“aunt! Will you be silent now so that I can finish before the sun rises! The boy lived with his aunt and was a nice but easily scared bloke. They rapidly got to be really good friends, even though he was incredibly nosy and would always interrupt her fairytales...”
“Keep to the story”, I said.
“Okay”, said Eulalia. “The boy made the girl feel a little less lonely and a little more brave, but she still longed for her parents and that’s why she started building a sailing-boat. In the evenings when the boy was home with his aunt the girl would take down trees and make boards of different lengths. Then she worked it all into the most beautiful little dinghy. For sail she used an old dream she had never known what to do with.”
“A dream?” I said. “For sail?”
“Sure”, said Eulalia happily, “don’t forget this is a fairytale.”
“Oh, that’s right”, I said.
“And then one day the boat was finished and done and she was ready to take off to the sea in search of her mom and dad.”
“What about the boy?” I asked.
“I was just about to get there”, said Eulalia.
She made a little pause and turned her head as if she tried to find the words out there in the darkness, and then she sighed.
“The problem was”, she said, “that she got so sad thinking she might never see the boy again. For a while she wondered if it maybe wasn’t better to forget about the voyage, but at the same time something was pulling her so that she finally understood that she had no choice. It was the sea splashing and surging inside her and she had to listen. When she lay on the floor in the old house at night she could hear the waves breaking in her head, and when she walked in the woods in the mornings she could feel the salt sea splash in her face. Get it? It was her destiny to hoist the sail, and no matter how much she would miss the boy she knew that she would miss the winds and the valleys of the sea even more if she stayed in the forest...”
“Besides”, I said, “ the boy would soon have to leave the island too, to go back to his mom and dad, so they wouldn’t be seeing each other until the next summer anyway.” I felt a thick lump in my throat and could hardly speak.
“Besides that”, said Eulalia.
She looked down on me and I guess I looked back but we could just about see each other in the darkness so we went back to look at the stars instead. The thin moon had moved a bit up over the trees and it felt as if new lights were turned on around it all the time.
“So”, said Eulalia, “one day the girl went down to the beach where she had put her boat, and she sat down on a rock and asked the very first wave that broke over her feet: `Hello there, wave, is it necessary to be close to each other in order to be friends?´ And the wave, who was an old wave with experiences from all the seven seas, said: `Whoever told you that, girl? A friendship is something you carry with you wherever you go and that can never disappear – at least not if it was for real. It will only grow from your movement and from all that you see and learn and in the end it will almost look after itself.´ And the girl said: `I think I understand.´”
Eulalia went silent and I said:
“I’m afraid that’s more than I do.”
She laughed somewhat hesitantly:
“Well, that’s the story.”
“Was that all?” I said.
“Yep”, she said, “almost. I believe there was a frog in it somewhere as well, but it wasn’t important to the story, only to itself.”
I didn’t feel much happier from Eulalias tale, but since she too seemed a little low I didn’t want to say anything about it. Instead I said:
“Starwind...”
“What?” said Eulalia.
“You could be called Starwind for surname, isn’t it pretty neat?”
I sensed how she sort of lost her breath, and I wondered if I’d maybe said something stupid. But slowly she whispered:
“Starwind... But that’s my name, I can feel it in my whole body! My, you’re so incredibly nice to me!”
“It wasn’t that much...” I said.
“Eulalia Starwind, it’s all the world! Nick, if you didn’t already have a name I would have made one up for you – you know that, eh?”
“Of course”, I said.
“I feel so much more ready to leave now”, she said. “A beautiful surname was all that I needed!”
“Is it time already?” I asked with a big knot in my chest.
“Not quite”, said Eulalia. “We can still sit for a while.”
By now it was in the middle of the night, I didn’t have a watch but could feel in my eyes that I ought to have been asleep long ago. Still I fought to keep them open, because Eulalia was soon to take off and because the stary sky was so beautiful. The crescent moon had wandered into a cloud and only the stars were glittering and sparkling like slow and lazy fireworks. Here and there one or the other twinkled as if to say something, and I thought it might be someone I used to know. Not that I had known that many people who had died, but one or two.
“Eulalia”, I said.
“What?” said Eulalia.
“Are you sure my grandmother won’t get worried?”
“Very very sure”, she said. And I was willing to believe her because I wanted to remain for as long as possible, with my head in Eulalias lap and all that happy glimmering between the trees.
Sometimes I slumbered off, and woke again when Eulalia spoke. She was talking slowly and a few times I thought the sentence was finished when suddenly there came a little more. I was too tired to get it all, but enjoyed hearing her voice. I think she said something about Melancholy, a friend of hers that always came up with such fun ideas. Then she talked about Fright again, who would normally fall asleep when sung to in a loud voice. And then she started humming and singing very silently and carefully, and I suppose I too fell asleep there in the tender night of the forest, with Eulalias lullaby like a friendly mosquito buzzing around my head:
I’m Eulalia of air and windbeaten sea,
I’m all that you could ever wish me to be.
I’m a light that bounces from the clouds at night,
I’m that thing that gave you a terrible fright.
I’m soft and safe like a giant rug,
and small and strong like a cartoon thug.
I’m a laughter and the silence around it,
I’m that thing you never missed ‘til you found it.
I’m neither this nor that, yet I’m both,
I’m in the east and the west and the south and the north.
Sometimes I shout all I can and I grumble and hiss and
then all that I want is to sit down and listen.
And there’s a song in my eye and a laugh in my belly
and there’s a tickle in my thigh and my knees are of jelly
and I sail with the clouds and dive in the rain
and lose myself searching some forgotten refrain.
I’m the hiccup that children can get when they stumble,
I’m all that they scream and all they may mumble.
I’m dancing at night beneath the stars and the moon,
I’m gone with the wind and the night very soon.
I know stuff that only Eulalias know,
like where the music came from, and where it will go.
I’m all that you want and believe,
and all that you give and recieve.
I think I’m the things you forgot, like a dream
that repeats itself in a steady stream.
I’m a wish or a threat or whatever,
I’m Eulalia of wind and weather...
When I woke at dawn I could still hear the song ringing remotely between the pine tops, but Eulalia was gone. All the stars were gone too and the only thing moving down in the valley were some drowsy sheep stepping through the morning mist. I sat up and rubbed my eyes and thought that I had missed Eulalias flying after all. Then I thought that I could see it the next time, for somehow I didn’t want to believe she was gone forever.
So I got on my feet and brushed myself, and started off homewards. Eulalias voice slowly echoed out of my head and when I came past the Clearing it was all deserted and silent. Then I got sad and a little frightened and thought that I maybe ought to sing to myself, until it passed by. And so I did.
At home Granny had left the door open and I went inside and undressed in the hallway. I then sneaked up the stairs and into the bedroom and the cold bed. It took some ten minutes to stop shaking, but then I could even feel a little glad. I thought about Eulalia flying out over the sea in the morning light, with her sky blue shirt and the brown leather belt of her shorts fluttering around her legs. When I thought of her she had that cute and challenging expression she used sometimes when she wanted to tease me, with the hair curling over her cheeks. Suddenly I felt confident she would find her mom and her dad, and I thought I might just as well get some more sleep. So I dozed off, although Granny who normally would snore so that the windows shook in their frames was all silent and still.
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