The Wild Folk

by Sylvia V Linsteadt

  “Yes,” said Tin. “But – I wanted at least to have a word with them, to ask them about how it really works, with the stargold and all…” He trailed off. The truth was, he’d hoped that maybe the Wild Folk would let him keep it. That he wouldn’t have to give it away to anybody after all.

  Oro beckoned again, and Comfrey noticed with a sharp intake of breath that his hand had six fingers. She followed, mesmerized, the leverets at her heels. Tin groaned, thinking of his bright and beautiful creation being thrashed through the bushes by Coyote-folk. With a sigh, balling his fists tight in his pockets, he climbed the stairs after them.

  Inside the high-ceilinged inn a fire flicked and lapped at a brick hearth. Woven tapestries in a hundred muted colours covered the walls, strung from corner to corner with red madrone berries and bells. Several dozen men and women milled about between the three front rooms, which were all open to one another by means of large, barn-sized doors so hidden behind shelves and side-tables and hanging tapestries they must never have been closed. In the far room was a long feast table. In the front, where they’d entered, furs and cushions were flung across the floor, and men and women and children, some younger than Tin and Comfrey, some as old as the village grandfathers, lounged. They played games with strange, leathery cards painted with crooked crowned figures; hit marbles painted like planets on a patch of wood; juggled winter lemons; strummed at fiddles and skin drums with their hands; read little books so old their leather covers drooped.

  The third room, to the left of the entrance, was empty of people. A skunk slept curled up on a cushion beneath the room’s far window, where a single candle guttered. The walls were lined with open cabinets full of strange and wonderful objects – a bronze orrery with planets that shone, a clay urn painted with dancing Egret-women, the vertebrae of seals dyed indigo blue, amber glass bottles with spidery labels.

  “Yes, our Cabinet of Wonders, where all the stories go,” said Oro with a sigh of pure delight. He leaned towards Tin and Comfrey, who were now both peeping through the door.

  “Guests, guests!” a little boy cried just then, leaping up from a game of marbles. He pulled a small gold trumpet from the pocket of his loose robes and blew into it.

  Mallow and Myrtle jumped into Tin and Comfrey’s arms, respectively, at the startling sound of the trumpet. Tin looked more closely at the boy and saw that, like Oro, he was oddly formed – his lip was cleft down the middle, showing his teeth between, and one of his eyes looked towards his nose, not straight ahead. His feet were bare, and missing their big toes, making the boy prance in an oddly graceful way to keep his balance. Tin looked around, swallowing hard at all the commotion. He suddenly felt the fatigue of the day, which seemed endless – was it midnight, or later? Or only just after dark?

  Everyone stared at the four of them. A kind-looking woman, who was reclining on deerskins on the floor, knitting a very large blanket on bone needles, chuckled. Her skin was mottled pale and dark, piebald between cream and chestnut, one of her eyes blue and the other brown, which made her gaze upon them, though friendly, feel dizzying.

  Peering around, Comfrey and Tin both realized that everybody was slightly misshapen, oddly proportioned. Not Wild Folk, no, Comfrey thought – there were no hoofs or tails or fur in sight – just humans made a little different, and unlike any she had ever seen.

  Oro caught them staring. “We all have our Oddnesses, you know. They are our gifts, our singular stories. Some carry them outside, that’s all.” He tapped his bald and oblong head. “Others, here.” He tapped his chest. “Course, not everybody thinks that way, do they, Amber?” he added sadly, putting a hand on the shoulder of the piebald woman.

  “Now, now, Oro. These children look half-dead with exhaustion,” said Amber. She heaved herself to her feet, leaving her knitting on the floor. For a moment the striped pile of yarn seemed to rustle and stretch, just like a cat. Comfrey rubbed her eyes. “Looks like all they can manage about now is a meal and a hot bath, eh, lovey?” she said, patting Comfrey’s head in a motherly way and tilting the girl’s chin up to look into her eyes. Comfrey could barely hold the woman’s gaze, looking at both the blue and the brown eyes at once.

  “What are your names, children?” Amber said.

  “I’m Comfrey. I’m from the village called Alder, just the other side of the boundary. This – this is my friend Tin. He’s…” She turned to Tin, but he wasn’t listening at all. He was too busy looking around. The people of The Holy Fool’s Inn fit the description of the Country people he had heard time and again from the Brothers a bit better than Comfrey did, but there was so much warmth and strange beauty and kindness about them. He’d never seen so many easy, smiling faces, or heard so much laughter. Just being in their midst made him feel glad. Not for the first time that day, he marvelled at this land called Farallone, his own land, though he had been kept from it his whole life inside the City’s Wall.

  “Is the lad deaf?” Amber said after another moment. The little boy with the trumpet loped near and tugged at Tin’s earlobe.

  “Ow, watch it!” Tin exclaimed.

  “Off in la-la land,” said Amber, opening a cupboard in the main room to pull out fresh bedding, and shooing off the little trumpet boy with her free hand.

  “He’s from the City,” said Comfrey.

  The boy with the trumpet, joined by an older girl whose back was greatly humped, giggled and leaned in to sniff at Tin.

  “The City, the City!” chortled the trumpet-playing boy.

  “Is he indeed?” said Oro, peering more closely at Tin.

  “Manners!” snapped Mallow. “It’s not as if they are another breed of human there, he’s just the same as anyone.”

  Oro chuckled. “Oh my dear little leveret, wouldn’t we be the first to know? I am not judging him, only observing. We Holy Fools love difference more than we love just about anything. We, after all, are the greatest misfits of all. We fit nowhere. I’m merely fascinated, itching to hear your tale. Never have we met a City person before! What a delight, what a true delight!”

  Warmth stole through Tin’s chest at the man’s kindness, and at Mallow’s loyalty. It made his eyes prick. He looked away.

  Amber turned to the boy with the trumpet and the humpbacked girl, filling their arms with the bed sheets. “Run along, you two, and make the beds and heat some water for washing,” she said giving them both a gentle shove. Then, like a great matriarchal tide, she bustled Tin, Comfrey, the leverets and Oro to the hearth.

  They ate supper sitting on threadbare pillows by the fire. Myrtle and Mallow were delighted when an old man with a drooping, trunk-like nose brought them a ceramic pot full to brimming with wild radish leaves from the garden.

  Though the children were tired, they were fit to bursting with their story, with what had befallen them over the past days, and eager to see if these strange, kind Fools might be able to help them or give them advice. Taking turns, Comfrey and Tin related the basics of what had come to pass since the night the Greentwins sent the leverets out across the land of Farallone. When Comfrey got to the Fire Hawk and his feather and the vision she had seen in it, her voice broke and she stopped, trying to catch her breath, not sure how much she should share. Myrtle, chewing radish leaves, leaped onto her lap and nipped at her sleeves, trying to comfort the girl.

  “And you have this very feather with you now, my dove?” Amber asked softly, her merry face very still and very dark. “What a burden to carry for such a young creature as yourself.”

  “It is here, in my pack,” Comfrey said. “I have been too afraid to unwrap it again. I don’t want to see any more. It was too terrible, what it showed me.”

  “Dear girl,” murmured Oro. “I have a knack for seeing. I can scry any old puddle. Quite a distracting habit sometimes. But perhaps I might have a look in this feather. A feather dropped from the wing of the Fire Hawk to herald the end of the world. Oh, earth, may it not be so.”

  “But everything is the same as ever it was!” said a girl w
ith blind blue eyes. “Surely the world is not ending. I have smelled in the air that the plum trees will blossom early. Surely they would not blossom if the world was going to end any time soon.”

  “Ay, child,” said Amber, but a cloud passed over her face. “Plums will blossom right until the end. Their business is to bloom.” She sat silent a moment, full of stillness. “But we must remember, my loves,” she continued, casting her two unmatched eyes all across the room, “that endings always carry new beginnings like seeds in their bellies. You just have to know how to look for them, and how to look after them, so that they can grow. That is our task, every single day.”

  “Here it is,” said Comfrey, opening her rucksack. “I’ll show you.”

  The Fools gathered near, nodding and murmuring and stroking one another’s faces and hands to soothe their fear. Comfrey removed the sheaf of white, butter-soft deerskin from her bag and unrolled it very gingerly, as if it swaddled a child and not a feather. Tin leaned close. Earlier that day they had been so busy arguing that he hadn’t stopped to ask just what this feather was, and what it had to do with the Elk of Milk and Gold, nor had he realized it had been in her backpack all along. Inside the buckskin was another wrapping, this time finely woven of usnea lichen. A smell of damp forest and smoke rose from the bundle, but the pale green lichen was unburned. Surely the feather wasn’t really on fire, Tin thought. But then Comfrey lifted it from its final swaddling, holding the quill lightly between her finger and thumb, and he saw that he was wrong. It flickered just like an ember, its delicate edges licked by little flames. It was as long as Comfrey’s forearm, and it lit the whole room with a dark and beautiful glow.

  The boy with the trumpet let out a crow of awe and surprise, and Oro crooned.

  “Oh my holy stars,” he said, reaching out.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” said Myrtle, leaping forward to stop the man. “Look, don’t touch. The Fire Hawk entrusted the feather to Comfrey alone. He’s a very particular creature.” She shuddered at the memory. “He might not take well to it being touched by anyone else. He might think it stolen, and come hunting us!”

  “By all Haredom,” muttered Mallow. “That’s the last thing we need.”

  “Wise little leverets!” exclaimed Oro, snatching his hand away. “What was I thinking? You children are very fortunate to have these as your companions and not my sorry old self! What an extraordinary quartet you make. It is a blessing you have come to us. Now, let me look. I shall peer from a friendly distance, shall I?”

  And he did, squinting and flaring his nostrils at once. The feather’s light danced all over his bald head, making it glow. His face went very still as he looked. Then it darkened, losing all of its light. Horror spread through his eyes.

  “Bedtime for the young ones,” he said abruptly. “Off with you all, besides these two and their leverets, poor chits. You are too young for such things, and yet you carry them, and so you must know them.”

  A mewling outcry went up among the children, but Amber silenced it and herded a group of twelve or so out through the tall glass doors into the night-time, singing raspy lullabies that sounded like the calling hoots of owls.

  “Is it that bad?” breathed Tin, studying Oro. Comfrey had hidden her face in her hands. The man was still staring into the feather. It sparked, throwing an ember onto the rug. No one dared touch it, so it burned a little black hole as it went out. Those who were left – another dozen adults of many ages and shapes – had gathered even nearer, holding each other. Comfrey wished that someone would hold her too. Myrtle quivered in her lap.

  “It is,” said Oro. “It is.” He sat back and closed his eyes at last. “You may put away the feather, my girl,” he said to Comfrey. “I cannot bear any more.”

  Her hand shook as she placed the feather back on its bed of lichen, trying not to look directly into its embered face. But she couldn’t help it. Her eyes were drawn inexorably there. And in a flash she saw her mother at the round table in their kitchen, feeding soup to a strange, pale man.

  “My mother!” she cried.

  “Oh dear,” said Oro. “Is that who I saw, then? A woman with fine dark eyes and a thousand dark, dark curls?”

  “You saw her?” Comfrey half-sobbed, holding Myrtle very tight.

  “Easy,” wheezed the leveret. “I’m not used to being clutched except as a prelude to someone else’s dinner.” Comfrey loosed the hare and took hold of her black braids instead, twisting them.

  “Briefly, but yes,” said Oro. “I saw a gentle Country-woman with a strange, pale man at her table. A man with something amiss about him. Something cold and grasping and very, very clever. One of the City Brothers, in disguise.”

  Tin let out a moan, and Comfrey a strangled cry, but Oro stopped them with a hand.

  “Better let me finish, my dears. That is not all I saw. I saw many more of them. I saw them as if I myself were a hawk flying out over all the Country. I saw them one by one entering all of the villages across the many gentle valleys and mountains of Farallone, disguised in Country clothes. I saw them beset and kill travelling merchants and traders to make their disguises.”

  “Are they after my Fiddleback? But how can they possibly know I am here, in the Country?”

  “It is not clear, my boy, what they want,” said Oro. “But whatever they are after, the worst of it all is that now they know. Now they know that the Country is not poisoned or diseased. That its waters are clean and its valleys bountiful, its people peaceful and unarmed. That it has healed itself while they were sealed away behind their Wall. That it is rich with all that must be lacking in that City. They will want to have it all, again. The Elk did not foresee this, she did not foresee the survival of the City at all. She was too tired and too heartbroken to understand the tenacity of poison and of greed.”

  At that moment, Amber came in. She took one look around the room and into the hollow, heavy eyes that met hers, and exclaimed, “My doves, it is far past midnight and time for sleep. Let’s attend to these matters when we are not so weary. Only Fools would discuss the end of the world at the witching hour.” And with one tidal sweep of her arms, she gathered both Comfrey and Tin to her warm, broad breast, squeezing them tight. “Visions clarify with sleep,” she said. “We may be Fools, but there are gifts to be had here at The Holy Fool’s Inn for those in need.” Then, with her arms still about their shoulders, she herded Comfrey and Tin up a narrow flight of stairs. The leverets followed at her heels.

  “But – my mother!” stammered Comfrey.

  “And the Brothers! Does Oro know when the vision he saw took place? Has it already happened?”

  “Sleep first, visions later!” said Amber, firm and motherly. “It can all wait until daybreak. Washroom’s down that way.” She pointed left at the top of the stairs down an equally narrow, white-panelled hall. “Third door on the right. And this is your room.” She turned the glass knob of a door across the hall. “Afraid we’ve only one vacancy. Three are taken by ghosts. Harmless sorts, but they do make for a sleepless night. The fourth, that’s Oro’s. He stays in the inn proper each night; old watchdog he is. The rest of us, well, we prefer a more rustic style of sleep.” She smiled and led them into the little room, lighting candles as she went, which illuminated a chamber with wrought-iron bed frames five hundred years old, quilts of soft floral patterns and stripes filled with wool, a wooden chest of drawers, and a chandelier of cut glass in the shape of flowers, lit with candles.

  Amber moved to the window and opened the curtains, gesturing with a candle and spilling a little wax on the faded red carpet. “There – our tents,” she said proudly. The shapes of a dozen or more snug, cone-shaped tents made of skins and tule scattered the edges of a grassy meadow ringed with apple trees. A few had fires lit inside. The children stared.

  “Into bed with you, now. Fresh nightclothes are in the dresser there. I’ll come and wake you for breakfast, and for your gifts. We can talk more about what you have seen, and what you must do
, by the saner and kinder light of morning. Otherwise, none of us will ever sleep, and we will be quite hysterical by dawn.” With a swift, violet-scented kiss on each cheek, she left them.

  Comfrey and Tin took turns using the bathroom, cleaning their teeth with willow sticks and a jar of peppermint tooth-clay, bathing in the basin of a white tub with soap that smelled of orange blossoms. They climbed into bed without speaking, and though their hearts were dark with private fears, the soft linen nightclothes, the sun-dried sheets and heavy blankets, the scent of orange blossoms and mint and fresh night air, suffused them both with well-being. Myrtle and Mallow nestled together beneath the window, lay back their ears, and fell at once to sleep, exhausted by the day and so much bad news.

  Tin glanced at Comfrey’s shape in the dark, her hair loose and drying in a black-brown mass across her pillow, tangled and long. He’d never slept in the same room as a girl, and felt suddenly embarrassed for looking. He turned to the wall.

  “Tin?” whispered Comfrey after a little while.

  “Yes?” he replied, hesitant, hoping she was not going to ask him about the City, or the Brothers, or blame him for bringing the Fiddleback here. He felt sick. Amber was right. Sleep was a welcome balm. He could escape into his dreams for the night, and think about it all in the morning.

  There was a silence. Outside a great-horned owl hooted gently, its voice like velvet.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” the girl said in a shy voice. “I’m glad I don’t have to do all this alone. My…mother, she’d be pleased to know I have a friend. Two friends,” she added, looking down at the sleeping Myrtle, then back at Tin in the dark room. His own hair was a pale tangle amidst the covers, and Comfrey blushed, turning away just as Tin had done, for she’d never slept in the same room as a boy either.

  “Me too,” said Tin. He wanted to say more – about the way Farallone made him feel, how he didn’t think he had ever really loved anything besides his friend Seb and his Fiddleback until he’d come here and felt the fullness and life force of this land and all of its creatures, its green plants and sun and hills and birdsong. But he was too tired and couldn’t find the words, so he smiled into the darkness. “Me too,” he said again, more softly.