The Walrus Mutterer

by Mandy Haggith

  Manigan produced a flask from his pocket and handed it to the old man, who sat on a block of driftwood, two briny eyes in a bundle of rags. He slugged and shuddered and the tide rose in his eyes. He handed the flask back to Manigan who lifted it to his mouth, drank, shook his head like a dog and grunted, then passed it to Rian. She shook her head, so he passed it over to Kino and began talking to the old man in a dialect Rian found hard to follow. It was full of words from the Cat Isles and as she tuned in she found it made some sort of sense.

  The talk was of storm and fish, the sea animals and spirits, the weather of the short summer, when the puffins departed their nests, the stranding of a whale last winter, the difficulty of finding enough driftwood to keep a fire burning, the labour of peat cutting. The old man pointed proudly to some iron tools in the rafters, then got to his feet and indicated Manigan should go outside. Rian followed. Round the back of the hut was a pile of peat turfs and Manigan was encouraged to help himself to several. He handed a few to Rian. ‘Unless you want to sleep with the old boy?’

  She shook her head.

  Manigan ducked back into the hut and exchanged a few words with Kino, then thanked the old man who returned indoors to enjoy the rest of the flask, no doubt.

  Manigan and Rian set off back down to the shore. They chose a spot that was sheltered among the rocks, then set about making it comfortable with a sail and some fleeces and blankets from the boat. There was little in the way of driftwood but up the cliff and over into a west-facing bay they found enough for a blaze. The old man’s peats would keep them warm through the night. Manigan produced oatmeal and a cooking pot, and as night came in they sat with full bellies by a warm fire, listening to the sea’s dialogue with the rocks.

  Stone

  Badger’s head was soon drooping. He curled up under the sail, snoring like a well-contented dog. From time to time, Manigan would go to check to see how Bradan was lying as the tide dropped away. Once he came back with the bag that had caused all the stramash and sat down by the fire with it. He pulled a flask out of his pocket and offered it to Rian.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Honey wine.’

  She took a swig. It was delicious.

  ‘Did you look at the stone?’ he asked her.

  She shook her head.

  ‘You really didn’t take a peek?’

  ‘Toma made out it was making him ill.’

  ‘The stone gives what its holder asks of it, mostly. Toma’s a wise old boy. He’d not want it.’

  ‘He was holding his head as if it was killing him.’

  ‘Aye, he could probably hear it whispering to him, threatening him. It wouldn’t like to be on Ussa’s boat, poor thing. Anyway, it’s safe again now.’

  ‘You talk about it as if it’s alive.’

  ‘You must. It has lived far longer than any mere mortal. When you see it you’ll understand. Are you ready? Do you want to see it? I’d like to introduce you.’

  ‘Is it dangerous?’

  ‘That all depends what you ask of it.’

  ‘I don’t want to ask it anything.’

  ‘Just wait till you see it.’

  He opened the top of the bag and pulled a blanket-wrapped bundle out. He was sitting cross-legged and placed it gently down on his ankles, braced between his knees. Then he opened the plaid. Rian gasped.

  A bright-eyed man with long black moustaches was staring at her from Manigan’s lap.

  Manigan dribbled a few drops of his wine from his cup into a dimple on top of the stone then made a formal introduction in Keltic. ‘Master, meet Rian, runaway slave who rescued you from the thieves. Rian, meet the Master Stone.’

  ‘I am honoured,’ she said, and bowed her head, trembling.

  ‘You may ask the Master what you will.’

  She glanced up, but the strange stone face had knowing eyes like a pig and she had to look away. She shook her head.

  ‘You are wise.’ Manigan was smiling gently at her, his face amber in the firelight, his hair gleaming. He was ceremonially still, but not stiff. ‘The Master would be happy if you would touch him.’

  ‘No.’ Rian recoiled.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can. The Master requests it.’

  ‘I do not know who he is. I can’t.’

  ‘Just touch him. Then you’ll know.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  He shrugged and pulled the cloth around the neck of the stone which stared at her with an expression shadowed and flecked with firelight, all possible moods crossing the face.

  ‘That’s all right. The Master understands. I don’t, but the Master always does.’

  ‘Why do you call it the Master?’

  ‘That’s who this face is called.’

  ‘I’m scared of it.’

  ‘Him.’

  He bent his head down to look at the stare. ‘She’s scared of you.’ He turned the face towards him. A pinched, smiley little boy was now beaming at her from the stone.

  She gasped again.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The Boy. He’s not scary, is he?’

  She pulled her knees up to her chin. ‘How can it be a boy as well?’

  ‘He is triple. Like the Goddess.’

  Then he turned the stone again, and the boy was replaced by a wizened visage, lined and full of gentleness, with penetrating eyes. She was spellbound by it and could not move her gaze.

  ‘The Sage. It is rare to see all three faces, but you’re special. It is conventional to greet this one.’

  ‘I am honoured to meet you.’

  The lines on the old face seemed to move in the firelight, as if it was smiling with an expression of deep peace. There was something about it that reminded Rian of Danuta, and she felt the terrible longing for her that she had had all the time when she was first captured. The pain of missing her was just as sharp as ever. She had simply found ways of shoving it aside, ignoring it, avoiding any thought of her. But here she was. The love in the old face before her was sharp as a dagger.

  ‘You have asked him something difficult,’ Manigan murmured.

  ‘I didn’t realise I was asking anything.’

  ‘Your eyes are always full of questions.’

  ‘I must go home. Danuta needs me.’ She didn’t understand where this came from, but looking into that old face she was certain of it. ‘And I have more to learn from her that no-one else can learn.’ It was as if someone else was speaking for her, a part of herself that had been silent since her capture, cowed and angry.

  ‘Well, you’re on your way.’

  He said it in such a matter of fact manner that Rian was surprised. He looked relaxed there, cross-legged, leaning his back slightly against the rock behind him, as if he sat out on shores beside fires all the time. Perhaps he did.

  ‘Do you have anything else to ask him?’

  Her mind was full of questions but she shook her head. The stone was alien to her again, after its brief moment of kinship. Would home ever be the same again after what Drost had done?

  Manigan smoothed the plaid out, thanked the stone head formally but simply in the Keltic manner, with the ‘you’ reserved for an elder. Rian repeated it. He nodded, wiped dry the dimple in its crown, folded the blanket over it and slid it into the bag.

  Now it was hidden again, she could relax. ‘Why do you have the stone?’

  He put the bag down on his right side and stretched his legs out. It started to rain, spitting into the fire.

  ‘It’s a long story. You want to hear it?’

  By way of an answer, Rian put another piece of driftwood onto the fire, another bigger piece across it, and then a third diagonally across the two.

  ‘Sit here.’ He indicated she should sit beside him. He arranged the sail
to cover them from the rain. It flapped in the rising wind but they were mostly sheltered by the rocks.

  ‘It was put into my grandmother’s safekeeping. The one I told you about, the granny I share with Ussa.’

  The fire was lapping around the wood, greedy and warm, and as the flames danced, his soft voice unravelled the story of the stone.

  ‘My Aunt Fraoch told me that her mother Amoa was given the stone by her father, the Merlin, after he had a dream that came true. It was a dream of destruction, of the death of the old king, the king’s son and heir, and the baby grandson, all on one night. They were the Bear Clan, although they never called themselves that as they had a superstition about never using the name of the animal. It’s a bit like us and the walrus: when we are hunting, it is considered disrespectful to call him that. Imagine if someone said to you, ‘Hey, human.’ It’s not nice, is it?’

  ‘What do you call them?’

  ‘Oh anything polite. Whiskery One, or Mister Tusker, or just Old Gentleman. Anyway, back to the Clan of the Furry Paws. The bloodline of the kings and queens ran back to the earliest days when bears and humans shared the land and some women chose to live with the great bears of the forest. They bore children who had the strength and the bravery of mighty animals and grew up to be hunters and heroes, protectors of the people. They were a wild clan. They lived in timber halls in the woods and in caves in the mountains. They had no slaves and no farmland. They lived only on the wild foods of the forests and hills, the lakes and rivers and seashore, and their livestock grazed in the woods and were as wild and dangerous as the folk: huge hairy cattle and goats, tough little ponies and bristly pigs with great tusks.

  ‘Now these people held many secrets. They might have been wild but they were clever too and they found treasure in the mountains. They protected the little people who mined gems and who sifted gold out of the water flowing in streams, and the little people paid them for that protection. So the bear people were wealthy as well as powerful. They kept hoards of riches in caves watched over by dragons. No-one had ever been rich like that before.

  ‘For many generations, as well as gold and silver, the cleverest of the bear people worked with copper and tin, and fostered their children with dwarves in the mountains to learn their skills in weapon-making and bronze-working. These smiths were a mighty tribe within the clan and the kings always made sure to be fair to them, granting them the land they needed to mine their minerals and woods sufficient to fire their forges. They encouraged the charcoal burners to work with them and they always rewarded them for their crafty skills with feast and gifts of cattle. So the smiths were content with the bear kings and accepted them as patrons and protectors.

  ‘It was a grand alliance of hunters, herders, fishers, foresters, miners and smiths that the bear kings ruled over, and there was peace in the land. Everyone shared in the plenty.

  ‘Now, the greatest of the kings was Ban, and that sounds like it must be a good thing, to be the greatest. But the thing about greatness is that it has a tendency to try to increase itself. It’s in its nature. The great want to be greater. Every tree wants to grow, but one day a storm comes to every great tree and blows it down.

  ‘That’s what happened to Ban,’ said Manigan. ‘Put another stick on the fire.’

  Rian did so and put over it the two ends of one of the bigger sticks that had burned through in the middle, so once again a triad of wood was burning. She sat back and he passed her the wine. She took a swig and passed it back.

  ‘You tend the fire just like my Aunt Fraoch used to do. Three sticks at a time.’

  ‘That’s the only way I know. That’s how the fire spirit likes it.’

  ‘What happens if you give it four? Or two?’

  ‘Two leaves it hungry and grumpy and four makes it work too hard and get upset.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  The rain was getting heavier, spitting in the fire, and the sea outside the geo was roaring, but in their sheltered spot only a breeze tugged at the smoke and swirled it about, sometimes in their faces, sometimes away.

  Badger stirred in his sleep.

  Rian asked, ‘Did what happened to Ban have something to do with the stone?’

  Manigan chuckled. ‘Sorry. My stories take a while sometimes. I’ll get to the stone eventually. Where were we? Oh aye, Ban and the troubles. Do you not know all about this?’

  ‘No. I’ve never heard of Ban.’

  ‘I’m surprised. I thought all the old women told that legend. I’d expect your granny, what was her name?’

  ‘Danuta.’

  ‘Aye, I’d have thought she’d tell it.’

  ‘Is it just a story then? I thought you were telling something about your great-grandfather, the Merlin, not just an old legend.’

  ‘What do you mean, just an old legend?’ He elbowed her in the side in mock outrage. ‘Anyway, this happens to be what my old granddad Mutterer called a true legend. If you still want to hear it, of course.’

  He pouted.

  ‘I’m sorry. Put me out of my misery. What happened to Ban?’

  ‘Is it annoying you that it goes on so long?’

  ‘No. I like it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. It’s like being with the women at a ceremony. I love long stories.’

  ‘Oh, I remember the women’s ceremonies. When I was a boy I sat by the fire with the Keepers. I loved it. Then they said I had to stop being there and go with the druids, but they never told such good tales, I didn’t think.’

  ‘The druids are supposed to be full of good stories.’

  ‘Aye, well. Some of them, maybe. Aye, right enough. There was the old Merlin, they called him Riabach, he could yarn all night long, and there’s Uill Tabar, only one arm and hairy as a horse, but he tells a tale well, and he makes me laugh, he makes us all laugh, and he rhymes. It’s the rhymes that are the funniest, to be honest. Are you all right?’

  Rian turned and was looking at him as if he had struck her.

  ‘What did you call him? The funny one?’

  ‘Uill Tabar. Why?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Come on. You look like I’ve offended you.’

  ‘No. No, you haven’t.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  She struggled inside herself, wanting to tell him. She felt instinctively she could trust him with her life, that there would never be anyone whom she could trust more deeply, but this was the one big secret she possessed. The name Danuta had told her was like a secret talisman, an unspoken mantra. If she said it, would she unwittingly destroy its magic? But if she never shared it with anyone, how could she use its power? And Manigan knew the man whose name it was. Until now Uill Tabar had been a fiction, no more than a label. It could have been no more than the name of a character in a made-up story, but Manigan knew him as a man, hairy and one-armed and funny. He was vivid to her and she knew suddenly it might be possible to meet him, to talk to him, to listen to him, to find out her own story, to discover who she really was, where she had come from. It seemed a possible end to the horror of slavery and the fear of endless running away.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He nudged her arm.

  ‘I want to meet him.’

  ‘Who, Uill Tabar? Why?’

  She turned and stared at him. ‘He knows who I am.’

  He returned her wide-eyed gaze. ‘Fancy you knowing him.’

  ‘I don’t. He’s just a name. I wasn’t really sure if he was real, to be honest.’

  ‘Oh, he’s very real.’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘You can trust me.’ He patted her thigh. ‘Thank you for sharing your secret.’

  She wondered what she had told him. Perhaps he thought Uill Tabar was her father. Perhaps he was. She tried to picture a hairy one-armed comedian druid as her father and was dismayed. If the name had
meant anything to her it had been of a noble, dignified keeper of lore, not some ugly figure of fun. And the secret that he was holding was supposed to unlock a mystery about her people and her role in the world, not merely be a grubby declaration of paternity by some drunken druid.

  ‘I’ll look forward to your meeting. There’ll no doubt be a good story in it, knowing Uill. If he’s keeping it for you, you can be sure of that.’

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know anymore. ‘What about Ban? And the stone.’

  ‘You really want to hear that old tale? It’s late. We should sleep.’

  ‘No, I want to know first, about the stone, then sleep.’

  ‘You’ll sleep no easier once you know.’

  ‘I’ll not sleep at all if I don’t.’

  He waggled his foot towards the fire. ‘Three more?’

  She chose another stick. Another of the big branches had burned through and its two ends could be placed onto the centre of the fire. The three-way cross complete, she sat back.

  ‘The stone was made by King Ban’s smith, whose name I can’t remember now so we’ll call her Red. She had made a great discovery: she had learned how to make iron, to take a brown ore found in the bogs and smelt it with all her magic to create a metal harder than any we had ever known. It was such a powerful new magic that the chief druids knew it had to be dangerous. Something needed to be brought into the world to counter that danger. And so they gave Red a stone and told her to use tools made from the new magic metal and see what came from the block, then listen to it until it spoke to her and whatever it said would be the right thing to do.

  ‘But the King was greedy and he said to Red, you can do what you like with that stone. But I want you to make me the greatest sword you can out of that new metal and if you don’t, be sure I’ll know about it and you’ll meet the sharp end of my armoury.

  ‘So Red was frightened and went away back to her forge. She worked first on the tools for working the stone: a chisel, a hammer and a spike. She made the spike as strong as she could, the chisel as sharp as she could, and the hammer as heavy as she could. Then, sitting beside the forge, she began to shape the block of granite they had given her. It was spherical and roughly the size of a head, so she thought perhaps a face might come, and she began working above a bit of a bulge on one side. Soon it was clear to her that this was a nose, with two eyes above it. Once they were looking at her, she set about a little smiling mouth and before long it was a boy’s face.