He went to the rampart and he looked on the palace that was as yet without thatch upon its roof. He was not the only one who was before it. Riders kept coming to it bearing bags; in the bags were feathers of birds of all kinds. They handed the bags of feathers to men who, on the top of the palace,were engaged in thatching the roof. These men put down the black and white and speckled feathers to make a thatch. But they stopped their work to argue with each other, and gusts of wind came and blew the feathers from under their hands, so that no matter how many bags were handed to them the thatch was never laid to more than a few hands' breadth. All around where King Cormac stood feathers were flying; on the ground was a depth of feathers which gusts of wind took up and blew away. Looking on the feathers and on the men who were letting them flow from them, King Cormac felt as if he were reaching an understanding of something -- he did not know what.
He turned to the palace that was embellished, and the door-keepers who were there led him within. In the hall was a couch on which a noble-looking man was seated. He rose as Cormac entered and brought him to the couch and sat beside him. A basin of water was at his feet and a servant was ready to bathe them. But where the basin had come from, or how the heating stones had been placed in or taken out of the water, Cormac did not know. The noble-looking personage who was the lord of the palace conversed with him, and all he said brought Cormac closer and closer to the understanding that was forming in his mind.
His feet bathed, he felt refreshed. A broad-shouldered man, the meat of a pig across his shoulders and an ax and a log of wood in his hands, came into the hall. "It is time to prepare a meal," said the lord, "for a noble guest is with us." Then the man split the log and lighted a fire on the hearth and hung the pig to cook before the fire. And Cormac marveled as he looked upon the hearth because, although a great heat came from the fire, the wood did not seem to burn away.
Said the lord of the palace, "It is time to turn what cooks before the fire."
"Not so," said the broad-shouldered man, "for if the pig were roasting forever it would not be cooked until, for every quarter of it, a true tale is told."
"Do you then," said the lord to Cormac, "tell us a true tale."
Then King Cormac told how his daughter, son, and his wife had been lost to him, and how, rushing out to take back his wife he had lost himself and wandered through a mist, and how he had come to the place they were in. And when he had finished his tale the broad-shouldered man turned what was roasting before the fire and behold! a quarter of the pig was cooked perfectly. "A true tale you have told," said the lord of the palace. And then he said:
"The season for plowing had come, but when we went to the field we found it plowed and harrowed and sown with seed. The harvest came on; we went to reap the grain but found the grain already stacked in sheaves. When we went to bring the sheaves home we found the field cleared and the sheaves made into a rick and the rick thatched. Since that time we have been thrashing and grinding sheaves out of that rick, and yet the rick is never less." And when the lord of the palace had told this the broad-shouldered man turned what was roasting and behold! another quarter of the pig was cooked. "A true tale you have told," said the man. |
