Free The Girl Green as Elderflower by Randolph Stow Page B

mountain, a man who was running along, crying in a lamentable voice: “Woe’s me, ah wretched me, how have I deserved to be crushed with such a load?” Pedro’s neighbour asked the cause of his distress, and he answered that for seven years he had lived in that mountain, at the disposal of demons, who used him every day as a beast of burden. When the other showed incredulity, he added that in the same mountain the demons held in servile bondage a girl, the daughter of Pedro Cabina of La Junquera. But the demons were tired of training her, and would freely restore her to her curser, if the father would reclaim her from the mountain.
    ‘Though still incredulous, the neighbour sought out Pedro at La Junquera, and found him even then lamenting the long absence of his daughter. When the reason for her absence was explained, the neighbour told the father what he knew, and suggested that Pedro, under the protection of the Divine Name, seek his vanished daughter in the mountain.
    ‘Pedro, though amazed, decided to take his advice. Having climbed the mountain and reached the lake, he sought out the demons, and begged that they restore the girl. Thereupon, as if carried by a sudden blast, his daughter came forth: long of stature, dried-up, noisome, with wandering eyes, with bones and nerves and skin scarcely hanging together, horrid in aspect, speech and intellect, and knowing and understanding hardly anything human.
    ‘Having received her, the bewildered father sought the counsel of the bishop of Gerona; and that good man exhibited her before his flock, exhorting them never to commend anyone to the demons. For the Devil our adversary, as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, destroys some, namely those given to him, whom he then holds imprisoned without hope of redemption; while others, such as those cursed, he merely torments and afflicts for a time.
    ‘I will not, Mrs Burrows,’ continued the priest, ‘detain you with what exactly was seen in the dwelling-place of the demons by the man they used as a beast of burden: an intelligent man, later released through the agency of Pedro Cabina. Suffice it to say that those who are casually sent to the Devil by others may find themselves, if the wrong ears hear, in a sense
half
damned, though kept apart from those devoted to eternal perdition. And sadly, those
commendati
, as we call them, are usually children. I have cases here from Sweden, from Serbia, from Germany. A happier story, the German one. Though both parents cursed the child, the Devil, who happened to be there, remarked: “They wouldn’t take two thousand pounds for it, really.” There are numerous such cases in Russia, of which Tooke writes: “The beings so stolen are neither fiends nor men; they are invisible, and afraid of the Cross and holy water; but on the other hand, in their nature and disposition they resemble mankind, whom they love, and rarely injure.”’
    The priest paused; but seeing that the young woman kept her eyes stubbornly on the window, he resumed: ‘A moment of temper is not blamed by anybody, Mrs Burrows. But from the story of Pedro Cabina’s daughter, and from something said by Malkin herself, I believe that you might have reclaimed her recently, and that she expected it.’
    ‘Oh-ah,’ said the woman. ‘Something said by Malkin. Sin her, have you?’
    ‘Not seen, Mrs Burrows. Malkin is invisible to us. But I have spoken with her. She is a naturally happy child who will not show her misery. But I feel her homesickness, and I know that she hopes in seven years’ time, fourteen years after your unfortunate expression, to come home to you.’
    The woman rose, and going to the window ledge made some small adjustment to the position of the pink flowers. Looking out into the street, she said: ‘She won’t never come here. Never.’
    ‘I see,’ said the priest.
    ‘What I said that day,’ said the woman, ‘I meant. There was I, a mother of fifteen, working my guts out for a brat I