The Well of the North Wind

by Steven, Kenneth;

  And all at once she did look up, and he barely breathed for fear that she would turn, yet she did not. The basket was all but full and she got up, slowly and strangely. She walked away from him, back the way she must have come and the way that he had come, limping and slow. And she sang no longer.

  *

  ‘Fian, what is the longest thing in the world?’

  He shook his head, not particularly wanting to know the answer.

  ‘A sermon on the evils of drink!’

  He smiled, humouring them and hoping they might go away. But nothing is as funny as a half-drunk man, and the three youngsters had stolen as much as they could carry and were getting rid of it as fast as they could. One of them lurched and moved away once more.

  ‘But can you tell us, can you tell us what the fastest creature in the world is called?’

  ‘A saddle.’

  ‘A saddle? Why on earth should a saddle be the fastest?’

  And the three of them collapsed with laughter at the inanity of the thought. They cried until their cheeks coursed with tears.

  ‘Dear Fian, won’t you have some beer? It would cheer you. Just a little? Just one tiny glass?’

  He shoved them away and went to the window. They had forgotten him already and were talking about their saddle. It was as funny to them as it had been before. And tomorrow they had to dig turf and carry wood, and horses’ hooves would be dancing in their heads. All thought of saddles would be forgotten. He tried not to look forward to their pain and failed.

  Who was the girl? What was her name and where did she come from?

  *

  He loved the scriptorium more than anywhere. It felt underground though it was not. The warmth of soft voices as they copied; the click and whine of the fire, and the rough blue scent of the smoke. The joy of what was being found and copied; the care over every letter and word. He read things that carried him away, that were beautiful with their talk of another world, and he thought what it meant to leave everything to follow this, to find something that could not be seen. He felt sometimes like a man who looked in from a night of snowstorm to a lit place of laughter and love. But he did not dare go in, or find the way.

  ‘Come and read with us, Fian!’

  The one who was nicknamed the Eagle for his nose called him over and they sat crouched, half a dozen of them, young and burning with the words. They read for no more than the pleasure of those words, and he crouched there too for a time and was carried away. But then he went out into the gathering night and the rain splintering the side of his face until it was sore, and he felt bitter and knew nothing. He loved the letters and the figures that lay in his hands, but the land that lay behind them – he thought he saw it sometimes like the magical land they spoke of on the sea’s western edge, but then he blinked and it was gone.

  That night he crouched by the window of the dwelling and was homesick. He wanted the soft hand of his mother in his hair, and her words when his brothers slept and she was content and without anger. Once at least he had folded his face close in to her breast and she had not pushed him away but told him a story, about a mouse that lost its tail. He could not remember how the story ended for he had fallen asleep, her hand still curling the hair at the bottom of his neck. He had felt safer and more content than ever before, and he never wanted to move from that place. But when he woke she had gone and his head lay in wet ground and she was shouting close by, raging about what she did not have. And he wondered as he got up if all of it had been a dream.

  He wondered now, at that moment, if he should stay or leave. And he remembered Colum’s words and thought how it was hardly the blink of an eye since he arrived. And he thought too of how his mother would scarcely welcome his return: she might reach out her arms to hug him on the first evening, but by the next she would be cursing the extra mouth that had to be fed and wanting him out from under her feet. What he wished for was impossible: to wander up the path home and be there with her for a few blessed hours, and then to slip away again before the sun’s rim tipped the far hills.

  ‘Fian, you asked about a girl!’

  He swung round, embarrassed that he had been so carried away. It was Cuan, one of the young scribes, and he came in breathless with his hair to the four winds. Big-eyed and kind, he might be trusted to take gold to the furthest corners of the earth and not touch it. They sat together and Fian found himself again, listened.

  ‘She is the daughter of a fisherman. She has a limp, for something happened to her when she was born, and she is sick. No one knows quite what ails her. And her mother is a healer. Why was it that you wanted to know?’

  He clapped Cuan on the shoulder and smiled, shaking his head. The boy was like a puppy, eager and glad, with not a bone of harm in him. ‘No real reason, Cuan. Thank you for finding out!’

  But it made a difference that night in the darkness, as he lay and remembered her and wondered.

  *

  Sometimes the children from the island came and watched them. They gathered like a flock of lambs to look at the chiselling and the carrying and the arguments. They peeped their heads over the edge of the settlement wall and if anyone suddenly came too close they scattered once more, down over the rocky grass and away.

  One day he took them by surprise and asked them if they would like to follow him. They glanced at him and turned away, and kicked their feet and bowed their heads, and he didn’t know if they understood what he asked them. But when he let them decide, after he had gone down the hill from the settlement and the chapels, he saw them straggling after him, so in the end they must have decided he was safe enough. They had strength in numbers, and when he turned back smiling, they were coming after him.

  He knew a tiny beach right below them on the east side. At low tide it was sheltered; a little boomerang of white shell sand that seemed never cluttered with seaweed and shells. That was how he found it now. He went down onto the sand and crouched, and he waited for them to come and find him. And he remembered Innis.

  They would watch no nearer than the edge of the bank where he had dropped down. They twisted grasses with their fingers and laughed a little, shy and strange.

  ‘I will draw something for you,’ Fian said. ‘I will draw you a boat!’

  Then they came closer. As the boat grew and came alive in the sea that might have been real around it, they watched intently. They came down little by little, intrigued and held by the speed at which his hand moved in the sand, and he thought again of his beloved teacher and of all those hours of learning on the beach, and he wondered where Innis might be now. By the time Fian had finished, they had gathered close and were watching, but they took care not to touch a thing.

  ‘I learned to do this when I was your ages,’ Fian said, still kneeling. ‘I had a good teacher and I loved to draw. It was the best thing in the world and it still is. That’s what I do up there; I work on the book that will soon be finished at last!’

  He watched them and thought of that gap between the grown world and the child’s. He didn’t know how to climb back; it was too late and he was too old, young though he really was. He smiled to them again and jumped up onto the bank and they scampered away and were gone. And suddenly he thought of the girl and wondered if he could find her, if there was any way he could see her again.

  *

  They woke him one night and it seemed to take a long time to return from the world of his dreams. He was asking them things in the shadows, as though he had travelled to the spirit world itself for guidance and was on the edge of hearing things, bearing answers back. He felt dragged out of sleep; up out of the depths towards light.

  ‘Fian. Fian!’

  And at last he knew that they were laughing at him, the circle of faces above his cot, and he wiped dribble from his mouth and was awake and embarrassed. They did not truly laugh at him; he was already too much of a friend for that. They laughed at his strangeness.

  One of them, Neil, knelt down beside him. The dark curls shone. They were all sc
ribes and they had been on the island several years now. They thought of little else: everything was the love of words, the creation of words.

  ‘Come with us, Fian! Something has been brought here and we want to show you. Forgive us disturbing your sleep. But we wanted you to be there too!’

  He rose and the cold was wretched. He still said almost nothing, afraid that the words he spoke might be nonsense. And they weighed words. But once they were out into the cold rush of the night and the moon’s fierce silver it was as though water was sluiced over his head and he was awake. He looked out east over the island that lay beside them; the long straggles of its headlands – and every rock was bright and clear. You could have walked the night through under that moon and never once missed your footing.

  ‘What is it that we’re going to find?’ he asked, catching up with them.

  ‘Wait and see!’ Neil answered, throwing back a smile. ‘Let it be secret till then!’

  They left the settlement, walking south, and kept close to the shore. Even then Fian thought about the girl and wondered if he would see her again. Surely it was here she must live . . . Yet what would he ever say to her? And how could he even consider it when he had all but become one of them? There was no use in his wishing . . .

  Then close to fields and over a wild scramble of rocks. The moon was gone a moment in clouds and he was more careful; he remembered their words that first night he was taken to see the book, and the promise he had made to care always for his hands. And suddenly they started down this rubble of boulders and grass towards the sea.

  They went easily, as though they had been here many times before and knew their steps in darkness as easily as in daylight. He wanted to call them back for he stumbled and felt sure he must fall, but he let them go ahead and he picked his way, anxious and uncertain.

  When he looked for a moment he saw a tiny inlet – nothing more than a jutting between the steep rocks – and there was a boat waiting. Fian came clattering down after them and they smiled at him again.

  Neil clapped him on the shoulder and his eyes glinted. ‘As well you work with your hands and not your feet!’ he murmured.

  And so they stood together at last on the edge of the rocks, and Fian’s eyes followed them down into the boat. Two men sat there, one in each end, and two boxes lay between them. The boat thudded against the rocks and arms reached out to bring up the boxes.

  ‘This is where I fear I won’t trust your hands,’ Neil said softly. ‘What’s inside is too precious. But one day you’ll learn.’

  Strange how they found a path he would never have seen, back up through the steepest of rocks. And it was slippery with slime yet not a foot wobbled, and then at last they were up onto high ground once more. Whatever it was they had brought with them, the men had been paid. Coins shone and were given once the boxes were handed safely across.

  ‘Shall we put him out of his misery?’ Neil asked on the plateau. ‘Will we let him see before we send him back to his dreams?’

  Not a box but a fortress. Layers and compartments and drawers; all made out of the darkest wood, and smooth. As he knelt he thought that it could not have been made by hands in Ireland; there was something other about it he could not have explained yet understood. Even the scent of it was from far away, exotic.

  At last from the very heart of the box they brought out six vials made of glass. He had only seen glass once or twice before in his life, and these were squat bottles – dark also. Neil held one up to the moon in front of his eyes. He held it with trembling fingers. ‘What is it, Fian?’ he whispered. ‘What do you think it is?’

  It was as though all at once his tiredness washed back over him. He could not think and he did not know, though somehow he felt on the edge of knowing. Had it not been the very middle of the night . . .

  ‘Ink!’ Neil said, bringing the bottle back down, slow and careful. ‘Ink from the other side of the world. For your book.’

  *

  ‘I have seen something,’ Ruach said, ‘but I do not know what it is.’

  And there was a strangeness to the days, though was it because of the knowledge of Ruach’s words, or was it really because they were strange? No wind; not even the grass seemed to stir in the fields, and there was always a breeze on the island – even if only the very edge of one. As though the world waited and held its breath; a single lark rose in the blue skies and twirled its song. The sea lay made of a single taut skin; it did not ripple and did not lap the shore. Ruach said in bleakness that there was no use in looking for green stones. Nothing would be given up by the sea in this stillness. He wandered about the settlement, slow and miserable, not knowing what it was that ailed him.

  But it was the little dumb man that fell ill, the gardener, though who knew if that was what Ruach had seen. They found him on his side in the earth, scrabbling, and his mouth searching for words he could never utter. And it was as though they saw him for the first time. For he had been there but behind all of them, grey and silent. Now he occupied the centre and they brought him new good water from the well and held thimblefuls to his mouth. They laid him on a soft bed and fussed about him, wrapped him in layers even though the night was warm and the air still. Fian looked at that moment and he saw a strange red flicker low in the sky, and a few seconds later came the answering drawn slowness of thunder.

  Then, as the rain began to fall outside and the heat broke at last, a woman walked in with a basket, and a girl was behind her. And the girl limped as she walked.

  *

  The woman sang all the time. She sang something that might have been as old as the hills themselves. It was beautiful, and to Fian’s ears it told of the sea and a place in the sea. And he imagined home as she sang; a place close to where the monks had had their chapel, out at the wildest edge of the rocks.

  The scholars and scribes fell away now as she sang; they stepped back and seemed to freeze, watching her and waiting. She and the girl sat the little man upright (though still he slumped over as though deep in sleep). She opened his mouth and put drops of liquid into it, and bathed his forehead and put something soft against his throat. This way and that she stepped, and always she sang, always her voice carried through the chamber. And Fian noticed the scent of flowers; so strong was it he felt almost dizzy, and he remembered again the day out on the moor when he came upon the girl by accident.

  He watched her now as she followed the woman, and he felt sure they must be mother and daughter. The girl kept her eyes always on the older woman; waited until she had finished what she needed to do and then let drops from another liquid fall on the tiny man’s forehead and chest and finally his mouth. And the air became thick and dizzy with the scents, and suddenly and without warning the song was done.

  ‘There is no more that I can do,’ the woman said, turning to the monks. ‘He may live and he may not, but there is no more that I can do. And now I am . . . I must go home.’

  She sounded exhausted, as though all of this had drained her utterly. Fian thought she might fall even before she left the chamber, but the girl reached out and supported her. Both of them limped out of the shadows, and still not one of the men had spoken a single word. It was as though they did not know what to say, these men who rarely knew when to be silent.

  Fian stood at the edge of the group, and suddenly it was as if he woke from deep slumber. He found himself chasing out after them into the warm night and the flicker of storm in the skies. He heard his heart chasing.

  ‘Thank you for what you have done for Cuillin,’ he said, and he was closest to the girl, and it was to her he looked as he spoke. He thought she smiled as she turned towards him, but perhaps that was only what he hoped. She seemed to think before she spoke; her words did not form themselves at once. And he remembered that there had been something other about her mother’s words, as though she found them strange in shape.

  ‘It was our joy,’ she said softly, and the words were slow and different. ‘We hope that he may be well.’

&nbs
p; And then she turned away, and he knew that now she would be gone if he did not say something here, at this moment. He breathed and stopped walking; stood just there at the edge of the settlement. ‘My name is Fian and I am working on the book.’

  And he did not know what more to say. But she turned and now, even in the darkness, he heard the edge of her smile.

  *

  ‘They are in a dead place,’ said Ruach.

  It was the middle of the night and there was nothing but the whoom of the wind. A single candle struggled to live, there in the darkness between them. Colum stood at the edge of the cloister: there were no stars that night. ‘But they are not dead themselves?’

  ‘That I cannot say,’ said Ruach. ‘I only saw an island that was dead, but for fresh water. Living water that leapt from the very rocks.’

  ‘It might be real and it might be metaphor,’ Colum mused, and his shadow moved against the candle flame. Somewhere else, far away, the wind roared, and it came to Ruach that the wind could be many things in many places at one time. And he had not thought of that before.

  ‘All I know is that Larach is the best navigator there is,’ Colum said, and his voice was softer as he came forward to stand close to Ruach. ‘We can do nothing but trust them to God. It is as though we must ship their oars. We cannot fight against the seas for them. We must ship their oars and trust them to God.’