Read Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 for Free Online

festooned the edges of the fals.
    At the top of the fals I could see a smal level area, dense with trees. Beyond the trees, the white cliff face rose abruptly. My eyes traveled to the top. That was where we had stood looking down; the cliff appeared even higher and steeper from below than it had from above.
    Looking to the right, I was able to spot the steps that had been cut into the cliff for a quicker descent than we and the horses had taken. They were stil little more than toeholds in spite of the entrepreneurs’”improvements.” Here, presumably, was where they were planning to set up a puley and a basket to lower the pious, if less agile, pilgrim and the adventurous tourist.
    “If you don’t mind,” said Joachim, “I’d like to introduce you to the hermit. He and I wil have a lot to
    discuss after that, but you might be interested in trying to find the wood nymph.”
    We tied our horses’ reins to a branch and scrambled up a steep track at the side of the waterfal. At the top, the stream emerged from the dark shadow of a grove of trees. We continued along its edge, ducking our heads where the branches swung low. Here, the water course widened into a swirling pool. In a few more yards, I saw what seemed to be a stone hut, like those we had seen further down the valey.
    But I was more interested in the river. When Joachim had spoken of its source, I had visualized a spring where water gurgled up from the earth, and I was wondering how the river could carry so much water and so rapidly. I went a little further, with Joachim folowing, and then spotted the real source.
    The river did not gurgle up from the earth but rather poured out of the face of the cliff. A cave mouth, only a few feet high but at least twenty feet broad, opened in the limestone, and the water boiled from it.
    A faint but steady wind accompanied the rushing river. After emerging and making a quick eddy under the branches of the grove, the water rushed over the edge of the fals and disappeared down the valey.
    “Has anyone ever gone into the cave to folow the river back further?” I asked. There seemed to be a low, damp ledge along one side of the river, along which it might De possible to walk or crawl.
    “I don’t think so. The cave’s too smal and there’s too much water,” said Joachim absently. We walked back to the stone hut and he went down on one knee before it, dropping his head reverently.
    I saw then that it was not merely a nut, but that the side toward us contained a stone altar, only partialy protected from the elements by protruding stone wals. Next to the rough wooden crucifix on the altar was a reliquary, a shining box where the saint’s relics would be kept. From where I stood, it looked as
    though it was made of pure gold. It was indubitably made in the shape of a giant toe.
    I hung back, having no intention of going down on my knees before the preserved toe of a long-dead saint who had not even had the sense to ask a wizard for help against a dragon.
    Joachim rose again after a minute. At the same time, I caught a flicker of motion in the shadows beyond the hut. I turned toward it quickly, hoping it was the great horned rabbit—or, even better, the wood nymph.
    Instead, it was an old man in a coarse brown robe that reached to his ankles. Below the robe, his feet were bare; I noticed that he himself had very large and horny toes.
    This, then, was the hermit. My eyes had become adjusted to the dim light in the grove and I could see that the hut, beyond the altar, would make an adequate shelter for someone who had deliberately given up comfort. The old hermit had a ropy beard that reached nearly to his knees and a beatific smile that he turned on both of us.
    “Greetings, my son,” he said to me, and “Bless me, Father,” to Joachim and knelt before him.
    Joachim blessed him in evident embarrassment and helped him back to his feet. “I should rather kneel to you, Father,” he said. “Priests who are busy with the