PART 2: VILLAGE OF THE LOONIES
Chapter 1: The Fish that Tried to Shed her Skin
"I want to tell you something before you leave, my girl, but I want you to listen to me, yes? Don't return too soon."
Those were the words her uncle uttered when he bade her farewell, with a serious, almost stern expression that had surprised her.
"Don't return too soon."
He had said more. He had advised her not to rush, not to let her stubbornness and impatience deprive her of beautiful experiences; he had stressed how everything seems difficult at first, but no difficulty lasts forever. Yet those three words erased the rest, because ever since she was a ten-year old, recently-orphaned girl, Nina had feared the moment she'd hear them fall from Benevolentix' mouth.
"Don't return."
Nina tried to improve, to make a fresh start. She sincerely tried not to be as bothersome to her new hosts as she had been to her uncle.
Even though she had no personal experience, Nina was sure that a village life was kinder, gentler. That people were more closely connected with nature. The village was by the sea, forming an idyllic landscape, a hymn to the nature of Armorica. There were no traffic jams or cart accidents to make the residents lose their temper. There was no hustle and bustle, neither were there steep prices in the market to make them miserable.
That's why the constant quarrels among the villagers over the slightest provocation surprised her so much.
The people in Lutetia were always hasty and short-sighted, treating everyone with indifference and rudeness. Nina had become accustomed to passing mostly unnoticed. But here, all eyes were on her from the moment she arrived, and all mouths whispered as if the newcomer were a fish in an aquarium that they had paid to see.
Nina tried… for about a week. She kept her mouth shut, knitted one failed sock after another, burnt cauldrons of stew she had been asked to watch, intruded into men's conversations where no one paid her the slightest attention.
And one fine morning, she reached her limit.
The villagers had gathered in the square, where the Druid was distributing the famed and mythical magic potion. A month had passed since their last raid on one of the four Roman fortifications around their village, and they were sure the Romans missed them terribly by now.
Nina took her place at the end of the queue, waiting patiently for her turn to come. She hadn't killed a single legionary since she saw how much it annoyed Obelix. She had been so quiet and obedient, surely they wouldn't mind taking her along so she could deal a few blows to the conqueror herself.
She stood behind Obelix, who, despite Getafix' refusal, never stopped hoping that one day he might be included in the fun as well. And when Obelix inevitably left empty-handed, Nina stepped forward and met the Druid's gaze with determination and hope.
"Nina…" Getafix sighed, but before anything more could be said, all the men that were standing around them started laughing.
The square echoed with their cackles, as if they had not just seen a person making a perfectly reasonable request, but had witnessed the joke of the year.
"Hey, people, take a look at the little one! She wants magic potion too,hahahahaha!" Unhygienix, to her right, was crying with laughter.
And Nina couldn't take it anymore, letting them trample on her dignity like that. She covered the distance between herself and the Druid with angry strides, raised her already clenched fist, and brought it down on his cheek.
She might not approve of unreasonable violence, but she couldn't just stand there and take it!
This made the rest of the assembled Gauls literally collapse with laughter, pointing at the stunned Unhygienix who was holding his reddened cheek. But as he explicitly stated that hitting women was beneath him, and Fulliautomatix next to him had no shame in sniggering at his expense, he vented his anger on the blacksmith.
One punch led to another; Unhygienix' wife, Bacteria took out the merchandise from the chests, and a fight broke out in the square.
"What are you doing!" Stubbornina exclaimed, ducking to avoid a stray fish that had been flung to the wrong direction. "It's the Romans you should be hitting!" And she continued trying to stop any Gaul she could grasp, achieving nothing, until Asterix picked her up by the waist and carried her to the side, fearing she would be the victim of some punch led astray.
And that was the beginning of the end for Stubbornina's efforts.
She had never gotten along well with women anyway. She started to see red with the housewives who had decided to force her down to their level. The things they expected of Nina were outrageous! To cook, to knit, to keep a good household. In Bellenus' name, who did they take her for?
That attitude did not help her popularity among the village women. Rumours spread like wildfire:the young miss from Lutetia who thinks she knows everything. Who snubs us for our village ways. Within a few hours, even women whom Nina hadn't unintentionally insulted, upon seeing her, would lift their noses high and turn their heads away.
And the men, her last hope, usually treated her as if she didn't exist. And why, pray tell, did they burst into laughter when they heard that the bow she carried belonged to her and not to someone else?
The girl returned to the Druid's hut and collapsed in a chair, stunned.
"But… You are indomitable." She muttered then, with the look of someone who had been granted a beautiful box, tied with a lovely ribbon. Waved it in front of her nose, they had, teasingly, to build up her enthusiasm. And while thoroughly thrilled, she opened it to find worms, spiders, and rotting leaves inside.
The Druid looked up from the ingredients he was grinding in a wooden mortar. Nina looked at him as if Getafix was missing the obvious.
"In Lutetia and the rest of Gaul, such behaviour is understandable, since the Romans are responsible for male dominance." Nina explained to the puzzled Druid. "The Romans, who are misogynists. They conquered us and imposed their misogyny on us. But… Getafix, were you never conquered?"
"Never."
"Never, ever?" The girl asked again to be sure. Could the theory she had formulated so many years ago, which kept her from despair, be so wrong?
"Let me put it differently." Getafix attempted to clear up the misunderstanding. "On the rare occasions when a Roman ends up within the village walls, which is usually an unintended consequence of a slap that happened to fall in the wrong direction, we help him return immediately and by air to Rome to inform Caesar that he made it."
Nina was really confused.
"But we Celts honour women! We Celts know the value of nature and family, because we haven't gotten lost in the muck of urban life. We remember and honour the ways of nature, and there is no nature without women. But now we have been colonized by the phallocratic, patriarchal pigs, the Romans, and we've forgotten to give women the respect they deserve."
"Grab me the willow leaves, will you?"
Getafix didn't try to explain to her that women's staying at home was part of a social contract. That it didn't need to be seen as a lack of respect, as it was essentially nothing more than a simple division of labour. Men on the outside, women in the inside; it was simple and practical, and wisely devised according to each gender's strengths and weaknesses. But her uncle had repeated all this to her many times already, and Stubbornina refused to accept that the whole thing was actually very successful. In fact, she refused to accept that the Roman invasion hadn't changed anything and that things had been this way for years, and insisted that they only believed that because it suited them.
Only once did Getafix say something to her. After all, he had taken on the task of continuing the lessons her uncle had started.
"Hmm, let's see." He began the topic himself, at a point when Nina hadn't mentioned it for days. He put the mistletoe he had gathered into his sack and they started walking together towards the village, while the forest around them thrummed with life.
"You say that we consider men strong and assign them all the interesting things that happen outside the house, while leaving the boring, easy tasks to the weaker sex, women. And this is, of course, terribly unfair."
The girl looked at him with indescribable hope. But Getafix continued.
"I'd like to ask you about these easy tasks… Do you mean household chores, which require intelligence, thrift, consistency, and continuous daily effort to ensure that the harvest will feed the whole family until the end of winter? Or childbirth, where a woman carries a new life inside her body for nine months and then suffers through the pains, physical and emotional, to bring it into the world? Or the subsequent raising of the child? The child that came from her body, that she nurtured for years, and before she knows it, her baby has grown up and left her. Or perhaps you mean the mental strength required to be married to a man who is constantly exposed to dangers: the sea, the weather, wars. When you speak of easy, boring tasks, is that what you mean?"
"Easy, no, those aren't…um…" Nina remained stunned for a while, walking mechanically.
Getafix breathed in the mistletoe-scented air that stirred the foliage. Soon the green would give way to shades of yellow and brown. Soon the figs will start to rot, and the villagers would begin to gather apples and nuts.
He didn't even blink when the girl erupted like a summer storm.
"Exactly! We are doomed to suffer for the sake of others! While a man has choices. He can become a warrior, a fisherman, a blacksmith, a bard, a Druid, a sage, a general, and a king. He is free. We are tied to the loom!"
Getafix looked at this girl who had not spent a single day tied to the loom or any other piece of furniture in any house, and smiled.
"Be patient, my girl. Be a little patient, and tomorrow the wind might blow in a different direction."
But calm reigned in the village, and Nina was simmering in her cauldron. Getafix' workshop was her first victim. The wizened Druid came back one day from the forest and initially thought he had not entered the same hut he had left that morning. For the next three quarters of an hour, he fell victim to Nina's relentless lecture on why her arrangement of his belongings was more efficient than his own. She had reorganized his herbs and pots to the point where he spent the following week asking about every little thing, with patience that would swell and deflate, wondering where she had put the jar of aconite and where she had stashed the long ladle.
"Didn't you listen when I explained? The herbs are on these shelves in alphabetical order, unless they are used very frequently, in which case you'll find them here, above the pot. The ladles are hung behind this curtain so they don't gather dust, and the pots…"
And so it went on, until he stopped asking so he would avoid the lectures and resigned himself to finding things on his own until he got used to it.
The hut was cleaner than ever, everything in the solitary room gleamed, from the windows to the cauldron, because Nina's aversion to housewifery seemed to make a special exception for Druid huts.
The girl had an opinion about everything, and if something did not fit this definition, then Nina would sit and study it for days on end, gathering information mostly by interrogating the villagers. She would gather and ponder the data in her mind until she reached a conclusion that seemed so off-base that the villagers wondered if the girl had heard a single word of what they told her.
On her sleepless, restless nights, the girl wondered how she hadn't been kicked out yet. She wanted to make a good impression and be liked, but why couldn't they see that even if she was annoying them, she did it unintentionally and merely with the wish to make their lives better? But they were too narrow-minded to see that no matter how difficult a change might seem at first, only in the long term can its value become apparent.
How many excuses had Getafix been forced to make for her sake?
And when her frustration and sadness reached unmanageable levels, she would escape to the forest for hours. At least there, whatever she did was not subject to criticism. At least there, she had so much to learn and be occupied with. So much to give her satisfaction. And the greatest satisfaction of all came from playing with the Romans.
Usually, she would hear them from miles away: the poor patrol that had drawn the unlucky lot and been sent to the forest of the Indomitable Gauls. Nina would climb the nearest tree of denser foliage and wait for the legionaries to appear, with an arrow nocked on her bow. When they were within range, she would release the string.
The arrow would skim past the unfortunate legionary, and the patrol would vanish before the arrow embedded itself in the first available trunk.
Judging by the few times she had come face to face with the Romans, just the sight of a Gaul from the indomitable village was enough to make them run away, screaming in fear and panic. At least there were some people in this place who knew how to respect those who deserved it. Of course, the fact that in the forrest she wasn't in danger from Romans or anything else deprived her of any justification to ask the Druid for magic potion. Unfortunately, she came to that realisation when she had already boasted about how well she managed to handle the legionaries.
Getafix' teachings were a thing, and indeed a very interesting thing, but this thing occupied merely an hour of her day, leaving empty the rest twenty three.
She wanted more than anything else to learn the secret recipe of the magic potion.
"So, there's no chance you'll ever tell me?"
"From druid's mouth to druid's ear, Stubbornina."
"Just part of it?"
"None, Tina."
"One ingredient?"
"No."
"Only the least important ingredient?"
"I can't even tell you which ladle you need to stir it with."
"The ladle matters too?! Why?"
"Out of bounds, Stubbornina. Out of bounds."
She couldn't push any further. After all, she was a guest and had to respect them.
But she was certain that if she managed to learn the recipe, the villagers would see her in a new light. She would earn their respect. How many times had she secretly followed Panoramix, trying to see what other herbs he gathered in the forest besides mistletoe… Every single time, the old druid somehow managed to disappear from her sight. It was as if the earth opened up and swallowed him. Maybe that's exactly what happened, with some magic of his that Stubbornina stayed awake at night, trying to imagine. The resourceful druid was capable of many things, and Nina had already come to terms with that.
The fact that this change in her behaviour coincided with the first absence of Asterix and Obelix was merely a coincidence.
They had gone to Rome to bring back the bard, who – listen to this – had been kidnapped by the governor of Gaul to be taken to Caesar as a gift. Obelix was admittedly a great loss, but Nina was surprised that she ended up missing Asterix as well. The short, irritable man had not stopped calling her a kid, while using her as a punch-bag for his frustrations (for which Nina bore no responsibility). And with the two men absent, the only ones besides Getafix with whom Nina had developed any familiarity, the girl felt lonelier than ever.
"Asterix—"
"No, Getafix, no, no, just NO!"
"An hour a day!" It was the first time Asterix saw the Druid begging. "Just one hour, and you're done. She's become so enthusiastic about the idea—"
Asterix collapsed into the chair. "You didn't speak to her before you cleared it with me, did you?"
"She heard me mention the caves on the other side of the forest and was about to set off to see them…" explained the Druid, remorseful.
"Ughhh…" Asterix rubbed his eyes, then rested his elbow on the table, though his leg trembled with excess energy.
"I don't see the problem, Asterix. Nina is already familiar with weapons—"
"You're asking me to fight with a girl, Getafix."
He cast a pleading look at the Druid, as if to say: and Gallic courtesy? What about Gallic courtesy? The Druid took a sit next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder.
"Not to fight with her. I'm asking you to teach her." He contradicted in a gentle voice.
Asterix' gaze wandered around the Druid's hut, as if the right counterargument lay among the ladles hanging on the wall, the herbs, and the vegetables.
"She has her bow, but she always wanted, she says, to learn how to wield a sword. She hasn't had anyone to practice with all these years." Getafix continued, with a small smile as if the whole situation was somehow entertaining, a joke that the warrior couldn't grasp. "How it will benefit her, I don't know, but it will certainly not do any harm."
Asterix sighed again. "And if she gets hurt, what do we tell her uncle?" He brought up the eternal argument, which everyone dismissed as if it had no value at all.
"Her uncle," Getafix did indeed counter calmly, "knows better than any of us that when Nina sets her mind on something, no one can stop her. And it is preferable, I think, if she learns from you rather than someone else."
Asterix gave him a sceptical look. "Who else would agree to such a thing?"
"So, you agree?" Happiness blossomed in Getafix' face.
"Gggg—"
"Splendid, splendid! Let us say tomorrow after sunrise, in the clearing out here, in front of my hut? What do you think?"
Asterix didn't want to tell his friend that if he kept this up, he'd become worse than Benevolentix. He accepted his fate, hoping that if he helped the girl blow off some steam, she would stop inflicting headaches to the village Druid.
