Chap. 16
The Naiadi
‘A fair young maiden she seemed, till
I descried her otherworldly beauty.’
from The Laye of Estland Waik
The evening of the following day found the travellers in an eerie country, marked by a sharp decrease in the amount of fallen snow, of which there was only the lightest skiff, and an endless succession of uneven hills, which appeared overall as though the crust of the land had been broken into uniform chunks, each of which was tilted so that there was a gradual slope always on one side, the east, and a sharp drop on the west face. As well, the general lay of the land was canted slightly to the left, towards the south. What colossal upheaval of the earth could possibly had expressed itself in such an odd, regular formation, none could say. But ancient and bluntly eroded though the hills were, as though the land was forever trying to remember its former shape, they were possessed of an immediacy, as though the force which had shaped them was ever present, however quiescent it might seem to the eye.
The low ground between these yellowed scrub-grass-grown hills was often covered with a dense growth of brambles, and between many of the hills were rivulets which gurgled spiritedly along ice-rheumed channels. Each shallow gulley was shrouded in dank mists which clung to the tangled undergrowth, and to the north and south the general lay of the land rose somewhat; in neither direction, north or south, could anything be seen but drear alder forest, which stood silent, naked, dark, impenetrable and foreboding.