Halmis liked to sit by the river, among reeds or beneath willows, narrow-leaved and moving with the slenderest breath of Myr the air-sprite. Near her brothers’ house, where she lived, there lay among reeds, half drawn from the water, the ruin of a boat. It was a place to sit and think, whether the sun shone or the clouds scudded. Halmis possessed a stringed instrument of music, a thing akin to the lyre. Sometimes she brought this with her to the boat, and played upon it sitting there, hidden by the reeds. Sometimes she sang, her voice rising from the reed bed like a voice of the earth.

Ramiki likewise could make a song and sing it.

Halmis could prophesy; Ramiki likewise.

Each had, beyond the common, perception, memory, imagination, and moving gift of speech. When either recited certain things to the people of the river country, and gave advice or promised good or threatened penalty, it was called prophecy. When what they said came to pass they received great honour; when it failed they said that the time was not yet, but that the people would reach it. Halmis believed in her power. Ramiki believed in his power. While that was so, either was capable at times of inner doubt and unhappiness. But, very largely, they kept that to themselves. That course, they thought, was undeniably wiser, in the world as it was constituted. As for belief in each other’s powers, that wavered.

Halmis dwelled by the water-side. Ramiki had his home upon rising land, where he lived with his father in a well-built house guarding field and pasture. The people still thought that the old chief would give the house to Ramiki, keeping a corner for himself, and that Halmis would leave her brothers by the riverside and come into Ramiki’s house. Surely it would be advantageous to her to do so!

Halmis and Ramiki also thought, many times, that they would put hand in hand before witnesses and become man and wife. But after each time that they thought this, and before they could really speak of it to others, they quarrelled.

“I believe not in your power!” said Halmis, and she said it with scorn.

“I believe not in your power!” said Ramiki, and he said it with fierceness.

When they spoke thus each experienced ill-feeling toward the other and wished for some occult gift of hurting. They did not observe that these disbeliefs bubbled darkly from days when they did not believe in themselves. Halmis went to her brothers’ house, Ramiki to his father’s above the fields. The village talked, but old tradition gave it forth that prophets might be allowed to differ from other folk.

Whether individuals loved or hated, the river-country people had troubles of a collective nature. They had been long, long seated in a plain, great enough and rich enough for the forefathers, not so great nor so rich for the descendant swarm. Now it was crowded, now it was being sucked dry. For a time there seemed help in being a terror to the plain on the other side of a chain of hills, in organizing each bright season a great raid to bring home wealth and provision for man and beast. But that recourse was failing. Other plains, too, were crowded, sucked dry, growing poor.... There was much exposure of children, almost always female children. The old, too, were put to death. But all that only partially helped.

People must move—at any rate, some people. There was an old song of the plain which said that before the memory of man there had been a moving; in short, that the plain-folk had moved from elsewhere into the plain. It was hard to believe....

The chiefs and the elders consulted together. They applied for help to all likely forces, including, well to the front, the supernatural.

A concourse was held, an assembly of the folk of the plain. Not so many miles wide and long was the plain; it did not take thousands to make living difficult. The most got within hearing of them who harangued from the great flat stone that was the sacred or hallowed stone, alike of speech and of sacrifice. Chiefs must be orators, elders must know how to bring wisdom home, priest and prophet must be able to fix the ridge-pole.... All was done in order, throughout a day of sun and shadow.

Ramiki and Halmis stood together upon the stone that was wide as the floor of a house. The day was advanced, the light gold-red; behind were three great trees, before and to either hand the scimitar-shaped crowd of the people, excited already by music and by passionate, persuasive speech. The drums beat, the cymbals clanged, then silence, then right posturing by prophet and prophetess, then words half spoken, half sung, sent from the lips with force, ringing and reaching!

chanted Ramiki.

Halmis the prophetess took the chant:—

Ramiki chanted:—

Halmis chanted:—

Ramiki made a great gesture. His voice soared and rang:—

Halmis swayed in the wind of rapture.

chanted Halmis.

Ramiki moved upon the stone. At the edge he stooped, he caught from one below a drum, he beat upon it.

Halmis took cymbals, she lifted her arms, there clashed forth sonorous music.

“Hai! we will divide!” cried the people; and would have done it that day if the chiefs and the elders had allowed....

Halmis went down in the evening to the boat among the reeds and sat there in the moonshine, her arms upon her knees and her head upon her arms. Ramiki left the throng of chief men gathered in the chief house, drinking there red juice of the vine. He walked up and down in the moonlight. He was not calm within, nor triumphant because wisdom had become the choice of the people. Something dark within was spreading and staining the light within. The river-country people had many words for jealousy, but usually these pointed to a forthright lover’s jealousy. That was not the jealousy that Ramiki felt to-night. He spoke to the skies. “Why should she prophesy, dividing the praise?”

Down in the needs Halmis rocked to and fro, making decisions.

When the wine had passed from their heads, in the favouring tide between foaming enthusiasm and the back-drag to old levels, the elders and chiefs pressed the partition of the people. Came to the river-plain humming days of excitement, deeper, more sonorous and richly coloured than any remembered. So many should fare forth, so many should rest behind! These individuals would stay, these would go. An imaginary line was drawn, and some stepped to the one side and some to the other. Heads of families and owners of wealth chose for themselves and their households, for women, youths, children, and bondfolk. So that they might be distinguished, those staying painted across their foreheads a band of blue, those going a band of red. A vast preparation of wagons arose, a sorting of flocks and herds, a gathering of horses and strong oxen, a filling of grain sacks, a heaping of weapons and implements. Life took a quicker stride, had more life in its eyes. Every day there was debating, every day choice.

Ramiki went down to the boat among the reeds. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the reeds were moving. Halmis sat in the broken boat, and Halmis had across her forehead a stripe of red. He halted, he stared.... He had come to find Halmis, to speak of their taking hands and faring forth with the migrating host—prophet and prophetess, and the prophet the head of that household! And here, before he spoke, was Halmis with her forehead marked for outfaring!

He stared.

“Ha, red-on-the-forehead!” said Halmis. “I had a dream last night! We met rivers and mountains, but the wagons and the oxen swam like boats and flew like eagles and we came to a golden house—”

Ramiki was often jealous of Halmis’s dreaming, but he did not think now of that. All was lost in the fact of that red mark, made now, not after he had taken Halmis’s hand in his, before witnesses!

He spoke, “Taru and Nardan, your brothers, stay in the plain. They have marked their foreheads with blue, and Ina and Matar, their wives, are marked with blue. All their household....”

“I leave their household,” answered Halmis. “I am going to seek it—the golden house beyond the hills!”

“My house?”

“I want to know what is there, beyond the hills! It was not your house, Ramiki, in my dream, nor my house.” She lifted a reed in her hand. “It was the house.”

Ramiki moistened his lips. “A woman without a husband goes or stays as goes or stays her father. If her father be dead, then she goes or stays as goes or stays her brother or her nearest kinsman.”

“They made that rule. I am prophetess of Arzan. I rule for myself. I have spoken to the chiefs and the elders. By the god-stone, many watching, I put red paint upon my forehead!”

Ramiki breathed hard. There was a Ramiki who was going to speak, and somewhere else there was another Ramiki. Both lived, but the one who had the word was of great size.

“It is unheard of!” said Ramiki.

He turned away, he left the shining sun, the blowing wind, the moving reeds. He went away in a heated darkness to his house and sat there upon his bed. Like the beating of a drum in his head, over and over, resounded words he had overheard.

Had said one of the old wise men to another: “The god is greater in Halmis than in Ramiki!”

Now Ramiki did not believe that saying, and now he experienced an agonizing doubt, and now he turned to proving to himself and to others that it was not so. That had been yesterday.... In the night he had waked, and there had poured over him like the river in flood another feeling for Halmis.... At the height of the tide he had not cared that she had so much of the god. If it was so, it was well so!... The tide was a wonderful tide; it held an hour, and then it began to ebb. But when morning came there was yet a fulness that sent him through the shining sun and the blowing wind and the waving reeds to Halmis. Then the tide had sunk with a harsh and dreadful noise.

Ramiki sat upon his bed and listened to the drum beat in his head. “One said to the other, ‘The god is greater in Halmis than in Ramiki!’ One said to the other, ‘The god is greater in Halmis than in Ramiki!’” His heart was bitter within him, bitter as a root he knew in the forest.

His father came into the house, and, sitting down, began to feather arrows.

Said Ramiki at last: “I found Halmis with a band of red upon her forehead.... She goes like a young man, walking alone!”

“That should not be,” said his father. “If one woman does a thing like that, another woman will want to do so too.”

“She is prophetess.”

“She has breasts all the same,” said the arrow-featherer.

That night, in the night-time, staring from his mat into the velvet darkness, he did not want to keep her from going, for was not he, Ramiki, going? Then in the morning, with the sound of the crowing of the cocks, that sense of oneness fell again in two. He ceased to love Halmis. He felt again enmity and jealousy, and a great, oh, a great concern for himself. “Arzan! Arzan!” he cried. “Am I not man? Am I not the greater prophet?”

That day all the people saw him go away into a deep wood that yet was left upon the plain. He went with some ostentation of folded arms and brooding forehead. “The god will visit the prophet!” they said. In the evening Ramiki might stand upon the god-stone and break into rhapsody while all who were not preoccupied gathered to hear.

But though Ramiki returned at eve, it was not to the god-stone. He found Halmis in the glow, watching boys and girls who moved in a dance. He and Halmis went away together, down to the boat, for that was the quietest place.

“What did you do in the wood?” asked Halmis. “Sit all day and look at your shadow?”

It was evident that she was willing to quarrel. She was no less capable than Ramiki of formulating the notion that where there was not room for two one must be pushed away. She looked at Ramiki, and Ramiki, rightly or wrongly, suddenly believed that she wished there was blue paint upon his forehead. The thought was as unexpected as an earthquake and well-nigh as devastating.

They parted the reeds and stepped down to the boat. They sat there and looked blackly at each other.

“No, I did not,” said Ramiki, “sit all day and look at my shadow.... I praised Arzan.... Then I heard his voice from the clouds.”

Halmis shivered slightly. “What talk did he make to you?”

“His speech was about women,” said Ramiki fiercely.

“Oh—ah!”

“It was as though I were in his mountain. He told me many things—great and wonderful things. To-morrow I am going again to the wood—to praise Arzan again and listen again.”

“Then you will stand upon the god-stone and sing his words?”

“So!” said Ramiki. “In a great song. To which the folk will listen as I listened to Arzan.”

Halmis looked at him in silence. When she spoke it was in a whisper. She bent forward, her hand touched his knee. “Ramiki.... Did Arzan really speak? Perhaps it was only you—speaking to yourself?”

Her words had behind them at least an amount of comprehension. If it had been that way she could match it from her own experience!... Sometimes she thought that she really had seen the god or had heard the voice. At other times she thought blackly that it was only that Halmis who seemed a negligible thing. But she did not confide these doubts to the folk before whom she prophesied. Nor would Ramiki. Nor did she see how any could be brought to question Arzan in him.

Nevertheless, she ached to take the tall bright feather from Ramiki’s headdress—to take it at least for a time! In fact, she felt much as Ramiki felt. Where he had Halmis before him, she had before her Ramiki. When it came to that jealousy, there was small difference between them.

The difference between them was a matter of the status of men and the status of women—of hunters’ stations. And this hunter may have a coign of vantage and, in security, bring down the game he wishes to bring down, and that hunter may be placed disadvantageously and the matter end quite differently.

Ramiki’s eyes burned. He looked over Halmis’s head at the many-shaped and tinted clouds. “Arzan spoke—Arzan! He told me things about women that I had not thought of before!”

Halmis sat in silence. Before her, between her and Ramiki, formed a picture of the god-stone and the three trees behind it, and the people pressing close, and Ramiki chanting greatly to them what Arzan had told him—making them believe. At his best Ramiki was a great prophet.... What had Arzan told him?

She raised her eyes. “What did Arzan tell you?”

Ramiki laughed fiercely. “He told me why it was that women go or stay only as men say it!”

“Why is it, Ramiki?”

Ramiki looked at her, and now there was trader’s cunning mixed with the prophet strain. “Arzan has not yet given me the right words!—It may be four or five days before I sing to the people.”

“Four or five days,” thought Halmis, but she thought it to herself. She nursed her knees and looked at the bowing reeds.

“In all ways,” said Ramiki fiercely, “men are stronger than women!”

“Ha!” said Halmis. “The fountains of milk! The beings that he draws from himself!”

“Four things are tabu for women! Noble hunting, noble warring, noble owning, noble choosing!”

“O great man who is noble throughout! Cold does not chill him! Wet does not wet him! Thirst does not parch him, and those he binds are not shaped like him!”

“Arzan wither your tongue!” said Ramiki.

The sun carried its torch underground. The plain darkened, the wind sighed in the reeds. “Why do we quarrel so?” asked Halmis. “Now, I like Ramiki, and Ramiki likes me. And then I would kill Ramiki, and he me. And then I like Ramiki again, and am sorry.... Ramiki!”

She moved nearer to him. “Ramiki!”

Ramiki cried out. “O Arzan! still she befools me!”

He had cried so loudly that his words appeared still to sound over the marsh and the river. Halmis stood still, then, turning, stepped from the boat upon the reedy riverbank. “Thou fool! not to know when!” said Halmis.

Ramiki rose from his mat at dawn, drank milk and ate barley cakes, and passed through the fields to the thick wood. After wandering for some time he found a tree that liked him. It was huge of trunk and spreading of branch, and near by, in a round basin, a spring murmured. Ramiki sat down beneath the tree. At first he looked at the boughs and the leaves and the birds, and at the sky between the boughs. Then he looked at the spring, and it made a centre for him—a small, bright, round pool, shot at by the arrows of the sun. The wood was still, and had a manifold fragrance. Ramiki felt still likewise.

Ramiki spent the day in the wood. He had barley cakes with him in a wallet. Now and again he moved about, once he slept a little. When he waked he saw a serpent drinking. About midday a great cloud mounted into the sky. At top it was dazzling white, but underneath and in hollows shadow-dark. Ramiki watched it until it sank again beneath the wood and there was only clear and open heaven. He watched it very intently, swaying his body back and forth as he watched. When it was gone his gaze returned to the spring.... He had a good day, a balmy, idea-flowing day!

It was so prosperous, his spirit was at once so fluent and so soothed, that earth and life, and Halmis in both, grew more than tolerable. Ramiki sat cross-legged in the wood and stared at the cloud or at the spring, until the god had given him the song he should sing. When he had it he relaxed, and resting against the tree let his mind go doze and play. The god had spoken and gone, but Ramiki would remember! After a time he sat upright again, and finding at hand a bit of wood, drew his knife from the sheath, and began to whittle an arrow. As he worked he hummed to himself. Once or twice he laughed. It slipped into his mind, from where he knew not, that that was a fine boulder to throw into the camp of women!... He felt so balm-bathed and free that he lost for a time any grudge against the camp of women, any grudge against Halmis.

The light began to weaken in the wood. Ramiki, moreover, was hungry. He rose from beneath the tree, and retraced his steps to the village. The sun was sinking as he came near. A red and gold light caressed the river-plain. He heard blow one of the long trumpets, and presently saw that folk were gathering to the central place where stood the god-stone. A boy passed him, running from the fields. Ramiki called after him. “What is doing?”

“Halmis-who-prophesies,” spoke the boy over his shoulder, “will tell the folk who go what they shall find!” He ran on.

The balm flowed away from Ramiki.

He turned to the river, and there was Halmis coming up from the water-side. He waited for her. She came even with him, and the red sunlight made burning and bright the red upon her forehead and the red in her hair.

Ramiki choked. “The large things of the people are for a man’s thinking upon and handling—”

“O Ramiki!” said Halmis, “how can I help thinking upon and handling my own?”

She moved on toward the god-stone where the people were gathered. Ramiki kept her company. At first they moved with an equal step, then Ramiki quickened his. Halmis looked aside at him. His frame was drawn to great height, his feet seemed hardly to touch the sunburned earth. He seemed to move in quivering air; the inrush of force was evident. “The god is in him! The god is in him!” thought Halmis. Quickening her step she came even with him again. But now Ramiki uttered a shout and began to run....

He came to the massed people; crying aloud, he pursued his way. “Arzan! Arzan!” he cried. “I have been with Arzan in the wood! O people of the river-plain, Arzan has given it to me to say!”

The gathered folk were tow to flame, wax to the moment’s sharp impression. The crisis in their affairs had lifted them, shaken them awake. Now they were ready constantly for new excitement, craved the new, or the old made new. It had been good that Halmis the prophetess should prophesy of what the going stream might find! It was good that there should arrive the fresher alarum of Ramiki the prophet—Ramiki returning from an immediate interview with Over-Knowledge, Over-Power! “Arzan the great maker!” shouted Ramiki. “I have talked with Arzan! You have sinned before him, and I will show you how!”

All turned from prophetess to prophet. All saw Ramiki, but all had a sense of the overshadowing Energy. “Arzan!” cried the people, and “Hearken to the prophet!”

Ramiki came to the god-stone. He mounted to the place of the prophet. He turned, he faced the chiefs and the elders and the people, men and women. The wind blew his garment and lifted his hair; they thought that they saw around him the red light of Arzan. They turned, every one, from Halmis, they centred on Ramiki.

Halmis leaned against a tree. Her heart beat heavily. At first she had felt only rage. She thought she would come to the god-stone and dispute it with that usurper, and then had come fear to halt her. She hated fear, she fought it as with fire. But it was a great beast that, beaten away, came again! To-day she tried to fight fear with scorn, scorn being an arrow always in her quiver. But it failed to-day. Halmis looked at the women about her and farther away in the throng. There were many women, but that did not seem to help.... Men held better by all men. Women held better by the children, but the men by one another.... Halmis felt alone and afraid. Ramiki was speaking for Arzan. Arzan was a terrible deity and an eloquent! Halmis thought that a mist was rising around her....

Ramiki was not telling what the people marked with red should find or do, out of the river country, beyond the heaven-propping hills. He was not telling how plentifully now would be fed the folk marked with blue, the folk staying in the ancient land. He was not telling—or at least it did not yet appear that he was telling—why the wreath was given to man. He was not telling—or at least not yet telling—how, in this moment, the folk were sinning against Arzan. He was telling how the world was made, telling old things that they knew already, and perhaps new things.

Sometimes Ramiki spoke and sometimes he sang, passing from saying into singing, from singing into saying. To a great part of the listening throng what he said or sang was the literal word of Arzan. Imaginings and making to see and touch the Not-There were the Works of Arzan—when they were not the works of Izd, who, with the river-country people, meant darkness and demon....

Passion sustained Ramiki the prophet. He was a strong man to-night, a dancer, a hunter, a chief with hawk wings bound upon his head. The red sunset passed into dusk, the dusk into night, bondmen lighted torches, the people slanted toward the god-stone. Ramiki sang the battles of Arzan and Izd—Arzan and his hosts and Izd and her hosts—Izd the monstrous serpent, Izd the ancient dragon! That was old story, but the river-country people did not easily tire of old stories. And Ramiki was singing with power, and there were new things that he was telling. In especial they learned feats of Izd that they had not known. They knew her slaying breath and the injuries she did to Arzan, and the keen knife with which Arzan slew her and made of her body the sky and the earth! But the prophet gave them new detail and incident—new and exciting—and all to them seemed clothed in beauty and terror, and all was true—sublimely true!

Then Ramiki sang how Izd, though she was cut into sky and earth, yet made evil, and Arzan made good—Izd and her helpers and Arzan and his helpers. He sang the making of great waters, and the beasts of wood and field, and the making of trees and of grain, and it was all well known to the river-country people and often recited. He came to the making of people—of the great father-man and mother-woman, ancestors of the river-plain—and here he had brought from the wood new wisdom.

The river country had not had it before, but, dimly or clearly, it had been aware of that vast unexplained. Why? And why—and why? It had put forward groping and tentative answers to its own questions, but those answers had not really explained. The air held the answer diffused. Now it was coming together like the rich cloud that on summer days rose behind the mountain where Arzan dwelt.

Why were men here, and women there? Why, when a man entered his house, did he stamp with his foot to show mastership?...

Ramiki had used a great strain, a wide-flowing, deep-rushing chant. Now he changed. This to come was a story within a story. He made a pause, he regarded the deep night above, he altered posture and manner. The village, marked with blue and marked with red, drew breath for new things. There was a company of youths who, when prophet or prophetess spoke, were wont to band themselves at one side of the god-stone. These repeated loudly word or line wanting that stress, or in silences came in with refrains of their own, or merely shouted approbation of the god in the singer. Now while Ramiki watched the dark, they shouted, “Arzan in the prophet!”

Halmis heard them where she leaned against the tree, decked to sing and not singing, here to prophesy from the god-stone and not prophesying, come from the river with a high heart and now knowing fear. It was like a spell upon her, a slow, cold poison in her veins. Ramiki—Ramiki—Ramiki only was singing to the people.... She heard him, and though she tried not to believe what he sang, at last in great part she believed. How could she else, being of the river-plain and so very like Ramiki who himself believed?... She was very capable of a sense of sin—and perhaps it all had come about that way. Arzan had his favourite—no doubt of that! There must be reasons for favour and disfavour.... Ramiki—Ramiki—Ramiki was singing. As she stood under the tree she seemed to herself, for one strange moment, to have a child in her arms.... Ramiki sang:—

The river-plain that was descended from Arja clapped hands and rocked itself. The band of young men shouted to the sky:—

Ramiki pursued his story, and while he chanted he acted.

“Sons of Arja!” the youths shouted. “Arja’s sons!”

Shouted the youths,—

The strong sound smote the night. The flame of the torches appeared to leap. The god-stone was lighted, and the figure of the prophet. The crowd, seated or standing, bent like vines to the sun. Interest was carried to a point, and through the point, on the other side of the point, seemed to be space and new landscapes. The mind of the river-plain was ready for explanation—so that the explanation did not offend its sense of probabilities, so that it seemed godly and kingly, so that it was a boat that could sail the river....

“We are naught!” cried the people, “but he is god!” The drum-players and the long trumpets were come to the stone.

The music beat and blared. The women of the village looked aslant at the men, and the men at the women. Whatever there might be of old, old woes, terrors, mistakes, jealousies, sins, conflicts, emulations, tyrannies seemed, for one moment, to come up through the past, burst into fire, and stream and fork.

“Ahhh!” breathed the river-country people, men and women. It was so. They had known it must be so.

“Arzan! Give us protection!” cried the rhythmically moving river-country people.

Arja and Arjaya, and how and when the Golden Age went down.... The river-country people beheld the form of that of which they had long heard rumours, old speech-of-things, passing from people to people, changing shape but keeping substance as it passed! The river-country people both remembered and freshly imagined. “Arzan! Arzan! The sin—the sin!” cried the river-plain. Men believed and women believed.

Ramiki ceased his singing. His heart was freed, and he felt relief and escape, and a cheerful largeness of mood. The anger against Halmis was fallen. There even stole again over his being a fondness for that prophetess. The energy that had boiled within, thick and murky red, had been beautifully worked off by the late improvisation. Diffused and expanded through quite vast ranges, it was no longer an aching and concentrated desire to pay Halmis back and to make evident his own superiority. He became conscious of a tranquillity, of something like vision above vision.... Through this pushed suddenly up, for all the world like a lily in a pond, a willingness, a desire, that Halmis should keep the red band upon her forehead, that she should go, if she would, like a young man, walking alone! But he had made it too late for that!

The people of the river-plain thought it best that women should break no more tabus....