The Serpent of Stars by Giono Jean

Author:Giono, Jean [Giono, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781935744450
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2004-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

NIGHT came.

We sliced through the village of Ongles at a trot-gallop, extended and solid. The milestone at the turn sparked under our iron wheels. People came out of the café to look at our cloud of dust. From there, we skirted around a horn of Lure, into a little valley which raised its high wave of bare rocks in warning. At Saint-Etienne, we stopped under the plane trees to light our lantern. It was just a bottle with a hole in the bottom and a candle stuck inside it. Barberousse held it out above us.

We followed along Lure, but by a snaking route that wove round all the contours of the high hill like twines of ivy. The breath of the high ground cut across us with sudden gusts of wind as cold and solid as blocks of ice. Barberousse used his whole body to protect the candle, and then he extended a wing of his greatcoat, and we heard the sail clap and the mare galloped. My belly was all tickly from the rises. The swell of the open sea carried us along as its waves of earth unrolled.

A detour faced us into the wind at the mouth of a valley. The candle went out. The mare, who’d gotten a blast of wind right in her nostrils, stopped dead against the darkness. Césaire tacked gently into the night. I hung onto the sides.

“Prepare the matches.”

The wind whipped us on the sides, two turns of the wheels, and then it hit us right on the back.

“Light them.”

And we had to face the stampede once again.

We had gone past Cruis.

“What time is it?” asked Césaire.

“Hold the candle, my girl.”

Barberousse fished around and found his watch. We had not stopped galloping.

“A little after nine.”

“Good. Avanti! ”

“Give me the candle, my girl.”

One last hill threw us right into the open sky.

“Oh!” cried Césaire and Barberousse.

“Oh!” I cried.

“Oh!” said the girl softly against my ear.

The mare, held hard, reared up like struck water. We had arrived!

As far as you could see, the heavy sea of herds was lapping the black earth. It began there, under the mare’s feet, and it extended over the whole of Mallefougasse. Despite the darkness, you could see it. All the stars had descended upon the earth; they were the eyes of the sheep lit up by the watchfires, by the four bonfires, by all the Saint-Jean fires that illuminated the countryside from here to the distant mountains of the Mées, and of Peyruis, Saint-Auban, and Digne. You could hear the last shepherds to arrive whistling and the bells of the rams and the mules, and far off in the distance, toward Sisteron, the clusters of dogs howling, necks extended, into the moonless night. . . .

“Pause! Pause! Pause!” sang the shepherds to the sheep.

Men ran by, hands raised toward the new herds. The animals lay down in a mass around them. You could hear them kneeling down on the ground, crushing the hyssop. The whole heavy batter of herds turned slowly like a whirlpool of mud.

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