A Stranger Came Ashore

by Mollie Hunter

  On the early evening of Up Helly Aa, however, Nicol showed a different spirit, for he came to the house then, with a present of scarlet ribbons for Elspeth to tie in her hair. Janet, by this time, had set out food and drink for all the neighbours who would visit. Peter had tuned his fiddle. Elspeth had brushed her golden hair until the rippling shine of it was a dazzle to the eye; and staring greedily at this, Finn Learson told her, “You look like a princess.”

  Elspeth blushed to hear him speak so; and just at the moment that Nicol entered the house, Finn Learson added boldly, “And when you marry me, you will be princess of my whole kingdom.”

  Peter and Janet smiled at this, taking it to be no more than a piece of romantic nonsense, but Robbie knew differently.

  The kingdom under the sea, he thought in horror; and in his mind’s eye he saw Elspeth’s face among the faces of all the other golden-haired girls who had once reigned as the Great Selkie’s princess – the girls who had tried to escape, the drowned girls …

  “I’ve brought you a present, Elspeth,” Nicol’s voice broke into these thoughts, and Robbie watched him holding the scarlet ribbons out to her. She took them, smiling and exclaiming over their colour, and immediately began twisting them through the shining strands of her hair. For one wild moment then, Robbie thought all his troubles might be ended, for the way Elspeth looked at Nicol when she had done this seemed to show that he was the one she really wanted to choose. Nicol gave her look for look, and quietly he said, “I cannot make fine speeches the way he does, Elspeth. I have never learned such manners. But this I will say with all my heart. I will hold you tonight if he tries to take you from me, and I will never let you go from that hold.”

  “Nicol!” said Elspeth, with all her soul in her voice. “Oh, Nicol!” And then Finn Learson laughed, spoiling the moment for all of them.

  “You speak brave words,” he told Nicol contemptuously. “But you have still to prove them, and the night is not out yet.”

  “No more it is!” exclaimed Peter, taking up his fiddle to cover the awkwardness he felt, for it looked then and there as if it would come to a fight between the other two; but Nicol turned on his heel, and it was Finn Learson who danced with Elspeth then.

  Robbie watched Nicol stride from the house, knowing that Elspeth’s last chance to declare for him had gone and that everything now depended on himself – and on Yarl Corbie’s plan. Grimly then, he settled down to await the appearance of the Skuddler and the other guisers, crouching in a corner with his hands twined in Tam’s fur and his eyes constantly marking the time on the grandfather clock.

  The guisers would be visiting every house in Black Ness that night, he knew, and so it would be well after midnight before he could expect to see them. Yet still he rushed to open the door every time he heard footsteps and voices outside the house; and each time, he was disappointed to find it was only more neighbours arriving.

  Tam became restless, whining and shivering uneasily, and he wondered if the creature could sense what would happen that night. The hands of the clock seemed to move so slowly that sometimes he thought they had stopped altogether. He stayed alert, all the same, and at one o’clock in the morning when the guisers came at last, he was at the door before anyone else could reach it.

  Flinging it wide open, he saw the whole mob of them standing outside. The next moment, they were all around him; and from somewhere in the mob, a voice – Nicol’s voice – breathed in his ear, “All right, Robbie! I’ve fixed it!”

  And so there was hope yet for Elspeth, Robbie thought triumphantly. Then, with his heart beating hard in the excitement of this moment, he was carried back into the room by the rushing entrance of the Skuddler and the Skuddler’s men.

  16. Guisers

  There were twenty-six of the guisers, all told. Their long straw petticoats and high, pointed hats made them all seem taller than ordinary men. The bunches of coloured ribbons tied on petticoats, hats, and shirts, were like curiously-shaped fruit and flowers sprouting everywhere from them. The eyes above their handkerchief masks looked out like the eyes of mysterious strangers. Like strangers, too, they entered in deadly silence; for – as Robbie had just proved – even a few words spoken could give away the secret behind the mask.

  A shout of greeting went up at the sight of them, and everyone rose so that there would be room for them to dance. Chairs were pushed back against the walls. Peter raised his fiddle; and still without a word spoken, the Skuddler’s men formed a circle with the Skuddler himself at its centre.

  Peter struck an opening chord. The Skuddler raised the long white wand he carried in his right hand. Peter swung into a fast-stepping reel, and with a swish of his wand, the Skuddler commanded the dance to begin.

  Instantly then, the but end seemed to explode into a whirling mass of straw. Tall hats shot up and down like tongues of flame flickering through the mass. Coloured ribbons tossed about in it, like fruit falling, like flowers being torn off in a gale.

  The watchers in the but end clapped in time to the dancers’ antics. They cheered, they laughed. They shouted out guesses about which face lay behind which mask. For all the wildness of this dance, however, it was still carried on in deadly silence. It was still under the Skuddler’s command, too, for it was his wand that continued to direct all its movements.

  Up and down the dancers leapt. In and out they wove. Round and about they whirled and twisted, all in obedience to the wand. The signals from it divided them into pairs, into larger groups, and then brought them back into one mass. Another signal stilled all the others while each man danced alone; and as he danced, each and every man kept his eyes on the wand. Each and every man danced for the Skuddler, but the Skuddler himself never shifted position.

  It was only the hand with the wand in it that moved. And his eyes! The eyes of the Skuddler were everywhere, darting from dancer to dancer; and away at the back of his mind as he watched this, Robbie heard once more the voice of Old Da explaining to him the dance of the Skuddler’s men.

  “They are supposed to be earth spirits – the spirits of corn, and fruit, and flowers – and the Skuddler himself is the god of the earth commanding them to dance in honour of all the good things he has created …”

  “What’s the meaning of it all?” a voice breathed in Robbie’s ear, and turning towards the sound, he met the gaze of big, dark eyes – Finn Learson’s eyes drawing him into the same circle of mysterious power that held Tam and Elspeth; Finn Learson guessing at the knowledge Old Da had passed on and probing his mind for the secret of it.

  “I don’t know,” Robbie lied, trying hard to break away from the gaze; but the voice of Old Da was still running through his mind, and he was desperately afraid that Finn Learson could somehow also hear it saying,

  “It was the way they made magic in old heathen times, Robbie. The dressing-up was a sort of spell. The dancing was another part of the spell, and the whole thing made a magic that turned them into the creatures they were supposed to be – the earth-god and his spirits …”

  “Who’s playing the Skuddler?” Finn Learson demanded. “Do you know that?”

  Robbie backed off from the eyes boring into his own, then found that he had backed into his mother, and sighed with relief to hear her answering for him.

  “Nobody knows,” she told Finn Learson. “The young men always decide that among themselves, and it won’t be until they all unmask at the end of Up Helly Aa that we learn which of them it is.”

  A burst of cheering and clapping from all around announced the sudden end of the dance. Robbie found himself once more surrounded by the guisers as they crowded to take their share of the food and drink laid out. Shouts of laughter came from people jostling to watch each one swallow as much as he could without lifting more than a corner of his mask. Then Peter’s fiddle shrilled out again.

  The Skuddler’s men swept back on to the dancing space, each with a partner from among the guests. Another fiddler joined Peter’s efforts, and yet another. The but end bec
ame a wild, weaving whirl of figures stamping in time to the music. The laughing faces of girls bobbed about among the white masked faces of the guisers. Peter and the other two fiddlers stood perched above the dancers, their faces red and shining with sweat, their bows racing back and forth at mad speed across the fiddle strings.

  Somebody seized Robbie’s hand and pulled him into the whirl of dancers. He caught the gleam of white teeth and dark eyes as Finn Learson spun by, laughing, with Janet on his arm. A tall figure loomed over him, a masked face looked down, and the grim eyes of the Skuddler met his own. Briefly he glimpsed Elspeth’s hair in a tangle of gold, and scarlet ribbons, and then he was too dizzy to be aware of anything else except the floor heaving under his feet and the roof rafters seeming to turn like the spokes of a huge wheel above his head.

  A gust of cold night air and a last ringing chord from the fiddles brought him to himself. Somebody had opened the door, he realised. The dance was at an end, and the guisers were departing to visit the next house on their rounds. Silent to the last, they were beginning to vanish through the doorway, waving farewells as they went, and all the younger folk among the guests were jostling to follow them.

  Robbie was still dizzy. He held on to a chair to steady himself, and to his dismay, saw that Finn Learson and Elspeth were among those following in the wake of the Skuddler and his men. Quickly, in case his father or mother saw him leave, he ducked low and slid neatly in among the jostling throng.

  The next moment he was outside and catching his breath in wonder at what he saw there, for there was a strange, tingling feeling in the air, and instead of the velvety darkness he had expected, the whole sky was aflame with green, leaping light.

  Somebody shouted, “It’s the Merry Dancers!” – which is the name they have in these parts for the peculiar lights that sometimes leap and flicker over northern skies in winter – and this cry was taken up on all sides, for nobody could think when they had last seen so fine a display of these northern lights.

  Every face stared upwards, and everyone began turning round and around as they stared, for the light seemed sometimes to roll in great green waves over the sky, and sometimes it was like long searchlights of green shooting brilliantly out from a huge and starless black dome. Sometimes too, all the green would vanish for a few seconds, and everybody was blinded by darkness until the lights appeared again, in little tongues of leaping, dancing green flame.

  Robbie stared upwards with the rest, all thoughts of Elspeth suddenly forgotten in his wonder at this sky. Then, too late, he realised that the Skuddler and his men had moved on, and the others were following in little groups that straggled all over the hillside.

  Shouting, he ran to catch up with the nearest of these groups, then stopped in sudden terror that they might be trows, for part of the power trows have at Up Helly Aa is that they can take on any shape they wish. Yet still, he reminded himself, he had to keep track of Finn Learson and Elspeth. He simply had to! In a shaking voice he mumbled, “God be about me and all that I see.” Then, hastily he crossed himself, and stumbled on, but it still did not prove easy to find Finn Learson and Elspeth among all those straggling groups, and with every hour after that, Robbie found it growing even harder to keep on their trail.

  At the next house, the Skuddler and his band departed without any train of followers; but still there were people visiting back and forth between all the houses scattered over the hill, for in every house that night there was light, and music, and celebration of some kind. Moreover, Elspeth was as footloose as any of the others roaming the hill; and in each house she and Finn Learson visited, Robbie seemed to find himself being caught up in the celebrations at the very moment these two were ready to leave for some other place.

  In one house, it was a guessing game that held him trapped among boys of his own age, all clustering around him to shout the riddle,

  Wingle wangle, like a tangle,

  If I was even, I’d reach to Heaven.

  The more he tried to free himself too, the louder they called, “What am I? Guess, Robbie Henderson, guess!”

  But still Robbie could not guess – until Elspeth herself gave him the clue. Turning at the doorway with Finn Learson, she smiled goodbye at everyone there; and in a flash, Robbie remembered her footprint in the lik straw, and the tangle of smoke uncoiling slowly out towards the summer sky.

  “Smoke!” Triumphantly he shouted the answer, and darted outside to follow the two figures dancing and running on their way under the green lights of the Merry Dancers.

  In another house it was a dance that held him marooned in a corner while Elspeth disappeared. In yet another house he was helping to hand around the food when she decided to move on, and he had no choice but to drop a plate of scones to the floor while he dashed after her. Yet still, in spite of all such problems, he had to make sure Finn Learson did not notice how closely he was keeping on Elspeth’s trail, and a dozen times that night he blessed Nicol for the scarlet hair ribbons that picked her out from all the other people milling around.

  The further the night went on, however, the more difficult he found it to keep her always under his eye; for the further the night went on, of course, the more tired he grew. His legs began to ache with running over the tough, springy grass of the hill. His eyes smarted from lack of sleep, and it was the smarting eyes which at last betrayed him.

  One moment he had the will-o’-the-wisp figure of Elspeth full in view as she danced ahead of him across the hill. The next moment, his weary eyelids drooped, and before he could blink them open again, the green of the northern lights had vanished behind one of the sky’s spells of total darkness.

  17. The Skuddler

  A blind man would have been better off than Robbie at that moment, for a blind man could at least have used his other senses to aid him. Robbie was so panic-stricken, however, that he could not even judge the direction of the voices echoing faintly back to him; and by the time the green glow rolled over the sky again, the figures he had been following were too far off for him to say exactly which house they were making for, or which one of them was Elspeth.

  He would just have to make for the nearest house, he decided then, for that would be the likeliest place to find her; and off he went, running as hard as he could towards a gleam of yellow lamplight beckoning from across the hill. But no, he was told when he reached this house, Elspeth was not there.

  “Try Laurie Tulloch’s house,” someone advised him; and so off he went again, only to find that this had also been a wild goose chase.

  “Try Bruce Hunter’s house,” he was told, when he started asking then if anyone knew where Elspeth had last been headed, and wearily Robbie turned in that direction. But now it was no longer a case of running fast, for he was nearly dropping with exhaustion by this time.

  He ran a few steps, he walked a few steps, then ran again. And now also, he realised, he was by no means alone on the hill, for wherever he turned his eyes he seemed to catch glimpses of figures outlined darkly against the green sky – weird figures that ran or danced or gestured strangely – and the fear of trows grew so strong on him that he did not dare to wave or call or do anything which would draw their attention to himself.

  His right arm seemed to be powerless, too, for – try as he would – he could not lift it to bless himself. Moreover, the words that trows hate to hear seemed to have vanished from his mind. In panic at this, he tried to run faster, but like someone in a waking nightmare, he found that his feet had become ton weights and that he could no longer trust his own senses.

  He heard laughter crackling faintly on the still, night air. He saw the strange figures draw nearer, then vanish suddenly, and re-appear in different places. They loomed large against the night-sky. They grew small again, small as trows! Robbie ran on – slowly, slowly, his breath sobbing in ever-growing terror, yet still not knowing whether all this was really happening, or whether it was only the strange green sky and the hill’s uneven outline that were playing tricks on his sight.<
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  One thing he did know, however, and with the utmost despair he admitted this to himself. He had now completely lost track of Elspeth; and so now the only purpose in his running was to escape all those weird figures that threatened him, and then somehow to find the Skuddler.

  Another sound broke on his hearing, a sound much louder than the occasional crackle of laughter. It came from the seashore – from the beach down at the voe, and instantly he knew what it was, for once before he had heard that same sound. It was Tam howling, he realised. Somewhere down at the voe Tam was howling the same long-drawn out cry of mourning he had raised at the moment of Old Da’s death.

  For all his terror then, Robbie stopped dead in his tracks. There could be only one reason for that cry, he told himself. Finn Learson and Elspeth must be down at the voe at that very moment; and Tam was there too – howling for Elspeth’s last moments on earth!

  The thought of this hit Robbie with a shock that was like cold water dashed on his face. He gasped, feeling his brain clearing on the instant and the power coming back into his right arm. Quickly he blessed himself and called aloud the words that trows hate to hear; and like black shadows snuffed out by the sun, the leaping figures on the hillside disappeared.

  Or so it seemed for the moment, anyway, but a second look showed Robbie that some of the figures were still running along the skyline of a ridge above the point where he stood. They were peculiarly-shaped figures, too, but now that he had his courage back he could tell who they were.

  For a moment, Robbie turned from them to look down towards the voe. A boat rocked there at the water’s edge. Two forms stood on the beach above the boat. Some distance from the forms, a dog crouched, mournfully howling. Robbie took a deep breath, then he faced about towards the line of running figures, and yelled, “Skuddler! Sku-u-u-dd-ler!”