliphaunts in that continent struck him with great force as a most antic notion: yet there it was: and was it any more antic than the fact that there had not alone been lionels in Asia Minore but lionels in Greece as well? and yet now behold: in Africa, whence always something new, today: oliphaunts and lionels alike … and cockodrills as welclass="underline" and in India: lionels, oliphaunts and cockodrills. It beseemed him, then, that there was even more of a unitas in the universe than ever he had thought before.)
She went on, “So some have asked, Why not sell the obviously very old elephant? surely you must know the dying place, that race thereof, and might have it gathered and sell it, no fear that your precious ones have been slaughtered for their teeth? — but he may have been so slain,” she said, “by those who thought to sell the teeth long time later … But I do not allow Five-limbed Uluvendas to be slain on my shores and slopes, nor into the Interior … as far as my word may reach … and it reaches far … far away far. But — always — always — there are those who wish to slay Uluvendas; for his flesh, yes, but they don’t come from far away far to murder him for his flesh alone: for his teeth, his teeth of elephant, they come to murder him from far away far.” The certain look, such as came into her face when she spoke of Five-limbed Uluvendas, lingered long, but even long must leave after even length of time.