The Well of the North Wind

by Steven, Kenneth;

  By the time they came in there was no sea at all and the skies were torn between blue and grey. He was being welcomed, his arm held, and then he was helped ashore. They were asking about Marua, about Lua, about Innis himself – their voices different and their voices the same.

  The island was a soft green. It lay low and gentle in the water, its edges indented with white sand. The sun came and went; there was almost no wind at all. They brought him to a dwelling and he realized how empty he was, how much he had left behind. They told him to rest and they left him and he slept, dreamless.

  *

  He awoke in darkness, rested and calm. He heard soft voices somewhere close by and sat up. He was aware he had not eaten for a whole day; his head was light and strange, but something thrilled him – he did not feel hunger. Everything was full of light. Those were the words that came to him; he did not know from where. And he knew what he wanted; he wanted to write. Things moved in his hands and were alive. That was when they came best, through the night; sometimes there was so much he did not know where to begin and his hands shook with yearning to begin, to get everything down.

  ‘Fian?’

  Someone had seen him, was coming to find him. They had stopped talking and were coming to see if he was all right, and he smiled. He was glad he had said yes.

  All those years and everything washed away. Now he could begin at last.

  *

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘The boy, sir.’

  ‘Come closer. Closer.’

  He went towards the thickness of a peat fire; though he was well enough used to the turf smoke of home, his eyes smarted now. He went forward and saw nothing as he went; his left foot stumbled on something.

  ‘Let me see your hands.’

  He held them out, shyly, and they were taken softly in those of the older man. Fian felt his own hands small then, yet did not quite know why. The others were so large and soft it was as though they contained no bones. Still he held them and seemed to study them.

  ‘Yours are the fourth pair of hands.’

  Fian looked up, bewildered, and he heard the smile in the master’s voice.

  ‘Three others have poured their love and light into the book, boy. Yours are the fourth pair, and perhaps the last.’

  All at once Colum let his hands fall and Fian saw the edge of his face, as it is possible to see the edge of the moon on a certain night. Just the pale rim of it and the rest in shadow. There was silence and Fian heard the sound of his own heart; he wanted to speak for he was afraid of silence, and then he thought of writing in the sand, how there had been no need of talk then and of how he had not missed it. How even he had known it had been good that it was gone. He looked up again and saw the lit edge of Colum’s face.

  ‘There are times this will be the last place on earth you want to be, boy. When there has been storm for five days and no leaving your cell. When you have sat beside the same man to eat for years and feel you cannot love him any more. Or when your hands are empty and have nothing more to say.’

  ‘And what is there to do then?’

  Colum smiled at the impetuous tone. ‘Go and find Ruach, even as I am telling you now! Go, be gone, get out!’

  Fian fled, blind, out through the blue smoke, yet even as he went he heard Colum’s laughter behind him. Had he passed or failed? He felt young and awkward and angered as he searched for the man called Ruach. He went to the stonemasons and they would not stop their deliberations over the markings on a stone for a long time. When one of them looked up at last he jerked his head in Fian’s direction.

  ‘I’m looking for Ruach.’

  The man pretended to look under his bench and above his head and finally between the boy’s legs. Then he shook his head extravagantly and returned to his measurements. The two of them laughed.

  Fian went out with a face like a sunset and stormed off down a path. He almost knocked over the tiny man who was working the garden. ‘Ruach. Do you know where Ruach is?’

  The tiny man indicated that he couldn’t speak. But he stood tall (and even then he didn’t reach the height of Fian’s shoulder) and pointed down away from the settlement and the chapels. Fian looked at him and understood that might be the answer, that was all.

  The settlement was busy with laughter and talk and the barking of dogs. Fian decided he would follow the direction of the dumb man’s finger and see where it brought him. He still smarted from the laughter of the stonemasons, and all at once he thought of his mother and brothers. He felt a warmth in his chest and he remembered her hand over his own on days when she had time for him and was not angry. He thought of Colum’s words and felt he did not want to be here now, far less in another five years. By the time he had thought of all this he was out onto the rocks and heather and the talk lay behind him. He stopped and turned for a moment to look back, and then it came to him that he was free, that no one needed him at that moment, that Colum himself had told him, had commanded him, to find Ruach.

  The otter played with the sea. It lay in a lagoon of blue water, and the sea was so slow and gentle it almost was not there at all. Once in a while a ripple passed over the water and it rose almost imperceptibly. The otter, lying on its back and fussing with something, rose all but invisibly too. And then, at once, like a thing possessed, it was careering about, under and over and through the water, so that Fian could hardly keep track of its movement. Just as suddenly, there it was on its back once more with a tremendous flapping of a fish, and the otter nibbled at it, the flapping held secure in its paws.

  By the time it dived and was gone as though it had never been at all, Fian had forgotten the stonemasons and his hurt pride. He had forgotten too about home. He had walked a long way now, yet he did not fear he would fail to find his way back.

  In a way he might never have left the headland where he had grown up. All of this was what made up the landscape of home: broken pieces of red-black rock, the curves of smoothed-out bays between filled with pure white sand. A huge sky that always knew the wind, and inland, glens of flowers that fought against it. On the horizon great grey tumblings of mountains, sometimes snow-shadowed and grazed on their summits. That was all, and it went on for ever. For all Fian knew, this was how the whole earth might be.

  He remembered Ruach and started off once more, up and over a great long whaleback of hillside. Two ravens played in the clear air; they talked to each other as they rolled and fell. For a moment he wished like a child he might know what it was to fly. Then he forgot all of it and the ravens were gone as he saw the south coast of the island. The sun was on him and he had to raise his right hand to shield his eyes from its fierceness. All at once he wanted to run, and without thinking he began careering down through the heather, heedless of rocks and twisted ankles. He was a boy and he wanted to feel the wind through him. He liked to go so fast it felt faster than himself; he no longer knew what he was doing but he trusted his arms and legs. And he ran down into a valley.

  It was a bowl of a place, surrounded by hills on all sides, except the one that lay ahead. He stopped, out of breath, his hands held at his sides. He felt something and did not know what it was. The sky above was pure blue, but there was no sun. There was something here that was not himself. It did not feel threatening; he would have stood in the same place at midnight with the whole fur mist of the stars above him and not felt afraid. He looked all around and there was no one, yet he felt a presence all the same. He felt healed.

  He did not think it right to run thereafter. He walked slowly over the mossy grass and the bed of a small stream, up over the rise of a last hill and down onto a beach. A rubble of boulders first, then round stones as big as a fist, before smaller pebbles once more. The wind full in his face and the sea coming in like great white dogs, leaping and playing and breaking. He was so far away in the world of his thoughts he hardly felt the hand on his shoulder. He whirled round.

  ‘So Colum sent you to find me.’

  He had no time to answer before the
man turned away to his left and suddenly bent down to the shingle and began sifting it with his right hand. Fian was saying something about having come the night before, about wondering where to find him, and all of it was useless.

  ‘These are what I come to find,’ said Ruach, and he held up over his right shoulder a stone that was green, meadow green with flecks of white. Fian took it carefully and it rolled into his palm. It was polished by the sea and when he held it up to the light it changed, became a little globe of translucence, orange-yellow bright.

  Later they sat down in a gully out of the wind’s knife. Ruach took out a handful of stones from a fold of his robe, and Fian gasped at them. They were green as moss and polished; one or two of them big as a thumbnail.

  ‘Sometimes I can’t sleep,’ Ruach said. ‘I have no rest for days and I know something is going to happen. I am certain that something is coming but I don’t know what it is. And this is my hiding place.’

  ‘But Colum knows you are here?’ Fian asked uselessly.

  ‘Yes.’ The other smiled. ‘And he has also sent you to bring me back.’

  He got up and that was it. They started on their way to the settlement.

  *

  Why they woke him at night to bring him to the book he never knew. There was a wind that came from everywhere, that blew the light of their lanterns out over the sides of the path. There was a yellow patch of moon that darted through clouds, racing. Why had they waited until now, until the very middle of the night?

  They climbed the stone steps and he heard the wind raging at the tower. It seemed to shake as they went higher, as they curled the spiral towards a top they never seemed to reach. They said nothing; his mouth filled with questions but always they fell to dust. He was frightened of being taken for a fool.

  Then the room, and by that time his hands were paralysed with cold. They brought him over and he fought so his teeth would not chatter. They stood over him, watching not the page but rather him. It was beautiful. What more could be said or thought? It was all he had dreamed of seeing, since the days his hand learned to draw in the sand of home, since first he heard tell of books like this.

  They said things to him then, over each other; that this work was his alone, that his hands had been made by God for this gift alone and he must guard them. He must care for them as a treasure of the Holy Spirit; he must not risk them or shame them. And the light of the lanterns fluttered and shadowed the page; the pools of blue and red, the dark and perfect script. Everything tumbled through his head and he was nodding, he found himself nodding and promising even though he scarcely knew what he said. And something hot touched his forehead and a cup was put to his lips and he drank. He coughed because of the strength of whatever it was, and he lost his breath for a moment; and then before he knew anything else they were bringing him down the staircase once more. They talked and if it was to him he heard nothing. He felt dizzy and was only glad when he reached the bottom at last and the swirling of the wind once more. And then, before he knew anything else, he was back where he had begun and the darkness was warm and he crept into the warmth of his bed. And all of it might have been but a dream.

  *

  ‘So, you are going further north, Larach? And what is it you are hoping to do? Find yourself?’ There was a smile on Colum’s face.

  ‘No, I hope to leave myself behind. I hope to come to a place where there is nothing but God.’

  ‘That place is called heaven, Larach. I fear you will be searching a long time for a place where you are not. But if you find it, come back and tell me where it is, because I would wish to go there too.’

  There was silence and Colum turned away to the shadows and picked up something from the darkness. They thought perhaps he had gone for good but suddenly he was back, his full frame overshadowing them all. That was what they said: such a frame and such quiet.

  ‘If you have come for my blessing, Larach, then you shall have it. I have been aware of your restlessness a long time, and that you are a navigator and that the sea is thick in your blood. I cannot know what you will find and you cannot know, but you will put your faith in the One who stilled the storm on Galilee, and that is enough for me. Have you companions to go with you?’

  Larach nodded. ‘Three, Colum. All of them have the same dream.’

  ‘And what are they running away from?’

  But now Larach was silent and could not answer. Colum’s voice was mild, gentle as a child’s. The question was straight and steady. ‘I ran away too, once, Larach. So I ask myself the same question.’

  ‘Perhaps it is the noise, master. There are men cutting stone and there is eternal talking, day and night. There are manuscripts being copied and there are scholars learning and discussing and arguing. Sometimes it is hard to listen to the heart. And that has weighed on me a long time, the desire to listen to my heart.’

  Colum thought and was about to speak, and then he dropped his head and nodded. He nodded a long time and understood. There was nothing for it but to understand.

  ‘I will miss you, Larach,’ he said, and his voice was gentler still. ‘I will miss your arguments and your struggle, your refusal to accept what you do not comprehend. But whether you leave yourself or find yourself I think it is right that you should go. If the noise is too great in your heart, then go north and find silence.’

  ‘Thank you, master. I think that if I do return I will have learned to carry silence with me. I think all of us will have learned that.’

  ‘If, Larach – if you return?’

  Larach nodded, just and no more, and smiled and turned away.

  *

  It was a week later Fian woke and knew what was in his hands. It was still dark, the very middle of the night, and when he went outside there was nothing but the huge wind of the stars. And as he looked he remembered home and that night of gazing at the same stars, and how he had felt there on the edge of the monks’ world. He remembered Innis. Was it any different now? Was he one of them or was it only his hands that were here? Was his heart elsewhere? And then he moved on into the darkness because he did not want to answer all that now. He wanted to draw.

  He put wood on the fire and warmed his hands. It had sunk to an orange eye, a single globe that made no sound. It melted the twigs and he spread his hands before it, thinking of nothing and everything.

  He had woken with the figure in his head, and he was afraid that if he waited until morning it would be lost. He had kept it and carried it like a living coal; he was sure that he could find it. Then he knew how it had been born. It was the otter, the knot of the otter in the bay that afternoon he met Colum for the first time. A symbol of eternity: a head that curled all the way into a tail.

  At first there was a tremble to his hands; not fear that he would fail, it was not that. A desire of being certain; a desire to find perfectly. But then that passed; he flowed into a deeper self where nothing at all existed but the page and the finding. There was neither cold nor stone nor fire nor the wind that pattered against the stone. None of it was there; he flowed into the form and that was all. He had left himself. And by the time he had finished and returned from that place and shivered in the cold of the first dawn light, there was far more he had not known was to be found.

  And that was where they found him asleep, curled over, when they slipped up the steps as the first red light seeped from the rugged eastern skies. They smiled and touched their lips and were glad, for they knew they had found the fourth hand.

  So the island woke, and the bell tanged out in the quiet. A boat slid into the stillness of a bay to fish, and the arguments began once more among the scholars. The gardener who could not speak looked up, his hands thick with dirt, and praised God in the silence of his heart.

  *

  He first saw the girl one day when he was doing nothing. He had worked for hours, since the middle of the night, and his eyes felt hardly his own. It was strange to walk; he wanted almost to be down on all fours to be closer to the ground. And so he w
ent, into the moor and the birdsong, under the blue skies. Over to the west he went, into the island’s heart, and the larks rose up around him singing, and slowly his eyes were no longer strange to him.

  It was as he crouched, there in the middle of everywhere, that he heard the girl. He heard her before he saw her; heard her singing and looked all round at first, not sure if he was dreaming. Because of the stillness of the day she was not close by and he knew she had not heard him. She was gathering flowers and sang to herself and he watched her, felt strange as he crouched there in the heather.

  For a moment he feared terribly she would look up and see him and think he had followed her out here, for that was all wrong. So he crouched deeper, foolishly, as though somehow he might be invisible, even though his whole back and head were above the heather. And then he did not fear any longer, for he saw she was so absorbed in what she did she would not have seen him, or hardly cared even if she had. He saw the flowers she gathered, and realized he had not looked at them before. They were like candle flames: tall and white, the length of a finger. They did not grow everywhere, but rather in little villages, and he held one in his fingers, though he did not pick it. She had a basket beside her and laid those she picked in it, but she did not choose all. Some she passed over, and that left him the more curious.

  So he felt courage and curiosity rise within him, and in the end he half rose, silent as a shadow, and crept round closer to her back so she would be in no danger of seeing him. She sang on; the same song, the same sweet, high voice. He crouched down deep once more, for all the world like a hare hiding from the hunter. He saw her face now as she half turned for flowers, caught the blue of her eyes and the gold-brown of her hair that rustled at her neck. And he felt a strangeness he had never known before in all his life, and then again came fear like a wave that suddenly, right then, she would know he was there and turn and see him. And he found himself praying, muttering a prayer that she would not and that he would not be discovered. So came the breeze and rustled the whole moorland; he saw it moving, saw the wind’s hand strumming the blades and the flowers, and passing too like a breath through the gold-brown of her hair.