The Fourth Pig (23 page)

THE BORDER LOVING

The wan water runs fast between us,

It runs between my love and me,

Since the fairy woman has made him a fairy

And sat her down upon his knee.

Eden Water flows cold between us

And west of Eden the Solway tide,

But the fairy woman she came from Ireland

And my love stayed on the further side;

My love lies snug in Carlisle Castle

With the changeling woman for year-long bride.

Waters of Tweed are deep between us,

Fierce and steep the unridden fells;

But the fairy woman watches the swallows

And tastes the clover and hears the bells,

And my love watches and hears and follows.

MIRK, MIRK NIGHT

(for strange roads, with Zita)

 

O they rade on, and farther on,

And they waded rivers abune the knee,

And they saw neither sun nor moon,

But they heard the roaring of the sea.

It was mirk, mirk night, there was nae starlight,

They waded thro' red blude to the knee;

For a' the blude that's shed on the earth

Rins through the springs o' that countrie.

It was during the seventh year that I began to become aware of where I was and why. No sudden or startling event brought these hidden things to consciousness, but rather a succession of small enlightenments. It is perhaps not well known to those on Middle Earth that we others in Fairy Land are not used to look too directly up nor down. Our eyes in downward gazing seldom encounter anything nearer to ground than the thousand clustering tops of fern and flower, ankle-height violet or primrose, and knee-height orchis or burnet rose. The trees, also, bow down to the reaching gaze or grasp, letting drop apple or chestnut candle. To one lying in the thick lee of a hawthorn hedge, there is no sky, but only layer upon layer of spreading and dizzying branches, enclosing hollows full of that scent which is half goat and half
utter sweetness, and which is ever to be found in Fairy Land at yet other seasons than May. Nor do the upper windows of the great columned and vaulted halls of Fairy Land look towards anything but the soft sway of boughs and tendrils, and sometimes a flight of birds.

Yet it happened to me once in a ball game with my friends and companions, that one clutched at me laughing, and broke my necklace, which pattered down over my breast and past my knees. He laughed and said we should find another as good in the hall of precious things, but I, a little angry, said I must indeed have again what I had lost. So down I went, groping for my necklace in the thick, flawless, earth-covering grass, and at last I found it. But as I did so, as my fingers touched the beads, so also I touched what was below the grass, and this was hard and smooth. At that it came to me suddenly that nothing could root there, and I was momentarily blinded by a vision of white, twisting, easily broken roots. Carefully parting the grass-blades, I found that it was indeed as I thought. The ground—for it was neither earth nor sand nor rock—was dry, polished, unpierceable. And as I knelt there, the thought came clicking into my mind of my own fingers on another kind of foundation. I remembered first the mossy brittleness of forest banks under my soft baby grabbing, and then, with a certain shock and withdrawal, the wet clay round old cabbage stumps, parting with a reluctant stickiness as the root heaved up, and the rain on my shoulders, and the cabbage-smelling clay blocking my fingernails.

But as I sprang to my feet, breathing hard and clutching up the strands of the broken necklace, this vision faded before I had time to demand any where or when. And I saw my friend had
gone away, laughing at me, back to the others; and after that he was no more my friend in the fairy way. He had seen something in my face which he did not care for. And I let fall the necklace again, but this time I did not stoop to seek for it in the grass that was only fairy grass.

And another time with yet another friend of mine, looking up into his face, a flock of crested birds lighted on a green branch behind him: for he was a master of birds and had called them out of the magic meadows for my delight. But the weight of the singing birds swept the bough down, and for a moment I saw through the leaves and past the bright eyes and hair of my friend, and there was no sky. I saw merely a background without colour or texture, a lid of nothing over the tree, the lovely birds, and the delight I had in my friend. And all at once my mind was flooded with the open blue seen above ploughlands or best in a long narrow street somewhere without birds or delight, when the sky alone and certainly was beauty. And maybe that sky reflected itself into my face, for my friend suddenly dropped his arms from my neck and stepped back from me, his birds darting angrily all round him, and was gone. But for a time that did not matter to me, for I was still picturing the sky above that mean unbroken line of house tops, and I could smell summer garbage—although I did not know it was that, only that my nostrils and stomach were assailed by a sour foulness—and I could hear the wailing of an over-hot baby in a tiny room below the sunbeaten roofs. But I did not know where it was, and after a time the picture died out, leaving me only with a feeling of torsion and darkness at the base of my brain, made no better by my loneliness for my friend who did not come back. There was no place or thing in Fairy Land to
which that picture I had seen would fit, and I said to myself that it was nothing which existed. I ate more freely of the joy-apples and lay down more often by the springs and caverns of dreams. But yet I was uneasy, and in the midst of the singing my voice would waver and my pleasure go suddenly blank.

There is yet another thing about Fairy Land which is not well known on Middle Earth. We there have no looking-glasses. Looking was an action which we were used to practise upon others but never upon ourselves. Never were we accosted by this dumb and backless stranger whom Middle Earth women regard as themselves. Never need we fear the hand or face peering around the double's shoulder or smoothing her opposite hair. Never need we perceive change. We lived inside ourselves, seeing only our solid, friendly hands and the front of our bodies from the breasts down. Thus, if our friends told us that we were beautiful, we believed that this was the truth, and it built up in our protected inner selves an assurance which there was no looking-glass to drive out. And yet from time to time it happened to Fairy women that they should gaze too intently into the eyes of their friends and see their own faces, tiny and troubled. Yet if this came to them they would look aside quickly, pretending that nothing had occurred to mar delight, and in a little time, after blossom and dancing and forest chasing, it would be so. Remembrance of the unfit looking would close tight as a poppy bud, and all was well again.

But the time came when I myself was that kind of looker, but, instead of the hasty glance aside and the laugh which is the crying of the inner self for help to the friend, I stayed steady at my looking, and it became plain to me that I was not the same as the rest of the Fairy women. As yet I did not know where exactly the
difference lay, nor could I determine whether or not to take some means to allay it. But I went away from my friend, and for a time I was far from the fairy doings and festivals.

During this time of withdrawal I began to suspect, first, that, since I was in some way different from the fairies, I must somehow belong to some other place. Yet I could not anyway imagine what other place there could be, since at that time I had seen no bounds to Fairy Land, and I could not bring myself to speak or question about any subject so alien to all belief. So far this was anything but clear in my mind, yet I discovered myself to be acting, with more and more frequency, in ways that were strange to me if I regarded them critically, but which had some kind of dreadful familiarity which I could not understand.

Thus I would become suddenly anxious as to where and how I should eat my next meal. Although there was fairy food spread ready in any hall, and summer fruits for the thornless plucking. Or it would creep into my thoughts in the middle of a happy game that this was somehow not the thing which I should be doing. Although there was nothing more urgent or more delightful to do in all Fairy Land. Or it would come on me that I must at once and in desperate need wash something dreadful and repugnant from my hands and lips. Although there was nothing to stain them but the pleasant dye of berries or lily pollen. Or I would find myself intently and painfully watching some frond or petal. Although I had never once seen in the fairy glades any shrivelling or withering, or any change that was not willed by the fairy gazers.

And now it seemed to me that the rest of the Fairy folk were becoming ill at ease with me, either avoiding me or else, and oftener
, pressing round me too closely. At first I was troubled and constantly seeking to be as I had been, as it seemed to me at first I had always been. Yet the conviction of complete and everlasting companionship was beginning now to waver. With what pain to me! I began to be aware of a dark basis to all my fairy life and delight, of a profound disquiet out of which I had at some time arisen, but which was now again arising round me. I might well shake out the wings of my spirit and dart up from it, yet sooner or later it would be on me again. By and bye the moment came when I must needs face it, not entirely with fear, but with a certain relief. I collected up all the moments of strangeness and memory, trying to make out of them all one coherent image. Then more appeared, which I had to place as best I could. And soon enough I knew, as surely as once I had known the contrary, that there was some place, some existence, other than Fairy Land, and it was from these that I had come.

Now when I knew this, everything became changed. The very colour of flower or vine-leaf quivered under my vision, as though afraid of me, and the faces of my companions too, quivered and became without friendship for me. Thus, I went away through halls and glades, and the magic meadows of shadow runnings where often I had delighted, head-under amongst my own imagined creatures and shapes. Whenever I saw one of the Fairy folk, I would wave a hand of greeting and hurry on as though intent on some new pursuit of an enchanted moment. And after a time I came to the Clefted Ground, where it was necessary constantly to shut eyes and leap. Here I was alone. Yet I was not much frightened of the clefts because I was still as sure-footed as a true Fairy. I did not look down into them, nor did I look up much into
the pine branches crossed closely above me. There was light enough, for even here the resiny trunks were dotted with our gay little fairy lanterns, green and orange and pink, fruit-shaped or candle-shaped.

At the far side of a cleft I came on the one we called Serpent coiled round a pine bole and apparently waiting for me. I knew of old that she was not Serpent, but Worm, although it was better not to say so, and I knew suddenly that she was also Traveller-between-Worlds. She was very shiny, and ringed, and blind, with a small shapeless head—but that was of no importance, since her wisdom was not bounded by any constraining skull box, but spread fibrously throughout the length of her body.

“Serpent,” I said, “I wish to ask counsel of you.”

“Have you a gift?” she said.

“No,” said I, “for I had not known until this moment that I would come to you.”

“That is as well,” she said, “for I do not much care for gifts. They are seldom chosen with sufficient regard for the preference of Serpents. Fairies are not clever in such matters. However, I perceive that you are not a Fairy.”

I was silent for a moment then, overcome. The thing had been said, in the remote and toothless voice of Serpent who is Worm. “Are you certain of that, Serpent?” I asked, but my voice did not tremble much. Already I had accepted this, as something at last which would make sense of my pictures.

“As certain as you are yourself,” said Serpent; “it is the seventh year, after all.”

“The seventh year,” I repeated, “and then?” For still I did not know.

“Naturally, they have to pay.”

“They. But I?”

“Someone has got to be it.”

“What?”

“The teind. The payment.” Serpent made a slow gobbling motion, contracting and expanding her rings, which glistened in the pretty light of the fairy lamps. “But there may be others besides you,” she added.

“And if not?”

“It has to be paid for. After all, everything has been very pleasant from the point of view of a two-legged creature. For you as well as for them. You need not have looked up nor down. I never look. We elder Serpents have dispensed with such trivialities. You realise, young woman, that only the younger and less knowledgeable Serpents have eyes?”

“Certainly,” I said, and curtseyed, for it was no use reminding Serpent that she was Worm. I continued: “But, now that I have looked, I do not think that I care to be the teind.”

“You have eaten fairy food.”

“That is the least I have done. All the same, Serpent, I propose to find the way out.”

“To what place?”

“Wherever it was I came from. Where is that?”

“I am afraid you will have to discover that for yourself. It is likely to be less comfortable than Fairy Land. In any case, you must cross the Debateable Land first.”

“How do I get to the Debateable Land, wise Serpent? For I have wandered and wandered in Fairy ground and I cannot find the boundary.”

“You could not possibly get out by yourself whatever you found. You will have to meet with a deliverer. And they are scarce. Not always reliable, either. However, if you really intend to leave (and I am becoming drowsy myself) I can give you instructions.”

Serpent then explained to me just what I had to do, but the last two or three sentences were trailed out in a softly slimy voice, scarcely audible, as Serpent drooped her worm head down from the pine bole into the cleft, and her rings relaxed in sleep. So I went on my way, following the sinuous edges of a cleft until, as had been foretold, I came to a mound above which the pine branches did not completely meet. One glance up showed me the lidding grey that pressed so terribly close, depthless and formless and utterly sad; I did not continue looking. Knowing that if I considered the matter at too great length I should lose all power of action, I climbed immediately onto the mound and cried out for a deliverer. At once events began to move: the fairy lights on the tree trunks fell into a rapid blinking; one or two even dropped to the ground and flared. A gust of hot air rose out of the cleft beside me and with it a still remote, but very angry, gabbling noise, as though those to whom the Fairies were indebted had become aware that their payment was endangered. A wood bird darted out of the pines, flapped derisive scarlet wings in my face, and sped off, an arrow messenger to screech treachery in some lovely glade. I began to tremble violently. In a moment all would be too late. I could not now even pretend that I had said nothing!