Feminist Fairy Tales

by Barbara G. Walker

  Gijo talked so much about enemies that Barbidol thought about them too. One day in a fit of inspiration, she wrote a poem that she entitled “Against the Enemies.” Triumphantly, she hurried to read it to Gijo.

  “Listen!” she cried.

  AGAINST THE ENEMIES

  They tell you to hate,

  Those devils to break,

  But when the war ends,

  They say, “Oh, now wait—

  We made a mistake;

  Those devils are friends.”

  She sat back and waited modestly for his praise, but Gijo only glared at her in a silence that went on too long, until Barbidol began to feel uneasy. “Don’t you like it?” she asked. “It tells about enemies. See, it rhymes and everything.”

  “What kind of stupid kapok is that?” Gijo snarled. “What are you, some kind of crazy pinko bleeding-heart parlor liberal or something? Take your silly poem and get lost.”

  Such unexpected rejection of her first literary inspiration infuriated Barbidol, but she swallowed her anger and tried to smile. Remembering the “How to Be Popular” advice column’s recommendation for getting a boyfriend to “open up,” she inquired about what the column called his Personal Life Goal.

  “What’s your Personal Life Goal?” she asked.

  “My what?”

  “You know—what you want to be, your ultimate ambition.”

  “Got no ambitions,” said Gijo. “Take out the enemy, that’s all.”

  “If you could be the kind of person you most admire, what would you be?”

  “A hero, I guess.”

  “Don’t you want to be my hero?” Barbidol asked, fluttering her nylon eyelashes provocatively.

  Gijo snickered. “You don’t hand out no medals,” he said. “You ain’t nothing but a dumb broad.”

  “How dare you!” Barbidol cried. Her anger welled up, and she slapped his face as hard as she could. Gijo grabbed her and shoved her up against the side of his box.

  “Listen, doll, don’t try to give me no hard time. I’m pretty sick of your airhead chatter. Broads like you should be seen and not heard.” He shook her shoulders for emphasis.

  “You’re being totally nasty,” Barbidol exclaimed. “You don’t really like me at all.”

  “I like you all right, as long as you keep your mouth shut. You talk too much, and you don’t know nothing important.”

  Barbidol burst into tears. “Let go of me, you moron!” she yelled. “Why did I ever think you’d make a decent boyfriend? You’re a bloody-minded pig with nothing between your ears but plastic explosive!”

  At this Gijo slapped her face in return and pushed her away. Barbidol ran off crying.

  It was the end of her flirtation with Gijo. She never went near him again. She never again spoke of military matters. She returned to Kendall, declaring that he was the escort with whom she shared a true, profound philosophy. Kendall was glad to hear this, though he hadn’t been aware that they shared any philosophy, profound or otherwise.

  One day Barbidol asked him, “Kendall, are you patriotic?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “What’s your patriotic Personal Life Goal?”

  “What any patriotic guy wants, I guess. To have lots of friends, parties, a house with a swimming pool, a condo in the Bahamas, a wide-screen TV, a wall-size stereo, and a three-car garage with a BMW, a Porsche, and a Ferrari.”

  “I can relate to that,” said Barbidol. “Do you want to be a hero?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Heroes are guys who get destroyed.”

  “Oh.”

  Presently, Gijo was sold to a small boy who liked to stage battles with real fire and serious mutilations. He tore off one of Gijo’s arms, stuck an ice pick through his body, interred him in a plastic body bag, and finally burned him severely in a fireworks explosion. Gijo was forcibly retired, a wounded veteran, permanently scarred and half melted. He spent the rest of his days doing nothing at all in a dirty, jumbled, neglected toy box.

  Barbidol and Kendall were sold to a little girl who loved them, treated them well, and provided them with many new clothes. They lived happily ever after.

  TEN

  The Holy Grail of the medieval Christian myths—the quest stories of the Arthurian cycle—actually originated in European pagan tradition, in the form of the sacred Cauldron, another blood-filled vessel signifying death and rebirth. Although the Christianized Grail legends represented a patriarchal world, even in these the Grail was housed in a temple of women and revealed only to suitably gallant or woman-friendly knights. Joseph Campbell has pointed out that the lost Grail really represented the lost religion of pagan ancestors, whose ideas of life after death were quite different from those of Christian theologians.

  Unlike Sir Galahad, Sir Lancelot, Sir Bors, and the rest, my Sir Vivor seeks not the Christianized transformation but the Cauldron itself, as a symbolic survivor of the older, earth-centered religion. Thus his story reverses the reversal and returns to the ancient concept of the world-creating womb.

  Once upon a time there was a young squire named Vivor, apprenticed to one of the king’s knights, the notorious Sir Render, who was known for his wild, roistering ways. Sir Render loved winebibbing, wenching, gaming, and jousting, more or less in that order. He would begin drinking wine on first rising in the morning (or early afternoon) and would continue all day, becoming surly and truculent by evening. He would pick fights with other knights at the table round. He would crudely paw ladies and serving maids alike. He would kick dogs or serfs out of his way. He sometimes showed up at tournaments too drunk to hold his lance steady. Sir Render was not an easy master, but young Vivor tried to serve him faithfully. Vivor was a conscientious lad with a serious turn of mind. Unlike other young squires, he actually knew how to read. During long hours of waiting for Sir Render to sleep off his stupor, Vivor read books instead of playing at dice or quarterstaves with other apprentices.

  Vivor sometimes tried to engage his master in philosophical discussion, hoping to learn about the world from an older and presumably wiser person. Usually, Sir Render only slapped him on the back hard enough to make him cough and shouted cheerily that too much thinking would shrivel his private parts. Sir Render’s remarks nearly always were delivered at shouting volume.

  Vivor also listened to the quieter voices of old beldames and serving women about the royal castle, when they told ancient stories by the fire on winter evenings, or when they sang ancient narrative songs over the washtubs and embroidery hoops. From such sources he learned about the Holy Cauldron, so secret and so magical that folk hardly dared to speak of it.

  It was, so the whispers went, the true source of all life and death. To look upon it was to become a god. But it was hidden in a fairy castle far away, where only one person had ever dared to venture. That was the famous knight Sir Valance; the great warrior had vanished on his quest for the Cauldron and was never seen again.

  Vivor resolved that when he became a knight, he would find the castle of the Holy Cauldron. He asked the oldest of the court ladies where the castle was, and she told him that the directions could be had only from the Witch of the North, who had been a great priestess and had since retired to her forest home. He kept this information in mind.

  As Vivor’s patron knight sank deeper into wine sickness, he suffered bouts of indigestion, jaundice, and befuddlement. Eventually Sir Render became too ill to accompany his liege lord on raiding expeditions into neighboring kingdoms. He stayed in bed, drinking, groaning, and puking, while the other knights trotted gallantly forth in quest of gold, girls, and glory. Vivor remained with his master, dutifully holding his head over the basin, privately dreaming of his own glory to come. He imagined that he would outshine all other knights because of the great worthiness of the high quest he had chosen.

  In due course, Sir Render succumbed to a final overdose of malmsey and died in his bed, a half-empty flagon clutched in one hand and a maidservant’s corset
in the other. The king condescended to fill his place in the ranks by knighting young Squire Vivor.

  His Majesty advised Vivor to go forth on his first quest—the duty of a newly initiated knight—as soon as possible, the better to heal his grief for his late master. Actually, Vivor was not at all grieved to see the last of the bibulous Sir Render, but he bowed to the king and said he would obey.

  “What will your quest be, Sir Vivor?” asked the king.

  “Sire, I intend to search for the castle of the Holy Cauldron.”

  There was a collective gasp from the assembled knights, then a loud burst of laughter.

  “Surely, Sir Vivor, this is a fruitless quest,” the king said. “That castle is but a fable from the olden time. No one even knows in what direction it lies.”

  “There is one who knows,” Vivor persisted. “The Witch of the North will tell me.”

  Again the knights laughed.

  “You’re a foolish boy,” said the king. “But you’re officially a knight, and even the youngest, most callow knight has the right to choose whatever quest he fancies. Therefore, go with Our blessing, and may you return twelve months wiser at the end of your maiden year.”

  Overjoyed, Sir Vivor saddled his new horse and girded on his new sword. Within a few days he had prepared for his journey, and he set out on a fresh spring morning, feeling that he owned the world. The birds sang for him, the grass grew for him, the sun shone just to warm the cold metal of his armor. After a few hours, it grew altogether too warm, and Vivor sweated profusely inside his metal shell. But this discomfort failed to dent his confidence.

  A chill fell over his spirit, however, when he entered the forest that was the dwelling place of the Witch of the North. It was deep, dark, and dank, with huge trees whose roots ran everywhere and made his horse stumble. Through the upper branches of the forest canopy the wind spoke in strange tongues. A hawk flew screeching past his head. A dark, indistinct animal flitted across his path. He was startled by a serpent hanging from a branch, staring at him with lidless topaz eyes.

  By the time Sir Vivor reached the witch’s house, in a gloomy ravine, his ebullient mood had vanished altogether. He knocked on the door with the hilt of his sword. When the door silently swung inward without visible human agency, he stood still, disconcerted.

  “Well, are you going to come in, or are you going to stand there dithering?” a voice said.

  Vivor entered and stood looking around a dim, empty, stone-floored room. One cresset burned on the wall.

  “What do you want?” the voice demanded.

  “I’ve come to ask the Witch of the North the way to the castle of the Holy Cauldron,” Vivor said.

  The unseen questioner laughed. “Go away, boy. Go somewhere else and dream some other dream.”

  “I have sworn it on my honor as a maiden knight,” Vivor said firmly. “It’s my quest. I won’t leave here until I’ve seen the Witch of the North face-to-face.”

  “Well then, look at her!” said the voice. A door suddenly opened in what had seemed a blank wall. There stood a fantastic figure dressed in a thousand fluttering rags, with an ankle-length cloak of wiry red hair falling from under her pointed hat. Her face was dead white, distorted, and startlingly ugly. It gave Sir Vivor a pang of fright, until he realized that it was a mask.

  “Let me see your real face,” he said.

  “No one sees my real face.”

  “No matter if it is ugly,” he responded. “It can’t be any worse than your mask.”

  “Enough. What will you give me for the information you seek?”

  “I have nothing but my horse, my weapons, and my armor. If I give you any of those, I will be disabled. What do you want me to give?”

  “Give me your sacred word that if you find the castle of the Holy Cauldron, you will never reveal its location to any other human being.”

  “Gladly,” said Vivor. “You have my sacred word.”

  “All right then, listen.” She explained the route that he must follow, through the quaking bogs, over the Mist Mountains, along an abandoned stretch of the Highway of the Ancients, to the Stone Seacoast. There, she said, in a place where the sun never shines, he would find the castle of the Holy Cauldron. “Once you reach the castle, you’re on your own,” the witch said. “I have no knowledge of the enchantments they may use to repel unwanted visitors.”

  “How can there be a place where the sun never shines?” Vivor asked.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been there. I tell you as it was told to me.”

  Sir Vivor thanked the witch for her help and set off toward the quaking bogs. His horse balked at the edge, being wise enough to want to avoid such unsteady earth. Sir Vivor managed to prevail and drive it forward, but the poor animal trembled almost as much as the semiliquid ground. By keeping strictly to the witch’s directions, Vivor found the firm path. Only once did the horse misstep and slip down, one leg engulfed almost to the knee, but on the next step the hoof was safely snatched out of the sucking mud.

  As Vivor emerged from the bogs, the Mist Mountains rose before him, shrouded in their perpetual cloak of vapors. Night was drawing on. Vivor reflected that the trails through the mists would be difficult enough to find in daylight, let alone in the dark, so he camped and slept by the roadside. His sleep was disturbed by thin, wailing dream specters. He awoke chilled and stiff.

  The Mist Mountains proved harder to negotiate than he had expected. The mist was cold but stifling, with a sour odor that made him cough. Several times his horse wandered from the path, which was found again only after much trouble. The mist was so thick that, from the saddle, Vivor couldn’t see his horse’s feet. In the end he had to dismount and lead the horse, so as to feel the way with his own feet.

  All day he toiled in choking white clouds, until the dimming light showed him that night was coming again. Beginning to despair of ever emerging from the mountain fogs, he camped and again slept badly.

  He awoke thoroughly wet with condensation that had penetrated under his armor. To make matters worse, his trail rations were running low. Though his horse had no difficulty in finding forage, he himself had nothing left but some cheese that was going moldy, a few strips of leathery dried venison, and a chunk of bread so stale and hard that he had to break it with a rock. He had neither seen nor heard any game in the silent mountains. Not a bird called in the mist.

  Another day passed among the fog-enshrouded ridges. Toward dusk, Vivor sensed a thinning of the mists as the trail began to descend. Now and then a fitful breeze blew aside the curtains of vapor. He glimpsed a dim valley below. Somewhat encouraged by these signs, he and his horse pressed on with renewed hope. They arrived on the valley floor just as the last rays of the fallen sun were staining the dark clouds’ edges with a sullen red.

  The scene was bleak, but Vivor was glad to see clearly again. He saw a barren landscape, walled on one side by the Mist Mountains and on the other by a range of stony hills. The Highway of the Ancients ran through the center of the valley, along a small, sluggish stream. Here he watered his horse and camped for the night.

  The highway had been built during the lost dream time by people whose very name was long forgotten. It was a road of huge dressed stone blocks, laid with such skill that hardly any of them had crumbled or upheaved in centuries. No one knew how to build such a road anymore. People believed that it had been done with the aid of dark magic and so avoided the highway out of superstitious fear. Adding to this fear was the fact that all along the side of the road stood mysterious stone figures, like images of ancient, unknown deities, exuding who knew what dangerous influences. Their shoulders were hunched, their hands tense but empty, their faces half rubbed away by wind and weather. They seemed malignant in their immensely old age.

  Trying not to look at these glowering effigies, Sir Vivor arose in the morning and directed his horse northward along the road. He traveled for days through this empty, monotonous landscape, where wind sang over the low scrub. At night he seemed
to hear faint, jeering voices in the wind. Having run out of food, he grew hungrier by the day. He managed to kill a moorhen with one of his arrows, but after that meal he saw no more game.

  By degrees he became faint and semidelirious, wavering in the saddle while his horse plodded stolidly on. The highway, which seemed to have no end, shimmered before his eyes. Several times he thought he saw the stone figures move, or he thought he heard their voices addressing him. From the corner of his eye he saw one particularly grotesque figure make a sudden bounding leap toward him, with claws held menacingly aloft. But when he looked at it directly, it stood still.

  When Vivor came to the end of the highway, he was no longer sure whether his eyes saw reality or fever visions. Two tall pillars marked the curb where the stone blocks ceased. Beyond them there seemed to be nothing at all. Coming up to the brink, Sir Vivor saw that the road ended on top of a steep cliff. A switchback path led down into a very deep, very dark, narrow gorge or canyon that opened out northward into an arm of a dim, cold sea. Looking over the edge, Vivor saw a castle at the very bottom of the gorge, shaded by high beetling rock walls to the east, south, and west. “A place where the sun never shines,” he said to himself. “On the Stone Seacoast. This must be the place.”

  He urged his reluctant horse onto the switchback path. Though it protested, the animal was surefooted enough to pick its way down slowly and carefully, with only a few slips. At the bottom, in deep shade, stood the castle. It was built of dark basalt, with very thick walls and squat turrets at each corner. Banners, bearing the image of a round, black, three-legged cauldron, fluttered on the battlements. No other movement could be seen. There was no sound but the gnashing of the restless waves, slowly chewing away at the seacoast rocks.

  Vivor rode up to the castle gate and rang the bell that hung there. Presently a knight appeared, dressed in black armor, riding a black horse.

  “Who goes there?” he shouted.