Suddenly They Heard Footsteps

by Dan Yashinsky

  She pointed out the window to a pile of white bones. “Not everyone knows how to show respect to old women,” she said. “So what are you looking for?”

  “I need to help those people by finding out why the Rain of Youth stopped falling, and the Well of Beauty dried up, and the boatman must always row back and forth and is never free. And I need to keep my Dancin’ Girl by bringing Mr. Globus something that can’t be bought, will never be sold, is always free, yet more precious than gold.”

  “Well,” she said, “those are good questions. And because I like your laugh, and you remind me of my sister, and you know how to talk to old women, and most of all because you’re trying to help others and not just yourself, I’ll tell you the answers. The Rain of Youth stopped falling because those people tried to stay young for too long. They were afraid of growing old so they locked their gates to keep old age out. If they open their gates the wild, wonderful Rain of Youth will fall again. The Well of Beauty dried up because they looked for beauty in ads and mirrors instead of finding it within themselves. They must break their mirrors and throw away their ads for the wild, wonderful Water of Beauty to flow again. And that boatman, he came looking for my treasure, but he wanted to keep it all for himself instead of sharing it with all who need it. He’ll row back and forth on Wild River until he gives his oars into the hands of another greedy man. As for the thing you need to bring back to Globus, why, it’s called ‘wisdom.’ Wisdom’s the thing can’t be bought, will never be sold, is always free, yet more precious than gold. You’ve already picked some up along the way, because you found yourself some good questions. Wisdom always begins with a question. That’s what my old grandma used to say.”

  “Thank you,” said Laughing Boy. “But how do I take wisdom back to Mr. Globus?”

  “You can’t,” she said. “You can’t own it or loan it or double-click on it, or trade it or give it. He must go and live it.”

  For the first time in his life, Laughing Boy began to weep. Now he would never get to marry his Dancin’ Girl. The dragon watched him quietly, and when he finally stopped she said, “You can’t give him any wisdom, but you might show him one of these.” And she lifted the veil from the bowl beside her and took out the biggest diamond in the world. “Give it to your Dancin’ Girl, but make sure you show it to Globus first.”

  Laughing Boy was almost blinded by the brilliantly dazzling jewel. He bent down and kissed the dragon, took the diamond, and by the time he left, he was laughing again.

  When he came to the riverbank, the boatman was waiting for him. He rowed across and Laughing Boy jumped out. “If you want to be free,” he said, “give your oars into the hands of another greedy man.”

  Then he rode his bike straight to the town of ads and mirrors. “Break your mirrors,” he told the people, “and turn off your ads and your well will be full again.” When they did this the well bubbled up with the wild, wonderful Water of Beauty. They tasted it and looked at each other. They saw undyed hair and big bellies and every colour and shape of person—but instead of feeling sad, they rejoiced that there could be so many kinds of beauty in the world. When they wanted to give him a reward, Laughing Boy just laughed.

  He rode to the gated community, and told the old people to break the lock. With all their strength, they cracked the lock and the Rain of Youth began to fall, and the earth was refreshed. All the old people came out and danced in the wild, wonderful Rain of Youth. They still had their wrinkles, but now they felt young and full of hope. They threw open the gates and took down the walls, and their children started calling, and they even came to visit. On Sundays they brought the grandchildren. When they thanked him, Laughing Boy just laughed.

  He rode straight downtown, to the headquarters of Globus International. When he got there, Laughing Boy went up to the boardroom and stood in front of Mr. Globus. “I found the thing that can’t be bought, will never be sold, is always free, yet more precious than gold,” he said. “It is wisdom, O father of my best beloved, but you’ll have to go find your own. I can’t own it or loan it or double-click on it, or trade it or give it. You must go and live it. Oh, and I also found this diamond for my Dancin’ Girl.”

  Globus was almost blinded by the dazzling brilliance of the diamond.

  “Where, my dear son-in-law-to-be,” he whispered, “did you get that diamond?”

  “On the other side of Wild River,” said Laughing Boy. Then he laughed and said, “There’s a big bowl of them waiting for the right owner.”

  Mr. Globus didn’t even say goodbye to his wife and daughter. He rushed away alone and left the chief manager in charge. He hurried all the way to the bank of Wild River, where the water runs darkest and wildest, and he found the boatman. “Take me across,” he shouted. “I want to get it all for myself!”

  The boatman put his oars into the hands of Mr. Globus, and ran away.

  Back at headquarters, Laughing Boy and Dancin’ Girl decided to have a big party to celebrate their wedding. First, though, they let—well, they made—the chief manager take early retirement, and they took over the corporation. But they didn’t like everything to be the same, so they gave the malls and restaurants and factories to the people who worked in them, and let them decide what to do. After a while, the hamburgers tasted different everywhere you went.

  What a party it was! The bikers showed up, and Hunter and Fisher, and his first mother, and her mom, and the whole wild bunch of them got along very, very well.

  As for Globus, he began to row back and forth, back and forth, always across the current and never with the river’s flow. Unless he finds someone else as greedy as he is, he’ll row there forever.

  And deep in the forest, across Wild River, a dragon sat in her rocking chair drinking a cup of tea and watching a black-and-white television. (It only gets one channel.) She smiles and sings softly to herself, “One channel’s all I need, the Book of Lives to read…”

  THE STORYTELLER AT FAULT

  This interconnected series of stories is an homage to the creators of the Thousand and One Nights. In my version of the Scheherazade story I’ve updated the settings, motives and characters. But, as in the Thousand and One Nights, my storyteller must do some serious emergency storytelling to get out of a very tight situation. It was first published as a book by Ragweed Press in 1992. The Canadian fiddler/composer Oliver Schroer created an original score to accompany the piece, and we have performed it at festivals throughout the world.

  ONCE UPON A TIME a king went blind. His son set out to find a cure and rode so far he left his father’s kingdom far behind. One day a golden feather lay blazing in the prince’s way, and when he bent to pick it up he heard his horse speak up and say: “Don’t touch that feather, my friend, for it will bring you fearful trouble. This is a feather from the shining wing of the Firebird herself…”

  “Save the file! Scribe, save it and print it! Guards, take him away!”

  “What’s going on, Your Majesty? Where are your guards taking me? What’s making that awful sound?”

  “That is the sound of your death, Storyteller. My scribe is printing out your stories. All these nights while you were speaking, my scribe was hiding in the shadows with his special machine. It is a machine for memory, Storyteller, and unlike you, it will never forget these stories. As you said the words out loud my scribe keyed them into his machine. Now they are safe and sound and stored in a database. My memory machine will remember your stories forever. Listen well, Storyteller; that is the sound of a thousand nights of word of mouth turning into hard, hard copy.”

  “Hard indeed, Your Majesty, if it means the teller himself must die. Have mercy on me!”

  “Stand up, Storyteller. Take courage from your own stories of courage and heroism. In all of the tales you told me, not one hero or heroine ever begs for their life.”

  “Those heroes and heroines live in fairy tales that always end happily ever after. I’m a real person, a living man with a wife to love and children to raise. I know that one
day I will have to die; but not tonight! I’m not quite ready, Your Majesty. I’m really a bit too young to die…”

  “Guards!”

  “And anyway, why is this night different from all our other nights, when you seemed to enjoy my stories and asked for more? Why must I die tonight for the stories I’ve told you?”

  “Because tonight, Storyteller, you have come to the end of your own memory. Tonight you began to tell me the story of the Firebird. That is the first story my scribe entered into the memory machine, a thousand nights ago. You have no more stories to tell, and so you must die.”

  “But Your Majesty, the first time I told it to you the hero was a young archer. Tonight he’s a prince. I also know another version where it’s a young woman with ravenblack hair.”

  “Details, details. I’m sure they all ride forth to find a radiant destiny. It is the same story, even if you change the names of your characters. No, Storyteller, you have come back to your own beginning. Take him away without delay!”

  “At least tell me my crime, Your Majesty. What is the true reason for this dreadful judgment?”

  “I will tell you the truth, Storyteller. I owe you that much for the gift of your splendid stories. When I first listened to you I was enchanted by your tales of wonder. You used the same words as everyone else, but in your mouth those common words turned to pure gold. Your voice conjured distant lands, fabulous treasures, yes, even the beauty of the Firebird herself. But one day the spell was broken. I grew afraid that your precious stories would be forgotten, would vanish into breath and dust and be lost without a trace. I heard the echo of death in your charming voice. I was so afraid that I commanded my scribe to invent a machine to save your stories from oblivion. He caught your stories with his memory machine and locked them away in chips of glass and gold. Now we have a new, improved way to remember stories. Now they will never unravel, or lose their colours like a carpet left out in the rain. Now they belong completely to me, their greatest and most dedicated listener.”

  “But now that you have captured the words from my very lips, surely your Highness can spare the life of his humble storyteller.”

  “No, tonight you must die. You see, Storyteller, as my hoard of stories grew larger, my fear turned into anger. I was outraged that you, of all people, could be so heedless with your own stories. You cast them forth by word of mouth, like flower petals thrown on a fast river, as if you didn’t know the name of that river was Time. One day even your mighty memory would loosen its hold, losing a word here, a word there—until finally all would be forgotten.”

  “I will never forget my stories!”

  “Yes, Storyteller, one day you would betray your own stories. I condemn you to death not because I hate your art, but because I love your stories all too well. You are at fault for the crime of forgetfulness you would inevitably commit. At least you will die knowing that your stories will outlive you. Guards!”

  “Your Majesty… there is one more story. It is my secret story, and I have never told it anyone. If I perish tonight my story will die unheard. Would you have the death of a story on your hands as well as the blood of a storyteller?”

  “Storyteller, you may tell me one last story. Then you will die.”

  “You are merciful, Your Majesty. The name of my story is:

  THE LAST STORY

  Once upon a time there was a father who loved to tell stories to his little boy. Every night he’d go into the boy’s room, sit on the bed, and tell him fairy tales. One night the father was about to begin when the little boy turned away. He buried his face in the pillow and pulled the blanket over his head. The father could hear the little boy breathing hard, close to tears.

  “What’s up?” he asked, but the little boy didn’t answer. “How about a story?”

  Then the boy burst out crying and said something that surprised his father very much: “No, Daddy, I don’t want to hear any more stories.”

  After a while the tears slowed down and the father put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “How come you don’t want to hear any more stories?”

  The boy was still turned away when he whispered, “I hate fairy tales. They’re not true.”

  Now, this child usually loved fairy tales, the longer the better. The father said, “Not true?”

  “Yeah. They always end happily ever after and that’s not true. There’s no such thing as happily-ever-after… It’s a big fat lie.”

  The father sat for a time in the dark room, remembering when he was that age. Then he said, “Remember when you kids found that dead robin a couple of days ago? You dug a hole by the apple tree and buried it in a shoebox. I was watching you from the kitchen window. Is that bird still on your mind?”

  The boy nodded into his pillow. “And Grandpa bein’ sick,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” said his father. “Birds and grandpas. Well, that’s a riddle, all right, maybe the hardest one in the world. A bird’s alive one day, flying around, doing loop-de-loops, stealing flower seeds from your mom’s garden, making a nest, teaching its young ’uns to fly; then one day it’s lying still on the ground, and you wonder where the flying part’s gone. Same with grandpas, and all of us. It reminds me of when I used to ask my grandmother that same, hard riddle. She told me a story when I was little, and I never forgot it. She called it ‘the story of Tortoises, Humans and Stones.’ I don’t I’ve ever told it to you before.”

  “Tell it.”

  “All right:”

  A long time ago, in the beginning of the world, Worldmaker made all the living creatures and all the things of the earth. In those days Worldmaker made all the living creatures so that they could live forever and they never had to die. But there was one condition: they could never have children. One day two tortoises, male and female, came to Worldmaker and said, “There’s a problem with the world you made. We want to have baby tortoises.”

  “But if I let you have baby tortoises, you’ll have to start dying. Otherwise there’d be too many of you.”

  “We’re willing to die, if we can have baby tortoises,” they said.

  So Worldmaker gave them the gift of life, but also the gift of death.

  Human beings saw this and a man and woman came to Worldmaker. “We would like to have children,” they said.

  “Are you willing to die?”

  “Oh, yes,” they said, “if we can first look on the faces of our children, we are willing to die.”

  And so it was that all the living creatures came to Worldmaker and they all chose to have children, even though they had to begin dying.

  “And that’s the story my grandma told me that explains how it is that death came into the world.”

  “But Daddy, what about the stones?” asked the boy. “You said there were stones in this story.”

  “Ah, yes, the stones. Well, Grandma said the stones never wanted to have kids, and that’s why stones never have to die.”

  The boy turned over and looked at his father. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “I’m as old as my tongue and older than my teeth.”

  The boy laughed and said, “No, really.”

  “I’m forty.”

  “Is that old?”

  “Well, it’s older than you and younger than your grandfather. Why?”

  The little boy didn’t answer for a while; then he said, “You can tell me fairy tales again, Daddy. But I still don’t want them to end happily ever after. Do you know any other kind of stories?”

  “Sure I do. I know lots of stories. My grandma gave me a headful of good stories, and I still remember them. How about I tell you ten for now, one per night, and not one of them will end with the words ‘happily ever after’? Tonight’s story was the one about the stones. Tomorrow you’ll hear another one.”

  He kissed the little boy, turned out the light, and closed the door.

  On the second night the father told the little boy the story of “The Dreamer and the Butterfly.”

  I heard this from my gra
ndfather. He said it happened to two friends of his during the war.

  The two soldiers had been separated from their company during a battle, and they’d spent the day walking through the fields trying to catch up. It was a quiet, sunny day, peaceful after all the shooting. The two men walked into a lovely meadow and decided to eat. They found a creek in the middle of the meadow, dipped their cups in it, and drank the cool, fresh water. They sat in the long grass at the end of the meadow and munched their K-rations. The war seemed far away at that moment. One of the soldiers stretched out to have a short nap, leaving his friend to stand guard.

  The soldier who stayed awake was watching his friend’s face, and all of a sudden he saw something amazing. The moment his friend fell asleep, his mouth opened and a pale, blue butterfly came out. It rose into the air above the sleeper’s head, fluttered here and there as if trying to decide where to fly, and finally began to float across the meadow.

  The young man got to his feet and followed the blue butterfly. It flew slowly and close to the ground, and was easy to keep up with. The butterfly approached something white that gleamed in the green grass. The soldier saw that it was a skull—Grandpa never told me what kind—and a crowd of flies and bees swarmed in and out of the eye sockets. The blue butterfly landed on the skull and folded its wings and walked in. The buzzing increased inside the skull until, after a while, the butterfly came out again and resumed its flight.

  It flew towards the little stream of water that wound through the meadow. When it reached the stream it flew this and that way, but didn’t fly across. The man laid his rifle over the water and the butterfly flew across, as if it were a bridge. On the other side of the stream it flew to a small mound of earth at the far end of the field. It disappeared into the mound. Finally it came out again, flew back across the meadow, over the water, past the skull, and hovered over the face of the sleeping man. His friend watched with astonishment as the butterfly dropped to the sleeper’s mouth, folded its delicate blue wings, and disappeared.