Джон Стейнбек: Cup of Gold [Золотая чаша]

Slowly the knowledge grew in him that these were his deeds and his thoughts which were living with Brother Death. Each one had gone immediately to live with Brother Death as soon as it was born. When he knew their identity, the faceless little creatures turned on him and clustered thickly about his couch.

"Why did you do me?" one cried.

"I do not know; I do not remember you."

"Why did you think me?"

"I do not know. I must have known, but I have forgotten.

My memory is slipping away from me here in this grotto."

Still insistently they questioned him, and their voices were becoming more and more strident and harsh, so that they overwhelmed the great Tone.

"Me! answer me!"

"No; me!"

"Oh, leave me! Let me rest," Henry said wearily. "I am tired, and I cannot tell you anything anyway."

Then he saw that the little beings were crouching before an approaching form. They turned toward the form and cowered, and at length fell on their knees before it and raised trembling arms in gestures of supplication.

Henry strained his attention toward the figure. Why, it was Elizabeth coming toward him-little Elizabeth, with golden hair and a wise young look on her face. She was girdled with cornflowers, and her eyes were strangely puzzled and bright. With a little start of surprise she noticed Henry.

"I am Elizabeth," she said. "You did not come to see me before you went away."

"I know. I think I was afraid to talk with you. But I stood in the darkness before your window, and I whistled."

"Did you?" She smiled at him gladly. "That was nice of you. I cannot see, though, why you should have been afraid of me-of such a little girl. It was silly of you."

"I do not know why," he said. "I ran away. I was motivated by a power that is slipping out of all the worlds. My memories are leaving me one by one like a colony of aged swans flying off to some lonely island in the sea to die. But you became a princess, did you not?" he questioned anxiously.

"Yes, perhaps I did. I hope I did. I, too, forget. Tell me, did you really stand there in the dark?"

Henry had noticed a peculiar thing. If he looked steadily at one of the crouched, faceless beings, it disappeared. He amused himself by staring first at one and then at another until all of them were gone.

"Did you really stand there in the dark?"

"I do not know. Perhaps I only thought I did." He looked for Elizabeth, but she, too, had disappeared.

In her place there was a red smoldering ember, and the light was dying out of it.

"Wait, Elizabeth-Wait. Tell me where my father is. I want to see my father."

The dying ember answered him.

"Your father is happily dead. He was afraid to test even death."

"But Merlin, then-Where is Merlin? If I could only find him."

"Merlin? You should know of him. Merlin is herding dreams in Avalon."

The fire went out of the ember with a dry, hard snap. There was no light anywhere. For a moment, Henry was Conscious of the deep, mellow pulsation of the Tone.

The End