The Mammoth Mountains were not really mountains at all. No glaciers creased their rocky, weed-strewn slopes, no eagles screamed above their modest summits. An hour or so would bring you to the top, puffing a little, perhaps, but not exhausted, and the view, once you were there, was hardly worth the climb. Nevertheless, the people who lived there were extremely proud of the mountains, for they were the only point of interest in a countryside that neither rolled nor dipped but lay as flat as if it had been knocked unconscious.
Because of this pride of the people’s, you were well advised, on passing through, to remember the famous and somewhat true story of an early visitor who rashly remarked that anyone who could call those molehills mountains had to be either a blindman or a fool. It was suggested to him that he was already a fool himself and in grave danger of becoming a blindman on the instant. So, we are told, he wisely thought better of it, looked again, and said, “I see that I was mistaken. No mere mole could have made those mounds. They must have been the work of a mammoth!” The people were satisfied, the visitor escaped unharmed, and the mountains were christened.
However, the Mammoth Mountains had far more to offer than pride of ownership and rest for the eye that was weary of level plains. One of the mounds was different from its brothers, rockier, taller, and decidedly more cliff-like, with steeper sides and fewer softening trees, and its crest was forever shrouded in a little cloud of mist. Here lay the heart of the mountains’ charm; here, like Eve’s forbidden fruit, dwelt their mystery, for good or evil. For from somewhere in that mist, on stormy nights when the rain drove harsh and cold, an undiscovered creature would lift its voice and moan. It moaned like a lonely demon, like a mad, despairing animal, like a huge and anguished something chained forever to its own great tragic disappointments.
Nobody knew what it was that lived high up in the mist. As far back as memory could grope, no one had climbed the cliff to see. The creature had mourned there for a thousand years, in isolation so splendid, and with sorrows so infinitely greater than any of their own, that the people were struck with awe and respect. Therefore, climbing the cliff was something they simply did not do, and curious children were early and easily discouraged from trying by long and grisly tales which told what might well happen if they did.
From time to time, in the land below the cliff, strange things in fact did happen. A straying sheep would be found slaughtered, a pail of milk would sour, a chimney would unreasonably topple. These things were considered by some to be the work of the creature on the cliff, while others refused to believe that it ever left its misty nest. But they all had their favorite charms against it, and to all of them the cliff was the grandest, most terrible thing in the world. They trembled over it, whispered about it, and fed their hearts to bursting with gleeful terrors. It was frightful and fine and it belonged to them. They called it Kneeknock Rise.
At the foot of Kneeknock Rise, on its southern side, stood a village appropriately called Instep. Instep was closer to the Rise than any other village and was therefore exalted among villages, a sort of Mecca where you could go from time to time and renew yourself with reports of the latest storm, fatten your store of descriptions that strove endlessly to define once and for all the chilling sounds that wound down from the clifftop, and go home again to enjoy in your own village the celebrity you deserved—until someone else went off and returned with newer reports. Instep was famous in that flat and hungry land and the people who lived in Instep, made smug and rich by tourists and privilege, had fallen into the custom of flinging their gates wide, once a year, and inviting everyone for miles around to come to a Fair. The Fair was always held in
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