A mysterious visitor arrives at a farm and settles in for the last few years of her life with great purpose.
Chapter TextThis is the story of an adventure that took place in Narnia and Archenland and the lands to the west in the days when King Dale was the ruler of Narnia, Queen Esme was ruler of Archenland. King Dale of Narnia was an old widowed man with 5 grandchildren and Queen Esme was still a very young woman who had only lately come to her throne. They were 14th and 16th in line respectively from Queen Helen and King Frank.
In those days, the descendants of Frank and Helen's children and their semi-divine consorts had spread across many parts of Narnia and Archenland, farming the land around small hamlets, quarrying the hills in partnership with the dwarves and tending the forests and lands with the guidance of the guardians of the woods, rivers and fields.
Many Talking Beasts and fabulous magical creatures such as centaurs, fauns, gryphons, unicorns and flying horses were a part of their communities in those days in both countries and there was much coming and going between them. It was nothing to see a tumbling mix of faun, human, dryad and centaur children out on a spring romp near Armouthe or Beruna with their fond parents looking on, chatting about the crops coming in, the steps of the stars in the firmament or the rapturous joy and frivolity of the first rites of spring.
The largest villages that existed were mostly along the great river, with Beruna and Paravel so far being the only ones in Narnia that could claim to be towns, and Armouthe which was the harbour, fishing port and seat of government in Archenland. Armouthe sat on a tidal bend of the Winding Arrow, a good 2 miles from the mouth and over 80 winding land miles from Anvard, the summer mountain retreat of the Archen nobility.
But the boy in our story knew little of these details. He knew that Anvard lay high up to the south, on the other side of the pass to Archenland, but he was more familiar with Southern Narnia and Beruna, their market-town which lay a day's journey away on packhorse. To him as a young farm boy, it seemed full of adventure and curiosities at every turn. He yet knew nothing of the wider world or of what was to come.
But before we find out more about him or the other important characters in his legendary story, we must go back a bit and learn about someone who was very important in his young life.
...
The owner of a snug little cave was tucked up in her bed fast asleep after a hard day's work. She had been tending to several of the Talking Ibex mothers and their newborn kids who lived up on the heights. Then she awoke with a start to the sound of a crack. The hill was thrumming around her and bits of grit and dust were falling down, some of it onto her.
She lay there hardly breathing, eyes wide in the darkness, grasping her horns, listening intently for any further tremors or rocks falling in what was clearly an earth tremor. Then, faintly she heard the hissing and trickling of water. She got creakily out of bed, struck a flint and before long had a lantern lit. There, running down the back wall of the cave was a split and out of it was coming a fine muddy spray all over her worktable and some of her books! She wailed and groaned. She began frantically removing things from the path of the spray, and wondering how to block the crack up again, when a piece of rock popped out and a solid spout of very cold clear water – about as much as you would expect to come from a bathroom tap – poured onto the floor of her dear little cave, soaking the rugs. Before long it began to run under the little wooden door and down the hill below.
There was not a moment to lose. She flung open the door, and the starlight streamed in. She grabbed her wheelbarrow, and sloshing through the cold water in uncertain light, began loading books and simples, her bedsheets and blankets and some tools, all the while having to make hard decisions about what she took and what she left behind. She managed to grab the portrait of her old mother and father just as more water began pouring out of the cave wall and she had to get out.
Some hours later, she sat in the starlight awaiting the dawn, wrapped in the least damp blanket. She watched the stream that was now pouring out of the once dry and warm little cave, almost as if it were the memories from the last sixty-five years that were pouring away. Then she began to cry.
Like many but not all, this old faun was sensitive, learned, and bookish, as well as fond of dancing and sharing a droll joke with who-ever would pass the time of day. But her great gift in life was as a midwife and herbalist. For the truth was, she had helped more young fauns, satyrs and humans, unicorns, deer, bears and goats, talking or otherwise into this part of the world than you have shelled peas. She was legendary and dearly loved from Beruna nearly all the way to Anvard. Talking beasts and people came from miles to ask for her help and usually brought gifts of food or herbs with them. She might have chosen to live in comfort in Beruna, or even the capital, Paravel Town, but she had always preferred the solitude of her parents' little cave in Southern Narnia, up in one of the side valleys to the Archen River.
Under the huge Narnian stars, in the damp light of dawn with their brightness beginning to fade but not their beauty, she finally remembered a dream. It had only been vaguely remembered before now, but all its sadness and grandeur and purpose came flooding back and she realised that this was a moment to be moving on that had been foretold.
…
Just before sunrise, the old faun woman surveyed the view from her high valley for one last time. The blue rocky pinnacles and forested slopes of the Archen Mountains to the right and the tumbling misty foothills and lowlands off to the left. She was facing the sun as it came up over the horizon, streaming through the forested lands. Its shafts of light warmed her eyelids and gave her new hope.
She blew her nose and wiped her eyes because it was a sad way to leave but she decided the only thing to do would be to follow where the water took her and find her new purpose.
So, wrestling her barrow down the valley, she followed the new rivulet which sprang ahead like quicksilver through the grass.
…
Early that afternoon, she was still on her journey, bracing her hooves against the rocks and wrestling the barrow over uneven ground, trying to prevent her worldly possessions from tumbling out. Then, she came out onto more even ground again, this time on a narrow cart and goat track and the water that had been tumbling along beside her, petered out soaking into a bed of gravel, right outside a farm-house gate.
She stood there eyeing the place. Looking up a gentle hill across a large well-kept vegetable garden to a little cottage and a few outbuildings. She had once known its former occupants and had heard rumours but had not yet met its new tenants. Well, now was the moment. She unlatched the gate and pushed her wheelbarrow up the into the yard, under the tall stems of flowering mustard and carrots, and looked with her clever dark eyes across the beds of onions and turnips and cabbages towards the house. She set down her barrow and propped herself against it, resting and waiting.
Her slim, bent form with dark red brown skin and curly white fleece was bright against the blue of the cabbages and the green of the mustard. A man came out of the house to find out who had unlatched the house yard gate. She looked up at him with clever dark eyes and said, "I think you'll be needing me for a while".
That was that.
…
So Dorcas came to stay at Lindenlea farm. She knew she had come to the right place because the woman of the farm was in the last months of a difficult pregnancy and needed help. So Dorcas stayed for the birth of the baby and beyond that, as nanny and teacher.
When he was four, Dorcas worked with his father to teach the boy his letters and when he was six to write. His father taught him how to get milk from the goats and how to make cheese from it and Dorcas taught the whole family how to help the goats when they needed help with their kids.
Dorcas joined the boy's mother in teaching him about the many small secrets of the woods and fields, the turning of the seasons and the ways of growing things, moulds, worms and the soil. They even introduced him to some of the dryads who inhabited several of the trees in the neighbourhood, who in turn gave the boy extraordinary experiences in the ways of trees, their roots and seeds. In May each year, the whole family, Dorcas included, joined the dryads of a local grove of beeches in stately dances of thanksgiving.
When the boy played with the local dwarf children and talking deer fawns, flitting with them through the orchard, climbing trees, disappearing behind trees, sometimes mysteriously, or when he was learning how to plant seeds and cuttings with unusual care and gravity, Dorcas would fix him with her bright black eyes and say, "Aye, there's no mistaking it, there's dryad blood in you young one."
These words, he had no meaning for until he was five and didn't grasp fully till he was eleven.
The boy had developed the ability to grow almost anything he took his mind to and with great rapidity. Roots would grow on green sticks he planted within a week and seeds that would normally take weeks to sprout would be showing their heads above soil in a few days. His mother had these skills too, even more strongly, which was why their garden was so healthy and full of life.
But his mother did not have the knack of seemingly disappearing into trees or appearing at the tops of trees with no branches between the ground and the crown.
Even the boy could not always describe how this happened. He just seemed to bind to the tree, find footholds and he never fell.
His parents had had many early frights, but they learned that the boy's natural affinity with trees of all kinds meant that he was safe if he didn't jump from a great height. As for Dorcas, she would look sidelong at him, raise an eyebrow on her wise happy-sad face, and turn to his parents and remark "there's a reason for this, mark my words".
All seemed lovely for the lone child in his cosy family home with such wonderful teachers and playmates. But when the lad was only ten, the dear old faun became gravely ill. She had a cough that would not get better and she became very thin and weak.
On a bleak autumn day, the leaves turning yellow and beginning to fall, she called him to her. With his mother looking on, Dorcas held his youthful hand in her weathered one and in a wispy faint voice, her now filmy dark eyes seeming to stare into the shadows, she told him something that he never forgot.
Dorcas's soft husky voice was halting and her breath was laboured. "I'm not prone to foretelling my love... but you must understand something... my days are coming to an end at last... yes, sad but true... now I must speak what I saw... and heard and what I... see now before my lips are... stilled."
She paused for breath and swallowed.
Long ago, long before you was even born... I had a dream... it come in the night... I was in a wood with many pools... oh it was so warm and fragrant. Beautiful. I could have slept there forever. Then a great Lion came pacing through the wood towards me. It was Aslan as sure as eggs are eggs..."
"His golden light was all about me... I could almost smell his sweet lion-scent..."
"Now, his voice was like strong honey and it spoke to my very soul. It was a voice of peace and hope and strength. He told me how much he adored and admired my life and my work... that was so wonderful to hear… I think we might have even played a game of tag around the trees first… I remember laughing… but his voice also held a command. He stood by me and told me that by and by a sign would come to leave my cave and that I was to use my skills to bring into the world someone who one day would save many Narnians and Archenlanders from a terrible fate."
"I almost forgot the dream in waiting for the sign, for I waited many years, continuing my work. But the sign came by and by. it turned out to be an earth tremor. About ten years ago now. It cracked the hill a wee bit and water began coming right through my cave. I had to leave. So I followed the water, and it brought me here. When I arrived, I realised that this someone would be you, for your mother was heavy with you and she was having a time of it. That is why I have stayed. Watching you grow and encouraging the talents you have."
"So, when you was born, I knew that you was my special charge. I've tried to teach you well. I've seen the things you can do, though you don't always know it yourself. You have a knack for... dryad ways shall we say... and that's a gift no son of Adam should waste."
Dorcas paused and swallowed again, her chest heaving a little.
"Those gifts are tools young one, not toys as I have told you before. I lay no charge on you sweet boy, and I do not foretell, but I say this... you will find other teachers… and a day may come when your special gifts will save not only your own life but that of many others as well".
The boy stood, feeling burdened, confused and bereft and nodded glumly. After this long speech Dorcas's head sank into the pillows and closed her eyes. She beckoned to the boy's mother, who bent over her and Dorcas whispered something. The woman nodded, holding back tears.
Shortly after, the boy's mother went to the linden tree across the house yard, stood with arms outstretched and clasped the tree with her head bent, forehead against the trunk for a while. After this, she stood in the centre of the garden and put her fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle, which was repeated several times. Then she waited patiently. After a few minutes, a pair of large black birds appeared. She spoke to them briefly after which they flapped away. She returned inside and said to Dorcas, "I've put out the call."
Dorcas remained in bed for three days, drinking little, eating nothing, mostly sleeping or appearing to. The family wiped her brow and sometimes carried her shrunken body to the outdoor privy.
On the third day at dawn, there was a light tap at the door and the boy stumbled down from his loft wonderingly. To his surprise, at the door were the startling shapes of a deep chested brown-haired centaur, a tall grey dryad and two faun women. In the distance across the house yard he could see a few others shapes too.
"Mother!" he called, startled and not sure what to say or do. But she was already on her way, wrapping a robe about herself. When she saw who was there, her eyes widened. She curtseyed deeply and with palm up, touched her forehead and then gestured for them to enter.
The centaur demurred, and just tapped a hoof, but the dryad and both fauns did enter, then crossed the room to Dorcas's bedside.
Dorcas opened her filmy black eyes and settled her gaze upon her visitors. She did not smile, but opened her hands out a little. The fauns took one hand each to help her sit and the dryad bent her beautiful tall form and gathered up the little old faun woman and lifted her from her bed, her coverlet falling away.
Dorcas' ivory horns showing the slight curl of age, her naturally dark red brown skin and patchy silver-grey fleece and horny old cloven hooves were visible now as they gently bore her outside and into the garden amidst her herbs and the scent of spruce and fir woods from up the valley drifted down in the early mist.
The sun peeped over the eastern horizon and sent shafts of glorious golden light across the world, lighting the clouds behind them in lemon and apricot tones, lighting up the fluttering yellow leaves of the linden tree. The dryad lifted Dorcas high into the air, seeming to stretch taller than ever to meet the sun.
The fauns took out their flutes and began a light but melancholy tune, subtended by the slow sonorous droning hum of the centaur.
The family followed them out and stood on the damp ground, barefoot, still in their nightshirts. It was only then as the boy looked sadly and a little shyly at the visitors that he noticed the yard was lined with creatures of the woods and fields. There were hundreds of talking rabbits, moles, hedgehogs and hares, a whole herd of roe deer, even a great elk, and to Gwyn's lasting astonishment a mixed group of unicorns, winged horses and centaurs. There were even a few wildcats and a wolf.
The entire clan of local dwarves stood holding their hats looking sad and solemn. Then as the sun's rays began to shine brightly, cutting through the mist, the troupe of sad merry fauns reached the height of their tune. The sun's rays shone on Dorcas directly lighting up her sorry form. She gave a gasp, and all was still.
Only the small birds of the forest and field could now be heard with the occasional cuckoo and the rasp of capercaillies.
The boy's eyes were sore with hot salty tears and he howled a sharp dirge into the sunrise. Clinging to his father and mother he sobbed his first real grief.
Over the morning, a grave was dug out of the red clay soil just outside the house gate on the edge of a thicket. It was dug by a small army of stout dwarves and lithe energetic fauns and some talking rabbits. Everyone got very dirty, hot and sticky.
Any farm chores that might have been forgotten were seen to by some of the visitors without being asked. And there were many willing hands to pluck small branches and piles of grass to feed the farm goats. The farm's resident Talking Bulldog was quite overwhelmed by the crowd and simply retreated, grumbling.
The garden became a makeshift kitchen with trestles and cooking fires. Some of the Talking beasts such as rabbits, hares, and deer, pretended to not eye the rows of vegetables and controlled their appetites out of respect for both Dorcas' memory and the farm.
By early afternoon, Dorcas had been laid gently on birch bark, her eyes closed, her horns and hooves rubbed in red clay, her skin with white ashes and sweet oil. Her hands were folded in and her legs crossed gently and holding a mixed bunch of pink yarrow, torch lily and Narnian fresny.
More bitter tears were cried, as looking on, it could be seen how the old faun's body was wrapped gently in birchbark and bound firmly around and around with willow bark strips. Then, with more piping and droning, the bundle was lowered gently into the grave. Then came a very long time of silence broken by sobs and sniffles and some crying out loud, in which every person and talking beast present came to the graveside and dropped in a handful or with their feet pushed in a small pile of soil and clay.
One or two talking hedgehogs lost their footing and fell in, rolling themselves into balls in their embarrassment. But no-one laughed and they were simply and gently helped out with branches by others nearby.
Finally, the fauns brought the shovels and mounded the remaining soil over the grave, sprinkled seeds over it and then laid turves of grass and meadow flowers all over the mound and roundabout.
Then everyone gathered about, the smallest in the middle and the tallest around the outside and they all sang some verses from the Great Song as it is called in Narnian memory, the song of the beginning.
For it was said that when Aslan had sung the earth and divine waters and plants and animals and talking peoples into being, most had struggled out of mounds much like this one. So, everyone who knew and loved her sang, so that Dorcas could find her way into Aslan's country in something like the same way.
At that very moment, the song was completed, but it hung in the air and still thrummed in the earth for a few seconds. Then before all their eyes, the seeds sprouted and pushed their way up through the turf. They burst open to reveal many little white and red flowers which opened to release a sweet and delicious perfume that made everyone remember the good faun with even greater clarity and affection, and they knew their work was done.
So the tears of grief became tears of joy and wonder.
After this the rest of the afternoon was spent in making sure that everyone had had enough to eat and drink before they went on their way.
For the boy, the unexpected events of this day were at once confusing, enlightening, exhausting, and exhilarating. They helped him make sense of the last few weeks because he had never really known death before now. But he also found he had a new awe for the old faun who had helped bring him into the world and taught him so much. He had never realised before now, how well known she was and how respected by so many.
It made him wonder why it was that she had considered him so important.
…