The Green Hero (17 page)

So the great kitchen fires blazed. Spits were turning. Pots were boiling. Every servant was working like ten. For it was not enough to prepare the dinner. Finn still sat at the table, and they had to assuage his raging hunger by a constant stream of tidbits until the main course should be ready. But they could not appease him. He came storming into the kitchen and seized a half-cooked sheep from the spit, and ate it right there, standing in front of the fire, feet spread, one hand on each end of the spit, not noticing that his hands were burning. He devoured the sheep, and cracked the bones and sucked the marrow—and smote the cook again for being slow. Then he went back to the table to wait for his meal.

The bewildered footmen tried to serve him as if it were a formal dinner and he a banquet room of guests. They began with a huge carp, which had been raised in the royal pond and fed only on swans. He didn’t bother to slice it. He ate it from tail to nose, crunching the bones, eating the eyeballs like grapes. Then he ate several giant crabs, shells and all. He drank off a tub of mutton and barley soup, then went to work on a whole roasted ox stuffed with pigeons. When he finished the ox it was midnight. His eyes were glazed, his face red and swollen. But he ate the honey and cakes and fruit, finishing another barrel of wine—and then, finally, stumbled to his couch with a bowlful of walnuts. And the weary servants who had been feeding him since dawn began to clear the table.

He awoke in the middle of the night, ravenous. The servants were all asleep. He would have roused them, but he couldn’t bear the delay. He took a torch and went to the kitchen. The cupboards were bare, not enough there to interest a mouse. He went to the storeroom, placed the torch in a sconce on the wall, and then looked at the carcasses hanging from meat hooks. He lifted an enormous side of beef from its hook, sat down on a barrel and began to devour it. It wasn’t cooked, of course, but he didn’t care. By dawn all the carcasses were gone—the oxen, the sheep, the dressed goats—he had eaten them all. He went off to take a nap before breakfast.

By the end of the week there wasn’t a scrap of food to be found in the castle or in any of the houses around. The villagers had fled—because he had sent his soldiers to take their livestock. He hunted from morning till night. Game was plentiful. He killed stags and wild boars, nor did he fear to hunt the savage bear, for bear steaks were good too. But, mighty hunter though he was, he could not kill enough each day to satisfy the day’s hunger. Famine was inside him; when he fed himself he fed her. And she grew stronger and stronger and made him want more and more and more.

Finally, his kingdom was swept bare. The villagers had fled; their crops lay untended; he had devoured all their stock. There was no game in the forest, no fish in the rivers. He sold all he owned—his castle and his jewels, his very crown, his chariots; the horses had long been eaten. He sold everything, keeping only his battle-axe. Then he took the princess and went to another kingdom to buy food with his gold. It was a treasure of gold, a huge leather bagful. But inside a week he had spent it all on food, and had nothing left.

Now the hunger began to torment him so that he could think of nothing else. More than a hunger, it was more like a thirst, but for food. A thirst, parching every juice of his body, involving all his organs, squeezing his entrails into one burning mandate—food!

Finn was walking outside the city, along the shore, trying to find a washed-up fish, upending rocks and scraping barnacles off with his teeth, for they had tiny specks of flesh inside. Gulls stooped, screaming. He was hoping to catch one. A man of the city passed, walking by the shore. Stout, richly dressed, a merchant by the look of him. He passed, and looked back again at Hanratty’s daughter.

“Stop!”

The man turned. Finn held the girl by the wrist, and walked to the merchant.

“You, there. You looked at her.”

“I meant no offense, sir,” said the man.

“I don’t care what you meant. Do you like her?”

“What?”

“This girl, man, the girl. Do you fancy her?”

“She is … very beautiful.”

“How beautiful?”

“What?”

“How beautiful? In money? How much?”

“Are you offering to sell her?”

“She’s mine to sell.”

“I hesitate to name a price.”

“Don’t hesitate.”

“I’m not a rich man. …”

“Look, sir, I am a king, no greasy merchant. I do not bargain. I am a king and I am offering you a princess. The price is ten bars of gold, which I know you can afford. So let us conclude before I lose my temper.”

The merchant looked at the huge hairy wild-eyed stranger, and then at the lovely young girl. He sighed deeply, and wrote an order for ten bars of gold. Finn snatched the paper and rushed toward the city to the countinghouse before it should close. The merchant and the girl stood looking at each other on the beach.

She was looking at him, but her eyes had already veiled over, refusing to see him. She had seen enough in one swift glance—the mild pouting cheeks, the tiny mouth, the shrewd eyes, the big stomach. She moved from him and waded out into the water, and stood there, whispering:

“Oh, Father Lyr, you whom I have always honored above all the gods—ever since I was a little girl and my father thrust me into the salt bay like a wriggling little tadpole, and I felt no fear at all, only a wild bliss—oh, Lyr, whose sea I have always loved, whom I love even in rage because your rage is storm and in the center of storm I find silence which my heart drinks—O Lyr of the living waters, oh, master of the horse, swinger of tides, hear my prayer. I am only a young girl, a lost princess whose father, the king, has gone mad. Please, please deliver me from the gross body of this transaction. Please, please save me from this ugly old man. At his touch I will either perish, or kill him and go mad as my father. Please help me, Lyr, and teach me to help my father in his crazed hunger.”

The merchant stood there on the beach keeping an eye on his new purchase as she stood knee-deep in the water. Then he saw a wave rolling, larger than the others. Even as he looked upon it, its cusp deepened and seemed to fill with hot silver. The light was too bright; it stabbed his eyes with pain. He looked away and blinked—and, when he looked back again, there was no girl there, but a fisherman casting his net.

“Fisherman, fisherman,” he cried, “have you seen a girl?”

The fisherman shook his head silently.

“Where is she, where did she go? She’s brand-new—just finished paying for her. Where did she go?” He raced down the beach, frantically looking for the girl.

That night, Finn was in the hovel where he now lived, finishing an enormous meal, when he saw an old fisherman come in with a net over his shoulder. He threw the net on the table and little silver fish spilled out.

“For your breakfast,” said the fisherman, and turned into Hanratty’s daughter.

“A clever trick,” said Finn. “Where did you learn it?”

“When you left me with that terrible man, I prayed to Lyr to help me. He did. He taught me sea changes.”

“Think you can do it again?”

“Oh, father. …”

“Well, if Lyr is trying to help, let him do it right. Gods should not stint—any more than kings. You just keep saying those prayers, missy. I see a small but steady income.”

The next day he sold her to a landowner. When the old man tried to embrace her, she turned into the likeness of his wife, paralyzing him with fear. And so she slipped away.

Then she was sold to a hunter. She turned herself into a dainty little red fox and led his hounds on an exhausting chase—and when they came near, called to them in her own voice. They were confused, so was the hunter. In the confusion, she slipped away.

A sailor bought her next. When he tried to come close, she leaped overboard, turned into a seal, and swam away more swiftly than he could follow.

Finn kept selling her and she kept changing into other shapes, and returning to him to be sold again. And he was able to keep himself in food, but his hunger grew and grew. Finally, it was necessary for him to sell her everyday; it took that much gold to buy the food he needed.

One day she was late returning. He grew ravenous, and went striding out of the hovel, axe poised, looking for something to kill. A cat crossed his path. He swooped and caught it. It was an orange cat, sleek with good eating, because it used to meet the fishing boats coming in, and was thrown scraps by the fishermen as they gutted the fish. She didn’t bite or scratch, but settled herself in Finn’s hands, almost purring. She was used to men. Finn gloated upon her fatness, and was ready to devour her—fur, claws, whiskers, and all. His fingers tightened about her neck. She looked him full in the eye. A shaft of green fire pierced the man, making him cry out in puzzled grief. He forgot his hunger for a moment, and almost remembered something else. He heard a voice being wrenched from him, a different voice from the one he’d been using, a younger voice. He heard it calling,

Creature pair of earth and air,

Here and there, and everywhere

Come, I pray, and serve me fair.

He heard wings beating and the wild cry of a hawk screaming its joy. He saw a black shape hurtling toward him along the beach, and heard the pleasured yowl of a tomcat. And the hawk, Finn’s own falcon, landed on his shoulder. And the huge black tomcat he had taken from the Fish-hag rubbed against his leg, purring hoarsely.

“Oh, master,” cried the hawk, “we’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“Yes-s-s,” said the cat. “And now we’ve found you, and shan’t lose you again.”

Unhesitatingly they had recognized their master, Finn, within the gross uniform of Hanratty’s flesh. For when animals love you they can see beyond appearances. And in their knowledge of him Finn began to remember things. Slowly, painfully, he began to untangle his mind from its sleep of greed.

“Who are you?” he cried. “Who am I?”

“You are Finn McCo-o-o-l, son of Cuhal, chieftain-to-be of the Fianna,” said the cat. “Stolen from us by enchantment laid upon you by my old mistress, the Fish-hag, and her sister, Drabne of Dole. Made to change forms with a mad king of Ulster, Hanratty by name, who offended Amara, Goddess of Groves, and was punished by her with Famine. … Except she punished you instead, thinking you the wicked king.”

“Oh, what a mixed-up tale,” cried Finn. “So many puzzles, so many enchantments, so many crimes and mistakes. My head reels!”

“Easy. …” said the hawk. “Easy, young master. Puss there never did know how to tell a story. Blurts it all out in one big undigested lump. Let me tell you one thing at a time, so that we can begin to undo the evil. You are under enchantment. We must disenchant you in some way. Then we can begin to think about vengeance, and so forth.”

“Hanratty has my body, you say? And this is his?”

“Right,” said the hawk.

“That girl—she’s Hanratty’s daughter?”

“She is, poor lass.”

“Poor lass, indeed,” said Finn. “Well, my friends, let us counsel together. I want to be me again—and soon.”

“We have already given some thought to this matter,” said the cat. “And even have made a bit of a plan. But I’ll let the hawk tell you; she puts things so much better.”

“Thank you,” said the hawk. “Our plan is simple. To capture the Fish-hag, and force her to concoct a reverse spell that will put Hanratty back into his body here, with all its awful cravings, and you back into yours. While I have been given the honor of telling you the plan, our friend, the tomcat, has reserved for himself the glory of its execution. Since he knows the witch’s habit and has some experience in magic, it is he who will hunt her down and do what must be done. As for me, I will stay here and find you food, which seems to be an assignment large enough for anyone.”

“I am so happy to see you two again that I can hardly speak,” said Finn. “I want to weep. But I won’t do that, either. Just take my thanks, good friends.”

“Farewell,” said the cat. “I go hag-hunting.”

“And I,” said the hawk, rising in the air, “will just go hunting …”

Now the cat had kept very close watch on the Fish-hag since the hour he had learned that it was she and her sister who had done a mischief to Finn. He had gone to the Salmon Pool, prowled the hazel copse, blending into the shadows of the trees as only a black cat can—and then, at night, prowled outside her windows, peering in, leaping on the roof, listening to all that went on. At first he could find no way to surprise her. Then she gave him his chance.

She took to entertaining an extremely important Demon of Darkness, who came a-wooing in his favorite form—a rat. But a very handsome rat. A huge pearl-gray one, larger than a rabbit, with black ears, and black tail, and silky jet-black whiskers. Now the cat had seen her receive many swain in the years he had spent with her, but never had he seen her so frantically in love. At first she welcomed him in her own form, but found that a bit awkward, and of late had changed herself into a she-rat for his visits, which they both found more convenient. She was a suave brown rat with dainty paws and hot golden eyes. The cat thought she looked much better this way. And he kept watching, kept planning … so that when he and the hawk were overjoyed one afternoon to hear Finn’s voice dimly calling over hundreds of miles, over sea and plain and forest, speaking the old magic rune—when they had heard the beloved voice of their vanished master and had answered its call, why by that time the cat’s plan was ready for action. And now he was on his way back to the hazel copse.

What he did is soon told. He waited until night came, and blended into the shadows—ghosted through the window, and the Hag never knew he was there. He waited in the corner and watched her weave a small spell, and turn herself into a pretty brown rat. She hopped on a cushion and folded her paws demurely, waiting for her demon lover.

But it was the cat who came. He pounced.

“Good evening, mistress,” he said, holding her fast, fixing her with his blazing green eyes, grinning at her with his successful teeth. “It is long since we met, you and I. But you haven’t been idle all that time, have you? Oh, no. You’ve been busy, busy, busy … doing jobs for Goll McMorna, have you not? And one special job … which involved the disappearance of my master, Finn.”