Wednesday, April sixth.
THE geese flew ahead over the long island which lay distinctly visible under them. The boy felt happy and light of heart during the trip. He was just as pleased and contented now as he had been glum and depressed the day before, when he roamed around on the island hunting for the goosey-gander.
He saw now that the interior of the island consisted of a barren high plain, with a wreath of fertile land along the coast; and he began to comprehend the meaning of something which he had heard the other evening.
He had just seated himself by one of the many windmills on the highland to rest a bit, when a couple of shepherds came along with their dogs beside them, and a large flock of sheep in their train. The boy was not afraid since he was well hidden under the windmill stairs. But it so happened that the shepherds came and seated themselves on the same steps, and then there was nothing for him to do but keep perfectly still.
One of the shepherds was young, and looked about as folks do mostly; the other was an old queer one. His body was large and knotty, but the head was small, and the face had sensitive and delicate features. It appeared as though the body and head didn't belong together.
He sat silent a while, gazing into the mist, with an unutterably weary expression. Then he began to talk to his companion. Presently the other took from his knapsack some bread and cheese, to eat his evening meal. He answered almost nothing, but listened very patiently, as if he were thinking: "I may as well give you the pleasure of chattering a while."
"Now I shall tell you something, Eric," said the old shepherd. "I have figured out that in former days, when both human beings and animals were much larger than now, that the butterflies, too, must have been uncommonly large. And there was once a butterfly that was many miles long, and had wings as wide as seas. Those wings were blue, and shone like silver, and so gorgeous that, when the butterfly was out flying, all the other animals stood still and stared at it. It had this drawback, however, that it was too large. The wings had hard work to carry it. But probably all would have gone very well, if the butterfly had been wise enough to remain on the hillside. But it wasn't; it ventured out over the Baltic Sea. And it hadn't got very far before the storm came along and began to tear at its wings. Well, it's easy to understand, Eric, how things would go when the Baltic Sea storm began to wrestle with frail butterfly-wings. It wasn't long before they were torn away and scattered; and then, of course, the poor butterfly fell into the sea. At first it was tossed back and forth on the billows, and then it stranded upon a few cliff-foundations just beyond Småland. And there it lay – large and long as it was.
"Now I think, Eric, that if the butterfly had dropped on land, it would soon have rotted and fallen apart. But since it fell into the sea, it was soaked through and through with lime, and became as hard as a stone. You know, of course, that we have found stones on the shore which are nothing but petrified worms. Now I believe that it went the same way with the big butterfly-body. I believe that it turned where it lay into a long, narrow mountain out in the Baltic Sea. Don't you?"
He paused for a reply, and the other nodded to him. "Go on, so I may hear what you are driving at," said he.
"And mark now, Eric, that this very Öland, where you and I live, is nothing else than the old butterfly-body. If one only stops to think about it, one can see that the island is a butterfly. Toward the north, the slender fore-body and the round head can be seen, and toward the south the lower body, which first broadens out and then narrows down to a sharp point."
Here he paused once more and looked rather quizzically at his companion to see how he took this assertion. But the young man kept right on eating and nodded to him to continue.
"As soon as the butterfly had been changed into a limestone rock, many different kinds of seeds of herbs and trees came travelling along with the winds, and wanted to take root on it. It was a long time before anything but sedge could grow there. Then came sheep-sorrel, the rock-rose and the thorn-brush. But even to-day there is not so much that grows on Alvaret that the mountain is well covered, for it is barren here and there. And no one would think of ploughing and sowing up here, where the earth-crust is so thin. But if you will grant that Alvaret and the strongholds around it are made of the butterfly-body, then you may well have the right to ask what that land which lies beneath the strongholds is."
"Yes, it is just that," said he who was eating. "That I should indeed like to know."
"Well, you must remember that Öland has lain in the sea a good many years, and meantime all the things which tumble around with the waves – seaweed and sand and clams – have gathered around it, and have stayed there. Then, too, stone and gravel have fallen down from both the eastern and western strongholds. In this way the island has acquired wide shores, where grain and flowers and trees can grow.
"Up here, on the hard butterfly-back, only sheep and cows and ponies go about. The only birds that live here are humble lapwings and plover, and there are no buildings except windmills and a few stone huts, where we shepherds crawl in. But down on the coast lie big villages and churches and parishes and fishing hamlets and a whole city."
He looked searchingly at his comrade, who had finished his meal, and was tying up the food-sack. "I wonder where you will end with all this," said he.
"It is only this that I would know," insisted the shepherd, lowering his voice so that he almost whispered the words, and peering into the mist with his small eyes, which appeared to be worn out from spying after all that which does not exist – "Only this: If the peasants who live on the built-up farms below the strongholds, or the fishermen who take the small herring from the sea, or the merchants in Borgholm, or the bathing guests who come here every summer, or the tourists who wander around in Borgholm's old castle ruin, or the sportsmen who come here in the fall to hunt partridges, or the painters who sit here on Alvaret and paint the sheep and windmills – I should like to know if any of them understand that this island has been a butterfly which once flew about with great shimmery wings."
"Surely it must have occurred to some of them," the young shepherd put in, "as they sat at the edge of the stronghold of an evening, and heard the nightingales trill in the groves below them, and looked over Kaimar Sound, that this island could not have come into existence in the same way as the others."
"I want to ask," said the old one, "if no one has felt a desire to give wings to the windmills – so large that they could reach to heaven; so large that they could lift the whole island out of the sea, and let it fly like a butterfly among butterflies."
"It may be possible that there is something in what you say," returned the young man; "for on summer nights when the heavens widen and open over the island, I have sometimes thought that it was as if it wanted to raise itself from the sea, and fly away."
But when the old man had finally gotten the young man to talk, he didn't listen to him very much. "I should like to know," resumed the old man in a low tone, "if any one can explain why one feels such a sense of longing up here on Alvaret. I have felt it every day of my life; and I think it preys upon each and every one who must go about here. I want to know if no else has understood that all this wistfulness is due to the fact that the whole island is a butterfly that longs for its wings."
This chapter has been put on-line as part of the
BUILD-A-BOOK Initiative at the
Celebration of Women Writers.
Initial text entry and proof-reading of this chapter were the work of volunteer
Rebekah Neely.
