Celandine opened the copy of Aesop’s Fables she had brought with her and began to read a story about a fox and a crow. The crow had a piece of cheese which the fox wanted to try and steal. The fables were quite simple, but her lesson was not so much to read as to try and work out the moral of the story – which was always printed in italics at the end. She was supposed to go through the story, and then find the meaning of it for herself. Before she read any further, therefore, she made her eyes go out of focus and quickly placed her hand over the line of italics on the opposite page. She didn’t like the morals and she wished they weren’t there.
The crow was sitting in a tree with the piece of cheese in its beak, and the fox was beneath the tree, looking upwards. The fox told the crow how beautiful he thought she was – how gorgeous her plumage, how bright her eyes, how pretty her dainty little feet. He was sure that she must have the most wonderful voice to match. Would she not sing for him and make his happiness complete? The ugly old crow was very flattered. She opened her mouth to sing, and so of course she dropped the piece of cheese – which the fox very quickly gobbled up. Then the fox offered up a few rude remarks and ran away laughing.
It was quite a good story, but Celandine wasn’t sure what the moral of it might be. Don’t sing with your mouth full? Never believe anything a fox tells you? She began to move her hand very slowly, uncovering the words one at a time, to give herself a clue.
Moral; Pride and vanity …
‘Why do ’ee sit theer?’
Celandine jumped and the book slid off her lap. Her hands automatically scrabbled after it, just managing to save it from falling into the water as she turned to look over her shoulder.
He was different, this one – paler-skinned, a figure in grey on the bank of the stream. He wasn’t waving a stick at her and he seemed less outlandish, less wild, than the ones she had seen before. Nevertheless his sudden appearance was shocking enough and Celandine glanced towards the half-obscured opening of the wicker tunnel, judging the distance lest she should need to make a run for it.
‘What do ’ee want with us?’ He spoke again, and again the impression was of one who was calm, unflustered. His head was bald in the middle, like a friar’s, with white hair that grew thickly over his ears, and his shabby grey gown, tied about the waist with a cord, would have made him look even more monk-like if it weren’t for the short sleeves.
‘Come, maid, answer. Why do ’ee come to this place?’ It was not quite as easy for her to understand this one. His accent was strange.
‘I – I’m sorry.’ Her voice wasn’t working very well. She swallowed, and made another attempt, trying to remember to speak slowly and quietly. ‘I just wanted to … well, I just wanted to help. I thought I could help.’
‘Thee thowt to help? By bringing the Gorji upon us? Thee might help us the mooer by staying away, child. Thee’ve no business here.’ Yes, his accent was unlike that of the others she had heard, as though he came from another part of the country.
‘Nobody saw me come here. And I haven’t brought any … Gorji … with me.’
‘Thee be a Gorji, child. What do thee bring, if not theeself?’
Celandine took his question literally and said, ‘I’ve brought some lucifers.’ She pushed her hand into the pocket of her pinafore and fumbled for the box of matches that she had stolen from the drawing room at home. ‘See?’ She held up the little wooden box and shook it.
He frowned, but looked unimpressed. His bare forearms were folded and she saw that he wore a thick metal bracelet on each wrist. They were arms that looked as though they were used to hard work, and his face, though pale, was strong about the jaw, the neck muscles clear and visible. That first impression of him as being somehow monk-like began to fade.
‘For a wean?’
She didn’t know what he meant. A wean? A baby perhaps? Did he think that she had brought a baby’s rattle? She slid open the box, and took out a match – holding it up for him to see. Then she struck the match upon the side of the box.
He flinched at the sudden eruption of flame and thick white smoke, turning his head sideways, and half raising an arm as a shield. His grey eyes darted from the burning match to her, and then back to the match – back and forth again – finally remaining fixed upon the flame as it grew and dwindled and died.
Celandine threw the spent lucifer into the stream and closed the box.
‘I’ve siddit afore, Micas – ’tis all their nonsense. Take no heed o’ it.’
Celandine recognized the voice. It was Pato, who now emerged casually from the surrounding undergrowth and stepped down towards the bank. The figure in grey turned in surprise to look at him, and the two nodded to one another.
‘Pato.’
‘Micas.’
There was something cautious in their greeting, Celandine thought, as though they were not particularly well acquainted.
Pato was minus the trident this time. He stood with his hands on his hips and stared directly at her.
‘You’m back yere again, then maidy. I was hoping we’d seen the last of ’ee – and p’raps we would, too, if we’d only make sure thee’d seen the last of we.’ He looked meaningfully at Micas. ‘’Tis better not to show theeself, Micas. I’d ’a thought your kind might’ve knowed that.’
Micas nodded, but said, ‘I know it well enow – but she knows we’m here, Pato. She knows. And so hiding mayn’t be our best play. Wha’ist she want, I wonder? If ’n we knew that, we might barter it for her going.’
How unalike they were, Celandine thought – the one so pale, the other so dark. How could that be? And why would their speech be different? And why did they seem as though they were strangers to each other?
‘I don’t want anything,’ she said. ‘I only wanted … to be friendly. And to bring you things that might be useful to you.’
‘A box o’ fire. Hmph.’ Pato snorted and looked up at the sky.
‘Well, what about the fish hooks? Did you find the fish hooks? And the needles?’
Pato said nothing.
‘What be in the other box?’ said Micas.
Celandine was puzzled. What other box? Did he mean the book? She held it up.
‘In here, do you mean? Um … stories. Tales.’
‘A box o’ fire and a box o’ tales.’ Pato was not to be impressed. He turned to Micas. ‘I means to stay out o’ this. An’ thee should do the same, Micas. Leave this maid be. She’ll soon tire, if we pays her no mind. Come.’ He began to walk away, then stopped to look over his shoulder. Micas remained where he was. Pato shook his head, and disappeared among the ferns.
Micas stepped further down the bank, so that he was right at the edge of the stream – just a couple of feet from where she still sat upon the flat rock. He nodded cautiously at the closed book. ‘Show’st me,’ he said.
‘Read to you? Is that what you mean?’
‘Show’st me how’n a tale be put in a box.’
‘All right.’ She was close enough to him to be aware of his slow intake of breath as she gently opened the cover of the book, as though he were tensing himself against the possibility of more fireworks.
‘“The Fox and the Crow”’ she read. ‘“There was once a clever fox … ”
The next morning Micas did not come alone. Others appeared from among the ferns, half a dozen or more shabby little figures in grey, all of them quite elderly, to stand in a silent huddle upon the bank of the stream.
Celandine looked at their bearded faces, so pale their skin and white their hair that they might almost have been albino were it not for the dark cautious eyes. She wondered once again whether this could possibly be happening.
Micas spoke on the group’s behalf. ‘These be Elders, maid. Some Tinklers, some Troggles. They’m come to judge ’ee for themselves. And to hear ’ee tell a tale.’
‘Oh,’ said Celandine. She opened her book, selfconscious now, and began to read. The bubbling waters around her were like a musical accompaniment to a voice that sounde
d as though it belonged to someone else.
Within another couple of days Celandine had attracted quite a respectable audience. The number of listeners was now perhaps thirty – a shy and solemn congregation – fathers, mothers, children. They stood beside the stream in silence, rarely smiling or speaking, but their huge dark eyes were wide with curiosity and wonder as she read the ancient fables of the boy who cried ‘wolf’, the dog in the manger, the fox that lost its tail. And she in turn was so overcome by the strangeness of it all that she sometimes had to stop mid-sentence and look up from her book, to convince herself that she wasn’t dreaming, before finding her place once more.
At the end of each story the dark heads moved a little closer together, to nod their approval at one another and perhaps exchange a whisper or two – but if she spoke to any directly, or asked them questions, they shrank away from her, protectively drawing their young ones closer, shielding the tiny heads that peered wide-eyed from the folds of coarse grey material.
‘How long have you been here?’ Celandine wanted to know. ‘And where do you live? In the trees?’
The group looked to Micas, and from him she learned a little more. They called themselves Tinklers and Troggles, and they lived in the caves. Celandine could just see the mouth of one of the caves from where she sat upon her rock. She wanted to look at the jewellery that they wore – the heavy anklets and bracelets, the medallions that dangled from the cords tied about their gowns.
‘Can I see?’ She spoke to one that Micas had called Mab, and the pretty Tinkler girl silently held out her wrists to show the metal bangles that she wore. The designs looked intricate, but the metal was dull, like blackened pewter.
‘Where do you get these things?’
‘We worken the tinsy.’
Celandine took this to mean that they must somehow make these things for themselves, and indeed there was nothing about this group that seemed borrowed from the outside world. There were no bits of binder twine, no scraps of tweed or twill, no pigskin waistcoats that had seen better days. And when it was time for her to go, and Celandine offered them whatever treasures she had brought – a hatpin, a ball of wool, the metal puzzle from her Christmas box – they shook their heads in refusal. Always she left these things upon the rock, and always they had disappeared when she next returned, but she was certain that it was not the cave-dwellers who had taken them.
Celandine soon learned that there were four distinct groups, or tribes, that inhabited this secret and forgotten world. They sometimes referred to themselves as the Various.
‘Aye, Various we be,’ said Micas. ‘The Naiad do work the Great Clearing, and the Wisp do fish the Gorji waters. Us Tinklers and Troggles don’t see much o’ they, for we biden in the caves and keeps to our own.’
Pato and Fin, and the others of the first group that Celandine had seen were Naiad, so Micas told her. She had yet to meet any of the Wisp. She got the impression that those who lived below ground were inclined to avoid those who lived above it.
By the fourth day of listening to her stories, the cave-dwellers became more relaxed. They sat upon the bank now, rather than stood, and some of the younger ones dabbled their toes in the water as Celandine read to them, from another book now, of frogs and wolves, of wicked witches, and of children who got lost in the woods.
The old fairytales could be quite frightening and when, on the fifth day, she told the story of Little Red Riding Hood, she caught something of the nervousness of her listeners – feeling a chill across her own shoulders as she reached the part where the wolf was about to pounce. Celandine was aware of the silence around her – the eyes that stared, the open mouths that dared not breathe – and so when Fin came suddenly bounding out of the brambles behind her shouting ‘Ah – ah – ah!’, she scrabbled to her feet along with the rest of them, and leaped from the stone to the bank, shrieking with fright.
In an instant she was laughing, of course, clutching her chest and gasping for breath. Fin danced around her, grabbing at her sleeve and saying ‘cake-cake-cake’ in his throaty little voice. He was so plainly delighted to see her that she could hardly be cross with him, but the scattered group of Tinklers regarded him from a safer distance, scowling at him as though they were cats that had just been doused with a garden hose.
He had escaped at last, for surely they must have somehow kept him away from her these last few days, and now he was making the most of his freedom.
‘I all right. I all right.’ He splashed back to the rock and picked up the book – which Celandine had dropped, face-down, in her panic. The pages fascinated him and he riffled his fingers through them, dangling the book above his head so that he could see from beneath how the leaves fluttered back and forth.
But his joy was cut short, for now here was Pato, bursting through the undergrowth on the opposite bank of the stream with Rufus and a few others of the Naiad in red-faced pursuit.
‘Fin! Come away from there! Fin – I told ’ee … I warned ’ee … I’ll give ’ee such a latherin’! Fin!’ Pato was furious. He made a dash towards the rock, but Fin was too quick for him. He jumped across to the near bank, scampered up it, and ran to hide behind Celandine. ‘Ah – ah – ah!’ He was hanging onto her skirts, so that when she spun round he spun with her. For a few moments she felt as if she were a dog that was trying to catch its own tail.
Then Pato came running up, very hot and angry looking, and managed to get a firm grip on the collar of Fin’s tunic. He swung back his free hand and shouted, ‘I told ’ee! I told ’ee!’
‘Don’t!’ Celandine half reached towards Pato’s raised hand. ‘Don’t hit him! Please don’t!’
Pato lifted his hand higher still – but then he paused, and his shoulders seemed to sag. He lowered his arm.
‘Hit ’un?’ He sighed, and wiped the back of his brown wrist across his streaming forehead. ‘No, I casn’t hit ’un. Casn’t do it somehow – though by the Stone, I comes close to it, and thass the truth. Maybe ’tis my blame, but there ’tis.’
‘He doesn’t mean any harm, I’m sure he doesn’t.’ Celandine looked down at poor Fin who, though secured by the scruff of the neck, seemed content enough, his attention now on the nearby group of Tinklers.
‘No,’ said Pato. ‘He don’t mean no harm …’
‘But he’ve brung it upon us all the same.’ Rufus and the other half dozen of Pato’s companions had drawn closer. It was Rufus who spoke, but he didn’t pursue the point. Like Fin, his attention seemed to be drawn towards the cave-dwellers.
There was silence for a few moments, and Celandine was aware of the uneasy way in which the two separate groups regarded one another. There was a mutual curiosity there, but also a wariness that seemed strange to her.
She said, ‘Fin hasn’t really brought you any harm, at least … not if you mean me. Nobody else knows that I’ve been coming here, and nobody ever will – I’ve already promised you that. I’m very careful, you know, not to let anyone see me. And I’ve tried to bring you things that might be useful.’ She looked slyly at the bright red stitching around the shoulders of Rufus’s waistcoat. ‘Did you like the wool?’
Rufus looked the other way.
‘And I don’t think the others mind me coming here – Micas, and Loren, and Elina … and the rest. I’ve been reading to them. They like it, I think.’
Pato looked at the book, which Fin was now clutching to his chest, and muttered, ‘What be that thing?’ He called across to the other group. ‘Micas! What is it ’ee do … what do ’ee …?’ His voice trailed off, waiting, as Micas walked over. ‘When ’ee do all sit there by the gwylie, Micas, and this yere maid do break open that … that thing … and she do talk to ’ee … well, I don’t understand it, thass all. What bist she a-doin’ of?’
Micas rubbed the palm of his hand across the top of his shiny head.
‘’Tis named a boox. She do bring tales from’t. Though we don’t see how. It speaken to her in voices we m’nt hear, though we hearken right close. By p
iece and by piece it speaken to her, and she speaken to us.’
‘We med all tell a tale, Micas – thee or I as well as the next – and have no need o’ such things. Bide still, Fin, will ’ee?’
‘This’m but a maid, Pato. Nor maid nor giant, nor thee nor I, would hold so much – aye, tales upon tales – in but one pate. No. We’n a-held much parley on this. It speaken. ’Tis witchi.’
‘Witchi?’ Pato raised his eyebrows and yanked Fin towards him, as he bent forward to take a closer look at the book.
Celandine had to stifle a giggle.
‘It’s just a book,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing … witchy … about it. Look, I’ll show you.’ She gently took the book from Fin and let it fall open, lowering it so that Pato and Micas could see the pages. The two of them moved in a little closer – Pato, reluctant and suspicious, Micas more curious and interested.
‘See? Here’s a picture – of a crow. And over here, there’s a fox. And these are the words that tell the tale. Can you see?’
The two faces, one so dark, the other so pale, studied the open pages.
‘I sees a corben, and a renard,’ said Pato. He bent his ear towards the book. ‘But I casn’t hear no tale.’
‘Well, you don’t hear anything. You have to read it – these words … all these marks on the page, they’re words …’ Celandine was beginning to realize how difficult it would be to try and explain. ‘You see, each word …’ – she pointed with her finger – ‘each word makes a sound. Or rather, each letter …’ She gave up. ‘Tomorrow I’ll bring some paper and a pencil. Then I can show you.’
Pato turned away, disinterested. ‘’Tis all nonsense to I. Micas, thee and I shall have this out, now we’m gathered. Be you for letting this maid to keep coming here or no?’
Celandine Page 10