Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 25

Perhaps it was Dusty’s noise that brought Leo’ mother out of the house. At any rate she was suddenly standing on the path waiting for her son. Leo had a moment of feeling remote and alienated, then experienced a rush of warmth and love. He took her in his arms, and was staggered to see that he was now considerably taller than she was. He was amazed too to see her frailty, the greyness in her hair and the gauntness of her face. He felt a boniness in her body that had not been there before. She was trembling as they hugged but otherwise retained the calmness and dignity that had always been her hallmark. They walked together up the path. ‘Your father will be glad to see you,’ she said quietly. ‘He hasn’t been very well.’

In the cool dark of the house, smelling older than Leo had remembered it, the boy found his father sitting asleep in an armchair. His hair, for so long a proud silver, was now grey and wispy. In the relaxation of sleep his face sagged. Leo woke him gently and it took the old man a confused moment to realise what was happening.

‘Ah,’ he said at last. ‘You’ve come. I knew you would.’ He staggered to his feet and embraced his son, who found that he towered over this parent too. He also found that he had to support his father and after a moment he lowered him back into the armchair.

‘A glass of wine, mother,’ the man said. ‘A glass of wine for the traveller.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

Leo was surprised, thinking about it later, to realise how quickly the three of them settled into their new relationship, with little apparent effort. There was an atmosphere in the house of sluggishness, as though the old people had been in a long sleep before he came. As Leo moved with energy and vigour through the rooms, he could feel the dormant air being disturbed, ripples emanating from his body and becoming waves. The still rooms stirred into life again.

Leo’ parents were content to concede everything to their son. When he spoke they listened deferentially. Meals were served when he was hungry. When he was tired and went to bed they followed almost straight away. It was f*******n for Leo to talk about his journey until after the telling of the seven stories. His parents, traditionalists, kept to this rule; Leo quickly became reacquainted with routines on the farm. And he learnt of the changes which had occurred since he went away. His father had been ill for a long time with pneumonia, and still had little strength. Ranald, the neighbour who often worked for his father, had come as often as he could, but that was not often enough. His mother, quite a bit younger than his father, had not been ill but seemed to Leo to have aged quickly too. Leo found himself working from dawn till after dark, bringing the farm back into condition. Yet his pace was tempered by regard for his father, who accompanied him everywhere, trying to help. Leo felt that his own energy and quickness were somehow an affront to his father, an implicit insult. He forced himself to slow down, to seek his father’s counsel, to include him in the work, even though he was often impatient to be getting on with it, and sure of what needed to be done.

As word spread that Leo had returned from his journey, neighbours began to call, bringing customary gifts of food. In talking with them and asking them questions Leo realised the wisdom of the rule that the journey must not be discussed with anyone until after the telling of the stories. The rule reminded the traveller, filled with the importance of his own adventure, that the experiences of the people in his home district were important too, even if they were less glamorous. It reminded him of his place in the scheme of things. While Leo had been coping with love and danger and death, these people, his neighbours, had been growing their crops

, tending their cattle, raising their children and mending their fences. In other words, they too had been coping with the whole cycle of life, which included, in the natural course of events, love and danger and death. Leo saw that in many ways his journey had been unnecessary, for all the things he had encountered and learned, could have been learned here in the valley. Yet he also knew that he needed to leave the valley and make the journey in order to come to that realisation.

After he had been home a week his father went away for a few hours, and upon his return handed Leo his summons. He was to appear before the Council of the Valley, in a week’s time, for seven consecutive nights. Though the summons did not say so, Leo knew that if he passed this, the great test, on the eighth night there would be feasting and a dance, to which all the people in the valley would come, as he himself had gone to others’ feasts when he was younger.

He left his father and walked away, up to the steepest and most distant paddock, Yardley’s, to check on a heifer that Ranald had told him was down. He was excited and nervous, yet aware of a strange feeling of detachment. Thinking it through, he realised it was because the importance of the test was not as absolute as he had once believed. Supposing he failed, what then? In the first instance there would be the embarrassment, not only to him but to his parents. There would be painful silences with friends and neighbours, for the embarrassment would often lie in the subjects which could not be raised, rather than in what was actually said. He would be excluded from the privileges and responsibilities that went with the status of adult in the valley. Certainly, as time went on, and he aged, he would be accepted as an adult anyway, but without any ceremony or sense of pride. And the position of elder would be forever closed to him. There was a boy further along the valley, Suraci, who was known to all the children as brash and shallow, a braggart. He had been away for only a short time, a few months, and had returned as cocky as ever. Leo was never told what happened when Suraci appeared before the Council — he was not entitled to know — but there had been no feast for Suraci. From then on the boy had changed completely, and had crept around the valley like a shadow of a bird on water.

But Leo knew that for him it was different. If he failed the test it would be through circumstances outside himself, and he would feel no shame. He did not need a Council of senior men and women to tell him whether he had achieved maturity or not. He knew that he had, though he would continue to gain wisdom, and to mature, through all the days of his life. And his mood was affected by the fact that he did not plan to stay in the valley long. He was anxious to go back to the town of Conroy, where he had left Adious with her aunt, and to return with her and Jessie to their own small holding. Though his resolve to do this had been weakened by the illness of his father and by the state in which he found the farm, it nevertheless remained his major priority. And when he did leave the valley, he wanted it to be with honour and dignity. For this reason the telling of the seven stories was important to him.

He could find no trace of the heifer in Yardley’s, so instead he sat on the ridgeline and looked out over the farm. It was an attractive sight, and one that filled him with love for his home and his parents who had raised him here. He knew that he could not call himself an adult if he were to walk away from his responsibilities to them. Yet he also knew that if he stayed on the farm and took its management over from his father, then there would be a part of him that would never grow up. There was no malice in this. It was just the way things were, and a lot of it was to do with love — the love of parents who wished to protect their son from hazards and mistakes. Leo was clear enough about all the emotions involved but unclear about how they could be resolved. He sighed, stood up, and jogged off down the hill to check a blocked pipe in a gravity-fed water trough. All these small jobs! Every day was full of them. Would the time ever come when he could walk away from them and go back to Adious and Jessie?

Chapter Twenty-Four

On a cool autumn night, with the dark sky bewitched by stars, Leo stood in front of the Council to begin his first story. Between thirty and forty men and women were present. He knew them all, by sight or by name, and felt himself to be among friends, even though the atmosphere for this important occasion was serious and formal. His parents, both members of the Council, were debarred by custom from attending. There was dinner, a few short speeches, then Leo was introduced by his father’s brother, Fahey. He stood, nervously cleared his throat, and began:

The First Story

‘IN the days long ago there lived on the earth a creature called Slither. Something like a lizard, something like a snake, he had a body of immense length, so long that he did not know where it ended, and he had no idea how long it might be. His body stretched out across the plains behind him. On a clear day he could see where it disappeared through a gap in the mountains. Sometimes he would amuse himself by shrugging his shoulders and watching rocks crash down the mountains five minutes later, as ripples from the movement reached the narrow defile.

‘For all his great size Slither was extraordinarily dextrous. It was nothing for him to tie his body into interesting knots. One of his amusements was to make these knots as complicated as possible and then to have the fun of unravelling them. A few times, however, he scared himself by tying knots so difficult that he began to wonder if he would ever get them untangled.

‘When he was young, Slither stayed in the same area, eating the leaves and bushes that formed the main part of his diet. He ate quite a lot, because if he went for very long without eating he began to get signals from a distant part of his body that it was hungry and wanted nourishment. Before he was very old he had eaten out most of the plains on which he lived and was obliged to move on. He travelled as smoothly as he could but it was inevitable that the passage of his body across the countryside caused a lot of disruption, especially as it took him years to pass any one spot. He travelled across oceans, which was easy for him, as most of his body was still waiting on the shore when he reached the other side. And he hardly noticed the tidal waves that he generated as he made the crossing.

‘One day, when journeying in a new continent. Slither came across a remarkable discovery. It was a giant barrier that crossed his path from east to west. Slither had never seen anything like it. In size it resembled a mountain range, yet it was made of materials that were not like any mountains he had ever seen. It was a kind of scaly substance, made up of many colours, and quite beautiful when the sunlight was reflecting from it. It was firm to touch but gave when prodded. At times it seemed as though a trembling movement would run right along it.