# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/The Calling of Zoé de Mersac

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THE CALLING OF ZOÉ DE MERSAC
A SPECTRAL hunt, like the wild chase in the Black Forest by Wotan and Frau Holle, startles the people on the Canadian shore of the Detroit. At certain intervals a dog trots north-ward over the water, a black dog with drooping ears. Again, it is a phantom boat, rowed by twelve fierce and silent men, also going north. Once in seven years a gaunt horseman rides north, followed by dogs, along the western sky, at sunset, and the people shudder, for they know that among those who see the spectre one must be in his grave within a month. So at least it proved when Sebastian Lacelle hunted near his home at Askin Pointe. He was a sportsman by instinct, "born with a gun in his hand," they said, and on one of his forays he had wounded a deer and followed it through the wood at top speed, to get another and a final shot.
Soon he came to a clearing, and there was his ​deer, trembling and looking around at him with innocent, frightened eyes. He had slaughtered hundreds of animals for sport. He had bent their heads upon their shoulders and cut their throats while they looked into his face, inquiring, beseeching, astonished. He had pounced on them in their death-throes and clubbed and stabbed them. Why did he not do so now? Because a pretty girl knelt before the door of a cabin, and the deer—it was her pet—lay on the ground, bleeding, panting. She was lamenting and caressing the pretty creature, while she tenderly dressed the injury. Lacelle felt a strange tug and softening at his heart. He doffed his hat and offered some clumsy explanation with a hope that, as he had supposed the animal a wild one, he might be forgiven. As she lived in a time when a request for mercy for an animal would have been received with jeers and laughter, it was natural that Zoé de Mersac should grant the pardon with at least a pretended willingness, and, as both had lived a half-wild life, they soon found plenty of matter for easy talk. The hunter went to the woods again next day, and yet again. Their talks were longer and their voices lower at each such meeting. Yes, they loved and were happy.
On the day before the wedding, when the people were discussing at their doors the way the chasse galerie had swept by on the night before, the girl was seized with trembling, and her heart shook. She told her fears to her lover. Surely, something ​was impending. His gun was flung on his shoulder. He laughed at her. To-morrow all would be well. He was off for one more hunt, to celebrate his last day as a bachelor. Yes, he would be careful. He was always careful. See, the ducks were plenty on the river. Wouldn't a nice plump one look well at the wedding dinner? She besought him with tears to stay. He kissed her, and laughed again, "Dead or alive, I'll be back in the morning."
At daybreak Zoé went to the shore, unable to rest, yet cheered by the dewy freshness of the landscape, the softness of the sunshine, the chorus of birds, and, sitting on a boulder,—one of those great rocks that Hiawatha had hurled at his father in the long fight,—she waited long; but Sebastian did not come. Once, indeed, it seemed as if she heard a sigh, and a cold touch fell upon her bosom, so that a chill went through her, and she fled, frightened, to the house. All day long she waited in her bridal dress, despairing, her anxious parents and puzzled guests about her; but he did not come. At the fall of the dark she went out to the shore again, alone. It had grown windy and threatening. Ah, God! how the spectre hunt went by that night, with cries and howls and whistling! The north must have been crowded with spirits. A boat-like cloud whirled past. As it went into the north she saw the leap and quiver of the aurora borealis,—the flames that pour from the end of the earth, for there the old world-fire has never been ​put out. And again the wind shaped itself into words, like his voice: "I will come for you in a year and a day." She went back to her home. No tears were in her eyes. The cold spot on her bosom would not be warm. Even her heart seemed colder.
In a year and a day the dawn broke fresh, and Zoé asked to be dressed and taken to the river in a chair,—it was so long since she had been out in the sunlight. Painfully, carefully they clothed her wasted form. Her face was white, save for one red spot on the cheek, but she smiled as they lifted her across the threshold, and she looked toward the cloudless sky in rapture. For some time she sat there with her parents, bright and happy, as it seemed. Vapors began to gather and drift up the river toward the north. She eyed them with a curious expectancy. Somewhere was heard the hollow baying of a hunting hound. A cloud shaped like a boat drove past on the breeze. Zoé looked up with a joy in her face that was wonderful to see. Sebastian!" she cried, and stretched forth her arms. The others looked into the air, wondering. When they turned to her again they wondered no less at the great calm that had come to her, a calm never more to be broken by the storms or accidents of this world.