by Jane Yolen
An it shall pass on a summer’s day
When the sun shines het on every stane
That I will tak my little young son
An teach him for to swim his lane.
An thu sall marry a proud gunner
An a right proud gunner I’m sure he’ll be.
An the very first shot that ere he shoots
He’ll kill baith my young son and me.
Had it truly happened, or was it just some dream brought on by a fall? She felt again those cold, compelling hands on her, the movement of the webbings pulsing on her breasts; smelled again the briny odor of his breath. And if she did have that bairn, that child? Why, Harry Stones would have to marry her, then. Her father could not deny them that.
And laughing and crying at the same time, Mairi began to run up the stone steps. The sound of the sea followed her all the way home, part melody and part unending moan.
Once a Good Man
ONCE A GOOD MAN lived at the foot of a mountain. He helped those who needed it and those who did not.
And he never asked for a thing in return.
Now it happened that one day the Lord was looking over his records with his Chief Angel and came upon the Good Man’s name. “That is a good man,” said the Lord. “What can we do to reward him? Go down and find out.” The Chief Angel, who was nibbling on a thin cracker, swallowed hastily and wiped her mouth with the edge of her robe.
“Done,” she said.
So the Chief Angel flew down, the wind feathering her wings, and landed at the foot of the mountain.
“Come in,” said the man, who was not surprised to see her. For in those days angels often walked on Earth. “Come in and drink some tea. You must be aweary of flying.”
And indeed the angel was. So she went into the Good Man’s house, folded her wings carefully so as not to knock the furniture about, and sat down for a cup of tea.
While they were drinking their tea, the angel said, “You have led such an exemplary life, the Lord of Hosts has decided to reward you. Is there anything in the world that you wish?”
The Good Man thought a bit. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “there is one thing.”
“Name it,” said the angel. “To name it is to make it yours.”
The Good Man looked slightly embarrassed. He leaned over the table and said quietly to the angel, “If only I could see both Heaven and Hell I would be completely happy.”
The Chief Angel choked a bit, but she managed to smile nonetheless. “Done,” she said, and finished her tea. Then she stood up and held out her hand.
“Hold fast,” she said. “And never lack courage.”
So the Good Man held fast. But he kept his eyes closed all the way. And before he could open them again, the man and the angel had flown down, down, down, past moles and mole hills, past buried treasure, past coal in seams, past layer upon layer of the world, till they came at last to the entrance to Hell.
The Good Man felt a cool breeze upon his lids and opened his eyes.
“Welcome to Hell,” said the Chief Angel.
The Good Man stood amazed. Instead of flames and fire, instead of mud and mire, he saw long sweeping green meadows edged around with trees. He saw long wooden tables piled high with food. He saw chickens and roasts, fruits and salads, sweetmeats and sweet breads, and goblets of wine.
Yet the people who sat at the table were thin and pale. They devoured the food only with their eyes.
“Angel, oh angel,” cried the Good Man, “why are they hungry? Why do they not eat?”
And at his voice, the people all set up a loud wail.
The Chief Angel signaled him closer.
And this is what he saw: The people of Hell were bound fast to their chairs with bands of steel. There were sleeves of steel from their wrists to their shoulders. And though the tables were piled high with food, the people were starving. There was no way they could bend their arms to lift the food to their mouths.
The Good Man wept and hid his face. “Enough!” he cried.
So the Chief Angel held out her hand. “Hold fast,” she said. “And never lack courage.”
So the Good Man held fast. But he kept his eyes closed all the way. And before he could open them again, the man and the angel had flown up, up, up, past eagles in their eyries, past the plump clouds, past the streams of the sun, past layer upon layer of sky, till they came at last to the entrance to Heaven.
The Good Man felt a warm breeze upon his lids and opened his eyes.
“Welcome to Heaven,” said the Chief Angel.
The Good Man stood amazed. Instead of clouds and choirs, instead of robes and rainbows, he saw long sweeping green meadows edged around with trees. He saw long wooden tables piled high with food. He saw chickens and roasts, fruits and salads, sweetmeats and sweet breads, and goblets of wine.
But the people of Heaven were bound fast to their chairs with bands of steel. There were sleeves of steel from their wrists to their shoulders. There seemed no way they could bend their arms to lift the food to their mouths.
Yet these people were well fed. They laughed and talked and sang praises to their host, the Lord of Hosts.
“I do not understand,” said the Good Man. “It is the same as Hell, yet it is not the same. What is the difference?”
The Chief Angel signaled him closer.
And this is what he saw: Each person reached out with his steel-banded arm to take a piece of food from the plate. Then he reached over—and fed his neighbor.
When he saw this, the Good Man was completely happy.
Allerleirauh
HER EARLIEST MEMOR WAS of rain on a thatched roof, and surely it was a true one, for she had been born in a country cottage two months before time, to her father’s sorrow and her mother’s death. They had sheltered there, out of the storm, and her father had never forgiven himself or the child who looked so like her mother. So like her, it was said, that portraits of the two as girls might have been exchanged and not even Nanny the wiser.
So great had been her father’s grief at the moment of his wife’s death, he might even have left the infant there, still bright with birth blood and squalling. Surely the crofters would have been willing, for they were childless themselves. His first thought was to throw the babe away, his wife’s Undoing as he called her ever after, though her official name was Allerleirauh. And he might have done so had she not been the child of a queen. A royal child, whatever the crime, is not to be tossed aside so lightly, a feather in the wind.
But he had made two promises to the blanched figure that lay on the rude bed, the woolen blankets rough against her long, fair legs. White and red and black she had been then. White of skin, like the color of milk after the whey is skimmed out. Red as the toweling that carried her blood, the blood they could not staunch, the life leaching out of her. And black, the color of her eyes, the black seas he used to swim in, the black tendrils of her hair.
“Promise me.” Her voice had stumbled between those lips, once red, now white.
He clasped her hands so tightly he feared he might break them, though it was not her bones that were brittle, but his heart. “I promise,” he said. He would have promised her anything, even his own life, to stop the words bleeding out of that white mouth. “I promise.”
“Promise me you will love the child,” she said, for even in her dying she knew his mind, knew his heart, knew his dark soul. “Promise.”
And what could he do but give her that coin, the first of two to close her dead eyes?
“And promise me you will not marry again, lest she be . . .” and her voice trembled, sighed, died.
“Lest she be as beautiful as thee,” he promised wildly in the high tongue, giving added strength to his vow. “Lest she have thy heart, thy mind, thy breasts, thy eyes . . .” and his rota continued long past her life. He was speaking to a dead woman many minutes and would not let himself acknowledge it, as if by naming the parts of her he loved, he might keep her alive, the words bleeding
out of him as quickly as her lost blood.
“She is gone, my lord,” said the crofter’s wife, not even sure of his rank except that he was clearly above her. She touched his shoulder for comfort, a touch she would never have ventured in other circumstances, but tragedy made them kin.
The king’s litany continued as if he did not hear, and indeed he did not. For all he heard was the breath of death, that absence made all the louder by his own sobs.
“She is dead, sire,” the crofter said. He had known the king all along, but had not mentioned it till that one moment. Blunter than his wife, he was less sure of the efficacy of touch. “Dead.”
And this one final word the king heard.
“She is not dead!” he roared, bringing the back of his hand around to swat the crofter’s face as if he were not a giant of a man but an insect. The crofter shuddered and was silent, for majesty does make gnats of such men, even in their own homes. Even there.
The infant, recognizing no authority but hunger and cold, began to cry at her father’s voice. On and on she bawled, a high, unmusical strand of sound till the king dropped his dead wife’s hand, put his own hands over his ears, and ran from the cottage screaming, “I shall go mad!”
He did not, of course. He ranged from distracted to distraught for days, weeks, months, and then the considerations of kingship recalled him to himself. It was his old self recalled: the distant, cold, considering king he had been before his marriage. For marriage to a young, beautiful, foreign-born queen had changed him. He had been for those short months a better man, but not a better ruler. So the councilors breathed easier, certainly. The barons and nobles breathed easier, surely. And the peasants—well, the peasants knew a hard hand either way, for the dalliance of kings has no effect on the measure of rain or the seasons in the sun, no matter what the poets write or the minstrels pluck upon their strings.
Only two in the kingdom felt the brunt of his neglect. Allerleirauh, of course, who would have loved to please him; but she scarcely knew him. And her nanny, who had been her mother’s nanny, and was brought across the seas to a strange land. Where Allerleirauh knew hunger, the nurse knew hate. She blamed the king as he blamed the child, for the young queen’s death, and she swore in her own dark way to bring sorrow to him and his line.
The king was mindful in his own way of his promises. Kingship demands attention to be paid. He loved his daughter with the kindness of kings, which is to say he ordered her clothed and fed and educated to her station. But he did not love her with his heart. How could he, having seen her first cloaked in his wife’s blood? How could he, having named her Undoing?
He had her brought to him but once a year, on the anniversary of his wife’s death, that he might remind himself of her crime. That it was also the anniversary of Allerleirauh’s birth, he did not remark. She thought he remembered, but he did not.
So the girl grew unremarked and unloved, more at home in the crofter’s cottage where she had been born. And remembering each time she sat there in the rain—learning the homey crafts from the crofter’s stout wife—that first rain.
The king did not marry again, though his counselors advised it. Memory refines what is real. Gold smelted in the mind’s cauldron is the purer. No woman could be as beautiful to him as the dead queen. He built monuments and statues, commissioned poems and songs. The palace walls were hung with portraits that resembled her, all in color—the skin white as snow, the lips red as blood, the hair black as raven’s wings. He lived in a mausoleum and did not notice the live beauty for the dead one.
Years went by, and though each spring messengers went through the kingdom seeking a maiden “white and black and red,” the king’s own specifications, they came home each summer’s end to stare disconsolately at the dead queen’s portraits.
“Not one?” the king would ask.
“Not one,” the messengers replied. For the kingdom’s maidens had been blond or brown or redheaded. They had been pale or rosy or tan. And even those sent abroad found not a maid who looked like the statues or spoke like the poems or resembled in the slightest what they had all come to believe the late queen had been.
So the king went through spring and summer and into snow, still unmarried and without a male heir.
In desperation, his advisers planned a great three-day ball, hoping that—dressed in finery—one of the rejected maidens of the kingdom might take on a queenly air. Notice was sent that all were to wear black the first night, red the second, and white the third.
Allerleirauh was invited, too, though not by the king’s own wishes. She was told of the ball by her nurse.
“I will make you three dresses,” the old woman said. “The first dress will be as gold as the sun, the second as silver as the moon, and the third one will shine like the stars.” She hoped that in this way, the princess would stand out. She hoped in this way to ruin the king.
Now if this were truly a fairy tale (and what story today with a king and queen and crofter’s cottage is not?) the princess would go outside to her mother’s grave. And there, on her knees, she would learn a magic greater than any craft, a woman’s magic compounded of moonlight, elopement, and deceit. The neighboring kingdom would harbor her, the neighboring prince would marry her, her father would be brought to his senses, and the moment of complete happiness would be the moment of story’s end. Ever after is but a way of saying: “There is nothing more to tell.” It is but a dissembling. There is always more to tell. There is no happy ever after. There is happy on occasion and happy every once in a while. There is happy when the memories do not overcome the now.
But this is not a fairy tale. The princess is married to her father and, always having wanted his love, does not question the manner of it. Except at night, late at night, when he is away from her bed and she is alone in the vastness of it.
The marriage is sanctioned and made pure by the priests, despite the grumblings of the nobles. One priest who dissents is murdered in his sleep. Another is burned at the stake. There is no third. The nobles who grumble lose their lands. Silence becomes the conspiracy; silence becomes the conspirators.
Like her mother, the princess is weak-wombed. She dies in childbirth surrounded by that silence, cocooned in it. The child she bears is a girl, as lovely as her mother. The king knows he will not have to wait another thirteen years.
It is an old story.
Perhaps the oldest.
The Gwynhfar
THE GWYNHFAR—THE WHITE one, the pure one, the anointed one—waited. She had waited every day since her birth, it seemed, for this appointed time. Attended by her voiceless women in her underground rooms, the gwynhfar’s limbs had been kept oiled, her bone-white hair had been cleaned and combed. No color was allowed to stain her dead-white cheeks, no maurish black to line her eyes. White as the day she had been born, white as the foam on a troubled sea, white as the lilybell grown in the wood, she waited.
Most of her life had been spent on her straw bed in that half-sleep nature spent on her. She moved from small dream to small dream, moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day, without any real knowledge of what awaited her. Nor did she care. The gwynhfar did not have even creature sense, nor had she been taught to think. All she had been taught was waiting. It was her duty, it was her life.
She had been the firstborn of a dour landholder and his wife. Pulled silently from between her mother’s thighs, bleached as bone, her tiny eyes closed tight against the agonizing light, the gwynhfar cried only in the day—a high, thin, mewling call. At night, without the sun to torment her, she seemed content; she waited.
They say now that the old mage attended her birth, but that is not true. He did not come for weeks, even months, till word of the white one’s birth had traveled mouth to ear, mouth to ear, over and over the intervening miles. He did not come at first, but his messengers came, as they did to every report of a marvel. They had visited two-headed calves, fish-scaled infants, and twins joined at the hip and heart. When they heard of the white one, t
hey came to her, too.
She waited for them as she waited for everything else.
And when the messengers saw that the stories were true enough, they reported back to the stone hall. So the Old One himself came, wrapped in his dignity and the sour trappings of state.
He had to bend down to enter the cottage, for age had not robbed him of the marvelous height that had first brought him to the attention of the Oldest Ones, those who dwell in the shadows of the Circle of Stones. He bent and bent till it seemed he would bend quite in two, and still he broke his head on the lintel.
“A marvel,” it was said. ‘‘The blood anointed the door.” That was no marvel, but a failing of judgment and the blood a mere trickle where the skin broke apart. But that is what was said. What the Old One himself said was in a language far older than he and twice as filled with power. But no one reported it, for who but the followers of the oldest way even know that tongue?
As the Old One stood there, gazing at the mewling white babe in her half sleep before the flickering fire, he nodded and stroked his thin beard. This, too, they say, and I have seen him often enough musing in just that way, so it could have been so.
Then he stretched forth his hand, that parchment-colored, five-fingered magician’s wand that could make balls and cards and silken banners disappear. He stretched forth his hand and touched the child. She shivered and woke fully for the first time, gazing at a point somewhere beyond his hand but not as far as his face with her watery pink eyes.
“So,” he said in that nasal excuse for a voice. “So.” He was never profligate with words. But it was enough.