Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 26

‘Slither became fascinated by this remarkable barrier. Though he could have slid over it quite easily, he chose not to. He looked to the left, where it disappeared into the west, and he looked to the right, where it disappeared into the east. He decided to follow it to the east, to see where it led.

‘That was the start of a long pilgrimage by Slither. It was a strange time in his life. He ate hardly at all, and his body — as much of it as he could see — became scrawny and thin. He did not even notice the countryside that he was passing through, and would not have known at any given moment whether he was in jungle or grassland or forest. He did much more damage to the land and its inhabitants than ever before because he had become careless about the way in which he travelled. He was obsessed by his quest, to explore the full length of this strange phenomenon that he had found.

‘As he slid along beside it, Slither did notice that the mountain range — if indeed that was what it was — was becoming smaller and meaner and less attractive. He began to feel that he might be disappointed in what he found at the end of this rainbow. But even though he was getting weary and dispirited he pressed on.

‘The time came when Slither felt that he was approaching the end of the search. He had an instinct that there was not long to go. At the same time, he began to feel that there was something very familiar about the part that he was now journeying beside. He could not place exactly w

hat it was, but there was something about it that he felt he recognised.

‘At last came the moment when all his questions were answered. After a few hours of exhausted sleep one night Slither woke at the first shadowing of greyness in the sky. He moved off again straight away, travelled a very short distance, and then, as the sun rose, found himself looking at his own emaciated neck. The barrier he had been travelling beside all this time, was his own body, and he had been depriving himself of everything to do this. There was now only one comfort for Slither — that at least he had recognised in the end what his obsession had been. Otherwise he might still be absorbed in his fruitless journey.’

Leo sat down quietly, as he had been taught. Some minutes of murmured discussion among his audience followed, but, as he had been warned, no looks or comments were directed towards him. In time his uncle rose, and gestured for Leo to follow him. Fahey led him out of the meeting place, and walked him home across the soft wet paddocks, saying nothing to him, except for a parting admonition to be ready at the same time the next night. Leo went to bed and lay for a long time looking out of his window, at the stars that so brilliantly punctured the sky.

NEAR the town of Perno,’ Leo began, ‘was a river which ran deep but which could be forded in places if one was careful. At one of the fords lived a man named Sussan. He had placed a rope across the river to aid those who wished to cross. The traffic at this particular ford was quite heavy, as it was on a direct route between Perno and Capital, so people liked its convenience, even though it was one of the more dangerous crossings. But people didn’t mind getting a bit wet if it saved them time.

‘One day the river was flowing swiftly; it was dirty, and had risen a good way because of heavy rainfalls further upstream. A man called Marne came to the river with his wife and children. To the wife, the river seemed dangerous and she told her husband that they should walk up to the next ford and try to cross there instead. The children were not really old enough to assess the situation for themselves but, seeing that their mother was disturbed by the height of the water, they supported her pleas and promised their father that they would not complain about the extra walk. But Marne was a stubborn man and, with the rope to hold on to, he was sure there would be no danger. He told his family he would cross first and then they could follow.

‘As he began to wade into the water Sussan came out of his hut and watched. Marne was already so far advanced in his course that Sussan felt it was futile to try to recall the man. He watched with increasing fear as Marne, with water up to his waist already, approached the centre of the river. Suddenly a new wall of frothy water swept downstream and knocked Marne off balance. It almost dragged the heavy pack from the man’s back and Marne reached around in an attempt to get it back onto his shoulders. In doing so he lost his grip on the rope and was swept under. He did not surface again and, although his wife and children and Sussan ran along the banks of the river for quite a way, hoping to find him a mile or more downstream, it was not until the river subsided a week or so later that his body was found, trapped under a log-jam.’

Leo paused in his story and looked around. The drowning of the foolish man was not the point of the tale as his listeners knew. Leo continued.

‘When the wife returned to her home in Capital, she had to tell the story of her husband’s death many times to her friends and neighbours and relatives. She did not want to give her husband a bad name by making him sound foolish or lazy, so she explained to them all that he crossed the river because the children were so tired from the long walk that they could not walk the extra distance involved. “Even though they offered to go round the long way,” she would say to people, “we knew that their little legs would find the journey too far.”

‘The children also found themselves telling the story; not just when they were young, but again and again over the years, to new friends and acquaintances. The oldest child, a boy, had a vivid memory of watching his father’s face in the water as the man was swept downstream, and he incorporated this dramatic fact into his rendition; and, as time passed, he began to fancy that his father had called out to him as well. The words he imagined that his father had called out were, “My son, my son”. The second child heard her mother’s story about the children being too tired to go a safer way and she felt very guilty, as though she were responsible for her father’s death. When she told the story she seemed to remember a remorseful conversation in which her father had told her she was a lazy little girl, and had then plunged into the water in a bad temper. The last child was too young to remember the actual tragedy, so his version of the events was a colourful one involving a rope bridge breaking and a number of travellers being swept away.

‘Back at the ford, Sussan sometimes recounted to passing travellers the story of the drowning of Marne. Indeed it became a popular story over the years, and people often asked for it. Sussan would describe a violent argument with the doomed man, where he, Sussan, would be knocked to the ground in his attempts to stop Marne from dashing suicidally into the swollen river. Marne would then be pictured clinging to the rope as Sussan made frantic efforts to reach him, with poles or a length of rope. Just as his desperate, white fingers clutched at the end of the pole a gust of water knocked him loose and with a despairing look he was sucked away to his death. Sussan did not have to tell the story many times before he began to believe in it himself, as did all the other actors in the drama, whenever they told their different accounts. They could see the drowning man’s face, could remember the words that his lips formed, could even remember how they felt as they relived events that never happened.

‘Many years later Marne’s wife came through the ford again. By then a bridge had been built, but Sussan still lived there. Indeed he had prospered, having built a*****e and a guest house by the crossing. Marne’s widow stayed in the guest house and after dinner she was privileged to hear Sussan, in the midst of stories about the old days, tell of the drowning of her husband. But the story had changed so much that she did not recognise it. She only thought sadly of the many tragedies that the river must have seen, and, not having recognised Sussan, wished that he could have been there when her husband attempted his fatal crossing. “For”, she thought, “we did not try hard enough to dissuade him from going, and perhaps we could have done more to help him when he was washed under.” ’

Leo paused, having almost finished his story. ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘that’s not what really happened. Marne caught cold from crossing the river and died two weeks later from pneumonia. But his children like to believe it was more dramatic than that. That is, if he had any children. And the bit at the end about Marne’s widow hearing the story and not recognising it — I just put that in to make a point.’

His listeners laughed heartily with him and Leo knew they had understood, and liked, the story.

The Third Story

Leo said: ‘There was once a field containing many flowers, all of a small blue type. These flowers were unusual, in that they could come into bloom in any season of the year. At any given time there would be some flowers in the field that were very old — almost withered away — and some that would be in full flower, and others that were still folded buds.’ Leo used his hands to sketch in the air the shape of the new buds. ‘And,’ he continued, ‘there were butterflies in the field that were always in motion. They would land first on one flower, then on another. It didn’t matter what stage the flower was at; the butterflies didn’t care. They didn’t understand “forwards” or “backwards”, or even straight lines. They just kept going from flower to flower.’ He paused.

‘The field,’ he said carefully, ‘is called Time. And the butterflies, the butterflies are us.’

The Fourth Story

‘ONCE upon a time there lived a girl by the name of Alzire. She was a solitary child who lived near a great hill named Goffa. Every night, as dusk fell, she would climb to the top of this high hill and there she would fly, on the end of a very long string, a star that she had made. The star would be cold and white during the day, when she kept it in a cupboard in her bedroom, but as night approached it would begin to pulsate with colour and life, and glow with warmth. It seemed to take on a life of its own. Every night it would join the millions of other stars in the sky, even though on cloudy or stormy nights Alzire would not be able to see it as it soared high above her in the heavens. But she did not mind its invisibility on these occasions: she was more than compensated on the other nights when her star proudly took its place in the glittering display. As she watched it and felt it tugging on the string, it seemed to her as though the sky were like music and her star an essential note in a concert of triumph.