The Well of the North Wind

by Steven, Kenneth;

  ‘Is there such a thing as perfect trust?’ Ruach asked, his voice soft.

  ‘Perhaps not for us who have grown old,’ Colum said. ‘The child when he leaps from the rock into his father’s arms below; he has perfect trust. But to learn it again when you have fallen and fallen, and when others have not been there to catch you – that is hard. I am not sure if we ever stop learning it, Ruach, that is for sure.’

  The wind came again: a single huge boom. The candle flame hissed into darkness, yet still for a moment Ruach saw Colum there. ‘I think he is looking for water. He is thirsty and searching for water.’

  And there, nothing more than the shadow of Colum’s head, looking up once more. ‘No more than the rest of us, Ruach. No more than us all.’

  *

  The autumn had come. One day Fian got up and knew it. The day before it had been summer and now it was autumn. Nothing was different and yet everything was. He felt it and rejoiced, and did not even know why.

  The day still, with pieces of blue in the faraway sky. The other islands lying in scattered fragments on a silent sea. The russet of the hills, and from somewhere the scent of smoke. He liked it that no one was about, that perhaps he was the only one that knew. And all at once he thought of Larach and his men at sea. Surely they must be dead, and perhaps that was what Larach had wanted. To find God in a storm’s death. He had not wanted to fade into nothingness; he needed to fight against the lions and know that he had fought.

  Fian went up the stairs, slow and silent. He felt there was nothing in his hands at all, but there were days like that when in the end it was enough to be here, to see the page and what had been before, to be set on fire by its beauty. When he felt a little faith he knew there was more to find within. It was strange, but on faithless days, especially when sea and wind tore at the island like a madman, there was nothing. He wondered what all this was, this fighting against the elements to do nothing but survive; this whispering of prayers and copying of books. Where was God in this grey world, and what God was it that toyed with them in the grey misery of storm? There had been days he had done nothing. Days when he had crept away and slept, when even Cuan with all his young laughter and kindness could not bring him back from where he had curled in against the wall.

  Faith was for him a candle. It fought against the darkness, but sometimes it struggled and flickered; sometimes it was all but gone. He sat there now in the shadows, his elbows on the cold stone. The fire clicked and he looked over into its heart.

  ‘I came to find you.’

  He all but fell to the floor with shock and she laughed. He turned and saw her now, coming out of the shadows, and still his heart chased. He closed his eyes and smiled, struggled to gather himself once more. ‘You gave me a fright!’

  He felt strange because somehow he was unprepared. He wanted to say something else but he had no words. He looked away.

  ‘I am going to pick flowers,’ she said simply. ‘Would you like to come with me?’

  That woke him out of himself. He was up at once and ready. She took a long time to struggle down the stone steps, limping all the time, but he carried the basket she had brought and was ahead of her, looking back and catching the gold-brown of her hair.

  ‘It was on the moor I saw you,’ he said, when at last they stood out in the limpid blue quiet of the day. Still the place was silent, as though all of them were in hiding or had slept far longer than was their wont. And again he was glad; he did not want to meet Neil or Cuan or any of the others. There would only be questions.

  ‘I will go somewhere else today,’ she said. ‘It is the best place for the flowers I want to find. But you must be patient for I am slow.’

  Her head was down as though ashamed and he wanted to say that it didn’t matter, that it was not important. She said nothing but began walking, slow and steady out to the north side of the settlement. Then she began up onto the higher ground, and he thought that it must hurt her to walk here, but he was shy to suggest such a thing.

  Instead he said: ‘You must show me the flowers.’ And at once he thought his words meaningless and foolish. ‘I know none of them by name and I want to learn. I would like to find colours, inks, for the making of the book. Do you think that would be possible?’

  She was silent a time and he dared glance at her, and he realized she was thinking. She thought about everything she said, as though she needed to hold and hear her words before she spoke them.

  ‘I think there are one or two you would find,’ she said at last. And he thought that she might say more but she did not.

  Still they walked up and up, into rugged little hills with deep ditches and high ridges. She followed a path he could not see, right into the middle of the island where he had never been before, and at last they were high enough to see the other side and the west.

  He looked back and the settlement might have been a cluster of child’s toys. He caught the breath of turf smoke on the air, and he wondered where it came from.

  They came to a strange high wall of rock and then curved round it and over. Now the west lay below them, dark rock and heather to the very edge of the sea. On and down to a place of wetness and a pool among the rocks. And flowers he had never seen before in his life.

  ‘What is this place?’ he asked, for it felt strange and he did not know why. She crouched down, the basket in front of her, and smiled.

  ‘This is the Well of the North Wind,’ she said. ‘It is my favourite place. No one else comes here or knows of it. That is why I love it.’

  And the words were beautiful to Fian, and already he wanted to find it in pictures. He wanted to find a colour to capture it, and somehow it was stowed away already in his hands, to be found when the time was right.

  He gathered the flowers with her and they hardly talked or needed to talk. Sometimes the wind breathed about them but nothing else, and he was glad to be away from the arguments about angels, and the questions about the breaking of bread. For even his place up in the tower was not hidden away and silent. Nowhere was safe, except the hill alone where Colum slept and prayed. That was the only place. And suddenly he found the words pouring out of him without fear.

  ‘Can I come here with you again, to find flowers and talk? Will you look for me as you did this morning?’

  He watched her silence as she bent over towards the flowers, and it was as though her face broke and was glassy with grief. Her voice different and angry, sharp and shrill so he was taken aback, afraid. ‘I am sick,’ she said, and looked away from him. ‘I am sick and I will die. I do not know when I will die and I do not want . . .’

  Suddenly she had struggled to her feet and was stumbling away, weeping and enraged. For a moment he was so surprised, so taken aback by the shattering of the peace they had known, that he did nothing but turn and watch her go. Then he struggled up himself and was trying to catch her, wanting to stop her, wishing he had not spoken at all. She stopped at last on the top of a small hill and her face was white and cold, and she looked straight ahead into nowhere.

  ‘I want to go back alone,’ she whispered.

  He nodded; he could do no more than that. ‘I do not even know your name,’ he said helplessly.

  ‘Mara,’ she said, and made its gentleness harsh and bitter. ‘And I know your name!’ And she began limping down and away home.

  *

  ‘I want you to go and find Ruach.’

  What he wanted to do was to tell Colum about Mara, to ask him what he should do. He knew in his heart that either Colum would have sat him close by the peat fire and talked with him softly, or else he would have shouted at him and told him to be gone. There were no half-measures with Colum; he was either gentle or giant. And Fian feared he knew which it would have been that day.

  Instead he stumbled out of the settlement south, the driven rain sore against his face. He did not want to go and yet he did; there was too much in his head for him to be still and draw. There had been nothing at all in his hands since the day at the W
ell of the North Wind.

  He was soaked long before he came to the beach where he knew he would find Ruach, but it did not matter. He walked until he thought of nothing, and until his face was numb with the rain’s sting. And he came down again into the strange bowl that lay up behind the beach, and even now he had to stop and listen to its silence. He remembered the first time he had come down into it and he felt no different now. It was like a green goblet, a chalice. There was no one here but himself and again he turned all the way round because he felt there was someone here, that there must be. And what came to him was the story of Moses and the holy ground – but why this place, and what burning bush was there to find? Had he seen such a thing then and there in the howl of the rain he would never have doubted again. And yet here he found it easy to believe all the same. And then something beyond his comprehension happened. A fold opened in the southern sky and for a moment sunlight poured down, into the green hollow itself. Of course not there only, but also. And it was as though a curtain was drawn over his doubt, and he was sure.

  Then the cloud closed and the walls of grey were thick as ever, and even the green bowl seemed empty and nothing. Before he moved he asked himself if what he had seen had been real or a vision, for already it felt foolish and impossible. And yet he knew nonetheless.

  A few minutes later he clattered over the first boulders onto the beach. It felt strange, thinking of talking now after what he had just passed through; he would have been grateful for time and quiet to wonder. But this was what he had been sent to do; he had to come back with Ruach.

  At first he thought he was not even going to find him, that this time Colum had been wrong. But a sudden drifting of wood smoke made him turn his head, and he saw the gully of stone from which it came. He made his steps quiet on the stones; he did not want to seem to shatter Ruach’s silence. He was a searcher too, one for whom the world was rough and jagged, as it was for Ruach. He searched for answers, he did not swallow them. And never would Colum shout at his doubting.

  Now he was sunk over his small fire of sticks. As though he knew that Fian was there, he looked up at his shadow at the mouth of the gully and smiled. He smiled sadness, if such a thing was possible.

  ‘You are wet to the bone,’ he said softly, his brow furrowed. ‘Come, sit close; warm yourself. Were it not for my folly and my dreams you would not have had to come the length of the island to find me.’

  ‘I was glad to,’ said Fian. ‘I had stones to come and search for too.’

  They crouched and stared long into the fire that drove this way and that in the wind. Ruach fed it, piece by slow piece, as rain was hurled around them in spatters. It came to Fian that never had there been another moment of light, and he was on the point of asking Ruach if he had seen it too. Then he knew he did not want to ask, for he did not want the answer. He was content with quiet.

  Ruach smiled once more. ‘This is the best time for the green stones, for they are made the brighter by the rain. But I have no heart for them, nor have I had from the first moment I came.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Fian asked.

  But though he looked at Ruach for an answer none was offered. The other just gazed into the fire, his face deathly pale, and fed the tiniest of twigs to the flames. Had he heard him at all or did he not want to answer?

  ‘I had a dream two nights ago, of a star that fell. It was bright and beautiful, and it fell into the sea. But because of the dark of the night, I could not see where it fell. But I knew that I had to find it.’

  Ruach’s mouth closed. He gazed still into the fire, as the wind came again and tore through it, driving the flames another way. Fian was frozen to the marrow; he yearned to leave and yet he could not say so. His hands hurt.

  ‘That is why I came here, to know what the dream meant. And I am no closer, though I have walked and prayed and hungered and held myself sleepless since it came. Why am I chosen for such things?’

  And Fian had no answer. If God wanted to give messages and truths, why did he not give them simply? Why had they to be translated, as though from some lost language? He had no answer.

  In the end the last piece of wood was nothing more than blackened ash. Together they began the long march back, the wind rising about them all the time like ghosts, as the grey fell into darkness.

  *

  He dreamed of nothing but that it was cold, and woke and found it to be true. He curled in on himself, shivering, and turned and turned again in his search for sleep. He thought of the winter ahead; the long, slow drag of it, and his heart quailed. He had lost count of the days since he had drawn, and it was as though he almost doubted now that the skill still lay in his hands. But perhaps there was no more to find; perhaps the time had come to go home. But he did not know where that was any more. This was as much his home as anywhere.

  In the end he fell into a half-sleep and he did dream, if dream it was. A girl sang as she fed a fire, and the girl was Mara. She had a beautiful voice and he wanted to tell her, but he lacked the courage.

  When he woke it was with a start and his back hurt. And it seemed that in the shadows he looked straight into the face of Colum. And as he looked the face began laughing, rocking with laughter until at last it was still again.

  ‘Dear Fian,’ the face of Colum said, ‘you have overslept. It is a new day.’

  Fian drew himself up on his bed with shock and shame. ‘Is that why you came here?’ he asked, foolish and red. ‘Was it to come and mock my sleep?’ He looked everywhere but the face of Colum.

  But the face of Colum he did not look at changed. The laughter fell away and the face became old and kind and full of a thousand journeys. ‘No, Fian, that is not why I came here,’ he said, and the voice was as soft as the nest of a mouse; there was neither mockery nor reproach in it.

  ‘I am here because I have seen your struggle. I have seen that the page is dry and the pen empty. You struggle to find God and you will not let God find you. That is why I am here.’

  Fian looked at him at last. He huddled there in the shadows, his knees up under his chin. He struggled for the words he wanted. How often would it have been easier to draw the words he sought than to utter them?

  ‘Where do you find God?’ he whispered. ‘When you doubt?’

  The answer came back at once, as fast as an echo. ‘In the small things. In the voice of a child, in the curl of an otter, in the single moment of light on a day of storm.’

  And he remembered the walk to find Ruach. He remembered and nodded.

  *

  And so was the night that Colum washed their feet. Three days it had raged like a demented creature; the sea threw itself huge and white over the headlands, and walking was a battle with the wind. What could hope to live out on that water? Hard to remember the days when it had been a single piece of glass, its edges all but unbroken. Now they huddled at the heart, in the place where prayers had been said so long it was as though they had made smooth the very stones. They held together and heard the roaring beyond them. They did not want to be afraid and yet they were. And all that day they were hungry and barely a word was spoken. Everything they were seemed in doubt, became distant and lost.

  And then in the evening it dropped; they heard that it fell, just a little. And the bell rang; they heard it over the gusting of the wind. And Colum was suddenly with them; he sang soft and low, and his voice carried among the stones, so that one by one they seemed to waken from a kind of slumber and sing also. Until all their voices were as one, and yet still they were soft, but stronger than the storm. And then Fian saw what Colum did – or rather, he heard the sound of the water first, and understood when he looked. Colum washed their feet: from eldest to youngest, from wisest to slowest – tenderly and gently he washed and he dried their feet. The feet too of little Cuillin who had almost died, who smiled shyly as his master cared for him and loved them all.

  *

  ‘Fian, you must come with me!’

  It was the first time he had slept
well in days and someone was dragging him awake in the middle of the night. He said things that made no sense and found himself on his feet, scrabbling to wrap his shivering. The voice that had called him again and again talking endlessly now about what he could not understand, and then they were out into the night. The wind had no longer its first force; it was not constant but it gathered its strength and came in great sudden booms. The night was starless and moonless, and suddenly at last Fian realized it was Ruach who had pulled at his sleep, chattering nonsense as he dragged him along now. All at once Fian was awake; he held Ruach’s shoulders and shook him.

  ‘Enough! What is it? What is it you have seen?’

  Ruach reached out and held him, like a little child. And Fian stooped, for he was taller than him, and Ruach’s mouth whispered against his ear. ‘I don’t know, but there is something I have to find!’

  There were a hundred things he could have said, yet it was that trust which made him say none of them. Ruach had sought him out and that he could not reject. But if they were to search the darkness then they needed light. He found a lantern and he found Ruach once more. ‘Where do we need to search? Do you know anything?’

  The face grey and pathetic. He was like a dog that has been whipped. Eyes that did not know where to go. The wind roared against them. ‘The sea! All I know is that. Somewhere in the sea!’

  He was awake now and enough that his sense of humour had returned too. He wished he could tell Ruach’s dreams to be a little more precise. If they searched the next ten years, that might not be enough.

  They went uselessly down below the settlement first, close to where once he had drawn in the sand for the children. They staggered about like two drunk men and Ruach held onto him, half talking to himself all the time. Fian wished that this might be enough to satisfy him, to let him see there was no point. But then Ruach was not like the others, and when a dream haunted him nothing would heal him until it had been understood.

  Two things changed, and more quickly than ever Fian would have imagined. First, the wind eased, almost as though it had grown tired of itself. And it grew light; or rather, a pitiful grey band brought the ghost of the morning to life. Not life exactly, but to some state beyond death. It was freezing and the last of the wind was a jagged edge of knife that bluntly tore at face and hands. But it was a kind of dawn.