The Star Mill Read online

  Seeing that his beer mug was empty, understanding the quixotic torment of his rediscovered happiness, Loldca ladled him out another great horn of the dark brew.

  Ilmar offered some to Aino. She smiled and sipped. Then he dipped into the foam with a wide grin.

  Vaino sang:

  "Stainless sits the maid beside thee, Maiden bright to thee affianced, Pledged to thee in all her beauty."

  Ilmar set down his mug and turned to Aino. But the girl had left her seat. From the doorway she looked back, her eyes storming with tears.

  "What did I do?" Ilmar asked Lokka.

  "Nothing, my son. It was the song. You see, the wedding Vaino sang about was yours—but not hers."

  "Who else?" Ilmar demanded.

  "Not now." Her hand touched his. "Kaleva wishes that you enjoy all the good olden things now. That you are happy. Let the trouble come later. The secret sorrow is always with us." He felt her shiver as she grasped his hand.

  "What secret—?"

  "I'm sorry, Ilmar. It just came out of me. Please don't ask yet. Kaleva will tell you all—and all too soon." Her voice dwindled to a whispered sigh.

  Ilmar scowled down at his half-empty mug. Joy was indeed fleering. The laughter, the songs, held an undertone of desperation in them. The Vanhat were holding back some great dam of fear. ...

  Hero. They called him hero. Yet Ilmar knew he was not. He had tried to be a hero. That was what had taken him out of their secret illusion-protected valley, a valley that dreamed lost dreams but was really a sham itself. The log huts. The homespun dress. The feast of fish from the lake and forest animals. All of this was of itself illusion. It had no place in Earth I, with its complex technology and star-flung economy. Why?

  What was their terrible secret?

  Why must these ancestors of the ancient wizards and warlocks hide themselves from the rest of the world?

  He had the sudden bitter feeling that he did not want to be here. He did not want to belong to the Vanhat. He belonged out there—with Cairn and the Ussi.

  Then, in a well-polished compote of sugared strawberries, he saw his face. Distorted, twisted by the curving surface, with the crimson sword blazing double-size across his cheek.

  His hands made fists, his teeth pressed his lips and jaw into a tight fine. I belong, he muttered silently. I belong.

  The sound of a great bell, sharp and incisive, cut through his self-searching. It was somber, deep-toned, and it demanded immediate attention of all at the feast.

  This it got. The songs were instantly hushed. Even the children stopped their laughing chatter, as if conditioned to it like Pavlov's dogs.

  "What is it?" Ilmar's demand cut the silence like a knife.

  Nobody answered him. At the other end of the long table Kaleva rose with majestic dignity, but his face was suddenly eon-old and very sad. He smiled down the table, but the smile was haunted.

  "Vanhat, it is time. We must go to Underearth. We have had our Day."

  VII

  Underearth. The very sound of it was like a tomb's door closing. Is that what it was, really? Were the Vanhat really only ghosts who must descend to their graves after their one day of each year among the living? Were they accursed, by some eldritch magic of their own making? Ilmar wondered suddenly if the ship had slammed against the cliff and if he, like the rest of them, was dead and buried.

  Was this the true illusion? Was the village, the shimmering lake, the feast, the songs—were all these things only the illusion of life?

  When Lokka beckoned him, he followed her like an obedient boy. But following, rebellion began boiling up inside of him. He would not be deadl He would not go to Underearth! He was alive—all of him! Never had his muscles and his nerves felt more alive than right now. Let them go back to their graves, not Ilmar!

  Kaleva led the solemn procession at a lagging pace out of the Greathall, down the smoke-scented path where the sun was already melting the winter's first snow blanket. Mothers kept a firm grip on childish hands so that they wouldn't run back to play in the bright patches. Old muumus with bent backs and gnarled canes hobbled to keep up. As Kaleva's tall form reached the woods, Ilmar blinked from the sun-sheen dripping melted beads off the soughing pine branches.

  A winding path brought the silent cortege to the foot of a great cliff facing north. This broken escarpment leaped into driving mists and it was here that Kaleva halted them. His blue tinted glasses reflected the morning sun when he turned, as if to devour a long last look at the valley of the Vanhat. Then he nodded to his flock and vanished into a narrow cave-arch. Ilmar saw that there were old logs shoring up the cave; it had the look of a mine shaft, unused since the ancients.

  He lingered, watching them file in. Two tassel-hatted twins went into a tantrum and their father had to grab them, one under each arm, and carry them, kicking, into the dark.

  Lokka turned. "Come, Ilmar. It is time."

  The haunted resignation in her face struck fire in II-mar's brain. "Nol I won't go in that black hole!"

  He whirled and ran. Lokka called after him urgently; others stopped and called, too. But the mugs of beer and his taste of freedom and happiness burned in him like a raging fire. It was his nature to lead, to rebel. His star-trek had been both. He had left the Vanhat before in some wild youthful rage of pent-up concupiscence that demanded action, even though Kaleva said it was not time yet. The Gate is not open! Kaleva had admonished him. Wait! You must have the Sword! But Ilmar had not waited, and the results of his folly brought disaster. Now they were dragging him back to more waiting....

  He ran with these thoughts washing over him, unheeding both the implicit warning they brought and the mind-calls of the Vanhat. Come back! You will die!

  He reached the shadowed range of high mountains to the South. That was where he would go. South, to the great Cities. Whirling about, he spotted what looked like a narrow ravine, a pass through. He was in fog now, sifting, clinging fog. He plunged further in toward the crack in the rock. Suddenly his legs wouldn't run, his arms moved in slow-motion. In a panic he found he could scarcely breathe; he fought with his fists against the rubbery web that had him trapped. One slow-motion step further in. Another. Then he screamed and fell—very, very slowly.

  He dreamed.

  The runners of his sledge sought out a tenuous path along the birch-lined lake. The rowan cumber rattled as the chestnut horse strained his young muscles in the yoke to Ilmar's whip. Ilmar shouted into the stinging north wind, cracking the whip expertly over Ahava's head.

  Ilmarinen the Wondersmith was still peeved. He grimaced at the neat way his wizard friend Vainomoinen had tricked him. He swore at Ahava about it, then chuckled and jammed the bead-embroidered whip back in its sheath.

  "The old graybeard is a wily foxl" he told Ahava. "He is old, yet he still has his lusts, and he hopes that I— Ilmarinen, the Wondersmith—will pick his berries out of the sucking marshl Ai. Old Louhi, the Witch of Pohyola, got her daughter, the rainbow siren, to ensnare even such an old .graybeard as Vainol Think of that, Ahava. With all his years. True, his voice is still mellifluous to charm the birds out of Tapio's trees and the crows into drowning' themselves out of envy—but he is ancient and the juices have run dry. So Louhi tells him that he may marry her entrancing daughter on one condition." Ilmar laughed into the howling wind. "What do you think that condition is, my fast onel It is that he must build for Witch Louhi the magic Sampo. The Sampol The Star Mill that will grind out anything one may ask of it. The wonder-machine that will snatch god-power from beyond the stars and create things out of the smallest particles of air and sea and rock. What manner of things? Anything! Anything that exists anywhere in the starsl"

  Ilmar pulled the left rein fast and swore at Ahava to miss the looming knoD of hare rock like a demon's head with blue-gray snow for hair. The right runner screamed over bare rock, the sledge tilted perilously, then righted. With a toss of mane and a show of teeth, Ahava pushed wind and on.

  The wind was chill, and getting
more so. Ilmar took time to brush the upswept snow off his red beard and shaggy eyebrows, then confided the rest of his ignominy to Ahava since there was no one else on the bleak journey to listen.

  "So, naturally, old Vaino came to me. Me—Ilmarinen, the greatest smith of all. Kylla. Was it not I who forged the sky above us? Were not the stars sparks out of my blazing forge when I accomplished this feat? Was it not I who melted raw gold to fashion the moon and to—"

  Ahava gave a loud back-snort for such bragging. Ilmarinen grumbled at the sudden noise, gave him a re-monstrative taste of whip, then went on.

  "I must confess that Vainomoinen, my oldest friend, used a clever trick to put me on my way to Pohyola. Getting me to climb up that great pine to fetch the moon down for him to prove that I had indeed made it—then sang up such a storm that it caught that pine tree up, roots and all, and hurtled me off into space in the direction of the Witch's gloomy island in the sky."

  Ahava's shrugged back-glance seemed to ask: "Then why did you not go back after this ship-tree spilled you back down on the shores of this gloom-haunted place? Why did you sing up this sledge and steal me out of my warm barn, to continue your journey across this tundra to Pohyola's Castle?"

  "Perkele!" was Ilmarinen's grouchy answer.

  With her usual courtesy to human visitors, when Ilmarinen reached the courtyard of Louhi's black stone castle, she set the dogs on him. Ilmar heard her cackling at one of the windows while the ill-fed creatures snapped at Ahava's heels and tore bits of rawhide and wool off Ilmarinen's leggings when he got out. Ilmarinen was giving the wild-eyed monsters something to think about with his whip when Louhi, her sadistic mood sated, sent them yelping and cringing in the down-meadow direction of the swine-pens. A stablekeep took charge of Ahava and Ilmarinen tramped swearing into a side door of the castle.

  He demanded food for his empty belly. A wretched slave-girl servant brought him cold barley gruel and sour beer. His language frightened the bats in the rafters as he flung the tray across the stone floor.

  Louhi cackled delightedly, hiding behind a pillar; then she moved out into the small, cold chamber. Ilmarinen squinted at her from under his coppery bushes. The black shawl and the ragged apron which she affected did not fool him. Her ugly dark face with the eyes glinting malevolently out of deep sockets told him at once who she was and what

  "What is this sonta—for Suomi's greatest hero!"

  Louhi hid a toothless smile and adjusted the black shawl over her hump. Her claw held fast to the rowan snake-stick that was her badge of membership among the star-demons of the Black Nebula.

  She gave him a mocking curtsey and a beggar woman's whine. "You can see from the bareness of the room, and the skinniness of my servants and my dogs, that I am very poor, and I can offer you no better."

  "You lie, WitchI" Ilmarinen tramped the room in a fury. "I—Ilmarinen, the Wondersmith—have traveled all the way from Lake Imari to visit you and your daughter. And this is the treatment I receive!"

  "Ah! Why did you not say so at once! My beautiful daughter shall wait upon you, herself!"

  She clapped her hands. Servants appeared. Food appeared in trenchers that steamed with succulent meats and gravies and plump potatoes. Pohyola's fabulous daughter herself brought in a copper pitcher of dark ale to wash it down.

  Ilmarinen stopped wolfing down food and gaped. She was indeed the most radiant creature Ilmarinen had ever seen or dreamed of seeing. Dressed in an opalescent web-thin garment that clung to her thighs and her breasts invitingly, she wore sapphires that formed an exciting pattern on the opal; and as if that were not enough, small silvery bells on her ankles and wrists, bells that tinkled when she moved toward him, smiling with red, red hps.

  "One has heard of Pohyola's daughter, even to the southmost tip of Carelia," Ilmarinen gulped. "What is your name, delightful creature?"

  "I have no name."

  "NiinF'

  "Speaking of names, have you on your travels heard reports of, or encountered, the great wondersmith Ilmarinen?"

  "I have, child. I have met with this smith often on my journeys, for the reason that I myself am this same Ilmarinen."

  The Witch's daughter gasped in awe. Louhi cackled in her throat when she saw the way Ilmarinen stared at the girl.

  "He has come to forge us the Star Mill-the Sampo itself!"

  "Have I?" Ilmarinen's eyes could not remove themselves from the red-mouthed girl. "What do I get for performing this marvel?"

  "Why marriage with my daughter here, of course!"

  So it was that next morning, before dawn fingered its cautious way through the everfogs of Pohyola, the Witch island, that Ilmarinen sought carefully for a station where he might erect his smithy and work in peace. He found a cavern halfway up a great cliff. In the center of it was a great broken thing like metal and ceramic wedded; there were colors streaking rainbowlike through this Thing, colors not seen on the earth because they had come from Otava. This, then, was the lost vessel, a magic place, and here Ilmarinen set up his bellows and his forge, together with the great black cauldrons for the melting and the dipping.

  Many days and nights did the smith toil summer nights when the sun burned somberly always through the cloud-wrack. Besides the melted Thing, he stirred in black swan plumes, the milk of a cross-eyed heifer, silver-tipped barley plucked under a gibbous moon, sheep's blood, and other magical things. And all the while he did this, Ilmarinen sang the Old Songs, song-magic dipped out from the cosmic sources of all-creation and all-power, as the Great Bear dips out stars.

  Success did not come easily. Presently, staring fiercely into the iridescence bubbling in the cauldron, Ilmarinen saw a gold crossbow set with a silver arrow emerge and twang with blood-lust on the air of the shadowy cave.

  "You are beautiful, my friend," the smith told it. "But you are evil."

  He seized the crossbow and broke it into many pieces. These he flung back into the cauldron and told his servants to work the bellows harder than before and put more pithy-knots on the fire. Ilmarinen himself worked, out of impatience, so that sweat hissed down into the fire and yellow flames leaped up and singed his beard.

  Came a boat, with silver sails, a starboat. But this, too, was of evil disposition. Ilmarinen took no pleasure in its great beauty; he smashed it without a flinch and back it went into the fire.

  Now a heifer of great charm, with golden horns and the sign of Otava on her forehead. But she, too, went back in the pot. And a plowshare for harvesting stars. Then, at last—

  The wind snarled and howled across the ragged cliff, like thousands of fear-crazed star demons fleeing Ukko and his thunder. Black clouds boiled across the icy sky. In the cave smithy, sparks leaped up out of the furnace in a devil's dance. It was now that the Sampo arose.

  First Ilmarinen saw the Star Mill's rainbow cover forming, changing and writhing in the great cauldron. He sang his magic louder, louder. He told the Powers behind the stars to stop building universes and build him a Sampo.. ..

  Old Louhi was well pleased. She rubbed her claws together greedily and set about making the Sampo do its work of grinding out things for her. Warehouses full of things. Foods. Woolens and silks. Metals and made things. Things to barter with her demon friends. Servants of steel. Warriors to guard her Castle. All the soaring desires in her evil heart. When the storage bams her servants built for her overflowed with things, Louhi demand that the Sampo itself build more storage houses.

  While this was happening, Ilmarinen, weary to the marrow of his bones, slept. When he finally woke and had eaten, he went to see Louhi, sitting on a golden throne and bedecked in silks and jewels; he stood before her and demanded his fee.

  Louhi screwed up her face at him. "Begone, smith! Can't you see that I am busy thinking up things to want?"

  "I want, too, Mistress. I want what I was promised."

  Louhi shrugged. "Go find her for yourself, then, and leave me in peace."

  Ilmarinen found Pohyola's daughter in the meadow behind the barns
and servant quarters. Now she was no queen in cobweb and sapphire. Now she was a sweetfaced child in a blue peasant skirt and a modest white j blouse. Her dark hair hung in brown ringlets about her i milkwhite shoulders.

  Ilmarinen told her she must come with him and be his bride, as was promised him by her mother.

  The sweet-faced child wept:

  "If I leave my well-loved homeland, Who shall hear the cuckoo calling, And the birds all sweetly singing? If I seek a foreign country All the cuckoos then would vanish, All the nightingales would migrate From the shores of Pohja's island. All unplucked the mountain-berries, All untrod the fragrant meadows, And the woods I love so dearly ..

  Such was her weeping and her poignant song that Ilmarinen stumbled away, wiping the drops of salt water off his cheeks. He sighed as he went back into the rear courtyard and bade the servants fetch his sledge and Ahava to pull it.

  Cracking his beaded whip, he set his path southward to his own country, with the sound of Louhi's cackling laughter drifting down from her tower to bum his ears.

  "He won't die, Father?"

  "No, Aino. The stress his mind was under negated the Shield to some extent. In this way he was protected from his own rash attempt to plunge through the Illusion."

  "I don't understand."

  "These things are not to be understood with our minds, child. Something quivering inside of my cells tells me what is and what is not. It can't be pinned down or labeled with the mental equipment we have to work with. The Illusion surrounding our valley is strong; we purposely gave it such a concentration of reality that we ourselves are confined within it. Ilmar is special. He is of Ilmarinen himself, so his cells are close to the Power. We waited here in our self-imposed exile for many centuries for him to come; when the midwife saw the sword mark she brought him to me and I knew our long wait was near its end I"

  "He stepped right into the Illusion—on this side!"