They had discovered that, entering the thick green grove which lay right beside Uncle Ungert's cottage, they could be hidden there as if in a hall with green fairy-tale curtains which no one could reach and draw aside. It was a little piece of forgotten wilderness whose serenity had remained undisturbed since Uncle Ungert's matted old goat had gone to happier hunting grounds. The land was quite marshy here, and there were treacherous spots into which a small foot could easily sink. A mysterious bubbling and boiling could be heard in the earth round about, as if it were trying to say: I am the hidden river, the broad river which runs toward the sea. At these places the alder bushes, with their smooth bright stems and their impenetrable green arches of leaves, formed genuine little jungles through which they could walk, keeping a lookout in every direction among the ferns and the monstrous clinging plants, and feeling like the only people in the primeval forest.

But there was another place which the birds loved, and which Sabine called Noah's Ark because it was raised above the marshy ground and the invisible river; up there it was always dry and the sun shone and the bumblebees hummed like mad around some funny blue flowers which looked as if they had been made of rattling tissue paper and stuck stiffly   [p. 121]   onto long stalks. At the very top, on the shiny gray slab of stone which peeked out like an eye from deep within the earth, amidst stealthily advancing lichen and moss in brown and bright yellow and dark green shades, Sabine was accustomed to sit with her legs crossed underneath her, watching the exciting and changeful life around her, while Myran lay stretched out beneath the gnarled old ash tree which he loved, looking up into its many-branched crown and listening to the trills of the birds.

Nowhere in the world had Sabine felt as safe as here in Noah's Ark.

The epilobium, the wildwood's violet fire, stood like a row of sentries around her hiding place, the bumblebees' favorites nodded cunningly with their blue heads, and the yellow bedstraw spread its sweet odor through the still and sun-filled air.

Myran taught her to love the birds. One pedantic little willow warbler in particular became her friend. No doubt it had its nest somewhere nearby, and Myran wanted to show it to her, but no matter how hard they looked, they could not find it. Sabine could think of nothing except that nest. She crept around with all the caution she could muster, scarcely daring to put her foot on the ground for fear that she might happen to tramp on some downy little creatures in a nest. She could never have imagined that something of that sort could lie hidden between the bunches of grass. Now and then she heard an anxious and piercing wheet-wheet, and then she realized that danger was abroad---that she must have come close to the nest. She stood there on one leg, her heart pounding, and looked with all her might, but since her eyes were not used to the wilderness, she could not discover something as carefully hidden as a willow warbler's nest. She had to be satisfied with observing the little grayish-brown bird itself, which first sat in a tree, then hopped from   [p. 122]   branch to branch, holding an investigation in its own amusing and careful way as to whether there were any insects in the bark.

Of a sudden, a breathless Myran came up to her very quietly, taking her meaningfully by the hand. He led her cautiously through a raspberry patch and all the way up to the old gray fence, which was falling to pieces. At first Sabine could not see anything at all. She only felt the blood throbbing in Myran's warm hand. Going still a little closer, she bent forward, and not until she was so close that she could touch the fence was she able to distinguish the nest among the gray and stubbly rails. It was built out of sticks and straw on the most fragile of fragile things: a dried piece of bark already come halfway loose from the old fence post, and it seemed only to be waiting for a puff of wind to blow it down. Here the tranquil gray warbler had built a nest for its young in a strange trustfulness toward that strong hand which is the defender of the defenseless, the shelterer of those without shelter. Sabine sat down on the ground in mute reverence. The baby birds were quite naked, with only a few promising spots of down here and there, and they lay clustered together like a single, tender, breathing softness. She could see how the thin membrane rose and fell in the light rhythm of respiration, and perhaps it was this which moved her most of all, as if she had accidentally come upon something which was supposed to be hidden in the deepest recesses of God's heart.

"You have to be careful not to touch it," Myran said. "Birds are very sensitive. It can happen that they'll abandon their nest if a human being touches it."

Sabine merely nodded. She would never have dreamed of touching it. And she knew that, having seen it, she would be careful of everything that breathed---she would know that nothing was as sensitive and delicate as a living being.

  [p. 123]  

Finally the bird itself came to the realization that whoever it was that sat in the grass close beside the nest was not some strange being, but rather something which had planted itself in the nest's surroundings, something that belonged to the surroundings like the stone and the bushes---this was how still Sabine sat in her contemplation. The shy bird seated itself on the fence post and sounded its quiet and modest cry: tsit, tsit, tsit. It sat there, quite content, and looked around; a frizzle of down surrounded its small legs; now and then it lifted its wings, which drooped a little, ever so slightly.

Afterwards, when Sabine came to sit down beside the big ash tree with Myran, she was so thoughtful and her eyes were so large and dark that he had to draw her close to him, letting her lie the way she wanted to, with her head tucked underneath his arm, curled up like a baby bird in its nest.

Myyriäinen lay there thinking of the wondrous thing which had befallen him since he had started to carve little Sanni's head. It seemed to him that everything he saw had changed since he had begun his work. The whole village seemed to have been transformed. The people looked quite different. Lampinen's face had acquired a certain remarkable quality he had not seen there before. Palaga's eyes had become as deep as the Madonna's, and her hair had a sheen as though it were in an old painting. The children had grown so full of expression that he thought it would take him years to decipher what it was each one of them had concealed in his dirty little face. For example, Mikko, who was ill and could not move, had shadows beneath his eyes and a cast to his mouth and his temples which Myyriäinen had never seen anywhere before, and at which he believed everyone would be astounded, if only they had the chance to see it. Assendorff, too, had been changed in some way. His ill-tempered old face had got something splendid about it, causing him to   [p. 124]   resemble a red-bearded Moses on Mount Sinai. Not to mention Uncle Ungert, who obviously declined more and more each day that passed, growing smaller all the while; yet at the same time he grew as big and tall as an archangel. Myyriäinen could scarcely dare to begin to study him, the way he looked now; no one could know, of course, how much time he had left; and, as for himself, he had only his own brief span of life in which to ponder what he had seen---and how could that possibly be enough time?

And it was not just the people who had changed. The trees had also grown full with expression. Even the ground had acquired another appearance. The special way the little paths had of creeping along beside the groves and disappearing into the meadows had somehow become mysterious. It was plain that the village roads and the black edge of the forest and the banks of the river all possessed an intimate relationship to one another, their emanations converging around an invisible center which was the soul of our village. If its writing could only be read, then the reader would behold a mighty face emerging from concealment. Even the little nest which had recently aroused Myyriäinen's amazement, hanging onto its fragile piece of bark, had its given place in that face, although one could not really tell, as it lay there, what its connection was to everything else.

He thought that, if he were going to succeed in rendering Sanni's face the way it was in the moment of death, he would have to include everything the village's mighty face contained, not just the faces of Lampinen and Mikko but the trees, too, and the small paths and even the little nest which lay breathing in the chink of the fence. It might seem that the task was one a human being could not complete during his brief time on earth---a task, perhaps, which he simply did not have sufficient power to complete. Yet he felt no anxiety; instead he knew nothing but happiness.

  [p. 125]  

"It's really a strange sort of thing you're going to get from me," he said to Sabine, who lay with her head hidden beneath his arm. "It's not just beautiful, there's a kind of magic in it too. When you have it, you can never be sad. And the best part of all is that you'll never be alone."

He did not get an answer, and he wondered if Sabine had gone to sleep. He lifted his head to see what had happened, but then he felt his arm being pinched, and the pinch was more or less meant to say: "Don't look at me, you stupid Myran!"

"It's a dead girl's face. And it is so beautiful that, when you've seen it, you'll notice that none of the faces you see around you is as strange or ugly as you sometimes think. You'll be able to tell that, deep within them, they resemble the dead girl's face, and that there's something in them which is just as beautiful as the dead girl's face, although it doesn't always show so clearly. And the best part of all is that you can see that your own face is just as beautiful, too. For it also resembles the dead girl's face. The remarkable thing is that people don't realize that they resemble one another and that what they possess in common is the most beautiful thing about them, their true beauty. That's why it is so good to have the dead girl's face with you, for then you're aware of it and cannot feel alone.

Now Sabine crept out of her hiding place. She had to get a good look at Myran's face in order to see if things were the way he said. She thought that his face was very beautiful. But she indignantly rejected the notion that his face was in any way supposed to resemble Assendorff's or Uncle Ungert's. There was not another face like Myran's in the whole world, and that was the reason it was so beautiful.

"You don't look a bit like anybody else, and I don't either," Sabine said with great decisiveness.

Myran laughed at her, but she did not get annoyed,   [p. 126]   because she loved to hear him laugh. Sitting up, he took her on his lap.

"Let me tell you something, my little mermaid. You can't figure that secret out before you've seen everything there is to see in the dead girl's face. It doesn't resemble anyone in the whole wide world, and yet it resembles us all, so that if we reach the depths of any face whatsoever, we're simply returning to it---to the dead girl's face. That's the way we human beings are."

"I don't resemble everybody and I don't resemble just anybody," Sabine insisted. "I don't resemble anybody but myself. And neither do you."

"If you knew how ugly a person is when he only resembles himself, then you wouldn't talk that way. I know, because I made that sort of image of myself. And it was a distressing sight. It was the dead girl who taught me that a human being doesn't look that way."

"How does a human being look, then?" Sabine asked suspiciously.

"What can I say? A human being looks like someone who knows that he is lonely, but who by virtue of this very loneliness is able to experience his community with men and nature. Can you understand all this? Whenever you are most clearly aware of being Sabine and no one else, then you are most fully a human being, and whenever you feel that you are a human being, then, in turn, you are very much more than just the lonely Sabine. You have a soul which can enter into contact with other souls, not only the souls of men but of animals, too, and even of the well-spring and the tree and the flowers. In this way, loneliness cancels itself out, and you become a friend of every living thing."

"It sounds like a fairy tale," Sabine said, astonished and a little perplexed.

  [p. 127]  

"It is a fairy tale. But I can't tell it correctly. Only death can do that."

"Then it's beautiful death, not cruel death, that tells the story."

"It's only that we human beings sometimes think death is cruel. But that's not true. We'd be terribly unhappy and lonely if we didn't have death to tell us the fairy tale of our life."

It was time to go. Uncle Ungert was probably seated at the table already, waiting for them.

Myran got up and took Sabine's hand in his. She tripped along pensively at his side as they descended the slope of Noah's Ark; from time to time she looked up at his face.

"No one can tell the kind of stories you do," she said, and she thought to herself that it would no doubt be a great deal easier to live if a friend like Myran was always at one's side.

"And the end of the fairy tale goes this way," said Myran. "If there hadn't been a little mermaid whom Myran held so dear that he wanted to make something beautiful for her, then he would not have thought himself able to do something with his poor hands, and the enchanted face would never have come into existence."

"Say that once again," Sabine begged. She thought it sounded so wonderful that it almost could not be true.

Myran said it once again, just the way he had said it the first time.

And then Sabine thought that, no matter what the world held in store for her, she would never be able to feel truly lonely and unhappy.

When Sabine awoke the next morning, it was strangely silent in the cottage. Not even the cat could be seen. And   [p. 128]   where had the old uncle gone? She decided to lie still for a while and wait. The nicest part of the whole morning was when Uncle came trudging up to the bed with a glass of tea and a piece of sugar and a roll on a little tray, painted blue with a rose in the middle. He was especially enchanted by the rose, and always placed the glass so that the rose was visible. Then he looked at her with his old eyes and said: "Uncle invites you to eat." She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. It wasn't a real morning to wake up in, if you didn't get to hear Uncle saying his piece in his funny way. And while she drank her tea, Uncle would stand there and watch, the way he was accustomed to do, for that was what made it taste so good, and what made it so much fun when the hard roll slipped out of her fingers and the tea splashed around. "You don't know how to eat rolls," Uncle would say then. But just the same, the best part of all was what happened after the tea. Then they had their little talk. There was nobody who knew so much about Sabine as the old uncle did. Myran didn't know a tenth---he didn't know a hundredth of what Uncle knew. Sabine had told him everything during these chats of theirs when nobody but the cat was there to listen, and who knows if even the cat was paying any attention as he sat there half asleep, with the one eye closed and the other opened just a little crack. She had also told about Joachim, although she had thought she would never be able to talk with anyone about that. She herself was astonished that she could tell about it, and without feeling at all self-conscious. Uncle didn't say very much about it, but he understood everything. Afterwards, he said that Joachim had to be allowed to live, too, and that's why he did not want to leave Sabine or depart from the house at Lintula. Sabine had thought she would ask Uncle a little more about this matter. When she thought about it, she could very well believe that it was Joachim who had sat   [p. 129]   curled up within her breast, for she felt such a pressure there. But after she had come to Uncle Ungert's, the pressure had vanished, and now she wondered where Joachim had gone. Perhaps he had entered into someone else instead. Of course, he would leave an empty space behind. Actually, there were a great many things she still wanted to ask Uncle about. But where could he be right now? Why, the fire hadn't even been lit. She sat up and stared uncomprehendingly toward the cold stove---the fact that there wasn't a pan of water singing over the fire seemed to be a direct infraction of the laws of nature.

Then she noticed that Uncle lay quite still, stretched out on his sheepskin on the floor beside the stove. She crept out of bed and went over to him. He was not asleep; it was really very odd. When she bent down, he looked at her sweetly with his old eyes, which seemed just a little absent-minded, and said in a weak voice: "Uncle feels poorly today." When he closed his toothless mouth, she could get a good idea of how sunken it was. He smacked his lips a little, and his chin bobbed up and down by itself. "My dear uncle, how old you are," Sabine said, and threw her arms around him.

Then, with a bound, she was standing again. She would see to it that Uncle had tea in bed, and then he would no doubt feel fine once more. Some dry sticks lay on the shelf around the stove, but she could not find firewood anywhere. Sabine thought things over for a moment. It wasn't as simple as you'd imagine to fix a glass of tea. The water pail was empty, too. She got dressed as fast as she could, wrapped Uncle's blue-striped apron around her, and went out singing to herself, the pail on her arm. "Scat!" she hissed, when in her haste she had almost fallen over the cat which sat right in front of the door. It did not bother her at all that the cat spat angrily after her, for she had more   [p. 130]   important matters to think of. It was an exciting enterprise to haul water up out of the well. She looked down into the deep black shaft and shuddered involuntarily. At the bottom, the water glittered evilly. It would not have surprised her if a long clammy arm had reached out and grabbed her by the neck as she leaned over the well's edge. Using all the care she could muster, she stretched her arm downward with the pail, but she saw immediately that she was a long, long way from reaching the water. That was odd. Imagine that the old uncle had exposed himself to all these dangers and difficulties every morning without saying a word about it! She saw that a rotted old piece of rope was fastened to the edge of the well, and it dawned on her that she was supposed to tie the pail to the rope, and lower it in that way. Immeasurably proud of her discovery and forgetting all her caution, she merrily heaved the pail downward, and almost went sliding in along with it. She uttered a little shriek, and, in her terror, let go her grip. Afterwards, it was a real comfort to discover that the pail had not vanished after all. But how heavy it was! She pulled and tugged with all her might, bracing herself against the edge of the well, but the pail just got heavier and heavier. Ordinary water wasn't that heavy. There was someone holding the bucket down there, that much was sure. "Shame on you, you naughty troll," Sabine scolded, and then the pail came up like greased lightning. She poured out most of the water, and as she did, she examined it very carefully. It looked like ordinary water, no matter what had happened. Quite exhausted but satisfied with herself, she left the well with just a cupful or two of water splashing around in the bottom of the pail.

At last she had collected everything she needed, a little water and some pieces of firewood, and no one could believe how much trouble they caused her before she got them into the house. Now---would you believe it?---they   [p. 131]   lay just as quiet and innocent as you please. But she was the troll now. "I'll scald your fine skin," she said to the water. "I'll burn you up," she said to the piece of wood. And she rejoiced in her heart when she saw the red flame, crackling merrily, devour the white wood. The water seethed and whistled inside the saucepan, but could not get out.

"Now you're going to get some warm tea," she said to Uncle. She was red in the face from her own eagerness and the heat of the fire, and her eyes shone with joy at being the master of the objects she had collected.

She sat down on the floor beside Uncle and gave him, as carefully as she could, one sip after another of the good warm drink. She let some pieces of a roll lie in the glass until they had swollen up and grown quite soft, so that she could give Uncle a few of them with her teaspoon. There was a funny kind of smacking noise in his mouth, and he blinked his eyes like a doll.

"I'd so much have liked to have a few days more, since it's not finished yet," Uncle whispered between sips.

"I know that you'll get to finish reading everything," Sabine said.

"How do you know that?" Uncle asked.

"Just because I know it," said Sabine. She felt big and strong. She knew everything. Uncle was like a little child whom you had to instruct---you had to straighten him out.

"It's so peaceful if you can reach the end. Then there's nothing left over."

When Uncle talked this way, Sabine had to remember Joachim. She sat thinking for a while, and then she began to weep quietly to herself. She wept and still she was terribly happy. She did not need to ask anything, because she knew everything.

"Just look there," Sabine said suddenly. "You look a lot   [p. 132]   healthier already. Your cheeks are as red as a Christmas goat's."^[1*]

What the troll child said was true. He really felt a great deal better. He sat up and looked around the cottage. He saw the striped rug which Natalia Ivanovna had given him many years ago, when the children had sung for him on his birthday. They stood in the dark winter morning with candles in their hands and sang one song after another for old Uncle Mandarin. He laughed silently to himself. "I'm a winter child," he thought. "My mother was young and strong when she gave birth to me. My life was strong and beautiful. I have never been afraid."

With a great sense of satisfaction, he pulled himself up on his shaky legs. He had done many foolish things in the course of his life and had made many mistakes. One morning he had gone off and left little Katja, and afterwards he had never thought of her. He had tasted hunger and thirst. He had hunted antelopes. He had seen blood flow. And he had been paid back for everything he had done wrong. "I've lived, I've lived," he muttered to himself. He knew that a joyous death awaited him after the completion of his day's labor.

He got carefully dressed in order to be ready when his friend arrived, so that this friend, together with him, might go through what was left of the fleeting flourishes his spiritual self had written upon the face of the earth.

Today Myran came a little later than usual. He had been working so well, he said, that he did not have the heart to stop. He told Sabine that only now---after his conversation with her up on Noah's Ark---had he found the right approach.   [p. 133]   Everything had become clear within him, and he had achieved the work's final form. He also knew what his sculpture would be called. Its name would be Death. And when Sabine saw it, she would understand everything he had told her about the way a human being really should look.

Sabine pleaded and begged to be allowed to see the sculpture immediately. Why, she could sneak over to Lampinen's this evening in order to get a peek at it. Secretly, she thought that if it was as beautiful as Myran said it was, and bore the name of Death, then it must resemble Joachim, although Myran had never seen him. But she said nothing about it, because she did not want to make him feel unhappy in case it turned out that the sculpture did not resemble Joachim at all. Joachim had been so beautiful as he lay dead that there could be nothing more beautiful than he had been.

"It can't be permitted," said Myran. "What would you say if we were discovered?"

"Well, you can bring the sculpture here, can't you," Sabine insisted.

"You can't move something like that around," said Myran. "It's as delicate as a bird's nest. If we move it before it's finished, then I might have to abandon it."

Sabine understood this argument. But it only made her desire to see Death's sculpture grow all the stronger.

Uncle Ungert was already rattling his papers. He carefully wiped his glasses with his big brown handkerchief and got ready to read. He cast a glance over the lenses at his little band of listeners.

He had not had a chance to do any more than clear his throat when Assendorff came through the door quite unexpectedly, a curious and important expression on his face. He talked as though something dreadful had happened.   [p. 134]   "Trouble is brewing," he said. The Lintula boat had been found, adrift and empty, over at Ängsvik, and now some devil had got the idea that the little creature had gone and drowned herself. They had begun to drag the river, it was said, but nobody believed that they would find the corpse, for nobody knew, of course, where the awful event had taken place, and besides, the current here was so swift that it would not willingly surrender whatever it had once pulled down into the depths.

Sabine almost choked with laughter. Could you imagine such a funny thing! Now they were looking for her on the lake's bottom, and thought that she lay there gurgling with blue cockles in her hair and red coral flowers snaking between her fingers. She could see the scene quite plainly. Small voiceless fish came swimming across her face now and then, pecking at her cheeks and peering curiously at her with their round eyes. And there she sat, big as life, in Uncle Ungert's cabin, and did not have the slightest idea of casting herself into the water so that they'd be able to find something.

Myran looked shrewdly at Sabine.

"The stupid people don't realize that a mermaid can't drown herself in the water," he said.

Slapping his knee, Assendorff let loose a peal of laughter. He thought it was a witty remark. It was actually a little mermaid he had picked up that morning down below the Maiden's Cliff.

They could not take their eyes off the happy, laughing girl. The river had given them this child. The water's spirit, mocking and magic, dwelt in her laughter, and there was the glitter of moon silver in her gray eyes. She was very dear to them.

"Now we'll certainly have to say that we're alive, won't we?" Assendorff said contemplatively. "For otherwise   [p. 135]   there'll be a funeral. And that's the worst thing I can think of."

Sabine laughed so hard that tears ran down her cheeks.

"Let me have a funeral, I'd like so much to have a funeral," she howled, hopping around and clapping her hands as though to conjure up a completely new and quite unfamiliar sort of masquerade. She was never so cheerful as when the possibility of such mysterious confusions between fantasy and reality arose.

The strange chatter bewildered Uncle Ungert.

"Whose funeral are you talking about," he asked with a trembling voice.

Then they all felt a little foolish and did not know what they ought to say. Suddenly becoming serious, Sabine sat down all by herself in the corner under the old portrait. When Uncle asked about the funeral, it sounded so terribly different. It was nothing at all to joke about. On the contrary, it was very sad. She sat there, looking from the one to the other with a helpless and questioning gaze, as if she had the feeling that she was about to wake up from a beautiful dream. She looked at Uncle, she looked at Assendorff, she looked at Myran. She had a strange squeezing sensation in her heart. "Do you all intend to abandon me now?" she asked with a lump in her throat.

Assendorff wriggled around on his chair.

"What silly talk," he thundered. "We'll be quiet for three days and not say a thing. And then we'll see."

"Three days," Sabine thought. "Three days are better than nothing. They're a long time."

Going over to the stove, Myran pretended he had something to do there.

"You know how it is, of course," he spoke toward the stove and did not turn around. "You know what I'm making for you, and what kind of magic it contains. Then how   [p. 136]   could we abandon you? After all, we have everything in common, and that's what is so wonderful. And then you'll make the Little Mermaid for me, the way you promised."

The glimmer came back into Sabine's eyes.

"I have such beautiful paints at home, just wait and see," she said eagerly.

"Of course I'll see your paints," Myran said. "I'll see everything you have at home."

Sabine scarcely dared to breathe. It was marvelous to think that Myran would come home to Lintula, and she would have a chance to show him everything she possessed, her favorite spots and the Old Coachhouse with its saddles and the summerhouse and Lady Macbeth and, best of all, her own room and all the things she loved and had never shown to anyone. And the thought brushed against her like a breath of wind---although she did not want to think of it---that she would open the door to the Storeroom just once, ever so slightly, and show him the empty chamber.

The cat came up with a very meaningful air, too, and sat down right in front of Sabine. She looked into its yellow eyes. Tongues of flame seemed to spurt up within them, and dreams arose inside her heart like sparks from a distant fire.

It was like the beginning of a new and still more enchanting tale.

The old house with its pale rose color and its white pillars emerged in a wholly new light. Everything that was dark and heavy lay concealed beneath its foundations, and the house itself rose upward, floating in the magic gleam of unforgettable memories. With his clumsy steps, Myran came tramping up the staircase to the second floor, and in a flush of happiness she received him into her childhood's fairy castle.