Fire Fire (15 page)

KING INGOL AND THE WHIRLWIND

The evil King Ingol loved the flesh of boys and girls, although few
knew this. He visited the castles of his neighbours and minions and
was lavish in gifts, generous to a fault, and all loved him, except for
the visionary princess Ariane, who had seen the way he looked at her
brother, had seen the evil lust with which he pursued the boy. Elaan,
her beloved brother, noticed nothing, and accepted the gift of the
finest horse in Ingol's stable with youthful delight and gratitude. And
Elaan would not heed her warnings, sure that his sister was jealous
of the King's favour.

Time passed and Ariane watched in distress as the King earned
the trust and confidence of her parents, and the friendship of Elaan.
She was not sure what she feared, for she was a pure innocent, but she
sensed the sensual, corrupt poison of the King's touch, and had seen
children turn from bright youth to grey despair overnight in the village
and was sure that the King was somehow responsible. Ariane alone
could see that all greyness in the land seemed somehow to emanate
from him. What Ariane did not know was that the King had been
watching her, troubled by the aloof princess, determined to have her
too, to take her bright youth before she could turn Elaan from him.

King Ingol invited Ariane and Elaan to stay at his castle. Their
parents were delighted, thinking that the King wanted to choose
Ariane as his bride, and, quite properly, had asked for Elaan as
chaperone.

Ariane agreed, determined to protect Elaan no matter what.

The King was urbane and charming at table, clearly enjoying his
guests. He provided them with wine and with rare sweetmeats,
entertaining them with poems and stories. Then he asked Elaan to
play an air, and Ariane to dance, which they did. Then, as the night
wore on, he yawned and showed Elaan and Ariane to their chambers.

Ariane followed him back to the great hall.

May I speak with you frankly?

Yes, my lovely Ariane.

I know that you desire my brother's bright youth. I offer myself
in his place, if you will agree and will send him home tonight.

The King laughed. I will have both! he said, since we are being
frank with one another. And he leapt upon Ariane and tore the
clothes from her body, laughing as she fought him, and he took the
princess Ariane's bright youth. He left her unconscious on the carpet
and went to Elaan's chamber.

The King took Elaan's bright youth and cast him, grey and
broken, into the forest.

Ariane awoke alone in the great hall. She gathered her clothes.

She could sense that Elaan was long gone. She slipped down to
the stables where she found Elaan's horse Fireas that had been
Ingol's horse but loved Elaan as much as she had hated her former
master. Ariane whispered to Fireas in words that only horses understand
and dragged her aching and bruised body up onto the horse's
bare back.

Ariane rode into the forest and neither she nor Elaan were
seen again.

Ingol did not know that you cannot take from a visionary without
giving something. The greater the theft, the bigger the gift. Ariane
took a long while to recover but when she did, she was more powerful
than Ingol could have imagined. She found Elaan quickly with the
help of Fireas and healed him in secret, and the two became as loving
as they had been before Ingol ever came to their castle. She became
a spirit of the wind, and he a spirit of fire.

Ingol continued as he always had, taking what he wanted from
the children of the surrounding lands.

One night a shining warrior and a strange princess knocked at
Ingol's castle. They were invited in and put up in the same chambers
as Ariane and Elaan had occupied many years before. After dinner, the
warrior played the timbor and the princess danced. Neither had bright
youth, but they were strange and beautiful, and Ingol was enchanted.

He smiled and sang.

Who are you, strangers from a strange land? They didn't
answer, but played harder and danced with greater wildness. The
princess danced near and he thought he heard, whispered on the
wind, Ariane and Elaan. Ingol leapt up, suddenly afraid, but then the
whirling princess was upon him.

A whirlwind dropped King Ingol's dead body in the village
square that night and his castle burned to the ground. The greyness
lifted and slowly left that land altogether and the people thereafter
worshipped the whirlwinds and fire.

This was Lilo's favourite story and for a while Ursula liked telling it. Then she forgot it altogether.

‘All's well that ends well,' Pa said. The morning storm was over and the children were tired and ready for school, only delayed by half an hour this time. He beamed at his lanky children. They scowled back. Pa could make any one of them laugh, melt, smile, twist away in shy adolescent happiness.

Pa jollied them into the car and smoothed their ragged feelings.

‘She won't let me eat
lettuce
,' he whispered once they were on the highway, rolling his eyes.

They were silent but smiled, staring out the window so he wouldn't get them too easily.

‘She won't let me eat cabbage,' he said, turning round and wobbling on the road as he raised his hands palm up level with his ears and gripped the steering wheel between his big knees.

The kids laughed and shrieked, ‘Watch the ROAD!'

‘No sauerkraut for me and no
sauces
on no
sau-au-au-au-sage
,' Pa sang in an operatic tenor.

‘No
toilet
paper for my bottom, no
toothpaste
for my teeth,' sang Siegfried.

‘No underpants and no overcoats, no right sleeves, no left legs,' shrieked Helmut.

‘No sesame, no sesame, no sesame, NO NO NO SESAME in my supreme soufflé,' sang Gotthilf, and the car veered and swung with their laughter.

They arrived at school, and alighted dishevelled and suddenly serious once the car doors opened.

But sometimes Pa, too, got depressed and huddled in dull confusion, deserted by his optimism. Some genial spirit left him and he sat in bleak emptiness, waiting for it to return and whisper reassurances in his ear. Pa's self became draughty. He avoided Acantia and the children avoided him. He sat in the closed auditorium tuning the viola over and over again. Eventually he began playing scales, children's exercises, Wohlfart's Viola Exercises, then tricky fragments of pieces and then viola parts of Haydn quartets, then whole sonatas, playing for ten hours in the closed auditorium. The children listened in with one ear as their universe was, poco a poco, rebuilt and set to rights.

By the time Gotthilf was sixteen, going to school had become a grim ritual with Acantia in which they all sensed she was powerless to do more than harry. Acantia sent them to school abraded and late. Breakfast was rhubarb, wheatgerm, brewer's yeast, dolomite, junket and freshly vitamised silverbeet and apple juice. Gotthilf threw up into the bracken and ixodia nearly every morning as he trudged through the clay cutting to the main road and the school bus. If breakfast wasn't downed on time to catch the school bus or to get a ride with Pa, Acantia made them eat it when they got home.

Lunches were unpresentable at school. In Acantia's world they were not only healthy but also quite tasty. In the world of school, Gotthilf risked having his head held down the toilet with his garlic, homemade cheese and Acantia-bread lunch swilling around his face if he dared even carry it out of Acantia land. He was caught after Acantia found his discarded lunch on the side of the bush track.

A boy who doesn't need his lunch doesn't need his dinner.

Acantia beat Gotthilf every day when he came home from school. It ceased to matter why. If he had done nothing wrong, crimes were ruthlessly engineered. The barrier between the permitted and the forbidden was moved in the night without his knowledge. Gotthilf stopped trying to be good. Ursula, who also went to school, knew Acantia had to be right. She wanted Acantia to be right.

Gotthilf was beaten twice most days because by the time Pa stopped practising and came to join the family for the evening, he would be past caring.

Acantia exclaimed tiredly, ‘I don't know what to do! Pa, I am at my wits' end! The boy is sick. I cannot discipline him. His
father
will have to do something! Look at him! He's a muttering slouch. He comes home from school with that terrible look on his face. God only knows what goes on there, but a face like that tells all!'

Pa went to see Gotthilf, to exact contrition, with Acantia behind his shoulder.

Gotthilf laughed an evil, adult, King John laugh.

‘I will never apologise to that that . . . that . . .!'

‘Aah!' Acantia gasped, as if punched. ‘Hit him! Hit him! It's the only thing he understands!'

Pa beat Gotthilf. He never thought that delinquency and the tortured sense of injustice might look the same. But Acantia just said sadly, ‘Gotthilf has had a splinter of ice in his heart since he was a baby.'

Gotthilf quietly collected and labelled swear words and pejorative or derogatory phrases. He was the Delinquent, after all. He was also greedy for knowledge of the outside. He knew the meaning and etymology of
pash, screw, cunt, hard-on, fuck, box, bush, friggin', jerk-off,
wanker, poofter, pansy, boong, nip, nigger, bloody
. It was Gotthilf who tried to clear up Siegfried's notion of the meaning of poofter.

‘Poofters are NOT a brand of motorbike.'

But Siegfried needed more than a delinquent's word to be convinced.

Gotthilf stared down at the mud already covering Trevor's runners and wriggled his chilblains inside them, trying to stop his heart beating too fast. The mean rain of Toggenberg winter slanted through the trees and soaked into the thirty-two shivering boys waiting in the open for the start of the interschool cross-country. ‘Get 'em dirdy, Goddo, an' I'll skin ya. Come to think of it, lose in my runners an' I'll skin ya,' Trevor had said. Gotthilf had won every cross-country in Berg, scampering cheekily to the finishing line minutes ahead of even the matric boys. Teachers whispered together about a Berg win in the interschool, and even a win in the state, in the open competition.

From the shelter sheds came muffled, half-hearted pep-ups from cold schoolmates and spine-stiffeners from competitive parents. Gotthilf hadn't told Acantia of the race. He knew Ursula was in the shed somewhere, but wished she wasn't.

Gotthilf glanced from under his dripping fringe at the other competitors. Unfriendly, unfamiliar boys in unfamiliar uniforms. Jumping to keep warm, stretching. Professional schoolboys. He stared quickly back at his goose-pimpled red arms. He felt a wave of horror. He had caught the look on some of their faces. Excitement. Energy.