The turtledove and the devil

By Shefki Hysa

The turtledove and the devil

Once upon a time a boy and a girl lived in Chameria district, in a mountainous village near a forest with oaks. The girl’s name was Turtledove and the boy’s name Murmur. Both shepherds: the boy grazed the sheep and the girl the goats. The aurora took them from home and the night brought them back home. All the day they were together. They swam in the waterfalls scum that were fed by the snow of the mountains heights. They drank rill water that flowed out of the rocks’ gaps, flowed downwards in small flows that swished in winter and summer through the humid grass and ran over in the tempestuous streams, whose gravels sparkled like jewels under the sun and the moon light. They wandered like does from a rocket to another rocket. They climbed up to the top of the oaks, clambered bough to bough and garland to garland, with gurgle of laughs, as to hearten even the squirrels. They capered and capered. They followed each other and hid themselves hollow to hollow and cave to cave, till the deepest hideaways. They waked up the beasts that flied away, teased the doves’ clouds that fluttered over the forest and induced the wildfowl’s songs. No bird’s nest or beast’s burrow could escape their eyes. They knew every flower, grass and wood. Knew all the secrets and the languages of the forest, imitated every kind of bird or animal. In a word they were gods of the nature round…

When they were sweaty and tired of the jokes that their vivid fantasy invented, the girl would say to the boy:

- Come on Murmur, let’s have a rest, - and together, with their hands clasped, they rushed at the swards.

They lied down among the flowers and the grass, face to face and bustled to see each other in the eyes, so exhilarated of the nice flavors that saturated the air. Their eyes blazed from some flames, hidden deeply in the breast. They looked and looked at each other and were lost in a fathomless longing that flourished the feelings, heighten the stature and approached them each day more…

- Come on Turtledove, the dinner is passing up, - would say the boy when they were hungry.
They grabbed each other and dashed to the cattle. The sheep and the goats were so mild. Just when the boy and the girl hallooed, they were going to crowd with gladness bleats. They quenched the hunger in the dugs like lambs and kids. Drank and drank until being overfed with the tepid milk. And everyday they felt how they grew beautiful like the own nature where were vivified. And everyday they understood that were made for each other…

But what happened hereinafter? Their fellowship was noticed by the village, but by the devil too…Their coevals envied them, the devil envied them too…

And I wish the devil never envies you!...
One day, the mischief appeared in front of the girl with the face of a friend and, after cutting her off, he began to whisper her that Murmur wasn’t the one who appeared but the devil himself… Was he the cleverest, the deftest, the fastest and the strongest boy in the village?!... Yes, yes!... Did he behave differently from the other people?!... Yes, yes!... Follies after follies he was doing to sell himself like nobody else!... Yes, yes!... Was such a behavior a diablerie?!... Yes, yes!... A diablerie to cheat her, Turtledove!...

And the nameless one acted this way tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, days, weeks and months until he defrauded the girl…

Now she considered incredulous the excessive daring of Murmur. His naughtiness, that once enticed her so much, now was intimidating her…

“Turtledove, isn’t Murmur the devil himself?!... Did I say this to you?... Look, look how he flies from a rock to a rock, from a oak to another oak?!.. And he doesn’t have bird wings!... Look, look how he sucks the milk of the goat dug and he has taught you too!... Look how he caresses the deer, like cows!... No one thinks about these things, only Murmur.. What a weird name!... What a hideous name, like the devil’s perversities!”… So, the friend’s voice, in the face of whom was hidden the devil, echoed time after time in her ears…

And the girl shook her head, each time more cheerless. She stayed sleepless all night with a silent grief that tore to pieces her heart. And each time more frozen, more lowering she stayed. She was waiting the occasion to get away from Murmur, though something was keeping her close to him…Some invisible yarns for her eyes…Maybe the enchanting power of a devil?!...

This was horrifying the girl, though she did and didn’t believe in the devil’s existence…The fairytales told so much for his misdeeds and deviltries. Were they true?... Who knows?!...
And regretted that she had wasted and was still wasting her time with that mischief…She was ready to cry... But what bad thing had she seen from him?...Maybe she was going to meet with it afterwards?!.. And shivered as of those winds of the dark and humid caves of the mountains…
That’s the place where the devils ensconce themselves!...

“You have stooped, she said to herself. But you have won something too, objected an internal voice, maybe the voice of the devil, of Murmur…But how come he doesn’t ask me for this withdrawal, she wondered. He has become so discreet, although he continues to caper as before… Has he understood the trick?!... Absolutely, otherwise he wouldn’t be the one he is”!...
The doubts and the guesses were killing Turtledove and one morning she couldn’t put up with it anymore and approached despairingly the boy:

- You aren’t a good man and I don’t want to see you ever again, Murmur!...
- Wake up, Turtledove!... - yowled the boy and the joy in his face hardened, he shuddered, like a oak leaf from the thunders.

- Yes, yes! You are the devil himself! Don’t hazard to show up again! I wish my imprecation kills you Murmur because you have deluded me! - darned painfully the girl and close the eyes, so she couldn’t see anymore that face, once so loved…
- Turtledove!... You don’t love me anymore?! - screamed alienated the boy, whose hand stiffened in the girl’s hair.

- My eyes hurt me! I hate you! - She shouted and the boy turned blue as he was hit by a thunderclap.

Then he felt how his fervid body was evaporating and blending slowly in the air, which began to swirl and thrill everywhere, bringing his fevers to the oaks too…

The air was swishing, the leaves were murmuring, the girl’s hair was murmuring, surprisingly everything was murmuring. And it seemed as though an invisible hand was fondling her. But she didn’t open the eyes… She thought it was Murmur near her, trying to coax her, to calm her down…

And she was combing more… Tying tightly the eyelids, however the Murmur’s shadow entered even in the darkness inside them. He wasn’t going to run away. He wasn’t going to leave her alone…Therefore she opened the eyes to wrestle with the devil-boy…

In front of her nothing, neither to the right, nor to the left, neither nearby nor far away…Nothing everywhere… Her eyes didn’t catch anything, in spite of the leaves that dangled as never before…Where was Murmur hidden?!..

- Mmmmrrrrr! - murmured the air and thrilled the nature.
She thrilled from the breeze too, from the solitude that surrounded her. She panted and suddenly, a weird longing for the devil-boy filled the emptiness that she was feeling. She wanted to hate him but she couldn’t. She wanted to forget him but she couldn’t. His shadow was prowling outside and inside her being. But where has he lent himself to?!...
The longing was hurting her in the breast…

- Murmurrr! - screamed with all the intensity of her girlish voice, but nobody answered, except a new buzz of the air, which murmured lightly when it bumped into grass and leaf and it seemed as somebody was whispering longing words to the girl… Suddenly she smelted something and her heart hurt. Her eyes were filled with tears. They rolled down her cheeks and her body. Her whole body got wet as from a rain of tears, as though her being had shed tears. And gradually the tears were converted in shiny plumes and herself in a bird, never seen before in those parts…

She moved the arms, already with plumes, clashed them violently as shaking them, and after a while she was in the air. The air was playing with her; she was playing with the air. And, while feeling its caresses that aroused inside her an old nostalgia, she opened the mouth to say something, but, in stead of the words, a series of melodious sounds flowed down: they were the first harmonics of a new bird song!...

The forest was murmuring green beneath Turtledove...

***

In the evening the sheep and the goats returned piecemeal in the village. Some of them lost by the forest and some others became preys of the wolves… And where were the shepherds? Had they grabbed each other, as the malignant mouths were whispering back and forth?...
However, the village was alarmed and the good people ran in search of them. They roamed days and nights but they didn’t find any trace of the boy and the girl…

Meanwhile the people noticed the weird drift of the air like an endless murmur of words…Wicked words!... Rumors!... The murmur of the air didn’t stop…Sometimes it faded away and sometimes it clattered and covered everything it could find before…

It is said that the people called this murmur wind. So, words in the wind…wind… Precisely this saying was the origin of that new label, according to the popular Cham etymology… And since then, it is said that began the wind…

Later, much later, the people noticed in their forest the strange bird that wriggled with the wind. It seemed that the wind blew for the bird and the bird flied for the wind. A fabulous game for the curious eyes…

But the time passed and the people were taught with the strong friendship of the bird with the wind. However, that fierce desire, with which the bird took wing and throw itself like an arrow in the wind, as to embrace the air, and the anger it murmured in such cases, didn’t escape people’s eyes and minds… The bird swallowed up the space!... It was swallowed up by the space too!... But there was a pain, a drama in this laborious flight…

But it happened that someone, maybe in a winter night, near the fire, connected in his mind, the traceless disappearance of Turtledove and Murmur with the weird fight of that new habitant with golden plumes in their forest…

And so was born this tale, which is told nowadays in Chameria…

Shefki Hysa