In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and lis flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half-hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below.
The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the needles of the pine brahe chitter of is and the cries of small arboreal mammals, as well as the birdsong; and from time to time a strust of wind would make one of the branches of a cedar or a fir move against another and groan like a cello.
It lace of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was ill, never stant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and
brushing every pine e with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds densed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles.
There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village, little more than a cluster of herdsmens dwellings, at the foot of the valley to a half-mined shrihe glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the perpetual winds from the high mountains, and s of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley iual rainbows.
The cave lay some way above the path. Many years before, a holy man had lived there, meditating and fasting and praying, and the place was veed for the sake of his memory. It was thirty feet or so deep, with a dry floor: an ideal den for a bear or a wolf, but the only creatures living in it for years had been birds and bats.
But the form that was croug ihe entrance, his black eyes watg this way and that, his sharp ears pricked, was her bird nor bat. The sunlight lay heavy and ri his lustrous golden fur, and his monkey hands turned a pine e this way and that, snapping off the scales with sharp fingers and scratg out the sweet nuts.
Behind him, just beyond the point where the sunlight reached, Mrs. Coulter was heating some water in a small pan over a naphtha stove. Her daemon uttered a warning murmur and Mrs. Coulter looked up.
ing along the forest path was a young village girl. Mrs. Coulter knew who she was: Ama had been bringing her food for some days now. Mrs. Coulter had let it be known when she first arrived that she was a holy woman engaged iation and prayer, and under a vow o speak to a man. Ama was the only person whose visits she accepted.
This time, though, the girl wasnt alone. Her father was with her, and while Ama climbed up to the cave, he waited a little way off.
Ama came to the cave entrand bowed.
"My father sends me with prayers for yoodwill," she said.
"Greetings, child," said Mrs. Coulter.
The girl was carrying a bundle ed in faded cotton, which she laid at Mrs. Coulters feet. Then she held out a little hunch of flowers, a dozen or so anemones bound with a cotton thread, and began to speak in a rapid, nervous voice. Mrs. Coulter uood some of the language of these mountain people, but it would never do to let them know how much. So she smiled and motioo the girl to close her lips and to