The Book of Dreams

by O. R. Melling

  “I do love that song, byes. We’re havin’ a party, eh?”

  Dana was so surprised by Fingal’s affability, it took her a moment to act on the Cailleach’s instructions. Then, heart beating wildly, she struggled out of the bag. As she ran toward the giant, she shouted as loudly as she could.

  “Yoo hoo! Hello there! Help!”

  The goblins went berserk. Screeching with rage, wielding their torches like cudgels, they charged at her.

  Jean had just crawled out from his bag and saw the danger to Dana. He turned as he ran, face elongating to a snout, black hair sprouting from every pore in his body. Dropping on all fours, he faced down the goblins, baring his fangs and snarling and snapping. In the fiery shadows of the bonfire, he looked all the bigger and more savage.

  Surprised, the wild men stopped in their tracks, but it didn’t take them long to recover. Brandishing their torches, they circled the wolf warily.

  By this time, Dana had run back to join Jean. They were hopelessly outnumbered. But before the goblins could move to attack, Fingal’s big hands reached down.

  “Now, lads, be pleasant!” he boomed as he scooped up Dana and Jean. “Ye know the rules. The lass got the first word in. Away ye go now and thanks for the song. See ye next new moon, if ye’re up for it.”

  This was met with a blue streak of curses, but the men did as they were told, grumbling among themselves as they headed back down the hill.

  Fingal lowered his massive face to peer at the two in his palm. His eyes were as big as moons. His nostrils were like caves stuffed with hair.

  “Pay no heed to the byes,” he said in a friendly tone. “They work too hard, them fellas. Take no holy-days. Makes wee Jock all cross and cranky.”

  He patted the wolf lightly with his baby finger. “Nice doggie, don’t bite.” But as Jean unraveled to his own form, the giant’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s a good trick. I never seen that before. A Frenchie, I betcha. Loupgarou, eh?”

  Dana expected Jean to be offended by the remark, but he only laughed and nodded. Fingal turned to Dana.

  “So, what is it ye want, lass? I’ll do your biddin’ this night.”

  Dana shouted to be heard. “The Cailleach said you could help me.”

  “An Cailleach Dubh? Aren’t ye the lucky one to be gettin’ advice from the likes of her. She be the sister of Aoife, her that was the wife of Manannan, the Irish Lord of the Sea. I shouldn’t be tellin’ ye this now, but I’ve always been partial to a bit of gossip. I’ve heard tell that Aoife stole secrets from her husband. The language of nature, it was, and all the wisdom it gives. Well he murthered her for that, didn’t he? She was of the crane family so he made a bag of her skin and put the secret language inside it. Now her sister, An Cailleach Dubh, got ahold of the bag. She’s not a crane, mind, she’s—”

  “A cormorant!” Dana burst in with sudden insight. Images of the old woman flashed through her mind: the feathery shawl, the hooked nose, the high-stepping gait. She wasn’t human at all, but a bird-woman. “Of course! An Cailleach dubh. The black witch. It’s the Irish name for the cormorant, and they do look like witches with their raggedy black wings!”

  “Anyhows,” the giant continued, “once the Cailleach got the bag, she had to scarper from the wrath of Manannan. She flew all the way across the ocean till she dropped down here in Cape Breton, almost dead. And here she stayed. A bit like me own tale,” he finished.

  “She told us you can find things,” Dana said. “I’m looking for the Book of Dreams.”

  Fingal scratched the top of his bald head. The rasping noise was like a saw cutting through a tree.

  “Can’t say as I’ve heard of it. But there’s another one of your lot wandrin’ about the place lookin’ for a book. Brendan’s his name. A saint from the Old country, travelin’ like a sailor in a wee boat. I could find him for ye. Maybe you’re after the same thing?”

  Without waiting for a response, the giant strode from the hills and headed straight for the ocean. He didn’t slow down as he reached the seashore, but simply kept going, into the cold waves. Soon Cape Breton was but a shadow behind them.

  Cupped in the shelter of Fingal’s hands, Jean and Dana peered through the lattice of his fingers. They were striding over the water as if crossing a plain. On their left rose the jagged coastline of Newfoundland. In every other direction swelled the far-flung sea.

  “I know some saint,” Jean said to Dana. “Who is Brendan?”

  “He’s an Irish one,” she explained. “Very old. He sailed to Canada in a leather boat, long before the Vikings or the French and English.”

  She couldn’t miss the snort of disbelief.

  “It’s not as daft as it sounds,” she insisted. “An Irishman proved it was possible in the 1970s. Tim Severin. He wrote a book about it.”

  Jean didn’t look convinced. Dana was about to argue the point when the giant made his announcement.

  “We’re goin’ to drop by the girlfriend,” he said. His face went red. They could actually see it glowing in the dark. “She’ll point us in the right direction.”

  Now he popped the two of them inside his breast pocket to protect them from the gale-force winds. The fabric of his shirt was coarse and warm. They could see where they were going by peeping over the edge. The coastline had disappeared. They were engulfed in the darkness of sky and ocean. The stars seemed to drown on the rim of the horizon. They were treading the cold lonely miles of the Atlantic.

  When they finally spotted her, a distant figure on the waves, she was like a mirage in the dunes of a watery desert. Huge and stolid, like the Colossus of Rhodes, she stood alone on an outcrop of rock. A gigantic statue, she was coppery bronze, with a greenish sheen wherever the water had tainted her metal. Though she was dressed as a warrior in chain mail and helmet, she bore no weapons. Her features were strong and stern, with metallic eyes that stared blindly out to sea.

  As they drew nearer, the great head swiveled on her shoulders.

  “We’ll be given a few riddles,” Fingal warned his companions. “Ye know the drill. No such thing as a free lunch. Ye got to give before ye get.”

  A surprise test! Dana was alarmed. “What kind of riddles?”

  Jean didn’t look happy either. “In my grand-mère’s tales, if you say the wrong thing, it’s always bad.”

  “Don’t let it bother a hair on your chinny chin chins,” Fingal assured them, though he was gulping nervously. “A few questions about life, the universe, and everything. Three will do the trick. The magic number. Don’t suppose either of ye knows the Saltair na Rann?”

  They shook their heads. He looked glum.

  “Sure nobody reads the oul books nowadays.”

  He trudged up to the Bronze Lady till they stood face-to-face.

  “Greetin’s, hen, how’s it goin’ there?”

  The metal jaws clanked as she opened her mouth to speak. Her voice had the timbre of organ pipes in a church.

  “What is the number of the hosts which the light of the clear sky reveals?”

  Fingal scratched his head as he mused upon the question. Dredging deep in his memory, he fished out the answer and produced it proudly.

  “The hosts of the air cannot be numbered.”

  The Lady’s impassive features warmed ever so slightly. Was there a hint of a smile on those great bronze lips?

  “That is correct.”

  Fingal looked pleased as punch, but his face went blank at the next question.

  “What is the name of the multitudes which dwell there on the other side of the solid earth?”

  “Your turn,” he hissed to the two in his pocket.

  Dana and Jean conferred in a panic.

  “Australian peoples?” Jean suggested.

  Dana shook her head. Something she had read somewhere? A song or a tale she had heard in Faerie? At last the answer dropped onto her tongue.

  “The Antipodeans!” she cried.

  They were through to the next round and almost there. Jean wai
ted nervously. In all fairness, he knew it was up to him to answer the last question.

  “And the bright sun, whither does it go?”

  Jean grinned with relief. He wasn’t the weakest link.

  “À l’ouest. It goes into the West.”

  The bronze head nodded for the third and final time.

  Jean and Dana let out a cheer along with the giant. They had passed the test!

  “Here’s our question, m’dear,” Fingal said to his girlfriend. “Has ye seen that little Irish monk fella, the one in the skin boat? He came this way once upon a time, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Indeed I saw him,” she said. “A holy man, a saint, and a mage of power. And he saw me.”

  A trace of surprise echoed in her voice.

  “Can ye tell us where he went?”

  “I can.”

  The Bronze lady remained still for a while. Fingal waited placidly. He was evidently accustomed to long delays in their discourse.

  At last she swiveled on her feet and pointed due north.

  “He went thataway.”

  “Much obliged. Thank ye kindly.”

  Fingal leaned forward to plant a few slobbery kisses on the metal lady’s lips. Hanging over the edge of his pocket, Dana and Jean were caught off guard and nearly fell out. Smothering their laughter, they clambered to safety even as they did their best to ignore the loud noises of the giant’s affection.

  At last the giant had finished with his farewells and they set off northward.

  Dana looked back. In the clear starry night, the Bronze Lady stood stark and glittering above the cold waters. Arms akimbo she moved with heavy grace, pointing in different directions like a gargantuan weather vane.

  “Who or what is she directing?” Dana called up to Fingal. “The wind? The waves?”

  “Can ye no’ see?” The giant was shocked. “That’s a great shame now. Ye canny see the beauty of her work. What she does for the soul-birds who wander the world.”

  “Soul-birds?” Jean frowned. He translated the words in his mind, trying to make sense of them. “The souls of the dead people?”

  “Ach no, they go elsewhere. The souls of the living. There always be parts of them flyin’ to and fro.”

  “What?” Dana and Jean said together.

  “It’s a shame ye canny see them. Can ye not open your eyes a bit wider?”

  The giant’s words triggered a memory in Dana’s mind. You need but open your heart. She made an effort to try harder, calling up her fairy sight. Gazing back again across the starlit waters, she finally saw what Fingal was talking about.

  All around the bronze figure they flew, like spray from the sea, like flurries of snow. Hundreds and thousands of birds—white birds!—they flocked in circles and lines and spirals. From the four corners of the earth they arrived in droves, flying straight to the Lady. Over and around her and to her they flew, from the tiniest hummingbird the size of an insect to the great whooper swan. There were many that Dana could name—gulls and guillemots, razorbills and fulmars, gannets, puffins, skuas and terns—and there were many she couldn’t. Exhausted from their journey, some rested on the Lady’s head and shoulders. Others hovered on the wing, waiting for her instructions. What inspired her directions?

  Dana was seized by a desire to understand, to know. Were these the birds she had seen in the Medicine Lodge? Were they singing her song? She couldn’t hear them. She was too far away. The loss and longing was an ache in her heart. As the yearning to join them grew inside her, she suffered the strangest sensation. The yearning itself emerged from her body in the shape of a white bird. On a rush of wings and wind, it flew over the waves, to meet the others.

  Dana found herself in two places at the same time and with two different perspectives. She was still with Jean in the giant’s pocket even as she flew with the white bird toward the Lady. The first impression that struck her when she reached the other birds was the overpowering sense of loss. She could hear it in their cries. The call-notes were like sobs. All were grieving for something.

  Now as she gazed on the Lady through the white bird’s eyes, Dana saw a different figure. No longer a warrior made of metal, she saw a shining angel—Cara Mia, Mother Carey—all kindness and love and comfort itself. Her outstretched arms welcomed the weary travelers. She knew each bird and called it by name, knew whence it came and where it would go. Indeed she knew the very number of the feathers it had on each wing. And even as they came to her, she guided them in the right direction, sending them to the place where they would heal.

  Like the other birds, Dana wanted to find her place. Could the Lady send her where she needed to go? Like a lost lamb to the shepherdess, she rushed toward the outstretched arms. Did the angel smile? There was no doubt that she knew who Dana was. The gentle arm pointed northward, directly at Fingal’s back as he trod through the waves. Before Dana knew what had happened, she was fully back in her body.

  A wave of disappointment washed over her. She had almost got it! A glimpse of the secret! Something that the Lady knew. And the soul-birds too. And the Cailleach and her sister, Aoife. Yes! The knowledge that the crane sister stole from the Lord of the Sea and the cormorant kept in her black witch’s bag. What was it? Dana had caught sight of it before, in the language of the land. The truth was all around her, encrypted in code, in the secrets of fairy tales. How could she decipher it?

  “What are the soul-birds?” she demanded of Fingal.

  “I canny explain, pet. It’s too deep for me. Sure ye can ask Brendan when ye meet him. He’ll be able to tell ye.”

  “But you must know something!” she insisted.

  Jean frowned and murmured to her. “He don’t know a lot. Maybe you ask too much.”

  Dana relented, aware that the giant was soaked to the waist with the dark waves breaking against him.

  As if he had heard Jean’s whisper, Fingal shrugged amiably. “Giants aren’t the brightest pennies in the purse, doncha know?”

  “Are there many giant in Canada?” Jean asked, curiously.

  “Oh aye, there be giants everywhere! We were upon the earth from the very beginning. And there’s lots of room here, eh? I’ve heard tell the Old Countries are all landfills and motorways. Here there still be wild places. That’s what a giant likes. Plenty of room.”

  “You know the others?”

  “Oh, aye, plenty of them. There be a whole French clan up in the big tunnels of Churchill Falls. Came from Normandy they did, a long time ago. Used to live in the swamps of Labrador. Hard life, that. Ye get eaten alive by the black flies in the summer and freeze your butt in the winter. They were some happy byes, let me tell ye, when the hydroelectric plant was built and all them tunnels carved. Great place for a giant to live, all snug and out of the weather.

  “Then there’s Joe Mufferaw out in Renfrew County. Lives in them there hills in the Ottawa Valley. Half-giant, not as big as some, but a good lad. We have to lie low, ye know. Humans don’t take too kindly to giants. Could be ’cause some are carnivores. Makes a fella unpopular. I’m vegan myself,” he added quickly, when they both gasped audibly. “But there’s some likes the taste of human flesh, if ye know what I mean.”

  “I’m hearing more than I want to,” Dana whispered to Jean. She had given up hope of learning about the soul-birds.

  But the giant’s monologue came to an abrupt end as he let out a yell.

  There ahead in the darkness a small boat bobbed on the waves. Absurdly small, it looked like a walnut shell afloat on the ocean. In the dim light, they could barely make out the design on the sail: a Celtic Cross emblazoned in crimson.

  “Ahoy, Brendan!” Fingal called.

  “Ahoy!” came a hoarse reply.

  • • •

  The man on watch was the first to see them. Another crawled out from the narrow shelter where he had been sleeping. Both gawped and rubbed their eyes. There was no mistaking what they saw before them: a gigantic grinning man with two small figures who had scrambled onto his should
er, like tiny parrots.

  “Visitors for Brendan,” Fingal announced.

  And before anyone could react, he deposited his two companions on the deck of the boat and, with a friendly wave, strode away.

  The strange boat was not unlike a floating bird’s nest. Banana-shaped, with a flat bottom and square sails on double masts, it was an untidy muddle of ropes and equipment. Everything was wet or damp. It had obviously been at sea for some time. The smells were overwhelming: wet leather, musty wool, pungent sheepskin and grease. The astonished crewmen were as bedraggled as their boat. They were long-haired and bearded, and their eyes shone wildly from staring out at the Atlantic too long.

  “Cá bhfuill Naomh Bhreandán?” Dana asked, assuming that Irish was their language.

  The men looked back at her blankly. She and Jean were already suspecting the worst. They noticed the anachronisms around the boat. Yellow tarpaulins covered bow and stern. Sheets of plastic protected electronic equipment. There was a radio telephone and a life-raft dinghy. Hardly the gear of a saint who lived before the Vikings!

  “I think,” said Dana, slowly, “there’s been a mistake.”

  “Brendan is here?” Jean asked the men.

  Once again the sailors looked confounded. Two more crewmen joined them. One was a tall young man with an easy air of command.

  “I’m the skipper,” he said in an Anglo-Irish accent. “Tim’s my name. That’s George with the flashlight, our sailing master. Trondur, there, with the head of curls, is an artist and hunter from the Faroe Islands. The gangly one with the big feet is Arthur. We call him ‘Boots.’ As for Brendan …” Tim made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Brendan is the boat.”

  Their fears were confirmed. Fingal had left them in the wrong place! Jean looked dismayed. Dana didn’t.

  “This is the Brendan voyage!” she cried, delighted. “What’s the date? What year is it?” she asked the captain.

  “It’s June 13,” he said, puzzled, “1977.”

  “Câlisse,” Jean swore.

  “The last trip!” Dana said, excited.

  She knew the story well, it was one of her favorites, the life-saver that had helped her survive a dose of chicken pox at age nine. Gabriel had taken a week to read the book to her, as they pored over the maps and photographs in it. The author was the captain himself, Tim Severin. A true tale of heroic adventure, the book described how Tim built a boat of leather and wood, following instructions from a medieval manuscript. Then he set sail with a crew of three men to prove that Brendan the Navigator, an Irish saint, could have reached Canada in the sixth century A.D., long before the Vikings or any other explorers.