Archie and the North Wind Page 3

  And this went on for years until the younger son says, ‘This is no use. We’re never going to find her. We may as well face the fact,’ he says. ‘I’m going home.’

  So his brother Jack says, ‘Well, please yourself. I don’t blame you.’

  So the younger one he went away home.

  And the other two kept going on and on and on, across ferries and across water and into different countries and all over. But no word could they get of the bull or their sister.

  Until the second oldest one, he says, ‘It’s no use, Jack, I’m going home too.’

  Well, Jack says, ‘I’m keeping going on. I promised to go on till I found her. I’m going to do just that.’

  So the second-oldest laddie, he went away home to his father and mother with the sad news. But Jack he kept on and on and on. And every day he always found a wee bite from somebody. And one day this old henwife that he was working for, when she was giving him a bowl of porridge and that, and a cup of tea, and he was telling her his story – you see, he told everybody that he met in case someone had heard of the bull.

  ‘No, laddie,’ she says, ‘I never heard nothing of a white bull or wee lassie. I never even heard mention of them no way,’ she says. ‘But see that mountain there?’

  He says, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘up there in that mountain there’s a wind trapped into a hole,’ she says. ‘It’s trapped in there and it cannot get out. And they tell me it knows everything, no matter what you want to know, if you go up there,’ she says, ‘and look for a wee hole.’

  And Jack says, ‘If there’s a hole why can he not get out?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ she says, ‘I’ve never seen the wind. Don’t you know that it can’t come up through a wee hole? Just look for a hole,’ she says, ‘and put your mouth to the hole and shout down into it.’

  So Jack goes and he climbs and he climbs and he climbs and he climbs this mountain. And it was some mountain. And he’s looking all over and all over. It’s a long time before he spots this wee hole.

  He says, ‘I wonder if that’s the hole she’s speaking about?’ So he put his mouth to the hole and he shouts down, ‘Wind, are you there?’

  ‘Ooooooooooooo.’

  He says, ‘Well, listen, please. I’m looking for my wee sister that was stolen by a white bull years ago. And I’ve been tramping and walking and swimming and rowing all over the world trying to find her. And I’m really exhausted, Wind. Please tell me what happened to her.’

  Then he put his ear to the hole, you see.

  And he heard this:

  ‘Oooooooooooooooo.’

  ‘What are you saying? I can’t make you out,’ he says. ‘Try and speak a wee bit clearer.’

  But all he could get was ‘Oooo the Coo!’

  He says, ‘It sounds like “Follow the coo.” Is it “Follow the coo?”’

  And he put his ear again to the hole. But there was no answer.

  ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘I’m off my head to listen to that silly old woman to take that road up this huge mountain and that silly wind that doesn’t know anything. All I could make out was “Follow the coo, follow the coo.”’ He says to himself, ‘What coo isn’t he speaking about?’ So he trudged down the mountain again. Hours and hours and hours it took him to trudge down. But when he got to the bottom, sure enough there was a cow. And this cow started to walk on. It was a-standin grazing when he came down. But it started to walk away, you see.

  So Jack says, ‘Well, no harm done,’ he says. ‘I’ll follow it anyway. I’m sure that’s what that wind was saying: “Follow the coo.”’

  So he walked after this cow and he walked after this cow for about two days. Till this cow stopped to eat the grass again, you see. And it ate away and it ate away and he’s standing looking at it and going round about it. And then the cow sat down and stared chewing the cud. And Jack he sat down too beside it, you see. And suddenly he heard this voice saying, ‘You might go and get me a drink of water.’ And he looked round. This was the cow speaking to him.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘you can speak.’

  ‘Of course I can speak,’ she says. ‘Go and look over there,’ she says. ‘There must be water beside those rushes and things over there.’

  He says, ‘I could do with a drink myself.’ So over he goes. And he’s looking about for something to carry water in, you see. And he’s kicking away the grass. And he takes his sword and he’s cutting down these rushes and things when this head comes, this huge beast, like a dragon, a great big mouthful of teeth. And he jumps back, terrified. And looking past in a cave – this dragon was in a cave – he sees this girl at the back of it.

  And he says, ‘My sister! I’ll bet it’s my sister!’ But he’s too terrified to stand and look too much. And he goes back to the cow and says, ‘Oh no, no, no, you’ll get no drink of water here, neither me nor you. There’s a beast there and I never saw the like of him in my life,’ he says. ‘I’ve heard about dragons and that’s what it must be.’

  ‘Well,’ the cow says, ‘you’re a big young man with a sword in your hand. Are you afraid of a beast?’

  ‘You never saw the beast,’ he says. ‘It’s forty times the size of you.’

  ‘Away you go,’ she says, ‘Go on,’ she says, ‘laddie, go and kill the beast.’

  ‘Kill the beast?’ he says. ‘How am I going to kill a beast like that?’

  She says, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what to do. When it opens its mouth, you jump into its mouth, and keep well back into its mouth so that it will not be able to get its mouth closed,’ she says, ‘and just cut the windpipe with your sword.’

  So she gave Jack heartening, you see. So down he goes and sure enough this beast opens its jaws and he jumps inside the jaws and right enough he was so far back into its gullet, it couldn’t get its mouth shut. And he starts to hack and hack and hack and hack with his sword till all the windpipe is cut and the head slumps down. And he jumps out before the teeth could get him, you see. And when he looks into this cave, he says, ‘No, that’s not my sister.’

  But the girl runs to him. She’s that happy she clings on to him.

  And she says, ‘You don’t look very pleased to have come and rescued me.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’m really looking for my sister.’

  ‘What happened to your sister?’

  ‘She was stolen away by a white bull,’ he says, ‘I can’t remember how many years ago. And we’ve never seen nor heard of her since.’

  ‘Well, that’s what happened to me,’ she says. ‘But I wouldn’t behave myself. Every chance I got I was running away.’ And she says, ‘If that’s what’s happened to your sister, she’s probably in the same place I have been in. This is my punishment, out here with this beast, for what I have done. I just wouldn’t stay, I was always trying to get away. Lots of girls try to get away and they’re badly punished for it.’

  And he says, ‘Do you think that my sister could be there?’

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘if she’s living, that’s likely where she’ll be. But you must take care. There’s a great fortress built,’ she says, ‘and an army of men you’ve never seen the like of. There’s no way you’re going to get in there. I’m warning you, if you go in there you’re going to your death.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘if I’m going to my death, I’m going to my death. ’Cause I promised I wouldn’t come back without her anyway. And I’d be as well dead as wandering about this way for years and years and years.’

  But anyway, he came back and he took the lassie with him. And they sat down and leaned against this cow, because she was sitting chewing the cud, you see. And the cow says, ‘She’s not your sister then?’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘She’s not my sister. But she’s somebody’s bairn for all that.’

  She says, ‘Aye!’

  And Jack says, ‘She thinks my sister might be there. But there’s no way I’ll get her out,’ he says. ‘It’s a king that changes himself into a bull and goes and steals these bairns and lassies.’

  And the cow says, ‘What do you mean, no way?’

  ‘Well, he has an army of thousands.’

  ‘But,’ says the cow, ‘you can have an army of thousands too, if you just listen to me. I’ll tell you what to do,’ she says. ‘Go with your sword to the dragon’s head and cut the gums away and pull every tooth out that you can get.’

  He says, ‘Ah, there are thousands.’

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘Pull them. And get the lassie to help. Go on, you, and give him a hand,’ she says. ‘Now go and do what I’m telling you.’

  ‘Might as well,’ he says.

  But they got a drink of water anyway. The well was free now, you see, with no beast guarding it. So having this lassie, they pulled and pulled and they pulled and they pulled and he yanked and he cut and the lassie pulled them out and threw them in a heap, all these teeth.

  And he went back to the cow. He says, ‘What am I going to do with that now?’

  She says, ‘I’ll tell you. You’re going to stick them in the ground all round about you.’

  ‘Ah me,’ he says, ‘I must be mad listening to a cow, but I’ll do it anyway.’

  So him and the lassie both, they stuck all these teeth and they kept sticking and sticking until it was pitch dark night and they couldn’t see to stick any more.

  And the cow says, ‘Ah, that should do you,’ she says. ‘Go on and lie down and get a wee rest to yourselves.’

  Jack says, ‘Aw, it’s all right for you lying there chewing the cud, but we never had a bite to eat. I know I never had a bite since yesterday – the meat I got from that old henwife.’

  ‘Ach,’ says the cow, ‘never mind, son. Put your hand in my ear, you’ll get plenty to eat.’ So he put his hand in the cow’s ear and sure enough this meat came up in front of him, and him and this lassie sat and ate. And then they slept up against the cow’s side.

  So when Jack woke in the morning he gave himself a stretch and blinked his eyes like that and he looked round about him, there’s all this lying round about him. ‘What in the name of God is that?’ he says.

  And he got up and he went and looked round about. And you know what it was? Men with armour, gold armour and they were in all stages. Some of them hadn’t their heads up out of the ground; some of them right up out of the ground; some of them as far as he could see round about him. They were all coming up, all these men.

  And the cow says, ‘Aye,’ she says, ‘that’s your army. Now go and see if you can get your sister.’

  So he got all these soldiers. And he had some idea what to do, being a king’s son, you see. So he led the army to this fortress where this king lived, and sure enough it was a big strong fortress, with thousands and thousands of soldiers. But this army Jack had, he never heard or saw fighters like them. And he went in there and there was a great battle and he beat them. And he rushed in and got this king. And he got hold of him and he tarred him and feathered him, he put a match to him and he says, ‘The world’s well rid of you. I have no qualms about doing this for what you’ve done to all these bairns and wee lassies and things.’

  And sure enough, he found his sister. She recognised him right away. And he recognised her. And he took her out and he took her back to where the cow and this other lassie were.

  Now for the first time he really took a look at this other lassie, you see. And she was as bonnie as a summer’s night. And he began to speak nice to her and asked her if she like to come back with him if she had no place to go now.

  So he took her back and his sister back and, oh, the carry-on when they got to that castle where the mother and father was. And he married the lassie, so he brought back a wife and his sister and they lived happily ever afterwards.

  Gobhlachan, of course, told the story in Gaelic and it was also, of course, a different version of the story, but this is the one Archie remembered, or thought he remembered and told or re-told or embellished a thousand and one times over the years.

  He remembered Gobhlachan, sitting cross-legged astride the anvil, hammering the melting horseshoes into shape as he told of Jack and the cowardly brothers, the poor sister and the beast, the dragon and the cow. Somehow Archie knew that the actual magic was in the words themselves, not in the events. The stories were the iron, to be shaped and moulded. And as Gobhlachan hammered and smelted the fluid iron, first into a horseshoe, then into a poker, then into a gun barrel, then into a pot, then into the coulter of a plough, Archie saw that he was doing the same thing with words – turning glass into a mirror, an apple into a lake, a shoe into a boat, teeth into soldiers.

  Who was this girl, he asked himself, taken away by this white bull and incarcerated against her will for so many years? And what, or who, was the bull? And the dragon, the cow, the soldiers, and that other girl rescued from the depths of the cave once the dragon was killed and his useful teeth removed?

  It was at that point that Olga Swirszczynska arrived on the scene, like a woman out of one of Gobhlachan’s story, wild, unkempt and foreign, with a string of horses in tow. Was she the girl, Archie asked himself, taken captive years ago and still roaming the world in search of her lost parents? Were her horses human, or at least semi-human, like the cow in the story, and what dragon or beast or king kept her within his kingdom, guarded by thousand of invisible soldiers?

  She turned out to be none of these things, but exactly what she said she was – a Polish exile, a former ballet teacher and musician whose back injury had forced her to alternatives, and who had fallen in love with the ways of horses and now wished to set up a riding school here on the great white beaches that ran for ever along the very edge of the Atlantic.

  Where else could be better, where the horses could run free, in this marvellous combination of wind, water and air? Where else could be better than where earth ran out and only sea remained? What better for horses than the wind in their manes, their hooves on the sand, their burning feet constantly washed by salt water as they ran and ran and ran along the perfect beach?

  That too was only a version, for so many things were missed out of the story.

  Archie never heard it directly from Olga herself, but over the years Gobhlachan leaked out other versions of the story, much as you would add a window to a house, exposing an extra view, or sail a different way round the island to see the cliffs, or the mountains, or the caves on the far side. These clues had to be interpreted, of course, for Gobhlachan never told anything directly, as it were – he never sailed straight up the river, but carried his canoe of words on his shoulders, paddling up through creeks and streams, taking diversions, pausing, hesitating, turning back and resting, so that you always needed a personal compass to know where you were, or might have been. You always needed a non-existent map and dictionary to work out the country you might be going to.

  She’d been a revolutionary in the Uprising, and a novice nun. Her father had been a count, and her mother an unknown gypsy girl. She had spent time at all the great courts of Europe, and had run away to China when she was twelve. She could speak a dozen languages, and read the moon and the stars. She had been forced to marry a former Russian prince when she was fourteen, but had escaped on a ship to Egypt, where she had trained as a dancer. She could speak to the birds, tame wild horses and divine unknown wells.

  No wonder Gobhlachan fell in love with her. Unless, of course, it was the other way round: that she became all these things because of his love. But love it was, and gradually over time Archie was eased out of Gobhlachan’s life, as the sun extinguishes the clouds, or as the ocean erodes the land.

  This coincided with a rapid decline in Gobhlachan’s trade. Once the initial effects of the Siabadh Mòr were dealt with – once the pots and pans were repaired, once the barns and houses were rebuilt, once the ploughs and carts were remade – the need for the smithy’s services faded away. All that was left were Olga’s horses and the needs of the few natives who clung on to the old ways, keeping a horse when a tractor would have been much more useful, using a plough when a combine was much more effective, repairing things when they could now as cheaply be bought brand new.

  It seemed overnight – but of course it was years – that things changed. One day, horses were there; the next, none but Olga’s existed. One day, people walked to church; the next, they moved in rows on buses. One day, people would tell each other news; the next, they were all sitting in their living rooms, receiving news from places called Beirut and Baghdad.

  It was just a different story, of course: the fantastic was now out there, rather than near, happening to strangers on television rather than to themselves in their own villages.

  ‘Did you see that man walking on the moon last night?’ they asked each other.

  ‘Did you see that young naked girl going up in flames?’

  ‘Did you see the mushroom cloud, rising and rising and rising?’

  Because these picture-stories were told by educated men, most people believed them. After all, there were photographs and films to demonstrate their truth – that girl truly was burning; that former city was shown in all its ashen ruins; that man was heard speaking, as if from underwater, bouncing on the actual surface of the moon.

  ‘Aye, but they’ll never land on the sun!’ someone said.

  Gobhlachan looked at him with pity. ‘Of course they will. At night. When it’s not so hot.

  ‘These are just the same stories as I told,’ he said.

  Of course, people laughed at him.

  ‘What? That old fool? Aye, I always knew he was without balls, but that certainly gives a new meaning to be without marbles.’

  But every time he saw a new horror, or a new marvel, he knew that it was just a modern version of his own old story, the story of the girl and the bull and the cow and the dragon and the king. He knew all along that kidnappings and rape and conquest and adventure and slaughter and victory were elements of the story, just as the fire and the flames and the bellows and the anvil and the hammer and tongs were the elements out of which he used to make pots and pans and horseshoes and axles and spades and ploughs.