The Golden Bird

IT WAS in the forests of Asan that the Golden Bird first flew out from a flower-besieged thicket and fluttered before the dazzled eyes of Luilla. It was in the forests of Asan, — the open and impenetrable, the haunt of the dancers and untrodden of human feet, coiling place of the cobra and the Python, lair of the lion and jaguar, formidable retreat of the fleeing antelope, yet the green home of human safety where a man and a maiden could walk in the moonlit night and hear unconcerned the far-off broil of the Kings of the wilderness. It was into the friendly and open places that the golden bird fluttered, but it came no less from the coverts of dread and mystery. From the death and the night it flew out into the sunlight where Luilla was happily straying.

Luilla loved to wander on the verges of danger, just where those flower-besieged thickets began and formed for miles together a thorny and tangled rampart full at once of allurement and menace. She did not venture in, for she had a great fear of the thorns and brambles and a high respect for her radiant beauty, her own constant object of worship and the daily delight of all who dwell for a while on earth labouring the easy and kindly soil on the verges of the forests of Asan. But always she wandered close to the flowery wall and her mind, safe in its voluntary in- corporeality, strayed like a many-hued butterfly, far into the forbidden region which the gods had so carefully secluded. Per- haps secretly she hoped that some day some kingly and leonine head would thrust itself out through the flowers and compel her with a gaze of friendly and majestic invitation or else that the green poisonous head of a serpent reposing itself on a flower would scrutinise her out of narrow eyes and express a cunning approval of her beauty. It was not out of fear of the lions and the serpents that Luilla forbore to enter the secret places. She knew she could overcome the most ferocious intentions of any

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destroyer in the world, firm-footed or footless, if only he would give her three minutes before making up his mind to eat or bite her. But neither lion nor serpent strayed out of these appointed haunts. It was the golden bird that first fluttered out from the thickets to Luilla.

Luilla looked at it as it flitted from bough to bough, and her eyes were dazzled and her soul wondered. For the little body of the bird was an inconstant flame of flying and fleeting gold and the wings that opened and fluttered were of living gold and the small shapely head was crested gold and the long graceful quivering tail was trailing feathered gold; all was gold about the bird, except the eyes and they were two jewels of a soft everchanging colour and sheltered strange-looking depths of love and thought in their gentle brilliance. On the bough where it perched, it seemed as if all the soft-shaded leaves were suddenly sunlit. For as Luilla accustomed her eyes to the flickering brightness of the golden bird, it hovered at last on a branch, settled and sang. And its voice also was of gold.

The bird sang in its own high secret language; but Luilla's ear understood its thoughts and in Luilla's soul as it thirsted and listened and trembled with delight, the song shaped itself easily into human speech. This then was what the bird sang — the bird that came out of the Death's night, sang to Luilla a song of beauty and of delight:

"Luilla! Luilla! Luilla! green and beautiful are the meadows where the children run and pluck the flowers and green and beautiful the pastures where the calm-eyed cattle graze, green and beautiful the corn-field ripening on the village bounds, but greener are the impenetrable thickets of Asan than her open places of life, and more beautiful than the meadows and the pastures and the cornfields are the forests of death and night. More ensnaring to some is the danger of the jaguar than the attractive face of a child, more welcome the foot-tracks of the lion as it haunts the pastures of the cattle, more fair and fruitful the thorn and the wild briar than the fields full of ripening grain. And this I know that no such flowers bloom in the safety and ease of Asan's meadows, though they make a thick and divine

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treading for luxurious feet, as I have seen blooming on the borders of the wild morass, in the heart of the bramble thicket and over the mouth of the serpent's lair. Shall I not take thee, O Luilla! into those woods? Thou shalt pluck the flowers in the forests of night and death, thou shalt lay thy hands on the lion's mane.

O Luilla! O Luilla! O Luilla!"

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