The Green Hero (16 page)

“Did worse to me, to me!” shrieked the Fish-hag. “Ruined my Druid feast and disgraced me with the green-beards forever. Persuaded my charge, the Salmon of Knowledge, you know, to teach him certain forbidden wisdom. Stole my Salmon Net, caught and cooked the Loutish Trout, drugged my guests, abused me with the contents of my own sewing basket, and all in all made me suffer much. Too much.”

“Doesn’t sound too promising,” said Goll. “He seemed like trouble a-plenty when I thought him only a little upstart. Now I learn that he has magical wits and strong allies.”

“Oh, well, he has strong enemies too,” said Drabne. “Namely us.”

“He stole my black tom as well,” said the Fish-hag.

“Hush, sister,” said Drabne. “Let’s listen to Goll. I believe he has a proposition for us.”

“I have if you can handle it,” said Goll. “Finn has performed certain tasks which make him think he’s ready to claim the chieftainship of the Fianna. Of course, he must fight me first. And when I fight I like to win.”

“Can there be any doubt about the outcome of such a battle?” said the Fish-hag. “Are you not the most fearsome warrior in the land? And Finn is still a lad.”

“A precocious lad. …”

“So you do fear him?”

“Fear is a term I do not choose to recognize,” said Goll. “But I respect anyone who offers to fight me. By overestimating my foe I find myself paying attention to detail. And it pays off, ladies, it pays off.”

“So you wish us to take care of a few little details to ensure your victory?” said Drabne.

“Why not?” said Goll, grinning.

“In other words, you’d like him damaged a bit before the fight?”

“A bit. Or even quite a bit.”

“How about your knightly honor and so forth?”

“That’s for losers.”

“You’re a man after my own heart,” said Drabne. “Or would be if I had one. Let’s get it straight then. You’d like us to arrange some accident for Finn, preferably fatal.”

“Preferably. I’d settle for a little less though.”

“It’s a large order. We’ll need to do our very best evil in this matter, O man. It’ll cost you something.”

“How much.”

“You know we wouldn’t overcharge you—an old friend like you.”

“I’m still listening.”

“We have been in the habit of kidnapping certain infants from their cradles. But their mothers raise such a hue and cry, it’s positively unsafe. Now we need these newborn babes. We need their skin for shoes when we go dancing. We need their bones to make buttons of, and their little hands for corpse-candles—which we sell to robbers, you know. When the fingers are lighted they cast a sleep upon all within the house so that the robbers may go about their business undisturbed.”

“I can understand how mothers might object.”

“Now what we want you to do is manage things so that we can pick up the brats and not be bothered by their mothers.”

“Young mothers can be very unreasonable,” said Goll. “How can I persuade them to ignore a threat to their newborn babes? You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Oh, yes we do. And we know what
you’re
asking … which will cost you what we’re asking.”

“I don’t know. …”

“You’re a persuasive man, Goll. Find a way. Or we can’t do business.”

“I’ll find a way.”

“Now add several weighty bags of gold and we can reach an agreement.”

“How many is several?”

“Loose term, is it not? Can mean as few as three, or as many as fifteen. Let us be moderate, however, and say twelve.”

He groaned and smote himself on the head. But he knew better than to bargain with the crones. The longer the conversation, the more it would cost him. He groaned again, and said:

“Agreed.”

“Go away, good customer,” said Drabne. “Amuse yourself until the hour before dawn while my sister and I counsel together. When you return, we shall have a plan to present.”

Goll strode away through the wood and left the withered sisters hanging upside down on their branch, twittering away to each other. How he would have liked to set a torch to them as he had done to wasps’ nests when he was a boy. But he did not dare. He walked through the woods thinking many things, and returned an hour before dawn.

“Greetings, O Master of the Fianna,” said Drabne. “My sister and I have conferred. We submit this plan.”

Drabne spoke a long time then. Occasionally her sister broke in to add a detail or two. Goll listened very carefully. As he listened, he began to smile. When she had finished he was laughing. A curious sound, something like the creaking of a gate that has not been oiled; he was not used to laughing. When she was through, it was full dawn and he could see the witches in all their ugliness. He bit back his shudder. He knew full well that you must never show a female—young or old; maiden, nymph, or crone; filly, mare, or nag; chick or vixen; blooming girl or horrid hag—that she is anything but charming and desirable. He made himself smile, and kissed the withered claws of their hands, letting his lips linger on the mildewed hide, and said:

“Oh, sisters sage, your wisdom is surpassed only by your beauty. Truly, I thank you for this splendid strategy, and will begin the payment of your fee immediately.”

“You are courteous indeed,” said Drabne. “Quite our favorite client, in fact. Isn’t he, sister?”

“Oh yes … oh yes … teehee. …”

“Thank you, kindly Crones,” said Goll. “And farewell.”

“Farewell. Do ill,” they said politely, and flew away, blinking and smiling, for they hated the sun and loved the darkness.

Now, to understand the dreadful trap being prepared for Finn, you must know about Hanratty.

He was a king in Ulster, a huge burly brawling man. The battle-axe was his favorite weapon. There was no peace in Ulster, but there were long dull periods of truce when all he could use his axe on was trees.

One day he went farther than usual and found himself in a grove he had not seen before. Oaks grew there, beautiful thick old trees, evenly spaced. The earth was strangely clear of acorns and twigs, as if it had been swept. He did not know it but he had stumbled on a sacred grove of Amara, Goddess of Growing Things. All he saw was the thickness of the trees and a chance to use his wild strength. He stepped to the largest tree and raised his axe.

“Do not strike,” the tree said.

“Why not?”

“This grove belongs to Amara. I am one of her oak maidens, grown old now, a priestess now, and this tree is her temple. It must not be defiled.”

“This grove belongs to me,” said Hanratty. “And I am not in the habit of consulting trees before I chop them down.”

He swung his axe and buried its head in the trunk of the tree. The wind moaned through the leaves, and blood, not sap, bathed the axe-head. But Hanratty was used to blood; for a moment he fancied himself in the whirl of battle again, and happily swung his axe. By this time he was all spattered with blood like a butcher, but he chopped faster and faster—and the great tree fell with a tremendous crash. He looked at its bulk lying there, shouldered his axe and tramped away. Owls and hawks dipped in to sip the blood welling from the stump.

When Amara heard the news—and she heard it soon because birds are great gossips—she was torn by rage. Never had she been so insulted by mortal.

“No … I will not kill him, not just yet,” she whispered to herself. “Death is too easy. I must think of something to fit the crime. And not in some dim afterlife, but here, right here on this earth he loves so well and uses so violently. Yes, I shall practice my reprisal on that big hot body whose pleasure he is always serving.”

She paced her throne room, and thought and thought, and finally sent for one of her servants. This was a terrible servant, one she rarely employed, and only when people seemed to be losing veneration for the Queen of Harvests. The servant’s name was Famine. She was not quite a skeleton. She had flesh, but it hung on her like rags on a scarecrow. Her lips had fallen away, and the fleshy part of her nose, and the flesh had been eaten away from her eyepits so that her face was four holes and a fall of hair.

“Hail, great Queen,” she said. “It is long since you called upon my services. I have been in the Place of Shadow working for Oogah. She sends me out to frighten children. I come to them as dreams of their dead grandmother, bringing night-sweats and filial piety. Half-rations down there, Amara, half-rations. You see I have been forced to finish my own lips.”

“I have a task for you, Famine. You will feed well for a while. …”

While this was happening, those dire sisters, Drabne of Dole and the Fish-hag, were preparing to strike.

Drabne of Dole, making herself invisible, followed Hanratty around his courtyard that noon, and stole his shadow. She folded it carefully, stuck it in her purse, and flew away.

That same morning, the Fish-hag went to the woodland pool where Finn swam each morning. She hid underwater and kept out of his way as he swam. Then she crouched under the bank and waited. He climbed out and knelt on the bank to look into the mirror of the still water and comb his hair. But as soon as his image flickered on the silver pool the Fish-hag seized it, stuck it in her purse, and swam off.

The sisters met in a clearing of the woods. They set a black pot boiling on a fire of twigs, and dropped in a frog, a spider, and certain magic spices. Then Drabne stirred in the shadow of Hanratty, and the Fish-hag added Finn’s image she had stolen from the pool.

The pot bubbled; its lid bounced spurting steam. The sisters joined hands and danced around the fire, singing:

When we disagree

with nature’s decree

Why, then, we two

simply brew

A magic recipe,

Or two, or three.

Teehee … tehee … tehee.

From the steaming pot two spites arose. Drabne seized one, spoke a curse, and hurled it northward. The Fish-hag seized the other, spoke a curse, and hurled it southward. The spites flew like darts, one toward Ulster, one toward Meath. They flew and darted and hurried and hurtled through the changing airs. One entered the castle in Ulster and bit Hanratty’s neck, hanging there like a bat. The other found Finn as he was crossing a meadow in Meath, and bit him on the neck, hanging there like a bat. Hanratty fell to the floor, bloodless, and lay there with no more thickness than a cobweb. Finn’s spite drank all his blood, and left the boy on the grass, no thicker than a cobweb.

A bitter draught blew through the castle, lifting Hanratty’s cobwebby body off the floor, blowing it out the window, beyond the walls, southward. A sweet strong meadow wind blew, lifting Finn’s cobwebby body off the grass and sailing it north.

Finn came to the castle, the king to the meadow. The lacy bodies plumped out, and took on color. But a powerful magic had been worked, making Finn and Hanratty change places. Finn now had Hanratty’s appearance, and sat massively on his throne, while Hanratty was now a slender youth whose eyes were sometimes gray and sometimes blue as the light changed. They were still themselves in their souls, but with each other’s body and habits—and both were in ignorance of the transformation.

And so it was that that night when Famine arrived to work Amara’s vengeance she found Finn in Hanratty’s place, and never knew the difference.

Finn had eaten and drunk himself into a heavy stupor, and was lying on his couch when he was visited by an amorous dream. A naked maiden, tall and graceful, came to his couch where he lay all flushed with wine. Her hands were cold, laving his heat. Cool as tall eels her drifting legs. And her hair seemed frosted. When he embraced her she pressed so close that the icy length of her body seemed to be entering his, laying delicious icy fingers on the very roots of his blood. He shuddered with pleasure, and slept.

When he awoke in the morning he was hungrier than he had ever been in his life before. He sent for a monster breakfast. Five huge melons. A great tureen of porridge. A baby pig, roasted whole. Twenty hens’ eggs. And half a barrel of wine.

“Call that a breakfast?” he roared, flinging the barrel at the cook’s head. “Food, man, food!”

The cook was terrified. The king had eaten all his own breakfast, and his daughter’s breakfast, and the servants’, too. But still he called for more. Even in the kitchen they could hear him bellowing—all the way from the great dining hall. Nothing to do then but to serve him what had been planned for lunch. Now they brought him a huge haunch of venison. A peck of potatoes roasted in their skins. Also pastry, honey, apples, grapes. And a barrel of undiluted wine.

They brought him food. Finn sat at the great table, roaring with hunger, striking the board with the haft of his axe. Hanratty’s young daughter sat near him, not daring to speak a word, staring at the man she thought her father, amazed. Finn seized the haunch of venison as if it were a drumstick and ate it swiftly, wrenching the meat from the bone, eyes bulging. When he had stripped all the meat away, he cracked the head of the huge bone between his teeth and sucked the marrow. Then he reached with both hands, seizing potatoes and pastry and fruit and shoving them indiscriminately in his mouth, chewing and mumbling, and looking about the table for more. He ate the fruit—skins, pits, and all—drained the flagon of honey, then raised the barrel of wine to his mouth, drank that off, and flung the barrel away.

The girl was still staring at him.

“You know, you’re very pretty,” he said to her.

“Father, what’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you know me?”

“You must be my daughter since you call me father.”

“But why are you acting so strangely?”

“Pretty girls shouldn’t ask questions. They should enjoy their food, and smile, and play the harp.”

“Would you like me to play, Father? And sing for you?”

“After we’ve had something to eat. I must apologize for this meager fare, my dear. …”

“Are you still hungry, father?”

“Cook!” he bellowed. “Where is that rascal?”

The servants rushed to the storeroom to get what was laid by for dinner. A very lavish state dinner—he had planned to entertain three kings. But his daughter told the servants to prepare the food as quickly as they could, and she herself sent messages to the three kings, asking them to come another time.