Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (8 page)

They came so quickly, one after another, that she felt evil spirits had been sent to take her. She had not eaten since the night the soldier brought her a meal, except for the few small edible things she could gather while the grandmother slept or was calm. She was shaking with hunger and her vision blurred by the hot shimmer of the Illusion People dancing before her eyes.

Their dance was very subtle, their feet lost in mist, their heads bobbing only a little as their bodies shimmied with the heat. Sweat poured into her own eyes and down her neck and arms. It blurred the sight of the next whirlwind until it came rolling out from behind the dancing Illusion People, and spun so rapidly it was almost upon her. She jumped up to run. But then she saw it was different from the others. This one twisted sunward. But now it was passing her, passing the crossroads.

She dove for it, her hands outstretched, and clutched them into fists. Her fists filled with hot dust and dirt, gritty and too agitated, for a moment, to lie still within her fingers. And then the wind was gone.

Now she had what she needed and she walked quickly back to where she had left the old one. If this Irish magic worked, perhaps they would intercept Manuelito's rider as he returned. Maybe he would even take them home. Dezbah's heart lifted at the thought.

“But I'd be that sorry to lose you,” another thought answered. Oh no! Not now, when she was so close. Her thoughts would betray not only themselves but, if she was not careful, the messenger who had been sent to report back to the Navajo leaders.

So she thought instead of the story he had told her, and of the journey she and the old one had just made. “We're very hungry—she's almost worn out, I think,” she thought to him. “But I have the dust! The magic dust, just like you said.”

And then she saw from his thought that it had only been a story and he didn't believe it himself, and that he was sorry to have encouraged her to have gone to such trouble for its sake.

“No matter,” she thought. “I will not let go of this dust until I can throw it onto the old one, so that her spirit may have that chance of returning.”

“You're a fine lass and a credit to your people,” the thought came back.

But here was the place where the old one should be resting and she was not there. Dezbah wept dust, having no water with which to make tears.

And then she heard the hoofbeats again and saw the tall man in blue and felt strong hands lift her onto the horse. And she could not form the thought to wonder whether to be thankful or worried, but let him follow the trail of clothing and the bare footprints of tired old feet.

They found her lying face down, an hour or so from the river. At first it seemed she wasn't breathing, and Dezbah was afraid to approach her, lest she be dead. All ghosts were evil and dangerous, but the one that had taken this grandmother before she was dead would be an esepecially bad ghost, Dezbah thought. The soldier put his hand to her neck and said, “She's alive.”

Dezbah, still clutching the dust, jumped down from the horse. The soldier, sensing her intention, stood aside and she flung the dust over the old one, adding the precaution of doing it to the four directions, clockwise, east, south, west and north.

The old one's wrinkled back heaved and she coughed out dirt. And saw the soldier and screamed.

“I beg your pardon, ma'am,” he said, closing his eyes and turning his back.

Dezbah began helping her cover herself with the rags.

“Are we home yet?” the old one asked. “I dreamed we were going home. I was just about to see the peak of the first sacred mountain when that biilaganah woke me up.”

“You've been sick, grandmother. But you're better now.”

“Now that the Navajo fairies have returned her,” the soldier's thought intruded.

But it was overlaid with another thought. This was not a human one. It was the familiar and beloved thinking of a Navajo pony.

The soldier caught the thought entering her mind and looked down at her with one raised eyebrow. “So. That's yer man from Manuelito and his people, is it? The general knew someone was coming in, but they've never caught him.”

“Please,” she said. “Go away. Just a little way. Don't try to catch him. Don't let him see you. I must speak with him.”

“Would be a feather in my cap to take him,” he said with a sigh. “But I think I feel a call of nature anyway.”

A short time later the messenger arrived. He was traveling fast and light but he could see the old one was all but dead. He took pity on them and held the old one before him while Dezbah rode behind.

It was a long journey, and food was still not plentiful, and the old one faded more and more, though she was always within her own senses. Suddenly she cried out, “There it is! The sacred mountain! Oh spirit of the mountain, I am home!”

She was so excited she fell off the horse. She was never able to climb back on and soon after died, wholly herself and very satisfied. Dezbah and the messenger buried her quickly and the messenger offered to take Dezbah with him back home. But she shook her head.

In a few more days, with the little food she could find on the way, she was near once more to the place where she had captured the whirlwind. A blue clad figure sat tall on a horse. He sat even taller as she approached, and she heard his thinking and knew that he was very glad she had come, and felt some burden that was his lift from his mind like a rock to reveal the happiness below it. He gave her a hand up onto the horse's back.

“I wasn't sure you'd be returning,” he said.

“I did,” she said. “The grandmother died, but she had her spirit back and she saw the sacred mountain and knew she was home. Your magic was a good one. But this is not your Ireland. Magic works different here. You can't go catching just any whirlwind without danger. I will help you use what you know the right way, to help The People.”

“My thought exactly,” he said, and she realized that it was.

In the years that followed, the two of them worked with her people, helping them learn that which would benefit them in dealing with the Americans and the New Mexicans. Dezbah herself learned to weave and work silver, and to wear dresses like the few white women at the fort. She helped others learn these skills as well. The soldier showed the men some skills too, and they worked in a way that was pleasing to the soldiers, who thought the Navajo men were doing it for them, when really they were doing it to learn how to improve their crops when they returned home.

And when the time came when the general and the Navajo leaders made a talk about sending the people home, the soldier watched from his duty station and Dezbah watched from among the crowd and both gave a little “push” of their thoughts at the general, who finally agreed to let the people go home.

This time too, the soldier accompanied the Navajos on the long walk. But it was not as a captor but as Dezbah's husband, known to the People as Catches Whirlwinds, though Dezbah had done the true catching, that Liam O'Malley, formerly of the U.S. Cavalry, went with them. He and Dezbah were married and began a trading post specializing in fine horses and with it, they helped her People start another long journey— that of rebuilding their lives, their homes, health and prosperity.

AFTERWORD: This is not a true folktale, but a made-up story about made up people set against the true background of the Navajo's Long Walk and captivity at Bosque Redondo. The stories about whirlwinds, both the Navajo belief and the Irish, are found in books of such magical beliefs. I hesitate to call them superstitions, as I have never personally attempted to intercept a whirlwind, so how would I know?

by

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

In the old days, the crowd of suitors at the palace gate had been downright unmanageable. Knights and princes and even a king or two, each trying to pull rank on the other, had clamored for a glimpse of, a word from. a moment with the beautiful Princess Babette. Princess Babette was, as was de rigeur for one of her station, the fairest of the fair. The gold of her hair put that in the royal treasury to shame with the brilliance of its lustre, the blue of her eyes was as guilelessly clear and deep as a cloudless spring sky, the rose of her cheeks and lips put the sunsets and dawns to shame, and her complexion was dewy and creamy.

As if the fine coloring wasn't enough, her very bones were beautiful, high cheeks, a firm chin and a wingcurve of jawline sweeping above a swanlike neck. Her figure was a symphony of slender, willowy grace, amply but not over-generously curved at breast and hip.

And all of that beauty went to he who won her hand in marriage, along with the aforementioned treasury, ( which was far more substantial if not as lustrous as Babette's tresses), a great deal of fertile land, a large and competent army—in short, a kingdom for which many of the noble suitors would have been happy to marry a far less beauteous princess.

Every day the royal audience chamber was choked with petitioners for the hand of the princess. Babette's royal mum and dad lay awake nights thinking of impossible tasks for the fellows to do, impossible things for them to fetch, to prove themselves worthy of the princess. Babette herself loved dreaming up and suggesting little embellishments—the mountain to be scaled by the king with the unfortunate wart on his nose should be made of glass, for instance. That would keep him busy. He'd have to find the thing first. She herself would have given less difficult tasks to the younger, better looking princes, but often these did not have fortunes that matched her own, and the King her father sent the poor dears off to claim the single eyes of fire breathing dragons or clean the stables of giants.

Fortunately, unlike the impractical suitors of princesses in stories, most of the kings and princes and knights understood such tasks for what they were—a way of being told they were basically unacceptable unless they proved to be more than human. They were gently-born humans, it was true. Noble, even royal humans. But when it came to fire-breathing dragons, again unlike the hapless princes in storybooks, the suitors showed a streak of self-preservation and common sense that, had Babette's father and mother thought about it, were quite desirable characteristics in a son-in-law. Though they sighed and pined and cast many a backward look at the beautiful Babette as they slunk away, most of the suitors declined to die for her and decided instead to fall in love with someone a bit more accessible.

Not so with one candidate, however. King Vladimirror I was very tenacious. He was actually a wizard, the former Grand Vizier of a mighty kingdom, and by his wizardry he had overthrown the rightful monarch. He had no scruples about using that same magic to climb glass mountains, clean giant's stables, quench fire-breathing dragons, and whatever else was required to win a suitable queen.

Babette's problem in this case was simple. She didn't like him. Didn't trust him. As he crawled up one side of the glass mountain, atop which she perched, she could feel her skin wanting to crawl down the other side.

“Now!” he announced, when he stood on the pinnacle with her. “I am ready to claim my prize.”

“Not so fast,” she said, hastily dreaming up another embellishment. “You've only passed the first part of the test.”

“What do you mean the first part?” he demanded. “I've done more than any of the other candidates.”

“Yes,” she said, “but
they
didn't even finish the first part. There's more.”

“Very well.” He said. “I will do anything to win you.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why will you do anything to win me? The obvious answer is my dowry, but I'm told you live too far away for us to consolidate our lands, and that your kingdom is far wealthier than ours. Are you a very greedy king, that you want the little wealth I could bring with me?”

He was actually a very greedy man indeed, but his greed had never been confined to gold. His eyes roamed over the territory he currently desired and he thought of the pleasure of owning something—someone—other men had coveted, of the power he would have over her to do his bidding. “The answer should be obvious every time you look into your glass, madame. You are very beautiful.”

“True. But you're not. So my next question is, why should I be won by you?”

“I have braved the dangers set before your suitors and I alone have prevailed.”

“Yes, but you used trickery.”

“Magic, madame. I am wise in the ways of magic.”

“Wise? Learned perhaps, which is not always the same thing. And I have never heard that a tricky husband was necessarily the best one. No, I think you have used an unfair advantage and besides, I don't wish to travel so far from home. So sorry. Wrong answers, but thanks for playing. Next!”

Vladimirror was angry. Vladimirror was wrothy, in fact. Foaming at the mouth in fact. No upstart princess, be she more beautiful than the dawn , was going to humiliate him in that fashion. Or any other fashion, for that matter. “If I can't have you, my proud beauty, no one will,” he fumed. Even to him, that sounded a little trite but then, he was a wizard with spells, not a wizard with words. Nonetheless, he added, “Not even yourself.”

“Fine,” She said. “Do you mind? It's getting hot up here and I want to get down,” and with that she slid down the mountain on her shapely satin clad rump.

Vladimirror was very unhappy about all of this but he had not overthrown a monarch because he wore his heart on his sleeve or said what was on his mind. He had cast a curse upon her, though she hadn't noticed, and he left the kingdom smiling, anxious to return to his own kingdom and watch in his scrying glass as his revenge against the haughty princess manifested itself.

“You put the wind up that last one, m'dear,” the King said, as he and the Queen joined their daughter and a few hundred of their closest courtiers in sampling the sweatmeats and candies the various suitors had brought in tribute to the princess.

She didn't answer. She was concentrating on the sweetness of the marzipan she had just slipped between her lips. Sweet somethings on the tongue were ever so much nicer than sweet nothings in the ear, she mused.

Unbeknownst to her, the wizard's spell had the effect of multiplying the effect of the food she put to her lips. Every morsel added girth to her lissome body. She didn't notice that night, when she slipped under her velvet counterpane and pulled the jeweled midnight blue draperies surrounding her bed. But the next morning, when her handmaidens tried to help her into her gown of white samite trimmed with little seed pearls and white diamonds, the gown did not fit. She could not even pull it on. Fortunately, all of the handmaidens for fashion-conscious princesses had to be expert dressmakers and designers, and they were able to slit the seams and piece in new fabric. Still, the effect in the mirror was less pleasing to the princess than it had formerly been.

Babette decided white was maybe not her best color. But laborious changes of garment revealed that blue was no better, nor red, green, yellow, violet, lavender, fuschia, cloth of gold, or silver. Black, the handmaidens informed her, was slimming, but it made Babette feel like a widow.

Oh dear. And she hadn't even married yet. She supposed she had better look at some of the young men more closely.

She didn't get a chance. As soon as the next lot of princes saw her, most of them made their apologies and left. The rest waited until they heard the tests, then they left too.

Babette felt strangely light, despite her increased weight. She was suddenly left alone—relatively speaking. No suitors waiting. No glass mountains to perch on. No one seemed to care what she was wearing or how she wore her hair. In fact, everyone, including her parents, seemed to be looking the other way when she approached. It made her feel invisible. That was annoying, but also something of a relief. The truth was, no one seemed to recognize her for herself. It was as if Princess Babette was someone else entirely and she was just—this largish girl, who was actually rather hungry.

This proved to be a bit of a problem for everyone else though. Now, when Babette reached for the sweetmeats the princes had left behind, her father sighed and her mother gave her a Look. The closest lady in waiting said, “Your Highness, perhaps you would like to wait until we can order more rare and lustrous fabric from the importers?”

And though she took no more at meal times than she was accustomed to taking, she felt eyes watching each morsel she put to her lips, and found she had quite lost her appetite until she was alone, back in her rooms again.

She was, as one wit put it, “The mock of the town.” From being a proud and beautiful princess surrounded by suitors, she had gone almost overnight into being plump and ignored, even by those who she was quite sure loved her.

It was as if she were a ghost in her own castle. Her own servants snubbed her and when she reacted angrily her mother, passing by, overheard, and took her aside. The Queen searched her daughter's face, her eyes full of pain, and said, “You must not blame your maidens, daughter, or anyone else if you are not as well treated now as in your slimmer days. Wrath will not restore your beauty, nor the power it lent you. With your slenderness, you have lost something of your character.”

“But Mama, that's ridiculous!” Babette stormed. “I haven't lost my character at all. I'm still a virgin!”

“Of course you are. And likely to remain that way unless you take yourself in hand.” The sad thing was, Babette could see that the Queen thought she was being kind and giving wise advise. Part of it was wise. Babette never again took out her own frustration on her handmaidens or other people. She learned to get what she needed from them by looking them in the eye and getting them to stick to their jobs. If she saw in their expressions some pain or worry unrelated to herself, she got them to tell her of it, and relieved it if she could. Otherwise she would never have got anything done.

But still, without hours to fill dressing and dancing and entertaining suitors, she had a great deal of time on her hands. She drifted quite by accident into the great hall where her father was teaching her elder brother, the Crown Prince, about ruling and making good decisions and passing judgements. She sat on the sidelines and listened, day after day, as her father heard each case and spoke to his advisors and listened to them, then he and her brother weighed each fact until they came to a verdict, issued a decree, upheld or struck down a law, granted an exemption or a punishment, as the case required. Her father, she realized suddenly, was a very good king. Her brother would be a good king too, she could tell. They were both fair, listened well, and truly cared about the fate of the people in front of them. They understood how other problems within the kingdom would affect the welfare of those same people.

She came to feel extremely humble, and saddened. With such an example she could have been a good ruler too, at the side of one of those princes. Even one of the ones who wasn't really handsome or daring might have been good at kinging with her help.

Vladimirror watched her from afar and saw her bursting and bulging in her dresses, looking bewildered and shocked at how people treated her, and then sad and whipped, sitting alone in her chambers. He sent a message by carrier bat and it came in the night and tangled in the hair of her chambermaid.

“What does it say?” the chambermaid asked, when the princess had quieted the servant's shrieks, disentangled the bat, taken the message vial from its leg and was reading.

“It's from that wily wizard of the East,” Babette said, frowning. “He's taking responsibility for my current—condition, and offers to give me back my figure if I pass three of HIS tests. It requires me to travel incognito, I'm afraid. You'll have to change clothes with me.”

“
How
incognito?” the chambermaid asked. “You may need to travel in something a little rougher than the gown I'm wearing. It used to be yours remember?”

Babette eyed the pink samite gown with the little ruby insets thoughtfully. “You might have a point there. If you would be so kind as to go to the kitchen and fetch the cook. Her gown should fit me. And I will need some food for the journey as well.”

The chambermaid rolled her eyes, as if her plump princess
would
be thinking of food and cooks even at such a time, but obeyed. The cook took a long time coming and when she came, it was with a gown over her arm as well as her own.

Babette cocked an eyebrow and the cook said, “I brought you me other gown, ‘ighness. It wouldn't do, me cookin' in your finery, and it'll bring a good price at the market if I don't get it all stained with grease and such. That silky stuff stains right through the apron, it does. So you can ‘ave this ‘un and I'll keep yours nice and clean. Might be I can wear it to me daughter's wedding before I sells it.”

Babette nodded, thanked her, slipped out of her dress and handed it over. When the cook departed, the chambermaid tried to help her mistress on with the old roughly woven brown garment, splattered with gravy stains across the bosom. Babette shook her head. “I'll have to get used to dressing and undressing myself if I'm going to be incognito.”The princess was appalled to find that the cook's frock fit her perfectly, and without too much room to spare. The cook had always been the largest woman in the palace.

The chambermaid clucked her tongue, “I wish your Highness could find it in you to go incognito with two or three of the palace guard anyway. It's as much as my job's worth to let you go haring off like this.”