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Page 59
"_Nerrvik_! _Nerrvik_! To him who loved her Annadoah lied. Dead, she
told him, was her heart as a frozen bird in wintertime--but her heart
was only sleeping! And now the wings are beating--beating within her
breast! _Ootah_! _Ootah_! _Ioh-h, ioh-h_!"
Her voice broke. She beat her little breasts. She bent over the sea
and listened. For a long while she watched.
Then, from the shadows in the clouds, the answer came. Truly Ootah was
brave, and his heart was marvellously kind; unsurpassed was his skill
on the hunt and of every animal did he kill; and great was his love for
Annadoah. Even the spirits had marvelled and spoken of it among
themselves; but Annadoah had chosen her fate; she had denied the love
that had unfalteringly pursued her, and now that she desired it, even
so to her was that love to be denied. That was fate.
Then in a clamorous outbreak did Annadoah plead with Kokoyah. She
grovelled on the ground. She called upon all the spirits of the winds
and air. In a tremulous, heart-broken plaint she finally called upon
the spirits of her father, her mother, and those who had gone before
them.
But unrelenting, passionless, the answer came--from the shadows in the
clouds, from the winds, from the moaning sea. To warm the wild heart
under the water was beyond the power of all the spirits. They repeated
to her, as in mockery, all that she had told them that Ootah had done,
of his mighty love for her; but nevermore might she soothe his injured
limbs, nevermore might she touch his gentle hands, nevermore might she
look into his tender and adoring eyes. His hands were cold, his eyes
were closed, his heart was still. It throbbed with the thought of her
no more--and that would be forever. That was fate.
A frail, pitiful figure, Annadoah stood on the cliff, wringing her
hands toward the declining sun. In the midst of that wild
golden-burning desolation, Annadoah felt her utter loneliness, her
tragic helplessness. In all the universe she felt herself utterly
alone.
Far away, awed by the heroism, the very splendor of the bravery of the
man who had perished, the tribe stood murmuring. In their hearts was
no little unkindness toward Annadoah. But, forsaken, outcast, she did
not care.
Over the aureate shimmering seas she wrung her little hands and into
the waves lapping at her feet her tears fell like rain. For the heart
of Annadoah ached. Nothing in the world any more mattered. All that
she had loved had perished in the sea. And she loved too late.
Gazing at the low-lying sun, veiled as in a vapor of tears, remote, and
sadly golden in its self-destined isolation, an instinctive
wild-world-understanding of that tragedy of all life, of all the
universe perchance--of that unselfish love that is too often denied and
the unhappy love that accents only too late--vaguely filled her
primitive heart.
Sinking to her knees, convulsed sobs shaking her, she wrung her hands
toward the sun, the eternal maiden _Sukh-eh-nukh_, the beautiful, the
all-desired.
"_I-o-h-h-h_!" she moaned, and her voice sobbed its pathos over the
seas. "_I-o-h-h-h! I-o-h-h-h! I-o-h-h-h, Sukh-eh-nukh! I-o-o-h-h,
Sukh-eh-nukh_! Unhappy sun--unhappy sun! _I-o-o-h-h-h-h_, Annadoah!
_I-o-o-o-h-h-h-h_, Annadoah! Unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!"
Annadoah's head sank lower and lower. Her weeping voice melted in the
melancholy sobbing of the aureate sea. One by one the natives
departed. She was left alone. To the north the sky darkened with one
of those sudden arctic storms which come, as in a moment's space, and
blast the tender flowers of spring. A cold wind moaned a pitiless
lament from the interior mountains. Yellow vapors gathered about the
dimming sun. Ominous shadows took form on the shimmering sea.
"_I-o-h-h-h--iooh_! Unhappy sun--unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!"
Taking fire in the subdued sunlight--and descending from heaven like a
gentle benediction of feathery flakes of gold--over and about the dark,
crouched figure, softly . . . very softly . . . the snow began to fall.
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