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CHAPTER 10
The Heath
He had to go to the bottom of the hill to get into a country he
could cross, for the mountains to the north were full of
precipices, and it would have been losing time to go that way. Not
until he had reached the king's house was it any use to turn
northwards. Many a look did he raise, as he passed it, to the dove
tower, and as long as it was in sight, but he saw nothing of the
lady of the pigeons.
On and on he fared, and came in a few hours to a country where
there were no mountains more - only hills, with great stretches of
desolate heath. Here and there was a village, but that brought him
little pleasure, for the people were rougher and worse mannered
than those in the mountains, and as he passed through, the children
came behind and mocked him.
'There's a monkey running away from the mines!' they cried.
Sometimes their parents came out and encouraged them.
'He doesn't want to find gold for the king any longer - the
lazybones!' they would say. 'He'll be well taxed down here though,
and he won't like that either.'
But it was little to Curdie that men who did not know what he was
about should not approve of his proceedings. He gave them a merry
answer now and then, and held diligently on his way. When they got
so rude as nearly to make him angry, he would treat them as he used
to treat the goblins, and sing his own songs to keep out their
foolish noises. Once a child fell as he turned to run away after
throwing a stone at him. He picked him up, kissed him, and carried
him to his mother. The woman had run out in terror when she saw
the strange miner about, as she thought, to take vengeance on her
boy. When he put him in her arms, she blessed him, and Curdie went
on his way rejoicing.
And so the day went on, and the evening came, and in the middle of
a great desolate heath he began to feel tired, and sat down under
an ancient hawthorn, through which every now and then a lone wind
that seemed to come from nowhere and to go nowhither sighed and
hissed. It was very old and distorted. There was not another tree
for miles all around. it seemed to have lived so long, and to have
been so torn and tossed by the tempests on that moor, that it had
at last gathered a wind of its own, which got up now and then,
tumbled itself about, and lay down again.
Curdie had been so eager to get on that he had eaten nothing since
his breakfast. But he had had plenty of water, for Many little
streams had crossed his path. He now opened the wallet his mother
had given him, and began to eat his supper. The sun was setting.
A few clouds had gathered about the west, but there was not a
single cloud anywhere else to be seen.
Now Curdie did not know that this was a part of the country very
hard to get through. Nobody lived there, though many had tried to
build in it. Some died very soon. Some rushed out of it. Those
who stayed longest went raving mad, and died a terrible death.
Such as walked straight on, and did not spend a night there, got
through well and were nothing the worse. But those who slept even
a single night in it were sure to meet with something they could
never forget, and which often left a mark everybody could read.
And that old hawthorn Might have been enough for a warning - it
looked so like a human being dried up and distorted with age and
suffering, with cares instead of loves, and things instead of
thoughts. Both it and the heath around it, which stretched on all
sides as far as he could see, were so withered that it was
impossible to say whether they were alive or not.
And while Curdie ate there came a change. Clouds had gathered over
his head, and seemed drifting about in every direction, as if not
'shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind,' but hunted in all
directions by wolfish flaws across the plains of the sky. The sun
was going down in a storm of lurid crimson, and out of the west
came a wind that felt red and hot the one moment, and cold and pale
the other. And very strangely it sang in the dreary old hawthorn
tree, and very cheerily it blew about Curdie, now making him creep
close up to the tree for shelter from its shivery cold, now fan
himself with his cap, it was so sultry and stifling. It seemed to
come from the deathbed of the sun, dying in fever and ague.
And as he gazed at the sun, now on the verge of the horizon, very
large and very red and very dull - for though the clouds had broken
away a dusty fog was spread all over the disc - Curdie saw
something strange appear against it, moving about like a fly over
its burning face. This looked as if it were coming out of the
sun's furnace heart, and was a living creature of some kind surely;
but its shape was very uncertain, because the dazzle of the light
all around melted the outlines.
It was growing larger, it must be approaching! It grew so rapidly
that by the time the sun was half down its head reached the top of
the arch, and presently nothing but its legs were to be seen,
crossing and recrossing the face of the vanishing disc.
When the sun was down he could see nothing of it more, but in a
moment he heard its feet galloping over the dry crackling heather,
and seeming to come straight for him. He stood up, lifted his
pickaxes and threw the hammer end over his shoulder: he was going
to have a fight for his life! And now it appeared again, vague,
yet very awful, in the dim twilight the sun had left behind. But
just before it reached him, down from its four long legs it dropped
flat on the ground, and came crawling towards him, wagging a huge
tail as it came.
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