The King, setting command upon himself, sent for his wife; when she came he put her hand into the other's hand. Then the juggler flung his cloak about her, and in a minute he and she were gone, and Cormac who had been alone by the ramparts did not know what direction they had gone in. He groaned heavily. But he knew that groaning was no use, and taking his sword in his hand and filled with a great passion of grief and anger, he sprang off the ramparts of Tara and ran across the plain.
The clear light of May-day had been on everything, but as he went on a mist fell down or rose up. It was light at first and was only about his feet, but it became heavier and thicker and thicker and heavier. He heard birds' cries coming through it. He went on and on and came suddenly out of the mist. And now a lovely light was on everything. But the plain he was on was strange to Cormac. The grass was bright; there were white blossoms on the hawthorns and golden blossoms on the furze, and there was the singing of larks above, but on that wide plain there was neither hill nor bush nor rock nor tree that he remembered.
And then he saw dwellings there. He went towards them and saw that surrounding them was a rampart of bronze with an opening through it. Within the rampart the dwellings stood as palaces, one having every embellishment, and the other without thatch as yet upon it. There was a well of springing water before the opening of the rampart -- water so bright and clear that Cormac stood looking into it for a long space of time.
Around that well nine hazel trees grew; their leaves looked as if they never withered, and their branches bore purple nuts that fell into the water. As one fell, a silver salmon, one of the five that were in the well, rose and fed on it and then swam down one of the five streams that flowed out of the well. A salmon with a shining body having fed on a purple nut went swimming down each of the streams that in their flowing made a murmur that was as sweet as music. As King Cormac listened to that murmur and looked into the clearness of the water he felt close to an understanding of something that he had not understood before -- something was rising in his mind like the bubbles that came to the top of the well as the salmon rose and fed on the nuts that fell to them from the branches of the hazel trees. |
