Authors: Bernard Evslin
Yes to foe
Always no.
In such a test
first is worst
last is best.
“This is the message sent me by the Salmon of Knowledge, a most wise and prophetic fish. Can you read me its meaning?”
“I can,” said the harp.
I tell you, Finn
brave young friend,
Your tasks begin
At the very end.
“Begin at the end, is it? But is this indeed what he means that I must start at the last item, the Boar of Ballinoe instead of the Lion of Louth, which heads the list?”
“Yes, yes, so I guess,” sang the harp.
Not north to Louth
But west by south
Must we go
toward Ballinoe.
“West by south it is!” cried Finn. “And ho to the Boar of Ballinoe!”
The cat and falcon, too dark against the snow, found the hunting very poor. Finn consulted the harp and was taught a spell:
Cat and bird
By this word
I teach you to bleach
Quite out of sight.
Now each by each
Go white, go white.
No sooner had he said this spell than the cat turned white as an ermine, and the feathers of the gray falcon paled until she disappeared against the snow, except for the hot black circles of her eyes. Invisible to their prey, then, cat stalked and hawk stooped, and filled their bellies again.
After some whirling snowy miles Finn met a man in rusty armor riding the skeleton of a horse; his hands were bone and his head a skull. He offered combat, but Finn said:
“Begone! I cannot wound you for you have no blood. I cannot kill you for you are dead.”
The wind whistled through the standing bones of the horse, making a thin laughter. The skull spoke:
“I was fat, very fat. My wife, the beauty, said: ‘Stop eating. Grow thin, or I take a lover.’ So I began to fast until I had starved myself quite away and became as you see me now. But she took a lover anyway because I was poor company at mealtime.”
“Unjust, unjust!” cried Finn.
“All of that, brave lad. Even worse—for now, having grown fat by eating what I did not, she held profundity of flesh a virtue, said the body was a reflection of the soul, and that my soul must need be pinched and mean to produce such emaciation.”
“Never have I heard such wicked reasoning,” said Finn. “Did you kill her then?”
“Oh no, I loved her. I stayed on listening to her abuse, trying to be friendly with her lover—a stout man without much to say for himself—until she found that irksome too and bade me leave. So I found a horse to suit me, and must ride its whistling bones up and down the land until I find a man whose wife is a bigger bitch than mine. Then we two must fight a fight that is very pure, being only for rage and amusement and honor, you know, because it will be Winner Take Nothing. Are you the one, lad? Is your wife as fair and foul as mine?”
“I am a bachelor, sir.”
“Then curse you! Ride on!”
“I am walking, as you see.”
“Don’t be wasting my time, bachelor. Walk on—before I smite you from sheer spite.”
Some miles farther on, as they were climbing a low hill they saw a huge snowball rolling down the slope toward them, growing as it came. They gave it room to pass, but were amazed to see it pause on the slope, something very difficult for a snowball to do. A voice sounded:
“A question, young traveler.”
“Ask away,” said Finn. “I’ve never held converse with a snowball before, but I see nothing against it.”
“You are a sweet cautious lad. But I’m getting quite chilled despite the warmth of my temperament. Won’t you dig me out?”
Finn drew his sword and hacked away the snow.
“Gently now. I cut easily.”
He plied his sword with care, scraping away the snow, until he came to the core of the matter. It was a woman, so fat that she rolled instead of walked, and, upon such a day, had gathered snow. She was red-faced and red-haired with a gurgling laugh.
“Thank you, young sir. Have you seen a man on a horse which is the very match of him, both being but skin and bone?”
“Nothing but bone, madame. I saw no skin.”
“Ah, poor fellow, he does not prosper without my care. Which way did he go?”
“He wasn’t going. He was staying. Waiting until another husband might pass whom he would challenge to prove who was Champion of Misfortune.”
“He said harsh things about me, no doubt?”
“He did that. But I know there are two sides to every quarrel.”
“Two? There are ten! Twenty perhaps. In fact, a real quarrel between husband and wife has no sides at all; it’s perfectly round, just like me. Tell me, what is your own preference? Do you care only for those meager little sparrow-girls, or might you fancy perhaps a woman of substance?”
“I have had slight experience of women, fat or thin. I grew up with a girl named Murtha whom I simply cannot describe. I don’t know what I like.”
“Then roll along with me, lad. We’ll gather snow enough to hide us from prying eyes, and I shall teach you what to like.”
“Dear lady,” said Finn. “I am enchanted by every degree of your luscious rotundity. Lucky the man who can play radius to your circumference. Unfortunately, I am on a mission and may not tarry.”
“Pity,” said the lady. “Then I must go looking for my husband, I suppose.”
“Just follow the road, and you will find him.”
Now upon this winter so weirdly cold that the sea froze, fur-hatted men swarmed down from the Land of the Long Night, swooping across the ice on narrow sleds that bore mast and sail, and out-raced the north wind. Seagulls spotted these invaders while they were still far north of Eire, and screamed the news from flock to flock. The falcon heard the tale as it was striking a heron, and flew back to tell the cat.
“That is a large bird you bring, brother,” said the tom. “Is it tough as it looks?”
“It is meat, brother, and hard to find these frosty days. Have you killed?”
“Only a limping hare. Everything one can eat seems to be hiding in its hole waiting for the thaw. There will be much hunger this winter.”
“Worse than famine is abroad,” said the falcon. “The Seal-clad Ones of the Place Beyond the Mist are coming over the frozen seas. In sheeted sleds they come, and the smell of blood comes with them. Yea, I smell battle, brother, and much slaughter. Let us welcome it. We hawks deem it shameful to eat what we do not kill, but it is sometimes necessary. I do not relish man-flesh, except for their eyeballs, which are sweet when fresh. In this weather they should keep for days.”
“You have disgusting habits,” hissed the cat. “Were we not under magic bonds of friendship, I should seek to express my disapproval more sharply.”
“Dear little caterpillar,” cooed the falcon. “You are too furry and earthbound to threaten me. Let us put aside our friendship for a bit and debate my habits with tooth and claw.”
“It cannot be,” said the cat. “We are on a hero’s venture—we are Companions of the Doom. We must not indulge in private quarrels. Accept my apologies.”
“Accepted,” said the falcon.
“Go on with your tale. Are they such fearsome warriors, these Seal-clad Ones?”
“They carry fish-spears that can pierce the leather armor of that behemoth they call the whale, also walrus-tusk swords. And they are very hungry. Also they come so swiftly that they will attack before anyone knows they are here. But what if they fail? Then they will be dead, and
their
eyeballs will be eaten.”
“We must hold fast to our master and protect him in the time of fighting,” said the cat. “I wish him alive. He saved me from the Hag, and I am grateful.”
“I am a war falcon, as you know. Trained by Goll McMorna to stoop upon warriors as well as game. And, as I say, I prefer to eat only what I kill. So I am yours to command, O hag-free and spell-spitting tom.”
Finn, who was plucking the heron for their supper, heard the cackles and mewing of this conversation, and was amazed to find himself understanding it. But the hawk’s tale was so strange that he thought it might be happening in his own head.
“Do I understand them?” he asked the harp.
“You do.”
“But how?”
“Through me. I am the Harp of Dagda, who was the most potent bard of the Tuatha da Danaan, and, as you see, I am strung with catgut instead of wire. And at that time, you must know, cats were big as cows—which was as well, for rats were big as rams. You understand the tom then through me, and through him the speech of other beasts and birds, but only so long as you carry me and touch my strings.”
“Then it is true that sailing sleds speed toward these shores?”
“Too true. And there will be great slaughter when they come. They used to strike these coasts long ago, in the days when Dagda was first learning his scales, and he lived two thousand years, did my sweet master, before he was cut down in his prime. The seas were always frozen then, and the Seal-clad Ones would strike by night in their winged sleds, and kill and kill and kill. But then the sea gods fought. Lyr and Tyre fought their deep duel and left each other wounded on the floor of the sea. And the blood from their huge bodies, always flowing and always warm—for gods cannot die, only bleed—heated the seas and kept them from freezing, melting the ice plains and forming an impassable gulf of waters for the Seal-clad ones. Until now … until now.”
“And we are the only ones who know of this coming?”
“We alone.”
“What shall I do?”
Build man of snow
Let the winds blow.
Finn struck camp immediately and did not bed down for the night, but worked until dawn, raising a giant man of snow. In its eyeholes he stuffed tufts of rabbit fur soaked in oil of the heron’s liver, and put fire to them. The snow giant, looming on its headland, glared with enormous burning eyes over the frozen sea. In its lifted hand he balanced a young pine, and it seemed to be poised to cast a huge spear. He had placed the snow giant so that it faced north by west, and the north wind howled at an angle into its earhole and out its westering mouth, making a terrible sobbing bellowing cry.
You can still see that giant if you find the headland. It stands there where Finn built it in one night, but the snow has turned to white stone, and its legs and trunk are one column of stone. Its eyeholes are dead. But you may know it by its raised arm and by the sobbing bellowing sound it still makes when the wind blows strongly off the North Sea.
But it served its purpose for Finn that night so long ago. The fur-hatted invaders did not strike the coast of Eire, and the bards say it was because they feared the giant standing sentinel on the headland, and its burning eyes and the shadow of its mighty spear, and they imagined Eire a land of giants. Be that as it may, we do know that the next day was even colder, so cold that the sunset froze in the sky. Its weight overbalanced the horizon, and it slid down the tilted line of the sky to the North Pole, where it stuck, flashing there in a pageantry of frozen colors we call the Northern Lights.
“Quickly!” said the harp. “Visit the sunset before it slides away and search its roots for the seeds of fire.”
“Why?”
“You will need them. Go!”
Finn bound long straight branches to his feet like the runners of a sled. He slung his sword belt to the falcon, who seized one end of it in her beak and drew Finn swiftly over the icy plain of the sea to the great frozen lake of flame. He felt small as a speck of dust, did Finn, when he came to the base of that pulsing radiant wall of color. Cold light poured down, staining him with its rich dyes, and his blood sang at the loveliness. The falcon flew slowly, pulling him on his skis past arches and columns and ramparts of living color to the red roots of the sunset. He dug there with his knife and pried out the seeds of fire, white-hot little pearls of the primal flame, which sprout with unbelievable speed when planted, and will nourish life or spread death according to the manner of their sowing, and must be handled only by heroes. He put the white-hot little pearls in his wallet and skied swiftly away as the sunset’s weight began to tilt the horizon.
Now Finn turned from the coast and made his way southwest toward Ballinoe, for that was where his first task lay—to kill the boar that was ravaging the countryside. But the going was not easy. The weather had shifted suddenly. The iron frost was broken. A thaw set in, melting the snow, cracking the ice, turning the whole countryside into water. Freshets of water came tumbling off the hills. The rivers were enormously swollen, and overflowed their banks, washing away huts, barns, trees. Finn, passing, saw people afloat on their roofs. He saw cows swimming, and sheep and goats, all herded by dogs who paddled after, barking furiously. Roads were washed out, trees were uprooted. As far as the eye could see, the fields were covered with water. Finn hauled in a drifting coracle, and packed himself in it with cat and harp and falcon, and simply let his little boat go with the tide. The cat rode his shoulder, trying to fluff his wet fur, eyes burning disapproval at the idea of wetness. The falcon rode the bow, hunching malevolently between her wings. She, too, disliked the weather.
By and by as the sun came up warmly each morning, the waters shrank back off the fields. The land steamed. Dogs herded cattle back to the barns. Horses ran in the field, trumpeting. The road appeared again. Finn left his little boat and resumed his journey by foot.
The falcon flew high, searching for game. The cat stalked the underbrush. Finn strode on, hair loose in the wind, breathing deeply of the wild moist air, now and again touching his harp. He came finally to Ballinoe, where he met an old woman on the road.
“Good day, Grandmother,” he said. “And a good afternoon to follow, and a good night after that. My name is Finn McCool.”
“Is it now?”
“Do you dislike strangers here?”
“We do, but not so much as we dislike our neighbors.”
“Is the place full of sadness and suspicion then, stewing in spite and black looks and sour words? Is that the way of it?”
“It is. We are no different from anyplace else.”
“But are you plagued by a wild boar?”
“Good day to you,” said the woman. “I can’t stand here talking of this and that.” She humped off rapidly down the road, muttering to herself.