Chapter V: Part 5

The wizard elk lifted one foreleg. Gaupa saw it, a helpless look in his eyes. An icy-cold blast ran through him, before he rose to his knees. The light-grey elk’s leg was lifted still higher, stopped in the air for a tiny moment, and then fell rapidly. It hit Gaupa between his shoulder-blades. Daylight was extinguished for him as suddenly as when a candle is blown out. With incredible speed he rushed into empty space, then began to sink—down, down.

Gaupa lay on his face, his left arm bent under him, but the right hand which held the knife was stretched out to one side. Then his fingers loosened slowly from the curly maple shaft, straightened out, and the knife lay loose on the snow crust.

Rauten lifted his leg for another blow, but half-way up it became so heavy that he could lift it no further, could not even hold it up. It was as if Rauten thought better of it, as if he believed that the man had had enough. He remained standing, his eyes, soft as dusk, staring sadly at Gaupa. Then he grew sleepy and tired, strangely tired. His great head nodded, nodded lower still, rose and nodded again. Then it stiffened. There lay Rauten, the wizard elk.

The morning sun reached the tree-tops and crept slowly down the trunks. Then reaching the earth it stole forwards as if nosing the man and the elk curiously.

* * * * *

The day was not different from many other days.

It was a day in May, when spring dwells below in the great valleys, early flowers bloom, and clouds sail across the blue sky.

On the Ré Valley slopes dusk turned to evening.

For a little space there was silence.

The jay said no more. A marten sat well hidden in a spruce tree close by, his eyes shining like raindrops among the needles. Dawn lit copper-red fires on all the mountain peaks.

Then the snow crust crashed noisily below that rocky wall on Gipsy Lake slope. Rauten fell on his side. He did not move, but inside him something bubbled with the sound of hidden brooklets under the peat in a bog.

Suddenly the great body curled up and straightened out again just as suddenly.

Gaupa and Rauten slept side by side, Rauten’s head touching Gaupa’s chest as if the animal wished to rest with him.

In the snow beside them red flowers seemed to bloom.

Summer must have come to Ré Valley very early that year.

_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.,
London and Aylesbury._