Stories About Heroes
Every story begins with a grain of truth.
* * *
Macala was on her knees grubbing for mushrooms amongst the tree roots when she heard the sound of feet hurrying over the rustling mulch of fallen leaves and then heard Corona call her name. She heard the urgency in his voice and pushed herself to her feet, groaning under her breath at the aches of old age in her back and her knees; Corona caught her under the arm and helped her to straighten up, and then swooped down to grab the basket she’d forgotten on the ground.
“What is it?” She asked with misgiving. Any minor hurt or fever, Pola (her granddaughter and student) could have dealt with. That Corona had run to find her spoke of greater trouble; had Dandelion miscarried, a woodsman had an accident, a hunter taken hurt from some predator in the woods?
Between breaths, Corona gabbled out, “It’s a stranger, a woman… Hedge found her on the ground near the human-tunnel, chased off a biter sniffing about her… She’s unconscious… Pola said I should find you…” He hadn’t finished before they were hurrying back to the village, as fast as Macala’s old body would allow.
Oh, how far they had fallen that the presence of a stranger in need provoked such surprise, and such fear! Macala could remember back to when she’d been but a girl, when it was not a rarity to see other knytts, when trade in resources and stories was almost as common as change in the weather. How long ago had that been? Somewhere along the way, under the constant blue twilight of the woods, she had stopped counting the seasons. But then that disease had come through all the land – that had made travellers a thing to be feared, lest they carried the dreadful fever – and even after it had passed, the fear and suspicion it had left had made visitors less frequent. That had let the predators in the woods multiply, even drawn the human-things out of their cave, and then…
Well, was it just her imagination that the winters seemed longer now? And the nights darker? It felt to Macala that… something had crept into the land, something dark and cruel. The happier times of the past had been taken away. Some shadow ruled their lives now, perhaps ruled the world.
Young Logi stood outside the little house she and Pola shared and worked in, full of anticipation, as he ever was, for anything strange and new in their closeted life in the woods, beside Hedge, the woodsman who had found the stranger. Macala shooed them off and met Pola at the door; besides concern, the girl’s face showed the steady confidence that had replaced the timorousness that had once defined her. “Maybe I shouldn’t have called you,” Pola began, “But…
an outsider!”
“What state is she in?” Macala asked as she hurried into the house and to the bed where the stranger lay on her side. She was a young woman, with brownish skin, a dirty, worn dress that might have once been white, pale feet not used to the touch of the sun (Macala had spotted her practical black boots beside the door) and a great tangle of black hair sprawling around her head.
Pola rapidly reported her examination of the stranger, even as Macala began her own. “She has a lot of small hurts. There are scars from the human acid on her legs, as well as some signs of predator attacks, but nothing so serious. I think she’s starving,” The girl diagnosed, even as Macala confirmed her words, feeling the woman’s ribs prominent under her skin, “Malnutrition and exhaustion,” Pola concluded with a confidence that made Macala proud.
“Anything else?” Macala asked, straightening up.
"Yes," Pola replied, then shot a glance to the door where Corona stood, still holding Macala’s herb basket. Macala nodded, to her assessment and her discretion. Some topics were for the ears of women only.
Turning to Corona, she said, “Set the basket down there on the mantel for me. Go and get something our visitor can eat when she wakes. Rest and food will do her all the good she needs.” As he bolted to do as bidden, she turned back to Pola and pulled down the neck of the stranger’s dress, revealing the dark, curling tattoos that marked her shoulders and back. “Did you see this? Do you know what it means?”
Pola shook her head, wide-eyed, but then of course she wouldn’t – the girl could probably count on her fingers the number of outsiders she’d ever seen. “The hermits of the Barbire Swamp pattern their skin like this. When I was a girl I heard their swamp was full of human ruins and ghosts.” She smoothed the woman’s clothes back into place and mused, “She’s travelled a very long road to get here.”
* * *
Since the stranger was sleeping in Pola’s bed, the girl had gone back to her mother’s cottage for the night. Macala had had to chase Logi away again before she could settle down into her chair by the fire. When the stranger first stirred she stood and filled a bowl with the stew keeping warm on the hearth. When she turned back, the woman was alert and watching her with bright eyes.
“Eat, you should eat,” Macala said, proffering the bowl. “It’ll do you a world of good.”
The woman took the bowl and ignored the spoon, lifting it to her mouth and tipping the stew straight in. Macala gave her a moment before asking, “Do you understand my language?”
The woman paused for breath. “Yes,” She said in a fair accent, muttered her thanks and went back to guzzling the stew.
Macala watched her contemplatively. “You should stay here awhile,” She said. “Your body has a lot of neglect to recover from.” This brought no reaction from the stranger. Macala waited until she’d finished eating before trying again. “You’ve come a very long way. Why?”
The stranger lowered the bowl from her mouth and looked at her mistrustfully.
“I’m old enough to remember when travellers weren’t so infrequent,” Macala said pointedly, “Though I suspect you aren’t. I recognise the marks on your back to know how far you’ve come, and I know a woman’s body well enough to see when she’s recently carried a child to term.” She gave the stranger a piercing look and the young woman turned her face away. Softly, sympathetically, Macala appealed, “Tell me. I’ve seen enough of the world not to be shocked by any of the things a woman may be running from.”
“I’m not running
from anything,” The stranger said suddenly, bitterly. “I’m searching, searching the whole world if I have to!” Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I had a dream… where a great, black bird came to my window and took my son away. The next morning, he was gone. So I’m looking for him.” As she said those final words she gave Macala such a fierce look that the old healer lost any thought that the strange woman might be mad, or lying. Macala drew in a deep breath that suddenly felt cold in her lungs, and shivered. “So thank you for your kindness in taking care of me,” The stranger went on, “And for your offer of hospitality. But I must refuse. I have work to do.”
That final statement hung frigidly in the air between them, filling the house with silence. At last, slowly, Macala murmured, “I knew we were living in dark times.” Louder, she went on, “I’ve watched the darkness spread as I’ve grown older, and I fear I’ve seen only the beginning. I fear the world my grandchildren will grow up to... And I wonder if predators coming out of their dreams to prey on their loved ones will prove the least of the horrors humankind have left on the Earth.” She sighed. “But I know there are no great birds living in these woods, and few enough normal ones these days.” She shivered again, and looked into the face of the stranger whose eyes were hard and cold with determination, a determination to seek a child who was almost certainly already dead. She went on, “But I know that somewhere beyond the northern borders of these woods there are mountains – mountains that I heard tell are the tallest in the world, and where humans built a great temple. Foul things often come to and from human places, as you must know, and if I were a great, flying predator I think I’d want to build my nest in the highest place I could find. So if I were to give you advice, I’d tell you to go north, though doubtless the road will be hard – maybe harder than any knytt can bear.”
She looked into the fierce eyes of the stranger who said, softly, “Thank you,” And though her voice was hard, her gratitude was genuine.
Macala sighed wearily. “This village will be full of tales of you tomorrow. You should take at least a night’s rest before you go, and what food we can provide.”
The whole village knew the woman’s story before she left the next morning, laden with the gifts and blessings of the little village. They hoped to see her again but she did not pass back that way.
Macala caught a chill the following autumn and, made frail by her advanced age, she died sleeping in her bed. Her children buried her beneath one of the tallest trees in the wood.
It was many seasons later that a rarer-than-ever traveller came through the village and brought rumours of the strange woman who had so briefly passed through their lives; he said that he had heard that she had found her son, alive and well, somewhere in the high mountains, and had taken him safely home. More likely, they thought, she had told her tale in some other village and they had invented a happy end to her tragedy to bring levity in hard times. But if few of them believed the rumour, still they told it to one another, and to their children, for these were dark times when tales of heroes needed happy endings.
Every story begins with a grain of truth.