The Last Storyteller (50 page)

And so I went on, keeping my friendships in constant repair and telling my tales. A sense of good organization returned, and my welcome at firesides increased. Some counties became my favorites: County Leitrim, poor as its own marshland; Cork, in its power and glorious variety; Tipperary, with its political drive; Wexford, with its old customs and dark places, though none as dark as my darkest days.

At the two-year mark, halfway through my second full round of the country, I wrote to John Jacob. “Perhaps the time has come for my teacher to assess how I’m doing,” I said. With him in mind, I hired a hall
next to a church twenty miles from his home; it could accommodate a hundred and fifty to two hundred or so.

It filled to about three-quarters of capacity; knowing the countryside, I figured the rest would drift in around a quarter past eight. When I walked onstage at twenty past, people were standing here and there at the back, chatting.

No applause; it didn’t happen that way in those days. I sat down on my kitchen chair (borrowed from the priest’s house next door) and cleared my throat and clapped my hands. More nervous than usual—which is saying a lot—I checked the faces and saw John Jacob about ten rows back.
Is this man ever going to age or change?
I wondered. He looked as I had first seen him, ruddy and healthy and sound.

I opened by talking about the life of the
seanchai
.

“They were knowledgeable men, those old storytellers, with gifts of language and timing, with prodigious memories and a strong desire to tell the stories of the land. Through them we preserved our ancient identity, and even if every tale they told didn’t relate directly to that audience on that particular night, they kept people alive to the Family of Man.”

I tried not to look at John Jacob, but his nodding head kept drawing my eye back to him. No wonder he approved: my opening remarks came straight from his tuition.

And then I took the leap. I had been planning it for months—and I knew that I might never do it again. It contained a huge risk for me, and yet it seemed essential. After all, it observed, responded to, and put into practice the central piece of advice by which James Clare had guided me.

“One day you have to tell the story of your own life,” he said, “and perceive it as myth. When you can do that—that’s when you’ve finally grown up.”

I launched into it. It took two and a half hours, and here you have, again, an edited version—you two children know it in its “real-life” form, anyway.

If we were sitting by your firesides tonight, and were we a hundred, five hundred years back in time, the tale that I’m about to tell you would last until cockcrow. But I’m mindful of the electricity bill, and the hardness of the chairs you’re sitting in, and the fact that we all have to get up in the morning
.

Long ago, if long ago means that many, many rivers have flowed into the sea, and if long ago means that many, many stones have rolled down mountains, there lived a chieftain’s son. He had no sisters and no brothers, just his father, the chieftain, and his mother, the chieftain’s wife
.

A rich family, they had horses and cattle and pigs. They had sheep on the mountain too, and when it came to the first of May each year, the boy rose at earliest light and gazed anxiously into the distance, because he knew that if the peaks shone white with snow, they would have to pay no rent for the grazing of their sheep up there that summer. It gave him great pleasure to wake up his parents and tell them, “There’s snow on the mountains.”

They lived in peace, this chieftain’s family, and the wheel of the year rolled over them in a benign way. The sowed and they reaped, they planted and they harvested, and when all their labors were closed down by the winter winds and rains, they sat by their fire of logs and admired the pictures they saw in the flames
.

A hospitable house always welcomes visitors, no matter how inconvenient, and one day, the boy, his red hair flying in the wind, ran down the hill to the door of his house and called everybody
.

“Look! Come out and look!”

Advancing up the road they saw a party of singing, dancing, swaying people wearing the wild motley of jesters and troubadours—pointed hats and pantaloons in variegated colors. One man turned cartwheels; another juggled silver balls that caught the light; a young girl cracked a whip that echoed up and down the valley
.

At the center of their group, like their queen bee, strode a tall young
woman who clapped her hands in a steady rhythm. As the breeze turned this way and that, the chieftain and his family and his household could catch the strains on the wind of a pleasant marching song
.

The party drew closer and closer, and the boy grew more and more enchanted. As they crossed the grass sward in front of the house, the tumblers tumbled higher and faster, the jugglers switched from silver balls to gold, the girl cracked the bullwhip so hard and so fast that it sounded like branches breaking in the woods in a storm
.

For five full minutes the troupe kept up this performance, accompanied all the while by their beautiful young leader clapping her hands and singing the song that gave the other performers their rhythm. When they had done, they bowed deep and low, and the chieftain and his household applauded
.

Naturally enough, the chieftain and his wife called up food and drink, on tables set out on the grass. The boy spoke to each performer and asked how they’d learned their wonderful routines. Each promised to teach him, and never had the boy enjoyed such company
.

But a cloud came into view—not a cloud in the sky, for it was a beautiful day of bees humming in the honeysuckle and birds warbling in the trees, but a cloud in his mother’s face. She left the table and went into the house. The boy, so dutiful all his life, so caring of his parents, tore himself away from the troupe and followed
.

In the hallway he found his mother standing with her forehead pressed to the wall. The boy walked over to her and said, “What’s the matter, Mother?”

She waved him away and went upstairs; he heard her lock the door
.

The boy went back to the table, where the troupe had begun to perform again. This time, directed and urged on by their beautiful leader, they startled the household with their speed and agility and talent. Foremost among them, their leader danced as they sang and played reed pipes for her and she beat a drum
.

She danced as no woman had ever before danced, a swaying to the rhythm that grew wilder and faster. In the beginning she made lazy and friendly movements, and by the end she was spinning so fast that the tassels in her hair made a bright circle in the air. And, as the music came to a sudden stop, she threw the drum aside, sank to the ground, bowing low in front of the chieftain
.

At that moment the boy, for no reason that he could tell, glanced back at
the house. Looking out from an upstairs window, his mother stood with her hand to her mouth in fear. As the dance ended, she turned away and vanished
.

The next morning he rose early, and felt something wrong. Down in the yard, he saw his father climb onto a saddled horse that had been loaded with bags and goods. He had always known when his father was undertaking a journey—for weeks the household prepared. They shod the horse, they polished the leather of the chieftain’s bags, they prepared his best riding boots. But this journey must have been a surprise, an emergency
.

The boy ran downstairs; he could just hear the clip-clop of the hooves as his father rode from the yard. With all his speed, he raced after the horse and caught up to his father at the gate
.

“Father! Father! Take me with you,” cried the boy—and he surprised himself with these words from his own mouth, because he hadn’t meant to say that at all. The father turned in his saddle and said, “I can’t. This life to which I go is too uncertain. Stay at home and take care of your mother and the household.”

He spurred his horse and cantered off. The boy raced after him again, calling, “Father! Father! When will you be back?”

Of course he couldn’t catch the horse, who had now been spurred into a gallop, and the father never answered. Or didn’t seem to, although the boy thought he heard on the wind the single word “Never.”

Back at the house his mother waited by the door. Do you know how your face looks when you feel both angry and sad? You frown, yet your mouth turns down. That was how his mother looked. The boy didn’t know what to say—but his mother said it for him:

“I know what has happened, and I know where he has gone. From now on, you will devote your life to finding your father and bringing him back. To me.”

For a year and a day the boy went into training for his great search. He learned how to ride a horse across a torrent of water. He learned how to look for plants that gave natural food. He learned how to take a stone out of a horse’s hoof. He learned how to use a sword and a knife against bandits. He learned how to ask a question and get a straight answer—almost an impossible feat in Ireland
.

And when a year and a day had passed, his mother stood by in the yard as the menservants saddled the horse and loaded up the bags and the weapons
and the food and helped the boy—who had grown so much in that year—to mount the horse
.

“Bring home your father,” said his mother, and the boy rode away
.

“Good speed,” said the cook as he rode away
.

“Good speed,” said the kitchen maids as he rode away
.

“Good speed,” said the menservants and the yard boys and liveryman as he rode away
.

He began his search by asking questions on the road he followed. “Have you seen a band of strolling players? They wear all the colors of the rainbow.”

For a year and a day he received no answer to that question, and he reached the end of the road
.

Next, he began to ride in circles that narrowed and narrowed. This time he asked, “Have you seen a man who can tumble as the clouds tumble across the sky? He wears all the colors of the rainbow.” For a year and a day he received no answer to that question, and he reached the innermost circle. If he rode any farther he would be looking at his own face and the horse would not be able to turn around
.

Finally he said to himself, “I have to do the thing I feared: I have to ride up the steepest mountains and down into the deepest valleys,” and, his heart laden with fear and doom, he set out. This time he asked, “Have you ever seen a juggler who has all the colors of the rainbow flashing in his face from the gold and silver balls he juggles?”

For a year and a day he received no answer to that question—but mountains are high and valleys are deep, so he soon knew that he would need another year and a day to scale every peak, plumb every depth
.

On the third day of the third month of the third year, as he rode his horse down a rocky path by a cascading stream, he met an old man cutting wood at the edge of a forest. He asked his question, and the old man, shading his eyes from the sun, said, “If I tell that I have seen such a sight, that I have seen a juggler who has all the colors of the rainbow flashing in his face from the gold and silver balls he juggles—what will you give me?”

The boy said, “I will give you the sun in the morning.”

But the old man said, “I already have the sun in the morning, and most mornings I don’t like it very much.”

The boy said, “I will give you the moon at night.”

But the old man said, “I already have the moon at night, and she’s a cold mistress.”

The boy sat back on his saddle and thought as deeply as a sage in his cave. Finally he said, “If you guide me to the juggler who has all the colors of the rainbow flashing in his face from the gold and silver balls he juggles, I will come back here and tell you legends and tales that will delight your mind for as long as you live.”

With a cry of pleasure, the old man pointed to the high hills. “Up there, every morning at dawn, every day at noon, and every evening at sunset, I see all the colors of the rainbow flashing and dancing.”

The boy spurred his horse and rode up the mountain. And oh, it was a hard ride. He had to ford a torrent of icy water. He had to take a stone from his horse’s hoof. He had to find food from plants that grew under rocks. He had to fight off a lone bandit who wanted to kill him and steal his horse. But now and then, as he looked up, he saw the colors of the rainbow flashing and dancing just over the edge of an escarpment
.

As the sun reached the highest point in the sky, he rode around the edge of this cliff and up onto the plateau. There he saw, laid out as with a great circus, tents of all colors and sizes. Weaving in and out among them went tumblers and jugglers and clowns and singers and dancers. The boy knew that his search had ended
.

He walked forward from tent to tent, opening the flaps and peering in. In the first tent, he saw a man teaching two bears to waltz, and the man was so kind to the bears. In the second tent, he saw a man teaching a monkey to play an accordion, and the man was so kind to the monkey. In the third tent, he saw a man teaching an elephant the tightrope, and he was so kind to the elephant
.

From the fourth tent he heard music. He lifted the flap and peered in. There, three musicians, playing a pipe, a fiddle, and a drum, kept time to the dance of the queen of the troupe while the boy’s father, once a great chieftain of the lowlands, lay on cushions, watching, smiling, and applauding
.

As the boy stood there, the dancer saw him. She snapped her fingers. The music stopped. She walked over to the boy and took his hand and kissed it
.

“I have been waiting for you,” she said. “Welcome. I need you here.”

Though he still hadn’t reached his majority age in life, the boy knew enough of the world to feel alarmed. His father stood up and, with great reluctance, greeted his son
.