by Joan Aiken
"I am sorry to leave you in such dismal quarters,amiga," I whispered. "But as soon as we reach a bigger place tomorrow you shall have as much barley as you can eat, and a measure of wine, too!" -
I left her with one of the saddlebags and brought the other with me. By now the old people were plucking at me impatiently to come away, so I suffered myself, at last, to be led into one of their dwellings. Even I—and I am not tall—was obliged to stoop double under the lintel, which I should judge to have been not more than seven hands high. Once inside, however, the roof rose higher, for the buildings were of a shape like conical beehives; but the air was unbelievably bad. It smelled thickly of human sweat, of dung, both men's and beasts', of rotten flesh, rancid grease, peat smoke, dried blood, and other things, all horrible. There was a little flickering light, from the embers of a peat fire and a tallow candle, by which I could see that all the people I had seen appeared to have crowded into the hut, curious to inspect me, no doubt.
It was plain that their eyes were more accustomed than mine to seeing in this dim light.
The old man who had first greeted me issued an order to a woman somewhat younger than the rest, and she obediently fed the fire with handfuls of peat, and blew until flames broke out. I now saw that the fire was on a flat stone and that the smoke—a little of it—passed up through a hole in the roof.
The woman then fetched an iron pan from some cranny, and proceeded to fry eggs in it over the flames. Meanwhile I was invited to sit, and did so on the earth floor. As my sight grew accustomed to the dimness, I perceived that the dwelling also accommodated a couple of goats, and a clutch of scrawny fowls, perched on ledges in the circular wall, which was built of rocks and turf.
After a longish while the eggs were done, and were served to me on a wooden platter. A more disgusting meal I have seldom eaten, for before passing them to me the woman poured over them about half a pint of the same rancid oil in which they had been fried. However, I was too hungry to be very particular, and swallowed them down somehow, helped by fragments of stone-hard bread, which tasted principally of peat ash.
I was then offered some drink, in a cup of leather so old that it had gone black and hard, like wood.
"What is this drink?" I asked with caution, for the liquor smelled strong and strange.
The old man who had first accosted me—whom I took to be the headman of the village, for the others treated him with great respect—replied with some word quite unknown to me. When I shook my head he went into a long explanation, ending with the words "Brezo, brezal," several times repeated, from which I understood that the drink was prepared from heather.
It was sweet to the first taste, then very bitter; after two or three mouthfuls I put down the cup, for it was not at all to my liking. At this they all cried out, and pressed me to drink more of it, but I would not.
I then intimated that I would be glad to rest, laying my head sideways on my hand, repeating over and over again the words "bed, sleep." The villagers looked at one another in surprise, it seemed, and perhaps affront; they burst into another long disputation among themselves. Being terribly fatigued, I did not pay much heed to this; although I feared I had offended them. Perhaps, I thought, strangers came that way so rarely that they felt cheated unless they had several hours of talk and information about the world that lay below the mountains.
"Tomorrow I will talk," said I. "Tomorrow. Mañana. Mañana,." "Ah, mañana, mañana.," they all chorused, and then moved outside, giving some instructions to the woman who had cooked my fried eggs.
She, with looks of civility, indicated a pile of rags and refuse against the wall, and I thanked her. As I moved toward this uninviting couch, the woman touched my hair with a wondering look, toothlessly repeating a word, which, after a moment, I recognized as "Guapo, guapo." Beautiful, beautiful.
I suppose yellow hair was a thing unknown to them; all of them were black-eyed, and though most were white-headed with age, it was plain that their hair, when young, must have been black, as this woman's was. Out of politeness I touched her hair and said in my turn, "Guapo,"but she shook her head in a melancholy manner.
At this moment the parrot, Asistenta, who had spent the last hour asleep inside my jacket, suddenly chose to emerge, stretching a sleepy wing, and croaking, "Nine o'clock!"
The woman's face went wax-colored with terror, and her mouth fell open, exposing the stumps of rotted and blackened teeth. She gasped and jumped back in fright as the parrot walked along my arm.
"Don't be frightened," I said several times. "It is a parrot—a bird. Only a bird. Look!" I picked up one or two crumbs of the bread left on my supper dish and held them on my palm for Asistenta, who pecked at them greedily, when they were all gone she recited a list of plants with virtue for curing rheumatism, and then climbed back inside my jacket and went to sleep again with her head tucked under her wing.
Whimpering with fear, the woman retreated to the far side of the hut, where she crouched, watching me.
I said again, "She won't hurt you. She is only a . bird—like a raven, liké an eagle," I said, naming two birds that one often sees in the mountains.
"Like an eagle," she repeated doubtfully.
"An old man gave her to me in Oviedo," I added. But I could see that the name Oviedo meant no more than if I had said, "She was given me by the man in the moon." The woman had probably never left this village in her life.
Wishing to relieve her mind and distract it from her fear of the parrot, I said, "Señora—when I first came to this place, the old man said that I had been expected since sunrise. What made him say that? For I had no intention of coming to this spot. I came here by chance. I was lost in the forest."
I had to repeat all this many, many times, very slowly and loudly, before she understood me. But at length she came to grasp my meaning, for she replied, in her lisping way, "Ah, señor—it is because tomorrow is the first day of autumn. On the eve of that day, a stranger always comes to our village."
"Always? How can this be?"
"It is the will of the great father."
"How curious! So you were not expecting me in particular? Just any stranger?"
She did not understand that, but replied, "Yes señor, we were expecting you. I am sorry, though, that it has to be one as young and beautiful as Your Honor."
This I found disquieting. What did they expect the stranger to do for them, on the first day of autumn?
"Is the stranger generally an older man, then?—What do you ask of him?"
But this she would not, or could not, answer. She said merely, "It is for the good of the village."
"What is for the good of the village?"
"That the stranger should come. It is for the good luck of the bees, and the beasts, next year."
"What is the name of this village, señora?" I asked.
"Name?" she said, puzzled. "It is just the village'. There is only the one, after all."
It seemed as if she knew of no other place, in all Spain!
Wishing to thank her in some way for having cooked my meal, I wondered what to give her. Money, it seemed, would be useless in a place like this, where nothing was bought or sold. Opening the bag I had brought in with me, I gave her a big bunch of Anitas raisins, taking one or two myself, to show that she was to eat them. She tried one, gingerly, and then mumbled up the rest with relish, exclaiming, "Bueno, bueno!"
Soon after, there came a call from outside, and I lay down while she, laying a finger to her lips, tiptoed to the entrance, where she received some order from the old man. Returning, she made the gesture of sleep to me, with cheek on palm, closing her eyes.
She had no need to make it, for I was drowning in waves of weariness. Two minutes, and I was lost to my strange surroundings.
IT SEEMED to me, in my dream, that I had displeased Father Tomás. "I shall have to take you before your grandfather!" he shouted. "First he will reprimand you, then you will be punished most severely!"
In the dream I felt a horrid
dread of this punishment. What could they be going to do to me? Father Tomás was shaking me by the shoulder, shaking and shaking.
But it was not Father Tomás. It was the woman, waking me. With some wonder, I saw that her eyes swam with tears.
"I am sorry I have to wake you, muchacho she snuffled woefully, "but he is coming now."
"Who is coming?" I felt so heavy and sodden with fatigue that I was sure it could not yet be morning; I seemed to have slept only for half an hour or so.
The woman did not answer, but laid peat and heather stalks on the fire, so that it blazed up quite brightly.
I saw that the old man, the leader, had come back into the hut.
"Now, Your Honor, I have to tell you what we need," he said.
"Yes?" I mumbled sleepily, not wishing to offend him. "Why is that?"
"We need more bees, more goats, we need a warmer summer, less rain, we need more mountain hares, but above all we need more people. We need children! We are all growing old and we have no children. You must tell them that!" His manner was urgent; he pushed his face closer to mine. I could smell his stinking breath, and see the sore places where his broken teeth had gouged his tongue.
He was squatting in front of me, staring at me intently. His eyes, under shaggy white brows, were like black holes in his face. It seemed as if I could look right through the holes, farther and farther back—
"Drink," said the woman quietly, and passed me the leather cup full of heather liquor.
My mouth tasted horrible and my head ached. What I longed for was a dram of pure water. I took a sip of the heather liquid and then wished I had not, for it did my thirst no good.
"You must tell them of all these things we need," the old man croaked.
"Who must I tell?" I wondered if he meant I was to go down to the nearest town, to the mayor, perhaps...
"Drink, drink," said the woman again, and pressed the cup on me. For politeness, I took another sip of the bitter stuff.
"You will go through the door of rock," said the old man. "You will walk the path of cloud."
His face was only an inch away, his eyes stared into mine. At the back of each eye burned a tiny spark, like the light of a cabin, far away on the black mountains. I was nearly asleep again; for a moment I thought I was on the mule's back, riding along through the cloudy night.
"You will see the gray mother; you will see the father of fire. You will tell him of our need. Tell him that we are hungry, and have no children to care for us."
Now I felt as if I were floating in a boat, being carried smoothly down the flooded river. I felt the woman gently move my hands behind my back and tie them with a piece of leather. Then they each, the man and the woman, took one of my arms and helped me to my feet. I rose up and moved along glidingly, as one does in a dream; weary though I was, walking seemed to be no trouble at all. Somehow we passed through the low doorway—I do not remember stooping—and then we were outside, where all the rest of the people stood waiting, in a black knot against the gray of the bare mountain. I could see now that morning was not far off. The utter blackness of night was past, the sky had paled, and, from where we stood, many craggy ranges of mountains were visible, all around us, in varying shades of gray and darker gray, layered with cloud. The sky overhead was covered with a plum-dark shadow, but over in the direction where the sun must presently rise, one jagged skyline of peaks lay bared like broken teeth against a narrow band of silver light.
Nobody spoke, but we all began moving away from the stone huts, in a kind of straggling procession, I myself still ahead of the rest.
What we were doing seemed to me strange and mysterious, but also most natural. I thought, dreamily: Now they will show me the door of rock, and the path of cloud.
The old man, who walked on my left, was carrying, I noticed, an ax with a head made not of metal but of dark polished stone. That stone must indeed be hard, I thought vaguely, if it can be used for an ax head. It was exceedingly heavy, too, I could see that: the old man, who was very bent, slow, and stooping in his walk, could lift it for short periods only, and was obliged to stop and rest it on the ground at every third or fourth step.
I thought of offering to carry it for him, but my hands were tied.
Then I observed that the woman on my right wept as she walked; I could not see her tears, but she kept wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. I could hear her sobs, a faint miserable sound in the stillness.
"What is the trouble?" I asked her. "Why do you cry?" and she, unexpectedly, mumbled, "I had a boy once, long ago, but he died."
That brought Bernie into my mind, and her baby who had died, long ago; slowly I began to wonder: What am I, Felix, doing here on this mountainside? Where are we? Who are these people? What is happening?
We were making, I now saw, for the outcrop of rock under the jut of which the animals and the haystacks had their scanty shelter. The outcrop, which formed the summit of the hill on which the village stood, was sharp and craggy and big as a castle; a path, which I could dimly see, circled around it and climbed to the very top.
I heard one of the burros bray, and this roused me a little from my dreamy state.
"I want to give my mule some water," I said to the woman, and she sobbed out, "Yes, yes, it shall be done. Very soon!"
"No, but I would like to do it now. Untie my hands, please!"
"Hush!" said the old man angrily. "No one should speak until the sun rises."
Far away, I saw there was a great gap in the saw-toothed range of peaks that rose against the strip of eastern light. From the growing color in the sky at that point, I guessed that when the sun did rise, it would show exactly in the gap, and its light would then strike the tip of the outcrop above us.
Suddenly three things happened. When I say "suddenly," I mean that they happened in the same moment, but it was a long, strange moment—as if time itself had stretched out so fine and thin that you could see right through it.
The parrot, tucked inside my belted jacket, began to mutter and scuffle, trying to flap her wings; and she suddenly poked her head through the opening at the front of the jacket, and shouted, "Six o'clock!" Then, at a very rapid rate and in a loud, raucous voice, she began to recite a number of the Latin words I had been teaching her the day before:
"Amnis, axis, caulis, collis, clunis, crinis, fascis, follis—"
While I stood still, many of the villagers had caught up with us; now they stared at the parrot in stupefaction. There were cries of alarm.
A single eyeblink after that, the whole world around us was suddenly illuminated, not by the sun rising, but by a tremendous flash of lightning: not white light, but a great leaping reddish bronze-brown glare. Just for a second the scene reminded me of the fearsome picture of hell which hung in my grandfathers chapel: briefly this grim glare held over the landscape, and then there was an earsplitting clap of thunder, directly overhead, and rain began to come down as if the sky had fallen.
I heard the woman beside me cry out in terror, and then—while the echoes of the thunder were still dying away, muttering and grumbling farther and farther among the rocky peaks—I heard her whisper into my ear. "I am going to untie your hands. Go now, run,run!—otherwise they will kill you! They are going to kill you!"
As she said this she was fumbling with the strap that bound my hands; at last she had it undone—she gave me a push and said again, "Go—run—run!"
And so I ran! I could hear the villagers behind me, crying out distractedly in their fear and amazement:
"He has two heads!" "And one of them is a bird's!" "The father of light must be angry!" "What did we do that was wrong?"
Most of them fell flat on their faces, excepting the old leader, who still stood upright, with one hand clasping his stone ax and the other covering his eyes from the dazzle of lightning flashes which followed one after the other. There was something lost and piteous about his appearance. "What is it?" he muttered.
But I did not wait to answer. During a brief
period of glare I ran stumbling toward the overhang where the animals were tethered. Running with my head bowed against the rain, I was helped by the bawling of the burros, who seemed as terrified as their owners by the sudden storm.
And indeed, it was one of the worst storms I had ever been in.
My mule, thanks to her morose and taciturn nature, did not seem greatly affected by the weather; she snorted and grumbled as I untied and led her out, as if to draw my attention to the fact that she had been given a very indifferent stable and no breakfast, but she paid little heed to the lightning flashes and the terrific peals of thunder overhead. Flinging myself onto her back, I urged her past the great crag—as soon as we were out of its shelter the wind nearly blew us over—and away from the dome-shaped huts. In the next flash I perceived a rough track leading down between low, rising cliffs, and I turned the mule's head in that direction. I did not dare urge her into a gallop, for the light was still very dim, in between the flashes; day seemed to have turned back into night. But, glancing over my shoulder, I could see no sign of pursuit; perhaps the villagers had been so stricken with terror at the suddenness of the storm that they had lost interest in me, and given up their intentions.
As to what those were, I could only guess; and would rather not. I thought the woman was probably right when she said they meant to kill me. I hoped they did not kill her instead, for letting me loose.
What use killing me would be for their bees or their goats, I could not fathom.
As the mule hurried grumbling down the narrow rocky pass, while the rain sluiced over my bare head, I slowly struggled out from the strange, dreamlike mood which had held me in its power for what, now, seemed a very long time; I could not remember when it had begun; only that when the old man had told me I would walk the path of cloud, it had seemed a perfectly sensible suggestion.
After a while I realized with dismay that I had left my hat and one of the saddlebags in the hut; luckily it was the bag that held my two pistols and most of the food, not the more precious one which contained my fathers papers and his book. I was sad about the pistols—but nothing in the world would have made me go back to that place, even if there had been no danger. I had conceived a mortal horror at the very thought of it; I could hardly bear to remember the hours passed in the disgusting fetid smell of that round hut, or the food and drink I had been given; indeed, I have recalled those events only two or three times, with the greatest reluctance, up to this very day.