Authors: Bernard Evslin
Just as the windy sky showed its first apricot glow, Finn McCool came to the place he had been told to go, past three meadows and a wood, up one hill and down two. There he counted nine hazels huddled in the mist about a spring of water. There was a curdling of the mist as the boy watched, shivering with dread; it thickened into the shape of a hag, who said:
“A fair morning to you, boy-dear.”
“The like to you, mistress.”
“And what brings you to the Spring of the Nine Hazels, Finn?”
“I was instructed to come here.”
“Indeed? And who did the instructing, may I ask?”
“Murtha of the Vale.”
“Murtha, is it? How does she know of this place, and by what right does she tell what she knows?”
“She was advised by a pelican to tell me to come here and fetch her the opals that lie beneath the stream.”
“Pelicans, opals, little girls who know more than what’s good for them and little boys who know less. This is a mixed-up tale you’re telling me, and I don’t know that I like it at all.”
The old woman wore a tattered cloak. She had wild feathery gray hair and hands like the feet of a bird. Her nose bent to meet her chin and the chin curved up to meet the nose halfway. Every time she spoke both nose and chin moved, and Finn was so fascinated waiting to see whether they would finally touch that he lost the drift of her words.
“Why are you looking at me in that foolish way?”
“I am waiting to see whether your nose touches your chin. It comes closer each word. It’s very interesting.”
“Is it now?”
The Fish-hag smiled and Finn shuddered. Ugly as she was in the ordinary way, the look of her trying to be pleasant was not to be believed.
“Pray be not displeased, mistress. I meant no rudeness.”
“Oh, you have a few lessons in courtesy to learn, but time enough, time enough. I have so much to teach you I don’t know where to start.”
“Are you a teacher?”
“Not by trade. But every good mistress instructs her own servants.”
“I am no servant. I am Finn McCool.”
“The very name I was given. Enough chatter, though. Lessons are bitter here, and the first of them is ‘Shut up and listen.’ ”
He leaped away and started to run. She pointed her hands at him, muttering. A sewing basket floated in out of nowhere and perched between her hands. She continued muttering. A spool leaped out of the basket, rolled rapidly along the ground, hopping over twigs, and circled Finn, casting its thread about him, binding his legs. Though delicate as silk, the thread was strong as cable; he could not move. The spool rose in the air, still circling, and wrapped him about until he was cocooned from shoulder to foot. The witch whistled. The spool sailed back into the basket and paused to allow a needle to thread itself. The needle flashed out of the basket toward Finn. Darting more swiftly than a dragonfly, it sewed up his lips.
“The less you speak the more you hear. And for a learner, listening is a lot better than discussion,” said the Fish-hag. “Any questions? No? Splendid. You’ve learned something already.”
Finn felt his eyes fill with hot tears, but they were of rage, not grief. And when he thought the Hag would misread them, he grew angrier than ever, and the hot tears gushed.
“Yes, cry,” said the Hag. “You’ll learn it won’t help, so you’ll stop. Oh, I know it’s painful, but pain is the beginning of education.” She snapped her fingers. “Needle, thread, your work is done. Come back home, the lesson’s begun.”
The thread binding Finn was drawn back onto the humming spool in the Hag’s basket, and the needle flashed back to its cushion. And now something truly fearful arose from the basket, a scissors flying like a bird snapping its steel beak. The scissors-bird darted in on Finn, nipped his ear till the blood came. Finn picked up a stick and batted at it, but the scissors-bird was far too quick and flashed in and out lightly, sticking and nipping the boy until he felt as though he had been rolled in nettles. He dropped the stick, and the scissors stopped biting, but sailed close to his head, snapping its jaws.
“He will be your tutor,” said the Hag. “He is called the Scholar’s Friend. He will keep you up to the mark.”
So Finn became the Fish-hag’s servant and learned certain duties about the pool. Simple ones at first. To feed small worms to larger ones, until the larger ones grew fat enough to be fed to the Salmon, whom Finn never saw plain, only as a silver flash when he rose at dusk to feed. He was taught to hunt plump tadpoles for the fish, and to peel them before casting them back into the pool.
“Truly, he’s a delicate feeder, this fellow,” said Finn to himself. “And I should not mind having a look at him at all.”
For something had happened to Finn in his few weeks of servitude. He had grown used to pain and hard work and even to his fear of the circling scissors-bird and the hovering Hag. He had gotten used to his lips being sewn up tight. Since he could not speak with anyone else, he held long interesting conversations with himself. Indeed, tuned to listening as he was, and forced to take note of things as his painful lessons multiplied, he found himself growing more curious, needing to know how things worked, how they came to be, how they connected with other things. His biggest pain was the sense of being compelled to act in a certain way without his own wishes being consulted. He could not bear the idea of being considered a servant. But he found that concocting silent plans of vengeance, vividly pictured, enacted in great detail before sleep, helped him forget that pain, too. So he lulled himself each night with charades of violence done to the Hag, to the faithful denizens of her workbasket, to the Salmon, which he still knew only as a silver flash at dusk.
But then upon a day he was instructed to change the Salmon’s diet. Preparations were under way for the great night of the year, the night of the Midsummer Moon, when the Druids were to assemble from near and far to eat of the Salmon, whose flesh would be magically renewed, and, having eaten, to return to their places with a belly full of wisdom to last the year. So worms and tadpoles were stricken from the menu. Now all that the Salmon fed upon was the hazelnuts shaken from the nine hazels. To Finn’s surprise he was not instructed to crack the nuts, only to shake the trees so that the hard little bolls fell into the stream. He wondered about this.
And the Fish-hag who sometimes, disquietingly, seemed to be able to read his thoughts, said, “In these nuts lie kernels of wisdom. When such are to be swallowed, why then the jaws of the eater must be strong enough to crack the shells for himself.”
Finn stole a nut and tried to crack it between his teeth. It was like chewing a pebble; all he did was give himself a toothache.
“Seems there’s no shortcuts to these matters,” said he to himself. “Well, I must look sharp then—to steal myself a taste of the Salmon when the Druids feast. For, sure, I must learn enough at least to get myself free of this place and leave my mark on those who have done me harm.”
Now by this time the scissors-bird had snipped the thread binding Finn’s lips; it was understood that he had lost the habit of idle speech, and had learned to listen. Indeed there was little time for anything but preparation for the Druid feast. Three times each day he had to shake the nine hazels so that they would spill their nuts upon the stream, and the Salmon now struck the surface often to feed, not only at dusk. Finn admired the long lithe thrust of him. Smoothly armored in silver he was; like living coals dusted with ash were the eyes set in their flat sockets. When he opened his mouth it was full of glittering knives. All gullet he seemed, and the Fish-hag chanted:
“Look sharp, look sharp. Nothing is as hungry as wisdom, for everything must feed it, even hunger. So shake the tree, lad, shake it hard.”
That night Finn could not sleep. He left the little kennel where he slept behind the Fish-hag’s cottage and drifted over the meadow through the grove of trees circling the pool. The scissors-bird flew sentry as he wandered, not bothering to drive him back to his hutch, just keeping watch lest he try to escape. Finn sat on the bank staring at the pool. It was black as a tarpit. Then he saw a gliding sliver of light, and he did not know whether the moon was throwing darts from a chink in the clouds or whether it was the Salmon rising.
“It must be the moon,” he thought. “The Salmon lies far below, fast asleep.”
He heard a voice say: “Good evening, Finn.”
“Good evening, sir.”
“Are you sad, lad?”
“I cannot sleep.”
“Then you are too happy or too sad. And I do not believe you are happy.”
“True for you, Master Salmon.”
“You’re not old enough to be sad, Finn.”
“What age do you have to be?”
“Old enough to have seen enough and done enough to have earned the right. What you think is sadness are silly little vapors of discontent, because you are not man enough yet to do what you have to do.”
“And what is that?”
“Why, to free yourself, of course. To destroy your enemies and help your friends.”
“You make it sound simple. I don’t know where to begin.”
“At the beginning, lad. Where else?”
“And what is that?”
“Name your enemies.”
“Oh, that’s easy. The Fish-hag, and her helpers—especially the scissors-bird.”
“Very well, they’ll do for a start. Destroy them, and your immediate troubles will be over, and you’ll be ready for the next batch.”
“But how? The Fish-hag is very powerful. She has magic on her side—flying needles, spools of thread that tie you up before you know what’s happening, and that terrible scissors so swift and sharp, who can cut a lad to pieces as if he were a bolt of cloth.”
“I’m sorry, Finn,” said the Salmon. “I seldom give advice. And when I do, it’s along general lines. No details. But seeing as you are rather young and tender, and may do some interesting things if you are permitted to live, I will stretch a point and tell you this. When faced by a powerful enemy, son, use their own weapons against them. Use their strength to your advantage. Seek your allies in the very heart of their camp.”
“I’m sure that’s good policy, sir,” said Finn. “But I still don’t know how to go about it. Dole me out a bit of your magic wisdom, pray. Just one detail or two of real practical instruction.”
“Why, for that, Finn, I would need more than your need. The only way you can learn such of me is not by questioning, but by eating of my flesh, the way the Druids do.”
“But I am not a Druid, and if I steal from them I will be punished most horribly, the Hag has said. She will put me to the Fire Flick and the Marrow Log.”
“Yes. Secrets and penalties, risks and rewards all go together, Finn. Farewell.”
He flipped in the air and dived, and the water closed blackly over him.
“Well, some of it sounded like good advice,” said Finn to himself. “If I can just figure out how to use it.”
And he went back to his hutch and went to sleep. But the next morning he wasn’t so sure. It’s tricky being advised by moonlight; he did not know whether he had actually been conversing with the wise Salmon or if it had all been a dream. Suppose it had? Wisdom was sometimes offered in dream scenes; the old stories were full of it. Besides, he was never quite certain of how much he saw in his sleep and how much elsewhere.
But something had changed in him all the same. He found himself doing the first thing that came into his head, and that was a peculiar thing. Druids were gathering in the grove. They were clad in green—long beautiful leaf-green robes from which their clean gnarled faces shone. And Finn could see how they had come to be known as Tree Priests, Sages of the Mistletoe. When they doffed their green robes for a ceremonial wetting in the pool, Finn crept among the scattered garments, swiftly ripping each one. When the Druids emerged, dripping, and began to dress, there was a great outcry. Their beards shook with rage; they scolded like great jays, grew hoarse as crows, cursing. And Finn was pleased to see the Fish-hag turn into their servant, scurry among them trying to appease them, vowing she would sew up every rip so that they would never know it was mended.
She squatted right there on the bank of the pool with her work-basket on her lap, and began to mend, needle swiftly flashing in and out of the green cloth swaddled about her. The scissors-bird swooped away from its perch near Finn and dived into the workbasket to be ready when the hag needed to snip. Now Finn had his enemy and her helpers busy doing something else. He left the pool and ran beyond the hazel copse to the Hag’s cottage. It was the Sacred Salmon Net he was after, and he had to move fast.
The eyes of the Fish-hag’s cat cast the only light in the room, but Finn lit no candle; he wanted it dark for his deed. Well he knew what dreadful punishments lay in store for him if he should be caught—just thinking of the Fire Flick and the Marrow Log was enough to scare a lad into obedience, and right then and there he almost abandoned his plan. But then the voice of the Hag creaked in his ears saying, “Do this,” “Do that,” and he thrust aside his fears and whistled the cat to him. The big black tom leaped to his shoulder; Finn felt its purr boiling beneath his hand as he twisted the cat’s head now this way, now that, so he could see by the light of its blazing green eyes. The cat loved Finn, who, in his deepest trouble, found time to tease him with a dangled string and to toss him a peeled tadpole now and then.
Now the Sacred Salmon Net had come down from the earliest mists of time when the magic kings of the Tuatha da Danaan reigned in Ireland. Fashioned by Giobniu the great smith, it was spun of the beard of Mamos, the first Druid, and its handle was a rod of gold. When Finn snatched it off the shelf it seemed no implement at all but a living extension of his own arm, and he knew he could scoop up any swimming thing from any water in the world.
Swiftly Finn left the cottage, bearing the net. Swiftly he circled the meadow where the Druids were matching verse while the Hag was mending, then darted through the hazel copse to the edge of the pool. And then, instead of dipping the net, stood there panting, watching the stars float upside down.
Finn stood at the edge of the pool; it seemed like a gulf of shadow waiting to swallow him. He stood there at the edge of wisdom, between boyhood and manhood, and was taken by a creeping blood-sucking sadness in which Murtha’s face hung, now laughing, now cruel, garlanded by memory. And he stood there trying to fight the sadness and let the laughter and cruelty enter himself. He felt himself fill with a choking excitement. Now? he asked the night. Now! said the Salmon Net. Now! sighed the trees. Now! sang the drowning stars, and Finn dipped his net.