The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

mag, br preg, mc

Two lost souls on the fringes of their society find healing and completion and oh so much more bounty one midsummer evening.

If you should not be reading this because you are too young or offended by explicit language, don’t read it.

Midsommar Magic

By Herbdel101

Herb Delight

The Great War emptied Arnor’s Dale of most save the young and the aged. Lord Keflavik marched away under his red banner taking with him those who could wield a bow, bill, or sword. The red lord came not again to the high country, falling as he did, in some nameless skirmish, his troop scattered and broken. The Dale, though, remained in relative quiet. Many other lords also suffered permanent reversals in the struggle with the invaders of lowland vales to the south, and heirs were too busy mastering their new, if depleted, holdings to take advantage further north. Life slumbered on in the valley untouched except for absent friends and family.

Keflavik himself had no heir, nor lady to carry on. So, the villagers in Arnor’s Dale lived as they lived, kept to themselves, and gave over rede-making and the settling of such disputes as commonly come, to a group of elders still hale enough to give good thought, and impartial enough to be asked for counsel more than once.

Occasionally a tinker or small merchant would wander up over the stern crags and down the sheep paths to see what he might sell and carry away for trade elsewhere. It took a sturdy disposition to top the reaches. The land was old and humans had not long laid their hands on the earth. Fireside tales were still told of the old ones seemingly of human form, but not if seen by certain lights or on certain nights. These others favored the heights when people first began to seep into the north and they eventually withdrew to some other place, no one kenned where or when.

Yet they left behind strange remains that had odd markings cut into stones and at times an uncanny feel when the merchants wandered by. Some ruins felt welcoming, others faintly unwholesome. Some indeed were so forbidding even the dim sheep would not graze within sight of particular standing stones. The people of Arnor’s Dale left offerings at several sites at certain times of year in thanks or as a hedge and bar to what no one well remembered.

Were the old ones really gone? Sometimes there were faint glimpse of shapes among the trees. Tale spinners recounted music and lights in certain copses or on the heights. It was hard to say from these rare reports. On occasion, though, good fortune seemed to attend the seasonal propitiation and the next year went easier for all. Even so, people tried not to meddle with the places of the old ones not deemed safe by tradition.

Life in Arnor’s Dale proceeded season to season. The shallow river at the bottom of the vale gave fish and cress. The fields nurtured slow moving cattle. Nut trees and fruit trees offered annual bounty. Even the Tithe men of Keflavik’s overlord were no longer seen, proof indeed Arnor’s Dale was blessed, though the prudent still set aside wood, woven baskets, and good cloth in case there ever was such a call. Those too young to have fared forth with Keflavik grew into young men and maidens; began to look at each other with appreciation and speculation, flirted and fawned, danced and dreamed as their bodies swelled with muscles, curves, and quickened spirits.

Torfi joined not in these fervently appreciated pastimes. He was halt of foot and twisted in his back from a fall out of a tree early in youth. Reduced to rolling himself along in a little cart or painfully stepping along with one foot while a crutch helped him drag the other, Torfi made a place for himself with the clever work of his hands. Anything broken, but take it to Torfi and he would mend it. Oft times he would suggest something better than the original way the broken thing had been made. And so he had his part in the life of the Dale, aside from most, viewed askance by some who wrongly thought outer injury reflected inner spirit, and sometimes put upon by those whose cold souls found amusement in trivial torment. Torfi’s heart was good and his countenance kind. It was “truly a pity,” the elders clucked, that he “is trapped in such a wasted shell.”

The young folk gathered every year at Midsommar to place the first fruits on the heights. They would eat, sing, and frolic. The elders would eventually begin to nod, catch themselves with heavy lids and wander back down the paths to the village. The ripening young people would stay and dance as the elders yawnsomely recalled when they too were able to make merry all the night and continue on to prodigious feats of nuisance making the next day. Many matches made in Midsommar came to children in the winter as men and maids learned the ways of each other.

This year most thought Orm would win the new beaded vest made for the best dancer of all the lads. He was tall and strong with flashing feet and a leg so well turned many girls would take a deep breath when he was like to make display. Yet, for all that he was fair of figure; Orm was mean clear through, a truculent danger to the weak, a disturbance even to the strong.

Last year one of those rare merchants had come to Arnor’s Dale and bore with him a lovely flute. Warm wood and cunning keys made it a wondrous addition to the dance and the merchant willingly played for he welcomed a break from the road and relished the ale that came his way that night. Yet, Orm demanded the man let him try the flute. Orm could pipe, after a fashion. But, he had not a patch of the skill shown by the trader. And when, upon the merchant’s reluctant assent, that lack became clear, Orm angrily tossed the flute across the clearing, shattering it on a rock. The merchant sought justice the next day from the elders and Orm grudgingly, but steeply paid.

Dalla’s eyes had glowed when the trader played for the gathering and filled with tears when the beautiful flute cracked on the stone. She collected the broken keys, the splintered tenons, and the caved in lip plate and took them all to Torfi, thinking if anyone was clever enough to rescue such a marvelous instrument, it would be Torfi. Dalla also had a kind heart. But, she was nearly as afflicted as Torfi among the young of Arnor’s Dale. Thin and dull of hair, sharp and bony of figure, and with a flat face stained red on one side from birth, few would ask her to stand up in the dance. The stain was considered ill luck and the cruel and ignorant hissed at her to keep out of their way. Dalla danced but, never with a boy. She would only tread the patterns and make the steps alone and never at Midsommar.

Torfi, though always spoke her fair and she was apt to bring things to him she thought might interest him, and to spend a little idle time in the workshop he kept, talking of this and that. Torfi took the pieces of flute with a smile and said he would see what he could do. All the winter he labored, cunningly crafting new keys that would seal in place of the old, delicately shaving new wood for the tenons, and carving an entirely new lip plate. When the work was done, he put it to his lips and opened his heart. He practiced at first not only the tunes of the village, but also those that recalled times and deeds agone, and the popular dances he knew from the rare visits of people over mountain.

As he played he began to think of the river running sluggish through the valley, of the winds wuthering in the pass above the Dale, of birds singing in the orchards, sheep making peaceful noises as they grazed; the bees industrious in their hives and the rhythm of the seasons. All that grew and strove and failed and rose again in the Dale went into Torfi’s song.

Dalla came upon him one day as he wove his song of the Dale and was transported. “Torfi!” she said. “You must play at Midsommar.” Torfi had little liking for the idea. It was a steep climb to the heights even for the hale and whole. But, Dalla would have none of his dissent and enlisted Assur and Nafni to help roll Torfi’s cart up the track to the place of the elder ones.

Indeed, the flute was wonderful once again. For every jig Torfi played, the dancers moved more lightly than ever. Schottisches had people smiling and tapping, and other tunes drew people to the circle as blooms draw bees.

Orm had been too deeply into the ale that evening. He danced passably, but not with his usual skill. The growing knowledge that someone else, perhaps Nasi of the Mill, would receive the vest and pair with the best girl dancer, as always Aldis the pretty blond Thatcher’s daughter, put him in an ill mood. Then he realized the flute was the same one over which he had been forced to pay so much a year agone. He strode up to Torfi and demanded it as his right. “My pipe, twisted one. I paid for it.” Much debate ensued. Most just wanted Orm to go away and Torfi to keep the dance going.

Even Aud and Saevil, no friends to Torfi, took his part. Dalla stood in front of Torfi. Aud argued that the flute should be Torfi’s. Orm had not the skill to repair it. “Indeed,” Aud said, “you left the pieces lying a year ago.” Or, if Orm really wanted the flute, Aud reasoned, “You should pay Torfi for the winter’s work it took to make the instrument whole.” Finally, Orm appeared ready to give way. But, as people began to relax, Black haired Saevil jeered at Orm that “it was just as well, Orm was giving over, because if last year was any measure, Orm could have made no good use of the flute anyway.” Smoldering, Orm shoved Saevil, who fell back knocking Dalla into Torfi’s cart. Saevil recovered and swung at Orm and they were off in a truly magnificent brawl as Aud struggled to part the two.

Unnoticed in the broil, Torfi, Dalla, and the cart began to roll away downhill. Dalla and Torfi lay in a tangle of limbs unable to halt the backward careen. As the cart jostled and jolted, they held on and tried to steer in a more or less straight line as branches whipped past, and the underbrush slapped their faces. It was a wonder they did not crash into a thick trunk or break a wheel and spill them both. Long time they rolled and jostled, afraid to catch at the branches and come to a mischief. Yet at each near disaster, the cart shifted and moved on, gathering pace, seemingly guided by something just enough to avoid boulders and briars. After a small forever, the ground leveled, tall grass caught at the wheels and as it tore and tangled again they slowed to a halt in a clearing.

By the time the fracas ended on the heights Orm had a black eye and a broken wrist that took long to heal. Saevil had one less tooth; the old folks had a rare spree to cluck over all winter long, and almost no one retained much of a mood for the festival. Save for Aldis. The buxom Thatcher’s daughter had been hoping Nasi of the Mill would rise to the occasion in the dance so she would at last have an excuse to go off with him. She admired his broad shoulders and lanky frame. Aldis had just about run out of ways to gracefully discourage Orm. And with Orm there was always the fear that there was no graceful exit or perhaps even an exit at all.

Nasi’s thoughts had run along the same road as Aldis’. Like Torfi, Nasi had worked hard all winter. You see, he had been practicing the dance and thinking of Aldis’ ripe rump, narrow waist, and full white bosom. For Aldis and Nasi the evening was a complete success! They snuck around the back of one of the carved pillars at the festival height to get away from the Hurley burley. Perhaps the location in a place of the old ones lent them something more than merely the enchantment of man and maid. Perhaps not. Who can say for sure? Not all the moaning that night was the wind, though. And before spring, they were parents. Of Torfi and Dalla, no one that night recalled which way they departed, or how.

Some half a thousand feet below the height, the arms of the woods circled round a high meadow, below which scree steeply sloped to a bend in the river. The scree was odd, not the usual ice fractured bits of cliff collected in a splintered pile, but fragments of worked stone, some carved intricately, others blackened as if by fire or a blast of some sort. Perhaps a tower or other strong place had once stood there. The edges of the meadow had that long grass which had snared the wheels and brought Torfi’s wagon to a safe halt. In the center of the meadow, though, there were four white stone plinths, two tall and two short in a diamond shape. Of columns that usually top such bases there were none. Just outside the stones flowers rioted in a thick ring broken only once as if in entrance to the tallest base. Fireflies danced inside the stones where the grass was short and soft and very green.

Torfi and Dalla collected themselves. Throughout that wild ride down the mountain, Torfi had clung to Dalla and to the flute and she to him. The unmarked side of her face blushed nearly as red as the stain on the other cheek as she climbed off him. Dalla helped find Torfi’s crutch, the wagon still gripped by grass. Together they made their way into the center. Torfi sat. Dalla cried. “Oh, Torfi! I am so sorry this happened. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t pushed you to play, Orm would never have known and been so ugly. And now we’re stuck here! How are we to get home?”

“Nay lass,” Torfi said. “There’s nowt to water the flowers about. That Orm soon would have heard sommat of the flute any road. Best ‘twere this night, when others at least had a chance to kick their heels up.”

Reassured, Dalla peered curiously at the plinths, some marked with the same signs found high on the reach where the people laid Midsommar gifts. Others had markings unknown to them. The full moon blazed white, a pure color that made the stones shine that very shade, a calming glow that relaxed the two. Crickets sang in the tall grass outside the sward.

“Here now,” Torfi said. “Tell me how is it you wanted me to play the dance, yet I’ve ne’er seen thee stand up on the heights thyself?”

Dalla turned her head and hid her marked cheek behind her dull brown hair.

“Eh, that’s the way of it?” Torfi said. “Weel now, I see naught but us here. I’m minded that the festival ended in the wrong spirit.” And he took the flute and began to play for Dalla, softly at first, a breathy and stately Courant. Dalla rallied, took off her shoes, and got up to walk around the green. Torfi smiled and moved to a Gavotte. He raised an eyebrow at the place in the tune that a kiss was allowed. Dalla tossed her head, smiled hesitantly back, and moved to the center of the diamond. She began to dance.

As the music purled from Torfi, mist began to rise outside the circle of flowers girding the plinths. It came oddly on this balmy night, suddenly with an obscuring thickness yet not intruding past the flowers. The cricket conversation diminished, muffled as if by great distance. Fingers flickering faster, Torfi moved to a Volt and then a Galliard. Dalla’s feet kept pace and the two grinned at each other. The dance went on. The fireflies but lately so sedate in their own pursuits coalesced in four spirals, each swirling and glinting above one of the stone bases. Torfi and Dalla came to a startled pause. Dalla came and sat wide eyed. Yet, there was an air of peace, of waiting, almost a welcoming expectation in the glade.

Torfi wet his lips and began to play again, this time his song of the Dale. The light changed from the intense white of the moon to a golden color as the firefly shimmer grew brighter; into a constant whirling glow. Torfi played. He could not stop. Something held him to the song. On each stone a figure coalesced from the gleam. Solid they became, male and female, two each, of alabaster skin and surpassing beauty. They were not human; such pure skin and perfect features. The nude males were lithe and well muscled with a grace that caused Dalla’s pulse to jump and her eyes to linger on certain places. The females each had tiny waists spreading to broad rolling hips. Breasts bulged round; so bounteous yet jutting boldly forward. Silver hair shimmered to their waists.

Torfi played on. Dalla, breathless, put her hand on Torfi’s shoulder and watched as the four figures leaped lightly forward from their stones toward the two in the center. They too danced at first as languid as the river in Torfi’s dale song. Later, they weaved liquidly around Torfi and Dalla arms raised high and softly descending. The song grew and so did the light. Torfi and Dalla squinted and then shut their eyes as they could not bear to continue viewing the magical dance. Torfi’s breath grew ragged as the music demanded he play on. It built and pulsed, sliding from note to intense note, beating upon them, wanting entrance to them, demanding something…until all at once the light and music flared together and they felt something hot and vibrant sink into them. The flute fell from Torfi’s aching hands.

In the shocking silence that followed, Dalla felt it first. Her roughened face, red marked, began to shift. Her bony body felt suppler suddenly and she gasped as the flat straw texture of her hair softened and began to curl and grow about her shoulders. Torfi saw the red stain of the birthmark lift and slough into the air as scarlet motes. It wafted round Dalla and settled in a wreath round her head. That narrow band of glorious color widened from a crown to spread up and down the new shining length of her hair and she inhaled sharply, Torfi thought it might be in pleasure.

She moaned and grabbing her dress she pulled it over her head and moaned again. Her flat chest swelled as she threw her head back lost in a heated feeling. Her now exposed hips twitched and reshaped from coltish angles to fertile breadth. Her legs grew smooth and lengthened slightly, no longer gawky but graceful and shapely. Her complexion smoothed to cream and that flat face acquired stunning cheekbones and a foxy pointed chin. Lips suddenly filled full and turned cherry. Her tongue licked them as unaccustomed and desirous thoughts filled her mind. Still her breasts grew. Her nipples lifted and became erect as she swelled. Her bottom firmed and rounded from nothing to a ripe womanliness that invited caresses. Her womanhood moistened.

As this was happening, Torfi lost track of Dalla, because his own wasted form was creaking and shifting as well. He cried out in a sudden lack of pain as his shoulder and back straightened. His bent and wizened leg creaked once, twice, and became true. Torfi felt an electric pulsing flow from his scalp to his toes and muscles stretched his skin where there had been only bone and tendon before. His clothes constricted. Made for a wasted waif, they were far too tight for the muscular hunk he had become. Torfi made shift to quickly shed them.

He groaned as heat filled his groin. All unthinking he stood as he had not been able to stand for so many years, unaided, tall, the crutch forgotten. He too threw his head back and stretched his arms wide as pleasure pooled in his core. As he stood, the delicate dangle between his legs became a swaying thwack as lengthened thickened meat softly slapped his inner thighs and his balls plumped as if from almonds to eggs.

Panting, Dalla and Torfi stood there amid the eldritch figures, which were now faintly smiling. Two of them began to hum, a male the song that Torfi had found in his soul waiting to be brought to them, and a female an eerie descant that hinted of more magic to come.

The other two old ones turned to Torfi and Dalla and held out hands and the dance began anew. This dance was not so stately as before. The music became rougher and more urgent with a sinuous and driving feel that took the melody and sent it winding round the four who were not singing. The female took Torfi’s hand; the male bowed to Dalla and took her in his arms. Their bare skins teased and tantalized as they rubbed past each other in a pattern of steps that brought them all around the green.

The old ones had intoxicating bodies, lithe and shapely, all that spoke of fertility and desire. They gathered Torfi and Dalla in their arms and kissed them with sweet and flowery breaths, bringing electric shivers from the two young people. They hugged; skin warm, bodies curved and welcoming, hard to soft and soft to hard. Their bodies gave off a musky urgency that made the humans pupils shoot wide in ruttish absorption.

Dazzled, the four sank to the grass and began to couple. Torfi’s full cock plumbed a hot and slick crevice. Dalla inhaled sharply as she felt a thick and probing fullness invade her own wetness to its very bottom. They stroked and squeezed Dalla and Torfi’s new lush forms. Teasing Dalla’s roseate nipples with a squeeze and a nibble, lightly fingering the sensitive tightening skin of the plump sack of plums between Torfi’s legs, the old ones stirred their partners to a wet and gasping fervor. Over it all the song of the dale rose and swept thought away as the moaning consummation built.

In this languid liquid friction Torfi and Dalla lost themselves for what seemed hours. Their wet and urgent cries rose as counterpoint to the power of the enchanted music. With each thrust and clamp of muscle, each lubricous shuddering partial retreat and push again, the four rose higher in the splendor of their senses.

The pounding rhythm rose to a crescendo of beats, sending them into spasms as bulging breasts wobbled with the thrusts. Dalla felt a flow pulse into her over and over as the old one came and came and came again. Each spurt heightened her pleasure. Her eyes rolled back and she did not at first see her belly start to rise. Larger it grew as she matched each thrust and jolt of fluid from the old one with her own shuddering clamp of her legs. As she felt her womb begin to fill, Dalla looked as her flat belly rounded and swelled, in seconds making her look ready to give birth.

Torfi found himself coming in the same way. Something beyond him seemed to guide his motions as he thrust and thrust again, pouring his essence into the other’s inflating womb. His swollen testicles pumped what seemed to be an ever replenished flow of spunk into his partner’s belly as his face froze in a rictus of pleasure. Indeed, for some long while, his flow seemed to increase, becoming nearly constant as her tummy inflated. Eventually it ebbed, became more ragged and with a last gigantic pulse, it ended.

The women’s bellies bulged enormously as Torfi and the male old one slumped to the side completed. For some minutes, Dalla and the woman gasped in time with the music as pleasure surged along with their still growing wombs. Each now looked titanically pregnant and as their skin tightened at last. High off the ground, they began to feel an orgasmic swollen pressure and raised the knees already shoved wide by their burgeoning bellies. They screamed as one, not in agony, but triumphant ecstasy as births came. The humming song of the dale faded leaving the men limply on the sward groaning with the echoes of their pleasure and the women making little mewling noises of contentment.

The two singers gathered the babes that had emerged from this congress and held them high as if offering them to the moon. The infants made no noises of distress as human babes do when sent thus rudely into the world, but seemed instead to have a ready acceptance of their state. Their eyes observed all with a watchful awareness unfound in ordinary infants. The old ones placed their prenaturally calm offspring on two of the plinths and then returned to the middle of the rite.

Torfi and Dalla gathered themselves and took stock. Dalla felt no pain. Indeed, her belly was flat again, just retaining that slight new enchanted curve that made her navel into a jewel.

The two old ones who had joined with Torfi and Dalla rose and stood across from the others. The other female seemed, Like Dalla, unchanged from the magical fertility. They raised their arms and they began to hum and croon that same song of the Dale as the magic rose again.

Torfi felt his member swell again, rise to attention and become rock hard. He trembled. His scrotum tightened and his spent balls seemed to inflate and fill even larger than before. Dalla’s cleft became a dewy then sopping ache that demanded filling. Her breath caught. They moved to embrace the old ones who had guided the first stage of the spell and now joined them in the second. Again the perfumed breath and musky scent of the eldritch creatures dazzled the senses of the two humans. They dropped to the lawn and began to buck and thrust with their partners.

This time, the music turned primal sooner. Under the driving tune came the noises of fierce friction, wet slapping skin moved suddenly together. Tits trembled as cocks went deep. Kisses muffled the cries of potent joy marking each thrust that brought Torfi, Dalla, and the old ones to grunting groaning heights of delight. Rivulets of rapture shot up and down the lengths of their bodies, playing percussively on their nervous systems. Each squeeze and clutch of gasping excitement made their lust soar. Rhythmic blissful peaks of pleasure made Dalla’s nipples ache and shoot rigidly forth from her tight and pebbled aureoles. Torfi felt his cock grow hot and thicker than he had ever dreamed of being, buried in the female’s fiery pussy and held tightly in its sopping embrace. The Midsommar song beckoned them all toward a swift completion. Torfi felt the root of his member bunch and constrict and suddenly he was spewing forth a river of creamy fluid. His partner’s stomach immediately puffed outward and she shrieked at the sudden influx as Torfi ground himself downward, sealing his groin to hers and shudderingly shooting cum from his aching and now peach sized swollen balls as her womb pulsed fuller, mushrooming to a vast fecundity.

Dalla too gasped with widened eyes as her belly lifted and pushed nearly as high as one of the plinths. She was so overset with the building sensation of climax that she could not even breathe. Her hard nipples and tight breasts constricted further and her sex filled and filled again with the male’s magical effluence. Torfi and Dalla’s partner slumped again as their part waned and their spent parts subsided. For a second time, the music coaxed long rapturous minutes of further growth from the enormously impregnated ladies crying out not in pain but exultation. Their taught bulges rippled with contractions and they roared in blissful euphoric completion as the enchanted act of procreation conjured new beings.

As the music became more ragged and ebbed, the two old ones that had been standing moved to retrieve the newborn. The babes made no sound. As before, they were laid on the pillars to wait. The four inhuman figures stood and faced Torfi and Dalla lolling tiredly on the cushiony turf. The perfectly figured others joined hands, bowed gravely and then went each to one of the carved rocks, there picking up a babe.

Fireflies gathered again, this time in silence, again they swirled and the coruscating light built to a warm unwatchably intense brightness. When it faded the plinths were empty. Beyond, the ring of flowers, the wall of mist began to subside. Though still night, Torfi and Dalla could see the white moon was much further across the sky. They looked at each other in wonder as the emboldened cricket conversation came once more into prominence around the glade and a breeze brought a flowery perfume from the ring.

“Art afeered lass” He asked? Dalla shook her head no and wonderingly laid her head on Torfi’s bare and muscular chest. Her now scarlet curls trailed down his abdomen and tickled lower. “I have no words for what has happened,” she said. “Look at us. We are changed out of all countenance.” Torfi smiled. “Ay,” he said. And hae’ we both not only gi’en thanks for Midsommar, but been gi’en a great blessin’? Oy feel nae pain and can walk again. I ken, also, ye ae bonnie and hale yersel’.”

And he bent and kissed her mouth gently. Despite the rutting sex the two had just completed in that magical rite, Torfi and Dalla felt each other stirring. They found themselves, starting tenderly and hesitant, quite unlike the prior frenzy. Each soft stroke and tickle, each nip and caress built to a mutual bliss. They moved easily together. Perhaps the old ones had left them a magic all their own, of unity and knowing each what the other might find most pleasing, a finger here withal, a quick thrust there, a grab and squeeze and stroke that made their own human music a sensory symphony all their own. For a third time that night, Torfi spent himself. Dalla felt him shoot inside her and her own climax hit as she clamped her luscious legs tightly around his now back. They hugged and thrust lifted their locked mouths from the others lips as they came. A third cry filled the meadow, startling birds that had begun to stir, this time one of triumph, completion, and simple human joy in joining.

Dawn came. Torfi and Dalla nestled together and then rose, unchilled, for the night had been warm. They retrieved their hastily shed clothes and made shift to rip them just enough to fit their new forms. As they made their way outside the circle of flowers, the plinths looked somehow older and less potent in the post Midsommar dawn. They took the flute, but left the cart and crutch. After looking dubiously up the steep slope down which they had careened only hours ago, Torfi and Dalla worked their way around the skirt of the mountain picking through underbrush and trees, to where the path to the reaches descended into the valley.

Eyebrows rose and questions came fast and often as the villagers saw their changed states. They didn’t tell the whole tale, saying only they had slept, awakened changed and bewildered and left from “somewhere” now that the morning light let them scramble up a rocky slope till they found a pathway home. No they cannot say where they were and they were in such a “daze” they are sure they could never find it again. After the wonder faded, the elders discouraged questions whether they might be filled now with an evil influence. “No,” the council said, “Torfi and Dalla clearly have not changed their ways. They are the same people as before, just more able. Have done with your wagging, now!” And life went on in Arnor’s Dale, though Torfi and Dalla kept company together and she moved to the house behind Torfi’s workshop.

It is perhaps notable, though strangely never noticed that Torfi and Dalla always come to the Midsommar festival early; him to play and her to dance with the best. Later they slip away, not to home with the village elders, but somewhere else, where they play and dance again each year, in secret thanks, their song of the Dale. And do they do more? Why, ask the old ones! If you can find them.