  The farther the progress which the children made into the forest, the wilder and more singular became the country through which they passed. Shadows cast by no visible forms went before them in the path,—shadows which shook, moved, and trembled; which seemed as if they might all at once become real forms; shadows which had something dreadful about them, so that Eva was glad they were always in advance of her, and that her foot never had to touch the ground on which they lay. The color of the moon’s light was changed. She shone with a pale greenish lustre. No green plants, no beautiful flowers, grew in the stony, rocky soil through which their path now lay. It produced things like sticks full of thorns. Under the stones lay hidden long, slender lizards, or coiled-up serpents with forked and fiery-red tongues; things like dry twigs, which would suddenly display many legs and run away. Slow-crawling, hairy caterpillars, and round, fat, slimy worms, lay everywhere. Things like insects, which yet had no life, grew, instead of flowers, on the thorny sticks which stood among the stones. One of these things, in shape like a dragon-fly, Aster picked; but he immediately dropped it, and said that it had stung him; and from that time Eva thought that he became more and more perverse, and that he was every day less like the gentle, affectionate boy she had been so glad to receive as a companion. She saw, too, that, while her own dress retained its spotless whiteness which nothing seemed to affect, his became every day more and more soiled and stained. She missed, too, the low, sweet songs which had been sung by the flowers. To be sure, she had not always been able to distinguish their words; but they had been friendly, and had warned her of every danger before it came; but this was all over. Every night, as soon as the moon was gone, creatures like bats, with shining heads, came in great numbers, flying around, and moaning in a sad, mournful way which was most pitiful to hear. As the moon neared the full, stranger shadows and shapes came near. Yet the two went on, following the path, though Eva sometimes imagined that the inhabitants of this strange country were opposed to their passing through it. The music which had been always heard at the rising and setting of the moon grew fainter and fainter, till at last her ascent and fall came in perfect silence. Then the strange shadows disappeared, but the path led through a stonier and more rocky country, where all was wild and barren, and where, after the moon was gone, little, dancing flames played on the stones. Sometimes it was hard, indeed almost impossible, for the two children to climb over the rough places in their path; and Aster was very often discouraged; but Eva persevered, for she felt that the flower they sought could never be found in this barren and dreary land. I have said that Aster became every day more obstinate and perverse. Sometimes Eva thought that the strange flower, like a dragon-fly, which he had picked, and which he said stung him, had changed him, and that was the reason why he tried to annoy her in every possible way. He knew how uneasy she was when he was not with her; yet, knowing this, it was his greatest delight to hide himself behind some large stone, and after she had looked for him for a long time without finding him, afraid that his enemies had carried him off, he would jump out upon her with a loud mocking cry; he would pull her hair, he would try to soil her white dress, by throwing mud and dirt upon it, to make it, as he said, like his own, which was all stained and soiled, and then, when he found that he could not discolor its whiteness, he would throw himself down on the ground, and kick and scream, and tell Eva that he hated her, and that he wished THEY would come and carry her away. One day, when Aster had been worse than ever, and the way had been stonier and harder than it had ever been before, Eva began to think that it was of no use to go on, or to look for the flower lost so long ago by the imp-like boy, whose powers of annoying her seemed to increase as he grew smaller with the moon. She sat down upon one of the rough stones, and great tears gathered in her eyes. And as, one by one, they rolled down her cheeks and fell to the ground, everything around her seemed to grow vague and dim; and at her feet, just where the tear-drops fell, there came a bed of round green leaves, under whose shelter bloomed and nodded a multitude of tiny purple flowers; violets, whose sweet fragrance, rising, made a misty cloud, through which Eva caught faint glimpses of a pond, and a house near it, and then the house seemed to change into a cosy parlor. And by the window of this parlor a lady was sitting sewing, and rocking a cradle with her foot, and singing to a baby boy who was kicking and crowing in the cradle; and then the child heard her mother’s voice calling, softly, “Eva, Eva!” But before these memories came fully back, Aster came up, and angrily crushed and trampled the sweet violets under his feet; and as he did so the cloud and its pictures disappeared, and Eva forgot them; only she was very sorry for the dear little flowers that Aster had killed. Poor little flowers, which tried to do her good! For it seemed to her that with their last breath of perfume there came a low voice, which whispered. “Beware of the stones,”—and that was all. And then she asked Aster why he had destroyed the harmless flowers, which had only come to warn them. “They only came to do me harm,” Aster said, angrily. “They would have taken you away from me, and I should never have seen you again. You shall not go away from me yet, for I can never get home without you; after I have done with you, why, then you may go.” “Where?” Eva asked, pained at this selfish speech. “Into what is to be,—out of Shadow-Land into what is to come, but is not yet.” “I do not understand you.” “You will know when the time comes. I crushed the flowers because they were part of what is to come; they had no right here.” Nothing more was said; but Aster seemed restless and uneasy until they left the place where the violets had bloomed. Yet nothing disturbed them, and on they went, till Eva began to wonder where the stones could be of which the voice had said, “Beware!” At last, when there was only a tiny crescent of the moon, like a faint silver line, floating in the sky, and Aster’s figure, like it, was once more reduced to its smallest dimensions, the forest through which they had wandered for so long ended; and as they passed from it, a low cry of surprise from Aster made Eva look down, as she saw that his eyes were fixed upon the earth; and then she saw with equal surprise that, while she walked along the rough, stony path without leaving any impression, every step that Aster took left a deep, plain track, and that in each of these tracks there was either a frog or a spider, which would disappear while she looked at them. Then a sudden turn in the path brought them to a place where a huge pile of rocks, like an immense stone wall built by giants, rose up before them. A faint breath of violets seemed to come, and then pass away, and as it did, Eva knew that these were the stones of which she had been warned. At that very moment there was a flash of light, and a star fell from the sky, near the moon. “A falling star, how pretty it is!” Eva said, as she watched the bright thing, which seemed to fall behind the stone wall. “Did you see it, Aster?” “You don’t know anything, Eva,” was his reply, “I told you once before that everything which was lost in the moon fell into Shadow-Land, and that was something bright which fell just now.” But this had nothing to do with the wall, which must be climbed. How, Eva did not know. She was almost afraid to try it; and so she stood, looking at it, when Aster, who, ever since he had crushed the violets, had followed her in silence, except when he had spoken of the shooting star, with his eyes bent on the ground, suddenly ran forward to the wall, and began to look eagerly into every crevice between the stones. “What are you looking for?” Eva asked him. “Come back to me, Aster; it is not safe for you there without me.” “I will look,” Aster said. “The bright thing you called a star was my flower. It is here, and I am going to find it.” “Don’t!” Eva said, imploringly, as the boy tried to creep into one of the crevices between the stones. “Remember Aster, that the moon is nearly gone, and if she should disappear, you will go to sleep, and then you will have to stay in there until she returns.” “I don’t care!” Aster said, crossly, “If, as I know I shall, I find my flower in here, the moon will have no more power over me, for I shall then be myself; and you may go on alone into what will come. Besides, the piece which was torn off my coat is in there, and I am going to get it. If I do go to sleep, I can lie down in here, and rest; you can mark the place and wait for me, if you choose. I don’t intend to obey you any longer; you are nothing but a little girl, and I am a prince.” Eva’s hand was on Aster’s shoulders and when he found she would not remove it, he raised his own, and struck her. Not till then did the child unwillingly release him, seeing that all her efforts to detain him would be in vain. Then, without saying another word, Aster crept slowly into the crevice. And Eva, picking up a white stone which lay at her feet; made a mark over the place with it. As she did this, the faint silver light of the moon faded from the sky; there was a loud croaking as of frogs, and then she heard the shrill cry of the spider which had spun the web around Aster; and then it grew very dark, and a sudden drowsiness came over her, which she could not resist; and, lying down upon a stone under the crevice into which Aster had crept, Eva fell asleep. |
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