Zora
Zora, child of the swamp, was a heathen hoyden of twelve wayward, untrained years.
Slight, straight, strong, full-blooded, she had dreamed her life away in wilful wandering through her dark and sombre kingdom until she was one with it in all its moods; mischievous, secretive, brooding; full of great and awful visions, steeped body and soul in wood-lore.
Her home was out of doors, the cabin of Elspeth her port of call for talking and eating. She had not known, she had scarcely seen, a child of her own age until Bles Alwyn had fled from her dancing in the night, and she had searched and found him sleeping in the misty morning light.
It was to her a strange new thing to see a fellow of like years with herself, and she gripped him to her soul in wild interest and new curiosity. Yet this childish friendship was so new and incomprehensible a thing to her that she did not know how to express it. At first she pounced upon him in mirthful, almost impish glee, teasing and mocking and half scaring him, despite his fifteen years of young manhood.
„Sí, hay demonios allá abajo detrás del pantano —le susurraba con aire de advertencia, cuando, después del primer encuentro, él se había arrastrado de regreso una y otra vez, medio fascinado, medio divertido a saludarla—; yo los he visto, los he oído, porque mi mammy es una bruja“.
El muchacho se sentaba a mirarla con asombro mientras ella yacía acurrucada en la rama baja del imponente roble, aferrándose con pequeñas extremidades curvadas y dedos ágiles. Poseída por el espíritu de su visión, entonaba cánticos de voz baja, temblorosa y traviesa: