The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
The Walrus Mutterer: Episode 62
It was as if someone else was speaking for her, a part of herself that had been silent since her capture, cowed and angry
Manigan dribbled a few drops of his wine from his cup into a dimple on top of the stone then made a formal introduction in Keltic. “Master, meet Rian, runaway slave who rescued you from the thieves. Rian, meet the Master Stone.” “I am honoured,” she said, and bowed her head, trembling.
“You may ask the Master what you will.”
She glanced up, but the strange stone face had knowing eyes like a pig and she had to look away. She shook her head.
“You are wise.” Manigan was smiling gently at her, his face amber in the firelight, his hair gleaming. He was ceremonially still, but not stiff.
“The Master would be happy if you would touch him.”
“No.” Rian recoiled.
“Why not?”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. The Master requests it.”
“I do not know who he is. I can’t.”
“Just touch him. Then you’ll know.”
“I can’t.”
Moods
He shrugged and pulled the cloth around the neck of the stone.
The stone stared at her with an expression shadowed and flecked with firelight, all possible moods crossing the face.
“That’s all right. The Master understands. I don’t, but the Master always does.”
“Why do you call it the Master?”
“That’s who this face is called.”
“I’m scared of it.”
“Him.”
He bent his head down to look at the stare. “She’s scared of you.” He turned the face towards him.
A pinched, smiley little boy was now beaming at her from the stone. She gasped again. “Who’s that?” “The Boy. He’s not scary, is he?”
She pulled her knees up to her chin. “How can it be a boy as well?”
“He is triple. Like the Goddess.”
Then he turned the stone again, and the boy was replaced by a wizened visage, lined and full of gentleness, with penetrating eyes.
She was spellbound by it and could not move her gaze.
“The Sage. It is rare to see all three faces, but you’re special. It is conventional to greet this one.”
“I am honoured to meet you.”
The lines on the old face seemed to move in the firelight, as if it was smiling with an expression of deep peace.
There was something about it that reminded Rian of Danuta, and she felt the terrible longing for her that she had endured all the time when she was first captured.
The pain of missing her was just as sharp as ever. She had simply found ways of shoving it aside, ignoring it, avoiding any thought of her.
But here she was. The love in the old face before her was sharp as a dagger.
“You have asked him something difficult,” Manigan murmured.
“I didn’t realise I was asking anything.”
“Your eyes are always full of questions.”
“I must go home. Danuta needs me.”
She didn’t understand where this came from, but looking into that old face she was certain of it. “And I have more to learn from her that no one else can learn.”
It was as if someone else was speaking for her, a part of herself that had been silent since her capture, cowed and angry.
“Well, you’re on your way.”
Surprised
He said it in such a matter of fact manner that Rian was surprised. He looked relaxed there, cross-legged, leaning his back slightly against the rock behind him, as if he sat out on shores beside fires all the time. Perhaps he did.
“Do you have anything else to ask him?”
Her mind was full of questions but she shook her head. The stone was alien to her again, after its brief moment of kinship. Would home ever be the same again after what Drost had done?
Manigan smoothed the plaid out, thanked the stone head formally but simply in the Keltic manner, with the “you” reserved for an elder. Rian repeated it.
He nodded, wiped dry the dimple in its crown, folded the blanket over it and slid it into the bag. Now it was hidden again, she could relax. “Why do you have the stone?”
He put the bag down on his right side and stretched his legs out. It started to rain, spitting into the fire. “It’s a long story. You want to hear it?”
By way of an answer, Rian put another piece of driftwood onto the fire, another bigger piece across it, and then a third diagonally across the two.
“Sit here.” He indicated she should sit beside him. He arranged the sail to cover them from the rain. It flapped in the rising wind but they were mostly sheltered by the rocks.
“It was put into my grandmother’s safekeeping. The one I told you about, the granny I share with Ussa.”
The fire was lapping around the wood, greedy and warm and, as the flames danced, his soft voice unravelled the story of the stone.
Polite
“My Aunt Fraoch told me that her mother Amoa was given the stone by her father, the Merlin, after he had a dream that came true. It was a dream of destruction, of the death of the old king, the king’s son and heir, and the baby grandson, all on one night.
“They were the Bear Clan, although they never called themselves that as they had a superstition about never using the name of the animal.
“It’s a bit like us and the walrus: when we are hunting, it is considered disrespectful to call him that. Imagine if someone said to you: ‘Hey, human.’ It’s not nice, is it?”
“What do you call them?”
“Oh anything polite. Whiskery One, or Mister Tusker, or just Old Gentleman. Anyway, back to the Clan of the Furry Paws.
“The bloodline of the kings and queens ran back to the earliest days when bears and humans shared the land and some women chose to live with the great bears of the forest.
“They bore children who had the strength and the bravery of mighty animals and grew up to be hunters and heroes, protectors of the people.
“They were a wild clan. They lived in timber halls in the woods and in caves in the mountains. They had no slaves and no farmland.
“They lived only on the wild foods of the forests and hills, the lakes and rivers and seashore, and their livestock grazed in the woods and were as wild and dangerous as the folk: huge hairy cattle and goats, tough little ponies and bristly pigs with great tusks.”
More tomorrow.